by jphilo | Jun 9, 2011 | Family
Some weeks are just too hot to handle, and this week is getting mighty steamy. You might think I’m talking about the record breaking, never-before-experienced-this-early-in-June heat wave that’s got the whole state sweating up a storm. At least, we hope there’s a storm coming soon to cool things down. But it’s more than the weather making this week too hot to handle, though the heat was the primary instigator of events.
Think domino effect.
Think taking your 82-year-old mother to a mammogram appointment in the heat.
Think she’s already hot and sweaty before the boob smashing begins.
Think she’s really hot and sweaty after the smashing ends.
Think her daughter doesn’t realize quite how hot and sweaty her mother was and took her to Walgreens to buy a Father’s Day card for her son.
Think her daughter figured out how hot and sweaty her mother was when her mother got sick to her stomach and threw up in a plastic shopping bag.
Yeah, that kind of domino effect.
Poor mom. On Memorial Day a few short weeks ago, she was almost dancing in the cemetery, making jokes about modeling for her internment beside Dad. Yesterday, she was over-heated, smashed, and tossing her cookies at the drug store. This morning, she’s feeling better and eating again, but the whole experience has me thinking.
Why are we subjecting this 82-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s to yearly mammograms? There’s no history of breast cancer in her family. And if she ever was diagnosed with breast cancer, would she want treatment? After all, the best day she had all month was when we visited the cemetery. It’s where most of the people she loves hang out. However, if I continue in this vein, the topic could render this post could get a little too hot to handle. So I’d better stop now.
That darn domino effect.
by jphilo | Jun 7, 2011 | Family
Once again, a dip into this blog’s archives is a reminder of how much can change in two short years. This post, from June 8, 2009, chronicles the wedding of my daughter’s best friend. Since then, our daughter Anne met and married her husband, and her best friend had a baby. The young family spent an afternoon and evening with us last week when Anne and her hubby were here. Anne has graduated and will soon move to Ohio.
But one thing hasn’t changed – the constant, deep well of joy within my daughter – captured so well in this photograph. She is a woman of unconventional and uncommon contentment. And that, I pray, will never change.
The Wedding Dance
Anne’s best friend got married on Saturday. My daughter was bridesmaid dress creator and maid of honor. I was wedding photographer (under duress), and Hiram was our gal Friday, but please don’t say it to him in quite those words.
One week before the wedding, life was tense at our house. Two of the four bridesmaids had yet to try on their dresses for the first time. Anne’s room was a disaster area, strewn with purple cloth and lavender thread. I was a nervous wreck, envisioning potential camera disasters in every waking moment and having nightmares about them every night. I maintained sanity by taking so many deep, cleansing breaths I almost hyperventilated.
On the day of the wedding, Anne was still altering dresses until an hour before the ceremony. But when she walked down the aisle, she was lovely, calm, and collected. I didn’t have to look lovely and maintained a surface calm by snapping over a thousand pictures, assuming that the more I took, the greater the likelihood of a few good shots. And my gal Friday – and don’t you dare tell him I called him that – kept me collected.
At the reception, Anne’s car had battery problems which kept Hiram in the parking lot during most of the festivities. Anne’s toast to the bride, Rachel Ross, was warm, witty, and wise. I kept snapping pictures, but the lighting at the reception hall and my camera were not compatible. Would I have any decent pictures of the reception and the dance?
My question was answered yesterday. Among the thousand and more pictures that took all day to download, this one, with my daughter, radiant and beautiful as she danced, brought tears to my eyes. All my tension and worry were redeemed by the look on her face.
Why, I am wondering today, after all my fussing and fretting, all my my worry and snippiness, was I granted the honor of seeing my sweet daughter dance and of capturing her joy?
by jphilo | May 31, 2011 | Family
This week’s recycled post was selected for one good reason. It made me laugh. Three meals at McDonald’s in one day is a feat I hope never to accomplish again. It’s more fun to read about when it happened in May of 2008 than it was to eat!
The Dream of a Lifetime – Recycled
Wednesday morning, my brother and mom picked me up at 6:15 to attend my uncle’s funeral. We spent most of the day on the road. In the course of the trip, we realize a dream that would make most seven-year-olds salivate. We ate three meals at McDonalds.
In our family, this accomplishment is earth-shattering news. My siblings and I spent most of our childhoods begging to eat at McDonalds. Since the closest one was 25 miles away in Sioux City and money was tight, our pleas fell on deaf ears. Except, of course, when Mom had saved up for a big city shopping trip. Then, if we were also running short of the straws for Dad, we ate lunch at McDonalds with strict orders to save the straws, ketchup packets, plastic spoons, extra napkins and anything else not nailed to the floor.
Our taste buds have changed in the intervening years, so we weren’t thinking of Golden Arches when we started out Wednesday. Later, my brother said he did have the Clear Lake McDonalds in mind since his mother-in-law would be there with her breakfast gang. She was, and we had a nice visit. My yogurt cup was delicious.
We arrived at our destination around noon. With the post-funeral light lunch three or more hours away, we decided to get something to tide us over. Pipestone, Minnesota’s dining options are limited. Once again, we chose McDonald’s. Their side salads are pretty good, I discovered.
At the church, Mom had time to visit with her sister-in-law before the funeral. The service was sweet and touching, a good end to my uncle’s life lived long and well. The cemetery was beautiful with dozens of fern peonies buds opening to the warm and welcome sun. During lunch back at the church, we chatted with relatives more than we ate and didn’t leave until after 5:00. By 8:30 we were close to Albert Lea, hungry as bears. Mom suggested we stop at the travel plaza that housed several fast food places. We agreed, but we weren’t hungry for Pizza Hut. We were hungry for Cold Stone Creamery ice cream, but after quick waistline checks we shook our heads.
