I have a pretty good track record in choosing Presidents. Sometimes, I’m way ahead of the game. I decided in 2004 that I wanted Obama for President.
Obama at the 2004 Democratic Convention (Google Image)
Sadly, I didn’t notice him on the ballot for a while.
This time around, I haven’t been able to decide. Hillary? Bernie? There are things to recommend each of them. So what is a good citizen to do?
Well, today I have my answer. I know who I’m going to vote for. I know who I will work for. I know who will solve one of the major problems the world faces today.
Please join me in supporting the candidacy of Donald Trump:
WINTERSET, Ia. – Donald Trump says if he gets elected president, he would have to change his hair style because he wouldn’t have time to maintain it, as he would be working his butt off in the White House.…[Emphasis added]
The world will be a far, far better place.
* * *
I found this, along with a zillion other brilliant pictures at The Last of the Millenniums. He’s got a gift for finding the really fun stuff.
It was always the same. Mom and Dad. The kids. They were a unit, Mom-and-Dad.
I’ve written before of my parents and the great love I was privileged to come from. Here. And Here. But I haven’t told you that it all ended up in heartbreak. My Dad’s. Poor Dad.
Whenever I think back to our home growing up, Mom and Dad were together. The end of the day would find them doing dishes together, and then they’d sit at the kitchen table and talk, smoke cigarettes, and laugh. In the summer, they’d relocate to the front porch, where they’d laugh. The sound of their voices, their laughter is as much the sound of my childhood as the train running by the house.
After they retired and moved to Florida, Mom started having health problems. She’d always had some; she’d contracted polio in the late 40s and got emphysema from smoking. But in the mid-1990s, Mom had a series of strokes.
Still, she never let it dampen her sense of humor.
“My dog,” she said to me during our daily 10 a.m. call, “is no help at all.”
“What do you mean, Mom?”
“Yesterday, I needed C.K. to be Lassie. He wasn’t,” she giggled.
Huh?
C.K. was Mom and Dad’s golden retriever. He was sweet as are all goldens, but had no rescue training that I knew of. So I didn’t get the connection to Lassie.
“Well, yesterday when I fell and was lying on my back on the patio unable to get up, I told C.K. to …” her own laughter had interrupted her.
“When you were WHAT?”
“Well you see …” Mom went on to laughingly explain that it had been raining in her part of Florida for days. Finally, shortly after we’d talked the day before, the sun came out. And Mom decided to go outside with CK and sit in the sun.
Google Image (Thank God there was no pool)
“I thought I’d warm my bones a bit. But the gods were agin’ me” she said, laughing harder.
I was not catching on.
“Well, I climbed onto a chaise lounge and lifted my face to the sun. But things didn’t work out the way I planned.” She was now having trouble telling the story, she was laughing so hard. “I nestled back, and wouldn’t you know it, the damn chaise lounge collapsed!”
“What?” I said. “Are you OK? Did you break anything? Are you hurt?” I got that helpless feeling you get when you are hundreds of miles away and can do absolutely nothing.
“I lay there on my back until Dad got home at lunch time. I couldn’t get up. And all the while I was laughing and saying to C.K., ‘Why aren’t you Lassie? Why don’t you go get help? What good are you?’ But all C.K. would do was lick my face. It didn’t help – his breath was awful.”
Dad gave up his morning job that day. And it began several years of loving caretaking, with admirable assists from my sister Judy and my brother Bob.
“I thought for sure I’d lost her,” Dad confessed to me a few days later. “I got home and she was nowhere to be found. I looked all over the [small] house, expecting to find her on the floor. I DIDN’T expect to find her on the ground outside – she never goes there!”
My Dad was a very imperfect man. He had a temper and a sarcastic streak. But he had an incredible soft spot for Mom. He fell in love with her in the 1940s and never stopped loving her. They were inseparable.
When I think of their later years, I remember one time in particular, during a family vacation in a beach condo in Florida. During hurricane season. The winds were blowing and we were all watching the wind out on the Gulf of Mexico, out of the plate glass storm doors.
Somehow, Mom had an accident. In her pants. She pooped. In front of her whole family. Poor Mom was mortified.
It was possibly the one time she didn’t laugh at something awful that had happened to her. Instead, tears welled up in her eyes, and she headed back, head down in humiliation, to the bedroom she shared with Dad.
