Aging

My confirmation, Temple Emanuel

I think this picture was taken around 1975. My mother is the woman on the far right. Her mother, my grandmother, is the woman standing in the pantsuit in the center. Her husband, one of my grandfathers, is beside her.  It's funny that my dad kept his sunglasses on for the photo. The man on the far left is his father, the other of my grandfathers.My siblings are also in the picture along with one of my aunts who is my father's sister.

It brings sorrow to me that all have passed on except for my siblings and my mother. It is sorrow for love gone by. The deaths in my family of which I was a part were not long and drawn out. My beloved Nana Anna passed very quickly. I lied about my age in order to see her in intensive care. My Poppa Jack also passed away in the hospital. I got to see him one time, too. My father never woke up from what turned out to be his final heart surgery.

My mother is turning 82 on Tuesday and it is getting harder to be around her. Whenever she spoke of the final years before her mother passed, she would reminisce about how mean she was to her. My older sister witnessed it but at that time I lived halfway across the country and had my own issues.

I am looking at the picture and realize I am flanked by my grandfathers. I remember Poppa Jack making sure he was next to me. It was a protective act.

I am losing my mother as her brain changes with age. She was never the milk and cookies type of mom and our relationship was rocky but these past few years she tried. We had fun together and would laugh. Being with her now is a lesson in patience and reminding myself that her hurting me is a symptom of what is going on with her physically. Apparently this is heredity. My older sister, not joking, reminded me the other day on the phone that we have a pact that if one of us gets mean when we are old to say something.

With each new visit, I hope that the time spent with her is without me getting my feelings hurt. This probably sounds selfish of me especially when I know she is oblivious to the effect her actions and words have on me.

I have started to mourn my mother. She is leaving me very slowly. Little pieces of her are breaking off and crumbling never to return. After each visit it is taking longer for me to recover my balance because she is getting worse.

I was going to write about Lolly today, our (Poppy and me) new girl. She's a 5 year old Chihuahua that was rescued from euthanasia. I'll have to talk about her soon. Until then, here's a pic.

On Turning 56

I just woke up from a nap and it's raining. One of those typical rains with big drops and slanted. It has been a hot and rainy summer and it's fall now and I would like cooler weather. It's mid-October, for Pete's sake. It's normally cooler by now. Thank you global warming.

This Tuesday I turn 56. Around my birthday I usually write about how I feel.

Today I didn't feel like spending any money...so I didn't. Instead I took Poppy to a local park and we walked the path that encircles it. Here's a pick of Poppy I took by accident during our walk. I was trying to turn the camera off:

Here's a pic of a family of ducks that live on the pond in the park. I took this one on purpose:

 

Each year around my birthday I take stock of my life. This year I

1. Left my old job for a new job
2. Was let go at my new job by my supervisor. Not the one that hired me. She was fired from her position after I was there one week. I was let go by her replacement.
3. Was unemployed for 4 weeks
4. Landed safely and happily where I work now. 

This is one of my mother's rabbit statues with a gecko in the middle of its face. I took this yesterday as I have gotten in the habit of spending my Saturdays with Mom. This was also taken on purpose:



 Speaking of my mother, I introduced her to the new very large Goodwill store down the road. I have been getting rid of things I no longer want or need so one Saturday she and I went there to drop off my donations. Afterward, Mom wanted to see the inside of the retail store, which is next door. I plead guilty to introducing my mother to her new drug - Goodwill shopping. It is located in an upscale neighborhood so you can imagine how nice some of the things are there. 

Getting back on point, I can't take stock of my life without including her and her changes. She doesn't wash her hair often enough now. She thinks it is okay to just pull it back into a comb or barrette when it is clearly not.

My mother has always hated to cook even though her cooking is close to gourmet. This past Tuesday, she invited my younger sister and her family along with me to break the Yom Kippur fast. Beforehand we discussed the different dishes she could make. Mom decided on chicken in wine sauce. This is one of her specialties. She used to make it often and it was always mouth watering.

I got to her house a half an hour early and she took the dish out of the oven to turn the chicken over. She had used large chicken breasts instead of fillets and the chicken was clearly pink. I told her we needed to raise the oven temperature to get them cooking faster and that they wouldn't be ready on time. Mom cursed a blue streak and exclaimed how much she hated to cook. Her rant ended on, "So we'll eat late." I answered with, "I'm sure none of us have fasted anyway." We can talk about how bad of a Jew I am another time.

 Here is a pic of a racoon mom and her baby keeping an eye on me while I walked to my mailbox. Mom climbed high in the trees and her baby followed:



Getting back to my mother. Her cooking one of her go-to dishes incorrectly was a road sign flashing in my face. 



