Cramming it In
Sep. 30th, 2002 04:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
geminigirlSo...I'm going to try and get two or so days of rambling thoughts into this entry, and get offline again. Net is sporadic and slow from Mom and Dad's, and I need to get meds ready for dad and get him a snack so he can take them. I need to feed myself and at some point, getting on the treadmill would be ideal since I've been lazy. If not the treadmill, maybe the bike. But something to veg, to have real time to me. At least a little more time than the twenty or so minutes I grabbed taking a shower this morning.
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1. I'm back home in the town I grew up in, the house, the streets, the stores I grew up in. The familiar, the quiet...I went out last night to buy tea-something we'd forgotten in the grocery store and as I walked out to my car, I took a good look at the sky; it's so much more vivid here than "home" which I'm not sure is "home" either, because isn't this house supposed to be home?
2. Went grocery shopping with my Mom yesterday-I revert to twelve or so when I do that, I think. Suddenly, I have to ask for things that I want, instead of just choosing for myself. Mom is respectful of my snack choices though; she laughs because she knows I'll pig out on cucumbers if they're in the house. At the same time, she bought things that she'd never have bought when I was twelve-single serving pudding cups and such. They'd have been deemed "not good for you" and not purchased. She didn't even say anything when I was looking for a cookie last night...that's odd for my Mom. Usually requests like that are met with "Do you really think you need a cookie?" (A cookie, not two or five or whatever. And I'll eat just one cookie too.) She did say to me, "You're looking much better." And instead of "thank you," I said, "Yes, but how much of that is because I'm wearing clothes that fit?"
3. I love that in my hometown, I can go to the pharmacy and they know my name. They ask how I am, what I'm doing, where I am now. They know my Dad-he talks football with the pharmacists. I love that when I stop at the gas station, with Dad's card to fill his car, and take it inside because it doesn't work in the card reader, I say to the attendant, "It's not my card, it's my Dad's" and there's no question, no problem with my using it. Because it's not that small a town, but it has that feeling.
4. And I'm in the grocery store, I see the aging parents of my high school friends, find out who's gotten married, had babies...graduated from school. I feel left out a bit...having done only one of those things.
5. My father came home from the hospital yesterday. There's an angry looking incision down his leg, held together with staples. An elementary school art project. My father is suddenly old. The trappings of aging are present. There is a walker, a cane. I am pained, watching my father get around that way. Every movement from chair to bed, from bed to bathroom is accompanied by wincing. This, I suppose is an improvement over the quietly muttered under the breath, "Oh shit," which formerly accompanied getting up. I am wandering through the kitchen, making food, measuring out medication, ensuring that eating happens, fetching food, newspapers icepacks. My father is old. Not aged. Just old. And while this is the tradition, that parents care for and raise children who turn around to take care of aging parents, I'm not ready for that yet. I'm not old enough to be travelling back and forth for hospital visits and illnesses. I'm not old enough for aging parents yet, for my mother to be withering-I watch her hands, once powerful, whether they were working in the garden, administering a spanking, cooking or practicing musical instruments, I watch these hands once strong start to wither and twist with arthritis, and see my father slowly forgetting more things than before and I'm sad. But this is the cycle, and the way things are, and so I do the right thing, and spend a week with my Dad as he's recovering, knowing that this is only the beginning, and hoping that I can fill the shoes of my mother, care for her, for my father the way she cared for her parents as they grew older. She left me some mighty big shoes.
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1. I'm back home in the town I grew up in, the house, the streets, the stores I grew up in. The familiar, the quiet...I went out last night to buy tea-something we'd forgotten in the grocery store and as I walked out to my car, I took a good look at the sky; it's so much more vivid here than "home" which I'm not sure is "home" either, because isn't this house supposed to be home?
2. Went grocery shopping with my Mom yesterday-I revert to twelve or so when I do that, I think. Suddenly, I have to ask for things that I want, instead of just choosing for myself. Mom is respectful of my snack choices though; she laughs because she knows I'll pig out on cucumbers if they're in the house. At the same time, she bought things that she'd never have bought when I was twelve-single serving pudding cups and such. They'd have been deemed "not good for you" and not purchased. She didn't even say anything when I was looking for a cookie last night...that's odd for my Mom. Usually requests like that are met with "Do you really think you need a cookie?" (A cookie, not two or five or whatever. And I'll eat just one cookie too.) She did say to me, "You're looking much better." And instead of "thank you," I said, "Yes, but how much of that is because I'm wearing clothes that fit?"
