My Mother My Muse by Karla Stover

 

My Mother My Muse

 

     “Pardon me.  Do you have any Grey Poupon?”

      The question was asked by a lady, leaning out of an aerial gondola that was traversing the treetops of Costa Rica’s Braulio Carrillo National Forest.  She was directing her question to a group of people in a gondola below.  After a pause, during which mouths dropped open, those who understood English laughed, and the lady continued on her way, a happy camper.

     That was my 82-year-old mom—the funnest person I knew.

     Mom had a zest for life that all my friends loved.  “Bring your mom,” they were always saying, if I was asked to some social function.  So we attended a 60^th birthday party, a 70^th birthday party, a vintage fashion show, and an egg roll-making class put on by ladies of the local Cambodian-Episcopal Church.  The egg roll-making class was proof-positive that lack of a common language is no barrier to communication when Mom’s involved.  She and I left with many invitations to come back and just visit.

     One thing I envied was that Mom took no prisoners, and did things we all want to do.  Once, when looking for something in a one-stop-shopping store and unable to find a clerk, she had my dad step away (he wigged out when she did these things), and shouted, “Is there a clerk anywhere in the store?”  Needless to say, she got the help she needed.  Another time, (my personal favorite), when a checkout clerk had been paging unsuccessfully for the perennial price check, Mom decided to help out. “Price check on register four!” she shouted.  “Way to go lady,” said the man in line behind her.

     The thing is, Mom only wanted the courtesy and respect we’re all due, and her time was important to her as it is for all of us.  On occasion she’s even left the doctor’s office without seeing the doctor, telling the receptionist that she was on time for her appointment and that since the doctor couldn’t be on time also, that she’d reschedule.

     Of course, she got me into situations, too.  A few years ago, when we were at the end of a string of traffic and trying to get out of a little town called Tahuya, I rolled down the window and shouted, “My mother’s pregnant and has gone into labor.  I’ve got to get out of here!”  Mom and I were in stitches, laughing.  The Sheriff, directing traffic came running up, took a look at Mom, and had to laugh himself. It’s my claim, and I’m sticking to it, that Mom put me up to it.  It’s Mom’s claim that the Sheriff only laughed because her dye job needed a touchup.

     Mom is also one of the kindest people I know.  For years, an elderly, childless couple lived across the street from us.  Mom was the only one in the neighborhood who would go over and visit.  Her reward was to find out that the gentleman had lived a fascinating life, traveling through South America in his youth, and that he was highly gifted.  Once, he took her down to his basement and showed her the murals he’d painted on all cement the walls.  He was also a potter, and gave her a small arts-and-crafts teapot he’d made.

    Next door to this couple was a Viet Nam vet—no family to speak of—and, as a result of the war, not really able to have any kind of normal relationship.  He and Mom were good buddies, though.  Mom sent him snacks when she baked, and he carried in my parents’ garbage can every week.

     Once a month, Mom and Dad have brunch with some of their old high school friends—class of ’41 and ’43, respectively.  They all meet after church, (which Mom referred to as “Boning for my finals.”)  However, for those folks she couldn’t visit with in person or by phone, she fell back on old-fashioned ink-on-paper correspondence.  She typed her letters on a vintage, Royal, manual typewriter. When 1999 became 2000, she put a label on it that said “Y 2K Compliant.”

     When I was twelve, and required to taking cooking in school, I felt insulted that our first project was how to broil a grapefruit.  Mom had taught me to cook two years previously.  I was eleven, and she had to go to work, and I baked cakes and cookies, and helped get dinner started, because in our family, in spite of my brother’s perennial sports practices, we always ate dinner together.

     Mom was a good cook, but sometimes her patience was sorely tried.  While my brother and I were growing up, my dad loved to take us all camping, and we often took off for a campground in Mt Rainier on Friday afternoons.  This meant Mom had to cook ahead and freeze meals for the weekend.  Since we live in Washington State, we often got caught in rain.  I have a vivid memory of being huddled in an old tent in a torrential downpour while Mom tried to chip a ball of frozen spaghetti into a frying pan to heat it on our little Coleman stove.  Until his dying day, my brother shuddered over the memory of “fried spaghetti.”  I just think (no doubt from a woman’s point of view) what a heck of a good sport she was.

