Surely Nothing...

I knew a lady one time who'd had, before I met her, a set of twin girls. When these twins were toddlers, one of them was killed in a household accident. Their mother's grief was such that she wound up with an ulcer, which ruptured one day. She called an ambulance, and the ambulance--I swear--wrecked on the way to the hospital and left her more injured than she was before she called it. Plus, by the time I met her she'd had a mastectomy, and now after battling some other kind of cancer (I believe it was), she's dead.

I always think of her when I'm tempted to say, "Surely nothing else can happen."

This past June my family spent a week in Myrtle Beach, courtesy of George Bush and the US taxpayers, and there was not one thing in the world for us to complain about. We went to a lovely place with plenty of things to do; the weather cooperated; we got along nicely and didn't have car trouble or lose our wallets or anything. It was so lovely, in fact, that I tossed aside superstitious caution and finally (in a hesitant whisper) voiced the thought that I'd been having for months: that we ought to stop and take notice of the fact that all was going well. We had jobs, a house, cars. We were all healthy and the children were not having any trouble. Our parents were alive and living independently.

By mid-July, of course, things had changed as both of our mothers were diagnosed with serious illnesses which have altered (primarily) their lives, but also (no comparison to what they're going through, but still--) ours. So break out the violins and let me tell you that due to various circumstances, last week was really hard. From white-knuckle drives back and forth to the hospital and late-night stays with my severely compromised mother, to a fight with my husband, to work pouring in on me so heavily that I couldn't even return all my calls, much less accomplish the other hundred things my scary boss expects of me--it was a just an exceptionally hard week. By Friday I was so exhausted I felt as though I were underwater, slowly going through the motions of tasks but lacking the energy or concentration to do any of them very well. All I could think of was how much I wanted to get to bed early.

So. Around 10:30 PM I had my jammies on, we'd vacated the living room and brushed our teeth and were just getting ready to crawl into bed when Brandon, my six-year-old, casually and cheerfully mentioned that he had stuck something ("a little piece of foam") into his ear and couldn't get it out. Initial annoyance soon gave way to dull shock as a flashlight revealed an object the approximate color of his Grover hand puppet, waaaaaay down deep in his ear canal. You might be interested to know that tweezers, when held up to a child's ear, suddenly look enormous and deadly. There was no way we could get the little blue thing out.

So my husband started yelling and stomping about the stupidity of it all, and Brandon got hysterical when he realized we couldn't fix him, and I, nearly bursting into tears of self-pity, got to put my clothes back on and drive him (sans husband, you'll notice) across town to the emergency room...where--remember how exhausted I had been even before this happened?--after a stay in the freezing waiting room and after the usual discussion of allergies and copayments and social security numbers, we saw a doctor who eventually used a high-powered suction thingy to pull the piece of foam out of the ear while Brandon cried and I helped hold him still and tried not to faint.

This experience has gotten me thinking. If having a very sick mother and a hellish work week does not mean that my kid won't poke foam down his earhole, then I should consider myself reminded that one crisis does not preclude another. Just because you're riding in an ambulance doesn't mean it can't wreck. I should never take false comfort in the idea that "surely nothing else can happen." Tired as I am, I still have to stop and take a moment to notice all the things that aren't disastrous--the really hard job that hands me a regular paycheck, the kids who do ridiculous (yet typically kid-like) things, the mothers we can still hold in our arms. I'm glad to have them all. I'm just not going to say it out loud anymore for a while.

She's Not There

For those who don't know, I left town on July 15th to attend the Sewanee Writers' Conference in Sewanee, TN. (www.sewaneewriters.org) The trip was a big deal to me, and I figured I'd be blogging all about it by now, but other matters have eclipsed the conference.

Within a day or two of my arrival on the Sewanee campus, my husband reported that my mother had left a completely unintelligible message on our home phone. He and my daughter had each listened to it several times and still had no idea what she was saying. I called my mom's house but although it was 10 PM or so (Eastern time--I was on Central), nobody answered. Fearing the worst, I called the hospital and learned she had been admitted.

