On Being a Mother
I didn’t want kids. I didn’t plan to be married. When my friends in Iowa dated in high school, many of them were pre-engaged and talked about weddings and how many kids they wanted. They talked about what colleges they would go to because their parents would pay to send them and they would raise happy kids in houses like you see on 50s TV shows.
I didn’t want any of that. I couldn’t have it. I didn’t understand it. My parents wouldn’t pay for my clothing as a 15 year old, let alone college. They didn’t know how to be parents. What I learned from them is that having kids is a horrible chore. A millstone around your neck so heavy that you can never, ever overcome the weight of the resentment. I learned how not to be a parent, but not how to be one. I didn’t learn how to love anyone. I hated myself and when you really dug down, I hated everyone else as well.
So I said I would have kittens. I would live alone, dependent on no one. I would have a job like That Girl and I would have cats. I even dreamed I delivered a litter of kittens from my own body. My Mormon aunt laughed about that for years.
I was amazed when I met this sweet son of a Lutheran Pastor; a California boy who was in the Air Force stationed at Nellis in North Las Vegas. We talked about kids. He came from a big family and had 6 siblings. He knew about kids. He had nieces and nephews and loved them and understood being pregnant and knew how to change a diaper and speak softly to a crying child and all the things I had never learned or even seen except on TV.
We decided we could do it. What I didn’t know, he could teach me and his family would be supportive to make up for mine. So we tried for four months and I got pregnant and things went to shit with an Air Force drug charge and he got out three months before the birth of his son.
I wanted to be a great parent. I wanted my son to know unconditional love, the kind you see between a parent and a child in a movie and you just feel the pain and the beauty of it when they sit at one or the other’s death bed. I wanted to giggle, to encourage, to speak in a soft voice and calm my son’s crying. I wanted to teach him big words and a positive attitude, to enjoy hard work but not to do everything the hard way. I vowed never to hit him. Never to spank or berate and to always, always no matter what, choose my words wisely because the painful words are the ones you remember. The fearful times are seared into your soul and there is no scraping them off.
I was gentle and he was hyper and I thought that was how all kids were. As it turned out we didn’t have family support, and we moved around too much. I didn’t spank him and we crossed our eyes at dinner. He could say amoxicillin and 18 months and we read encyclopedias at bedtime and I drank too much when he was little, and I had a total bipolar breakdown when he was still in kindergarten.
I fought hard to be a stable parent. I took meds; I explained them to my son. I divorced and remarried. I was there for my boy when his father wasn’t, no excuses ever. When I was angry I sent him in the next room. I never called him stupid or ugly or useless or any other name that might stick to his heart. He became a somewhat indulged, although poor, smart, popular kid. He ran his mouth inappropriately as his mother did, and we joked about tying him in the closet and burying him in the backyard as our way of understanding when he needed to behave better. His teachers were horrified and we giggled like naughty children taken to task.
We became best friends. My son made me a better person, because he needed the best mom available. I stepped up my game because I had to, for him. He got the ex-drinker, ex-pothead, and ex-drug user, ex-untreated bipolar mom. I didn’t run the PTA and I swore too much generally and had a blue-collar sense of humor and we became best friends. He went through nursing school with me. He helped me with the algebra and statistics I had trouble with, and the chemistry that made me cuss. He was in middle school but he was a “double accelerated” math geek and he got it and he taught it to me. I took him to my cadaver lab and he knew more than many of my classmates.
We talked about anything and everything and stuck tight like glue and that is how we both made it through a more turbulent than normal 22 years. Now he is grown. I planned for him to have graduated from college by now, but he has an attitude like his mother did. I planned for him to have a job but there is a recession as there was when I got out of high school in 1982. He goes to college in fits and starts and I know he will finish. He has male pattern baldness which neither of us planned, but he wears a mohawk well, which I never expected but didn’t mind helping to maintain.
He moved two hours away. He calls nearly everyday and talks my ear off. I didn’t expect that. He worries about his dad and I, we both have health issues. He doesn’t fuss but knows when I’m not well and offers help before I need to ask. If I drop dead tomorrow, he will survive. He can survive in a city, a town or alone in the woods. I know my son will be safe and can make it and that means I did something right.
