HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Ethel!

the memorial box I made for my mother at an art workshop in Oaxaca in 2017
and the birthday cake that was a craft project at one of my daughter's birthday parties....ages ago

The doors to the memorial box are usually closed as it sits on its shelf in my living room, but in recognition of my mom's birthday week, I opened them a couple of days ago.

Yesterday began with the faint scent of cigarette smoke in the air. This is not a smoke-free building, but I've never smelled cigarettes before... still, there it was, wafting in from somewhere. My mom is such a talented and persistent ghost. Then a phone call came in that resulted in a small financial windfall--much appreciated, given all the moving expenses that will take months to recover from.

Later in the evening there were tickets to a play that I'd made plans for last week not quite realizing that the performance was on my mother's birthday. The action of the play opens just as all the characters have died in a tragic accident so....welcome to the afterlife and the struggles and the dramas that ensue there.

One of my daughters had reminded me in the morning that she celebrates her grandmother's birthday by buying a lottery ticket and having a martini. Schedules did not allow us to get together for drinks, so I had my martini before the theatre.

In my theatre seat, checking my email one last time before I turning off my phone, I received a thumbs up from the literary magazine that was considering  an essay of mine...that is in large part about death, the afterlife, and my mother.

Some days are surprisingly seamless. Thanks, Mom. 

In lieu of the Christmas letter, I give you one day.

If you're going to try on every piece of clothing in your closet and decide if it stays or goes, this is the person you want to advise you.

Age 8

 "Absolutely not," said the person (who once believed she was cat) when I tried on a long narrow skirt

and matching top. "It looks like a nightgown from a Victorian insane asylum." She explained that the pieces were nice enough--good even, if worn separately, but together were too matchy, drab, and shapeless. Another matching outfit made me look like a nun from some remote country in the Far East, she said. With C's advice, I mixed and matched things that hadn't occurred to me, and they looked great. Of course, I never go anywhere these days, and given the state of affairs around here, what I probably need is an insane asylum nightgown.

Earlier that day C also helped me by impersonating her sister over the phone. "Hmmm," she said when I asked her if she would. "I've impersonated you a lot," she said, (I didn't ask) "but I've never pretended to be M." Who, by the way, has always been able to rock a good outfit herself.

age 5

After a brief review for fluency in uttering M's birthdate and phone number as her own, I got Triple A on the line and had C (pretending to be M) cancel M's membership so I could add her to mine since she lives here. A $70 savings! Triple A had previously refused to cancel M's membership without speaking to her personally despite the fact that it is my credit card that has always paid for the membership. I suppose that maybe ex-spouses go around canceling one another's Triple A memberships right and left, perhaps just after inducing a slow leak in a tire. I live in Margaritaville now--not Divorceville, so I don't know anything about that.

C and I also had some quality time by spending an hour or so going through the box of Barbie dolls my mom trash-picked a few years back (a former favorite hobby of hers--and yes, I am aware that I have a weird family.) My mom had always meant to clean them and wash their clothes, but never did, so C anti-bacterial wiped and shampooed while I washed clothes. There was also a bit of Barbie surgery which invloved a switching around of heads. C is nearly done with her surgical technician training, and I'm proud to say that she handled the needle-nosed pliers and matte knife expertly. We plan to outfit two Barbies for each of my granddaughters if we can successfully remove the taint of years spent in a a cardboard box in a home fogged with cigarette smoke. Why in the hell are we doing this? Because my mom grew up during the Depression wearing church rummage sale shoes, and she can't stand to see anything usable go to waste. There was a talking Barbie in the box, too. We have to buy a battery, and we're hoping she's one of those Barbies that made the news a few years back for saying, "Math is hard," and "Let's bake some cookies for the boys." I'm not sure what we'll do with her if that turns out to be the case. Hire a hacker to re-program her? Sell her on e-Bay? Post her photo on a Barbie shaming site?

