My mom emphasized being independent on so many levels. Never expect anyone to take care of you; never have any part of your life be dependent on someone else; and most importantly, never ever expect a man to save you....unless there is a giant awful vampire bat (not really a vampire bat, but in my head it was heaving with blood dripping from it's tiny little teeth as it was dive bombing my head) attacking you.
I must have been in 8th grade, like at the beginning of 8th grade because it was still warm out, our pool was still open and a comfortable breeze pouring in from outside. On the side of our family room there was a brick seating ledge (for lack of a better way to describe it) that ran along the wall, with a gold-framed fireplace with glass doors. It was old school. No flipping a switch and getting a beautiful glow. Nope, lots of soot, and a flue that you couldn't ever really tell if you opened it or closed it. Well, on this particular night, my childhood cat Genny (short for General as I was obsessed with the movie Cat's Eye when I was a kid) was frantically messing with the fireplace. She repeatedly smacked the corner of the gold frame over and over and over again. I moved in closer, smacking my hands and yelling at her to knock it off, as it was annoying me and interrupting my tv watching. She continued to ignore me until her face was suddenly overwhelmed with little kitty terror as she flung her paw backwards, pulling out a large black object with her.
I'm just confused, chasing after what I thought was just a large ball of dust that was propelled into the curtains of our bay window. Genny takes off running. I should have followed suit. But no, I'm like the dumbass chick who runs up stairs in horror movies instead of running out the door, and I walk over to the curtains.
"SHIT!" I scream as the ball of dust attacks me, trying to swallow my soul and as I maverickly dodge his evil attempts, he starts fluttering around the room in a rage. I run around the corner and peek back in, not entirely sure as to what I just witness, thinking it had to be a bird. Nope. Bat. Big. Giant. Angry. Scarey. Trying to kill me. Bat.
"MOM," I yell up the stairs, as she was having her "mom" time watching the tiny little tv in her room that is usually reserved for grizzled men who live in shacks. "Mom" time was time in which her teenage children had just gotten too annoying for her to be around and rather than snap at us, she would hang out in her big girl room ignoring any requests or demands we might present.
No answer. "MOM!!!" Still no answer. At this point I am hating "mom" time as I do not think my voice is clearly conveying the urgency of a blood-sucking demon trying to kill me to her. Ugh! Not wanting to take my eyes off of this devilish creature, I back out of the kitchen slowly and as soon as I lose eye contact, I sprint around the corner and run for my moms room.
I don't even knock because clearly my yells for help were not causing her concern and damn if I'll be ignored.
"Jesus Jackie, what the hell is so urgent?"
"Genny pulled a bat in the house. It's trying to kill me. You have to get it out of the house!"
"Why do I have to get it out of the house?"
"Because your my mom and it's your job to protect me from all things evil."
"There's not a bat in the house."
"YES THERE IS!"
"You're being dramatic."
"Go look for yourself. I am staying here." At this point Genny is also hiding under the bed in my mom's room, refusing to come out as she knows the evil that is waiting down below.
She rolls her eyes, swings her legs over the side of her bed and heads downstairs. I close the door behind her and jump into her bed. My eyes are glued to the door, watching for the first sign of trouble and listening for what I am afraid will be my own mother's demise. She should have listened to me.
"SHIT!" I hear coming from downstairs, very quickly followed by footsteps plowing up the stairs with loud thuds as she skips steps to speed up the process. She flies into her room and shuts the door. "I'm calling your brother home." She reaches for the phone and dials the friends house where he is supposed to be.
"Hi it's Juanita. Can you put Chris on the phone?" At this point I can only hear her side of the conversation so I am going to make up what I assume would have been my brother's response, given his being 16 and not about to give up friend time to hunt down a bat.
"Chris you need to come home now."
Why.
"Because I said so."
I haven't done anything, I'm just hanging out.
"There's a bat in the house."
So.
"So you need to come home and get it out of the house."
Why do I have to do that?
"Because."
No. I am not coming home to get a bat out of the house.
"Damnit Chris, we are stuck up in my room. Get home now."
