The Drivers

“Dad’s acting kind of strange lately,” my brother, mom, and I started saying about five years ago…

My father was diagnosed with Frontal Temporal Dementia (FTD) about a year ago.  FTD, similar but different to Alzheimer’s, is a type of dementia.   As for my father and others who have dementia, this condition is usually diagnosed by MRI, CT, neuropsychological testing, blood work, and of course, very importantly, by the patient’s family members .  FTD is much less common than Alzheimer’s Disease.  It affects the frontal temporal region of the brain; hence, the name of the diagnosis.  Folks with FTD often experience executive functioning problems (e.g. planning and organizing) and have communication difficulty (e.g. stop talking), poor judgment, and difficulty empathizing.  This is what a normal functioning person does every second of the day, without thinking much about it.

We first noticed my father’s “problems” when he crashed his Mercedes into a wall.  This was about 5 years ago.  Hmmm, dad’s acting kinda strange lately.  This is a man who use to fly and land enormous aircrafts during the Vietnam War.  My father taught Math and studied Engineering.  His premorbid functioning was definitely strong in the area of executive functioning, visual spatial, judgment…  So when dad crashed his car, we knew something was up.

Last weekend I had a huge scare and experienced a big learning lesson.  My sister-in-law and I, our kids, and grandpa (my dad) decided to go out to lunch at a small local mall near my parents home.  My dad tires easily and often mumbles in Vietnamese, “sit down.”  I helped to seat my dad on the mall bench to let him rest for a little while.  As I am sitting there with him, I see some sales going on in a store.  I tell my dad that I am going to quickly run into the store and that he should wait for me, just for a few minutes.  As I enter the store, I turn around to check on him.  Great, he is still sitting there.  A few minutes later, I turn around to check on him again, yep, he is still sitting there.  Again, a few minutes go by and I turn around to check on him.  He..is…gone from the bench…My heart sinks…

Where did dad go? Where could he have gone? Maybe he went to the restroom! Yes, he’ll be back. I’m sure of it!  A few minutes go by.  No sign of dad.  I start scouring the mini mall looking for a 69 year old, Asian man, who’s shuffling, and is probably looking lost.  Crap! Now everyone in the mall looks like a 69 year-old Vietnamese man, and I am getting faint and having difficulty discerning one person from the other now.  I slap myself.  “Get it together, Mina!  You lost your father!”  Twenty minutes passed and now I am really worried.  I go to mall security.  Security and I start scouring the mall.  Still, no sign of dad.  The security suggests that I call the police because now it has been almost an hour.  I can’t believe it has come to this.  I can’t believe I lost my father.  I am feeling incredibly sad and embarrassed that I could not keep my eye on dad.  What if something happened to dad.  What if something horrible happened to dad.  I have to trust that he is okay and that the police will find him. 

Five minutes later, a call comes in to mall security.  The police have found a man with the same description walking along the street.  I am hoping and praying that this is indeed my father.  What the heck is he doing walking along the street?!  How did he get out of my sight so quickly?!  Another 10 minutes go by and I see my father, shuffling down the mall next to a policeman.  I run toward my father and am so relieved that he is found, and appears safe.  I look at him and he starts crying uncontrollably.  Of course, this makes me feel awful and I too start crying.  He’s not able to verbalize his thoughts and feelings to me, but just by looking at his sadness, I know that he wants to say a million things.  One thing for sure, I know he wants to say/mumble, “Go home.”  I am met with shame. 

This was a wake up call.

It’s hard for us to answer honestly and simply when someone asks, “How do you like Portland?”  We moved to PDX about two years ago and it has been a BIG transition.  Jason and I just celebrated our four year anniversary in July but it feels like we have been married for 10.  No, no, don’t get me wrong.  It’s not like we have been dragging or anything like that, but for a couple who has only been married for four years, we have done a lot!  Let see, we:

1.  Got married

2.  Had our first kid 16 months later.  We weren’t planning on starting a family this soon, but some of our friends were having a little trouble getting pregnant so we decided, Geez, what happens if it takes us a couple of years to get pregnant. We should start gettin’ busy now!   Anyway, of course, the day we start trying, is the day we get pregnant.  I have a girlfriend who calls mefertile Mertle…Go figure! 

