Introducing HOW TO BE AN ADULT

In the interest of full disclosure, I totally love David Richo!  Am bidding farewell to February & welcoming March by sharing some of what I love most from the very first book I read by him  - How To Be An Adult, a handbook on psychological & spiritual integration.  

Am writing about it here, on older2elder rather than over on Dream Reweaver because it was one of those rare books that Mom & I shared together, a process that helped us work better individually & as a team.  

There aren't many books that I can vividly remember finding, but can still recall spotting How To Be An Adult on a bookshelf at Borders/Warrington.  Felt like it pulled me over to it.  

 

The book was first published in 1991, but I came across it in 2000.  Sublime timing.  Earlier and either Mom or I or both would have been unable to process its message;  at that point in time, both of us could fathom "Consciousness elicits grace to match every accepted challenge with newfound adequate strength."  Eighteen months later and Mom would have been gone.  

There are no accidents.

It was helpful for each of us to have the other there to share bits with, rather than processing on our own.  Did it really take us almost a week to move through just the short preface & introduction?  Yep.

The real grabber was the first chapter - Growing Pains & Growing Up.  It would take until after Mom's reunion with her O! Best Beloved to begin to grasp how much she had to accept & handle traumas dating back to her childhood.  David gave her a fabulous permission slip to give it a go!

At the time I read the first paragraph of that first chapter, I hadn't a clue how starved Mom had been for those very things.  Not by her father, who seemed a genuinely loving parent, but spectacularly by her mother.  

We are born with inalienable emotional needs for love,safety, acceptance,

freedom, attention, validation of our feelings, and physical holding.  

Healthy identity is based on the fulfillment of these needs.

After Mom read that, it was hard for me to get the book away from her so I could read it too! 

Right after that passage came the description, The Adult Whose Needs Were Mostly Met in Childhood....

• Is satisfied with reasonable dividends of need-fulfillment in relationships.
• Knows how to love unconditionally and yet tolerates no abuse or stuckness in relationships.
• Changes the locus of trust from others to himself so that he receives loyalty when others show it and handles disappointment when others betray.

To this day, I think reading those three things had more of an impact on Mom than the six describing adults whose needs weren't met in childhood.  She seemed galvanized by the ideal far more than by reading the ones that had been her real. 

Those three descriptions contained words that were familiar yet foreign to her - reasonable, yet tolerates no... , receives loyalty, handles disappointment when others betray.  In simply reading them, especially that last, Mom - at almost ninety - could see where they didn't fit into her life while being given assurances that, even as she edged toward 100, they finally could.

This is going to be fun, sharing the parts we underlined & page tabbed, asterixed & slapped with PostIts!  Realize that as I share my experience with reading this life-expanding book, Mom will be with me since most of the time I won't be able to recall which of us tabbed that page, stuck a sticky on this one, underlined a passage.  

Let the fun begin!  And can't wait to welcome March!!!

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My best-ever rescue!

All day, I've found myself thinking of the University of Michigan study cited by Atul Gawande in his 2012 Williams College commencement address.  It found that hospitals with better outcomes weren't necessarily more successful at reducing risk & that they were basically on par with other hospitals when it came to post-surgical complications.  Where they stood out was how they responded if a post-procedure, post-treatment patient took a turn for the worse.  It was their ability to rescue patients with complications that set them apart.  

Found myself remembering my mother's emotional nose dive following a hospital stay, back in the early '90s.  It hadn't been a difficult hospitalization, yet a residual effect of her stay shredded Mom's self-confidence.  That something was colitis.  Although it was getting better every week, she still had little warning when it would strike.  

By late March her condition had become fairly manageable, but the gnawing fear stayed, emotionally disabling her.   If I'd left it up to her, Mom might never have stepped foot outside the house again.  The woman who adored even a ramble to the pharmacy would not venture out the front door.  In the spring!  

Nothing worked.  She wouldn't go out, not even to see the snowdrops making their demure debut in Cairncrest's woods,  She turned down Louise's invitation to come over for a cuppa & see the crocuses covering her lawn.  The daffodils spreading down from Cairnwood to the Pike weren't enough to lure her out.  