No. I'll see you when I come home later.
Silence. My mom looks at me and calmly hangs up the phone. "Chris isn't coming." I had gathered this based on her responses and terrified look of what would come next. "We are going to have to do this ourselves," which was mom code talk for: I am going to tell you what to do and you need to deal with it because there is not a snowballs chance in hell I am going near that damn thing.
"What do we have to hit it with? Where are the tennis rackets?"
"Somewhere in the garage. We'd have to run through the room to get to the garage. I AM NOT DOING THAT."
"Shit, no tennis rackets. Ok, bats don't like light so we need to turn on all the lights in the house. They are attracted to the dark, so if we turn on all the lights and then open doors and windows, he'll just want to head towards the darkness and we won't have to do anything." She looked excited. She believed to the core of her being this would work. I believed to the core of my being I was my mom's sacrifice and she was going to send me in to open doors and windows. Bitch.
We get downstairs. Its calmly relaxing in the corner where the wall and ceiling meets. It's like a cheesy scene from a Western. He's staring at me. I'm staring at him. I hear a wawawawawa, wa wa wa... and I know it's game time. I run covering my head, screeching the entire way and it swoops down and begins frantically circling the room. I get to the first door and I fling it open, without stopping I run to the next and open it too. I run back to the kitchen to hide where my mom has not moved, has not contributed to our safety or her own brilliant plan. I knew that bitch was throwing me under the bus. We sit and wait. Wait for the rat with wings to get excited by the dark and leave the light. 5 minutes goes by. Fucker is still there.
"Well maybe we should get something to shoo it towards the door, help guide it. I bet he's scared and just doesn't realize it."
"What are we supposed to use?" I am not liking where this is going.
"Run outside and get the pool skimmer."
"The pool skimmer? It's too big."
"No it's not, it'll be fine. Plus it has that net on the end. It'll keep the bat away from us." Us? Us? Really mom? Us. There is no us. There is only me and I hate where this is going.
I sigh and decide to head out the front door and walk around rather than risk having my hair pulled out by the diseased infested flying bastard in the family room. I get to the pool skimmer. It's got to be a good 15-feet long. It works for our pool which is like 11 feet deep and obviously longer so people can use it. This isn't going to work, but whatever. I attempt to carry it but having is dragging behind me as I approach the scene.
I get back to the kitchen and hand it to my mom. She looks puzzled. "Go shoo it out."
"Why do I have to do it?"
"Because I had kids so I didn't have to do things like this."
Fuck. I run into the family room and attempt to shoo it with the net but oh wait, yep it won't do anything but stay parallel to the floor, it can't stand up straight and therefore I cannot shoo the beast with it. I hear my mom cackling in the background. Clearly this is part of her master plan to take me down. I attempt again and in the attempt to straighten the pool I hit the bat who then dive bombs me.
"Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god," I scream dropping the metal pole with a loud thud as it hits the hardwood floors. "It touched me!"
I run, seeking out the protection of my mother who is curled up in a ball on the kitchen floor laughing so hard she is no longer making noise as she has run out of air. Tears are streaming down her face and she looks like she has second degree burns with how red her face is.
"Shut up! It's not funny."
"You should have seen you with that pool skimmer."
"It's not funny." At this point even I have begun laughing. After a good five or so minutes, we are both able to compose ourselves. "What are we going to do mom?"
"We gotta get it out of here."
"Why won't Chris come home?"
"Because he's smart. I wouldn't have either if someone called me for this. Get the broom."
I get the broom. My hands are sweaty, my heart is racing and every nerve in my body is on full alert. It's the final showdown. One girl enters, and hopefully one girl and not bat, leaves. My mom pats me on my back, almost in a supportive, "I know you are strong enough my child," kind of way. I will not be beaten by a damn bat.