Yesterday I spent the day with Mom. Her behavior was not the norm. For the past few months I have gotten used to her sometimes having a hard time following conversations and being able to call up a word but yesterday her personality was different. On top of that, once we got back to her house after all the running around we did (I always do the driving now), I laid down on the couch with Poppy and fell into a light sleep. I could hear Mom puttering around cleaning her new treasures and deciding where they should go. Then, it was silent. I opened my eyes to see her sitting on the couch doing nothing. No book. No TV. No newspaper. Just sitting staring straight ahead. I asked her why she was just sitting there. She said she didn't want to wake me up by turning on the TV. Mind you, there are two other rooms with working televisions she could have watched without disturbing me but that didn't cross her mind.

I am starting to lose my mother. For those of you that have experienced or are experiencing an aging parent, it feels like a part of you is disappearing. Trying to hold onto a wisp of smoke as you watch it disperse and disappear.

As I turn 56, it is bittersweet. So much of my life is finally on track. Now the part I could always count on is starting to get offtrack. As a former Russian co-worker would say, "Not nice."

Wait. How old are you?

My mother is 79 years old.  This coming January she will be 80.  She still drives, still cooks, still cleans, and is able to take care of her two dogs and walk them regularly.  My mother doesn't act or look her age.  This holds true when it comes to men, too.  "I know he likes me."  "I could tell he liked me."  It doesn't matter if the guy is 25 years old, single or married.  It doesn't matter if he is 50 or 65.  In my mother's mind she is still the belle of the ball and the life of the party.  Men find her fascinating and that, my friend, is her reality.

Apparently she has been learning some new slang as the other day when I was talking to her on the phone on my drive home from work she was telling me about some man she talked to somewhere.  I don't remember the details but that isn't the part of the story you need to know.  In her mind, he was enamored with her and she said, "I would do him."

Last Sunday morning I was over at my mother's house having my weekly visit.  I was requested to get there within a certain time frame as she had a neighborhood party to attend later that afternoon.  The way it works is each neighbor takes turns hosting and everyone on the street is invited.  My mother decided she is never going to host but periodically she does attend these gatherings.  One of the reasons she moved into this new development was because they represented themselves as actively providing social events within their community.

My younger sister, Eve, dropped by and it is always a treat to spend time with her, too.  The three of us were sitting on bar stools belly up to the kitchen island gibbering away when my mother announced that she bought a new top for that afternoon's party.  She said, "You know how I hate to shop," as she jumped from the bar stool and walked to her bedroom to get this new top we had to see.  Eve and I looked at each other. "Hates to shop?"
"I was being sarcastic."
"Oh."

Mom walks out of her bedroom with a sheer black lacy top.  Eve and I are speechless but we manage to oooo and ahhhhh over it because it is very pretty.  Eve then states the obvious.  "You know you have to wear a camisole underneath it, right?"
"What's a camisole," my mother asks irritated.
"Like a tank top," Eve says glancing my way.
I chime in, "Yeah.  They have spaghetti straps."
My mother is even more irritated.  She's the mother, after all.  "I don't need one."
The battle is on.  Eve and I are now talking over each other trying to convince my mother she absolutely cannot wear that top without a camisole underneath.  My mother's answer?  "I tried it on in the store and it looked fine."  "I have a black bra.  It will be fine."  To which Eve asks, "You have a black bra?"  To which my mother answers, "Yes.  I have two."

That shuts us both up for a second as more questions and weird thoughts dance around inside both of our heads.  We manage to bring ourselves back on point to the emergency we are trying to fend off.  My mother finally acquiesces and goes to the hall mirror to try on the shirt to prove to us we are wrong.  She whips off her current top and lo and behold, she is wearing a black bra.  The sight is a little unsettling.  She then pulls the new top up over her head, fidgets with it as she regards her reflection in the mirror, and walks back over to Eve and me.  Eve says, "See?  You can see your stomach.  You have to cover  your stomach."  That was a very polite way of saying, "Mom.  You are clearly almost naked right now and you CANNOT go out in public dressed like that."  I am nodding and agreeing.  My mother looks down and finally cannot deny or defend any longer.

"Where do I buy a camisole?"







  

On Turning 54

My hardest birthday was my 29th.  I had just one more year left in my twenties and then I would officially be old, at least that was what I was thinking.   It wasn't like I had to come to terms with things like no more partying, acting mature, or putting others ahead of myself.  I had been knee deep in just the opposite since I had turned 21.  My life was full of responsibility with my marriage and two children. It was about losing my youth.  At what point will my hair start to lose its color?  Will I end up being like the women I observed playing Mahjongg with my mother?  As a teenager I promised myself that would never happen.  Will I lose my identity?

