Not Yesterday
Today is not a usual day. Most days I get up and have salted orange juice, coffee with cream and sugar, and half a quart of water. Not today. Today is not yesterday. Today I had some of that laid out, but someone (foolishly) left the box of doughnuts with two doughnuts left right by my place at the table...
Usually I have my orange juice, coffee, water, and half an hour later a protein shake. Today I had the juice coffee, water And one doughnut.
When I was sixteen I went to live with my mother. She was living at a motel and as a perk for the customers, every morning they had free fresh doughnuts and coffee. This was before the current habit of hotels and motels providing continental breakfasts. This would be our last year and a half together. I would leave after I graduated high school.
I have written before, somewhat of my childhood and growing up experience. Going to live with my mother was not my most intelligent move, but I got what I deserved. And, indeed as someone once said, 'she wasn't really a very good mother, was she?' The answer was no, she was not, but she did the best she could. Sometimes things are what they are.
A few years ago I was doing some grocery shopping. I was up by the meat counter, when one of the other shoppers (she was wandering around glassy-eyed) met an acquaintance and they began chatting.
"Well, hello. What are you doing?" the other person said.
"I have to get the kid something for lunches. He's in summer school."
"You'd think the school would supply that," the friend said.
"Yeah, I don't know what to feed the kid..."
I had all sorts of thoughts as I overheard that conversation. Wow, just wow. This was an adult with a child old enough to be in summer school, and she didn't know what to feed the child— or the kid as she called him. That was bad enough, but then the school should be responsible to feed as well as teach the kid.
For all of her faults, I can say my mother never made me feel like 'the kid'. I do think she enjoyed children to a degree. I think as my sister and I grew older she wanted a partner in crime. Once when I was in Junior high, I remember her crying and saying 'I just want someone to love me'.
Of course that made me feel bad. To say my mom was difficult to live with would be an understatement. She was impossible to live with, but I would have liked to have made her happy. It grew worse as she grew older and no one knew how to fix it.
She died at fifty-eight of cancer and complications from alcoholism. They removed one lung, with the admonition that she could live another ten years if she'd quit smoking. She didn't, and the next warning was she would have six months to a year to live.
My husband and I drove down to where she had been living before she went into the hospital. We cleaned her rental bungalow as best we could and made arrangements for when her passing came, having been told she would never go back to her small house.
When we first arrived at the hospital the social worker took us into her office and, knowing we were religious she solemnly said, 'We need to have a prayer, before you go in.'
After her death I replayed those last months, the last year. Was there something else I could have done? Could it have been better? I wondered if we couldn't have reached her somehow.
My reality check asks me if the reason I think I could have done something different is because on this side of the situation I'm not dealing with her bad side. I'm only dealing with her memory, and I can find good memories. There are some people who are their own worst enemies. As much as you would like to help them you can't do it for them. As I've told my family through the years, there aren't any magic wands. At least I haven't found them yet.