Without a boy I wasn’t sure I wanted and didn’t know how to raise, my life would have been so empty I can’t imagine it. For me, he is the perfect child. For him, I am the perfect mom. We are both so lucky that if you could feel what we feel, you would melt into a puddle on the floor.
For me, every day is Mother’s Day. I am that lucky.
PBR
John was big, around 6’6” and probably 300 pounds, which was made up of dense muscle and beer gut. He was uniformed in a blue and grey shirt that bore his name, and twill pants always grease stained like his hands. He was perpetually loud. He laughed loudly, and he shouted at everyone-not in a boisterous or good-natured manner, but in the manner of a man who was ready to fly off the handle at any moment. The swagger and condescending sneer he gave his family or anyone who disagreed with him belied a white trash upbringing. Because of a mean streak as thick as he was, his children were silent much of the time, and were unusually obedient. The eldest son wet the bed until he was a teen thanks to his bullying father, and once grown became a marine and a bully in his own right.
John worked and was a union member at the Deere plant his entire working life. He was a mechanic, on the job and off. At home, in the evening and on weekends, he built race cars. He spent all his off time working in the garage on cars for the local raceway, but his wife’s car never did run when she wanted to take the kids to visit her siblings. He had his spare refrigerator in the garage. It was always stocked, all the shelves, with Pabst Blue Ribbon and Schlitz beer. He bragged about Mopars as if he made them, and laughed in the face of anyone who talked up Fords.
His wife published poetry and short stories in literary magazines. She had an absurd and gentle sense of humor like her mother, which her nieces and nephews adored. John stood at the keg at her family reunions out on his brother-in-law’s farm until everyone got religion and decided the drinking in front of the kids should stop. By then, they were adults and the damage was done.
(This is a work of fiction.)
Spring
By the last part of every winter, I am so ready to give up. Bipolar, SAD, RA stiffness, Coopedupiness; whatever it all is I curse my husband for refusing to leave Chicagoland. He’s never lived anywhere else, so he doesn’t get that it is possible. So I sink lower and lower into that funk of cold, stiff, snow and dark. I miss not being in an urban/suburban area. I hate the sound of the planes. I don’t see enough wildlife, there’s too much ambient noise…
Then March comes, and eases into April. Suddenly I am seeing water in the wetland, buds and shoots reaching out of the mud and the traveling birds return. I start hearing the Red-Winged Blackbirds and sassy Robins, the Goldfinches turn yellow and I realize winter will end again this year. I made it through another one.
This morning I stand at that magic window looking at bare but budded oaks, water and mud, and the Jays bring their fledglings screaming over. The baby squirrels are out of the nest, scampering together like kittens and tumbling and tripping on the tree branches without ever falling to the ground. The Red-Bellied Woodpecker and his smaller woodpecker friends fly off to their cavity nests with impossibly large chunks of suet and whole, unshelled peanuts.
While it is gloomy, the babies are here, and I’ve made it to another Spring.
Johnny
(This was posted by me on another site prior to this post.)
Once upon a time, I was an adult with a manly husband and a funny little boy who was around 8 years old. We had just come home with a Cockatiel. She was our first bird ever, and we didn’t even know what her sex was, so we named her Johnny. She chose the boy at the shop; she jumped onto his shoulder and preened his hair so sweetly we had to take her home.
We read and read on proper bird care so she would be happy and healthy and fun. We worked hard to keep things clean, because birds are so messy. One day I was using a shop-vac and cleaning around the table her cage sat on. The vacuum was loud, and I thought that, like a dog, she would be afraid of it. No. She walked a few steps closer, peeped her head over to look and as I was yelling NO! she was sucked forcefully into the vacuum.
I am a calm person. I do not shriek or scream or panic. I can call a code in the hospital with a dying patient and do just fine. But this? I completely lost my mind. I turned off the machine, I was jumping up and down, screaming for my husband, just plain shrieking in general. The boy and hubs came running because clearly something was very wrong. I didn’t know how to open the shop-vac, but hubs did. He opened it while I bawled my eyes out and jumped around. It was like a full body shiver that I could not get under control other than jumping all around. I nearly displayed jazz hands.