C and I also spent a good chunk of time researching chicken pox and shingles while calling back and forth with my daughter-in-law, and one of my mom's doctors. My oldest grandchild has chicken pox (despite having been vaccinated.) The verdict is that the sick child cannot be in the same house with her great-grandmother. So in lieu of buying a new wardrobe ( I would never even entertain the idea of buying a new wardrobe, really) I am putting my son and his family up in a motel so we can visit with them. C has not seen them since her wedding two years ago, and this trip of hers from Minnesota was meant to coincide with theirs from Arizona. So now my mother and her great grand children will smile and wave and talk a bit through the patio windows, and all of my children can get together. And me, too, because after viewing my Kaiser records online, which took about one minute, I see that I was vaccinated for shingles in the most efficacious time window. Really, can't we just merge Kaiser and the ACA and call it O-Kaiser care?

C's wedding two years ago

Oh--and yesterday, there was a one-hour beach walk as well, during which time we left my mom home alone with instructions to be very careful. When I get all my ducks in a row, there will be no more of that. The leaving her home alone, I mean. There will be walking or I will be donning that Victorian insane asylum nightgown. 

And during the beach walk I took a moment out of the here and now and made a vet appointment for our 20-year-old cat so she could get a rabies shot (even though she is an entirely indoor cat) so that she may get her license renewed (her license for catting, C calls it). Last year Piper was caught up in the City of Oxnard door-to-door dragnet and cited for catting without a license.

And I should mention how the day began. T'ai Chi Chih. I even got to student teach a mini-lesson. T'ai Chih Chih, I'm certain, is making a substantial contribution to my well-being. Immediately after I came home, I found my mom's glasses, which she'd lost behind her recliner, and I'm happy to say that she did not try to get them, thereby propelling us back to the ER with another fall. 

 And then at 6:00 p.m. with the closet purged of this: 

C began boiling water and chopping onions while I ran out for a zucchini and some mushrooms. We made spaghetti with vegetarian sauce. My mother proclaimed it delicious and went to bed early. M came home from work at some late hour. C and M and I gathered in the kitchen and found something to laugh and talk about, but I don't remember what. Then I put some of M's laundry away. (She is in grad school, has a job, and an internship with a 100-mile trip one-way from my house to the farthest point in this busy routine--so I assist in a little thing or two. She calls me an angel when I do these things.) 

And somewhere in here, I spoke to the man who loves me. He was doped on the pills to kill his pain. Someday soon his surgery will be scheduled. And maybe, if I'm lucky, things will line up so he can come here to recuperate. Actually, I would be happy to have him recuperating on the moon or anywhere he chooses as long as he's well-cared for and not alone.

So there was a nice symmetry to the day. A box of things out of my closet with help from C, and clean laundry into M's closet with help from me. 

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. That's one day here in Margaritaville. 

May your 2014 be filled with love.

Tossed in the Deep

We've had the talk more than once in the last week. How she hopes she falls off her chair like her father. Dead before he hit the ground, probably, she says. Not left to suffer for weeks like her mother. Heart beyond repair, but kept alive in the hospital without any prospects. Certainly not like her mother's mother. Bedridden at home. Not well cared for by her daughter-in-law. Not even washed until my grandmother went to wash her.

She wishes California were a right-to-die state, she says. Like Oregon or Washington. She was upset by this article in the L.A. Times. Says the man should have made it look like suicide. Held his wife's hand to the gun.

While all of this talk of death and dying, of mercy-killing or perhaps murder might seem morbid, I find that it diffuses the tension. It comforts me, in a way, to know that I know what my mother wants (not that I have any plans to wrap her hand around a gun.) It comforts me to know that she has an advanced directive. That she trusts me to be her medical power of attorney.

Sometimes she says she wants to go home to Iowa to die. Let me know, so I can get plane tickets, I say. Then we both laugh.

My mom is doing great. But she's 88. At her check-up with the pulmunologist yesterday, he told her he'd see her in four months. Thanks for stopping by, he said. Now he had to go take care of some sick
people.

There have been some big changes since she stopped smoking. The icky gross smoker's cough is gone. She seems less in a fog in the morning--literally and figuratively. When she quit, C said the thing that amazed her the most was that her grandmother was focusing on the future. There's always a future until the very last moment--which is something not every young person sees when they look at an old person.

But mostly, I'm thankful for the present. Though it's easy to let that gratitude slip away when things are difficult. M coming for the weekends, visits from friends and the man who loves me are pure sustenance. And I try to remember to read "Well" and The New Old Age Blog. There is so much information on health, caregiving and aging there. It's weird, this fractured family life that's prevalent in our society. When my daughters were babies and I was struggling with getting the hang of breast feeding, I remember thinking how odd it was that I hadn't actually seen anyone breast feed a baby. I haven't seen the day-to-day of helping an old person manage life either. But here I am doing it.

