What’s Old What’s Not

Today has turned into one of those unexplained remembering days.  You know the ones.  I remember when I thought that fifty was old, very old. A friend wrote that she was having the 50th birthday bash for her daughter.  I thought my oldest will be 50 this October.  My youngest will be 40 in November.  Today, for me, I know full well that seventy is young; it is only my children who are getting old. But several people I know have died.  Several more are knocking on the door.  What’s up with that?  I do not have to read the obits for reality to register.  All have to do is read my high school e-mails.  The funerals out number the reunions and parties.  The last reunion we had to make room for walkers and wheelchairs.  Chili dogs were not on the menu.

There is an urban myth that if we humans get past the three quarter mark we will not start dropping off until the nineties attach to us. That could turn out to be a good thing, that is if our children happen to still be alive and also love us.  Out living one’s children would be the worst of all. Having them still alive but hating our name and presence would run a close second.  The third worst would be if they never ever left home and still lived with us and also wanted us to go ahead and die so they could get the house. My own aging mother would awake in the morning and her first words: “I’m still here, damn.”  At eighty-one Mama took matters into her own hands, but that is another story.

We have a saint in our family.  My children’s uncle has kept the Grand Matriarc of the family in his home and created a space for her as close to the one she had during the time she and Jeff were still married.  Jeff died and Ken became shepherd.  Bertha will be 96 in October.  Her memory, both short and long term, and her interest in the present happenings is amazing.  My children have seen to it that their children have each been held by Great-Grandma.  Now she has become a Great Great Grandma.  The memories and the chance to hold one more new baby keep her alive generation to generation. 

I have more to say on this, I know I do.  But right now this grandma needs needs to take a little nap.

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Raising Children

It seems what children say or do is published on the net on a regular basis.  I have a few grown children and still have a pretty good memory.  So here goes as recall guides thought.

One sunny late November day in Dallas, the harsh hard driving Texas wind blew its way through our wind whipped trees.  David, our three year old, stood at the kitchen window and said, “Mama, look! The leaves are melting.”

Many years later, David’s two year old son Karl walked into the bathroom just as I was stepping out of the shower. He stretched apart his arms as far as they would go and exclaimed from his vantage point; “Gra-ma, your boobies are this big.” I told David that his son has precocious sight. Karl still sees far deeper into the truth of life than most young men his age.  Tonight, Karl is probably rocking his own girl child, MadiLyn Lily to sleep telling her stories of his father.

This is how life is passed, one generation to the next.

  

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Writing On The Road

My son, Kevin, is 49. He and Mary are the happy parents of boy/girl 4 year old twins. Toward the end of February Kevin was told he has cancer in one kidney, a questionable cyst in the second kidney, a questionable mass with nodules in one lung. This weekend in the emergency room he was told the debilitating headaches on the left side of his head were due to two pinched nerves at the third vertebrae: (we later were told that the headaches were not a vertebrae but rather a serious (understatement sinus infection.)  All of this started to come to light in February.  By March 5th the family was told and I left Houston for Frederick Maryland on Saint Patrick’s Day hoping good luck and prayers were riding on the wings of a commercial jet.  He is tired, very tired all the time.  He tries to hold down his job in between the mounting frequency of test for this and that.

The mental battle is unending.  Sleep in the house is limited.  I am filled with Mother questions, and just let them go by the way.  Kevin does not need a weepy mommy becoming one with his shadow constantly asking questions.  He needs a St. Patrick with a Saint Kit in tow.

The twins are crying over parts of a Thomas Train.  Sleep, sweet sleep.  May it come tonight.  Dreams are unsettling.

Illness puts a human into a time warp; seemingly stretched thin between two realities: remembered past and imagined future.  The present floats; a dream of flying.

There are times (like today) that I believe that this living life that we experience 24/7 is merely a time warp between two realities of our own design. The flicker of life is seen to fly in front of us and disappear without notice in an instant.  Some think they need new glasses or the flickers are merely floaters in their eyes.  Some take the time to look inside of themselves and perceive The Otherthan (for want of a better name).  Some authors call it The Being.  While others in ancient times called it “The Cloud of Unknowing”.  Somewhere across India and making way to China there was the search for The Being.  Even farther back in time,  the name given this Being of Unknowing was The I AM (the unspoken unknowable sacred): Today, I seek The I AM.

Instead of sleep walking, I believe this search should be called soul walking. Perhaps we might find something of lasting value on a stroll such as that.

Tomorrow is April 6th and at 12:30pm Kevin will be having the surgery.  Mothers are never not mothers.  Kevin holds the twins and his eyes become red and wet.  Years ago I was able to do something about his little boy tears.  Today I am able to do absolutely nothing for his grown man tears.  Kevin still looks like a little boy to me.

May God bless us, everyone.

Part #2

Sibley Hospital in Georgetown; The Da Vinci Robot; Three physicians of different disciplines; a flock of interns; and the ever faithful nurses of different disciplines came to the plate and batted a thousand.  They are the  ideal of what Modern Medicine is supposed to be in the 21st Century.

The Cyclopes has six arms which drilled or punched into position while the physician surgeon starred into the single great eye through which the physician guided the arms of the giant.  The trash detail arm pulled out the severed one third to one half off the top of the right kidney.  The proceedure took close to six hours.

The only person not exhausted was The Da Vinci Robot.

This was Monday. For the entire week, Kevin’s father sat at the foot of Kevin’s bed. Never left, from eight in the morning till eight in the evening he kept his vigil.  On Friday, Kevin went home.  With perfect aim, Kathryn, wanting to be held, on accident kicked her heel into one of the work blow holes left by the robot.  Everything came to a standstill.  They waited.  The bruise was instant and large and angry.

No one took a breath until Kevin did.

After that, Kevin proceeded to wear a very large pillow which wrapped around his entire middle.  He walked with it, ate with it, slept with it, and held Kathryn and John with it.  The last being the most important of all.

Each day gave hope and improvement and peace.

We get to keep Kevin.  What joy for Kevin, Mary, the rambunctious twins, the father, the brothers, the sister and yes, this mama.

We Are Family–

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