16 posts tagged “mother”
Where do you want to be in ten years?
Submitted by baby3194.
Inspired by AmyH, I'm not looking forward so much as backward:
- 1998 -- In the early part of this year, I was completing sophomore year of of college as a journalism major in Pennsylvania; in the fall, I got on a plane with my boyfriend of two years and headed for England, where we both had a year of study abroad and I was giving myself a shot at studying art history. My mother was married to her fourth husband, and I hadn't spoken to my father in years.
- 1988 -- My parents by this point had divorced. I lived with my mum in a large house on a few acres of land and a lake. My family raised and bred hunting dogs, and we also had a horse and a turtle. My father lived in a suburb of Chicago and had to learn to drive to come out and pick me up for our every-other-weekend visit.
- 1978 -- In a March chill, I was born on the South Side of Chicago to two people too young to know better and held together by religion and parental authority.
When you look at things this way, it's easier to see how futile looking into the future can be.
I don't know how to describe my religious beliefs at this juncture, but I know in my bones that expression is dead-on. In 1978, did my parents know their union was destined to end? In 1988, could I have ever imagined that in the next decade I would see Germany, Austria, Ireland, England, Wales, and France? How different would my choices have been in 1998 and forward if I had known my mother wouldn't live through the decade?
Of course, I look to the future and have hopes and dreams, but looking backwards reminds me to be adaptable and, most importantly, live in the moment I have now.
Note: The year links above go to images from a recent project I completed, which happens to be a reflection on the various addresses of my life and seemed appropriate.
Some technical snafus have delayed the day-in-the-life pictures, but I plan to post mine after the holiday weekend. :)
I expect my brother is only child in country who got a mentos geyser in his Easter basket.
This Easter basket brought to you by Mythbusters, for sure. Followed by much bouncing up and down, shouting, "It was higher than the house? Did you see that? Higher than the house!!"
Okay, so that was me. But the kid was impressed, too.
I turn thirty on Thursday. Last year, my birthday was a pretty depressing affair, in fact I don't have many strong memories of it, just the overwhelming sadness. My mother had died less than three months earlier and I just didn't know how to process anything in the absence of my mother. I don't know how much I've learned in the subsequent year except I know I'm still here. I know I've been happy and can still be happy. I know I make her proud by continuing to make my way, by raising my brother into an good man.four more days to my birthday, squeeeeee!!!
I've experienced a few things in the first thirty years of my life I wouldn't wish upon anyone else, but those experiences continue to form me into a woman I'm proud to be. In the next years, I hope to come to grips with myself as an "adult." I hope to be successful in my career and to support my husband in his. I hope to continue growing an inspirational, creative life. I hope to inspire and encourage my brother. I hope to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Okay, so this tweet and reposting it here is just utter gloating. Ever cook a meal and feel its execution and presentation were just dreamy? That was Monday's dinner.soaking maple planks for tonight's mahi mahi Dinner: planked mahi mani with roasted red pepper sauce, mushroom risotto and grilled asparagus
Random thought about my morning routines. In yesterday's case, I was reading new content at nonprofit.alltop.com and was inspired to write last morning's post (please read if you missed it :). Today, bowl of oatmeal in front of me, I decided to wrangle my tweets into this post. If you wish to be similarly fueled, consider Alton Brown's overnight oatmeal recipe. We've been making it in a triple batch with craisins and dried blueberries, then just reheating up a bowl each subsequent morning. Soooo delicious.my blog is fueled by steel-cut oatmeal and coffee at this point, me thinks
I know she would laugh at the online PR fantasy teams and enjoy me taking TV watching to new geeky heights.
When Z woke me up this morning, I was crying. Not quiet little sniffles, but actually outright bawling. In my sleep.
I was having a twisted variation on an old recurring dream. The basis of the original dream is that it is the end of the semester at college, and I'm supposed to be getting myself packed to go home. There are many distractions and obstacles, including a formal dance, an altercation with a girl--strangely, from high school--who thinks I got it on with her boyfriend (maybe I did?), and a staircase that is one part Tim Burton, one part MC Escher.
At one point, I am at the formal dance and one of my classmates points out a girl dancing with her not-from-these-parts boyfriend. This is significant because that man would later become my husband. In a strange meta moment, the person pointing Z out to me says, "You don't remember me doing this, do you?"
