Category Archives: Mom

Air Conditioner.

The summers of my childhood were sweltering. The air was thick and sat heavy on my chest. Everything was always damp from the humidity or just plain sticky. It was inescapable.

This rarely bothered me during the day when games and playmates could keep my mind off how uncomfortable I felt. My mother would twist her hair at the nape, secure it with one barrette, and walk around with a wet washcloth around her neck. She would sigh, appearing more tired than usual. If I aggravated her, which was much easier to do in the summer, she’d simply say, “Michelle, it’s hot.” That was my cue to leave her alone.

Without the distractions of the day, I could not shake off how truly miserable I was at night. The second-floor bedroom I shared with my brother was small. If I had to guess, I’d say it was an eight foot by eight foot square. Jim’s bed was a youth size, smaller than your average twin. My bed was a glorified wooden box atop which sat the same crib mattress that I used as a baby and Jim used before that. I couldn’t be sure, but I would guess we weren’t the first babies to sleep on that mattress either. Jim and I each had a small night stand, which wasn’t so much a nightstand as a set of drawers made of cardboard. Mom bought them at Woolworth’s or the five-and-dime, or maybe McCrory’s. We had one small dresser for our clothing. Nothing else could fit.

There was one window in the room where Mom placed a box fan facing out. She placed a similar one in the hall window. She said it pulled the hot air creating circulation to cool the house down. I’m sure this idea makes sense from a scientific standpoint, but as a child whose body was threatening to melt, I just thought she was crazy. When we would go to bed, Mom would say, “Just don’t move and it will feel cooler,” this another logical piece of advice that I thought was pure crap. No matter what, we were roasting in there. There was no breeze and every night felt about a thousand hours long.

One day, an air conditioner appeared. It was just the one, and I had no idea where it came from. Our new-to-us air conditioner wasn’t powerful and no doubt this is why it was cast off by the original owner. But it was better than nothing, and so it was installed in our dining room window. So incapable was this AC of cooling the entire first floor, small as it may have been, that Mom thumb-tacked bed sheets over the doorways to thwart the drift and dissipation of the cooler air. That night, and many otherwise unbearable nights to follow, Jim and I brought our sleeping bags down to the dining room and slept under the table, as this was the only clear spot large enough to accommodate us. The table became a makeshift fort and sleeping beneath it was just another shared story of our youth.

We only had that air conditioner for one summer. It limped along nobly until it finally just gave up.

Jim and I haven’t shared a conversation in years, much less a space as close as that under a dining room table. Since that time, the bridges between us have burned hotter than a New Jersey summer night, the embers smoldering on longer than a hand me down air conditioner ever could.

 

 

Everything Changes in an Instant.

Think about human life for a minute. Think about the idea that two people get together and do what people do and then, from that, another person is created. Just like that. It happens in an instant. Wild, right?

As the four year anniversary of my mother’s death approaches, I’m not feeling what I would have expected to feel. I’m not deeply and profoundly sad as I have been in past years. I’m not doing the fandango over here, but it’s more a general melancholy this time around. Perhaps my emotions will change day to day, minute to minute, as it gets closer. That is probably normal and to be expected.

I think I’m finally coming to terms with the idea that what’s done is done and it is all it will ever be. I mean, what choice do I have? She is already dead. Failure to accept this reality will not alter the ultimate ending. She is and will remain dead.

In one instant, she ceased to exist and I, in turn, ceased to be the person I was.

Things have changed so much since she died. These are changes I believe could not have happened until she was gone. There isn’t one single transition and for every one there is, there’s an offshoot of that creating a new shift, like branches on a tree.

I’m not who I used to be. I’m a person without a mother. The woman who got together with someone else and did the thing that people do, then carried me inside her for months is dead. And this human being, or what’s left of her at least, is sitting in a marble urn, a fine powder I presume, on my mantle. Think about that. That’s the reality of things. She’s dead. She’s powder. She’s on my mantle.

Some days it’s a sad thing, an emotional thing. And other days, it’s just a practical thing. These matter-of-fact acknowledgements happen more now as the intensity of my grief wanes. I think to myself oh, I have to go dust the mantle… Hi, Mom… It’s just how it is. Maybe I’m compartmentalizing. Maybe I’m accepting. I don’t know.