I suppose I might have learned to swim by being tossed into the deep. But I'm glad for those summertime classes. For steady hands under me while I floated. For the cajoling to put my head under the water. For gradually learning to hold my breath longer and longer, and eventually to stroke smoothly and turn my head, taking in the power of each lung full of air.

Flow Chart for Traveling with My Mother

My mother has smoked since she was 14. She's 88 now, and quitting is a tired subject. In addition, she's somewhat frail and needs a walk-in or roll-in shower with a shower seat. She walks very slowly, and really can't walk very far unassisted. I tried sleeping in her room (non-smoking) the first night on the road. I would get up when she got up and walk her down the hall and around the corner to the smoking courtyard, I thought. At 3:30 a.m. she stood up and shouted and waved her arms around. I think she was asleep. She shouted again a couple of times an hour later--still asleep and dreaming, no doubt. My daughter M, who has traveled with her grandmother prior to this this trip, said, "Yes, she does that every night around 3:00 or 4:00." Thus, my enthusiasm for sharing a room with my mother waned.

The second night we got my mom a room with a door that opened to the outside. I slept in the other room with my daughter. My mom could then quite ably walk herself outside for a smoke without much risk of taking a fall. In the morning I was a new person.

The third night was more difficult. The door to the outside in my mom's room was heavy and hard for her to open. Utah state law required that she smoke 30 feet away which meant a stumbly path into the parking lot. M borrowed a plastic chair from our balcony and set it around the far corner of the motel just a few feet away from my mom's door where she could light up out of sight. Still the doorway had an awkward sill that we worried about. Hence the flow chart.

And so tonight, our last on the road, with thanks to the fact that Las Vegas is apparently a mecca for smokers, my mom has a smoking room on the first floor with a roll-in shower. I won't tell you about the crazy part. About how I accidentally made the reservation through Expedia instead of directly with the hotel. Or how Expedia fucked it up. I will just say that a wonderful desk clerk named David fixed everything that Expedia botched.

Now, on a less mundane note, the west is full of wonders.

Rivers crossed today: Green River, San Rafael, Virgin (several times,) Muddy

Most disconcerting sign: CAUTION! BRIDGE DECKS AHEAD!
Ensuing dialogue: "Google that for me, M."
                              "Sorry, Mom, no 3G."

Drinking Smoking and Screwing

Last night the man who loves me said that my recent blog posts made me sound like St. Theresa. He might have meant Mother Theresa. Then again, maybe he knows what he's talking about. What I recall from Catholic school is that the Spanish St. Theresa had visions and heard voices. She was a writer, too. She looks pretty intense and not all that much of a do-gooder in this portrait by French artist, François Gérard.

The French St. Theresa (Thérèse), also known as "the little flower" joined the convent at 15 and devoted her life to God. She's the one you often see as a plaster saint holding a bouquet of roses. Weeelll.... I like roses.

As for Mother Theresa, I've read something somewhere that while engaged in her ministries she was something of a yeller and was known to treat her underlings severely. I suppose saints are never quite as perfect as we think they are.

But just for the record, I'm no saint.
I like dogs.
I like sorting through piles of second-hand clothes and finding useful or beautiful things that have no business being sent to a landfill. I like making things with my own two hands, and I've been known to read this book on airplanes so I don't have to make pleasant conversation.

And I drank wine from both of these bottles last night.

The moon is full, shining over the Chesapeake Bay, and I am hiding from it. My mom had two martinis with dinner--and that's one too many. We've left my brother's house for the weekend and come back to the place where she used to live with my aunt. I'm staying with her in her old apartment, and if I were to go walking in the moonlight, I might return to find her sprawled on the floor.
I have no sense of humor about drinking or smoking anymore. Two seconds after my family got together this afternoon, I announced that I would walk away whenever anyone lit up. I've been smoking since the day I was conceived. I'm sick of it. At this rate, I may stop drinking, too. The sight of anyone who's walking off kilter, talking too loud, or forgetting what they were talking about makes me want to have a cup of tea. A bucket of tea. An ocean of tea. Strong and black and bitter.