I charge. He charges. I swing the yellow and green broom with all my might. I connect. I send that fucker flying. He attempts to charge again but I got him a good two feet closer to the garage door. I swing again, but I miss, however this time he sees the open door and flies out. I slam it shut and lock it. I locked the damn door. Like the tiny little bat was going to pull out tiny little bobby pins, pick the lock and come back for another battle. I slide down the door and rest at the bottom, sweaty, slowly catching my breath and feeling accomplished. At this point my mom has gone and shut the other doors and windows and is inspecting the fireplace crack that the bat was pulled from.
"See," she begins, "we didn't need a guy to come and save us, we were fully capable on our own." You mean fully capable of using indentured servitude of your own child to save you. Whatever.
She had a valid point though. I don't think I ever asked a man to do something for me that I was fully capable of doing for myself, except maybe playing dumb about hooking up the tv/dvd player simply because I didn't want to have to do it. I have to say it may have been just easier if she gave me an instruction manual instead putting me through 20 some odd years of life lesson boot camp.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Lesson #2: That Gut Instinct, That Brief Vision You Had, Don't Shrug It Off, That is the Universe Telling You To Start Paying Attention
This is the post where quite a few of you will realize I am bat shit crazy. It's cool, I've come to terms with my oddness and weird connections with things. You see, my mom and I always had this weird connection with one another. But before I get into that, maybe I should explain some of my beliefs so that maybe it'll make more sense.
Those of you who know me know I abhor organized religion. The second you try to organize something and you put a group of people in the room and start dictating who gets to connect with God, it becomes stupid and everyone involved becomes a uniform zombie, repeating what they are told and losing any potential for a real connection. I have never liked having to go through someone else to reach God and I think it's more of a human ego-trip telling you that you need to have that kind of order than representing any kind of truth. Ultimately, I don't feel like organized religion is that far off. There are certain truths among all religions, certain things that just feel right and make your hair stand on end when you connect with them, and that's where the ultimate truth lies. I don't think this is the only life you lead but part of a bigger journey. I don't think God has any control over what your journey looks like and is not able to stop awful things from happening, but instead puts certain people in your life to help you navigate through when you need it. Certain souls that you constantly seek out and connect with regardless of what life you are in. My mom was one of those souls for me.
When I was a child she had this instinctual physical/emotional connection with me that when I was not ok, or in imminent danger, she just knew it. She would start to panic and sweat. Her heart would race and she would become an irrational mama bear, determined to get to me and protect me even if she was not there. Probably the freakiest occurrence of this was one time when I was in 4th grade and horseback riding. It was my friend Holly's (see my original post's comment section and our stalkerish obsession with getting to a barn at the detriment of actual connect to anything that was not a horse) moms' turn to drive, so my mom was sitting at home prepared to yell at me for traipsing my poo-covered boots into the house and order me immediately into the shower, rinsing what I thought was the most beautiful smell of barn off of me.
She wasn't off-base in being paranoid about my riding. You see, "I wanna go fast." I may have been the Ricky Bobby of little horseback riders. I wanted the biggest, tallest, fastest, most aggressive horses. If they threw me, it was sport and I sure as shit was not about to let them win. I wanted the ex-race horses who I could coast through courses with, jumping so gracefully over fences I felt like I was flying. It was the only place I felt truly free and untouchable. This die-hard obsession with horses turned my mom's stomach every time I got on one. That day something new popped up with it.
The lesson wasn't doing anything particularly dangerous or new. None of the skills we were practicing was something I hadn't already been doing for years but for whatever reason I just got scared. This NEVER happened to me. I had done the posting trot fine, practiced my two-point with utter precision and now she wanted me to canter through the ring, changing leads by doing a figure-eight in the middle. "No. I don't want to."
"You know how to do this Jackie, just do your figure-eight and change-leads, you'll be fine," the 20-something year old instructor demanded, irritated that a 9 year old was being defiant.
"No." At this point I am crying. I am scared to death. I am sitting on Canary one of my favorite horses and one that loves to go fast and I can't make myself do it. I am crying because I am scared. I am crying because I am disappointed in myself for having no idea why I can't do something I had already been doing for 4 years. I am crying because Holly can do it and I feel like I am a loser. She makes me sit in the center of the ring the rest of the lesson, not allowed to get off the horse or untack. It was awful.