Our third option was – you guessed it – McDonalds. I ordered a salad with grilled chicken, then caved and added a large fries to split with Mom. As we carried our food to the car, my brother said, “I think this a new record. Three McDonalds meals in one day.”
At that moment I realized we are getting really old. Forty-years ago, a day like this would have thrilled us. These days it makes us green around the gills. No doubt about it, we’re slipping. I have proof. We didn’t even save our straws.
by jphilo | May 27, 2011 | Family
My mom is not the person she was before Alzheimer’s started messing with her head. She can no longer:
- milk ten cows before getting on the bus to go to high school.
- stay up all night reading newly released novels like Gone With the Wind.
- match her big brothers bale for bale while hauling in the hay crop.
- reign as Iron Maiden of the Franklin School playground.
- bake a pie.
- move heavy furniture without a lick of help.
- remember the way to the cemetery where her husband is buried.
And yet, on Tuesday when Hiram and I drove Mom to that cemetery to decorate graves, what she is able to do remains a joyful and welcome comfort. She still can:
- read a novel a day.
- count out the exact change after taking us to lunch.
- appreciate the rare beauty of a perfect May day.
- find joy in the accomplishments of her grandchildren.
- tease her children relentlessly.
- remember how much her sister Ruth admired the trees in the cemetery where Dad is buried.
- Walk across bumpy grass to pay her respects at the graves of her husband and in-laws.
After arranging the flowers beside the headstone, I asked, “Would you like me to take a picture of you beside Dad’s grave?”
Mom glanced first at Dad’s name on the gravestone, then pointed to the grass in front of her own. Her eyes twinkled. “Would you like me to lay down and demonstrate the coming attraction?”
Hiram and I burst out laughing, and so did she. With big belly laughs that have lasted all week. Because my mom is still Dorothy Stratton. She’s still got her sense of humor.
She’s still got it.
by jphilo | May 20, 2011 | Family
Yesterday morning, I had a vivid just-before-waking dream. Our son, about three years old, snuggled in bed between Hiram and me.
He grinned when we called him the peanut butter in our family sandwich, giggled and squirmed when we tickled him. Along with his giggles, I heard the wheezy, asthmatic sound of his breathing – a condition called tracheomalacia which went along with his esophageal birth defect (EA/TEF) – something the doctors assured us he would outgrow as the cartilage around his bronchial tubes hardened.
I woke, disoriented and twenty-six years older than in my dream. I left our bed, where my husband, but no son, lay sleeping. I stumbled through our house, not the one we shared with our toddler son. I couldn’t shake the dream. It lingered all day long. The odd sound of our son’s breathing and the sweetness of his small, high voice and delighted giggles echoed in my memory. All day, I missed our child, ached for his small body crowding in between us, longed for his little boy, sweaty smell. More than once, tears came to my eyes as the realization that those years and those sounds, even the wheezy ones caused incessant worry, were gone forever.
Because the doctors were right. Our son outgrew the tracheomalacia around the time he started kindergarten. He left his wheezy gurgles behind, along with his fascination with dinosaur bones, his adoration for Mr. Rodgers and the Land of Make Believe, and his love of Legos. (Well, strike that last one. He still groves over Legos now and then.)
In a few days, our boy turns twenty-nine, and I rejoice in the man he has become. His face is whiskered, his step confident, his laugh deep, his voice resonant, his breathing quiet. He is a good man – loving, thoughtful, creative, and caring.
But he will never be three again,
never jump into bed between us again,
beg to be tickled again,
delight to be the peanut butter in our family sandwich again,
giggle with his wheezy gurgle again.
So this day, in the wake of a most vivid and lovely dream,
I am grieving for days that can never be again.
I am missing our little boy.
I am learning what it means to be a mom.
by jphilo | May 17, 2011 | Family
She did it! Our Annie graduated on Saturday – in 4 years and with no debt, so we are kicking up our heels and grateful, grateful, grateful.
What will she do with that literature degree? Well, she’s already finished up one young adult novel and is at work on a second. But everyone in this family knows writing books is not a way to get rich quick, though it is incredibly satisfying.
Of course, our Anne has more ideas up the wide, flowing sleeves of her graduation gown. She spends oodles of time sewing, knitting, tatting, and doing anything else she can think of with textiles. She even makes her own patterns and has perfected one for a high support, no underwire bra that full-figured women will love. The patterns can be purchased at her etsy site. You can also order custom made bras there.
BTW, for those of you who didn’t know Anne as a child, I am not making this up. For those of you who did know her in her dressing-Barbie dolls-in tissue-and-tape-creation years, followed by her Barbie-in-latex-glove-and-tape-bungie-jumping-creation years, this present day obsession comes as no surprise. Nor will it surprise you to know that she and her honey, though debt-free, are happily living on a pittance.
But you could surprise her by visiting her website and perhaps even ordering a bra. Now that she’d all graduated, there’s no risk of loose pages of her senior research papers being sewn into someone’s D cup. And there’s a high probability your order will be filled and shipped in record time – if you order before she and her hubby move to Bowling Green, Ohio in August.
So make this newly minted graduate’s day by placing an order. Or pass on the information to someone who might be interested. Or just congratulate her on her most recent right of passage. She’d love to hear from you!