Nobody else knew what had happened. But Dad sensed that something was terribly wrong, and headed back to see what he could do.
Dad turned on the tap in the bathtub, and helped Mom undress. He got her into the tub. He cleaned her tenderly, and then took her soiled clothes out to the washer and started it up. He grabbed two beers out of the fridge and then went back to Mom. He sat on the toilet keeping her company, washing her back, telling her jokes and stories. Bringing back her laugh.
The two of them spent the rest of the evening together in their room. The rest of us could hear them laughing all evening.
That’s love.
Fast forward to 1995, and Mom really was failing. After the incident with the chaise lounge, Dad stopped working, or he worked from home. He was fortunate that my sister and brother, Judy and Bob, lived nearby and could and did help. A lot. But Dad was Mom’s caretaker. And he wouldn’t have it any other way.
All five of us visited in 1995, and then again in 1996 for Mom and Dad’s 50th wedding anniversary; we hadn’t expected Mom to make it. But she did. At the celebration, Mom was still somewhat aware of what was going on around her, but not always, and not often. That was October 1996.
Dad, Judy and Bob continued to care for Mom at home. She had more small strokes, but still her sweetness lingered. Still, Dad knew he was, as he said, fighting a loosing battle. Dad was exhausted, demoralized. He hired some outside help, but even combining resources we couldn’t afford much. But for Dad, it was a labor of love.
My 10 a.m. phone calls continued. Sometimes Mom was receptive, sometimes not. My long-distance job became keeping Dad’s spirits up as much as Mom’s.
One day in early February, though, I heard a shrill voice shouting in the background when Dad answered my call. I had heard a voice like that during my first hospitalization for colitis in 1974 — a woman who was suffering dementia. The voice that had so terrified me when I was in the hospital at 17. An old woman who’d lost her mind, whose bed was moved into the hall so she didn’t disturb anybody (except she disturbed everybody). A woman whose voice I still hear in nightmares.
Only this time, that horrible voice was my mother’s. My sweet mother was possessed by the devil.
You’re trying to kill me so you can have my things. Mother! Help me!
That was my Mom shouting in the background. My sweet Mom. Yelling. Screaming. Terrified. Lashing out.
You want my stuff. You never loved me.
“Lease, she won’t stop yelling,” Dad said, with a voice filled with hurt. “What have I done?”
I should have listened to my mother. She told me not to marry you. That you only wanted my things.
Dad explained that Mom had started shouting at him in the middle of the night. She hadn’t stopped. She hadn’t rested since about 3 a.m. Neither had he.
“Lord, I’m tired, Lease,” he said gently, quietly.
“Let me try, Dad,” I said. “I’ll cheer her up.” I could always make her laugh. She was an easy audience.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t. She shouted at me, too.
Till Death, they say. That’s what he’s waiting for. MY Death. Then he’ll have all my stuff.
“But Mom, everything you have is Dad’s too. And what he has is yours. That’s the way it works.”
No. He wants my things. He wants me to die.
“No, Mom. Dad is right there, helping you. Come on, Mom. Everything is going to be OK.”
But I lied. Of course it wasn’t going to be.
We all tried, Dad most of all, to bring back the real Mom. But she seemed to be gone. Replaced with an abusive Banshee, who was nasty to all of us, but saved her sharpest spears for Dad.
Two days passed. Three. Then a week. Stupidly, we waited for it to pass. The five of us kids did what we could – but Judy and Bob bore the task of really helping Dad. They were there. Fred and I weren’t.
Ten days passed with no let up. Mom’s doctor told Dad that the only thing for him to do was to put Mom in a nursing home. Dad was determined not to. Adamant. No.
For a dozen days, Dad’s heart was torn out with each word Mom spoke. She was accusing him, always. Of not loving her. Of wanting her things. Of having married her for her stuff. and worst of all, of wanting her to die.
He knew that it wasn’t Mom speaking. Dementia was shouting at him. Not Mom. But it didn’t help the hurt.
For two weeks Dad was assaulted, constantly. The five of us all thought that the time had come. That Dad needed to have Mom go to a nursing home, at least for a short while, or it would kill him. It was killing him, with each word she stabbed at him. We suggested it short term, at least to let him catch his breath. He knew we were right, but still. He couldn’t do it. In sickness and in health. Till Death.
