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
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 60th birthday party, a 70th 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
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
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.