I am silent the car ride home. I don't even think I say goodbye to the Justmans (yep I was a bratty little kid who couldn't see past my failure at that moment to have manners). I get into the house and don't even have my coat off when my mom grabs me full on in a bear hug, preventing any kind of movement.
"I knew you were ok. For awhile I thought you wouldn't be but somewhere I just felt you be ok." She's crying. I'm confused and thinking, did Mrs. Justman call to tell her I was a pussy. Goddamnit, that's embarrassing.
"Mom?" She just kisses me and tells me to go shower because I smell, which I happily do because she's creeping the shit out of me. When I get back downstairs and prepare to eat the mass-quantity of speghetti she has made, I tell her about the lesson and the disappointment I had in myself.
She turns stark white (a feet that you all should be in awe of at this moment because anyone who knows my mom and I knows that whenever we held our breaths, we looked dead, we are/were that pale).
"What?" I look at her thinking for sure she must be sick because she's giving me that creepy look like maybe I ought to be grabbing a pot from under the stove ready to catch any projectile vomit.
"In the middle of your lesson I just felt sick. I felt like you were going to be really hurt and I couldn't get to you. I almost called the barn. I even called your dad to ask him what to do. And then all of a sudden, all that fear went away, I just had this peace that for whatever reason you were going to be ok."
"What?" I'm creeped out. My mom was apparently a creeper and was connected to me in a way I couldn't understand as a 9 year old. Does this mean whenever I do shit and she's not around she knows? Crap, I need to work on my trouble-making game because otherwise I'm fucked.
"I guess I must have started to feel ok when you went and sat in the middle of the ring." It made sense. Sitting in the middle of the ring is something I had never done, and after that day, never did again. I am way too obnoxiously competitive to not do something on a horse just because I was scared. In fact, that is usually a motivator for me because it means I can dominate something.
I wasn't connected to her in the same fashion, or at least I wasn't cognoscente of it. Now,I did join her on the crazy train shortly into my freshman year of college, but instead of having these crazy awake moments, I had terrifying dreams.
Shortly after my mom's second wedding and the first month of college, I woke up in the middle of the night. I felt like a fat man had been motor boating my face with his ass cheeks and I couldn't breath. I was crying and crying hard. The kind of crying that's gross because you have snot dripping down your face that makes bubbles as you desperately try to mouth breathe. It's 2 in the morning and I just woke up. My mom had died in my dream. She had died and I didn't see it coming. I was inconsolable. In my dream I became a non-productive lump and my soul died with her despite my still actually being alive. I knew I was being irrational and crazy but I needed to hear her voice. To have her tell me she's ok and it's all ok. But, it was 2 in the morning and I sounded like a crazy child. I was 18 and WAY too grown up for this. So instead, I sat up, wide-awake counting down until it would be a reasonable time to call her. Starting at 6am, I called every 15 minutes until I got her ass to answer the phone. I tell her all about my dream and how I know it was just a dream but that one day when she dies, I won't survive it.
She's somewhat sympathetically laughing at me, "oh sweet pea (yes that's what she called me and if I hear any of you say it to me now that you know it, I'm gonna punch you in the baby maker), I'm ok. That would scare the shit of me too but I'm ok." A little over a month later she was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer and proceeded to go under multiple surgeries, chemo and radiation.
I wish my connection to her mortality ended there. Almost 3 years ago I was living in Arizona and attempting to correct one of the largest idiot moves I had ever made, when I had a dream my mom's cancer was back. I didn't think twice about it because she had just gotten great blood results back and clearly I was just being an irrational momma's girl. I used this as an excuse to take take off of work to fly back to Colorado and look for a place to live and a job. My mom and I both secretly laughed about how her non-existent cancer was a great excuse because what kind of boss would say, "No you can't fly back to see your sick mom." I am an asshole of epic proportions. Almost a month later, her cancer back back a second time having spread to her liver.