Mother! He only wants my things! He wants me to die! Mother!
Mom shouted from her recliner in the Family Room. From her bed in the night. From her wheelchair. From the bathroom.
After two weeks, Dad, exhausted, sat at the dining room table, with his head in his hands, knowing that he had to make a terrible decision. That he had to put Mom, his Doris, the love of his life, into a nursing home. That she was going to die, and it would kill him, too.
“I held my head in my hands, and looked down at the floor,” Dad said. “I was so tired. So hurt, even though I knew it wasn’t really her yelling at me. Screaming those horrible things. Not stopping – accusing me of wanting her to die.”
You never loved me.
“I couldn’t take it any more, Lease,” he said. “I lifted my head, turned towards her and said ‘Would you please be quiet for a little while and give me some peace?’ Her eyes widened, then her mouth slumped and she stopped. She stopped yelling at me! The relief was overwhelming,” he said, weeping.
I already knew what had happened. All I wanted was to be with Dad at that point. I was still so far away.
“At first, the peace was just such a relief,” he said, with a mountain of grief in his voice. “But I realized within a minute or two what had happened. Another stroke.”
Mom paralyzed by this, more powerful stroke, was never able to speak again.
Dad was broken-hearted for as long as he lived – because he’d silenced her. Because he spoke to her harshly, out of patience. Out of exhaustion. Out of hurt. Mom died a month or so after she went to live in a nursing home. Dad stayed by her side, all day, every day. Holding her hand, talking with her, wishing she would speak to him, laugh with him, just one more time.
Judy Holliday’s voice is very similar to my Mom’s. Listening, I can hear her, clinking dishes and laughing with Dad.
* * *
Mom suffered from dementia at the end of her life — that’s what turned her from being a sweet woman into a Banshee. That is what broke my Dad’s heart. It is a disease that has broken many hearts and will continue to do so as our population ages.
Perhaps I mentioned it a time or two, but I am something of an impulse buyer. I succumb to all those “buy one, get one free” offers. The “50% OFF!s,” and, naturally, every sale.
Huffington Post Picture. I just don’t get enough opportunities to use it.
The other day, I had to make an appointment for a medical test at a large DC hospital center. Because I am a patient extraordinaire, I have all my tune ups and oil changes done at a major medical center. The hospital version of Jiffy Lube. I like feeling like my surgeons are on the cutting edge, and that my gastroenterologists are qualified to show others just what to put into my orifices. I do not like amateurs poking about where I can’t see them.
But now? Modern healthcare is just getting better and better!
Because there are all kinds of deals available. I can shop for services at my local hospital! How can you beat that? You see, the MBAs have taken over healthcare. So it’s just another consumer good. Right?
In fact, I learned that I can purchase all kinds of pancreatic treatments! Really! Right there at Georgetown! I can even, if I want, sign up for a pancreatic transplant!
But WAIT! There’s MORE!
I can get deep brain stimulation! I’m told while waiting on hold to make my doctor’s appointment, that it can treat (not cure) not just my GI problems, but illnesses, syndromes and conditions I don’t have! Imagine that!
Yup! I can treat not just my depression or bipolar symptoms, but my Parkinson’s Disease symptoms, too. I’m not sure if I have to wait for those to develop first, or if I can just plunge right in and treat em.
Of course, I’m hoping that once my brain has been deeply stimulated, I will come to understand why the MBAs think that someone with poo problems (and who spends way too much time with doctors and getting other treatments for the condition she is waiting on hold about) might enjoy some additional time in the hospital. Because we all know just what a hoot those procedures can be. Not to mention the designer gowns you get to wear. Ammirite?
Perhaps I can organize a girls’ retreat with my besties! Hey girls, this gastric bypass is on me!
I’ve learned that I can have bloodless surgery at Georgetown, too. I’d hate to make a mess.
The kidney tumors I also don’t have? You guessed it. They can be gone in no time. Still gone. Or maybe “Gone again” is the accurate description. How about “Gone with the Wind?” Or is that mixing up body systems?
As soon as the lines open on Monday, I’ll be calling again.
I’m really not at all sure how it happened. But apparently I did. I don’t like to talk about it. But I can feel you twisting my arm. UNCLE!!!!
