Vanishing Acts

Stay or go? This was the internal debate I had one recent morning when trying to decide whether to slip out of the examining room where I’d been waiting for my internist or remain quietly perched on the table. What’s your hurry? one part of me argued. Besides, you know the drill. And certainly, this was true.

Like most of us, after all, I was well-trained in the medical pas de deux wherein a disposable gown is offered along with the throwaway line, “The doctor will be with you shortly”––which is, of course, meant to be heard as “not anytime soon.” As such, I knew better than to expect that this visit would set any records for speed.

Nevertheless, because this visit was a follow-up for a skin rash that had slowly begun to clear, it was the countering voice in my head that proved more compelling, and then finally prevailed: Forty-five minutes is a long enough stretch and she’s obviously busy, I reasoned. Why waste her time and your own when the itchiness has all but disappeared?

As if on cue, an image of my ten-years deceased mother­­––a woman who’d been a serial appointment ditcher as long as I’d known her––flashed in my mind. Oh, man, I sighed, as I traded my clinic-issued garb for my button-down and jeans. Then, with memories of my mother’s vanishing acts filtering into my thoughts, I stepped through the doorway and out of the room.

My mother’s rants rarely varied. “They put you in a freezing room and forget all about you!” she’d explode as she powered down an office hallway and back through the waiting room. “I could have died on that table waiting as long as I did, and not a one of them would have given a damn!”

In truth, while I had witnessed these verbal blasts many times over, particularly when my mother reached her later years and counted on me to accompany her to all medical appointments, her retelling of these “ordeals,” as she called them, was part of the soundtrack I’d heard even as a young girl. Had there ever been a time, I wondered, when her combative behavior hadn’t left me feeling anxious and sad? Wasn’t that what I was feeling––even now?

What I had learned over the years was this: Just as there was no way of knowing when she would feel compelled to race toward a doctor’s office exit (which, inexplicably, wasn’t every time), no amount of sympathizing, soothing, or cajoling ever guaranteed that she would resist an impulse to flee when her temper suddenly flared.

Calling my mother out on her behavior had never worked, either. “You’re the queen of impatience,” I remember once having said in a fit of pique before demanding to know, “What’s your hurry? It’s not like you have some damn train to catch.”

Glaring at me as if she were contemplating how she might turn me to stone, she’d been fast with her rebuff: “Ah, you don’t understand anything,” she growled, as she reached for her purse. “You’re just like the rest.”

A short time later, as I stood in the parking lot after having explained my departure to the staff, I laughed at the irony: I had no train to catch, no place that I immediately needed to be. What I did have, however, was a bit more time to reflect. So, before turning the key in the ignition of my car and heading toward home, I pondered all that I had come to understand about this volatile woman whom I cherished.

I understood, for example, that it had been my professional training as a clinical psychologist, and more importantly, my own stint on a therapist’s couch, that made it possible for me to appreciate how tightly bound Mom’s runaway behaviors were to her personal world view. Through these channels, I came to see how her inability to regulate emotions––particularly her feelings of anxiety and despair, along with a chronic mistrust of others––had cemented her belief that she could rely only on herself in times of need; and how seeking help from others too easily evoked fears of being abandoned or let down.

With these insights, I also came to understand how “fleeing the scene” at a medical office––or far more consequentially, our home and her young family for many hours at a time, only to return silent, then retreat to her bedroom, sometimes for days––was a variation on a theme. These actions, I’ve since surmised, represented my mother’s desperate attempt to escape feelings of helplessness and fury that had seemed to chase her all of her life. I now understood that what she constantly craved was what we all sometimes need: to feel in control.

In the days since my recent, hopefully–not–to–be–repeated doc visit skedaddle, wistfulness has been my sometimes companion. I feel its presence, not when I am recalling my mother’s doctor’s office exploits, but rather when I am remembering the myriad ways in which she was, emotionally-speaking, nowhere to be found.

And yet.

Grateful as I am that I was able to make peace with my mother’s absences during her lifetime––and thus, with her––an abiding love cushions all that I recall.

So, I am in no hurry to move past my current pensive mood. Patience, I remind myself, as other, happier memories wend their way into my thoughts, has its rewards.

“Come,” I whisper, imagining that I am channeling my mother’s spirit and that she is choosing to settle in beside me. Opting not to vanish, but to stay.