Checking In With Mom

My eighty-nine year-old mother’s Parkinson’s is progressing.  “My mind is great,” she said yesterday on my visit, “but the body…well, not so good.”

“It’s definitely more pronounced lately. Mostly, it’s her balance,” Rosalind, my favorite nurse on her skilled nursing floor at The Jewish Home, told me. “But, we are trying new things and adjusting her meds.”

Rosalind had come into Mom’s room to check on her and have a chat with me. She rubbed Mom’s arm. “We love her.”

“Even when she tries to get up by herself and presses the call button fifty times a day?” I laughed.

My mother reached for her lipstick and the mirror on her little table.  “You dirty bird,” she said to me. “Don’t start in with that.”

The nurse gave me a wink and a knowing smile and left to tend to the resident across the hall.

As usual, Mom’s television was on in the background.  Trump’s speech the day before at CIA Headquarters was being rebroadcast.

“So, Mom, how are you feeling about our new President?”

“It’s a shame that he blew all the people off who really cared about something.”

“You mean the Women’s March yesterday?” I asked.

She looked up from the mirror. “Yeah, he got ‘em all wound up, then didn’t listen to them.”

Mom went back to applying her lipstick with a shaky hand.

“How about Melania?”I asked.

“Too skinny. Great inaugural dress, but too skinny. And, Trump’s big on Nepotism. ‘Gotta have his tribe around.”

“I felt for Hillary to be there and watch this whole thing,” I said. “Must have been hard.”

“I know,” Mom replied. “She killed herself through the whole campaign. It’s a man’s world, though. Sorry about that but it is.”

“You saw yesterday’s marches,” I said. “Strength in numbers, Mom.”

“Maybe.” She paused. “I’m just fascinated with it all.”

“What’s your thought about that Kellyanne Conway?”

Mom looked up at the television. “Which one is she, again?”

“You know, Trump’s campaign manager. Now, Counselor to the President.”

“The gaudy blonde? Is she married?”

Just then, my eyes went to the balloon that was hovering near the ceiling. “Where’s that from?”

“Oh, we had a circus-theme party yesterday.”

“Really? Did you have fun?”

“I had a ball even though I was stuck in this wheelchair and couldn’t dance, but I tapped my feet to the music. They closed with Hava Nagila in a circle. I loved that.”

“If only I could dance again,” she sighed, trying to cap her lipstick. Then, added: “You just learn to do something else.”

“Do you miss the booze? I mean, Mom, you loved parties with the wine.”

“Not really. It’s a waste of time now. I’ve got this new thing – pink lemonade. I drank that with the potato chips and the colored M&M’s at the party.”

I sat looking at her, waiting for more that I knew was coming.

She finally got the cap on the lipstick. “Make lemonade out of a lemon. That’s what I say.”

We looked back at President Trump on the TV.

“There’s no grey area with that one,” Mom said. “He’ll either sink or swim.”

Sleepless in Pasadena

Sleepless in Pasadena

“Enjoy your sleep tonight,” my mother told me just before I was due to give birth to our first child. “It’ll be the last good night of sleep you’ll ever have.”

I recalled these words this past Monday morning as I wound my way around the barricaded streets of my neighborhood in Pasadena, blocked off for the Rose Bowl Game traffic later that day.

“It’s never what you think it’s going to be,” I said to Hank, navigating through the road closures en route to Huntington Memorial Hospital. 

Just a few blocks north on Colorado Boulevard the 103^rd Rose Parade was in full steam while I was on my way to visit our grown daughter, Hilary, in the hospital.

A dog bite?

I’d spent the better part of this fall worried about our youngest, Joseph, back and forth between Malawi and Zambia, shooting a documentary about elephant poaching in the national parks.

I’d seen Joe’s pictures. Guns, flack jackets, undercover operations to capture the poachers, filming night raids…I was a wreck. 

For Christmas, all I wanted was for Joseph to arrive home safely on the 18^th of December. Before then, if I woke in the night, I drummed up all sorts of scenarios where he was in danger.

“Joe knows what he’s doing,” Hank would try to reassure.

But, a mother always worries.

When Joe got home, I breathed a sigh of relief, thanked the Man upstairs and crossed that worry off my list.

Then, Hilary’s dog got into a fight with, Hank’s sister’s dog while we were visiting Hank’s mother in Santa Barbara.   It got ugly, and on impulse, I tried to pull on the collar of one dog while our daughter, Hilary, pulled on the other – we were doing exactly what NOT to do when two dogs are fighting.

The result was a dog bite on Hilary’s finger.  She cleaned and bandaged it, but later the finger swelled and became infected. Eventually, this led to the ER at Huntington Memorial in Pasadena around dinnertime on New Year’s Day.

“They’re admitting her,” her husband, Doug, said when he called us later at 11:30pm.

Forget sleep. I started in with all the night thoughts. “Don’t worry, Heath,” Doug had said. “They just want to keep an eye on her and IV antibiotics.”

My mind raced, though. What if they can’t get the infection under control?

Again, Hank tried to reassure. “She’s going to be fine. She’s where she needs to be…”

But, I’m a mother. And, mother always worries.

Hilary was discharged two days later, on Wednesday to the comfort of her home and her husband in nearby Los Feliz armed with antibiotics and instructions to help the bitten finger heal.

“The doctor says it looks good,” she’d told me.

Again, I breathed a sigh of relief, thanked heaven above then, searched for the pink journal I’d packed away in the garage.  I wanted to see what I had written all those years ago the night before our first child, Allan, was born.