The thing is, I’ve been telling the story of my life for years. For my whole life, in fact. It’s fascinating. Intriguing. Hilarious. Well, it is the way I tell it, anyhow.
It’s the stuff of legends. Because like every good heroine in every good novel, I had a transformation. A metamorphosis. A change of life (no, not that kind). I went from being a pathetic, shy, “please don’t notice me” sort of person into, well, me. The person I am today. And you will agree, that I am not shy, retiring or ashamed of breathing air. But I used to be. Really. You can trust me on that. You see, I was there.
Besides, I can pinpoint the transformation. I know exactly when the moth turned into the butterfly. It happened on January 22, 1977.
As it happened, I’d moved to Boston in October, and truth be told I was horribly lonely. Living away from home was not the wild time I had dreamed of in my yearning to be an adult living in the big city away from my parents. There I was living in Boston, a city filled to breaking point with people my age, but I didn’t know a soul. I had no friends. No one to talk to. No one to go out with, and I hated going out by myself. I was miserable.
Actually, I was so painfully shy that I avoided talking to anyone I didn’t have to. I didn’t know how to make friends. I was afraid that if people knew the real me, they wouldn’t like me. So I made sure that no one had any opinion of me at all. I was pretty much invisible.
In fact, that’s how I had always lived my life. In high school, I had a small group of close friends, and really didn’t ever try to go beyond them. I was in Players, but there I could pretend to be someone else. That’s what we were supposed to do. But mostly, I was still friends with the folks I’d gone to junior high school with. I didn’t branch out much. I kept quiet, kept my head down. Nobody knew me. I always worried that if people knew what I was really like that they wouldn’t like me. So I didn’t let anybody in. Then if they didn’t like me, well, they didn’t know me.
My invisibility was confirmed a year or so after my transformation when I was parking my car at my hometown’s train station. My boyfriend Erik was with me, when Kevin, the heart-throb of Players pulled up next to me. I’d had a huge crush on Kevin all through school. He played the lead in all the plays, could sing and dance and was incredibly handsome and talented. In spite of that Kevin was always nice to me – in fact, he was one of the first people to seriously encourage me to sing.
(Google Image)
I got out of the car, walked over to him and said:
“Hi Kevin, it’s Elyse. How are you?”
“Ummm,” said Kevin, clearly not recognizing me.
“We went to high school together,” I reminded him. I mentioned the plays we’d done together. Erik stood next to me.
“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t remember you.” And he walked away.
Naturally, I was mortified. It was proof positive, in front of a witness, that I had been invisible. That nobody had noticed me. That this guy who had really actually given me my first smidge of confidence on the stage didn’t remember me. (And we won’t even get into the fact that he could have just said, ‘oh, yeah, how are you doing, it’s been a while.’)
Now, back to my transformation.
Being shy was fine as long as I was at home – my few friends were still nearby. But when I moved? I didn’t know a soul. Worse, I didn’t know how to make friends. And I had no idea how to learn a skill that I believed you either have or don’t have. I didn’t have it.
In January 1977 I found myself in the hospital. Sick, miserable, far from home and family. My boss, on his way to visit a sick colleague, stopped in to say hello. He was embarrassed as I was sitting in my hospital bed (appropriately) in my nightgown. He didn’t stay long. Nancy, my office mate, came too. But she was older, married with kids. She too could only stay a minute. My parents came up over the weekend. Otherwise, my only contact was with doctors and nurses. People who got paid to talk to me.
(Google Image)
It was pathetic. I was pathetic. I had no friends. Nobody cared. I cried myself to sleep for the first two nights I was there.
On the 22nd, a light bulb went off.
Maybe if I talked to other people, if I took my nose out of my book, well then maybe, maybe I could make a friend or two.
And really at that moment I decided that being shy was stupid. All it got me was loneliness. And being lonely for life, well, that didn’t sound at all appealing.
So I forced myself to be not shy. I made myself talk to people I didn’t know. To let them get to know me and decide, based on knowing what I was really like, whether they liked me or didn’t.
But talking to strangers is really hard. So I developed a fool-proof strategy. Whenever I was with someone I didn’t know, I’d say to them:
“Don’t you hate trying to figure out what to say to people you don’t know?”
As it turns out, everybody hates trying to figure out what to say to people they don’t know. And they all have something to say about just how hard it is!