Put off by the person breaking my dream's third wall, I attempt to return to packing up my belongings. Instead, another friend drags me off to this metaphysical shop where there are all sorts of elaborate wands and boxes. She wants to buy a box to share with me, and we look at several before falling in love with a multicolored, inky set of boxes. At some point, I am concerned about having offended the shopkeeper, so I offer to tally up her receipts at the end of the day. While I am sitting at a table, her myriad of papers and receipts in front of me, and trying to concentrate on the maths to do the job, many people come up and say goodbye to me. Z is eventually there, too, and I address him not as a stranger (as he was earlier in the dream), but as my husband. I tell him that I never imagined going home to my mother's house without her there and start to tear up, but he shushes me. Eventually, one of the administrators from my college shows up and hurries me along; apparently, he's to take me to the airport so I can get home. I quickly gather up my stuff, leaving the shopkeeper's receipts half done, and chase after him, with a strong sense that I don't have everything I need.
When we're leaving the main hall of my college dorm, I see my mother and try to say goodbye to her, but she brushes me off. She's not callous when she does so; it's more as if she knows it's going to be emotional and doesn't want to endure that.
Somehow, and the transition here is unclear, I end up in a car with my mother, and she is dropping me off so someone else (the college admin from earlier?) can take me to the airport so I can go home. At this point, I am aware in the dream that my mother is dead and I do not want to leave the care, I do not want to say goodbye. She tells me that this is what I must do and gives me a quick hug, fighting back her own tears, but trying to be firm with me. I get myself out of the car, but try to climb back in -- but she shuts the door and starts to put the car in reverse. Some unknown Rod Stewart song is playing, and I start to waver. My knees give, I fall to the pavement, clutching my bags and breaking down in tears. The car pauses in its slide away, as I wake up to my husband wrapping his arms around me, gently shaking me, trying to rouse me through my sobbing.
Even writing this now, I get a little shaky and a goosebump-like sensation goes over my skin.
You think you're normal. You think you're having a normal night, doing normal things. You chat with friends, kiss your husband goodnight, and think you are contentedly working on a sewing project. In the midst of this project, you realize a specialized sewing foot would solve some problems and go digging through the sewing supplies, trying to find said sewing foot.
Instead of a sewing foot, I found my mother's purse. The bloodwork from her last doctor's appointment, the funky coin purse she loved so much were inside. I discover she had $2 in her wallet when she died, a plethora of credit cards and a blank personal check (just in case). I find grocery receipts, shopping lists, and a receipt from the craft store visit when she bought a jewelry kit to make for her best friend. That project was never completed, like many others, and my mother isn't here to help me find the sewing machine foot, to teach me how to handroll a hem. And, like so many strange and unexpected things, it makes me miserably sad. Like the typically thick book she was reading around the holidays, her bookmark still in place. I found that, too, along with memories of reading the book aloud to her in the hospital when I had run out of other things to say.
Like I love you.
I miss you.
I found birthday cards your friends sent to you at Hospice and, finally reading them, see how many of them were trying to say goodbye in those inadequate Hallmark vessels and admire those who could see what I could not. What even now has the ability to bring me to my knees, to feel a primal pain and render me speechless.
Like so many things in the last week or so of your life, this is something we only share with each other. No one else is around to see me on the floor, clutching your purple bag and just sobbing. Your name is on my lips and you fill my heart, but it is nothing compared to having you here, to even be able to take your assistance for granted. Such a simple, yet impossible wish.
When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, she started using the phrase "the new normal" to represent her acceptance of how the disease impacted her life, but also wasn't going to stop her completely in her tracks. Instead of struggling against changes beyond her control, she embraced them--the new normal. And that's what I have now in my life--moments of fun, even happiness, but also the acceptance that these things can come from nowhere, filling my eyes with tears and stinging my chest with sorrow. Laughing and crying, missing you and yet picking myself up and moving into a new day--the new normal.
This is the rub: All happiness will be bittersweet.
I've experienced happiness this year and know more will follow, but it's undergone some emotional equivalent to a chemical reaction; it's not happiness as I knew it before...because my mother isn't here to share it with me/us.
I've been up since five this morning, anxious and sad. Today, my brother graduates elementary school. Registering him for first grade in the summer of 2002, she had no reason to think she wouldn't be here today. Nearly five years of homework and studying, learning and struggling. Pencils, rulers, glue. Buying this year's school supplies, I know Mum had a shadow of doubt over the year ahead; she knew it was statistically unlikely she would be here today. And, as each quarter passed us by, every report card marked a turning point:
- When I wrote of his first report card with straight As, she was living with cancer, and I had moved in to help her and my brother as best I could.
