The Unexpected

My mother is in the hospital again after suffering what doctors are calling a psychotic break induced by prednisone therapy. She spent the past two weeks or so staying awake for 72 hours at a time. Her blood sugars are out of control from the medication, and when she arrived at the ER Friday afternoon, she was, in highly technical medical terms, absolutely bananas. I'm pretty sure the ER staff is still talking about the tiny-boned lady who screamed terrible things at them before they could sink two shots' worth of sedatives and anti-psychotics into her backside. I went to the hospital to see her today, and the first thing she demanded of me was that I bathe her. The nurse gave me a sympathetic look as she darted out of the room. I'm not freaked out by my mother's nudity or her bodily emissions, but the IV line and cardiac monitor leads made the task harder, not to mention her constant flinching and hissing and corrections to the way I was washing her skin or wringing out the washcloth or, you know, breathing. It's not a secret that my mother and I have had a difficult relationship. There have been times when I wished for a different family, for siblings, for witnesses to some of the things she's said to me, for someone to stick up for me when she'd spin one of her stories with me as the villain and herself as the victim. But today, when I saw the way her bones showed beneath her skin, when I saw her distress as she lost control of her bladder and urine ran down her legs, all of that disappeared, and all I felt was this huge helpless love for this woman. I wanted to take her suffering away but I couldn't. All I could do was wash her and dry her and smooth baby powder on her back and tell her jokes about how I pee on myself because of the stupid diuretic I have to take. I made her laugh and distracted her from the indignities of her failing body, and I kept seeing not the bird-boned tiny wrinkled woman with wild hair but the dark-haired beauty of my childhood who loved to dance to disco and thought Donna Summer was the bee's knees. I've been crying on and off since I left the hospital because it finally hit me, after all of our fights and bitter silences and standoffs and threats that I love her beyond all reason, and when she is gone from this world, I will miss her so badly in a way that defies all measurement. I've wasted so much time. Tell your Mom you love her. Do it now.

If it's the thought that counts...

...what does it mean when your mother gives you a piece of clothing from a consignment shop wrapped up nicely as your Christmas present?

I'm still trying to figure that one out. The item in question---a heavily beaded black georgette blouse---is pretty in a mother-of-the-bride kind of way. Since I'll never be a mother of a bride, I'm not sure where I'll wear this blouse. Come to think of it, it wouldn't look out of place if I were headlining a show in Vegas, but unless there's a big demand for watching a fat woman in a sequined blouse knit, read, and surf the 'Net, well, I'm outta luck.

This isn't the first time she's given me a used item wrapped as a gift. There was the year she gave me a bright yellow and white silk scarf stained with red lipstick or nail polish or ink that she bought at a yard sale for seventy-five cents.

Here's the thing: I've got nothing against stuff from thrift stores/consignment shops, or yard sales. Even when the economy isn't made of the suck, I like looking for stuff in all of those places. It was the way she made a big deal out of the blouse before I even opened the box. "If (insert name of beloved sis-in-law here) can shop at consignment stores, so can I," declared TMOM dramatically. My internal alarms went off at that point, so I was able to keep a pleasant expression in place and avoid setting her off.

After all, I'd promised her I wouldn't ruin Christmas by "picking a fight." Like I always do, right?

But the prize winner for this year's holiday festivities has to be the four-slice toaster that she bought on sale at Sears for us. She made sure to tell us how she was so exhausted the day she drove out to Sears to buy the toaster that she had to literally drag it behind her in a big bag from the register to her car. Uphill. In the snow. No, not really...at least, not the uphill in the snow part. The dragging it in a big bag---totally part of the story. I wanted to apologize for her trouble, but I was afraid it would come out wrong because we hadn't asked for a toaster. We hadn't asked for anything. Between her health problems (real and imagined) and the fact that my Dad is running himself ragged trying to do everything, we didn't expect anything from them for Christmas.

It's a shame you can't return guilt trips. I'd exchange the toaster guilt trip for a nice skein of yarn.

Just sayin'.