I’d stumbled onto success. And then I went further. I was nice to people. I made them laugh. I asked them about their lives. Let them tell me their stories. Let them help me develop my own.
I was a different person. A completely different person.
I even have a witness to this transformation. You see, I was in a play that winter/spring. Rehearsals started in January, just before I went into the hospital. And at the first couple of rehearsals, I sat next to Howard. Howard kept chatting me up, being friendly to me. I had my nose in a book, grunted my answers and really was too shy to be more than polite.
OK, so I was a bitch to Howard. He remembers. He would testify to the existence of the shy Elyse. After my metamorphosis, Howard became one of my closest friends.
It’s a great story isn’t it?
But, you ask, how did you get it wrong, Elyse? You know I’m going to tell you.
You see, about 3 years ago, I went to a reunion of my high school acting group, the Players. It was the 50th anniversary of the start of the group, which is well-known in Southern Connecticut. There was to be a tour of the completely renovated school building, a review show starring Players from all the different eras who still lived in the area, a dinner and many, many drinks.
My old, close friend and fellow Player Sue and I decided to meet and share a hotel room. I picked her up at the train station, and we drove through our memories together. It was great – we caught up, laughed, acted like 16 year olds who were allowed to drink. We had a blast.
At some point, I mentioned to her how shy I was in high school.
“You weren’t shy in high school.”
“Yes I was. I was horribly shy. Afraid of everyone.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“Well, you were one of my best friends,” I responded. “Of course I wasn’t shy with you.”
Sue looked at me skeptically and the conversation went on to more interesting topics.
The next day, the day of the reunion, we linked up with other friends from our era. Of course my close friends remembered me. But so did people I didn’t remember. In fact, most people from those days remembered me. I was shocked. How could people remember invisible me?
I mentioned my surprise to Karen. Now Karen was someone I looked up to. She was (is) smart. Funny. Talented. She’s someone I would have liked to have been close to in high school, but, really, I was way too shy. And she was really cool.
“I would have had a lot more fun in high school if I hadn’t been so shy,” I said to Karen.
“Elyse, what are you talking about?” Karen said, her eyebrows furrowed and her entire body leaning towards me across the table. “You were exactly like you are now back in high school. Talkative. Funny. Vivacious. You weren’t shy in the least.”
Vivacious? Me?
According to everybody there, which constituted most of my high school universe, the story I’d told for decades is wrong. I was not shy. I did not transform. I am probably not even a damn butterfly.
I am so confused. How do you get the story of your own life wrong?
* * *
I decided to re-post this piece from last year after a fun discussion about introverts and extroverts over at Gibber Jabber.
So what are you, an introvert, an extrovert, or as brilliantly suggested by Glazed suggested in yesterday’s comments, an ambivert?
It’s Easter Sunday. On Easter in 1997, my Mom passed away. It was a relief for her, I’m quite sure, as she’d been ill for many years. For the rest of us, our sadness was soothed, knowing that she was no longer suffering.
My Dad was devastated. I’ve written about the two of them before, most memorably here (in my best piece of writing, ever). I’ve been working on another story about the two of them to post soon, but I thought today I’d post this one again. Because I’m thinking of her and missing her. This post makes me realize just how lucky I’ve been, even when I’ve been unlucky.
My Silver Lining
Thursday, November 22, is Thanksgiving in the U.S. It is also the 30th anniversary of the surgery I had for what was then thought to be severe ulcerative colitis. It was a difficult time for me, but one for which I will be thankful for on Thanksgiving and really every day. Yes, I got my health back as a result of the surgery, but that wasn’t the best part. The most important part, the silver lining, was that I got to know my Mom, and it started a close relationship that lasted for the rest of her life and that I will feel grateful for for the rest of mine.
Mom was the sweetest woman on the planet. My friends adored her. Our house was always open to hoards of kids. We lived near the beach, and it was convenient for everybody to just hang at our house. But it was more than that. For years dozens of teens used our house as their home away from home. There was always room, always plenty to eat, always a welcome. No one was ever turned away, and the answer to “can So-And-So stay the night” (or “the weekend” or in some cases “the summer”) was always “sure.”
