How I Got Here

Well, I should let you all know that I survived my trip. Almost in normal condition. The back-intestinal thing sort of hovered in the background but never developed fully.

Entertainment is rare in this little Kansas town I go to, to visit my son and his family. Since I have no idea about what constitutes fun anymore, I went to Bingo one night with daughter-in-law and her friend and sister. I believe we played 10,000 games of Bingo that night, all different designs of such. Incredibly none of us won anything. It WAS fun, and I suppose that says quite a bit about how exciting my life is in its normal state. It helps that all three of those women are crazy X3 when they are together.

While we were there, it began to rain. In buckets. We were in a community hall, and it sounded like we were in a tin can, which we were sort of. Although it rains all the time up here in the NW, it rains a year's worth in 30 minutes down there. Although last year, right after I left the area, half the town flooded (and daughter-in-law's sister's family actually lost their home from that, and lived with my son for six weeks until FEMA got them into a different house), this time there was no flooding.

Another night, when I went outside for my last cigarette, there was sheet lightening on the horizon which was CONTINUAL--so far away that you couldn't hear the thunder. The horrible midwest flooding going on right now is at least a state away from them at this time.

I had a good time. I spent a ton of money, we ate out every night (I hope I can still get into my go-to-work clothes on Monday). There were no fights. I love them. My granddaughters (7 and 6) are geniuses. The younger one, when we made our daily trip to Walmart, grabs a book when we pass that area, flops on her stomach in the middle of the concrete aisle, and reads out loud to herself completely unaware of surroundings and lurking pedophiles--we really have to keep a watch on her.

Anyway, it was good. I came back to lots of scarey mail (such as Social Security and Medicare statements and questions about my mother) which by now I have plowed through and taken care of what needed doing. Got hooked on "Brothers & Sisters" first season (available on DVD from Blockbuster). That's my daughter-in-law's fault--she insisted I watch the first one. Here's the funny thing about that series--it's absolutely accurate about how a family cannot keep secrets from each other. You tell one sister something, being mad at the other sister at the time. Then while with the first sister that you're mad at, all of a sudden you have a moment of closeness, and it seems perfectly reasonable to share that secret with her, and chaos results as reactions occur that you should have foreseen but didn't.

Okay, how many people, upon seeing Jamie Lee Curtis on the cover of "Modern Maturity," went to their hairdresser and said something like "I was thinking of going even shorter . . . " and hairdresser said "Yayyyyy!" and picked up the clippers and made a track on the back of your head before you could say the words ". . . next time."

Well, I did that unfortunate thing.

Actually though, I love it.

But when I put on girl clothes to go back to work, it doesn't quite work, although it looks very cute with jeans and t-shirt.

First sister, her daughter and I did a huge Mother's Day thing. Well, her daughter did everything that had to be done--I just went as a guest. It went great--lots of my mother's grandkids there, and their kids. First sister's daughter is an animal freak, and is now raising Peruvian alpacas. They are so CUTE. Half the size of llamas. When we went to see them, they came up to us, and just stood there inspecting us. And once they relax a bit around you, they hum. They wouldn't let us touch them, though.

I bought her a pair of gold hoop earrings, because everytime I take her to her house, she spends the time in her closet looking through every container there looking for a pair she used to have. I will be (maybe silently) accused of sucking up, I'm sure. The thing is I have an abundance of money right now because I have no time to spend it, really. So it is building up. I keep checking the checkbook looking for some error in addition/subtraction, but it seems to be correct.

When we think of cleaning out my mother's house after she goes, the temptation is there to throw a lot of it away without inspection. That will be a mistake cause when I'm there she'll pull out some little drawstring bag out of any of a thousand bureau drawers (she has a few thousand antique dressers), for instance, and say "Oh, that's my little men," and out spill five or six tiny men, one is an African warrior, carved from something that looks like ivory, from expensive-looking things like that to a cheap and rusty child's toy soldier. I have a weakness for all tiny things and have to be very careful about exposing myself to places where tiny things are. I did come home with a teeny Mexican man on a burro. I'm sure it'll get eaten by a spider, or vacuumed up if I'm not careful.

I have reluctantly scheduled my annual trip to my son's place in Kansas. I love him and my darling granddaughters. But I'm afraid I'll get sick again, as I did last year, with that unknown PAIN that took over my back and abdomen last year and left me with numbness and nerve damage in my left leg still.

I will only stay a week. Then, if I haven't died of my mysterious illness, I'll have another week off before I have to go back to work. I was looking at Tucson on the internet and am thinking of booking a fancy hotel there for three days, that comes with a 50-minute massage, and meanwhile looking at the area and seeing if I can afford to live there. One picture showed mountains in the distance. I can live there if I can see mountains. With the housing market in the toilet, I can maybe afford something, assuming I can sell my place. If the hotel people ask me "for one person only, madam???" (which they always do manage to ask, even if only with the lift of an eyebrow, I'll simply say I'm between boyfriends (they don't need to know I've been between them for 10 years now).

I want to run away, because everyone knows where I am. So when nobody comes here, it is continued, low-grade rejection.

My daughter is not speaking to me. She wants to buy my mother's house. She and her husband already have one of those predatory mortgages on the house they live in now and if they can't refi to a traditional 30-year mortgage in a few months, they are up sht-creek. Her normal response to everything like that is "it'll be alright." But I see no way they can offer a realistic amount. and that "it'll be alright" attitude--magical thinking I fear. We all love her, but can't afford to just give them the place . . .

