“Get out you damn fool,” she shouted.

To her caregivers, Eleanor’s words were too easy to ignore, just another refusal from a memory care resident not wanting to be changed at the prescribed time.

Her fingernails dug into their skin. “Stop it you damn shit.”

Without pause, they pulled my mom into the restroom, her fingers pressing deeper but their resolve to perform the task remaining firm.

I sucked in a sharp breath of air as my hand shot up and slapped across my wide open mouth.

It is no surprise that my mom held a position on the situation.

Nor is it a surprise that she let her caregivers know it.

The shock is that fight and foul language is how she showed she is a woman with an opinion.

Around the room the group debated — sometimes for hours, sometimes calm, sometimes spirited, ever respectful. I saw this scene repeated throughout my childhood at a dining table, in a conference room, on living room sofas, at home, in a restaurant, at church, and at family reunions.

My father, the minister, was at the center of the conversation. Everyone wants to know the preacher’s opinion. Dad shared wise and thoughtful points of view, and through the discussion his opinion was clear. But, he listened too. A master at asking questions, his concern was not that you shared his stand, he wanted you to think, question, learn, and grow.

My Mom, the ministers wife, politely participated but rarely commanded the focus of attention. By public appearances, compared to my father, one might assume my mom was shy or reserved or without strong opinions.

Not the case. She had opinions.

She had strong opinions on profanity.

At home, where mom was busy raising five children, her parenting style was capable, supportive, and firm.

Mom did not raise her voice to show disapproval — for that there was a look, maybe a sharp remark, but never a swear word spoken.

She did not tolerate her children using obscenities. We understood the rule on profanity and the expectation that we follow it. Although, I know my brother can describe the taste of Ivory soap.

Mom even fired off a letter to the Congressman from her home state after hearing him speak on C-SPAN, scolding him for using profanity on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. How would she react to the discourse today?

That my mom would use a curse word to express her opinion was unheard of, out of the question, it would not happen.

Shocked from hearing my mom swearing at her caregivers, I called my sister to tattle on her behavior.

My sisters response?

“Noooo! Mom did not say that! I don’t believe it!”

Dementia brings change — a lot of change.

It is not uncommon for a dementia sufferer, like my mom, who with a working brain never uttered a profane word, to one day start swearing like a sailor.

I recall attending a dementia seminar where someone asked the presenter why this happens.

She looked at the audience and said, “I know, I know, it’s hard for a family to handle when their dear sweet mom starts using vulgarities, but think about it… it’s not like little old ladies who have lived for 80 plus years have never heard profane words. Trust me, they’ve heard them all. With a working mind they knew better not to use them, but now they have a broken filter. They don’t have the executive function or filter of a fully working frontal lobe, so out the bad words spew!”

A broken filter in a foggy mind.

“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships…”

Dickens continues; fog was everywhere.

In movies, poetry, and fiction, fog sets a scene, stands as a symbol for social commentary or personal condition, or serves as a plot device — sometimes as effectively as another character in the story.

We understand fog cliches (i.e. a curtain of fog, out of the fog, as dense as fog) to convey mystery, mood, murkiness or misery.

These devices work because we expect weather to behave in the way we know it — rain makes us wet, sun makes us hot, snow makes us cold, and fog affects our ability to see.

But, rather than expecting fog to block or darken our view, could a fog awaken us to see more clearly, to challenge us to seek through the thickness?

Last weekend at the ranch, I felt the need to whisper, for feet ahead an unseen enemy might await behind the flood of tiny water droplets floating in the air.

And yet, the clouds on the ground that hid the ranch somehow let me see sights anew.

Would I have noticed the brilliant green of the sotol were all the other plants of green not whited out behind it?

Would the stature of this live oak mott have caught my attention had it not been the only mass to penetrate the haze?

Would the tangles of tree branches have shown through, like a network of working pathways sustaining health, if the forest of networks beyond it were likewise visible through the mist?

I reflect on my mom’s foggy mind. Can she experience things more vividly while being lost? I wonder.

Can I see her — behind the fog of disease?

One day, last February, the morning sun was a few hours above the horizon, but the persistent fog convinced us to leave the ranch, assured the gloomy day had no presents to give.

Were we mistaken.

Less than a minute in the car, Jim turned and said, “Look, a white rainbow!”

A ghostly semi-circle stretched across the sky, as if the colors in the rainbow let go of their grip, slid down the arches, and escaped with the gold, leaving a skeleton of innocence.

It was eerie.

And still, the familiar rainbow shape was beautiful dressed in white.

We had no idea we were seeing an uncommon and mystical weather phenomenon — not a rainbow at all, but a fogbow.

Both rainbows and fogbows form when sunlight hits water droplets suspended in the air.

However, the raindrops that create a rainbow are large enough to refract and reflect the sunlight within the drop of water and then refract the light again, separating and exposing the component colors of the light back to your eye.

The suspended water droplets of fog that form a fogbow are hundreds of times smaller than a raindrop. These tiny droplets cannot refract and separate the sunlight into colors. Instead, the light through a fog droplet diffracts or spreads out, overlapping and smearing the colors into a white haze.