But we weren’t close, Mom and I. I was Daddy’s girl from the start. Mom, well, I loved her. I even liked her, mostly. It’s just that there wasn’t a whole lot about Mom to make me respect her. She was completely helpless, you see. Hopelessly so. I can’t stand that and never have been able to deal with dependent people. And “helpless”? That was Mom in a nutshell.
She didn’t drive. She didn’t shop without Dad. She didn’t go for a walk alone. She didn’t try to take control of family problems and help figure out how to solve them. She waited for my dad to get home to reprimand, make a decision, to blow her nose, or so it seemed. She was utterly and totally dependent upon my Dad. It was incredibly annoying to this girl growing up in the late sixties and seventies during one of the strongest pushes for equal rights for women. My friends’ mothers were out protesting the Vietnam War. Mine didn’t even vote. They burned their bras; Mom ironed hers. They voiced their opinions ever more loudly. Mom looked to Dad to indicate which way was up.
After I left home and became more self-sufficient, my irritation at Mom’s inability to do anything without Dad’s help, grew.
So when Mom announced, just weeks before I was to have radical, difficult surgery, that she was going to come to help, well, I panicked. She was going to help me? Yeah right.
Her announcement sent me into apoplexy. It was the worse possible news heaped on a whole ream of really shitty news. Who the hell was going to help her?
I lived with my roommate, Keily, and my 120 lb. alcoholic German Shepherd, Goliath, in a tiny Washington, DC, townhouse, in a not terribly safe area. I was sure that Mom would get mugged — she’d make an easy target. I feared that she would let the dog out and they would both die. I drove a battered and temperamental VW Bug with a stick shift that Mom didn’t know how to use. And of course, I wasn’t going to be able to help her because I was going to be recovering from having my guts totally ripped open and reorganized. I couldn’t believe she would do this to me.
At the same time I couldn’t hurt her feelings and tell her that I didn’t want her. Nope. I could never have done that. Not if my life depended on it. Which of course, it might.
But once she dropped that bomb, I stopped worrying about the surgery, about the recovery, about everything except how I would take care of my caretaker. Thankfully, my brother Fred came to help too. He could drive my car; he could help with Mom for the week he took off from work. My roommate, Keily, was a star, too. (That’s a whole different story.) But Mom came for what was a very long recovery, 2-1/2 months, so felt like I’d be pretty much on my own in taking care of her.
It wasn’t long after she arrived before I realized that Mom without Dad was a different person. Dad loved the caretaker role, and she was happy to let him play it. Without Dad, Mom had opinions on stuff, could make decisions and could give savvy and sage advice. I decided quickly that maybe she and I were related after all.
And as soon as we got to the hospital, I was incredibly glad she was there. I was admitted and headed up to my room, sending Mom and Fred to get settled in their hotel. It was about dinnertime, which didn’t matter to me; I’d been on a clear liquid diet for about a week. And while I was starving, I knew I couldn’t eat. I had my instructions from my doctor:
(1) Do not eat; (2) Continue taking your medicines just like you are now; (3) Show up to the hospital. (Always pay attention to the details when your guts are on the line.)
Now Hopkins is one of the best hospitals in the country and it was also one of only two places in the country where the operation I was to have could be performed. The surgery was brand, spankin’ new – just a smidge beyond experimental. It was dangerous. It was highly specialized. My doctors were to take out my large intestine, rearrange what was left of my plumbing so that things worked normally, and close me up. Two surgeries were involved – they had to give me a colostomy (ewwww – a bag) in between the two surgeries while my innards healed. Only 100 of these surgeries had been done in the world. I was my surgeon’s 7th. I was scared shitless which is saying a whole lot for a girl with bowel trouble.
But when I got to the hospital, everything went wrong. They tried to insist I eat; they tried to give me the wrong medicine; they forgot about me and left me hanging out in my room where I fell asleep for several hours before someone wondered who I was.
The grand finale came when two nurses wheeled in an EKG machine, hooked me up and turned it on – and the machine started smoking. The nurses, trying valiantly not to laugh, had to quickly unplug it and get it out of there.
“MOM!!!!”
I called her at her hotel in a complete panic, hysterical. “I am not going to have this surgery. What kind of a hospital is this? They can’t even get an EKG machine to work. It was smoking Mom, SMOKING!!!! I’m not. I’m not. I’m not.”
