Happy Birthday, Mom.

If the dead can still get mail, if their things can fall out of the closet onto your toes, if they can visit you in dreams, if you can hear their voices inside your head, you can wish them happy birthday. Happy Birthday, Mom. 

Last year's birthday breakfast cupcake.

Last year's birthday party for my mom and my dear friend Carol

Birthday, 2012 just a few weeks after my mom moved in with me.

I'm not quite sure, but this may have been the last birthday she celebrated with her beloved twin sister Millie.

We very rarely know which birthday will be the last. So let's love the cake, and the guests, and the singing. Let's love the love that comes to us on our own birthdays and those of the people we love, be it in the form of gifts or people traveling from afar to share the day. Taste the sweetness. Feel the warmth from the candles. Soak up the glow. Reflect it back.

In a short while, I'm off to celebrate my friend Carol's birthday. She will be there via Skype while a half dozen of us party in person. We will eat and make merry, and celebrate the living and the dead.

The Sunday Report

I may have reached my zenith as a caregiver when I created this--whenever that was.

There were many papers spread out on the kitchen island and on the bed in my mom's old room, and somehow, today,  most of these projects are nearing completion. The things that needed mailing have been mailed, other papers are stored for now in a file box until it seems reasonable to shred them. There is a box of treasures to keep, old photos to organize, and a few things to give away. Leaving this world with such a light load of material possessions is not something I would have predicted for my mom decades ago. I am most grateful. 

 Now, f I can get the U.S. Commemorative Gallery to stop sending their "valuable" collector sets of coins. I sent back their "Eisenhower and Kennedy Golden Dollars" and received a note from them that my mom had pre-paid for them. I may take on a battle with them just to see if I can get any of her hard-earned money back. What a bunch of hucksters. Can you even spend these damn things like regular money? How is it that with dozens of consumer complaints against them, we still let a company like this exist to prey upon the elderly?

I'm in the process of my own estate planning now. Letting my adult children know what is what and what is where. I'm now the family matriarch, I guess....And hoping that I will lighten my load of material goods substantially before I leave the planet. It's all just stuff. And it's stuff that our kids or friends will have to sort through when we leave. Then again, who doesn't like pretty things? I can't even walk by a piece of beach glass without pocketing it.

Surf Naked

You can buy this t-shirt at LAX,

The sky and the ocean were outdoing one another in the contest for the grayest gray as the airport shuttle zoomed down the coast this morning. Dozens of surfers bobbed in the water, wrapped in their black wetsuits from head to toe. No one was naked.

At a LAX bar, I might have gotten my gin and tonic sooner if I'd been naked. The bartender saw the blond next to me, but I was swathed in my gray-haired cloak of invisibility. This is a randomly employed power I have no control over. Sometimes both men and women make a point of telling me they love my hair. Women frequently go on to tell me they could never go gray. They don't have the right skin tone or their gray is a weird texture. Whatever. Oh! the bartender said, when he finally noticed me, startled as if I'd dropped through the ceiling onto the barstool. At least LAX has stopped carding EVERYONE. There were no silver-haired exemptions. What was that all about? Dear whoever stopped that nonsense: Thank you.

I'm on the way to see my mom at the nursing home in Iowa. I'm leaving this:

Last night's sunset

for sub-zero temperatures. I'm wearing wool leggings under my regular leggings and I have a down jacket the size of a small easy chair. My suitcase contains a wool scarf, gloves, two wool sweaters, a down vest, and wool socks thick enough to use as a pillow. There will be extensive driving on this trip. I'm rather relieved that I will not be making the drive alone. Daughter C and her husband will be my travel companions. I keep picturing this:

My mom now has a doctor that checks on her in the nursing home. She no longer has to go out in sub-zero temperatures. She no longer has to go out at all.

And it's just now occurring to me that she may never leave the premises again. Just like that. She's already gone out for the final time, perhaps, and none of us knew it. Often we don't know these last experiences are happening as they occur. It would be too much for us, I suppose,  if we knew. For the past half-dozen years, I've considered that every encounter with my mom could be the last. And that is how I will approach this visit too. I don't see the point in denying it. It's as real as the brutal cold.

