How could we stand it?

The wiping incident happened a few years later. Due to arthritis in her hip, she was having trouble going to the bathroom on her own, so I accompanied her to the toilet. Still fastidious about hygiene, she said it was difficult to get to the proper angle to do a sufficient job of cleaning herself. As I unspooled a two-foot section from the toilet paper roll, I had a flashback: I am a nervous four-year-old sitting on the pot, crumpling the toilet paper into a tiny ball. Mom comes into the bathroom, saying, “Oh no, no, that’s not how we do it! Don’t crumple it up. You must leave it flat, fold it carefully to give it some layers. See? This way it has more surface area.”

I smiled at the memory. I doubt that at four I understood the concept of surface area, but Mom never dumbed anything down for us. Though she wasn’t formally educated beyond her senior year of high school (except for studying interior design briefly in New York), she was one of the most inquisitive, intellectually curious, naturally intelligent people I’ve ever met. She knew, or would quickly discover, how to shim a door, replace the glass in a window, build a bench, tear apart a Kirby vacuum to replace the impeller. She could perform taxidermy on a fallen sparrow, make a three-tier-covered-in-roses waterfall wedding cake, sew a pleated skirt without a pattern, and reroof a house (with the help of my brother Greg).

But now, she couldn’t wipe herself. The truth slugged me in the guts. It’s where many of us may be headed; all the accomplishments of a brilliant, full life, reduced to this.

But then again, maybe it’s fitting.

When my youngest son, Michael, took a philosophy class in college, he came home wanting to discuss ontological questions. How could one know one existed? Mom, who was visiting at the time, had a terse answer. “Well,” she said, “that’s easy. If you poop, you exist.” Laughing out loud, I questioned her typically matter-of-fact reasoning. “Mom, what are you talking about, I don’t follow your logic.”

“It’s common sense,” she insisted, raising her eyebrows as if any child could understand. “If you eat, and your body processes that food into excrement, it’s proof that you are a living, breathing being.”

My son laughed, too. “You may be onto something, Grandma,” he said. “You may know more than my professor.”

Though I resisted her common-sense wisdom when growing up, I now long for the days when she offered it up so readily. This woman who bore eight children and changed thousands of diapers must now accept our help after she proves she exists by the most basic act of humanity: defecation. But time reduces us all to the elemental. It’s the natural state of things.

We have since saluted Mom’s brand of wisdom, and even considered making t-shirts that say, “I shit, therefore I am.” We laugh to ease the sting of losing her.

Surface area is defined as the uppermost layer of something, the measure of the total area that the surface of an object occupies. How do we measure the surface area of a life? My mother stretches across my horizons, her love and influence too vast to quantify by a formula. All I know is, she’s our North Star. That star is dimming, and one day will flutter as if from a great wind and flicker out entirely, leaving our universe darkened. Then I’ll remember the act of wiping her the first time for what it was–a loving sacrament.

Unswerving

A novel by Barbara Ridley

When Tave wakes up alone in the hospital, she barely remembers the car wreck. Far from home, dazed, and despondent, she struggles to face the challenges of her new paralysis—all while worrying about her partner, Les, also severely injured in the accident, now cared for by her homophobic parents who refuse to allow contact. In rehab, Tave relearns life skills and comes to recognize that her future will be completely different from what she’d imagined. Where will she live? How will she find the help she needs? Can her friends rise to the occasion? Or will she be forced to move back in with her mother, putting up with endless talk of faith healers? Her one beacon of hope is Beth, her physical therapist. But Beth’s relationship problems with her own girlfriend push her toward overinvolvement—and risk damaging both her career and Tave’s recovery. A story of a spirited young woman gradually discovering her inner strength, and finding a new community, this novel challenges readers' preconceived notions of disability. For more about the author: www.barbararidley.com. Available from Bookshop, Amazon, and your local independent bookstore.

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