An Old Story, And An Armadillo Tale

I wrote a post the other day, about watching my mom grow older, how frustrating it can be to watch, and, how, sometimes I get a bit snippy.  Then, yesterday I made a long, rambling video talking about the same thing.  It got me thinking that I’d sort of written something similar, on my old blog, so I was brwosing around for it, and came across the post, and thought I’d share it — not so much for repeating some of the same theme, but, to share the bit about the armadillos.

The unspoken motto here at Johnbalaya is: entertain, and provide random trivia.

So, reprinted, with kindly permission from me (as copywright holder of the old blog, I had to ask permission for reprinting… you know how publishing is), is an old blog post from August, 2, 2011

The original title was:  Mom, Armadillos And Being Snippy 

I’ve not written much about my mother over the past few months.  It’s certainly not because I’ve not got anything to write about.

Take, for example, mom’s rather touching concern about the extinction of the armadillo.

The setting: the dinner table.

Along with her pork chop sandwich, mom was drinking a Snapple, and, on the bottle top there was the usual trivia, this one informing us that the litter of an armadillo is always only one gender – all male, or all female.  This piece of information caused mom to wonder what would happen if they only gave birth to males: if all the armadillos, everywhere, only gave birth to male armadillos, they’d become extinct.  The statistical probability of this happening didn’t seem to occur to her.  Just that if they all had male babies, they couldn’t reproduce, and would die out.  There was a pause while she considered this further, and I waited for more, but, she turned to another topic, and I found myself strangely caught up in this armadillo extinction scenario.  How long would it take for them to die off?  Would there be a chance to save them?  Would there be…what the hell was I thinking?!

No, I seem to always have something to write about my mother.  The issue comes from wanting to be sure that I write about her (and me) in the right way: I don’t wish to tell stories about my mom in a way that makes her seem silly or foolish, nor do I wish to sound as if I’m making fun of her; and, on the other end of the spectrum, I wish to write about her with the respect she deserves, and I don’t wish to make myself sound like a whiny, complaining, ungrateful son.  Frustration can make a person write without thinking, and that is not my intent.  Writing can be a way of expressing feelings, of giving voice to those thoughts that run around our minds, and can be a way of venting those thoughts.  I don’t want my writing to be like that.  I would rather it be thoughtful, as a way to help me make sense of it all – and, maybe it will even help me to grow.

Of course, that all sounds as if I’m ranting and frustrated all the time.  I’m not.  Just sometimes.

Like this evening.

Mom called and asked me to come help her find something.  For most people, this would be no big deal – we all lose things, right?  For me, it’s an almost daily occurrence. Today’s item: an envelope, addressed to the bank, with a blank check inside.  “I put it in the holder with all the other bills,” says she to me. A five-minute search found it tucked away in a desk drawer.  Last week it was a blank check that had been torn from her checkbook for some reason or another, and vanished, only to be found in the recycle bin.  Over the past year it’s been a wide variety of things that Julian and I have searched for, from pens, scissors and letter openers to checkbooks, keys, cash and credit cards.  Each search is accompanied by the same commentary from mom, “It should be right there, I always put my (pens, scissors, credit cards, etc.) in the same place (holder, drawer, wallet, purse, etc.) when I’m done with them so I can find them again.”

The frustration comes not from the obvious, frantic searching for the missing checks, but, rather, it comes from a sense of helplessness as I watch my mom growing older and more forgetful.  The frustration comes from having to stand here, watching, unable to do much of anything. Sometimes it makes me so angry that I get snippy, and the instant I get snippy, I get angry at myself for my tone.  When I get snippy, she tells me I sound just like her mother (my grandmother – who died when I was 9 months old, so I have to way of knowing if my tone is like hers).  Considering that my mother cared for her mom for most of her life, and didn’t really like her mom, being compared to my grandmother is not exactly the nicest thing I’ve been called.  I can’t claim that the words don’t hurt, but, I can’t claim that I didn’t deserve them.  I suspect that I am mothering my mother, and while mothering can be nice, mothers all have that certain tone that pushes our buttons.  I seem to have learned how to push my mom’s buttons.  This is both satisfying and horrifying.  Horrifying is the larger of the two feelings, which doesn’t make me feel any better.

Sometimes it’s tough writing about life with my mom because it means I have to write about myself, in as honest a way as I can.  It’s easy to write about my mom, mostly.  It’s the delving deep into my own being that makes it tough.

________________

Reading an old blog post has hidden dangers … like realizing that nearly two years ago I was writing about being snippy, and, two days ago, I was writing about having a tone in my voice…  seemingly, in two years, I’ve not learned to get rid of The Tone.

Maybe I need to work harder on fixing this particular fact….

In Which John Reveals His Big Bald Head

First off… don’t be scared.  My head is not quite as big as it appears in the video.

And, secondly… be forewarned ….  it is a bit lengthy.  So, you’ll need a few minutes.

Thirdly: Laughing at me is perfectly acceptable.

Then Why Are You Taking That Tone With Me?

Mom: “Why are you yelling at me?”

 

Me: “I’m not yelling.”

 

Mom: “Then why are you taking that tone with me?”

 

Instead, I am contrite. I apologize. “I’m sorry,” I say, “I didn’t realize I’d raised my voice.”

 

I want to say that I don’t yell, as in scream. It’s more of an excited raising of my voice.

 

At least I hope that’s what it is.

 

This is an exchange that mom and I seem to have on a regular basis. I can’t say I’m proud of the fact that I speak to my mom with That Tone. And, to add to my shame, I am aware of it the minute I start, yet I am unable to stop The Tone from leaving my mouth.

 

Perhaps if she were doing something that made me mad, it might be different, my shame might be less. But, typically, she’s not doing anything that makes me mad. Well, okay, there are some things like: ordering all kinds of flower bulbs to plant, without regard to the fact that she orders things that need full sun, and our yard is quite shady.  We go through this every Spring — a large box of things arrives: trees, bulbs, seeds.  They’re to be planted around the yard.  The only garden areas are against the house.  Here’s where it gets tricky, and where the “I get mad” part comes in. My parents bought this house in 1960, and once in the 1970s, and once in the 1990s, termites were discovered, and exterminated.  Now, termites like damp soil.  So, my mom has been a “Don’t water close to the house” advocate ever since.

Are you seeing where this is heading?

No water against the house.  Plants that are to be planted in the garden areas that are against the wall of the house.  So, the plants get planted, because I get yelled at if they sit around.  Then they die, because they can’t be watered, and she’s angry and swears to never order anything from such and such a place because they sell crappy product.  Then, the next Spring another box arrives, and the cycle repeats.  It’s a waste of time and money.  

 

So, yes, there are some things that she does that makes me mad.

 

Generally, though, I am more frustrated than mad; more frustrated at my own sense of helplessness.

 

I’m frustrated because it saddens me to watch my mother get old.

 

I’m really not mad when it takes her a long time to get dressed; I’m frustrated at seeing this once vital woman, who could be up, dressed and out of the house in less than 20 minutes taking 15 to 20 minutes just to get dressed. I’m not mad at her when she asks me to total up the numbers when she balances her check book, instead, I’m frustrated that the woman who always amazed me by being able to add lists of numbers in her head faster than most people could add them on a calculator now needs me to double check her numbers because she’s added them up four times and has come up with four different answers (this has happened to me, this coming up with multiple answers, so it should be no surprise to anyone when I get old).

