![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
My parents' empire
Posted on 2009.07.03 at 23:33
We are here, we are all together for the first time ever. I told Mom that she and Dad should have made up this cancer story years ago to get us all together - kids and spouses and grandkids - and all of us well-behaved.
I have a great need to stick by Mom's side. She's walking back to the B&B to go to bed? HANG ON! I'll walk back too! She seems so healthy and normal. She goes to exercise. She laughs and jokes like normal. The only thing is her eating and heartburn issues, which is of course the symptoms for which she originally pursued treatment.
I told Mom that over the next few years she was under strict orders to ignore it whenever I well up with tears, and to continue on with the conversation. I can't help it, and I don't want to frost any conversation from happening because it looks like I'm crying. I want to have all the conversations. I want to have the most horrible conversations about what she's going through, and what I'm going through, and what this is all like.
Mom said that she finds it too hard to think about the past, like when we were little, or to think too much about the future, and so she finds herself doggedly focusing on each day. All night when I started to get overwhelmed, I clenched on to that comment in my mind, and did the same. Almost like I was paying some tribute to Mom by aping her coping techniques.
Hawaiian Punch had her first two plane trips. She was remarkably easy going. She lost her shit near the end of the first flight, but other than that, she was at most mildly fussy, or more often smiley and making friends, or sound asleep.
When we were talking about having a baby, I was obsessed with how much work it would be to have a kid. I continually flopped back in my chair like I had the vapors, and said "It's going to be so much work." I was so overcome.
It is so much work, but it's much easier than I pictured. Because the work becomes the norm. It doesn't feel like so much work. Instead, whenever I've been apart from Hawaiian Punch, getting around feels abnormally free and easy. Taking care of her doesn't require constantly bemoaning how much there is to do. And believe me, if it took bemoaning I would be up to the challenge. I'm a bemoaner, big-time.
I have a great need to stick by Mom's side. She's walking back to the B&B to go to bed? HANG ON! I'll walk back too! She seems so healthy and normal. She goes to exercise. She laughs and jokes like normal. The only thing is her eating and heartburn issues, which is of course the symptoms for which she originally pursued treatment.
I told Mom that over the next few years she was under strict orders to ignore it whenever I well up with tears, and to continue on with the conversation. I can't help it, and I don't want to frost any conversation from happening because it looks like I'm crying. I want to have all the conversations. I want to have the most horrible conversations about what she's going through, and what I'm going through, and what this is all like.
Mom said that she finds it too hard to think about the past, like when we were little, or to think too much about the future, and so she finds herself doggedly focusing on each day. All night when I started to get overwhelmed, I clenched on to that comment in my mind, and did the same. Almost like I was paying some tribute to Mom by aping her coping techniques.
Hawaiian Punch had her first two plane trips. She was remarkably easy going. She lost her shit near the end of the first flight, but other than that, she was at most mildly fussy, or more often smiley and making friends, or sound asleep.
When we were talking about having a baby, I was obsessed with how much work it would be to have a kid. I continually flopped back in my chair like I had the vapors, and said "It's going to be so much work." I was so overcome.
It is so much work, but it's much easier than I pictured. Because the work becomes the norm. It doesn't feel like so much work. Instead, whenever I've been apart from Hawaiian Punch, getting around feels abnormally free and easy. Taking care of her doesn't require constantly bemoaning how much there is to do. And believe me, if it took bemoaning I would be up to the challenge. I'm a bemoaner, big-time.