- His teacher sent home his second quarter report card--again, straight As--early, so he could share it with Mum. I opened it excitedly at home and gave M a big hug. Then we called my mother's Hospice room, and a close family friend conveyed the news to Mum, so she could be part of the moment. I brought the report card when I visited Mum that evening and left it with her. She died later that night.
- M's third round of straight As...I couldn't tell if it was a greater victory for him or for me, a sort of basic validation that I hadn't screwed him up too bad (yet). I didn't have a decade of experience being his parent; I was never anyone's go-to person for homework help.
She's not here, but I am, trying to make the best choices to help this little boy be everything he can. At any given moment it can be a joy or a frustration, overwhelming and exciting, blissful and exhausting. Right now, minutes away from waking him up to experience his last day of elementary school, it's all of these things at once. I am so proud, so proud...of him, of us.
From one of my best friends in a recent e-mail:
It would be nice to know mundane minutiae like this about my best friend--if she could maybe convince herself to send an email in response...
My response:
Hey, sweetie. I certainly did fall off the radar there for a bit, didn't I? I guess I've been coming to terms, trying to understand what "normal" is in my new life. Thus far, it looks like this:
Morning
Z goes to work around 7:30 every morning, and I get up around then (or press the snooze for 15 minutes...). I wake up my brother and feed kibble to every creature in the house (Iams for the cats, Beneful for the terrier, Honey Nut Cheerios for the kid), then get myself washed and ready for the day. I get M to PLACE anywhere from 8-9 and usually do some running around after he's dropped off (oil change, grocery shopping, wandering the craft store).
Afternoon
I get home by 11, have some sort of brunch-type snack, then sit down at my craft desk. For the last two weeks, I've been making cigar box purses, artist trading cards, and decorating store-bought journals. I usually do that until 3:45, when I walk out the door with Yoda and walk 4-5 blocks to meet M on his way home from school. That's usually the highlight of my day...walking with Yoda and chatting with M. When we walk in the door, M sits down right away to do his homework and, if it takes him less than 30 minutes, we whittle away some time on his upcoming invention convention project (he's making an update to the Trapper Keeper for today's techno kids). After schoolwork is done, we either play a game together or he buggers off to go skateboarding or play online games. If so, I hit the craft desk for some more time.
Evening
Around six o'clock, I start making dinner, and Z walks in the door any time from 6:15-6:40. This can make meals just a tad chaotic, but I've become a pro at getting M to set the table early and, if Z's late, just sticking stuff in the oven on "warm." We eat dinner together and share stuff about our days. M is becoming a much improved conversationalist, though we have to work more on him listening to others. At least twice a week, he says something that just cracks us up. This week, we were trying to explain to him what a non sequitur was, and he was having a hard time pronouncing the word. We explained that it was a pretty strange word, not originally English, and hard to spell. Much to our surprise, he got the spelling right on his second try! What a smart kid. After dinner, Z and M clean up, then we either play together or go our separate ways until 9pm, when M goes to bed. It's funny, I've gone to two parenting workshops in the last month, and many parents complain about problems relating to bedtime and getting homework done. But M is such a regimented child that we almost never have issues in this area. Sometimes he gets mad at the homework problems, but I never have to nag him to sit down and do it. Anyway, some nights Z and I watch TV together or play video games; if he's really tired, he just goes to bed, and I stay up late crafting.
Obviously, the amount of time I spend at the craft desk makes this pretty ideal (I've made three purses, two journals and countless ATCs), but there are a million setbacks every minute it feels like. I still have to meet with my mum's attorney, still have to open the box from the cremation society, still have to sit down with Z and write our wills out and determine who takes care of M if anything happens to us. Those are the big things, but there are little things too...Yoda staring at Mum's bed and whining, grabbing four napkins instead of three for dinner. One day last week, I just came home and cried on the couch for a couple of hours, eventually exhausting myself into sleep.
It's odd, last weekend was really nice. Z came home early on Friday. We cried together, made love, then went out for a drink and an appetizer before getting back home to pick up M. It was true quality time together, and I really felt his love and support. Friday night, Z stayed home with M while I went to a craft class and then out for drinks with R. R and I also needed some quality time, as he has been taking really good care of me during the week (stopping by for coffee in the morning, going to the grocery store with me, or even just dropping off blueberry muffins when I need to be alone), and I'm not always as grateful as I should be. Saturday, we hung out with M and did some shopping; M spent the night at a friend's house, and we went into Largo to celebrate L's birthday (strangely, by riding a mechanical bull). Sunday was a day of productivity, Z cleaned the kitchen and bathrooms, while I did laundry. That afternoon, cuddled up on the couch, I said I'd had a good weekend--that I often felt silly or happy or friendly first, and sad second or third. It made me realize that's not true for most days...I am sad first and foremost, then all my other emotions come in a muddle afterwards. While it felt warm and good and honest to say then, now I just feel bad for feeling so bad most of the time!