Just before I left for TN, Mama had come down with shingles. (www.shinglesinfo.com) I understood that this wasn't a pleasant condition to be in, but it hardly seemed critical so I left for my trip as planned. But when I located her at the hospital, I learned she had fallen and broken her foot as well. Nobody realized at first that it was actually broken, but my stepfather observed that Mama got increasingly disoriented over the next few days and he decided she should go to the hospital. By then she couldn't make it to the car so he called an ambulance.

Again, the condition didn't sound life-threatening. Worrisome, maybe, but I was calling from TN every day, and nobody ever said, "You ought to come home." Doctors said my mother's confusion and disorientation was due to some swelling of the brain membrane, brought on by the shingles, but it'd soon be back to normal. I talked to her, sometimes, and sometimes to other family members who kept me updated. Sewanee is a long conference, and as I overheard one participant saying, "It's a tough conference. Not for the faint of heart." Still, I tried to hang in there. But when I got the news on Friday the 25th that Mama was being moved to a nursing home--and especially, when I spoke to her and she was childlike and sobbing and asking when I would be back--I went to my dorm and started packing.

Before Sewanee, I had called on the phone and said Bye, see ya later, to my Mama--the same mama I'd always known. I returned less than two weeks later to a sick, injured, terrified woman huddled in a nursing home bed, a woman who cried and couldn't understand how I had known where to find her, when she herself did not know where she was.

She's still in the nursing home, and we--that is, my stepfather and I, not the medical staff--are still working on the mystery of what has happened to her mind. A stroke? Head injury? Problematic medicine for the shingles? Is the nursing home now keeping her doped up so she'll be less trouble to them? That would be another story in itself, and it's not the one I'm writing tonight.

I really said all of the above just to tell you this: I miss my mother. I've lost count of the times that it has run through my mind to give her a call at home and see what she's up to. She'd tell me what she was cooking for supper and whether her Braves were winning. She'd tell me all the news of her friends and neighbors that, by and large, I've never even met. She'd ask what her "babies" were doing.

I prefer to keep in touch with most people by email, but Mama is the one person I frequently call. Nowadays, even though I may have just left the nursing home, I find I still have that same impulse to call Mama... my regular old Mama... but she's not there.

No Title for this One

Yesterday I had to mail a large envelope and also buy some stamps. I stood in line at the post office, idly observing the clothes and shoes and mannerisms of all the other people who were waiting, when I happened to notice a man whose arm was in a sling. It brought back a memory that, within thirty seconds, had me close to tears, sternly telling myself to get a grip before my turn at the window came.

What I had thought of was this: in 1990, during my first pregnancy, I had a job that required me to go to the post office daily and handle the company's mail. Every day I stood in line, and when my turn came, I exchanged pleasantries with a friendly, kind-faced man named Gary. He never knew my name, but we always chatted a bit. Towards the end of my nine months, the conversation centered around my due date and how I was looking and feeling. Whether I was tired. Whether I was ready.

There came a day when I didn't show up at the post office, and I guess, if I crossed Gary's mind at all, he would have assumed I was on maternity leave. But then after several weeks I appeared again, with a non-pregnant belly and my arm in a cast and a sling. Gary, bless him forever, was cautious in his friendliness. "What in the world happened to you?" he asked.

"Car accident," I whispered.

His face was concerned. I knew he was wondering about the baby, but I could tell he wanted to phrase it carefully. "Everybody all right?" he asked.

My eyes got wet, and I could only shake my head. No.

"I'm sorry," he said. And then he took care of my mail.

I remember, too, a lady who had owned the convenience store nearest to my home in 1990. Sometime shortly after the accident, I ran into her in the back corner of a grocery store. She was Asian and her English was poor, but she asked me excitedly, "Where your baby?"

