talk is yasui, as long as we keep it light.

I’m balancing on a tricky tightrope between providing a useful service towards Gabe’s academic success and being an annoying mother.

”Chokoretto no hou ga cohi yori suki desu ka?” I articulate carefully in his direction.

He frowns and, preceded by a sigh of sufficient length to allow what I said to sink in, replies, ”Hai, I like hot chocolate more than coffee.”

If it were up to me, I’d Skype him several times a week over the upcoming semester just to drill him on Japanese. Not because me tutoring Gabe is something that is particularly compatible with either of our temperaments, but because a) I DO want him to have a successful semester and recover from academic probation status, and b) it is mentally invigorating for me to review Japanese. Unless he proposed it though as the coolest notion he’s had all week, I think this will not come to pass. Instead, I will have to take a very Buddhist approach to the non-existent control I have over how his Spring shapes up, and allow it to be his process (with, I hope, significant helpful input from the faculty mentor he’s selected, and with whom he’s supposed to be consulting weekly.)

Because if academics do not pan out as a means of extending his maturing season I will almost certainly have to obtain a car for him to drive to the full-time job he will certainly have to find, and I’m not ready for that. The car thing. Scary. Also he’s messy, and I’m not in the mood to generalissimo anyone into maintaining adequate house-mate habits. Even though I guess it’s my job, seeing as how I birthed him and all. If this happens I will consider adoption offers, if anyone needs an almost-20 year old. Let’s root for Plan A.

Jeff, meanwhile, would like a car. This comes up every so often. This morning, as is typical, he wandered into the kitchen and said ”You know what I want? I want a used car.” Last time it was a truck. He also wanted to know how much a used Subaru would cost ($14K, I supposed,) and posited that it was worth it to him at that cost if we could swing it. I never know what to say in response to these exchanges. The impulse to get real is great. I would tell him that he is visually impaired (essentially true, and easier to swallow than cognitively impaired,) and remind him that he has no license and is uninsurable. I try not to do that though, truthful impulse notwithstanding. Today I just put it off, as usual, with ”Ok, let’s think about that one.” That has sufficed for several hours now, with no revisiting of the question.

Last night when I went to bed, Jeff was snoozing at some level considerably deeper than REMs, and I had the brand new and very strange experience of not recognizing his face. I scrutinized for quite a few minutes then came back and stared some more, wondering what kind of game was being played here...was my software glitching or was there something truly missing? You have undoubtedly seen a wax figure of a person which—no matter how morphically close it comes—does not really convey a knowable version of that person. It was like that. I pretty much had to accept the strangeness of the situation and go to bed anyway. By morning he resumed the familiar appearance of his AD-addled self.

Next up on the vocabulary list: takai and yasui, Japanese for expensive and cheap.

no, I don't go out in my bathrobe.

It’s no mystery to me, really, why the trips I’ve taken with Jeff in the past couple of years have gone well. It’s that I have no third parties to think about. Free from the daily obligations of home, and minus the split attention dynamic created when anyone else requires my consideration, traveling turns out to be as relaxing as it ought to be.

This morning, on the other hand, didn’t go quite according to plan. Jeff has acquired a new tendency to let Freddi the dog out the front door. Freddi is not a well trained dog. I have to take responsibility for this problem, since all the training that happened 11 or 12 years ago was pretty much up to me. Anyway, she is not such a good dog that she won’t take advantage of a situation. Jeff tends to lose sight of just which side of the door he’s on these days, and he’s apt, lately, to let a fellow critter in or out if it seems to want to go either way. So, when I heard the tell-tale open/close door sound, with too much space in between, I hurried to see Freddi standing by the lamp-post giving me that look. The look that says “ha. I know I’m naughty, but heck...it’s fun.” But I couldn’t do anything because I was still in my fluffy pink bathrobe.

By the time I’d tossed on my clothes from two days ago Jeff had taken off down the street which was bad on two counts: Jeff doesn’t know how to get back from down the street, and he was effectively chasing the dog toward busy Evergreen Road. All I really had to do was wave Freddi’s leash at her and she turned herself in, but I had by then exuded enough of my roiling sense of frustration that Jeff felt grumpy for the rest of the morning, including the hour and a half we spent in the oral surgeon’s waiting room while Gabe got his bone graft.

Freddi and I had a talk a little later, and she knew exactly what I was telling her even though she wasn’t willing to make any promises about improved behavior in the face of temptation.