This weekend, Mum's friend MC will be in town. We'll go out to dinner with her tonight, and then join her and her husband for brunch Sunday. I'm really looking forward to that. Saturday, Z and I have doctor's appointments in the morning, and I may take M up to a local festival that afternoon. Z and I also have to spend some time cleaning out the garage, as he's been buying cabinets from work to remodel our kitchen, and we need to better organize the space to store them. I'm not looking forward to that, as it will involve moving some of Mum's stuff around, and I'm not ready to make choices about those things (even things I know I won't be keeping, like her hats and wigs, I'm not ready to do anything with). Speaking of which, when I do feel ready to do something like that, it may be a great time to have you or E down. That would definitely require some handholding.
Next week, I'm going to apply for a great job I heard of through E's mother and make an appointment to get Ripley fixed. She's in heat right now and a great source of amusement for the household. I also meet with a grief counselor from Hospice and am struggling somewhat with what I want to get out of that session.
How's that for a nutshell of life? I'm sorry I've been distant. I don't know why I'm putting up this facade of enormous strength, but I guess it's what gets me through the days. It's been a month and four days, but I see her everywhere around me and yet somehow manage to be in denial, unable to understand that she's not here to share thing swith me: to laugh at the animals' antics, to feel pride in M, to talk about the next season of Project Runway, to enjoy the things I'm making, to see her new kitchen cabinets, to share a cup of coffee with outside by the pool. It tears me up. MC said this morning she once heard someone describe grieving as similar to learning to breathe underwater, and that rings so true for me right now. It's like doing this impossible thing, and all your instincts struggle against it. You need to do it, but every cell screams NO NO NO NO I CAN'T.
With love and appreciation for your polite "nudge,"
artgeek
My mother died Friday, January 12, 2007, after a more than yearlong battle against cancer. Originally diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, the disease had spread to her lymph nodes, adrenal gland, bones and--as we discovered during her hospitalization earlier this month--her brain.
Even writing these words doesn't make them more real. I alternately cannot believe she's gone and cannot escape thoughts of her. Every purple thing in the house (coffee mugs, cutting boards, the couch), every sympathetic bouquet, nearly every stick of furniture, every square foot of this house, every wag of her terrier's tail, every smile of her little boy, every thought of what's to come, what moments she won't be here for (my brother graduates elementary school in May)...It truly is unthinkable. There is a void in my every day, and I cannot measure it nor know its bounds.
Last week was a flurry of phone calls and arrangements, culminating in Mum's memorial service Saturday. It was beautiful, warm and funny, tender, thoughtful and joyous. I appreciated everything people said and did, but wished we had something else to be doing, something else to bring us together.
I miss my mom and can't imagine missing her less.
I've talked to Mum's doctors, and they cannot fix her cancer and it is spreading. The doctors and the hospital have done everything they can to help her, but it just hasn't worked. Today she's going to leave the hospital, and we will move her to a place closer to home where there are nurses all day and all night. Any of us can visit her whenever we want to.
This is all very hard to hear, but I need you to know two things:
- Z and I are here for you and will take care of you. That's the most important thing for you to know right now.
- Your mom loves you very very very much and never wanted this to happen.
Saturday night, my husband and I agreed we needed to talk to my brother,
who is 11, about my mother's condition. Sunday morning, we got up and
had breakfast, then initiated the talk. Despite the simplicity of the
words and how much my husband and I labored over them, I know I will
never have to communicate something so hurtful again in my life. My brother took it all in, asked some questions, including, "Is she going to die?" I said yes, and he looked thoughtful for all of a second.
"I'm okay with that. You're here and are going to take good care of me."
His words were comforting and scary, a reminder that Mum's sickness isn't something we'll get through--it's going to impact our days, in very mundane and unarguable ways, for the rest of his life. The idea of not only raising him, but doing some justice to her legacy, so he will remember her with love and admiration, it's a heavy, heavy thing. I am only happy that I am not carrying this alone.