He got little Johnny out. She looked awful. 80% of the feathers had been ripped out of her head so she looked all bald and lumpy and bloody. The Boy was stoic but close to tears. There had been a thick layer of dog hair inside the vacuum to cushion her landing. I had to take her to the vet and explain what I had done. I was balling like a baby. The vet was almost laughing. Such a nice man. He said it happens all the time, also watch out for ceiling fans. He said all the dog hair in the vac saved her life. The wounds were just superficial, and she would be okay with some time. Only half of her feathers ever grew back, so we called her little Johnny Frankenbird for a long time. She lived at least 5 more years with a half bald head and one bug eye and died of old age, not because I killed her. Thank God. All birds are measured against little Johnny Frankenstein. And the cages are closed when we vacuum.
Story of a Hawk
I found my wildlife rehab photos last weekend while the Boy was visiting. I was, for a couple of years, a state and federally licensed wildlife rehabilitator (about 12-13 years ago). I specialized in birds, but I took small mammals, too. This meant that if a bird fell out of the sky into your yard or you found a nest of raccoons in your chimney, I would get them, take care of them, raise them or help them heal and then release them back into the wild once they were well or grown. This was for no pay, and I worked my ass off from dawn to dusk and it is easily one of the most difficult, interesting and gratifying things I have ever done with my time. I was lucky my then-husband was willing to help, building a raptor mews, flight cages, etc.
I was the treasurer for the local wildlife rehab group, and one of only two in the county who took songbirds. You have to feed baby songbirds about every 15 minutes from dawn to dusk. I won’t even go into all the poop I had to clean up.
My garage was the hospital. In this photo, I am holding an injured Red Tail Hawk. I am dying of heat stroke and struggling to hold him still but comfortably. I got a call that this hawk was down in a ditch about 45 minutes away from my house. It was like 95 degrees with 90% humidity that day. So I drove out in a tank top and shorts carrying welding gloves and a long sleeved flannel shirt. You do not want to get raked by a talon. I walked these ditches full of tall weeds and garbage, finally saw the hawk’s partner circling above, and found the hawk by nearly stepping on it. It had been shot right in the eye. Native birds are protected by federal law unless it is hunting season. There is no hawk hunting season. Some asshole shot this beautiful bird in the eye meaning he would starve and die in the wild because there was no way could he hunt properly.
I kept him for a bit and then he went to the rehabber who took all the big raptors. She had an airplane hangar to fly them in so they could learn to hunt and she could make sure they could hunt properly before release. Because of the pellet embedded in this guy’s eye, he became an educational bird.
Not a bad life, but not the life he should have had.
Wordless Wednesday
I’m trying another Wordless Wednesday, Muffy style. Of course, this means not totally wordless. Spring is in the air, and the yard has come alive with traveling songbirds, squirrel pairs, chipmunks and hawk couples soaring above the house. The two big oaks out back along with the critters in the wetland guarantee the hawks land from time to time for a snack or just to rest.
Last week, I saw an amazing display. A couple of squirrels chased a Red Tail hawk out of the yard. Usually, the hawk would happily eat a squirrel, but not this day. Tired, full, sick; whatever was going on with that hawk, he was not up for a fight. The photos are not great. They were shot through a smudgy window and a dirty screen. Still, they show a surprising display of nature.
He’s had enough.
Ring
(Fiction)
Somewhere deep down I knew it was a bad idea from the beginning. It isn’t like I was the one he wanted in the first place. He wanted Lucy, probably because she was meek. Lucy was not as pretty, at least not in a showy way, but she was the one who would smile politely when people weren’t polite, she was the one who would go along to get along.
I had to work at it. He would come in to our work at the fast food place just to say hi to Lucy. His sister worked there, too, so she was his excuse for stopping in most evenings. He didn’t come by most nights Lucy wasn’t working, though, so it wasn’t hard to figure out.