After two rounds of cancer, her and I both spent most of our time in a perpetual state of crazy. Needless to say I am pretty sure anyone who met me for the first time viewed me as cold and uncaring as quiet frankly, I was in permanent countdown mode until her next test results and in the interim, attempting to spend as much time with her as possible and could have cared less whether or not anyone else was ok with that or if I was stepping on others toes. I had bigger things to care about.
In December 2010, the week of Christmas, I awoke at 2 in the morning. I had one of the most realistic and intense dreams I had ever had in my life. I was back in my best friend Christie's childhood house. Christie and I were standing in front of their wet bar, reflecting on the craziness of our lives and drinking (because who does one without the other) when we both heard her mom's legendary whistle, the joyous little whistle that she needs her attention an in all likelihood you were about to get something good. Little sidebar/back story, her mom had died only a couple of years before.
Christie turned white but then grew excited, chasing after the sound of the whistle, trying to find her mom. All you could hear was Carol laughing. There rooms were set up almost like a reverse donut, the ring being the rooms and the center being the walls. Carol did hot laps around stopping in each room to laugh or whistle. Christie became increasingly frustrated and after circling a couple of times decided she was going to sit on the living room couch and wait because Carol had to go back through again.
But she didn't. I just stood by watching this spectacle unfold, dumbfounded Carol was playing such ridiculous games. She didn't make it to the couch to go talk to her daughter. She approached me. She pushed my hair out of my face and before she could say anything I looked at her and chastised her with, "What are you doing? She needs you. She's been waiting for you. Go to her."
"She's not ready yet," she said gently. "And that's not why I'm here."
My heart sank. I knew why she was there. I didn't want her to say it. "It's time to gear up cookie."
"What?"
"It's time to gear up cookie. I am coming for your mom. You'll need all your strength for the both of you."
I woke up crying. I knew what it meant. I knew my mom's cancer was back even though all the test results said otherwise. I knew the battle was over.
I called my mom the next day. I lied through my teeth; she knew all about the predictive dreams I had about her. So I lied because if I lied maybe it wouldn't come true. "That's great. That is such a relief. I get the cat-scan results back next week. That's great Carol said that you wouldn't need her," (Carol had long ago reassured me that if my mom didn't win her battle with cancer, she would be there, always, and always represent my mom, she was my second mom and my mom's best friend), "That gives me such hope." I am an ass hole of epic proportions.
Needless to say on December 31, 2010, my mom found out her cancer was back. This time back in her liver, on her spine and in some lymph nodes between her heart and lungs. They were inoperable and all they could hope to do was shrink them for a few years and she would have to do chemo every few years. But after having weekly chemo for close to 3 months, the tumor grew in-spite-of treatment. "Jackie I am so sorry. I am so sorry I am leaving you."
I couldn't hear the words I already knew in my heart and knew for months before the reality kicked it. "I know you want me to fight but I can't win. I'd rather spend time with you and the family and just be together than be profoundly sick." Two months after this conversation she would pass.
The night she was actively dying, I was staying in a hotel. You see my lease was up and I was frantically trying to move everything into storage as she wasn't doing well and I needed to have everything out of the house by the time the lease was up so that I could get to her and just be with her. Her and I had a plan. I was going to be with her. I wanted to be with her. I needed to be with her. I needed to tell her thank-you for being my guide, my mother, and my best friend. She needed me there to tell her I'd be ok and I'd look out for my brother and that no matter what I would keep talking to her, keep seeking out our connection. That night in the hotel, I woke up again at 2 in the morning, panicked, desperate, scared, paralyzed by the mass quantity of emotions I was feeling. I thought I was being irrational because I was always irrational when it came to anything relating to my mom. I knew I just needed to finish up moving that morning and I'd be on a plane by late afternoon and seeing her the next day and I just needed to push down the irrational thoughts of just burning down my house and belongings and getting out there because it would happen and I would see her.
I wouldn't. She was actively dying that night. By 8:55 in the morning she passed away in her bed among hospice workers, a childhood friend and my step-dad. I was packing up boxes at the house and my phone told me I had an email. I opened it only to find a message from my step-dad informing me my mom had passed. My world came to an end. I missed it.