 

My mother has lived an active life (not necessarily “active” in the physically athletic sense). She was in the Women’s Army Corps during WWII, working on the bombing range. She travelled all over with my father, every time he was stationed somewhere new. She taught high school for 30 years. She built all the cabinets in one of the bathrooms, and stained/antiqued them. She was constantly working on something at our mountain cabins when I was growing-up: painting, tearing down, building up. Mom took turns with Dad, mowing the lawn, until I was old enough to start doing it on my own. I think of these things, these images of my mom as a younger woman almost every day: mom with a paintbrush, a hammer, on a ladder, sledding down the hill, swimming in the ocean, going for long walks in the mountains. I don’t purposely think of them, but these images flash into my mind when I see her struggling to get her socks on, or trying to open a bag of chips with her arthritic hands, or having to stop and sit down to rest after walking from one room into the next.

 

Three-and-a-half ago, when she had her heart-valve repalcement surgery, her recovery was quite long and tough on us all. Yet, as tough as it was to see her that weak, there was not much sense of frustration, as there were things I could do to help: I sat up with her when she was suffering from anxiety attacks so bad she could barely sleep and was afraid to be left alone; I cleaned her when she went to the bathroom; I shouldered her weight as we made our way down the steps into her bedroom. It was a time where she needed specific help, needed me to perform specific actions, and I was able to be there and do all that needed to be done. Watching her age, watching her slow down, when all I can do is watch, helplessly–it’s the toughest thing I’ve ever done.

 

There are moments when I am watching her, when my heart just breaks: watching her shuffle across the room, needing help putting her coat on, or having to struggle to get up out of a chair, or asking for the fourth time what I’m making for dinner. I look and I see traces of the vital woman I knew as a child, but she gets harder and harder to find with each passing year. No, don’t get me wrong — mom is still quite mobile and active for an 89 year old woman. I’ve known people in their 60s who were older in mind and body than my mom is at 89. She gets out, she drives to church and goes to breakfast with the other church ladies, she goes to visit her friend Pat, when Pat is in town, she goes around with Julian and I. So please forgive me if I’m making her sound older than she is. I don’t mean to. It seems that I just have trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that she can’t do the things she once did, and that when she needs me to open the bag of chips, or carry her purse, it’s not the fact that she’s asked me to do something that I get mad at. I’m mad at the loss, at the years that have gone by, at the time that slowly breaks us down.

 

I’m mad at the fact that I stand next to her, powerless to stop her from getting any older.

 

When my mom says to me “Why are you taking that tone with me?” I want to say, it’s because I’m standing here seeing you grow old. It’s because I’m mad that I can’t slow down the time, and I’m mad at the fact that time will run its inevitable course, knowing that all I can do is hope that we still have years left, yet also knowing that hope alone can’t stop time.

 

I wonder: maybe I should actually say that.

 

But, how?

Some Thoughts On Adoption: Part Five

(Click on the following links to read the other parts of this series: Introduction, Part One, Part Two, Interlude, Part Three, Part Four)

I’d like to add the caveat I’ve added to the past few parts of this series:  this is one story of adoption, my story.  These are my thoughts, opinions, feelings about adoption, my adoption, based on my experience.  I do not claim that my story is typical of all adoptions.  We are a world full of unique and individual people, with unique and individual stories.  This is my unique and individual story.

You’d think I’d remember the date my brother left home.  It’s not every day that your adopted brother has his adoption reversed and is returning to live with his birth mother (see Part Four of this series for the entire story, if you’ve not been following along since the beginning).

I remember the date my father died: February 8, 1980.  I remember that David boarded the plane to return to his birth mother later that year — September, October?  It was either right before school was to start, or right before the second quarter of the school year was to start.  The date had something to do with school.  He was nine years old, and one did have to think about his schooling.

So, why can’t I remember the date?

I remember being at the airport.  I remember the striped shirt he was wearing.  I remember the flight attendant (stewardess, as they were called in those days) coming over to us, introducing herself to David, and walking him through the door, and down the jetway to the plane.  I remember him turning around, about halfway down the jetway, to wave and smile at us, at mom and I.  There’s a memory of a stuffed toy in his arms, but I won’t swear it.

I can remember standing there, next to my mom, and feeling dead inside.  My father was gone — something that wasn’t supposed to happen in the natural order of things.  I didn’t know of anyone my age, fourteen, who’d lost a father (at least, not then).  My world was already upside-down.  I was adopted into this family as a baby, and, five years later, my brother was adopted into the family as well.  Suddenly, after a ten-month battle with brain cancer, my father was gone, our family was one-quarter gone.  Now, here we were at the airport, and my family was now reduced by half — from four of us, to two of us.  My brother, my adopted brother, was being sent back to where he came from.

I didn’t understand it at all.

That’s a lie.  I understood that David had been a lot of trouble from the beginning, and that my mom, now locked in grief, anxiety, probably depression, had no idea how to deal with David on her own.  Sending him to live with the woman who gave birth to him, who was married and who’d had other children since, seemed a good option — perhaps having a big family, with more siblings, with younger parents (his birth mother was twenty-five years younger than my mom’s fifty-six years).  Maybe all those things would be good for David.

That was the hope.  That is what I think my mother believed with all her heart in that moment at the airport as we watched David leave.  I think she hoped for David what his birth mother had hoped for him when she’d sent him to live us when he was born: that he’d have a better home, that he’d be loved, that he’d be safe.

For me, it was the start of a lifetime of …. of what?  Of fear.  Of anxiety.  Of isolation.  Of more things than I can set down in words.  In those moments, leading up to David’s departure, it dawned on me: I could be next.  I could just as easily be sent away.

In a way, I was sent away — on my eighteenth birthday my mother threw me out of the house; I’d been late coming home from a job interview because the interview ran long. I missed the express bus, had to take the local bus, and was late.  There were no cellphones in 1984.  I couldn’t call.  We were to go to dinner, to celebrate my birthday.  My mom was convinced that I was having sex with a man, and that I thought having sex with a man was more important than celebrating my birthday with her, so, I should just go live with this man I was supposed to be having sex with.

There was no man.

I was gay.  I’d told her — it was either a few weeks after dad died, or a few weeks after David left.  I can’t remember that detail either.  I can remember that she wouldn’t touch me, that she didn’t hug me again until after she found me on the streets, where I’d been wandering around for nearly twenty-four hours after she threw me out.  She hugged me then, and brought me home.

I spent the years between David’s leaving, and my turning eighteen waiting for my turn to be unadopted.  It seemed logical to my teenaged mind (because teenagers are known for their logic and astute insight into the workings of the world, right?)  I didn’t take the time to mourn my losses — I cried the day my father died, standing there, next to his bed, watching him breathe his last, but I didn’t cry for him again until I was well into my twenties.  I cried that day at the airport, watching David leave.  But, I didn’t mourn for him until later, years later, when his life got even more troublesome.  And, then I mourned him when he died five years ago.  Mostly, I was too busy being afraid that my turn to leave was going to come.

I spent those four years, from fourteen to eighteen doing everything I could to push my mother’s limits.  I can distinctly remember thinking that if she was going to send me away it was going to be for as many reasons as I could give her.  I was angry.  I was full of unexpressed grief.  She was the one who was there to direct it at.

I started ditching school.  I started having sex with men.  She’d marched me into therapy the minute I told her I was gay, because it was just a phase, and she didn’t want anyone blaming her for my being gay — Mama’s boys, was the polite term for faggot back then, and my mother did not want anyone to think that she was the dominating mother who’d turned her son into a Mama’s Boy.  The therapy didn’t work — the therapist never even tried to cure me.

