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This was the one interview I had which, secretly at least, I did not want to be successful. And I very nearly got my wish!
As my condition due to MS got worse, it became harder and harder for my wife Dorothy to deal with my physical needs. Her own health was suffering because of the strain of lifting me and so forth. We had agreed that I would stay at home 'as long as possible.' But what is 'possible' shrinks over time until a critical point is reached and you know it is no longer really 'possible.'
At the same time, Dorothy and I were very close to one another and dreaded being apart. That is the problem with being happily married. (Of course, the happiest marriage can feel the strains in this sort of situation.)
In short, my head told me that I really needed to move; while my heart wanted desperately to stay where I was.
Once it began to appear that something would have to happen sooner rather than later, I tried to visualize as positively as I could my life in a nursing facility. I even romanticized my possible transplantation as follows: Back in the 1960's, the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould wrote columns for High Fidelity Magazine in which he raised the idea of 'Desert Island Discs' - that is, those recordings that one might choose to have with one while marooned on a desert isle. (Gould himself was so reclusive that he essentially lived on such a place.) I would impishly pose this question (of course with CD's supplanting vinyl records) to my various visitors and note their responses. (After awhile I would expand the question to include books, art, etc.) Finally, I would reveal the reason for the question.
Anyway, Dorothy finally applied to The Boston Home, a superb place dedicated to caring for people with MS, in January of 2005. And then we heard virtually nothing for months. Since we had understood that the waiting time to get in was around two years, this did not fill us with optimism. Finally, though, we received a call and set up an appointment for a woman to do a home interview on May 6.
I was determined to show myself to her as belonging to the type most sought after by The Boston Home. But what sort of person would that be? I had no idea. So I thought it best to show her both sides of each character trait. (And of course resting in my subconscious was the knowledge that, while one of those traits might act in my favor, the other might just as well act against me. Thus I could have it both ways - my head and my heart - and trust to fate (i.e. this woman) as to the final decision.)
Q: 'Can you still transfer yourself?'
(Let me see: would they want someone to be able to do this or not? On the one hand, it would seem to be a desirable thing to have this sort of independence, thus giving the staff a break from having to get me up each day. On the other hand, people who transfer tend to fall on occasion, and it is hard to get them up off the floor.)
A: 'You know, it's funny you should ask this at this moment of my disorder (or is it a disease?) For, up until very recently, I have been transferring just fine, thank you! But - and this is a big 'but' - I haven't transferred since I was in the hospital a few short months ago. So I don't know whether I can relearn this valuable skill or not, but I am perfectly willing to try if that's what you think best; otherwise, I think I could relinquish it with few regrets.'
Q: 'Can you still feed yourself?'
(I know that they ask these sorts of things to try and trip us up. This is how they filter out the 'undesirables.' But what is 'desirable' in this case? On the one hand, again, perhaps they want some independent residents to save the staff from having to feed everyone. On the other hand, maybe this is a facility that specializes in more helpless cases and would deem me 'still too highly developed' to belong there. So I shall have to show myself as just barely helpless, as one on the cusp of helplessness, in that no-man's land between self-sufficiency and helplessness...)
A: 'How to answer this question succinctly? First of all, I can only use one hand - but that one hand is pretty good. But not too good! Basically, I can pick up something (preferably food) with a fork or a spoon and lift it successfully into my mouth around 80 percent - no, 20 per - no, exactly 50 percent of the time. The food does have a tendency to fall off the fork - but not too often. In short, I am able to feed myself just enough to maintain basic nutrition, thus keeping myself balanced precariously on the knife edge between being well-fed and malnourished.'
There was only one time when I did not 'behave' myself. When the woman asked whether I have any brothers or sisters, I replied, 'I have a brother, but he's an only child.' My wife gave an embarrassed laugh. Our visitor was writing and didn't laugh, and I wondered whether I had blown it right there. But finally I assumed that she'd heard 'I have a brother' but not the rest. Or else she heard it all but didn't care. Or did care, but hid it well. Whatever.
(And who is to say that humor would be a bad thing at The Boston Home? No doubt they may be in need of a few laughs, a few healthy guffaws!)(Or maybe not. Perhaps it hurts MS patients to laugh!)
Anyway, things were going fine, when she suddenly posed a question that caught me utterly by surprise. Remember that we had heard that the waiting time to get into The Boston Home was two or more years. But now she asked:
Q: 'Would you be ready to enter The Boston Home in three to four months?'
This question was so unanticipated, so shocking, that I lost my train of hyper-equivocation. I was stunned, and could only mumble: 'I - I don't know if I would be or not - it seems awfully soon, though it would give us the summer together...' (Of course, even in this panicked flailing I was still equivocating. Could I ever take a definite position on anything?)(Maybe or maybe not.)
This, as it turned out, was not the answer the lady wanted to hear. Afterwards Dorothy told me that the woman gave a visible start at my answer.
For her part, Dorothy stated frankly that she herself was very ready for me to enter The Boston Home whenever an opening came about. (Dorothy is not one to hesitate or equivocate!)
The lady soon left and Dorothy told me the gist of the above. 'Oh well,' she said, 'It probably doesn't matter.' There was a sad little resigned smile on her face. But I couldn't tell whether it was the smile of 'Now you can stay longer at home with me,' or 'Now we'll have to put you in a real nursing home!'
And thus, despite all the elaborately constructed equivocations, did I blow the most important interview of my life.
Or did I?
How often have we all said something that later we would wish to take back? In particular, which of those many interviews I botched could I have rescued by the retroactive retraction of an overly-hasty bon mot, a misplaced phrase? (Probably none, for the simple reason that virtually none of my interviewers wanted me to begin with!)
But I was determined to rescue this interview!
Once I knew Dorothy's feelings for certain, I called and left a message on the woman's phone. Finally, I made a direct, unequivocal statement: 'Sometimes even people who have lived together for 35 years don't always know one another's thoughts on even the most important subjects. And so, now that I know how my wife feels about this, I w1ll say that, yes, I would be ready to come in three or four months.'
(But did they want a man who automatically acceded to what his wife thought was best? Well, yes - if the wife is wise. But what if she wasn't?)(And could this woman tell whether Dorothy was wise or not?)
Unfortunately, it was late on a Friday afternoon, so the woman would not be getting my message until Monday (I realized that I was calling her office phone.) What mischief could be wrought in that time period? Perhaps she was speeding towards another, worthier candidate even as I was attempting to call her!
I heard nothing on Monday, which just fed my paranoia. On Tuesday she called me. She was friendly, but she didn't say anything one way or another as to my status. And then the phone was silent for three or so weeks.
I was watching/listening to a DVD of Strauss's Salome (wherein John the Baptist unsuccessfully 'interviews' the title character to urge her toward piety) one Thursday afternoon late in that month of May, when the phone rang: it was our female visitor, and she asked me point blank: 'Would you be able to come into The Boston Home this coming Monday?' This time I had learned my lesson: I said 'Yes', forthrightly and unequivocally (even as my heart all but stopped beating.) A minute later I asked where I was in the cue. She replied, 'You are first in line.'
And that was that. I actually entered the Home on Wednesday June 1, 2005. There would not be another opening there for a male for a full year.
By the way: I have now lived here at The Boston Home for well over a year, and I still don't know for sure which answers (if any) got me in here. Ironically, it could have been due to a political connection unrelated to myself directly. Or I may have been seized upon as a good match for a roommate, wherein my personality traits and interests mattered far more than my fractured responses to a few questions.
What I do know is, that my misplaced witticism was not a faux pas at all. For, amidst all the rest of the humor here, there is a 'jokes night' each evening.
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