     I have a thousand wonderful memories of things—such as Mom’s making matching mother and daughter and Shirley Temple doll dresses for the three of us, of Mom as a Day Camp counselor and learning to hate the song Found a Peanut but singing it anyway, of helping me with a sewing project after she got home from work and had cooked dinner and done the dishes, of sharing her books and her clothes and most of all, her time with me.  One day I got a call from her and when I answered the phone, the first words out of her mouth were, “My uterus is missing!” Our conversation went like this”

             “Pardon me?”

             “Myyy uterisss is missinggg!”

             “Gosh, Mom, not even a ‘good morning’ or a ‘hello?’”

              I curled up on the bed with a pillow behind my back and took a deep breath.

            “Okay, start at the beginning. And speak slowly; it’s barely 9:00 in the morning.”

           “Okay, hello.  Now, I have to have my gall bladder taken out and the surgeon thought she should take out my uterus at the same time, if I still have one, so she requested a copy of my records and there’s no record of its having been removed.  Just the ovaries!  I know it was supposed to be a complete hysterectomy.  I mean, I’m 83; at my age, what do I still need a uterus for, anyway.  Now what am I supposed to do?”

            Sweet mother of Mayberry, I remember thinking. What am I supposed to do?

            “Any chance you left it at Macy’s?”

             “Not funny!”

             I feel very lucky to have a wonderful mother who taught me many things.  She taught me to rinse my hair with vinegar to make it shine.  She taught me that if you accidentally dye your black hair an unfortunate shade of red, that powdered Cascade dish washing detergent will take a lot of the color out.  That the resulting look is something like a rusty Brillo pad is a lesson we both learned.  She taught my brother and me to put Black Jack chewing gum on a front tooth and smile.  And she taught us to be nice to those less fortunate.  A sidebar to that is that one day when hoboes were still around and a nickel was worth something, my five-year-old brother was so friendly to an old bum standing on the corner, the destitute fellow actually gave him five cents.  But what she didn’t teach us was how not to lose things. Of course, those things were generally benign items such as recipes and books, though once she misplaced all her gold jewelry.  (It turned up three years later, right where she’d hidden it before leaving on a trip.)

            Which leads us back to the lost uterus.

            Mom took a deep sigh.  “You remember last year,” she began, “when I had some tests because of a mass, and the doctor said I had to have a hysterectomy?”

            I did, indeed, remember.  My 84-year-old dad was in the room when the doctor gave Mom the news.  Mom thought about the pronouncement, then turned to Dad and said, “Well, dear, I guess there goes our plans to start a family.”

             Even the doctor laughed.

             In due time, Mom had the surgery and all was well—until the gall bladder thing came up.  After a lot of digestive trouble, her family practitioner sent her to another surgeon, and surgeon number two—S2, as we called her, requested Mom’s medical records.

             “As long as I’m in there, so to speak,” S2 said, “and there’s a history of uterine cancer in your family, I might just as well remove your uterus.”

             “What do you mean?” asked Mom.  “I had a complete hysterectomy.”

             “Well,” S2 said, “According to your records, only the ovaries were removed.”

             “What?  That’s not what I was told!”

            “I’ll request the films,” she said.

            Which to me posed another issue—films?  There’s a camera person in the operating room?  Who pays for that?  At Mom’s age, is it Medicare?  No wonder it’s running out of money!

             So S2 requested the films, had a viewing, and told Mom that she could see the uterus in a little bottle in the operating room.  Sort of like an early Tarantino movie, and that apparently the hysterectomy surgeon had just forgotten to make note on her records.

            Well, who can blame her?  The day of the operation Dancing With the Stars was down to its final show.

            Mom had her gall bladder removed.

            The procedure took less time that my last dental exam.

            The question of where Mom’s uterus is, is an eeny-meeny-miney-mo situation, depending on which doctor is correct.  Mom’s going with its being out:  One, so she can give up pap tests, and Two,” because her doctor (one of many drifting through the medical system these days) actually told her he would be embarrassed to do one on her!

            The moral here is that when it comes to doctors and surgeries—your health is in your hands.  Ask questions.   Clarify what’s to be done, and confirm that what was agreed on actually was done.

            And remember to wear makeup.  You may be filmed.

                          I saw a tee-shirt once that said, “I can’t write a memoir.  My childhood was normal!”  I agree.  When I hear Helen Reddy sing You and Me Against the World, I always cry. My mom was always my hero and my best friend.

            Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I miss you so much.