But in the midst of naughty dogs, impaired spouses, and recuperating young adults, I was having one of those sandwich spread squeezed moments (which other people have in much greater abundance than I,) but still, it reminded me of why—even with a rather mentally crippled travel partner—I like trips.

Fort Knox? It’s not in Johnstown Betty.

Yesterday I had this dogged notion that Jeff and I would manage to remain at Disney Hollywood Studios (the movie-themed theme park) until they turned on the multi-wattage dancing lights holiday extravaganza that is the seasonal highlight of the “Streets of America” section.

To that end, I took us back to the good old Animal Kingdom Lodge for a mid-day nap. It’s what you do with small children to recharge their cooperative spirits, but the results were guaranteed to be dubious at best with Jeff.
Still, I will say this about our subsequent evening in the park: We managed. We poked around a bit (best defined as freezing in place every so often to let the throngs filter around us,) then had a very satisfactory early dinner at a facsimile of The Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant, where they chop the Cobb salad so finely it resembles tabbouleh. Not once though, did I encounter any reference to Fort Knox.
Fort Knox? Yes, I was wondering about that myself. In the inimitable way of an Alzheimer brain, Jeff awoke from his nap with the idea of Fort Knox somehow teetering on the edge of his frontal lobe.
”Yeah, Fort Knox,” he said as he got up, without further explanation. We went outside to our rented vehicle (a Nissan Cube, which I turned out to like very much.) “What did that sign say about Fort Knox?” asked Jeff, pointing out the window.
”I didn’t see it,” I said. “I just saw something about 'cast members only.'”
But Jeff saw it again a mile or so down the road, on a grassy, hazy highway median. “Right there,” he said, “It says something about Fort Knox.”
”It does?” I replied. “I’m just missing it.”
He saw it again as we entered the vast and sprawling parking lot. Small billboards line the lanes where the trams pick up and discharge human cargo. I saw an ad for the television show “PanAm.” Jeff saw something about Fort Knox.
As usual, I clued in the turnstile-manning cast member that Jeff would struggle with the insert ticket and fingerprint entry procedure, and she managed his ticket herself then invited us through the wheelchair gate. Jeff squinted at her name badge. “This is Betty,” I said, “from Johnstown, Pennsylvania.”
Jeff said “Oh yeah, near Fort Knox.” Betty forced an uncomfortable smile, already realizing that not both our decks were full.
”Thanks Betty,” I said.
For reasons that are unclear, that was the end of Fort Knox for the day. And the delicious but highly overpriced Viogniers at the Brown Derby made it better, fortunately, not worse.

Standing on our own four feet...for now.

Tomorrow’s goal: Visit Disney’s Hollywood Studios park in such a way as to maximize our chances that Jeff will still be semi-functioning at 6:00pm. This is because at 6 they turn the lights on for some sort of epic holiday kilowatt spectacular. Thing is, I’m here in the season, which will probably never happen again. Hence, I want to see it, despite my confidence that I can continue to live happily without it.

To this end, I have booked a very early dinner (3:55pm, to be precise,) at the Disney version of the Hollywood Brown Derby, on the theory that dinner will be enjoyable regardless, and surely we can find a bench to sit quietly on for an hour (give or take) afterward.

It will not work to use the plan with which I approached both today and yesterday. That is, enter the park at rope-drop, do the one “thrilling” thing I’ve selected as appropriate, and try to just relax, walk, and look at things after that. I know this will not work because, despite my efforts to keep the pace relaxed and allow for snacks and sitting, Jeff turns into a lurching zombie by mid-afternoon, and must be returned to our hotel where he basically does not recover except in that I can lead him around and point to food I place in front of him.

So...that plan: out. Possibly we will go early, walk around a bit, come back and attempt a nap. Naps don’t work with neurodegenerated people quite the same way they work with toddlers, is the problem. The most effective strategy would be to impose a sudden and drastic version of Daylight Savings Time on Florida, advancing the clock approximately 5 hours. That probably won’t get enough votes from everyone else currently occupying the state though.

Which means, I guess, that it’s Plan A. Mid-day rest. Effectiveness: iffy. Something funny happened just before I obtained our boarding passes at BWI airport on Sunday. A member of the luggage lugging crew asked me, in a thick Central American accent which took me two tries to comprehend, whether I wanted a wheelchair. I guess that’s not actually funny, but it was novel because it’s the first time I’m aware of that someone perceived Jeff as wheelchair-worthy. For tomorrow’s agenda, that might just work. Too bad he’d never go for it.