She’d stopped hugging me, which, to me meant she’d stopped loving me.  I couldn’t get her to talk about it.  So, let her see me doing it, then she’d not be able to pretend it wasn’t true.  I was good enough to not let her actually catch me having sex.  She just caught me after it was done, and the man had to flee, out a window, to avoid her wrath.

She was my scapegoat.  Every drop of grief, loss, fear, and confusionI had was directed at her.  I ditched school more.  I had more sex with men. I stopped going to school, dropped out, and just spent my days having sex with men.

When I was sixteen, I told her that I was no longer going to church.  My mom, staunch Catholic, was devastated.  First I was gay, then I’d dropped out of school (she was a teacher, and my decision stung), then I rejected religion.  I would have left the church eventually, as I’d never felt any sort of feeling towards the whole thing — no matter how hard I tried, I never did find faith.  But, I left the church early not just because it meant nothing to me, but because I knew it would wound her. As I write this paragraph, I realize that I spent my time rejecting everything she stood for. Maybe that was the point.  If I reject all she believed in, then maybe it would be easier for her to reject me.  There was a part of me that wanted to be sent away, because once I was sent away, I could stop worrying about when it was going to happen.

Do I blame her for throwing me out when I was eighteen?  No.  I’d been trying hard enough to provoke some sort of reaction, though I admit to being surprised when I got a reaction.

In many ways, my teenage rebellion is no different than many teenage rebellions, so I can’t, and don’t, blame it on being adopted.  I don’t blame it on my mother — logically and rationally, at least.  What she did, sending David away, was something she felt was the best decision for her and for David.  I don’t think anyone thought about what it would do to me.  It took away my sense of security, my sense of safety.  I was already in a state of emotional turmoil, trying to come to terms with my father’s death, dealing with my own budding sexuality — something that was still Very Wrong back then; then the one unimaginable thing happened: my brother was unadopted.  To use a well-worn metaphor, I went over the edge of the emotional cliff.

My mother and I were both locked in our own emotional vortex.  We avoided each other when we could.  We clashed when avoidance was impossible.  She hated my being gay; I hated her for taking away my sense of safety and security.  We were mean to each other during those years.  I acted out, and she volleyed back with words like “fag” and “queer” and “whore”.

In those years I wished she’d never adopted me, and, I wonder if she didn’t feel the same.  She’d questioned it before, years earlier.  I was five or six, and was caught playing with a pair of my mom’s pantyhose (I had them on my head, holding them up, pretending they were a conical hat, imitating a picture I’d seen in a fable of some princess — the women of the court had on conical hats, with little veils at the top, one woman in the drawing had a hat that had two cones, almost horn-like, with a veil on each one — hence the pantyhose).  My mother turned to my father and said “Oh my god! Do you think they sent us one of those kinds of boys?  What if he is? Would we have to keep him?”  I had no idea what kind of boy she was talking about, but, the part about keeping me I understood.  I never touched the pantyhose again.  So, she’d questioned the decision to adopt me once, I wouldn’t be surprised if she hadn’t questioned it again in those years.  I certainly gave her reason to question her decision.

Those years ripped our souls apart.  They very nearly destroyed us. I think some parts of us were permanently destroyed.  Something held us together though — perhaps it was a fear that without the other, we’d each be alone. None of my parents blood-relatives lived here, though there were family friends who filled part of the gap.  But, when it came down to that concept of family — the micro-definition of family, the Mother and Son definition, not the definition of Family Can Be Made Up Of Whomever You Surround Yourself With — but, the simple, basic family law of mother and son, it was clear: together we were a family; apart we were each alone, orphans.  So, maybe it was that fear of aloneness that kept us together.

Maybe, just maybe…. it was something more.   It’s entirely possible that love played a role.

The Wigs

(This essay was inspired by a post by my blogger-friend, Andrea)

There was a period, back during the 1960s and 1970s when wigs were…fashionable doesn’t seem to be the right word, because back then, they were pretty obviously wigs, and rather unfashionable looking.  Let’s say that there was a time when wigs were a convenience.

It was a time of change in America.  Women were entering the workforce by the millions.  But, they still had all the responsibilities of home life too: shopping, cooking, cleaning, child-rearing — after all, America was changing, but not all attitudes were — some things were still a woman’s job.

One day, I don’t really know when, someone in an office somewhere said “Let’s make fake-hairdos, call them wigs, and sell them to working women, so they don’t have to spend as much time on their hair, and can spend more time in the kitchen.”  I suspect it was a man who said this.  So, overnight, an industry was born.  (Ok, so wigs weren’t a new invention, having been around for centuries; it was the concept of marketing them as a convenience, a time saver, that was new.  One could say, if one really wanted to, and I really want to, because I’ve been thinking about this all day, and it’s about to burst out, so I have to say it:  One could say that wigs were Hamburger Helper for coiffeurs.)

Us. 1968/1969

My mom, who was a woman ahead of her time in many ways, (like joining the Army during WWII), gave up dresses when pantsuits became acceptable work attire (she wore pants at home always), and, at some point, when I was too young to know why, she decided that wigs were the answer for her.  She cut her hair short, and embraced the wig.

I cannot honestly answer the question, “did people know she was wearing a wig?”, because I always knew she was wearing a wig, and, it always looked like a wig to me.  Whether people she worked with knew, I know not.  I suspect so.  I mean, back then, wigs really looked like a wig.

Us. April 1972.

When I was little, my mom went with wigs of black-colored hair.  Then, sometime around the time I was five, and my brother was born, she switched to brown-colored hair.  Finally, sometime around 1976, during summer break (my mom was a teacher), she went with silver-haired wigs — she was 53 then, and was turning silver already — so, during the few months school was out, she just went with a silver wig.

Us. 1976.

When she wore dresses to work, as soon as she came home, she changed — the dresses became pants, and the wig came off.  Sometimes the wig wouldn’t come off right away, if she thought she was going somewhere.  But, usually what happened was she’d get hot and take the wig off and set it down wherever she happened to be.  Sometimes there would be a pile of hair on the back of a chair, on the seat of the chair, on the couch, on a counter in the kitchen.  As many times as I was confronted by a wig-hair-pile on the chair, it always startled me.  I was always a bit scared that I would reach out to pick it up in order to move it somewhere, like the coffee table, or bring it down to her room and put it on the styrofoam heads that were on her dresser, and, instead of touching a wig, it would be some fuzzy animal.

The styrofoam wig stands, shaped like a head, always intrigued me.  I liked to draw eyes and mouths on them.  And, there were these long pins that held the wig securely to the styrofoam head, though mom never used them. I liked to stick the needles into the heads, like some sort of voodoo ritual, though I never imagined the heads to be anyone.  It was just fun to stab them with the pins.

The scariest moments would come when the wig ended up in the washing machine, and I’d be pulling clothes out, and would touch this wet, fuzzy thing and nearly screech in terror.

My mom and her wig did cause one small child to screech in terror.  We had a cabin in the mountains, and, one winter day while we were there, some people that had a cabin down the road invited us to go tubing with them.  There were three adults: mom, and the couple that invited us; and, I think, just three children: my brother and I, and the couple’s grandson Andy. After watching Andy, my brother and I tube down the big hill several times, my mom, never one to stand still, grabbed the tube from me, gave a little run, and jumped on the tube (yes, she was in her 50s then, and she was wearing the gray wig).  About half-way down the hill — it was quite a hill, and she was going very fast — her wig flew off.

It Flew.

Very Far.

My brother and I, and the couple who invited us, all knew it was a wig, and we were all laughing about the flying wig.  Andy, who was about four or five, didn’t know it was a wig.  As soon as the wig landed, he let out this scream of pure horror, and started crying, and screaming at the top of his lungs: “Her head flew off! Her head flew off!”