Friday Evening Beach Report: How a walk on the beach is like a lifeboat

 I am stuck. No not literally. Not in the mud. Just the mud inside my head. Still no word from the state of Iowa that my mom has made it onto Medicaid. It's Friday. Why didn't I call the caseworker? I don't know. Because I'm stuck in the mud inside my head.

Meanwhile my mom's dentures somehow got lost at the nursing home. This might be day three of toothlessness. Everyone is looking for them. No one has found them. Lost teeth were a pretty regular occurrence when my mom lived here with me. I'd find them under the bed or in the bed. Once my mom tried to retrieve them from under the bed herself and fell and hit her head. I think that was the time she ended up with a big lump on her forehead that made her look like a Klingon. One day I came home to find her and her caregiver looking sheepish. My mom had dropped her teeth in the sink and a piece broke off and was stuck in the drain. I didn't know whether to call the plumber or the dentist first. It turned out not to be a huge deal. The dentures were fixable and the piece of pink plastic was not big enough to obstruct the plumbing. I was able to do something. Now I'm just able to fret and think of all the reasons why one should not lose one's dentures.

I'm great at menial tasks while fretting. So I fretted and did menial tasks. Christmas lights, cutting up the giant cardboard box that the new ping-pong table came in. Pitching another thing or two into the Goodwill bag.Trying to decide if I should plan a visit to see my my mom soon. Deciding no. Deciding yes. Deciding no. Deciding yes. Getting frustrated for being indecisive.  I couldn't decide whether or not to take a walk either. But I finally did.

The sky looked like cotton batting

And the sand was a mirror for the sky.
Foam was dolloped on the sand like whipped cream.
And if I turned around, I could see the tops of the mountains were white too.

I walked for over an hour until the sky turned red over Santa Cruz Island. I finally got unstuck enough to text daughter C and ask if she wanted to go see her G-ma with me. 

The sunset went crazy and I went sane.

And I've gone through an entire day only being vaguely conscious of my injured ribs. I think I'll try to get back to yoga next week. Another way to be sane.

I came home and bought a plane ticket. I got out the checkbook so I can pay another million dollar bill for the nursing home. I resolved for the billionth time to floss every night so I'll never have dentures. 

It was a perfect day.

The 47%-ers in My House

My mother is one of the 47%. She began her working life at the age of 14 after she graduated from 8th grade. That's how life was in the 1930s when you grew up one of the rural poor. Her first job was as a mother's helper for a rich woman who had postpartum depression--though they didn't call it that then. "Never leave the mother alone with the baby," she was told. But one night when my mother was off duty the woman tried to kill the baby even though the woman's husband was right there. Both the baby and my mother were packed up and sent off to the grandparents' house. The mother went to an asylum. There might have been another child-care job after that, and at some point she ran the roulette wheel at a casino across the river in East Dubuque, Illinois. Her parents were quite taken aback the night they stopped in for a bit of entertainment. There was a food-service job for a Catholic men's college. She remembers putting the cherry just-so in the center of the grapefruit halves for the priests' breakfasts. There was waitress work, too, her feet screaming for relief by the end of a busy night. During the war she worked as a file clerk for a big aircraft manufacturer. After that came the night club jobs. Fancy places in Baltimore with names like the Chanticleer and the Band Box where she worked as a hat check girl or taking souvenir Polaroid pictures. "You always had to ask first," she said. "In case the guy was out with another woman." She was the hostess in a restaurant after she returned to the midwest and met my dad there. She raised four kids on a budget that never had any wiggle room. She canned vegetables from the garden, made jams and pies from the fruit trees, sewed our clothes, and stretched every dollar to the breaking point. After my dad died she began a string of factory jobs and finally landed a union job that paid a decent wage. Her final job was as a custodian for the city of Baltimore where she was horrified at how much useable stuff got tossed in the trash. I've never thought of her as a victim--or as someone looking for a handout. Although she'll tell you it was a damn good thing there were food stamps after General Motors told her my dad's life insurance policy "wasn't any good." We fell into the safety net, but it wasn't long before she hoisted us back out.

This year my daughter will be a 47%-er, too, I suppose, since she quit her three jobs to start grad school.