She wasn’t really interested in him. Her dad was an alcoholic, and he drank a lot. So did she, but she knew she could and would stop whenever she wanted. She couldn’t be sure he was able to do the same. I didn’t care about the drinking. I drank like there was no tomorrow, because I felt pretty certain that for me, there wasn’t. If there was, I didn’t give a shit anyway. It wasn’t going to be good. So I flirted. I smiled at him from the window in the back. I had a legendary smile; the kind people said would light up a room. I smiled and laughed a lot. I hid behind a happy-go-lucky attitude that I didn’t really have.
Finally, we became drinking buddies. We talked about Lucy, how she could be shy and flighty, how she thought he was nice but she wasn’t in a good place for a relationship. I listened while he wished she wanted him. We drank until we could barely walk. We smoked so many Marlboros in the box that I could barely speak the mornings after. We stumbled out of the bar in the dead of winter, got into his Datsun pickup and passed out while it was running in the parking lot. We watched the sun come up down by the river in the spring.
Finally, the booze and the nights and the shared cigarettes became a busy, wild sex life, and then an engagement. He doted on me. I was whatever he wanted to see. I was blonde and wild and willing to do almost anything. Lucy tried to warn me off, but I wouldn’t listen. She didn’t like him. She didn’t think he was good for me. We fought, and moved out of our apartment. She agreed to be my maid of honor, because in the end, we were best friends. That was what best friends did.
A few weeks before the wedding, after we were already living together, it started to dawn on me. This was not going to work out well. His dad was scary, his mom even scarier, his sister remote and his brother sexually aggressive. Once his dad hit on me, I wanted to back out. But I thought it was too late for backing out with 150 or so guests confirmed for a church wedding. I didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t think I had the right to cancel a wedding, even if it was my own. I was 20 years old.
I married him.
Absent
You might wonder where I have been lately. I wrote a post about trying even if you still write drivel or shoot crap, and then I didn’t write again. My absence has not been related to fear.
If you were reading a week ago, you know that my rheumatologist and pharmacy conspired to give me the oral version of an injectable drug; the oral version nearly put me in the hospital last year. I had decided to chance one dose and find the injectable at another pharmacy with employees who might actually care about the patients they serve. I did all of that.
I took the one dose of oral methotrexate a week ago Sunday. I called my Walgreens (yeah, I’ve decided to name them for their terrible service) and talked to them. It took two messages, the second one unpleasant, to get a return call. I called CVS, who looked while I was on the phone with them and told me they could order the injectable drug, even though I was not yet a customer. They called me back the same day with a time frame for obtaining the drug-24 hours.
I called the doctor’s office and expressed my displeasure at not being consulted before changing my med to one that had me sick for months last year. All they had to do was look in my chart and call me before okaying the change. I have spent the last nine days being really sick. I have left the house once, and that was touch and go. I am beyond angry. I used the injectable MTX this last Sunday and of course, now it is Wednesday which is the day I usually feel the effects of the shot. I have not gotten over the oral dose yet.
Why did I not skip a week? That is what my husband wanted me to do. But skipping a week of meds can put me in bed or at least make it very difficult and painful to move around. So I didn’t want to skip. Instead, I continue to lose weight hurriedly, drink Mylanta-Extra Strength!-and hope I can tolerate ramen.
I put up with rotten service from Walgreens for a couple of years because I am a long time customer. I’ve been using them for at least 15 years. For whatever reason, they have cut staff according to pharmacists, cut all service and employees are so pressured they are surly and uncommunicative which is a huge issue in health care. Walgreens asks for comments on service but does not seem to read them. PharmDs have asked me to write the company, and I have. I will be transferring all prescriptions to CVS, and there are plenty. I am one customer, but someone who picks up one or more prescriptions every week. I am an ex-customer, a dissatisfied one, with a big mouth.
I will get better. It just takes some time. In the meantime, I just don’t have that much to say. Instead of my previous habit of posting daily, I will probably knock it down to every day or two unless something fascinating arises.
Please remember: Advocate for yourself. Our healthcare system in the US is complex, expensive, and not rigged to the patient’s advantage. Get what you need and if you don’t, make your voice heard.
Stumble it!