By the time my mom got to the bottom of the hill, turned and walked back up the hill (remember, it was a big hill), picking her wig up along the way (and plopping it back on her head), Andy’s grandparents had managed to get him calmed.  Once he saw her stand up, when she got to the bottom of the hill,  he began to ease up on the screaming, though, he still had some tears going by the time mom reached the top.  We repeated the story to her, and, laughingly, she pulled off the wig, to show Andy it was just hair, and that her head was ok.  Andy, seeing the hair come off, started crying again.  He wanted nothing to do with the wig.

Mom finally gave up the wig, but kept her hair quite short for a number of years.  I think it wasn’t until she was in her mid or late 60s that she let it grow out, and started getting perms.

Mom. 2010.

As an adult, somewhere along the way, I ended up being the owner of three cats (or, maybe I should say that I was owned by three cats?)  Often, they’d curl up in a ball on a chair, or the couch, and, I’d be reminded of mom’s wigs. The cats have all departed this life, and the wigs are in a landfill somewhere.  I miss the cats; the wigs — not so much.

Though, I do miss stabbing the styrofoam heads.

Noon’s Tunes: “In Color” by Jamey Johnson

My parents were in their early 40s when they decided to adopt me, back in 1966.  Both of my parents lived through The Great Depression, and World War II.  My dad was in the Navy (then the Army) during the war, and was on a medical frigate when they tested the Atomic Bomb, dropping it in the waters of Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands.  My mom, she was part of the Women’s Army Corps, and worked on the bombing range, using surveying equipment to help improve the accuracy of the bombs.

My aunts and uncles were of the same generation, most of my parents friends were too.  So I grew up around them, hearing stories of war and depression first hand.

This song by Jamey Johnson, who is just about a decade younger than I, tells the story of him talking with his grandpa.  For me, because my parents had been older, this song is a generation closer, it’s not me talking to grandparents, but parents.

The story of the song may be of Jamey Johnson’s grandpa, but, it’s also a story of a generation of people who are becoming fewer and fewer in number.  The last of the World War I veterans died last year, aged 110.  My mom, who was 21 when she enlisted, during the last year of World War II will be turning 90 this year.  Soon, the generation who survived depression, war, Holocaust, will too be gone.

I’m thankful to have heard so many of the stories from my parents, my relatives, their friends.  And, like all stories, they need to be told in order to be remembered.

This song resonates with me, and I thank Mr. Johnson for the gift of his song.

There’s a verse from that song that makes my eyes water every time:

This one is my favorite one
This is me and grandma in the summer sun
All dressed up, the day we said our vows

You can’t tell it here but it was hot that June
And that rose was red and her eyes were blue
And just look at that smile, I was so proud

I’m reminded of my dad saying that he was so proud to be standing next to my mother, while the Justice of the Peace performed their wedding.

Every day, I’m reminded of that day my dad said those words to me, because, hanging in the living room is a painting — made from their wedding photo. Their wedding may have been in January, not June, but the roses were red, and, though you can’t tell in the photo here, my mom’s eyes are a beautiful blue.

 

Mom On The iPhone: Nine

First… sorry for all the postings today.  I’m still trying to catch up from several days of being sick, and several years of being too hungover to blog.  I promise not to get too carried away… or, to at least space my posts out more.

That being said:

Yesterday I took mom to the doctor, for a follow-up visit.  She’s on coumadin, a blood-thinner, and, she has to have regular blood tests, to make sure her blood is thin, but not too thin.  We were outside, waiting for the car (valet is such a wonderful thing, when you’ve got a person in a wheelchair!), and, though it was a cool, February day, the sun was out, so mom wanted to get a bit of sun after being sick last week.

Her blood test was good, she’s feeling better, eating better, and her hair was better than the last photo, so she was pleased.

I’m supposed to mention she’s getting a perm tomorrow.

(And, for those who care about technical stuff, this wasn’t really taken on my iPhone, but on my pocket-sized Canon.)

A Dickey Of A Story

Time: Day Before Yesterday.
Place: Living Room.

I walked into the living room. Mom was sitting in her chair, as usual. When she saw me, she leaned forward in her chair, resting her elbows on her knees.

“Listen” she said (that’s how she often starts a sentence.) “Listen. Would you reach up my shirt and pull my dickey down.”

(dumbstruck)

“It’s all bunched up in the back.”

(…mind seeking enlightenment, but it’s not happening)

“Could you pull it down and straighten it out.”

(Enlightenment!! She’s talking about her mock-turtleneck dickey! Phew!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

(This is a reposting of a story on my prior blog, dated 12/18/2008)

 

Mom’s On The iPhone: Photos Six, Seven, Eight (Or, The September Bug)

It began on a Not So Long Ago Thursday night, with Julian saying “I think I ate too much.  My stomach feels yucky.”  By midnight, we realized that it wasn’t eating too much, but, rather, eating something that wasn’t good.  Or so it seemed at the time.  Several rounds of vomiting, and several days of diarrhea, and we thought it was over.  Until mom got sick.  Then we realized it wasn’t something Julian ate.

Mom’s bout with The Bug began the same way, with a few rounds of throwing up.  Which wasn’t too bad.  It was the diarrhea that was bad.  When you’re almost 89, your control is not what it once was, and your speed isn’t all that speedy.  So, the mad dash to the bathroom resulted in me, on my knees, cleaning up the trail of diarrhea mom left behind her.  There was a time in my life where I believed that I would never be able to deal with someone else’s mess.  It seems that we learn to do the things we have to do.

Not long ago, someone said of me: He’s just taking care of his mom for his own personal gain.

On the third day of mom’s illness, as I was on my knees, cleaning, again, the trail of shit that mom left on the floor, from her bed to the bathroom, those words, said in a Facebook post I wasn’t meant to see, came flooding back.  And, as one does, when one is on one’s knees, cleaning, again, feces off the floor, recalling words said behind one’s back, one becomes angry and self-righteous, thinking of all kinds of pithily mean things to say to the person who uttered the insult in order to not have to think about the fact that one is, again, cleaning feces off the floor.

As I was scrubbing the floor, I thought “If I’m doing this for personal gain, I’d be wanting more gain than just a house in a not-so-great neighborhood.  If I’m cleaning poop for personal gain, there’d better be a large sum of cash involved.”  But, since I’m not caring for my mom for personal gain, I scrub the floor simply for the fact that it needs to be done.  If I were caring for my mom for personal gain, I’d be thinking about the money in the bank (of which, in reality, there is none — mom has always spent her money, either on herself, or others), or I’d be thinking about the insurance money (of which, in reality, there is none: when one lives past a certain age, the insurance one owned is suddenly worthless; when you live past the average life expectancy for your gender, the insurance is no longer worth having, as the cost is through the roof, and the payoff is virtually nothing).  As I cleaned the floor, my anger rising, I suddenly realized that I was glad to have been insulted, because I didn’t have to think about the mess on the floor.

The morning of the fourth day I called 911.  Mom was getting dehydrated from the constant diarrhea, and, it seemed that her pills were going right through her, so her blood pressure was getting very high.  Yes, ok.  I will admit, that at this point, I did do something for personal gain:  I called the ambulance to take her to the hospital.  I knew, from past experience, that if mom arrived at the ER in an ambulance, she’d get seen right away, and I wouldn’t have to spend hours in the waiting room worrying about when she’d be seen, or having to rush her to a public restroom.  And, yes, I also called the ambulance for more personal gain: because I’d cleaned up enough mess in the house, and I didn’t want to have to clean up a mess in the car.  There.  It must be true, then.  I’m not above doing things for personal gain.  I guess there’s more to personal gain than just financial gain.

