A Walk With My Real Mother

   I went for a walk with my mother yesterday. I walked out the back door with the confused imposter who had been living in her body the last few years and ended up with my real mother by the time we circled the building and stopped to rest by the front door.

            Her wheelchair supported both of us until I finally let go to sit on the bench. She rode in the seat and I hung onto the handles, gripping a bit tighter than necessary. If the migraine vision stole my balance or my hip dislocated, I could imagine what she might do to herself trying to rescue me, since that’s what real mothers do.

             We had forty-five minutes to kill before the ambulance would return her to the nursing home. She called it the hospital but I think she knew the difference this time. She needed to pretend, the way I had the week before when I wheeled her to the dining room down the hall and called it taking her out to dinner.

            She tucked the surgeon’s report between her leg and the side of the chair and used both hands to drink her diet Sierra Mist, screwing the cap back on after each sip. I wondered which excited her more, having a drink in a bottle instead of a Styrofoam cup with a straw, or realizing she had the dexterity to manipulate the cap without help. Her hands looked confident. Maybe she remembered how I had complimented her penmanship when she signed the forms in the office.

            She noticed how green the grass was despite the heat, and decided the thumping noise in the distance must be a large construction tool. It must have felt good for her to be outdoors. In the last year, she had been out only to pass from a car or ambulance to whichever railed, motorized bed she would occupy next. She smiled at a little girl passing with her mother, removed the cap to take another drink, and laughed when she realized it was ninety degrees and she was wearing a sweater. People would think she was crazy but she really wasn’t even warm.            

          She remembered I had no air-conditioning in my car and apologized for making me come out. I reminded her I like heat, and said I was glad to be there. She mentioned knowing someone else was supposed to have been in my place and the nurse had to call me, but believed me when I said I wanted to be there.

            We talked about the good news from the doctor; the hip had healed and he released her to put all ninety-six of her pounds on it again. In her mind, that meant she could go home soon, and she proved once again that she was in her right mind by telling me in detail all the things she needed to do when she went home.

            I reminded her how much she appreciated the nurses and therapists at the hospital, and how she had saved every menu to show me the wonderful meals they served. She said those things were nice but she was still anxious to go home before she got too spoiled to all that pampering. 

I wanted the confused imposter to replace my real mother so I could avoid the rest of the conversation. Her eyes met mine and asked for the truth, as no one but a real mother can. 

Today, I hope she doesn’t remember that I told her the truth.

Originally published August 2006, Author's Den and Gather

Elephants Upstairs

 

 

I need to thank the elephant who lives above me for serving up those lemons at 5:00 this morning. It felt like deja vu for a second; that's what time pain woke me yesterday, and I had a busy day so I didn't get a nap. I needed sleep and really didn't want to get up at 5:00 again this morning (or any morning).

When my body woke me earlier than I wanted on Monday, I used that extra time to write a letter, read a book, play games on the Kindle – quiet things because, even though I live alone, I live in an apartment. It felt natural to think that, until I heard my neighbors stirring around and leaving for school and work or wherever they go in the mornings, a considerate person would try to be quiet. And, I wanted to be considerate.

Consideration for neighbors apparently has never crossed the minds of my upstairs neighbors. I've tried sleeping in each of my two bedrooms, as well as on the couch, and no matter where I sleep or what hours of the day I try to sleep, one or both of the couple who live above me will wake me every couple of hours. It's an old building with squeaky hardwood floors, ancient furnaces and plumbing, and sticky doors, so I expect and understand a great deal of normal noises.

These people do not fit in any definition I would assign to normal noise.

Instead of just getting angry when she stomped her inconsiderate bladder to the bathroom and back at 5:00 this morning, and then stomped around the bedroom over my head for about five more minutes before returning to her squeaky bed, I decided to get up and turn those lemons into lemonade. I vacuumed - the bedroom floor, cobwebs in the corners, the ceiling fan, furniture, drapes, the drums . . . and, being the overgrown kid that I am, I couldn't move the drums without confirming that I still can't play them well.

And, then, I fell asleep around 9 p.m. and woke again at 2 a.m. I think I might nap for a couple of hours now before I resume my childhood obsession with practicing every part of Il travotore until I get one at least one of them close to tolerable.

 

Let It Be

 

       My big mistake was in expecting a twenty-mile drive to erase the thirty years I had been away. I set myself up for the unwarranted sense of betrayal that came when I saw a flat lot with a beer garden standing where I remembered rows of curbside-service speakers, covered by orange awnings. Otherwise, the outside of the stone and glass building appeared untouched except for the new name. Hunts was now Rubbies.

     

      While I was growing up, my family ate out most Friday nights. We hit the church fish fries, Sizzler and Pizza Hut after they came around, and Frisch’s on occasion. Once in a great while, we donned good clothes and manners and visited an upscale restaurant. The one place we all enjoyed, and therefore frequented most often, was Hunts, a family-owned, neighborhood bar-restaurant combination with one small and one large dining room, a banquet room, and servers who delivered food outdoors, on trays that attached to the car windows. Hunts' original salad dressing made them famous. Individual jukebox connections on each table made the dining room our favorite spot to eat. For a quarter, each of us could choose a song. A dollar entertained us through the whole meal. 

       Last week, my daughters and I went back to Hunts, where an eerie combination of old and new greeted me. Everything and nothing had changed. Hunts had taken the salad dressing but left the bar, standing across from the same row of booths, seating what looked like some of the same people, in the same clothes and hairstyles. A stage replaced the jukeboxes, and open mic meant we could still eat to music and choose a few of our own songs. 