As for me, I'm a taxpayer. I'll bet you my tax rate is twice as high as Mitt Romney's. But I guess we'll never know for sure.

photo credit: Carol Sigurdson Klein

Report from the Road or A Lot of Water Under the Bridge

When I uttered the words, "three generation road trip" during a conversation at my brother's kitchen table a few days ago, my mom said, "Gee, that makes me feel old!" Tonight at dinner in Omaha after our first day, I explained to my ex-sister-in law and my niece that my mom had already been driven from Maryland to Iowa by her sister, that I had flown to the Twin Cities from California, rented a car, and driven to Iowa, then back to St. Paul where I met my daughter, and the two of us got into her car and drove back to Iowa where we picked up my mom in my hometown and the three of us began the long drive to California. Somewhere in the middle of this conversation, I felt old. Fossil old. Cooling crust of the earth old. Dirt and dinosaur old. All of those miles already and today just the beginning of the 30-hour, three generation road trip?!

Here are the rivers I've crossed since I drove out of the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport:
Minnesota, Straight, Shell Rock, Cedar, Maquoketa, Wapsipinicon, Mississippi, Iowa, Des Moines, Racoon, Middle Racoon, Middle River, East Nishnbotna, West Nishnabotna, Missouri, Little Papillion Creek.

Here we are having an organic lunch on a farm near a little town outside Des Moines. Just as M. and I began to bemoan the narrow prospects of road food, I saw a sign that read, "Organic Farm Restaurant."

It was fabulous. It was started by a doctor--who's now a farmer, I guess.

Now all four of us (that includes my mom's oxygen machine--I call him Mr. O because he rides in the back buckled in like a person) are safely tucked in for the night.

It was a busy day in Margaritaville. Roberto the painter and his crew arrived early with pistolas and paintbrushes to caulk and paint the new moldings that went in after the floors. Night stands for one of the bedrooms were delivered.

I began a wall of old family photos in the alcove next to my mom's room, and I talked for a while with my brother's girlfriend about the doctors my mom will need--cardiologist, pulmonary specialist, neurologist, etc., and whether or not there's a smaller version of her oxygen machine that can make the move with her from Maryland to California. I called the utility companies, and the phone company, and made plans to cancel my old homeowner's policy, and my internet, and changed my address. There was more unpacking, and my kitchen island is heaped with things that go here and there and who knows where.

The swallows are still nesting above my patio doors, flying in an out, tending and rebuilding, and I feel they are kindred spirits as I feather my new nest. Come September when their nesting season is over, and they are no longer protected by law, I will encourage them to go elsewhere by having the old nests washed down, and a "bird slide" installed. It seems that it's impossible to have just one or two nests, and the bird poop is currently raining down a little too liberally.

The reality of this move is raining down, too--that I'll be more than an hour away from the man who loves me. That I'll be the point person for my mom without any family nearby to serve as back up. That my traveling days are done. But every time I step outside here and smell the ocean air, it feels like what I've been waiting for--that this spot is a destination.

I'm picturing a patio full of friends. Walks on the beach. Kayaking. The blender will be working overtime. People will be too tired to drive back to L.A. The extra bedrooms will be full, and we'll have to break out the air mattresses.

I'm ready. I've got toothbrushes and  razors. Sunscreen and aloe vera. Q-tips, cough drops, and Dramamine. Tequila. Coffee. Open arms.

Searching for a rare book--Do you have it?

The New Year is always piled high with resolutions and good intentions, right?

My mother decided that she would mend her pack-rat ways and neaten up her room. Somehow while going through her piles of papers, she zigged when she should have zagged and threw out her beloved crochet book, 101 Snowflakes. "Well, let's just order you another one," I said when she called to tell me what she'd done. I logged onto Amazon and gasped. Two copies were available--both used--one for $109.00 and the other for $145.00. Later that day I checked the used book stores in my neighborhood. No luck. Meanwhile, I've purchased a couple of pamphlets from Ravelry.com with a dozen snowflake patterns and mailed them off to her. But what I'd really like is to replace her lost book for her at a reasonable price. It's a crochet book, after all, not a Gutenberg Bible.

My mother spends a lot of time crocheting snowflakes. I received a huge new one from her this year. She crocheted a bunch for my son and his family to get their collection started. Several other friends and other family members got some, too. She works on them off and on throughout the year, taking breaks to read. Her favorite books are the Maisie Dobbs mysteries and anything by Elmore Leonard. I think both the reading and the crocheting are good for her brain. I sometimes wonder if I would have the patience to  work my way through the intricacies  of a snowflake pattern. Probably not.

