She's Leaving Home
Tonight is the last night that my own mother, who is 87 and 3/4, sleeps in her own house, in her own room, in her own bed--though that bed is now a narrow, railed hospital bed that allows her to get up a little more easily, should she want to...which happens less and less these days. Tomorrow, she will be put into a car by my brother, who will probably sidestep an explanation of where they are going as she will have no memory of it five minutes later. She'll be driven three hours south, to live with a generous and loving child, her oldest daughter, my oldest sister, who has offered to "take mom." Her mind is diminished by Alzheimer's, her body is weakened by age and ailment. She could live a few months, even a few years, though these days I expect a call at any time. "Mom's gone." She's been gone for a long, long time, and everyone knows it. Sometimes I think she knows it, too.
Mom never worked--well, she actually worked harder than the devil himself, raising six of us while my father (he lasted till 88, mind intact) served in the military, leaving her alone for long stretches in her private fun house for at least two decades. To clarify, mom never worked "outside the home," unless you count the unpaid hours of labor spent dishing out food at our catholic school cafeteria, leading a Girl Scout meeting, attempting to lead a Cub Scout meeting, driving kids to softball practice, piano lessons, so-and-so's house, airports, emergency rooms and the Bank of America to open our first checking accounts before she drove us to college (technically Dad was at the wheel for that one, as she was terrified of the freeway). The unpaid hours of labor spent in labor.
She was probably relieved when menopause hit, because it meant she wouldn't spend the rest of her adult life pregnant, though "with child" for her had a literal meaning: with a child--at least one at home with her from the time she was in her early 20s until my dear little slacker brother moved out when she was nearing her 70s (and even throughout that decade and into her next, a certain older brother would occasionally descend with laundry, a broken heart, a broken car, or an overdrawn checking account.) I have but one kid, and if my darling darkens our door when we're in our 70s it better be to pick us up on a regular basis in his Mercedes and take us out to dinner at that place in Soho with the really deep wine list.
My siblings and I are spread out in age from 40 to 65, so when we were kids, she always had the full range of childhood stages. She could have been a bestselling parenting author as she had her own controlled study group right there--a baby or toddler on one end, and a teenage rebel or drifting college student bookending the other. She got pregnant for the last time (that we know of, anyway) at the age of 45 so her own hormones were riding the Tilt-a-Whirl while she was coping with a first grader and a graduate student. I lament the fact that her memory has all but vanished, but who can blame her? She deserves a break.
You may think my dad had the worst timing. But I just think they had the worst birth control. One hot and boring summer, I unearthed a college biology text that belonged to my father, who got his degree on the GI bill when I was in second grade. It was the section on human reproduction, it was 1973, I was bored with Watergate on TV, so I read the notes he made in the margins near the section on pregnancy prevention and the so-called Rhythm Method (he went to a catholic-run university). "This method doesn't work," he'd noted, "and I have the three accidents to prove it. But I don't regret it." Good ol' dad. He didn't regret the second three (we're the ones with the really gaping age differences)--but poor ol' mom. Ol' before her time.
Anyway, this is it. Tomorrow she finally leaves home, which I think she always wanted to do--at least under the right circumstances. I suspect she wanted to visit Spain, or China, or just about anywhere that didn't have a kitchen for her to cook in, or a bed she had to make, or laundry that needed to be folded. She was (is) a bit of a martyr, a child of the Depression, a child of immigrants--maddeningly resisting the replacement of worn-out rag-like towels or stained housecoats, wearing our old sweaters from high school, keeping 10-year-old pencils till they were as useless as twigs, eating with my dad's GI-issued silverware and drinking from chipped coffee mugs instead of breaking out the "good stuff."
We got increasingly angry at her poor-person ways, which blossomed once old age set in. Her obsessive hoarding of cheap food, her compulsive buys at garage sales and the dollar stores--we nagged, we gave her new housecoats and dishes and sweaters and towels for Christmas, but she just dug in and found even older clothing to wear, things we'd stuck in a give away pile during the Carter Administration. She carefully put our new gifts away, in their original boxes, and they were forgotten. It was probably the biggest problem any of us ever had with her, this pointless combination of ratpacking and pennypinching, this rejection of the new and improved. I guess we are lucky that that is the extent of our mother issues.