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Mom was in the hospital for 4 nights.  They kept her in because her blood pressure was high, and they wanted to get it under control.  The fact that she’d been without medication for several days seemed too obvious a reason for her blood pressure to be high.  Instead, they’ve been trying to get her blood pressure back under control by changing her medication, rather than just letting her go back to the effective regiment that she had before she got sick.  But, what do I know?

 

Once mom got home, and was feeling better, it seemed that it was my turn.  I’d had a bout with anemia before Julian got sick, and I was laid up for a week or so, being too tired and weak to to much of anything.  Then, after Julian and mom each got over The Bug, it seemed that it was my turn to deal with The Bug.  I was lucky that my turn didn’t begin with vomiting.  I went right for the shits.  I was again laid up for several days.

It’s been a long September, and, attending to this little blog of mine was not much of a priority.  Now that Good Health has returned to Chez Xanadu, you should notice a return to a more regular blog schedule.

 

The Missing Pills

So this happened:
The other day, mom’s doctors made some changes to her blood pressure medication.  One of the medications now requires a three-times-a-day dosage.  In order to to get all three doses in, and spaced at reasonable intervals, she needs to take her first dose of the day around 6-7 a.m.  Her alarm always goes off at 7 a.m.; it goes off this early, even though she doesn’t get always get up that early, in order to allow her time to decide if she wants to go to mass, and breakfast with the church ladies.  She usually wakes up somewhere around 5 a.m. to go to the bathroom.  I figured, between the 5 a.m. bathroom call, and the 7 a..m alarm, she could take her first dose of the blood pressure pills.  The first night, I set my alarm for 6 a.m., went and woke her up, and gave her the pills.  I then recalled that when she first started taking this pill, earlier in the year, she was having to take an early dose, so I’d placed several pills in a small bowl, and left them in her bathroom, so she could take the pill when she woke up.

I decided to do this again, even though the dosage was different from the original dose: two-and-a-half pill, instead of one.

I put a handful of pills in the bowl, then cut several tabs in half, and added them to the bowl as well.  I brought the bowl in to mom, told her what I was going to do, reminding her of how we’d done it earlier in the year, and repeated the new dosage to her several times.  I then asked her to repeat it back to me.  I put the small dish on her nightstand, as requested.

This morning, at 8 a.m. she called me: her heart was beating fast, and she had some chest pressure (symptoms she had during her recent hospital stay — more about this in another post).  I took her pressure, and discovered that, like in the hospital when she had the chest pressure, her heart rate was very high, and that her pressure was fairly low.  I decided since it was so low, I wouldn’t give her her other blood pressure pill, as 101/60 seemed low enough, and, that another dose of a pressure lowering medication might make her pressure too low.  I did, however, give her a dose of a pill she has that slows her heart rate, which the doctors took her off of a few days ago, when they made the changes.  Within a half-an-hour she was feeling much better.

Tonight, while I was helping her get ready for bed (she gets herself into her pajamas, I just make sure her phone is on the nightstand by the bed, that the TV is set to a station she likes, and that its timer is set for two hours), I reminded her to take her pills in the morning.  I looked around for the small bowl that contained the pills I had brought down last night.  I didn’t see it on the nightstand where I’d left it, and, I didn’t see it on the counter in her bathroom.

“Where’s the bowl of pills from last night?” I asked.

She: “I brought it up to the other room, and you took it out to the kitchen a while ago.”

“I didn’t take a bowl with pills in it to the kitchen.” I said.

She: “There weren’t any pills in it.  It was empty.”

“Oh.  Where did you put the pills then?” I asked.

She: “Nowhere.  There weren’t any left.  I took them all.”

As it was the end of the day, and she’d made it all day without being ill, and with her pressure being normal, I only panicked slightly.  “What do you mean, you took them all?”

“I thought I was supposed to take the whole  dish.  You should have told me.”

“I did.  I even had you repeat the instructions back to me.”

“No, you didn’t”, she said, angrily.

I had, but, arguing the point wasn’t going to get me anywhere.  So, I just said “I’ll just put out what you need to take in the morning then, daily, instead of several days at a time.”

We’ll see what happens in the morning, whether she takes all the pills, as she’s supposed to, or, if she only remembers that she took too many, and decides to only take one pill.

When Family Comes To Visit: The End

Out of respect for my mother, I’ll refrain from detailed commentary about the visit from her relatives.  Yes, you read that correctly: her relatives.  Being an adopted child I can honestly refer to them as her relatives.

Any inferences you care to make from my designating the relatives as mom’s is entirely up to you.  I will neither confirm or deny anything you might infer.

Well, maybe I’ll just confirm that I sincerely like Cousin Rose.

The only other things I’ll say about the visit are:

• I didn’t exactly put my best foot forward.
• I finally got to make the drive up Mt. Evans.
• I spent several hours in the ER.  Diagnosis: concussion and hairline linear skull fracture (it was an accident — someone was being helpful, and I wasn’t paying attention).
• Guests, relative or not, who bring my mother to tears, are pretty much…  I’ll leave that sentence unfinished.
• It was over 100-degrees most of the days they were here, so I’m certain that wasn’t too fun for them.  There were also lots of fires in the mountains, and the air in the city was quite smokey, so I’m sure that wasn’t fun for them either.
• I tried (though, perhaps not hard enough), and failed (resoundingly), to be outwardly happy about the fact that my home was full of people I barely knew.
• I could have tried harder to be less of a jerk.  Until mom cried.  (Then I had to try even harder to not be a bigger jerk).

Ever have a moment when The Voices in your head start telling you “You’re a grown-man, who’s winding down his fourth decade, so stop acting like a spoiled, petulant teenager.”?  No?

Me either.

Oh, alright!  Yes, I have had that moment.

I can’t say I’m proud of the fact that I wasn’t a Martha-Stweart-Approved host, though I guess I should be pleased that I think I managed to not say anything mean, sarcastic, or offensive during The Visit.  And, perhaps, I should be ashamed of the fact that I mentally cursed my mom many times for not really taking Julian and I into consideration when she had 6 people come, knowing that there was no way she could drive them around, cook for them, or do much of anything for them, other than buy meals for them; knowing that the responsibility would fall on me, and, that I would be the one who had no choice or say in the matter.  Pity party?  Oh yeah.  Definitely.  And, in my passive-agressive way, I just did the least amount I could — I only cooked once while they were here, and drove when I had to (having a concussion did keep me from driving for a few days though).

For me, this was one of the most confusing situations I’ve been in.  Yes, this is my mother’s home.  But, it is also our home, Julian and I.  She’s always telling us this is our home, and how much she loves having us here, and how she’d have to sell and go into assisted living if I wasn’t here.  Yet, for all the talk of this being “our home”, it’s not.  It is Her Home.  She decides how the house looks, what things she keeps (most things), and vetoes just about any suggestion of change.  I understand her emotional attachment to the house, this house where she has lived since 1960, this house that was the only home she and my father ever owned, the home that hasn’t changed much in looks since my father died in 1980.  So, I get it.  It is her home, and we are just here because she doesn’t want to have to sell it.  Still: it is the place Julian and I live, and, we aren’t ever asked things like “I’d like to invite some relatives, do you think you’d help me play host?”

Instead, it happened like this.