3. I love that in my hometown, I can go to the pharmacy and they know my name. They ask how I am, what I'm doing, where I am now. They know my Dad-he talks football with the pharmacists. I love that when I stop at the gas station, with Dad's card to fill his car, and take it inside because it doesn't work in the card reader, I say to the attendant, "It's not my card, it's my Dad's" and there's no question, no problem with my using it. Because it's not that small a town, but it has that feeling.
4. And I'm in the grocery store, I see the aging parents of my high school friends, find out who's gotten married, had babies...graduated from school. I feel left out a bit...having done only one of those things.
5. My father came home from the hospital yesterday. There's an angry looking incision down his leg, held together with staples. An elementary school art project. My father is suddenly old. The trappings of aging are present. There is a walker, a cane. I am pained, watching my father get around that way. Every movement from chair to bed, from bed to bathroom is accompanied by wincing. This, I suppose is an improvement over the quietly muttered under the breath, "Oh shit," which formerly accompanied getting up. I am wandering through the kitchen, making food, measuring out medication, ensuring that eating happens, fetching food, newspapers icepacks. My father is old. Not aged. Just old. And while this is the tradition, that parents care for and raise children who turn around to take care of aging parents, I'm not ready for that yet. I'm not old enough to be travelling back and forth for hospital visits and illnesses. I'm not old enough for aging parents yet, for my mother to be withering-I watch her hands, once powerful, whether they were working in the garden, administering a spanking, cooking or practicing musical instruments, I watch these hands once strong start to wither and twist with arthritis, and see my father slowly forgetting more things than before and I'm sad. But this is the cycle, and the way things are, and so I do the right thing, and spend a week with my Dad as he's recovering, knowing that this is only the beginning, and hoping that I can fill the shoes of my mother, care for her, for my father the way she cared for her parents as they grew older. She left me some mighty big shoes.
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no subject
Date: 2002-09-30 02:08 pm (UTC)Think this is the case with any Parent/their child relationship. I still get that when going home..that feeling of being 11 to 14. The "do you really want that to eat" to "where are you going and when will you be back" (and not in the just wondering tone but in that I am your mom and I will know where you are tone).
3. I love that in my hometown, I can go to the pharmacy and they know my name. They ask how I am, what I'm doing, where I am now. They know my Dad-he talks football with the pharmacists. I love that when I stop at the gas station, with Dad's card to fill his car, and take it inside because it doesn't work in the card reader, I say to the attendant, "It's not my card, it's my Dad's" and there's no question, no problem with my using it.
Yup can say the same thing about my hometown. The same with the grocery store, drug store (I like it because it isn't a chain it is still a family owned/operated drug store), gas station (still in the same family and they are on generation number 2 to own it), etc.
Heck when your best friend, her son is going to the same school we went to and has the same teacher we had that is small town.
Our comment (to each other) is always "What was she thirteen when we had her"
no subject
Date: 2002-10-02 06:42 pm (UTC)There are still teachers at the junior high school I went to who I had years ago...I had mostly older elementary teachers, so they're gone. The principal of my Junior High is the same woman. I'd love to find my old JHS German teacher now. He'd probably want to speak "auf Deutsch" with me, and I've forgotten a bunch, but that's all good. I could probably get by.
But it's a great small town, even if I didn't realize it back when I was growing up and complained of constant bordeom.
All I can say is...
Date: 2002-09-30 02:36 pm (UTC)And call me if you need to vent. Not necessarily bad venting; just talking things out. It is hard watching parents age in front of you.
Re: All I can say is...
Date: 2002-10-02 06:46 pm (UTC)(I'm thinking of you at the moment...BNL on West Wing!)
I may take you up on that venting sometime; you're not online, so I'll try to catch you later. Thanks muchly for being a good friend.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-30 03:44 pm (UTC)Heehee! Incidentally, you've always been beautiful.
I'm not old enough to be travelling back and forth for hospital visits and illnesses.
*hugs*
When my mother first became ill, I found it very important to set limits in my own mind; to think about what I would and would not be willing to do. I'm lucky in that what my parents expect from me is very much in line with what I expect from myself; I imagine that has a great deal to do with the fact that they shaped what I expect from myself. :-)
no subject
Date: 2002-10-02 06:54 pm (UTC)You're right to tell me to set limits. But I think of the way my Mom traveled back and forth to Florida when her parents, particularly her mom were ill. I wonder if I can do that...be as good to her and to my Dad as she was to her parents...be the kind of kid that she was, that she expects me to be. I'm worried about failing in that regard more than anything.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-30 06:53 pm (UTC)