How is it that Moms know just how to calm down the most hysterical daughter? I was and she did. And she didn’t need Dad one little bit. Yup, she calmed me down, and then, I heard later, called the nurses’ desk and chewed them out royally. I’m pretty sure that was the first time she’d ever chewed anyone out. But she wasn’t going to let anybody or anything upset her daughter or get in the way of the surgery that her daughter desperately needed.
And whatever she said worked. Nothing else got screwed up. They paid attention to her daughter. In fact, Helpless Mom became SuperMom. She corralled doctors when they didn’t come in a timely manner, she sweet-talked most of the nurses and they seemed to come around more and more often as they laughed and joked with Mom. She was on a first name basis with all the residents and interns, knew if they were married, where they were from. They got a little bit of mothering whenever they came into the room, and she charmed the lot of them.
She was always full of laughter, encouragement and fun. Except when her sixth sense told her that I was feeling sorry for myself; then she’d tell me to stop sniveling. Sometimes I needed that.
Back at home, she was great too. She found the grocery store and walked to and from, lugging bags of food. She fed me and Keily, gave beer to the dog, helped me get upstairs and downstairs. Helped me do many things that were totally disgusting. She helped me be independent again.
We laughed our way through Christmas together and then my birthday in January. We laughed for two months, barely coming up for air. We talked a whole lot, too, about everything. We became fast friends.
There is one incident though, that made me realize that I’d never really known her before. Could this crazy woman really be my Mom?
We’d driven my VW to Baltimore for a pre-surgical checkup before the 2nd surgery, scheduled for the 9th of February. It was late January, and there were several inches of snow on the ground. On the way back home, the VW died in the center lane of a busy highway. I managed to coast to the side of the road, where the bug sighed once and died. Shit. I was still not at my best, and the promise of a long snowy walk was not a pleasant one for either Mom or I.
But a blue Honda Civic two-door driven by a big burly guy pulled up along the roadside next to us. He rolled down the window and asked if we needed a lift. I was about to explain that my car had just died and would he please call a tow truck, when, well, Mom jumped into the back seat! I stood there with my mouth flapping. Because I could hear her voice from my childhood talking in the back of my head:
NEVER EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES GET INTO A CAR WITH A STRANGE MAN.
THEY ARE ALL RAPISTS
But there she was, the woman who taught me never, ever, to get into a car with a rapist — she was in the back seat of a stranger/potential rapist’s car. WTF????? What the hell was she doing?
I didn’t know what else to do, so I got into the front seat. And there on the floor was something else that shocked me: A teddy bear with a green t-shirt that said “I’m Going To Steal Your Love.”
“Wonderful,” I thought, “a rapist with a sense of humor.”
As it turned out, the guy wasn’t a rapist — really! He took us to a reputable garage where they agreed to tow and fix my damn car.
But the adventure wasn’t over yet — we still needed to get home. The hotel across from the garage had a shuttle bus that went to BWI Airport. From there, we were told, there was another shuttle bus that could get us back to DC. It sounded perfect. Perfect except for the fact that we had hardly any money left The shuttle to DC only took cash. No credit cards. No beads. No chickens. Cash. Shit. We didn’t have enough for the fare, and couldn’t have come up with any more money. But that didn’t stop Mom. She walked up to the shuttle driver and chatted her up.
“Do you think you can let us both on for $16.50?”
“Sorry M’am, the adult fare is $10.”
“What’s the child’s fee? I mean, after all, she’s my little girl.”
The driver let us both on, shaking her head and smiling at Mom. Feeling like she’d done a good deed (she had).
Mom was there for my second operation, and then she headed home with Dad who had come up for it. When he arrived, Mom didn’t just let Dad do everything as she always had before. She showed him around — showed him her turf. She had realized that she really liked feeling in charge, and doing things on her own, for herself and for me.
For the rest of Mom’s life, she and I had a whole different relationship. I had always loved her, always liked her. But her care for me, and her resourcefulness and sense of duty and just plain fun let me develop a respect for her I’d never had.
I’ve always felt lucky in a way to have had these health problems. Because they gave me my Mom. I would never have known her, never have laughed with her so very much. I wouldn’t have heard the stories of her life, told with love and humor, the way she did everything. So on Thanksgiving, I will raise a special toast to Mom, my SuperMom.
FiftyFourandAHalf 