I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia (23 page)

I have to say that I am unbelievably grateful to everyone in the Corkin family—Heather, Alan, Tracy, Alex, and Cara—for their
hospitality and generosity during those six months. But all nine of us living under one roof unfortunately
did
get old. With the exception of Cara and Kassidy, who rarely argued and always played so well together, the kids began to irritate each other, and Heather and I began getting on each other’s nerves as well. I am sorry now for the way that I acted toward her at the end of our stay in Cairo. Heather and I were terrific friends, essentially from our first meeting. We both loved our kids more than anything. Neither of us was especially stuffy and proper in the way we lived and raised our children. We enjoyed a lot of the same music. We both had fun playing softball and working out together. And we laughed most all of the time we were together. However, at the end, the laughter and fun were totally gone, and one day after school let out for the summer, I packed up the kids and myself and we left for Heliopolis and Le Méridien. Being back in that hotel felt like coming home somehow. We stayed there for a few days, and then flew back to Maryland. I never actually said good-bye and thank you to Heather and her family. That particular fact has bothered me for years.

—R.E.M.

W
e arrived at Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia, exhausted, after traveling for more than thirty-six hours. Kassidy, a shaky traveler at the best of times, had thrown up all over herself and on me repeatedly, but because I had invested in Game Boys for both boys, everyone was, for the most part, intact. It was great to be back in the States after being in Cairo with the kids for what felt like a decade when in reality it was just under two years. The things we take for granted in this country: toilet paper, Kleenex tissues, Jif peanut butter, electricity, clean drinking water directly from the tap, traffic laws, driving, milk, Goldfish crackers, hamburger, ham, and Target! . . . I enjoyed many things in Egypt and I
made some great friends while living there, but it was still good to be back.

Not that everything was instantly familiar. Jim bought us a house in Montgomery County, but it was nowhere near where we had lived before in Montgomery Village. He had done extensive research on the schools in the different areas of the county and had determined that the Wootton High School cluster zip codes had the highest SAT score of any that we could afford. It was a good choice of home for our family in a terrific neighborhood.

Jim took us right from the airport to see our new house. I remember feeling so exhausted and filthy that all I wanted was a shower and a bed, but Jim was too excited for us to see our home and couldn’t wait any longer. The kids were excited, too, so off we went. It was a split-level with four bedrooms, three full baths, a beautiful newly remodeled kitchen and deck, a den, dining room, family room, living room, laundry room, and a large walk-out basement. There was a surprising amount of living space in that house, but not much closet or storage space. It had a one-car garage, and a large fenced backyard with a swing set. There was a forest of dense bamboo along two sides of the backyard that served as a barrier between our backyard and Darnestown Road. Because of this bamboo, we early on began referring to our new home as “Bamboo Corners.” I sat down on the hardwood floor in the family room and stared at the beautiful kitchen and, without even exploring any of the rest of the house, I said, “Honey, you did great! This is perfect!” As I sat on that floor, it was easy for me to imagine that this was the home where my life would
finally
start to make more sense.

Benjamin, Patrick, and Kassidy were all wild! A huge empty house that they could explore, dashing from one room to another, was exactly what they needed to release their pent-up energy. They all picked out their bedrooms first. Patrick’s was light green with fish stenciled on the walls, and Kassidy’s was Pepto-Bismol pink with a
beautiful
ballet-shoe border. She loved it! Benjamin and Patrick decided they were going to share the fish room initially so we could keep one room as a guest room, but that only lasted a few months and eventually the guest room became Benjamin’s room.

All three kids found bouncy balls somewhere and started throwing and bouncing them all over the family room, where I was sitting half asleep. Okay! Time to go! But first Kassidy had to know, “Where is my dog?” We had promised the kids that we would get a dog when we got back to Maryland. We were back in Maryland now, so where was the dog? Five-year-old logic at its very best.

We took a short walk up to see the Westleigh Community pool and tennis courts before piling back into the car. Jim had flown to his parents’ house in Georgia before we arrived home from Egypt and they had given us their old car. An extremely generous gift. And it wasn’t long before we were also the proud owners of a purple Plymouth Grand Voyager named Jewel, after my softball team in Cairo, the Jewels of the Nile.

I was not yet going to get my shower and bed because Jim wanted to show the kiddos where they would be going to school. Kassidy was tremendously excited to be starting kindergarten come the fall, Patrick would possibly be repeating fourth grade, and Benjamin would be heading to sixth grade in middle school. Jim drove by Dufief Elementary School first because it was close. We got lost looking for Robert Frost Middle School, so we gave up and went to the Woodfin Suites, where we stayed until closing on our house the following weekend.

