Travelogue - Goin' Home

Yesterday morning I rolled out of bed before six to shower, eat a little breakfast with Mother and pack.

Mother was, at her tallest, 5'5". She's now probably 5'2". In her 40s and early 50s, she wore a size 16. Then she wised up and took the weight off and has been a size 12 for my teen years and all my adult life. Until the past two years, she walked at least a mile every day. There is an excellent gym next door to Fletcher Park Inn, where she lives, and residents have automatic membership. She used to go over and take water aerobics classes, but now she does nothing. She used to rise at 5:30 or 6:00 and go to bed at 9:00. Now she wakes about seven, but sometimes lies in bed until eleven. She naps after lunch and goes to bed at 8:15. For years she took care of my aunt (her next younger sister - Mother is the oldest of four children, all girls), who lived next door, and who was a bit daft. Aunt Helen died three or four years ago, and since then Mother's motivation has been lessening.

Up until that point, I would talk to her once a week. After Aunt Helen died, my brothers and sister-in-law and I agreed that we needed to step up our contact. So I call Mother every day. In Tucson, I would call her on my morning commute to work. I was always a little relieved when she didn't answer, because I could say I called but I didn't have to talk to her.

She has been very emotionally abusive to me in my life, but I feel very strongly that this was a result of her own abusive father and was done out of ignorance, not out of malice. So there's no reason for me to cut her off. She made a lot of sacrifices for me—the schlepping to piano lessons and recitals, the recital dresses sewn, and so on. I am grateful for the opportunities that I realized as a result of being adopted by Mother and Daddy. And Daddy—Daddy was wonderful. Daddy gets glowing marks for his parenting skills, although he simply wasn't around much because of his medical practice.

So whenever I'm around Mother, as I was for 36 hours this week, I am painfully aware that I don't measure up, that I can never measure up, that I'll never be good enough. (Is this why I love the pig in "Babe" so much, why I melt inside when the farmer says, "That'll do, Pig. That'll do."?) I was relieved to drive away yesterday, to feel less inadequate with each mile that slipped under my tires.

Back to Mother's size: she eats breakfast when she gets up, then goes to "dinner" at 11:45. From all appearances, she (with her tablemates egging her on) ends every dinner with a bowl of ice cream. Then she goes back to her apartment and naps. And eats a little something for supper. From my sister-in-law's reports, there are lots of carbs that go into Mother's diet. And no exercise.

I look at her and see an apple. When I hear medical personnel on talk shows talk about "apple or pear" and look in a mirror, I can't decide if I'm an apple or a pear. I'm much rounder than I was ten years ago. In my younger years, I could turn sideways and basically disappear. I was very flat from front to back, and very wide in the hips. In my 30s, my measurements were 36-27-38. But no more. And when I look at Mother, it's absolutely clear that she's an apple. She wears only elastic waist pants and they come to a rest just under her bra. And she is constantly short of breath, for which the doctors can give no medical cause. When she walks up the stairs to her second-floor apartment, she has to stop midway up and catch her breath. And her lower back hurts, which she attributes to arthritis, but I would suggest (with no medical background, so it's just my opinion) that her back is tired from supporting that enormous stomach.

I made her promise she'll start walking the halls at least once a day. I don't have any confidence that she'll do so, but at least I called it to her attention. She's more stubborn than I am, so there's the distinct possibility that all this harping on her health from Jerry and Jim and Molly and me will only make her eat a second bowl of ice cream after dinner. But she'll be 95 in May and she takes no medications. It would be a horrible shame to watch her have to take blood pressure meds or insulin or some other logical outcome of this weight she's accumulated.

We walked up to my Aunt Louise's house (who is virtually bedridden with Parkinson's). As we walked back down the hill, Mother said, "I don't know how long I'll be around." Several times she told me things about the furnishings in her apartment—she has specified that I am to inherit everything in her apartment. I don't care about that. I do care about not being saddled with taking care of her if she continues this eating-and-not-exercising behavior.

When Molly and I talked on Wednesday night, I said, "I don't want to be 95." Molly responded with, "It's better than the alternative." Umm, in my mind it isn't. I want to do lots of good right now, help all my kids out, and then be gone before they start to have the worries about me that I have about my mother. I want to be a helper, not a burden.

(Caption: But it's a dry snow.) So, with great relief, I drove away from Fletcher at 8:00 yesterday morning. My goal was to stay ahead of the weather that was forecast to set in today—a mixture of snow and rain and ice. As I drove up the mountains north of Asheville, the tires of the vehicles around me were kicking up mud from the road onto my windshield.

The two scariest times on this trip were: 1) realizing I couldn't see through the windshield and that my windshield washers weren't working; and 2) seeing the dark clouds to the north and knowing they held some amount of snow.

And to counteract that, one of the happiest moments was pushing the correct buttons on my navigation system and realizing there was an Acura dealer just a few hundred yards off the interstate in Johnson City, TN. I pulled in and the nice young service manager told me I had a blown fuse. He replaced it and topped off the fluid for free.

The rest of the trip was easy. I drove most of the day through snow flurries, but the landscape around me was incredible. Rolling hills and mountains that, under a thin blanket of snow, looked just like the yards of freshly-painted still-wet silk that I scrunch on a counter to dry so the paint will rise to the ridges. Incredible vistas.

Around 3:00 I pinged Tyler that my ETA was 6:00. He then called to check the logistics and said he had a rehearsal at 6:30 and Jaci would be at a meeting at the Youngstown Business Incubator. I realized Grandma's babysitting was needed exactly at 6:00, so I was a woman with a mission. I dawdled not! I rolled into their driveway at 6:05 and got a quick kiss from Tyler as he dashed out the door for rehearsal.

A little later, in my new bedroom with Boston, Ridley and Rudi, Boston said, "Grandma, can you come back when Santa is here?" I replied, "Boston, I live here now. I'm not going away." His sweet response? "Yea!"

Rudi has been in my room since arrival. Later on today we'll introduce all the animals. (If you haven't been following along, that's two big dogs, two cats and a rat.) But so far, so good.

Thanks to Kris and the PianoLady for the cards that were waiting when I arrived. Thanks to all of you for your thoughts and wishes and prayers and interest as I drove.

I'm home now!