Euphemisms don't always translate well, I didn't know whether she would understand me if I said that we lost him, or he passed away. I had to stand in the grocery store and try to explain that he had died, and then the lady and I just looked at each other, neither one having the vocabulary to continue.

There's no moral or tidy ending here. Except maybe I should say thank you to Gary for not needing the details, and thank you to the convenience store lady for caring, and thanks to all the other random people like Sherry the hairdresser who put their arms around me and said, "I'm sorry about your baby," when there was nothing else to say. Eighteen years now, and I haven't forgotten any of you.


****AMAZING UPDATE TO THIS POST: I'M WRITING THIS ON JUNE 9TH. JUST HAD TO SHARE WITH ANYBODY READING THE ABOVE POST THAT YESTERDAY, OUTSIDE OF TARGET, WHO SHOULD I RUN INTO BUT GARY FROM THE POST OFFICE!!! AFTER 18 YEARS OF NEVER SEEING HIM, THERE HE WAS. NOW I HAVE CHANGED A LOT BETWEEN THE AGES OF 25 AND 43 BUT HE INSTANTLY RECOGNIZED ME AND SPOKE. I TOLD HIM WHAT A COINCIDENCE IT WAS THAT I HAD JUST HAD HIM ON MY MIND RECENTLY, AND I REMINDED HIM OF MY STORY (THOUGH I NEARLY BAWLED DOING IT) BECAUSE ALTHOUGH I COULD SEE HE RECOGNIZED MY FACE, I DIDN'T KNOW IF HE'D REMEMBER THE REST. BUT HE DID REMEMBER, AND SO DID HIS WIFE WHO WAS WITH HIM. HE HAD GONE HOME AND TOLD HER ABOUT ME, AND PRAYED FOR ME, HE SAID. I THANKED HIM IN PERSON FOR PUTTING KINDNESS AND COMPASSION AHEAD OF HIS OWN CURIOSITY. I TOLD HIM I HAD TWO CHILDREN NOW AND ALL WAS WELL, AND HE GAVE ME A HUG. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT??!!

Global Warming--SOLVED!

I've been meaning to tell y'all this for a while... I actually solved the mysteries of global warming a month or two ago and I know it seems like this is an important discovery that I should've gone public with right away, but what can I say. I'm a busy person. Idol is on at least twice a week.

Anyway, as you all know, it's only too clear to people my age and older that global warming is a real phenomenon, in spite of what some stubborn scientists claim. We know it's real because we distinctly remember that when we were younger, it was MUCH colder than it is now! Just stop for a moment, and I'll bet several examples pop into your mind. Personally, I always remember the early November day in 1982 when I was riding around with my new boyfriendish-type-person, freezing to death in my oxford shirt until he detoured by his home and presented me with his letter jacket.

But in that very story lies a clue to the mystery I have unlocked. Are you ready?? Here it is: It seemed colder when we were younger because we were too stupid to wear a coat! If you have children, the truth of my discovery will have you smacking your forehead right now. "You need a heavier coat," I tell my kids. "I don't wanna carry it," they whine. "It won't fit in my bookbag. It makes me too fat for the carseat." And so forth. "Okay," I shrug. "Be cold, then." And lo, THEY ARE COLD.

When I was 19 years old I bought a car with a non-working heater, and all that winter I drove to work--fifteen miles or so--shivering, with a blanket across my lap. I did wear a coat, at least, but the blanket was necessary because every morning, like an idiot, I got up and put on a DRESS, PANTYHOSE, and PUMPS. I look back now and wonder what kind of a fool would not put on some nice warm pants, comfortable socks, and a pair of boots. A YOUNG fool, that's who. Look around and you will see it--grown people dress for the weather and kids don't. That's all it is. Scientists, you can pack up your gear and go home now.

Next month, stayed tuned for my enlightening explanation of why it is that "most car accidents occur within two miles of home." If I'm feeling really crazy I'll also tell you why "most shark attacks occur in less than four feet of water." That's a joke. You DO know why these are true, don't you? Please tell me you do.