       Before I registered the significance of the glass-encased antique coke bottles I might have emptied in the past, or absorbed the nostalgia of the coconut face on the wall, I spotted my uncle standing at the bar. A few pounds heavier, much shinier on top, same brandy in hand, he looked past my pounds and gray and recognized my daughters. Hours and hugs later, I wondered if his mist over partying with great nieces came from the bottle, the years passed, or realizing how few we might have left. Maybe he thought, as I did, that I should be my daughter’s age and he should not be the only male left in the only generation ahead of me. 

       Harmonious discord wasn’t exclusive to our table, nor did familial concern end there. When the red head in the out-of-season, cardboard New Year’s Eve tiara draped her arms around my daughter’s shoulders and smiled at me, my heart sank. How could I have forgotten her name when she was so obviously overjoyed to see us? I mentally removed the tiara and a few lines from her face, and tried on the name of every second and third cousin I could remember. Nothing fit, except the warmth she radiated and the smile my daughter wore. 

       As the tiara bobbed and the stories poured, I narrowed the prospects. Laughter accompanied her complaints about the pawing she had received from the old fart by the pool table; she had to be from Mom’s side. I would either remember her name by the time she finished the rundown of safe, arms-length, and stay-the-hell-away men present, or I would ask my uncle when he found his way back from the bar. 

       Her name was Bonnie. I didn’t remember because I had never known. She was a regular, not related on either side, but already vested in my family by the time we found out. Bonnie stayed with us the first hour and then took off to pull a good-natured, stay-the-hell-away guy to a back corner for a dance. 

       Later, Bonnie hugged her way to a back table of arm’s-length listeners and my uncle grew roots beside a blonde barfly. One daughter went off to reserve her ten minutes on the sign-up sheet, while the other huddled close to hear a friend yell over the heavy metal group on stage. 

       A lone dancer hypnotized me with her routine – five steps to the right, raise the beer bottle overhead, bow, five steps to the left, flip the hair off the face, turn a complete circle, and repeat. Although disturbed by the obvious role of long-term chemical use in this dazed ritual, I respected the dancer’s disregard of public opinion. As if willing to enhance my appreciation, an ageless, gender-undisclosed clogger unfolded from a lotus position beside the stage and tapped passionately to the last thirty seconds of a poor rendition of Queen’s “We Will Rock You”. 

       Possible explanations flooded my mind: flashbacks, nightmare, Twilight Zone, time warp. Flashbacks seemed unlikely since I had refused even the drugs prescribed to me, and I’d never heard of contact flashbacks. The Twilight Zone was fictional and I knew I was awake. A mullet head conversing with a tube top supported the time warp, until I looked past my daughter’s nose ring and focused on the table behind her. Three men stared back at me, one fiftyish with waist-length hair poking out from a bandana scarf, a thirty-something, clean-cut yuppie, and a sixty-something, toothless biker in a leather vest. I would surely have warped to one era and there was no way these people all belonged in the same one. 

       Sometime after the clogger sang “Let It Be”, and before seventies rock, they called my daughter to the stage to introduce ancient country. While she tested the mic and whispered to the bass player, a ghost from my past climbed on stage beside her. Not quite the guitar player her father had been, and not knowing he was standing next to an old friend’s daughter, a worn man plugged in and accompanied her on a song her father had sung twenty years before. 

       I watched his tired eyes travel with the music, maybe wishing he could recapture the same thirty years I had wanted the trip to erase for me. He stared into space, the middle-aged bass player watched the back of my daughter’s head, the young drummer kept his eyes closed, and my daughter’s eyes never left mine. My uncle and Bonnie left their fans and came to stand beside the mix-matched crew behind us. The lone dancer repeated her routine and the clogger remained in lotus position. 

       The magic of this unique little world hit me as I watched young-and-hopeful stand two feet and a world away from holding-on-to-what’s-left on the stage. Everyone had come to share common space and individual passions and paths. Some were young. Some were old. Some were sober and others hadn’t been in decades. No one laughed and pointed at the clogger or the lone dancer. No one booed when the band changed, or when the music was horrible. The stay-the-hell-away guys didn’t shun Bonnie when she pawed them and turned the story around. 

       I hadn’t been anywhere so accepting in years, and couldn’t remember when being unaccepting had come into vogue. 

       Twenty miles got closer. We’re anxious to go back, where people remember how to let it be. 

Originally posted to Author's Den and Gather on  Thursday, April 27, 2006

Keep it to yourselves, Sanders, McConnell and Paul fans, and assorted Republican supporters

Through no fault of my own, I am stuck with Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, two of the most despicable, dishonest, delusional, demonic Senators ever to haunt this country. I believe they are both dangerous to the country but only fear physical harm by Rand Paul, since I very easily could have been the one to be curb-stomped by his hired thugs and have received not-so-veiled threats for talking about it.

I ask my friends and family to remember this should anything happen to me.

I write this post so I will have something to link when I leave comments on my Senators' Facebook pages. They both invite constituents to keep in touch on social media.

I'm not foolish enough to believe either of them read their pages, or even know what ridiculous crap their staffers post there to monitor the gullibility of their minions. It's alive and well, by the way, verified daily in senseless comments, most of which wouldn't pass third grade spelling or punctuation and should make the anti-education and critical thinking Republican Party feel successful.

I would never choose to communicate in any way with Mitch McConnell or Rand Paul if I were not cursed with them as Senators. They are not people I would want as friends, nor are they foes I would waste time trying to influence. Since they are my Senators, and they say and post insane things in public, I consider it my civic duty as well as a favor to sane Kentuckians to respond.

Their minions/cult/allies/cronies seem to think that when I leave comments for the Senators, I welcome responses from their weird fans. I do not. I don't go back to read their comments when I see notifications rolling past to announce that they are responding. I am creating this one-time message to let them know they are wasting their time.




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