I am not a big believer in psychics, mostly because I think they are often scam-artists who pray on the weak. Before any of her cancer had popped up, I was visiting her out in California, enjoying my summer before I started college. We went for laughs to see a psychic who proceeded to say something that stuck with us both forever. This very large pacific-islander man looked up at us and even before he started the reading or we could state what we wanted said, "Oh, you two have fun chasing each other around in your lives. Your souls follow each other on each journey. Though, this is the first time you got to be the mom. How did it work out this time?" He was staring at my mom, then he turned his gaze on me, "Do you think she learned from you? Did she meet your expectations? " We were both equally creeped out, particularly as he followed up to tell us what an old soul I am and how my mom was a new young soul, hence why things often hit her much harder than they hit me. How usually I am her mother and this life must have been the test round to see if she was ready to venture out on her own. I don't know that he was far off.
What I learned from our connection, more than anything is those gut instincts, those visions or dreams where things feel so real, it's because they are. Call it god, call in premonitions, call it whatever makes you comfortable enough to allow yourself to acknowledge their magnitude and respond accordingly. Listen to them. Don't ignore them and convince yourself you are just being crazy. The universe is telling you to wake up, to gear up, and to prepare so you don't miss a single moment.
Oh, and yes I realize at this moment I am a wee bit bat crazy, but don't hate the player, hate the game ;)
Those of you who know me know I abhor organized religion. The second you try to organize something and you put a group of people in the room and start dictating who gets to connect with God, it becomes stupid and everyone involved becomes a uniform zombie, repeating what they are told and losing any potential for a real connection. I have never liked having to go through someone else to reach God and I think it's more of a human ego-trip telling you that you need to have that kind of order than representing any kind of truth. Ultimately, I don't feel like organized religion is that far off. There are certain truths among all religions, certain things that just feel right and make your hair stand on end when you connect with them, and that's where the ultimate truth lies. I don't think this is the only life you lead but part of a bigger journey. I don't think God has any control over what your journey looks like and is not able to stop awful things from happening, but instead puts certain people in your life to help you navigate through when you need it. Certain souls that you constantly seek out and connect with regardless of what life you are in. My mom was one of those souls for me.
When I was a child she had this instinctual physical/emotional connection with me that when I was not ok, or in imminent danger, she just knew it. She would start to panic and sweat. Her heart would race and she would become an irrational mama bear, determined to get to me and protect me even if she was not there. Probably the freakiest occurrence of this was one time when I was in 4th grade and horseback riding. It was my friend Holly's (see my original post's comment section and our stalkerish obsession with getting to a barn at the detriment of actual connect to anything that was not a horse) moms' turn to drive, so my mom was sitting at home prepared to yell at me for traipsing my poo-covered boots into the house and order me immediately into the shower, rinsing what I thought was the most beautiful smell of barn off of me.
She wasn't off-base in being paranoid about my riding. You see, "I wanna go fast." I may have been the Ricky Bobby of little horseback riders. I wanted the biggest, tallest, fastest, most aggressive horses. If they threw me, it was sport and I sure as shit was not about to let them win. I wanted the ex-race horses who I could coast through courses with, jumping so gracefully over fences I felt like I was flying. It was the only place I felt truly free and untouchable. This die-hard obsession with horses turned my mom's stomach every time I got on one. That day something new popped up with it.
The lesson wasn't doing anything particularly dangerous or new. None of the skills we were practicing was something I hadn't already been doing for years but for whatever reason I just got scared. This NEVER happened to me. I had done the posting trot fine, practiced my two-point with utter precision and now she wanted me to canter through the ring, changing leads by doing a figure-eight in the middle. "No. I don't want to."
"You know how to do this Jackie, just do your figure-eight and change-leads, you'll be fine," the 20-something year old instructor demanded, irritated that a 9 year old was being defiant.
