At the Fox Plaza, it catches his eye:
an aquarium, glowing like a stage set.
He moves in closer, graceful angelfish
and silver dollars glide across the glass.
In the background, a chorus line of tetras
rehearse with flashy little turns.
Then he sees it, sitting on the bottom:
a tank toy in the shape of the White House,
that porch with the colonnade,
gravel, spread like a glassy lawn.
This is when he starts to cry
and bang his fist against the glass.
A Secret Service man, still in his suit
jacket, plunges his arm into the water.
Ashamed, he will tell them later
I know this has something to do with me,
But I can't remember what it is.
All the way back, he holds it in his hand:
small white house like a bone,
briny and damp as a seashell.
He knows if he could enter it,
he would be home, the contours
of its cold white glaze
pressed tight against his palm,
membrane to membrane.
Who are we without memory?
When Jeanne Wagner saw
the following excerpt
from "Dutch," Robert
Morris's 1999 biography
of Ronald Reagan, she
assumed that the
Alzheimer incident he
so poignantly described
really happened:
"And what is this pale ceramic object on
the sandy floor of his fish tank at Fox Plaza?
A miniature white house, with tall classical
columns, hauntingly familiar. He takes it home,
clenched wet in his fist: "This is … something
to do with me….I'm not sure what."
Dutch, however, was
controversial in that
Morris combined
biographical facts with
imaginative fiction. By
the time Reagan was in
the latter stages of
dementia, his
semi-official
biographer had lost
direct contact with the
former President.
Morris's description of
what was going on in
Reagan's mind feels
less like fact than
fiction.
Too many of us have
friends whose memories
have diminished under
the thrall of
Alzheimer's disease
that Reagan was
diagnosed with five
years after he left
office. Fact or
fiction, Morris's
incident provided our
poet with a perfect
theme for her
"improvisation" on the
dynamics of memory
loss.
Perfect because of the
almost hyperbolic
magnitude of the loss.
A leader on the world
stage who called for
the Berlin Wall to come
down, survived an
assassination attempt,
and played a pivotal
role in the eventual
collapse of the Soviet
Union could no longer
remember that he once
lived in the White
House.
It is not, however, the
memory loss of his time
as President that our
poet begins with but
Ronald Reagan's earlier
career as a leading
actor in scores of
Hollywood movies:
The brightly lit
aquarium feels like a
"stage set." Its
"graceful angelfish"
and "chorus line of
tetras" that "rehearse
with flashy little
turns" hint at lost
memories of leading
ladies and chorus girls
in films Reagan starred
in, such as She's
Working Her Way Through
College, Hollywood
Hotel, Million Dollar
Baby, Love Is On The
Air, and Swing Your
Lady.
Like other Alzheimer victims, Reagan is attracted to whatever
literally or tangentially suggests a connection to his past life. The
glitz and glamor of the dancing fish give him the flickering
impression that they have something to do with him, although
only we know that it concerns his time in the spotlight on
Hollywood sets with chorus girls and leading ladies. Wagner puts
us inside the troubled consciousness that all Alzheimer patients
experience, presented with but unable to connect, objects,
persons, places, and events with their lives.
Attracted by the fish, our former President "moves closer," and
we leap forward with him as he suddenly sees "it" sitting "on the
bottom" of the aquarium:
a tank toy in the shape of the White House,
that porch with the colonnade,
gravel, spread like a glassy lawn.
Whatever attracted him to the fish, he knows that this little toy
building is connected to his life in a deeply personal, essential
way. His frustration at his inability to solve its mystery is so keen
that it provokes an emotional outburst:
In that cry, in that hopeless attempt to grasp a connection,
Wagner captures the anguish of all lost minds trying to leap over
the walls dementia so solidly erects.
A secret service agent plunges his arm into the water to retrieve
the toy replica and places it in the former President's hand. Just
the cold, wet splash of reality by someone responding to a cry of
pain from one who is trying desperately to find a piece of the
puzzle that has become his life and put it back in place.
That submerged replica of one of our country's most iconic and
symbolic buildings reminds this reader of the lost city of Atlantis.
The Secret Service agent's compassionate gesture feels like a
gallant but hopeless attempt to bring a country, a world, a home,
back to a former ruler.
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How diminished that once imposing house is in the former
President's hand as his attendants drive their charge "All the way
back" to his current abode in Bel Air. "Back," in place of "home,"
suggests that whether he is in his office space at Fox Plaza, his
house in Bel Air, or a Secret Service limo, he no longer has a
home. Bel Air is only 5 miles from Fox Plaza, but the mental trip
implied by "All the way back," as "Dutch" clutches the enigmatic
token of his past, feels much longer. With the once world leader's
consciousness more childlike then adult, the nursery rhyme with
the little piggy crying "all the way home" lurks behind Wagner's
substitution of the neutral word "back" for the emotionally
redolent "home."
The "ceramic" toy that feels like a "bone" or "seashell" is emptied
of life. Most touching is our victim's sense of shame for his
inability to solve its mystery. Wagner increases the power of the
only words Dutch utters in her poem by creating and italicizing
the only two-line stanza in this otherwise three-stanza poem:
Reagan is hardly alone in losing the memory of one of the homes
he lived in. Many Alzheimer patients wander away from
wherever they are dwelling and are unable to find their way
"back," sometimes with tragic consequences. It is the huge gap
between the magnitude of what Reagan's mind once contained
and the depleted consciousness he now inhabits that gives
"Dutch" archetypal power as Wagner explores the essence of
Alzheimer's disease.
The title of our poem is the same as the title of Morris's
biography. "Dutch" was the nickname Ronald Reagan's father
gave him shortly after his birth, and it stuck with him throughout
his life. But as he fails to recall his acting career via the fish or his
presidency via the toy White House, he might be murmuring, "It's
all Dutch to me!" (which phrase, according to AI, "implies that
the language or information presented might as well be in a
foreign language that the speaker does not understand"). All the
essential details of Ronald Reagan's biography have become
"Dutch" to him.
Mary Oliver says that she would rather end a poem with a
question than an answer. As Dutch squeezes the most
consequential years of his life tight against his palm,/membrane
to membrane, Jeanne Wagner ends her improvisation on
dementia with an explicit question (and implicit answer):
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