"The Runaway Mommy"

Today, I intended to write a brand new post about the ironies of upcycling, but life is getting in the way.

To buy some time, I hope to entertain you with a three-part non-fiction story I wrote last year for a blog called "Between Baby and Boomers." (Wanna see it? http://baby2boomersandwich.wordpress.com).

The site used the first part, but they thought the other two sections were too much Short Story, not enough Blog. I like things that way, so I'm going to share all three parts here.

Enjoy! Anyway, as I always tell the kids, "It's new to you."

"The Runaway Mommy"

1.

I’ve been able to avoid most of the heavy lifting in terms of my parents, who until recently had been aging gracefully in Sacramento, California, 3,000 miles away from me and my young family. My older sisters, both raising families in the Sacramento area, help my parents deal with any day-to-day needs.

I’ve felt bad and blessed about this fact until my mom fell down some stairs last October and complained to me (in mid-December) that her feet and lower legs had been heavy and numb ever since. The soonest I could see her was Christmas. By then, walking, bending, twisting, sitting, climbing stairs, standing, everything—except lying carefully in bed—had become an ordeal of pain.

“I thought I was going to throw up when I rolled all those grape leaves, so I sure hope your children like them.”

“Mom! Why would you torture yourself like that? We do not needgrape leaves!”

“Well, Honey, you know, I want the girls to know that their Tayta loves them.”

I growl. I can’t say that I know better than to get in to fights with my mom, since I try to follow a path of honesty. But now, I’m not angry at Mom, who will forever equate food with love. I want to destroy Kaiser Permanente.

Kaiser Permanente, in their quest to kill my parents, misdiagnosed an amelanomic sub-ungular melanoma embedded in my father’s fingernail for years. My father, minus one finger and all of his upper-body lymph nodes, was lucky to survive both the cancer and the treatment. My mother’s bleeding ulcers and hemorrhaging uterus were also misdiagnosed, causing severe blood loss and emergency transfusions in both cases.

Mom’s doctor finally ordered an MRI of my mom’s back and reported a +1cm shift in two vertebrae, L4 and L5. Her spinal cord was kinked, they noted. Solution (which they would not begin until after Christmas): 6 weeks of physical therapy. That therapy could paralyze her for good.

“You are kidding me, right? Mom, you cannot accept this!”

“Honey, I’m tired of fighting.”

I am not tired of fighting.

I left the kids with my husband to enjoy a day of Sacramento winter fun at Fairy Tale Town. I took my dad’s Lexus, now part of the front yard landscaping since no one will let him drive anymore, and went on my quest: to scream at the highest level Kaiser administrator I could locate. It was an all-day event.

I have been an 8^thgrade ELA teacher in a Bronx school where a 13 year old girl told me “Suck my tit, Bitch;” where I literally caught a desk from mid-air that a 16 year old 8^thgrader threw at boy for calling him “fag;” where the principal shrugged and said, “Well, you can’t pull the Titanic off the iceberg overnight, Sweetheart;”where I wore stack-heeled boots every day in the hopes that if I presented more than 6 feet of Arab-American womanhood to my students, they would stop running out the back door of my classroom to pull the fire alarm, again. I became a lion tamer at that job. My own mother regularly calls me scary, haughty, arrogant.

I need all those traits and all that training to break through Kaiser’s wall of lower-level administrators; honestly, they bring to life Ayn Rand’s wretched, slovenly bureaucrats. But you know what? I do break through. Because I have been a bullied kid, a self-centered pseudo-intellectual, a busy career woman—but now, I am a mother. Now, I know how to fight.

Frankly, I’m thrilled to have an opponent taller than 43 inches.

2.

The latch snapped as I eased the hotel door open. Instantly, my five and a half year old daughter sat straight up on the sofa bed.

“Mommy! Don’t go!” she sobbed. My four year old, wakened by her sister’s shouts at her ear, shot up crying, too.

“Nooooo! Don’t run away! We need you!” Their voices ricocheted into the sleeping hallway of the Silver Spring Residence Inn. I shut the door and sprang to their sides, felt their tears in the dark, hugged them.