For the first time
ever,
Jim took time off work and helped out
with this move into “Bamboo Corners
.
” And things went relatively smoothly, although there were so many boxes piled everywhere. We had boxes and furniture that came directly to us from Egypt, as well as boxes that we had placed in storage before moving to Cairo. Opening up the boxes that had been in storage was like discovering an entirely different household. Everything was brand-new to me. I started to panic. This wasn’t our stuff. I had absolutely no recollection of those particular plates, glasses, books, towels, sheets, dresses, boots, coats, or toys. It was a strange sensation, because it felt as though we had gotten somebody else’s stuff delivered to our house. Wouldn’t those people wonder where their stuff was? Jim, with his usual impatience, told me to just stop freaking out, just unpack it, and put it away.

Early in the fall of 1997, we fulfilled a promise to Kassidy and adopted two gorgeous Lab puppies from the organization Lab Rescue: Linus, a roly-poly chocolate Lab boy, and Lucy, a beautiful tiny black Lab girl. Amber and Alexander, the two cats that we had brought back from Cairo, were utterly dismayed when Lucy and Linus first arrived, but eventually everyone got along just fine. Guess who ended up taking care of both dogs and both cats most of the time? Jim would walk the dogs with me on nights he was in town, and the kids, especially Kassidy, would walk with me, too, but pretty much everything else fell to me. I was on feeding duty, poop duty, bath and brush duty, daytime walk duty, and vacuuming-pet-hair duty. But I loved those dogs, and their unconditional dog love got me through some tough times. (I loved the cats, too, but their love was always a bit more contingency based.)

But my life back in Montgomery County was often chaotic, especially during the school year. Because Benjamin and Patrick had both been diagnosed with ADHD and other learning difficulties, they were required to have Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). What this meant in the Montgomery County Public Schools was a lot of meetings to discuss appropriate levels of disability support services, lots of signed papers and documentation about the different kinds of classroom accommodations that might be suitable, then more meetings with classroom teachers who didn’t believe in making
any
classroom accommodations for students, many times having to change schedules in order to get teachers who might follow the IEP, and finally lots of extra doctor’s appointments for appropriate-dosage medication checkups.

For the first couple of years after we got back from overseas, Jim worked for a small systems integration company, and he didn’t have to travel too much. He went with me to many of those IEP meetings for the boys at their schools if they were scheduled early enough in the morning or late enough in the afternoon. That is, he went with me until he shouted at Benjamin’s administrator and made Benjamin’s special educator, Wendy Salzman, cry. Then he didn’t go to any more meetings for a few years. In fact, on the letters that came ever after, there was always a handwritten question at the bottom: “Will Mr. Meck be joining us for this meeting?”

During the fall of 1998, Jim was diagnosed with Lyme disease and was on IV antibiotics for six months. An IV pole lived in our bedroom, and every evening when Jim returned home from work, he would lie in bed and medicine would drip into his arm through an inserted catheter. A nurse came once a week to check his catheter for possible infection and to bring him his week’s supply of antibiotics bags. Soon after that, he lost his job. His next company was a commercial security software company, and his job there had him back on the road most of the time. With this company, Jim was responsible for North American pre-sales engineering.

I was teaching a bunch of aerobics and Spin classes each week at two different gyms, and all three kids were always involved in lots of activities over the years. I let them try whatever it was they were interested in for any given year. The only rule was that they had to finish out the season or semester of whatever they started; they weren’t ever allowed to quit in the middle. Both Benjamin and Kassidy ultimately found their talents were best suited for musical theater. With musical theater came voice lessons, dance classes, and an endless string of auditions, shows, and recitals. But before that, Benjamin had tried violin, soccer, baseball, gymnastics, karate, rock climbing, math club, swim team, and improv team. Kassidy had taken dance classes from the time she was three, before even going to Egypt, but she also tried soccer, horseback riding, gymnastics, swim team, track and field, and diving. They also both sang in choir and played handbells at church, and took piano lessons for several years. Patrick ended up as a nationally ranked platform diver in college. But before that he sang and rang in choirs for a couple of years, played soccer, took gymnastics classes, art lessons, photography classes, and had been part of chess club, cross-country, and the mass driver club. My point is, I lived in my car for more than ten years.

But, you may say, a lot of moms do that. In fact, most moms these days schlep their kids to and from dozens of activities. The difference with me was there was no rhyme nor reason to the kids’ schedules. For example, if Kassidy came and told me she wanted to take horseback riding lessons, I would say, “Sure,” and just sign her up for horseback riding lessons on Thursdays from four to five-thirty, not necessarily making the connection that Patrick’s gymnastics class was already on Thursdays from four to five-fifteen in a totally different part of town. Or that Benjamin’s jazz class was
also on Thursdays from six to seven-thirty in yet another part of town. All this driving happening during rush hour in Montgomery County. Because I wasn’t able, for whatever reason, to make connections between one thing and another, our lives were a hectic, jumbled, disorganized mess most of the time. I often forgot to pick up one kid or drop off another at the proper time. Other mothers did not like to carpool with me.