When mom was in the hospital in January, she changed her primary care doctor.  When we went to visit the new doctor, the doctor told mom that she understood that mom had been through a lot while she was in the hospital, and she wanted mom to know that, as her doctor, she’d always listen to my mom.  She told mom, “Some of my patients reach a point where they say ‘I’ve had enough treatments, and I don’t want any more.’  If you reach that point, tell me, and we’ll make you as comfortable as you can, and send you home, if you want.  Some patients want to fight to the end, trying every treatment possible.  If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do.”   What my mom heard was “You went through a lot in the hospital, and there’s not much we can do for you, so go home and prepare to die.”   She then had to call her relatives and tell them that she wouldn’t be going back East to visit them again, because she needed to stay close to the hospital, and that they needed to come see her soon, before it was too late.   (Of course, my mom didn’t want them to come right that moment, because the summer is better for driving around in the mountains).  So, what do you do?  If you’re the relative, you come visit, if you’re the son and his partner, you grin and bear it.

I know I sound like an ass, whining about … what, exactly?  Having to play host?  That’s not exactly the worst thing ever.  Being taken for granted?  Yes, but, it’s not like I a have a job other than being around for mom, so, I don’t exactly have anything more pressing to do.  I chose to stay home and be with mom, to live with her, to make sure she’s happy and well-taken care of.  So, playing host is part of that, right? And, I shouldn’t be angry about it, right?

I guess I should have been nicer to mom’s relatives.  Until they brought tears to her eyes.

Then it’s fair to not be polite, right?

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I did, however, while we were out and about, encounter some wildlife:

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Mom’s On The iPhone: Photo One

After I posted this on my personal Facebook page, I had an idea: use my iPhone camera to document A Year In The Life of Mom.  I’ve always got the phone with me, so, the camera is easily accessible, and, I need the practice when it comes to photographing people.  Most people I don’t like well enough to photograph, so I haven’t spent much time pursuing that area of photography.  But, my mom… well, most days I like her well enough to take a photo of her, though I doubt this will be a daily posting, as we’re not always doing anything photo worthy: there are only so many photos of my mom sitting in her chair, doing word search puzzles, that one can take before being accused of being a boring photographer.

For those of you who already saw this on Facebook: consider it a treat to see it a second time.  :-)

In 2009, my mom had aortic heart-valve replacement surgery.  Her recovery was quite difficult, and there was a period of several months where getting her to eat was a challenge.  Slowly, her appetite began to return.  Around the same time as she began to eat more regularly, and with a little more enjoyment, a friend of mind recommended a place called Bender’s Brat Haus, a local restaurant that makes their own bratwursts.  I did a bit of research, and discovered that the restaurant also offered something called a Krautburger.  In various parts of the county, a krautbuger is called a runza or a bierock, but, they are all basically the same thing: a dough pocket, stuffed with beef, cabbage or sauerkraut, sometimes onions.  Years ago, there was a place down the street that made bierocks, and my mom enjoyed them so much, she would buy them by the dozen, keep them in the freezer, and pop them into the microwave anytime she needed a fix.  When the restaurant was going out of business, mom asked the guy to make her several dozen.  Mom’s friend Betty made them a time or two, and, mom always enjoyed them when she did, but, she missed not being able to have them whenever she wanted.  I’m a good cook, but, the mysteries of pastry dough elude me, and, we’ll just leave it at that fact that I can’t make them.  So, finding a restaurant nearby that made something that she’s long enjoyed was quite exciting, back in those days where she was still struggling to find food that she felt like eating.

Thankfully, the krautbuger was a hit, and, quite frankly, it was a gift: in those months after her surgery, she wanted to have a krautbuger almost daily.  We don’t go daily any longer, but, we can be found there a couple of times per week.  I’m grateful to my friend who, innocently remarked, in passing, “try a bratwurst at the brat haus”, and, I’m still thankful that I took mom there to check out the krautbuger, as I credit them with bringing the joy my mom had always felt about food before her surgery.  Which, I think is why I felt inspired by the quick iPhone picture I took of her today at lunch, enjoying, what else, but a krautburger, to start taking more photos of mom.

When Family Comes To Visit: Four

Here are a couple more images from Castlewood State Park.

The final image is of mom (can’t have family vacation photos without including mom, right?!)  Everyone wanted a photo of her, so she was joking about being a celebrity.  She rolled her eyes when I showed her the photo, but, I think it’s rather endearing.

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My Morning

The fun thing is watching how intent my mom gets filling out papers at the doctor’s office.

The Red Shed: Update

Last month, I shared the story of The Red Shed in our back yard.  I mentioned, at the end, that a new shed was being built.

It’s finally finished, paint and all.

As a reminder, here is The Red Shed:

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The Red Shed now exists only in photographs, and in memory.  It’s remains lay, for those of you who wish to go visit, in The City Landfill.

The new shed, The Sort-Of-Olive-Greenish-Grey Shed stands like a beacon to hoarders everywhere:

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Who I Remember and Give Thanks To on Memorial Day

This Memorial Day, I’d like to share a post I wrote for Memorial Day 2010. I’m grateful, and thankful, to all the men and women who have served our country.  And, I am especially proud and thankful to all those in my family who have served.

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Though I was not an “Army Brat,” moving from base to base, state to state, country to country, I am a child of the Army. Much of my life has been shaped by the military, and by the people who’ve served our country. It would be thoughtless of me to let this Memorial Day go by without mentioning (and thanking) those special people.

My mom joined the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) on her 21st birthday. The year was 1944, and, at that time, for her to join, she had to be 21. She enlisted for “the duration of the war, plus 6-months.” At the time, no one knew how long the war was going to last. During the war, my mom worked on the bombing range, working with the surveyors, working to make the bombs more accurate in striking their targets. The war lasted less than a year after she enlisted. Perhaps, if she hadn’t met my father, she might have done more Active Duty time. Instead, she did 20 years as a Reserve Officer. Because my dad was the one who was Active Duty, my mom had to go from base to base, and, thus, her time in the Reserves was varied, taking whatever duty she could at the local post.

My father joined the Navy during WWII, though he eventually switched to the Army. You could say that my dad gave his life for his country, though not in the typical “on the field of battle” way. My dad was a medic, and was on one of the medial frigates during the testing of the Atomic Bomb, at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. At the time, it was assumed they were a safe distance from the site of the explosion, but, in later years, as more and more was learned about radiation and it’s effects, they were indeed in harm’s way. On my dad’s ship, they all stood on deck and watched the explosion, in just their uniforms; no special equipment protected them. As the years went by, more and more of the men on those ships died of cancer and other diseases which, it was later determined, were all caused by the exposure to the radiation. My dad died of brain cancer, in 1980, at the age of 55.

Both of my parents were done with their military service by the time I came around (my mom was 42, dad 41, when I was born) so I missed out on the life of a military child. Which, perhaps, might be a good thing. I was painfully shy as a kid, and had a tough enough time making friends living in the same place all my life. Moving around every few years might have been even worse, though, maybe it might have helped my shyness. I guess I’ll never know.

The military was an important part of both my parent’s families. My father was one of 5 boys, and my mom (who was an only child), grew up with her 4 cousins, and they all felt like they were brothers and sisters. Out of the 10 then, 9 were in the military. All 4 of my dad’s brothers served: two in the navy and two in the army (and my dad, who was in both branches.) On my mom’s side, of the 3 who served, they were all army. I’m quite proud of all of them.

There’s quite a history among them all. My mom was among the early number of women who were allowed to serve, helping to pave the way for women to serve in the capacities they do today. My dad, as I said, was at the Atomic Bomb testing. I have an uncle who was among those who landed on the beaches of Normandy, another landed at Iwo Jima. I have an uncle who served under General George Patton. I have an uncle who won two purple hearts. Two of my uncles were in the Infantry.