Lasting only minutes, needing just the right balance of sun and fog thickness, and requiring the viewer to be in a particular position for the geometry of the bending light to make the fogbow visible is why capturing a fogbow on camera is rare.

Had I known of all this when I snapped a few quick shots I might have paid more attention and taken more photos.

Regardless, no photograph could capture the haunting first second of seeing the symbol of God’s covenant vacant of color.

How odd to experience comfort from an internet search, assuring me I was not seeing a broken rainbow.

Again, I imagine mom’s broken filter, but there is no comfort I am seeing something else.

Does her filter that lets the foul words flow out so freely, similarly let the lovely and colorful parts of life flow in?

Can her broken filter process in — a sunny day, or a rainbow, or an “I love you?”

Or, is the light in her world an overlapping smear, just a white haze?

I pray if her world dresses in white that she can still find joy in the shape.

Mom has no choice; I do.

I think about the filters I select to look through — at her and in my life.

Sunglasses come to mind.

Looking through traditional sunglasses decreases the intensity of everything in view by the same amount of darkness.

Looking through polarized sunglasses selectively eliminates the reflection of light, reducing glare and allowing you to see colors with greater contrast and saturation (not to mention the color enhancing technology added to these glasses).

I choose Maui Jim.

Whether a sporty model or my giant bug eye fashion frames (the ones that send Brownie, one of our largest and most lovable Longhorns, fleeing away from me in a full out sprint) my sunglasses of choice are fit with Maui Jim HCL Bronze lenses.

Maui Jim is a manufacturer of polarized sunglasses using the tagline, “Maui Jim sunglasses won’t change the world, they’ll change the way you see it; vivid colors, improved clarity, and crisp details.”

I assure you if my kids are reading this they are screaming, “Noooo! Mom, do not say this!”

Whipping my glasses from my face, stretching them out as an offering, wanting to share the glorious gift of the world through the lenses of my sunglasses, for years my kids have endured my outbursts of sheer wonder when my Maui Jim’s have turned the colors vivid.

“Look! Look! Can you believe it? Look at the colors! Look through my sunglasses! Can you believe how brilliant, how clear these lenses let you see?”

As if the blues of the Caribbean Sea, or the greens of the spring leaves, or the purple seed heads of bluestem grasses waving me toward Comfort from the shoulders of Interstate 10 needed enhancing for anyone to accept the gift?

I want my kids to see and marvel at the creation. To know the one who was first loving and kind, through a promise. To believe in the rainbow. To accept that lens.

Did you know that while wearing polarized sunglasses you can make all or part of a rainbow disappear depending on whether you are seeing all or part of a rainbow?

When light reflects from a surface it becomes polarized, which means it travels in a uniform direction aligned in rows on an even plane.

Light reflecting from flat surfaces, like water, is horizontally polarized.

Therefore, manufacturers of polarized sunglasses coat the lenses with a layer of vertically aligned molecules designed to block the horizontal reflections.

This is why fishermen wear polarized sunglasses, to block the horizontally polarized light reflecting off the water, reducing the glare so they can spot the fish below.

There is significantly more science behind my layman explanation, so forgive my attempt if errors are within. The short of it is that polarized sunglasses will block horizontally polarized light.

Rainbows are highly polarized from the light reflecting off the back of the raindrops, and the direction of polarization is tangent along the arch of the rainbow.

So, if you are looking at a full rainbow in your polarized glasses, the top most horizontal part of the rainbow disappears, because the horizontally polarized light waves can’t get through the vertical polarizers on your sunglasses.

If you drop your head 90 degrees sideways, resting your ear to your shoulder, the top of the rainbow re-appears, and the vertical arches of the rainbow disappear.

If you are seeing only half of a rainbow in the sky and you do the same drop of your head, you will see no rainbow at all; it totally disappears.

(Yes, taking your sunglasses off, holding them up sideways, and then looking through them might be an easier and less silly looking way to try this experiment!)

Within the filter through which we choose to see the world, we still have choices about which we accept to see.

There is a well known parable (the origins and variations debated) where a grandfather tells his grandson about two wolves that live and fight inside him. They represent the conflict between good (kindness, love, joy, courage) and evil (anger, greed, hate, fear). He explains that the fight goes on inside him and every other person. After a moment, the child asks the grandfather, “Which wolf wins?” The grandfather replies, “The one you feed.”

What fog must I look through? What filters will I feed? Can I feed kindness, love, joy, and courage? What clarity will I find from the food that feeds me back?

Yes, dementia brings change —

Change that counters my core understanding of mom because her behaviors can be so uncharacteristic.

Change that challenges me to squint through the stormy situation and search for mom behind the fog of disease.

Change that tests me to see myself and muster the courage to accept the change.

Change that compels me to seek the path of compassion to walk along with her through the clouds.

Change that can shape both our souls with vivid colors if I choose the lens that lets the blessings filter through the fog.

I can choose.

And mom?

I don’t know for sure…

but I choose to believe that when I tell her I love her and she sits silently in her wheelchair, starring deep and long into my eyes, that through her fog, mom sees me clearly.

A mother’s love, even through a foggy lens, is a filter I’ll select for seeing and serving in the world.