My mother understood the genetics. She knew she had a fifty-fifty chance of carrying the early Alzheimer’s mutation. She avoided taking the test for as long as she could, knowing firsthand what the disease would do and that nothing could stop it, and not wanting the diagnosis looming over the rest of her life. However, she understood the game of chance she’d be playing if she had her own children. She knew she could consign them to the wild-eyed nights and empty moments she’d watched her own mother go through.
It’s why she and my dad decided to adopt. Lewis came from Bengaluru four years before I was brought home from Arkansas. We were both infants. I’ve never met my birth mother, though I’ve been told she had me when she was sixteen and has since gone to college. We send her Christmas cards, and I know she’s not opposed to other contact from me. I just haven’t reached out. I might one day, but with everything going on with my mom, it’s one question too many.
A year after my mom and dad divorced, she decided she couldn’t put off finding out whether she’d inherited her mother’s disease. If she was going to be a single parent, she’d have to plan for herself and for Lewis and me. One day, when I was in middle school, without telling either of us, she took the test.
I don’t have a great memory for things other than words. I don’t remember my first day of high school, or the trip we took to Disney World when I was in elementary school, or the first time Lewis brought a girl over—which, to be fair, might be because he’s brought enough of them over that I’ve lost track. But I remember the day Mom told us her test results. The way the winter sunlight filtered through the window in the front of the house, the smell of apple pie—Lewis’s and my favorite, one of the few things we’ve ever agreed on—from the kitchen when she sat us down in the living room. I remember worrying the threads of the green couch, knowing something was coming even if I didn’t know what. Lewis, for his part, stared at his shoes in uncharacteristic stillness while Mom gave us the details on how the results would and wouldn’t change our lives.
There isn’t a question of if she will develop the disease. She will. With a strength I’d never known she had in her, she never mourned her prognosis. She’s only repeated how grateful she is she decided not to have biological children, how grateful she is to have Lewis and me—how grateful she knew enough to avoid the weight of worry over whether we’re going to share her disease.
She reassured us the coming years wouldn’t change and our lives would remain normal. Lewis took her at her word, from what I understood from his quick return to texting during dinners and working on college apps with his friends instead of coming right home every afternoon. He did become interested in his biological family, writing them letters in the summer before going off to college. He’s close with one half brother, who gave him the news their mother died years before.
As for me, I couldn’t accept life would “remain normal.” There is no normal, not now.
Normal is a memory. And it’s my job to hold on to every one of my mom’s. Every day I watch her for early signs—whenever she forgets the time of an appointment, or something I mentioned to her, or where she put her keys. What would be tiny annoyances in the life of a normal high-school senior fill my head with a parade of red flags.
There’s nobody else to watch for her condition developing or care for her. We don’t have extended family. My dad, who lives in Canada with his girlfriend, was rocked by her test results. It was never a question that he would continue to support Lewis and me financially, but nobody expected him to handle his ex-wife’s medical expenses, not to mention the full-time care she’ll one day need. I don’t resent him for it, even if I understand our lives would be easier were our family whole. He and I talk on the phone regularly, and I spend a month with him in Canada every summer—but