3. Sold our home in Los Angeles.

4.  Moved to Portland to accept a new job.

5.  Got pregnant with our second baby one month after we moved.

6.  Jason became a stay-at-home daddy.

7.  Bought a house in Portland and so we moved from our rental to the house we are in now. 

8.  Had our second baby five months after we moved in.

A colleague (he and his family recently moved from Phoenix to PDX) said to me recently that he found Portland to be a very friendly town, but people aren’t very welcoming.  I have to admit, I agree with his statement.  We had a pretty sweet life in Los Angeles.  We had tons of friends, a neighborhood full of young children (whom we were very close with and sometimes we would exchange childcare), a cute little California bungalow, and Jason had a great music studio in back of the house.  Why the heck did we move then, you ask?  (1) We wanted Miles (at the time we only had 1 kiddo) to be in a good school district, knowingly that we could not simply afford private school in LA.  (2) Get a bigger house and a bigger lot in a better neighborhood (3) Be more green-we wanted more trees, seasons, and be in a city that almost everyone cared about the environment  (4) Less traffic and congestion and better air quality (5) I was getting bored at my old job and wanted something more challenging, and last but not least (6) Be closer to at least 1 set of grandparents. 

The best thing about moving to Portland is that we got ALL of this!  Portland is an awesome, child-friendly, family-friendly, and dog-friendly (sad for us now) town.  It’s very affordable to live here and it’s absolutely beautiful, green, and lush.  We are in a great neighborhood and have a great house.  Miles and Lila are set for a great school district, and monthly weekend visits to the grandparents house in Seattle is so much fun! Miles will follow grandma around all day long asking her, What’s that called? Who is that? Why? and grandma loves every bit of it!    

I think what has made our move more difficult is that we don’t have any friends in Portland.  No, wait, I can’t say any friends because I do have about three or four girlfriends that I get together with…rarely.  I haven’t made that one really good friend where I can call last minute and say, ”Hey, you wanna grab coffee and talk?”  Everyone knows that I am never lacking conversation or “outgoingness.”  I can talk to our post lady about almost anything or to a deer that comes by once in a while to our backyard.  I am always up for coffee and being spontaneous (okay, not with a deer)!  I’m not able to go to playgroups during the week b/c I work full-time.  Sometimes I feel really isolated to the point that I’m almost a little crazy.  I am constantly out with the kids in the stroller (sometimes rain, and always shine!) stalking other moms in strollers.  This is one of the many things that I miss about LA.  Everyone is always outside taking a walk or playing with their kids, and, even if you don’t really know your neighbor down the street, you will become instant friends b/c you have that one thing in common, the KIDS.  Because it rains soo much in PDX, no one is ever out. It’s too cold and raining to go out about 9 months out of the year!  Okay, maybe not 9 months, but if feels like it when you are stuck in the house with two very active toddlers. 

Friends tell me to be patient.  I am told that when Miles and Lila start school, I’ll meet other parents who will want to have play dates.  I guess I am trying to be patient.  But it’s hard to think that Miles won’t start going to preschool until the fall of 2010, and it’s another year that will go by of loneliness and feeling isolated and stuck in the house.

So how do I/we answer folks when they ask us, “How do you like Portland?”  We simply say, “We don’t know.”  Because in truth, we don’t know.  We don’t know if we see ourselves being here long-term.

It’s hard to believe that Lila is 15 months old now.  Over the past few months, Lila has been transitioning from using a bottle to a sippy cup.  This has been great because using a sippy cup is so much easier to clean and it doesn’t leak as much.  There were many times we would hand Lila a bottle and once we got out of her sight, she would hold her bottle upside down, spilling her milk all over the couch or floor.  She would use the nipple of the bottle as a blotter and her finger as a paint brush.  She would do this with a big grin on her face, of course…  Interestingly, Miles would also steal her bottle and take a swig out of it.  I guess we are always telling Miles to share his toys with his little sister…He probably thinks, Okay, let’s share Lila’s bottle then too!  Anyway, the finger painting and stealing of the bottle was happening way too frequently, so I decided that we were going to cut Lila off the bottle now.  Both kids will now be using sippy cups.  While packing all the bottles away and feeling a sense of accomplishment (Yes, we are done with bottles! Woohoo!) , I also felt a slight sadness.  Lila will most likely be our last baby.  I’m 35 years old and feeling a little old to have a baby.  Also, the risk of having a Down Syndrome baby increases to 1 in a 100 (no one in our extended family has a medically fragile kid though), and those risks are too high for me.  Besides, I have two beautiful, healthy children, and best of all, I have one of each!  I’m also really liking where we are now.  Lila is at the age where she is much easier to take care of.  I get excited thinking about all the places we will go camping next summer or all the road trips we will be doing.  My girlfriend from grad school had a baby the other day and she said that her son refused to sleep in his crib and cried all night long the first night.  Oh, how I DO NOT miss those days!   I get exhausted just thinking about the newborn phase!  Ugh, the recovery of childbirth, your body, the hormones, breastfeeding, waking up every 2 hours, and frequent diaper changes.  Anyway, here is Miss Lila- very proud owner of Sesame Street sippy cups.