And I think we must sell my mother's house before too long. What I thought was enough money to maintain it almost indefinitely is turning out to be maybe not so much. Unexpected big bills keep coming, and they're never anything that can wait, really.

So, when this is all over, if it ever is all over, when I'm living in Tucson and nobody comes to see me, it'll be because they don't know where I am.

A couple of weeks before Mother's Day, I e-mailed my daughter "it's a lonely business, being the only one who goes to see my mom, and check the empty house, stay there alone some nights, etc." This was my little way of saying HELP ME!!!!!!!! So, although she and her husband had scheduled a weekend in a fancy hotel with an amusement park attached, e-mailed back they would only stay one night instead of two and come down. Then after a day with my mom (the first weekend when she realized she would never leave the assisted facility permanently and cried for three days straight), while at my mom's house thinking they would arrive soon, I get a text saying "it's really cool here--we probably won't be there until about 10 pm." Texting is very handy for passing news nobody wants, isn't it. So I'm there, standing on the shore, that bottle of bourbon crosses my mind, wondering why everyone is at a party but me, and filled with resentment and rage. This is a familiar place, a place I always seem to be, and it never gets less unpleasant.

However, I am weller than I realize. I no longer take a pill or drink stuff "at" somebody else. I've even cut back on my miracle stomach pills, to one a day again, and wierdly it's much more effective at that amount than taking three was.

Amazingly, if people I love are treating me badly, I no longer have to treat myself worse to give "them" a lesson.

So I went to the utility room, got a shovel, and spent a couple of hours shoveling the beach back onto the beach, from the deck steps that it has swallowed in the last two year's of wild storms. I thought I was making great progress until I got a step and surrounding area clear of sand and shells and discovered another step, completely buried and just visible at this point. My energy and rage was gone by then, so I just put the shovel away hoping I could get it done another time.

Then, oh the betrayal!!!!!! When they did arrive, there was a pseudo-granny in attendance, who was there to play with my granddaughter during this hotel stay, during the times her parents were sleeping late or doing grown-up things. A nanny, one might call her.

My granddaughter, who is the most physically beautiful child in the world, I do not exaggerate, can be a tiny bit of a pest I suppose. I love her but fear her a bit, as one does the popular girls at school. As a baby she never wanted to come to me. This was heartbreaking to me. She'd sleep in the arms of strangers, but not mine. Luckily, my boss, a very funny and nice person had the same reaction from his first grandchild at the same time, and while he was telling me about her "terror response" to him, which crushed him, I felt a little less singled out. But I do confess, three minutes into playing Candyland, or serving tea to stuffed animals, sitting in a tiny chair, well, it ain't my cup of tea. I am a rotten granny actually and prefer gossiping with her mother.

Worse than that, even I loved the pseudo-granny. She's a hoot! Although she's about 20 years younger than me, we have a lot of the same ailments, similar allergies and symptoms, near-death allergy experiences, and we talked and talked, with poor granddaughter having a hard time getting a word in. Finally when we were talking about feeling insecure or unhappy about something, my seven year old darling said "well, when I feel like that, I stand in front of the mirror and say [and here she speaks in a very stern pull-yourself-together tone] "you're FINE!!!" I was shocked into silence--how awful that she has had to learn such a technique at such a tiny age, but PROUD that she has it, a toughness. And I said "You DO? You're fabulous!" and grabbed her and loved her up because she is so fabulous.

I spent yesterday with my mom, and took her to the house. She was fine mentally but having breathing problems and her heart was pounding and flipping around--she'd been up most of the night because she couldn't sleep as it's worse lying down. First sister only sees her twice a month or so. Second sister sees her about the same amount, but during the week so she won't have to worry about seeing me. I feel they think I'm being a goody-goody just to make them look bad. But for me, my mother, since she's been sick, is finally the mother I always wanted--thrilled to see me, very loving.

Years ago, I rented the movie "Savannah Smiles," just because it has an adorable little girl in it and some preview or something I'd seen made me want to watch it. It was cute and watchable, and I was enjoying it. Two criminals are involved, having kidnapped this little girl, but they are comedy characters--one is a chubby, cheerful, affectionate guy, and the other is thin, quiet and moody. Of course, they both fall in love with the child and the movie shows their conversion from criminals to grampa-sorts. However, suddenly there is a dream-sequence which shows the background of the skinny, moody guy--as a child he's in standing in a farm field, in overalls, I believe, seeing his family ride off together in a wagon. And he is left behind. And he runs to catch up and remind them that they've forgotten him, and they look down at him, obviously note he's there, but then turn back to their laughter and happy togetherness, and drive on. And he runs on and on, getting further and further behind them, and they don't look back anymore.

Later in the movie, it returns to that scene, and they FINALLY stop the wagon, and attitudes totally changed, pull him up into the wagon with them, engulfing him into the family. But it's too late, for him and for me--by then I'm barely aware of the original story anymore, and I'm a messy puddle having in two or three minutes seen my life story laid out in front of me.

I know I will not go to Tucson--there seem to be only gravel in the yards there. I miss trees when I leave this place. I can't face the "for one, Madam?" questions.