Deodorant

I started using a brand of natural deodorant.

Aluminum is nasty, they say. It will clog your sweat glands and poison your blood.

Do you know how many products contain aluminum?

It is not a small number.

It’s in our pots and pans and silverware.

In cans and foils.

Sinks, faucets, ladders, cars.

Our drinking water is treated with it.

It is added to our foods and medicines.

It is even present in fireworks.

Do not tell me a little antiperspirant is going to give me Alzheimer’s.

“Oh deary,” she would say.

She had the sweetest laugh,

And made the best darn cinnamon buns I’ve ever tasted.

She crafted a beautiful quilt for me when I was young. I don’t know how she chose the fabric but the colours sing to me. It’s like she had peered into my soul and sewed what she saw. There is a tag stitched in the corner that confirms it was made with Grandma’s love.

It started a few months before I began high school. We were chatting on the phone and she said, “You’ll be starting Grade 4 in the fall then?”

“Grade 9, Grandma,” I said.

Over the next few years our conversations became more circular. The weather became a popular topic. We would discuss it thoroughly, sometimes reviving the subject several times in one phone call. I didn’t care. I knew those talks were limited.

The last time my grandparents travelled was for my sister’s high school graduation. The night after the ceremony, my grandfather was having trouble breathing. The ambulance was called, and he had to stay in the hospital for several days. Grandma was confused. “Where’s Billy?” she would ask.

“In the hospital, Grandma, but he’s going to be alright,” we would say.

Our reassurances never stopped the tears leaking from her eyes. Then she would calm and fifteen minutes later the cycle would repeat.

After that my father insisted my grandfather get help.

“You can’t take care of her when you are sick, Dad.”

I learned my grandmother had started wandering at night, which was concerning as they lived in a tiny house on the edge of a highway.

My grandfather was terrified of moving her. He said it was because the change would upset her, but I think he was afraid the thread she used to find her way back to him would be stretched too thin. That it might break, and he would lose her.

My father came to visit me this weekend. He told me he is drawing up a living will. Putting everything in writing so that my sister and I won’t have to make difficult decisions if something were to happen.

“I don’t want to live if I can’t remember you or your sister,” he said.

I keep thinking about this TV episode I watched a while back. The protagonist’s mother had Alzheimer’s and she was debating receiving a medical test that would determine if she had the gene.

What would I do in her shoes?

I would give almost anything to rid myself of the tightness that grips my throat every time I forget my keys or can’t remember the name of my Grade 6 math teacher.

I don’t know how I would live if it came back positive.

When I was seven, every wish I made on a penny, a star, or birthday candles was “Please let me get a dog.”

Now I wish

For my grandmother to remember my name,

For my father to keep his memories,

And that I won’t lose mine.

But I no longer believe in the power of wishes.

So,

I started using a brand of natural deodorant.