So in the interest of my mom's brain health, is there anyone out there with a bunch of craft books languishing in a dusty stack than might hold a thin magazine-like book called, 101 Snowflakes? The cover looks like the photo above. If so, please contact me. You can leave a comment here or send me an email. I'm sure my mom will crochet you some snowflakes in thanks. And if you ever meet her, she'll make you a martini, too.

Here are some of my snowflakes. Most people hang them on their Christmas tree. I like to hang mine in my windows.

The Maine Event

My daughter is married.

Somehow the baby that could barely tolerate being out of my arms is now, a quarter of a century later, a married woman.

It's a lot to comprehend.

It's been over four years since my own marriage fell apart, and although the trail of destruction the divorce left has not exactly been scoured away by the winds of time, there's been some pretty significant erosion. Oh, it's true that there were separate tables for him and his relatives and for me and mine, but there were incursions into one another's territory.

He danced with my mother. More than once. God knows what she said to him, but the music was so loud that regardless of what either of them said, it's doubtful that they could hear one another. I had a chance to chat with all of his brothers and sisters, and spent plenty of time with his niece who happens to be one of my favorite people.

And so the story of a divorce segues into the story of a marriage. Stories do that. They have a mind of their own, stories do. A baby girl is born, and some time later all hell breaks loose. There's heartbreak. A reversal. The story continues. There's a divorce. There's a wedding. And at this wedding, for the first time ever, four generations of  a rather unusual family find themselves in one place at the same time.

And now I'm home on my couch with my ancient cat purring on my lap. The man who loves me is at his place--savoring the solitude--or, who knows, rattling around in it, lost and wondering what happened to all the joyous hubbub. The relatives and friends are home, too--or making their way there by car, ogling fall foliage as they go. The younger daughter is running victory laps around my mother's trailer, having carried out her Maid of Honor/Party Captain duties, and safely returned my mother and her oxygen machine.

It was a peak family moment, this wedding.

Prenuptial Palpitations

You'd think I was the one getting married.

Two nights ago I stayed up until after 2:00 a.m. with some insane burst of energy. Last night I woke at 2:00 a.m. full of what-about-this-what-about-that, picturing my daughter driving up the New Jersey Turnpike with my mom riding shotgun and her suitcase-sized oxygen unit seat-belted into the back. Oxygen is flammable, I thought. Worryworryworry. Those east-coasters drive like demons on that turnpike. Worryworryworry. Only now, somehow, at the age of nearly fifty-nine, I know how to step outside the worry, step outside myself, and say. Okay. Breathe. And keep going back to the breath like I do when I meditate while my brain is tap dancing all over itself. And with the man who loves me breathing in a deep sleep beside me, it wasn't so hard.

And now my mom and the soon-to-be maid of honor are lounging in a waterfront hotel halfway to Boston. My mom was sipping her martini when the daughter called. In a couple of hours from now, they'll be asleep. The ssssssiippp-pppsssshhh of the oxygen machine a fore-shadowing of the surf on Maine's southern coast.

Tomorrow night there'll be nearly a dozen of us in Boston. And tonight, who knows, I may wake again, worried that we'll oversleep, that I'll forget some essential something, that I'll be careening around coastal curves in the dark between the rehearsal dinner and the hotel. But it's just worry. Oh. Hello, worry. You again? I'll breathe. And then in the morning, get on a plane.

photo credit: a guy named Phil. It was a long time ago, my wedding--and I can't remember Phil's last name. He took some nice pictures.

Love, Money, and Mink

I recently took my mother back to the apartment where she used to live with her sister until health problems forced them both to move a couple of years ago. Because the place is in the basement of my cousin's house a lot of their things are still there, time-capsuled as if they might someday return and resume where they left off.

"Do you suppose this gin is still good?" my aunt might ask as she leans down from her wheelchair and peers into the cabinet.

"Of course it's good," my mother would respond, opening the fridge. "But I don't know about these olives." They'd discuss the pros and cons of a martini without olives then, but they'd make the drinks anyway and sit at their table, a cumulous cloud of smoke forming under the low ceiling. They'd sip. And talk about how good it was to be back. 

Could happen. But probably not. My aunt lives in a nursing home now, both legs lost and her memory chasing after them.