“I need you, too. But Tayta is my mommy, and she had serious back surgery, Bunnies. She needs my help. Jiddo can’t do it. It’s a week; it’s just a week. Daddy and you will have fun driving back to New York, and you’ll be with your friends all week. It’s just a week. When you wake up Saturday morning, I’ll be back, and then we’ll have your birthday party.” Just filling the space with sound.

“Tanya, it’s 5:15. The shuttle’s waiting,” my husband murmured in my ear.

We kissed at the door, exchanged good luck wishes, and he returned to the wailing girls as the door snapped shut.

The shuttle driver loaded my small carry-on into the back of the van, but I climbed into the front passenger seat.

“I get car sick,” I half-smiled.

I relaxed into the vinyl seat, closed my eyes, and hoped for a nap while we picked up other passengers on the way to Dulles. Two minutes down the road, my right foot went numb, and I snapped to attention.

“We have to go back. I forgot something!”

At our Toyota Sienna—called “God Bless America” for the now-tattered bumper stickers my Syrian parents put on it in the days after 9/11—I pulled out two essential items: a full lumbar roll and a memory foam sciatic pillow made by a company called “Astar.” I call it “The Ass Star.”

Both pillows were critical to my identity, reminders that I should never again lift my sleeping 3 year old….Yeah, I snickered knowingly to myself, But I’m sure I'm going to try to lift my 75 year-old mother.

As I settled onto my pillows next to the driver, I actually guffawed, “Hah hah! I wouldn’t even make it to the airport without these. Ok, let’s go!”

3.

Silver Spring to Dulles, Dulles to Chicago, Chicago to Sacramento. I shoot through security; sleep through both flights and speak to no one. I am a raging extrovert, so it's possible this is the most secret sign of the Apocalypse. I walk straight from my seat to my middle sister’s Lexus SUV, idling at passenger pickup. I roll my small carry-on bag behind me, indulgently thinking, Ahhh, the benefits of traveling alone!

My sister looks genuinely happy to see me, a fact that shouldn’t surprise me but does. Out of a personal principle I suspect is related to long-seated resentment of my place as the family’s spoiled baby and (possibly worse) as a“bleeding heart liberal,” she does not generally give me compliments or praise. But now, she hugs me and exclaims, “Thank you so much for this. Seriously, we could not do this without you.”

She asks about the kids, my husband, yesterday’s Arlington funeral service for my husband’s uncle, a full colonel who fought in World War II, Korea, and Viet Nam. We should all live and die so well to be so honored in our death, I think.

 

I ask about Dad: he was a classic Type A personality, but his physical health and his mental acuity are slipping steadily.

At my childhood home again, I get big hugs and kisses from Dad (who seems an inch shorter than at Christmas) take a quick shower, and put on a fresh shirt that I hope will camouflage my growing belly. No: it’s not a baby. Or...well...it's a Food Baby. I've been eating too much and exercising too little, two facts that are crimes in my mom’s eyes.

I hate the smell of institutional almond-scented soap. The place seems quiet, but my head is buzzing.

            My father walks into the private room first: “Hi, Honey. Your baby is here.”

My sister steps in.

 

“Ahhh. Hi, Baby,” Mom smiles weakly, then spots me towering over my sister’s shoulder.

“Oh! My littlest baby!” Her eyes light up.

 

My heart pounds: Mommy.

She does not look good. Mom’s normally smooth olive-and-ivory complexion sweats gray-and-yellow under the fluorescent lights. Her eyes do not look good, either. She’s feverish, I know, even before I touch her. My little ones have the same look when a virus makes them suffer.

I angle my body over the bed rail and lean in to kiss Mom’s forehead. My new underwire bra audibly creaks--I'm that heavy. I pray she does not notice.

At once, I feel two strong hands grab my belly. Startled, I glance down. My camouflage failed. The shirt tucked itself in to my waistband as I leaned over. And since I’m bending towards the left, the right side of my belly is bulging.

“What is this?” Mom demands harshly.

I brace myself. Last time she saw me this heavy, she relentlessly drove home how extra pounds always make me look "mammoth" and "really unattractive."

“Honey, what is this? Is your liver swollen?”

I laugh, relieved. She might be feverish. She might be high on Percocet. But she is still Mom.


Copyright 2012, Tanya Monier