Four years and everything is different. A part of me, my past, is gone. My future, one that was virtually unimaginable while she was alive, looks bright. The enormity of the realization that her life and her death are both so instrumental in shaping everything about who I am is sometimes surprising. And yet, it shouldn’t be. She gave me life – it’s only right that everything between us will be profound, even when the depth of it isn’t felt until I’m ready to feel it.

I keep thinking back to one moment: I was walking out of her room, hospital visiting hours over for the day. I knew she wouldn’t live though the night. I knew I’d never see her again. I’m just starting to understand the gravity of that walk.

Think about human life for a minute. Think about the idea that a person goes around and does what people do and then, one day, they don’t. Just like that. It happens in an instant and everything changes.

 

Joining my friends in the weekly writing challenge at yeah write. Click the badge to read the other entries and learn more about what the challenge is all about.

Looking For Mute.

Lately, I’ve been dreaming about my mother and cigarettes. It’s no surprise. The anniversary of her death is approaching, as is the anniversary of my smoking relapses.

If you ask any of my friends who knew my mom, most will remember calling her Ma’am (as a joke, of course) and whining, “Oh, fucking shit,” one of her often-used phrases, while putting two fingers to the lips in a mock-smoking fashion. We did this to her face, we did this long after she stopped smoking, and we still do this now, because my mother and smoking will always go together.

When I was a kid with little access to cigarettes of my own, I’d steal some from my mother. She smoked menthol, which I do not prefer, but beggars can’t be choosers. If her supply was dwindling and thus my thievery easily detectable, I’d pilfer her ashtray, looking for those butts she hadn’t quite finished but failed to stomp out into oblivion. I’d wipe off the filter tip and get the last few puffs out of it, feeling the most disgusting part of the whole escapade was the menthol, not the used and discarded cigarette itself.

Though I dabbled in the beginning, I smoked every chance I got. As a mostly unsupervised teenager, that was more often than you’d think. By sixteen, I’d announced to my mother that she would be giving me permission to smoke in the house so I wouldn’t have to go for nighttime walks around the block to do so. After all, a 16-year-old girl alone after dark could get hurt out there. She probably didn’t have the strength to argue because as much as I’d tell you different back then, I find it unlikely that she just didn’t care.

And so, here we are, 21 years later and I care more about what people think about my nicotine addiction than I did when I started. I took 10 years off under the guise of my health but mostly because of the money. But then that fateful night happened when my friend brought tequila to my house because I wanted to get drunk and not feel the pain of having a dead mother. I like to tell her that it’s her fault I relapsed on the smoking and that, in the nearly 4 years since that night, I have not been able to get a hold of my desire to smoke, but it isn’t her fault. It’s mine.

I’m the one who thinks ahead to an occasion to do so, wondering when the next time I’ll be with a group I don’t feel uncomfortable around, or maybe just uncomfortable around enough that I can run outside to smoke, but also to take a break from the crowd and maybe sit one-on-one with someone for a little while. I’m the one who counts the number of smokers in the group to see if I’m going to look foolish or if someone else will have my back when I skulk off. I’m the one sneaking a smoke in, pretending no one will notice. I’m the one who can’t put the feeling of a cigarette buzz or the taste of a Parliament out of my mind, not when I’m awake and not when I’m asleep.

Since the beginning, it’s been a 24-hour loop of, “Man, I wish I could smoke,” and my friend just happened to be there with a cigarette the night I unmuted it. It was still playing, I just temporarily stopped listening.

I need to find mute button again. If you happen to see it, please let me know.

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Making Mountains.

I was recently stabbed.

People always tell you not to try to pry apart two things, say perhaps frozen breaded eggplant cutlets, by sliding a sharp knife between them. Well, I did, and now I can honestly say I’ve been stabbed.

I was also able to honestly bow out of being a Super Star Parent at my kid’s karate class, what they call those of us who help with drills, on account of my self-inflicted knife wound.

This is actually my second self-inflicted knife wound in five months. Last time it was slicing lettuce and, subsequently my thumb, while distracted. My kid wasn’t in karate then so I suffered without having any real need to tell anyone or bow out of things. I had passed on the tetanus shot, but sensing a recurring theme, I went and treated myself to one this time around. It’s the little things, you know?