What did happen was that my mother opened every drawer and each of her  little wooden boxes (many of which most likely came from thrift store or trash picking treasure hunts.) She looked through her closet and her jewelry box and stood in front of her bookshelves . "Take this," she'd say when I exclaimed over something. "It needs fixing, but..." We found earrings that have been in her jewelry box ever since I can remember. She still had the little golden expandable chignon-style hair clasps that I used to set on top of my head as crowns when I played dress up, her father's watch chain, and the crystal rosary in the pouch personalized with her name in gold across the white leather that her mother presented to her as a wedding gift.

I thought I was familiar with each and every one of my mother's treasures, but there was a surprise. "Is that mink?" I asked. The fur was soft as a kitten's, not marred at all by time, although the satin rose was maybe a bit faded with a hint of fray.

"Your father gave that to me for Christmas the year I asked for a mink coat," she said.  

My parents never had any money. The way I remember it, the only thing they ever fought about was money, and that was because there wasn't  any. I was touched by the story because my father heard what his young, poor-all-her-life wife wanted, and with, I imagine, a rather stylish sense of humor, he delivered mink.

And now the mink and satin rose is with my mother at my brother's house where she lives with him and his girlfriend.  My father has been dead for almost thirty years, and my mother looks back almost as much as she looks forward. Tucked-away treasures bring the past and the present together. I like that.

Who are you and what have you done with Denise ?

I've been enjoying the world of linked blogs. It's a whole new world when you dip into a stranger's blog. I've participated in Blog Gems a few times. And have again this week on their vacation theme.
http://hisbigfatindianwedding.blogspot.com/2010/05/everything-will-be-fine-i-said.html


I don't think I have the ability to channel Pollyanna every week. But I am looking at the Reasons to be Cheerful linky from a blogger in England.
http://mdplife.blogspot.com/p/reasons-to-be-cheerful.html

Really, it's me here. Really.
And here goes.
1. I am visiting my mom. Time and money have allowed me to do so.
2. My brother took off work today to drive her to the doctor even though I am here. He did so because I was uneasy about driving his truck in unfamiliar territory in iffy weather. And he did it with good cheer.
3. We had pizza for dinner and sat around the table talking about all the dogs we've ever had and I think my mom really enjoyed the conversation.

The Forgetting

"Penny for your thoughts," says the man who loves me.  He's just blown the candles out, and we're lying in bed in the dark.

"What if we get old and forget any of this ever happened? What if Alzheimer's erases you and me and all I can remember is my marriage to Mr. Ex?"

This morning Don't let me forget this is the prayer  still mantra-ing in my brain when I wake.

I returned just yesterday from the east coast and the celebration of my mom and my aunt's 86th birthday.  My aunt has Alzheimer's. By now, she's forgotten that I was there.  On Sunday, the day after the party, she'd already forgotten the celebration, the presents, and the cake. "Yesterday was my birthday?" she asked as my mom, my other aunts, and my uncle, and I sat with her at the nursing home. "Well, happy birthday, Millie!" she said. She knows she can't remember things, but I don't know if she knows how much is missing.

I thought short term memory loss meant that you couldn't remember if you took your pills, fed the goldfish, or remembered to eat breakfast. Or maybe it meant that you couldn't recall the appointment you made with the cardiologist last week. But I guess short term memory is a relative concept. If you make it to 86, twenty years isn't so long. That's about how much my aunt seems to be missing.

I find it intensely interesting to visit her. So far she's always recognized me immediately. And she knows that I've come from California to see her.  I find it curious that she asks about my daughters, yet not Mr. Ex.  I always hold my breath a little bit after she asks, "How are the girls?" She cried when I told her about the divorce originally, and I would feel awful making her sad all over again. But Mr. Ex, it seems, has fallen into the chasm of Forgetting.

My aunt's husband died more than twenty-five years ago, and she used to love to tell the story of how he was "back-dated," as she called it.  He thought she was his sister. Unless she was on the phone with my mother (whom he never liked.) Then he'd call her by her right name and shout at her to hang up.  

Maybe memory loss is somewhat selective.  In those chunks of time that fall away, maybe the passionate dislikes and the great loves remain.  

If I make it to 86 and the Forgetting scythes out a section of years, I don't want to be left with Mr. Ex.

Please don't let me forget this.