Of course, growing up with a military family, one becomes friends with other military families. My mom’s two best friends were military wives, one’s husband was in the 10th Mountain Division during WWII, and the other served two tours of duty in Vietnam. A non-family member (though he’s quite dear to me) was wounded on the landing at Iwo Jima. And, then there are the children and their children, and I know veterans of Korea, Vietnam, Desert Shield, Desert Storm.

My parents were never pushing for me to join the military. Of course, I was 14 when my father died, so I don’t think I was ever old enough for him to encourage to join. My mom, while never pressuring me, did like to mention that it was a good place to learn new skills, and find out who you are. There was a time when I had thought about it, though, being gay makes you think even more seriously about it (especially back in the 80s, before being gay was fashionable.) Then, of couse, there is my bad eye, with it’s blind spot and 20/200 vision which may have kept me out (or at least away from a gun) and, then, when I was 22 I found out that I was HIV+, and, in the early days of AIDS, we weren’t accepted most places. So, any thought I had about the military pretty much ended. I would like to have joined, to continue a family tradition, and to make my parents proud. She’s never actually said so, but, I think, mom’s a bit disappointed that I didn’t join (though, in her own way, she understands about my being gay and the HIV thing keeping me out.)

It was probably for the best that I didn’t join. I’m not sure I’m military material. I am, however, very proud, and very thankful to be surrounded by so many who have been in the military. I am humbled and honored to know so many people who have served in our country’s military. For those in my family, for those friends, and for those soldiers I don’t even know, on this Memorial Day, I offer my sincerest thanks for all that you do.

A Blast From The Past

I just ran across this journal entry dated September 13, 2005, and thought I’d share:

Night before last.

I’m in the kitchen. Mom suddenly hollers from the living room.

What she said: “There’s a dike leaking.”

What I heard: “There’s a dyke leaking.”

I found this rather disturbing, and wasn’t sure I wanted to know why my mom was informing me of this. Then realized CNN was on, she was watching Hurricane Katrina coverage from New Orleans. Dyke became dike, and the image was much better, though still disturbing (in an entirely different way.)

The Red Shed

I’ve always hated the red shed. No. That’s not right. The shed can go to its grave proudly knowing that it performed its job admirably: it provided safety and security to a good many belongings for more than two decades. The red shed can go to rest knowing that it withstood several record-breaking blizzards, plenty of record-breaking winds, many heavy hail storms, and more than one deluge of monsoon rains. Even in its last days, the door with its rotting and falling off trim kept everything inside safe. Even as the red shed is being torn down tomorrow, it can leave this world knowing that even as the walls are rotting away, it has stood tall and strong, and nothing inside ever got wet, moldy or mildewy. If the red shed were a member of our brave military forces, it would deserve a medals for strength, endurance and courage as it prevailed against everything that Mother Nature threw at it. If the red shed had been a soldier, standing tall and proud against the War of Time, it would deserve to have Taps played as its remains are carted off to the city landfill. No. I do not hate the physical part of the shed. My animosity is directed at most of the things that have resided in the red shed over its long life.

 

In its earliest years, the red shed provided shelter to bags full of plastic bags — grocery bags, bread wrappers, bags used to bring produce home from the grocery store. There were bags and bags of bags, because my mother believed that we could always use the bags for something. There were black trash bags full of plastic containers and lids: old Tupperware, margarine containers, cottage cheese containers, ice cream tubs, because my mother believed that we could always use them to store things in. There were boxes of old bits of electrical appliances: a toaster with a missing cord, the innards of lamps that had broken, broken strings of holiday lights, anything that had a broken cord, because mom believed that she’d get them fixed one day, because they couldn’t be thrown out as she “paid good money” for them. Better to keep them than throw them out. She’d say “Someone might want them. We can’t throw out something that someone else might get use from.”

 

One of the major accomplishments of my early 30s was finally getting mom to part with the bags of bags, and the bags of plastic containers. The broken electrical parts remained, though, if I’m honest, I’ll admit to throwing out a box or two over the years.

 

Like any space in her house, my mother does not care for emptiness. If my mother had a personal motto, it would be “If there is an empty place, something must be purchased to fill the emptiness.” After cleaning out the detrius from the shed, there was Emptiness in need of Stuff. Many of the things that accumulated in the garage were moved into the shed. The emptiness in the garage was filled with things from the house.

 

Over the years, my mom has reluctantly let go of a few things. Yet, the red shed has always remained more of a storage locker than a place for the things to keep up the yard and garden. Finally, though, over the weekend, we cleaned out the shed. Many things went into the trash with mom’s blessing. There were old bird cages, old suitcases, a couple of boxes of old plastic cactuses and silk flowers that my mom bought back in the 1980s when she was redecorating the house in the Southwestern style that was all the rage at the time. The cactuses were all dried out and brittle, the silk flowers, even though they’d been boxed were no longer vibrant. There was a large plastic tub, that we filled with all the old anti-freeze and other old household chemicals, which are now in the garage awaiting the next Household Chemical Roundup. There were old lawn chairs, some old curtains with edges that had been eaten away by mice. Perhaps it would be easier to say what we kept: mom’s mobility scooter (bought a decade ago, and never used, because she’s not that immobile, and, besides, she has me to push her around in the transport chair when we go places); a maple end table with a glass top; a small, patchwork quilt that, remarkably, had not been chewed on by moths or mice, and I had to keep because it was the quilt we used for the puppy I got when I was 5; a small, green, glass planter; two hammers; a wooden gun I made in 6th grade Shop class; a few small containers filled with nuts, bolts, nails. Everything else mom said to get rid of.

 

We cleaned out the red shed over the weekend. Mom sat in her transport chair, in a shady spot just in front of the doors of the shed, so she could review each thing as it was brought out. As I looked at her, sitting there, an 88-year old woman, reviewing her belongings and pronouncing judgment on them, I was overcome with a strange sense of melancholy. She was willingly, even happily, getting rid of many objects. The fanciful voice in my head saw it in terms of her letting her belongings dwindle down, as her own life is dwindling. She may still be going strong for an 88-year old woman with high-blood pressure, diabetes, fibrillation, a new heart valve, chronic kidney disease, arthritis, gout, and all the aches and pains of the elderly, but, at 88, the time before her is much less than the time that she’s already lived through. So, perhaps, she’s reviewing the past, and letting it go, with the acceptance that everything has its allotted time.

 

Or, then again, my fanciful voice is being silly.

 

The Red Shed gets torn down tomorrow.

 

The new, bigger shed starts being
built the day after. She’s already planning all the things that are going to be moved in when the building is complete.

 

We’re still trying to decide on a color.

Watching TV With Mom

When mom is around, one cannot watch tv or read or think of anything, because she likes to talk. If she can’t think of anything to say, she’ll tell you the same things over again. Or she’ll read parts of articles to you–only a sentence or two. Just enough to interrupt, never enough to inform. It’s always just enough to make you miss part of whatever it is that’s on tv.

Watching the news the other night, mom was in Full Chat Mode.  The story on the news had something to do with the risks of some drug or other, and I was able to catch maybe every 10th word. Interspersed with the news report was mom’s voice.

This is how it all sounded:

 

Reporter: Let me ask…..

Mom: Remember when I took that one pill and it almost killed me?

Man: No….

Reporter:…ok then tell me…..

Mom: It’s a good thing I insisted on going to the hospital.

Man: Yes…..