I’m not sure if it’s my perpetual distraction, the expeditious approach of middle age, or some other completely blamable thing, but I find I’m injuring myself with increasing frequency these days. I suspect it is in my best interest to keep the pain reliever within arm’s reach, since my next mishap is likely only days away. A cut, a burn, a trip-and-fall over nothing at all… all commonplace it seems. Bruises appear everywhere on a daily basis with little to no evidence as to what specific incident caused them. That is, of course, except for the near-constant hematoma on my right arm, just below the elbow, which is most definitely a result of walking into the doorknob in the hallway on my way to the kitchen every single day.

I used to laugh at my mother because she was forever tripping and falling or coming up injured in some way. She fell down a stair and broke her foot. She fell and twisted her knee. She wore a brace to alleviate the pain of carpal tunnel syndrome. She pinched a nerve falling down an entire flight of stairs (OK, that time she was pushed, but that’s another matter for another time). Always hurt, though. Always.

It was funny, to an extent, because she was just so damn accident prone. It was embarrassing to me when I was a teenager because the casts and walking boots and braces and slings seemed such spectacle at the time. It really upset me that she constantly bowed out of things, though I was never going to admit it at the time. And it was scary as hell when it ended up being multiple sclerosis, a disease with no known cause or cure.

But that’s not me, right? To draw parallels between the two would be silly and irresponsible. I’m a rational woman and I’m not going to let my mind go there.

I’ll just curl up into the corner of my couch here, and wait for my hand to heal. I’ll just watch TV or something. I’m not going to brood. I won’t make mountains out of mole hills. I won’t blow things out of proportion.

 

Joining my friends at yeah write on the challenge grid. Come read.

In Dreams.

I originally wrote this one year ago today. This dream still haunts me. Today would have been my mother’s 65th birthday, but she died on April 22, 2010. I don’t have anything new in me today. Grief seems to grow more intense as the years pass. 

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Mom. 1971.

 

It was present day for me. But one look around my childhood living room told me it was still 1988 in there.  I was kneeling backwards on the old, 1970s style couch, looking out the window at the side yard.  We called this part of the yard The Garden.  The perimeter of the property had green chain-link, but the side yard of our corner property had a white picket fence separating my mother’s flower garden from the area where the kids played.

The garden was in full bloom.  Tiger lilies, black-eyed Susans, daisies, rose bushes.  There were plenty of other things I could never commit the names of to my memory.  But they were there, as they always were.

My mother walked towards the window.  How could this be?  She’s dead.  She shouldn’t be here.  She looked like the house did, like it was 1988.  She was 40.

MOMMY!!!  MOMMY!!

I screamed at her.  I pounded on the glass window to get her attention.  Tears pouring from my eyes, tears of joy to see her again, so young and healthy, so vibrant.  This was the only time in her life she looked this way.  This was the only time she almost seemed happy.  There was hope then.

I kept screaming, crying, pounding.  I reacted as though there was an immovable object keeping me from her.  I reacted as though her death was between us.

“Open the window, silly,” she said sweetly as she smiled, crow’s feet showing around her eyes.

I opened the window and it stayed up.  I didn’t have to use the piece of wood to hold it like I usually did.  I opened the old, dusty metal screen.  I reached out for her, calling out through tears, “Mommy! Mommy!”

I don’t ever remember calling her Mommy.  By 1988, I was 12.  I called her Ma.  Maybe Mom sometimes.  Never Mommy.

She reached out for me, too.  Our fingertips touched, then our hands.  I slid my arm up, holding her wrist.  Her gold bracelet draped over my fingers.

We stayed like that for a moment.  Our eyes met.  She looked at me with kindness and love in her eyes.  It seemed she was telling me things were OK.  Or would be OK.  It was reassuring.

Damn it, she never looked at me like that when she was alive.  Never.

She loosened her grip on me.  I tried desperately to hang on, leaning my body out of the window, reaching with my other hand.

Don’t go…

It was no use.  She faded away.

I sobbed and called out for her.  She was gone.

Then I woke up, my pillow drenched.

***
I had this dream a few weeks ago.  I dream about my mom at that age and of being in my childhood home often.  I’m always my present age.  I usually know, even in the dream, that it isn’t real and that grown-up me doesn’t belong in that house.
***

This is NaBloPoMo Day 17.

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