Eventually I resigned myself to the fact that I could not fight getting older.  More birthdays came and went without fanfare.  Through the years the changes weren't a big deal until Thyroid Cancer busted through the swinging tavern doors making the kind of entrance that causes the poker players to look away from their cards, the drunk to find the energy to lift their heads, and the piano player to stop mid phrase.

I lost control over my body and rudely learned what being a non-person was like.  I was being harshly judged by ignorance.

I lost control over my future.  How many birthdays did I have left?  I learned that I never really had control over that in the first place.  Another painful lesson.

Each time cancer drove me to learn something, it was like being tortured on the rack forced into stretching my mind to make changes at my core.

Recently I was reading on Facebook someone describing losing two people within weeks of each other.  Both were in their mid to late sixties.  I did the simple math in my head and was slapped with the realization that I am but a mere 12 to 14 years away from their ages.  Everyone has experienced the phenomenon of the relativity of time.  The older we get the faster it goes.  As I look to turn 54 in a few months, the end gets closer and instead of it being blurry I am now able to make out some of the details.  I started to panic because there was so much more I wanted to do and this time crunch thing was squeezing my ribs with vice like strength.

It has been a couple of years since Cancer has held me at gunpoint.  I've had great reports after enduring my second surgery in 2010 and unbeknownst to me I had forgotten the lessons I had learned the primary one being tomorrow is never promised.

Young's Literal Translation of Proverbs 16:18 is "Before destruction is pride, And before stumbling -- a haughty spirit."  These I know to be true from my personal experiences and how prideful is it to believe I am the one with the control?  Nope.  Not going to fall under that delusion again.

Rock on, my fine feathered friends.  Oh - and about my hair and it losing its color - I started with a few white hairs but now it is more like what used to be a small intimate party is a houseful of guests because Word of Mouth can't keep quiet.  Uninvited people keep showing up and you know they will be calling their friends to come join them.  I am not going to cover up those white hairs.  I earned them!

Mom

My mother and I have not been close our whole lives.  It isn't until the past year that we've found peace.  There has always been some kind of weird behavior from my mother towards me that she has a hard time controlling.  She has admitted to it on and off through the past 10 years most recently about three months ago.  She has apologized to me again and again for "not being nice to me" and I know that a large part of it is that she feels that if she had loved me properly and treated me kindly I would not be in the position I am in now.

One of my earliest memories of my mother is when I was somewhere around 4 years old.  I was in the front yard playing while she was taking a nap on the couch in the living room.  This was the early '60s in a small town at a time when it was safe to let your kid do that.  Being curious, I observed a bee a little too closely as it went about it's business in the bushes and I got stung.  Crying, I ran into the house to my mother asking for solace and help. Instead I was told to go back outside and play.  Everything was fine.

I no longer experience emotional pain when I recall this.  With age comes acceptance plus my mother has apologized enough.  She is 79 and I don't want her to be awash in guilt.

The position I am in now is I am making 36% less money in Florida than I did in Baltimore. I live in a house where 95% of the windows are painted shut and the ones that I can open don't stay open unless there is something propped up keeping them that way.  There are termites and the bedroom carpeting, despite my vacuuming efforts, is a luxury spa for fleas.  Since last fall my landlord has promised he will tent the house.

The appliances were new in the '70s except for the microwave that my landlord replaced last year.
Since the old one was part of a stove/oven/microwave combo, the new one sits on a table in the kitchen.

Because I left my abusive alcoholic ex-husband who wouldn't allow the 40 some odd potential buyers into the house I used to own to view it to make a possible $40,000 profit, I have been in the foreclosure process and have been notified I owe a lot of money despite the auctioning off of the house that was a couple thousand short of the asking price.

Getting back to my mother.  I routinely call her on my drive home from work.  It keeps me awake after a long day,  the hour long drive seems shorter, and I can give her the time she wants.  As we were talking yesterday afternoon, Poppy's allergies came up which was followed by the subject of fleas and termites.  My mother with a voice choked with emotion said, "I can't believe a child of mine is living this way."  I told her it was okay and I wasn't ashamed to live where I do.  Of course I wish I was living somewhere nicer but in the end we all die and we can't take it with us.  Whatever we do in our present lives will end and some day we will be back and I hope the next life, having learned what I have in this life, will be cushier.

I have lived through cancer and decisions I made hoping they would patch-up emotional wounds.  I no longer raise my fists in response to fists being raised at me.  I can admit to imperfection without losing my sense of self.  I can cry without feeling less than.  I can feel weak or strong without guilt and/or the sense that I am letting someone down or carrying them.  The only expectations I aim to fulfill are my own; the ones I set for myself.

I love my mother and I accept her.  She is not going to change and she loves me with all of her heart as best she can.  I am going to enjoy and cherish her and sometimes grit my teeth because of her but I will do it until I don't have her anymore.