Reporter:…heart attack.

Mom: My legs were swollen like big fat watermelons.

Man:…money….

Reporter: So then why….

Man: …money….

Mom: It’s a good think Obama hadn’t got his hands on healthcare then, or they’d have let me die.

Reporter: …..millions….

Man: …..you’re welcome.

 

Very strange, and highly uninformative.

Wafers On Display

In honor of Holy Thursday and Good Friday, I thought I’d repost a brief tale from Holy Thursday and Good Friday 2005:

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Speaking of my mom.

Apparently she’s doing something at Church tomorrow, called Veneration of the Blessed Sacrament.

“What’s that?”  I asked.
“They open up the Gold Thing on the Altar, and display the Blessed Sacrament.”
“You just walk up and look at it?”
“It’s on display.  You come in, they have Benedictions, and you see the Host.”
“The little wafers?”
“Yes, The Blessed Sacrament.”

I’m still not real sure about this Catholic  ritual.  Mom insists I must have done this back in the day. I think I would remember this.  As far as I can tell, this is a special trip to church, to go look at the little crackers in a gold goblet  and say a prayer.  I’m sure I would remember having Made The Wafer Pilgrimage to the Church.

++==++==++

So, I ask my mom “How’d the thing at church go?”
“Oh god!  My back about killed me.”
“Did you have to stand the whole time?”
“No, I had to sit, but the pew was especially uncomfortable.”
“So what did you do there.”
“Just sat there.”
“Why?”
“Because the Host was on display.”
“Well, yeah, I got that part.  But, why were you there?  Did you have to help people out or tell them things?”
“No. While the Host is on display, someone always has to be there. It can’t be alone.”

Apparently the little, flat, white wafers have an abandonment complex or some such thing.

 

++==++==++

I’ve since learned that this ritual is called Eucharistic Adoration.

Mom, Make-up, Those Shoes, and Lonely Silence

My mother was 42 when I was born. My memories of her for the first few years of my life are rather vague and nebulous. It’s probably safe to say that I am unable to comment, with any firsthand knowledge, of the first 45 years of my mother’s life. But, for the 40-some odd years of mom memories that I do remeber, I can confidently claim that my mom is not a girly-girl. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing her. Just stating fact.

I can remember quite clearly how excited she was when the school district she taught for decided that it was alright for their female teachers to wear pants, rather than a dress every day. Ever since then, the only time mom wears a dress is for weddings, funerals, and certain special occasions.

Liberated she might have been, wearing those pantsuits, yet, she never got too liberated: she never burned a bra.

Now that she’s 88, she can’t do the things she once did, but, back in the day, my mom built and finished the cabinets in one of the bathrooms here in Chez Xanadu, she sanded and finished most of the built-ins in the house, she pounded nails, turned screws and sawed wood while the cabins in the mountains were being built, and she knows a few tricks about electrical wiring. She never wore her fingernails long, or painted them, as the paint would just chip, and the nails break during hard work. She wore a chipped nail, or a bandaged finger, as if it were a medal of honor.

And, let’s not forget this:

How many people can claim to have a photo, taken in the 1950s, of their mom on the rifle range, where she became a qualified marksman?

My mom’s never been into makeup — she had one tube of lipstick, and a couple of samples of other lipstick colors that she’d gotten at some Avon party, and that was all she owned for years. The tube of lipstick may have held the record for World’s Longest Living Lipstick — it resided in her top dresser drawer for my entire childhood, and was there when I moved out. She called me one day, I think I was in my early 20s, and told me she’d thrown out all her lipstick because she’d read an article that bacteria grew on the lipstick, and shouldn’t be used after a certain period of time. If it hadn’t been for that article, I have no doubt the tube of lipstick would still be there — only very special occasions warranted lipstick; being worn only once a year, a tube of lipstick can last a lifetime. Other than the lipstick, my mom has never worn any other makeup. I remember one time, she went to some makeup party, and came home with a new look. She showed us, we all made suitable noises of approval, then she went to the bathroom and washed it all off. “I’ve never had the patience to stand in front of

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Mom, Diets and Nutritionists

“I should have just told them not to replace the heart-valve, and to just let me die, then you wouldn’t have to be inconvenienced about anything.” This from my mom, who’s always lived by the rule “If you can’t be melodramatic, then why bother?”

Here’s some relevant information, to bring you up to speed:

In December 2009, about a month after her heart valve-replacement surgery, we had an appointment with her Nephrologist (translation: kidney doctor.) Mom’s been seeing him for almost a decade, as she has Chronic Kidney Disease. During this visit, her blood-work revealed that her Phosphorous levels were high, and the doctor gave her a list of foods to be careful of, to not eat too much of. On subsequent visits, I followed-up with the doctor about her Phosphorus level, and he would tell us that whatever she was doing was working — her levels were good. (In all honesty, we hadn’t changed much, since the doctor figured it had to do with the effects and aftereffects of her surgery).

Another piece of relevant information:

Over the past few months her blood pressure has been quite high, resulting in a 4-day stay in the hospital last month, various medication changes, one of which caused her to swell like a water balloon; the end result being a pill to help her get rid of all the fluid she was retaining (about 15 lbs, it turns out). The pill works by making you pee a lot, and, along the way, it depletes your potassium. During the most recent visit to the kidney doctor, he put her on a potassium supplement, because her potassium level was low. He felt it was temporary, due to the water pill, which she had stopped the day before, because the fluid had all been peed out. He suggested some foods that would help raise her potassium levels, requested a blood test in a month, and told her not to worry, it probably wasn’t a long-term issue, just an imbalance because of the water pill.

Yet another piece of relevant information:

Last month, while mom was in the hospital trying to get her blood-pressure under control, they discovered that she had atrial fibrillation. She’d had a-fib after her valve-replacement surgery, but, her heart beat regulated after a few months. It seems that it’s back, and, probably was there still after the surgery, just not as intense as it was after the surgery. A-fib is one of those conditions that, depending on the severity, and on the individual can be noticed by the patient when it happens, or the patient will never feel the fibrillations, so it can be hard to detect. Being hooked up to a heart monitor while she was in the hospital brought the condition to light. As a result, she’s on Coumadin, a blood-thinner, that will keep her blood from forming clots in the chambers of her heart. Blood pools a bit during an episode of a-fib, and, it can form clots, which can then be pumped out of the heart, and the clot can end up in the brain causing a stroke. The Coumadin responds to Vitamin K, which is present in green vegetables, and certain other fruits. So, you have to regulate your intake of these foods, because they can make your blood too thick or thin.

Final bit of relevant info:

My mom likes to be the center of attention. So, yes, it’s fair to say that we all have our moments where we desire to be in the spotlight, but, with mom, it’s more than our own basic need for recognition. My mom cannot bear to have a conversation that doesn’t somehow include her for very long. If people are talking about things she doesn’t know, she’ll change the subject back to her. If there’s a story being told, my mom will always have a better story about herself to share. She’s always been this way, but, as she’s gotten older, this tendency becomes more and more apparent. I suspect that part of it comes from having outlived most all of her friends and her generation of family, leaving her with few people to talk to regularly, so, now, when she gets the chance to talk, she can place herself firmly in the center. This has the unfortunate side-effect of impairing her listening abilities. She’s so focused on her part in the story, that she hears only selective parts of what anyone else is saying.

Yes, yes, I know… not the most exciting information in the world, but, it will add to the story, and, let’s be honest, when you’re writing, certain backstory information is always going to be mind-numbingly dull. Thank me for getting it out of the way at the beginning.

Now, onward to the story:

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