 

It was the promise of seeing the first-ever blooms of a friend's star magnolia that finally drew Mom out.  She could handle the 10-minute drive, and we did exactly as I'd promised, driving her past the magnolia, turning around at the elementary school & driving past it again, so it was right out her passenger's side window.  The we went straight home, where she collapsed into the big chair in the living room & I brewed her a reviving cuppa.  

We were gone all of thirty minutes, top.  But it was a beginning.

  
Praise be for Gail's star magnolia!  It was an opening.  Once Mom had seen the beauty of those glorious white blooms & soaked in Bryn Athyn in springtime, it was easier to draw her out of the house.  But never past Bryn Athyn's borders.  That became her boundary line.  Anything within, nothing beyond.
 
How I stretched those borders!  The first drive was to Gail's, the next went just a few minutes further, around the driveway at BATS & Orchard Artworks. 

 

Next, we added a loop around the college & through the high school, then a nip past the cathedral & around Cairncrest.  

Finally, one day I drove past the post office, across the bridge, out of our hometown, up Fettersmill, then right on Terwood, then roller coastered to Edge Hill.

Never down TO the post office.  As strange as it might sound to those who knew her, the post office embodied Mom's greatest fears.  

Her deepest fear?  Talking to friends.  Nothing I did shook her of it.  The last place in the world she let me take her was one of her best beloved - Bryn Athyn Post Office.  And the dangled possibility of going to Snacks by the Tracks, which she dearly loved, was met with particular horror.  

The challenge wasn't just to rescue Mom from her fear of getting out & about, but from a terror I couldn't understand yet totally gripped her heart.  

Then, a light dawned.  Approximating how long Mom usually went between visits to the bathroom & estimated driving time, I took a gamble.  On one ramble, we headed up Fettersmill & turned left on Terwood - by then, a familiar route - then turned left onto Washington Lane.   

We meandered along roads that took us past Meadowbrook Farm & charming homes with lovely grounds.  All the time, we talked about friends who lived along the way - Richard & Dorothy, Ginger & Gordon & their children, Bishop Odhner, Kirk & Carolyn, Bill & Cathy, Nora & Richard, even J. Liddon Pennock.  

And the whole time, I kept waiting.

Finally!  We'd just driven around Penn State/Abington's cozy campus & were headed off Cloverly Lane, up past the "Rapunzel house" on Rydal Road, when Mom touched my hand & said those long-awaited words, "I think I need a bathroom."

"Oh," I answered, as casually as possible, "No problem.  We'll stop by the Barnes & Noble that just opened, just a minute from here.  It has a nice ladies room."  

Trumpets sounded & angels sang!

Of course, I knew the factors at work, ones most people wouldn't connect.  Mom had been a fan of Barnes & Noble since the 1970s, when Mim introduced (addicted) us to what was then its one & only location*, at 5th Avenue & 18th Street, NYC.  Just hearing the name touched her heart, opened memories.  And she loved a hot cup of coffee, a nice nibble & a great book.  

At B&N/Jenkintown, she found all of that - plus super easy access to the ladies room.  One visit & she was hooked.

I still couldn't get her to go to the post office or head down on a Saturday morning to Snacks by the Tracks, but she was always up for a ramble over to B&N.  She had full confidence that she could make it there without getting "the call" & that, once there, a bathroom was literally seconds from the cafe.  

 

Barnes & Noble/Jenkintown served as Mom's training wheels back into the larger world.  We even celebrated her birthday there, with stuffies in attendance & a cake large enough to share with Rob Nash & his children, who happened to be there.  

Had planned on a fun party, but having Mom connect with Bryn Athyn friends was an unexpected blessing.  Just as the star magnolia had opened the way for Mom to reenter the her old familiar physical world, Rob et al opened the way for her to reenter her social one.  

It didn't happen all at once.  It took baby steps, then bolder & bolder strides, but by the time June 19th drew near, Mom was back as a regular to Snacks by the Tracks, reveling in Heather's sticky buns, Chris' grilled sausage sandwiches, and a bounty of good friends.

                                               

 

What Gail's star magnolia resembled then...                                           and now! 

*  Technically, there were two - B&N's textbook store was across the street.