(Interestingly, I'm having all kinds of people notice his condition and strive to help this trip. From airline attendants, to people manning the ticket turnstiles at Disney Parks. You stick your pass into a slot, THEN place your finger on a print-reading device, then retrieve your ticket from the other side. They pick up on Jeff right away and say "I'll take care of it," then just move him through without the rigmarole. Also, a lady held the tram door open this afternoon when it was obvious I couldn't help Jeff step and hold it myself. Nice people.)

But it is pretty...

Here’s the thing I failed to take into account when I decided to bring Jeff to Disney World with me, and stay in the Animal Kingdom Lodge: The AKL is really dark. Dim, I mean. It’s an ambience thing, and I love the theme here, but it sure poses a challenge for Jeff.

Apart from a general tendency for his brain battery (and energy level) to run out of juice quickly, vision has been the striking winner in the race for most challenging deficit of the trip. Much of the wooden floor of the main lobby is polished to a high gleam. And while the lighting is low, it appears in abundant forms...Christmas tree lights, an impressive assortment of lamps, and highlighted African art in every nook. What this means is that Jeff cannot perceive the floor as a normal floor at all. It sparkles with so much reflected light (without the benefit of overall lighting,) that he steps onto that floor as if he’s either going to fall in a hole or trip over a tangled string of holiday twinkle-lights.

The stairwells, meanwhile, are carpeted in giraffe-spots WITHOUT that helpful strip of bright yellow paint we use to coat the front edge of the wooden treads at the Nags Head beach cottage. Hence, we traverse the hallways with me giving verbal directions such as: “The surface we’re on is completely flat. I will tell you when we get to steps.” And then I do. “One, two, three, four,” I say as we climb a flight. Then, at the landing: “Now it’s flat...u-turn!...Now more steps, one, two, three four...”

But I just thought of something. Even if we’d stayed at the brightly-lit Contemporary Resort we’d have had a problem. I know because we explored it today as part of my tour of holiday decorations. In the Contemp, the carpeting is a patchwork of primary colors, in blocks and patterns of assorted complexity. Jeff thought he was about to fall over objects strewn about the floor until I said “No, it’s flat. Just walk normally.”

Other visually-based problems are old friends. I’m used to him walking into doors if I don’t steer him through, or not knowing what on his plate is a finger food. (I try to make it all one or the other--forkable or not.) But difficulties perceiving the floor below him is a new gift, highlighted by the Disney interior design team.

It's a Small World.

Here I am at Disney World, perfectly happy with the fact that—at 7:15pm—what I’m going to do next is watch Once Upon a Time on tv, and sneak upstairs to the Kilimanjaro Lounge and bring down a “zebra dome” for a mini dessert.

I’ll tell you what, airplanes and suchlike conveyances are tiring. The funny thing that happened this time and the last time we flew (which was in April) was that Jeff doesn’t know how to disembark. Even with me leading the way. He’s completely perplexed by the idea of ‘pick up your roll-aboard and follow Emily down the aisle.’

Another interesting, perplexing aspect to traveling that is new this trip has to do with those same suitcases and unloading them from the rear hatch of the car. We stop, we get out, we walk to the back of the car, I open the rear gate, I pull out both suitcases. Jeff says “ooookay,” and immediately swings the one I hand him back into the trunk of the car. “No,” I say. “We’re getting out now.”

Nevertheless, I think that—living in the moment as he must—he is having a pleasant time. And I am having a delightful change of scenery.

I was struggling a little bit with the indulgence inherent in this trip, and the idea of a place such as Disney World in general. Especially after a Facebook friend posted a link to an excellent series of photographs with the theme “Where Children Sleep.” Beautiful photos, beautiful children, often appalling living conditions. It’s very hard to look at the series and not come away remorseful about your plenty and almost sick about the excess so often depicted in stories about the luxurious lives of the 1st World very-rich. But then again, you can’t get mad at the 1st World very-rich for the fact that they hire an interior designer to decorate their home to maximum holiday excess while they’re away on Thanksgiving vacay without noting that it’s all a matter of degree and relativity. Here I am in a lovely resort. I am having fun.

Well, I guess it’s best to try to live life experientially, and be where you are, absorb what there is to absorb, and try not to get hung up on the fact that you can’t—at that moment—right all wrongs. Or probably ever. You can just try to fulfill the role in life you bumbled into, and hope you make a tiny difference toward the better.