Ironically, now, in the end she goes off to live in luxury. My sister's well-kept house is comfortable and handsomely appointed, with closets the size of mom's old bedroom, and towels so thick mom will think they're blankets. But really, who knows what mom will think. And in a way, that's the real irony. She's finally getting what she deserves--R&R, 24/7--and she doesn't even know it.
Mom never worked--well, she actually worked harder than the devil himself, raising six of us while my father (he lasted till 88, mind intact) served in the military, leaving her alone for long stretches in her private fun house for at least two decades. To clarify, mom never worked "outside the home," unless you count the unpaid hours of labor spent dishing out food at our catholic school cafeteria, leading a Girl Scout meeting, attempting to lead a Cub Scout meeting, driving kids to softball practice, piano lessons, so-and-so's house, airports, emergency rooms and the Bank of America to open our first checking accounts before she drove us to college (technically Dad was at the wheel for that one, as she was terrified of the freeway). The unpaid hours of labor spent in labor.
She was probably relieved when menopause hit, because it meant she wouldn't spend the rest of her adult life pregnant, though "with child" for her had a literal meaning: with a child--at least one at home with her from the time she was in her early 20s until my dear little slacker brother moved out when she was nearing her 70s (and even throughout that decade and into her next, a certain older brother would occasionally descend with laundry, a broken heart, a broken car, or an overdrawn checking account.) I have but one kid, and if my darling darkens our door when we're in our 70s it better be to pick us up on a regular basis in his Mercedes and take us out to dinner at that place in Soho with the really deep wine list.
My siblings and I are spread out in age from 40 to 65, so when we were kids, she always had the full range of childhood stages. She could have been a bestselling parenting author as she had her own controlled study group right there--a baby or toddler on one end, and a teenage rebel or drifting college student bookending the other. She got pregnant for the last time (that we know of, anyway) at the age of 45 so her own hormones were riding the Tilt-a-Whirl while she was coping with a first grader and a graduate student. I lament the fact that her memory has all but vanished, but who can blame her? She deserves a break.
You may think my dad had the worst timing. But I just think they had the worst birth control. One hot and boring summer, I unearthed a college biology text that belonged to my father, who got his degree on the GI bill when I was in second grade. It was the section on human reproduction, it was 1973, I was bored with Watergate on TV, so I read the notes he made in the margins near the section on pregnancy prevention and the so-called Rhythm Method (he went to a catholic-run university). "This method doesn't work," he'd noted, "and I have the three accidents to prove it. But I don't regret it." Good ol' dad. He didn't regret the second three (we're the ones with the really gaping age differences)--but poor ol' mom. Ol' before her time.
Anyway, this is it. Tomorrow she finally leaves home, which I think she always wanted to do--at least under the right circumstances. I suspect she wanted to visit Spain, or China, or just about anywhere that didn't have a kitchen for her to cook in, or a bed she had to make, or laundry that needed to be folded. She was (is) a bit of a martyr, a child of the Depression, a child of immigrants--maddeningly resisting the replacement of worn-out rag-like towels or stained housecoats, wearing our old sweaters from high school, keeping 10-year-old pencils till they were as useless as twigs, eating with my dad's GI-issued silverware and drinking from chipped coffee mugs instead of breaking out the "good stuff."
We got increasingly angry at her poor-person ways, which blossomed once old age set in. Her obsessive hoarding of cheap food, her compulsive buys at garage sales and the dollar stores--we nagged, we gave her new housecoats and dishes and sweaters and towels for Christmas, but she just dug in and found even older clothing to wear, things we'd stuck in a give away pile during the Carter Administration. She carefully put our new gifts away, in their original boxes, and they were forgotten. It was probably the biggest problem any of us ever had with her, this pointless combination of ratpacking and pennypinching, this rejection of the new and improved. I guess we are lucky that that is the extent of our mother issues.
Ironically, now, in the end she goes off to live in luxury. My sister's well-kept house is comfortable and handsomely appointed, with closets the size of mom's old bedroom, and towels so thick mom will think they're blankets. But really, who knows what mom will think. And in a way, that's the real irony. She's finally getting what she deserves--R&R, 24/7--and she doesn't even know it.
posted by rtc at 7:00 PM
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