June 8, 1982

Mom says that I will never sleep well again after this baby is born.

Mom is so dramatic.  What does she know?

He's All In

“Heath,” my friend, Nancy laughed, placing a hand on my arm “Hank’s the Mayor of Soul Hollywood.”

This past Sunday morning at our regular 9:30 class with Heather, we were standing outside the classroom waiting to clip into our bikes. Nancy’s husband, Jon, was close by. They are good friends and ride in Malibu.

Hank was deep in conversation with one of the instructors whose partner had been in a serious motorcycle accident.

“I know,” I said to Nancy.  “Look at him. He knows everyone. It’s like Bruin Woods,” I said. “Remember his itinerary of events for the week? He’s always been that involved guy.”

Nancy and Jon smiled, knowing Hank well after spending ten years with us at UCLA Family Camp.

Hank’s a joiner. Loves the schedule. The plan. The people.

As I write this on a Monday flight with Hank to New York, Hank, on his laptop, just leaned over…”Did you want me to book any bikes this week?”

“I’m good,” I reply.

“I’ve booked Danielle at 5:00 on Friday…Then, on Sunday, we have that brunch, so I’m thinking 4 o’clock….”

I smile and return to my laptop. Hank’s an insurance guy. It’s all about the relationships, he tells me, about his business. On this trip, he will be working the room. I’ll hang back.  I’ll find that interesting person and never move.

He’ll do a debrief on the ride back to the hotel. I’ll nod. Probably forget all the names…

I should have known he’d embrace this SoulCycle thing.  It’s an activity. And, Hank loves an activity. When I took him that first time, I never thought he’d like it. He’d been curious after I’d come home, loving it – and the people.

Hank, participating in the Mannequin Challenge

I tease him, now, about it. He’s all in. 

When he’s in his Orange County office, he rides after work in the Newport SoulCycle. If he’s in the LA office, he’s at Soul DTLA at the end of the day. On Friday afternoon, it’s Pasadena Soul. Rounding out the week, it’s Hollywood Soul on Sunday morning. 

And in a way I’m embarrassed by his exuberance. But, truthfully, how wonderful for him to embrace a healthy thing - to care, to know the names of the desk staff.  “Did you see? Lindsey’s back from Boston…”

I love that ... Never too cool to be that guy.

I keep coming back to my eighty-nine-year-old mother’s wise words….”Consider yourself lucky,” she says.  “He could be like my first two (husbands) boozing it up in the bar.”

I lean back over to Hank now on a project on his computer.  I tap him on his shoulder. His eyes are glued to the screen. I give him a smile, a squeeze to his arm.  He looks at me questioning. He’s intense and in work mode now.

“Sign me up for the 4:00 o’clock Sunday. I’ll go with you.”

He softens. “Ok.”

Twenty-three Days and Counting

And so it begins…the Holiday Season is on us. “Black Friday,” "Cyber Monday,” “Shop Small (stores)” and “Free Shipping.” It’s all about the rush to the finish line on December 25^th.

Our outdoor lights are up. Today, Hank and I will haul out the fake tree from the garage, wrestle with it down the hall to the living room and remove the heavy canvas cover like a tight dress without the Spanx.

No more worries about the Christmas tree drying out and keeping the thermostat down to the likes of our refrigerator to make it last. No more mornings to check the water in the base, feel the branches to check for dryness and dropping an aspirin in the water below to prolong that fresh evergreen feel and smell.

Yes, we bit the bullet two years ago. I thought I’d never go fake, but oh how merry it is.

Christmas is like final exams.  I cram for a month. It’s the cards, the gifts, and the festivities. The endless trips to the market… It’s as if I was back in college before the big test. Did I miss anything? Anybody?

One year I did. After assessing the final tally, I’d forgotten to get my husband, Hank, a nice gift. It was five o’clock on Christmas Eve. No problem! I was downtown to Brooks Brothers and back to serve the goose (which nobody really likes) by seven.

“Where are you going?” Hank had asked as I dashed out the door.

“Don’t ask. I’ll be right back!”

It’s the jolly season of did I remember to send a gift to … Did I tip fairly? Is my kid-like-on Christmas- morning-husband, Hank, going to like the little nothings in his stocking?

Each year, I keep receipts in a big envelope that grows fatter by the day while my bank account gets thinner by the minute. Crazy…

My oldest son, Allan, teases me when I get uptight at other times of the year. “Hey, Mom, have you bought the tree, yet?” It’s code for…you are such a bitch at Christmas.

Yep, Holiday Season is a trifecta for this Type A personality of mine. Why can’t I just relax and heed the wise words of that wonderful Erma Bombeck, the icon of suburban humor. It’s alleged that, in her dying days, she said that if she’d only known…she wouldn’t have worried about the dust so much.

“Do we have to be the first on the block to put the lights out?” Hank asked, leaving for a business trip last week.

“Yes.”

“Well,” he said zipping up his suitcase, “Please wait to do the tree when I get back. I mean, this is supposed to be fun.”

“Fun?!”

As I watched his car pull out the driveway, I thought about the year when the children were little and I was in my Christmas mode of “getting it done.”

Our son, Allan, had asked why we don’t have a birthday cake for Jesus on Christmas.

“Why?” I’d asked, barely looking up as I addressed cards.

“Because it’s Jesus’ birthday.”

I’d put my pen down and looked up at him standing next to me, little freckles dotting the bridge of his nose.  “You’re right. It is.”       

Had I forgotten the meaning of Christmas?