"No." At this point I am crying. I am scared to death. I am sitting on Canary one of my favorite horses and one that loves to go fast and I can't make myself do it. I am crying because I am scared. I am crying because I am disappointed in myself for having no idea why I can't do something I had already been doing for 4 years. I am crying because Holly can do it and I feel like I am a loser. She makes me sit in the center of the ring the rest of the lesson, not allowed to get off the horse or untack. It was awful.
I am silent the car ride home. I don't even think I say goodbye to the Justmans (yep I was a bratty little kid who couldn't see past my failure at that moment to have manners). I get into the house and don't even have my coat off when my mom grabs me full on in a bear hug, preventing any kind of movement.
"I knew you were ok. For awhile I thought you wouldn't be but somewhere I just felt you be ok." She's crying. I'm confused and thinking, did Mrs. Justman call to tell her I was a pussy. Goddamnit, that's embarrassing.
"Mom?" She just kisses me and tells me to go shower because I smell, which I happily do because she's creeping the shit out of me. When I get back downstairs and prepare to eat the mass-quantity of speghetti she has made, I tell her about the lesson and the disappointment I had in myself.
She turns stark white (a feet that you all should be in awe of at this moment because anyone who knows my mom and I knows that whenever we held our breaths, we looked dead, we are/were that pale).
"What?" I look at her thinking for sure she must be sick because she's giving me that creepy look like maybe I ought to be grabbing a pot from under the stove ready to catch any projectile vomit.
"In the middle of your lesson I just felt sick. I felt like you were going to be really hurt and I couldn't get to you. I almost called the barn. I even called your dad to ask him what to do. And then all of a sudden, all that fear went away, I just had this peace that for whatever reason you were going to be ok."
"What?" I'm creeped out. My mom was apparently a creeper and was connected to me in a way I couldn't understand as a 9 year old. Does this mean whenever I do shit and she's not around she knows? Crap, I need to work on my trouble-making game because otherwise I'm fucked.
"I guess I must have started to feel ok when you went and sat in the middle of the ring." It made sense. Sitting in the middle of the ring is something I had never done, and after that day, never did again. I am way too obnoxiously competitive to not do something on a horse just because I was scared. In fact, that is usually a motivator for me because it means I can dominate something.
I wasn't connected to her in the same fashion, or at least I wasn't cognoscente of it. Now,I did join her on the crazy train shortly into my freshman year of college, but instead of having these crazy awake moments, I had terrifying dreams.
Shortly after my mom's second wedding and the first month of college, I woke up in the middle of the night. I felt like a fat man had been motor boating my face with his ass cheeks and I couldn't breath. I was crying and crying hard. The kind of crying that's gross because you have snot dripping down your face that makes bubbles as you desperately try to mouth breathe. It's 2 in the morning and I just woke up. My mom had died in my dream. She had died and I didn't see it coming. I was inconsolable. In my dream I became a non-productive lump and my soul died with her despite my still actually being alive. I knew I was being irrational and crazy but I needed to hear her voice. To have her tell me she's ok and it's all ok. But, it was 2 in the morning and I sounded like a crazy child. I was 18 and WAY too grown up for this. So instead, I sat up, wide-awake counting down until it would be a reasonable time to call her. Starting at 6am, I called every 15 minutes until I got her ass to answer the phone. I tell her all about my dream and how I know it was just a dream but that one day when she dies, I won't survive it.
She's somewhat sympathetically laughing at me, "oh sweet pea (yes that's what she called me and if I hear any of you say it to me now that you know it, I'm gonna punch you in the baby maker), I'm ok. That would scare the shit of me too but I'm ok." A little over a month later she was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer and proceeded to go under multiple surgeries, chemo and radiation.
I wish my connection to her mortality ended there. Almost 3 years ago I was living in Arizona and attempting to correct one of the largest idiot moves I had ever made, when I had a dream my mom's cancer was back. I didn't think twice about it because she had just gotten great blood results back and clearly I was just being an irrational momma's girl. I used this as an excuse to take take off of work to fly back to Colorado and look for a place to live and a job. My mom and I both secretly laughed about how her non-existent cancer was a great excuse because what kind of boss would say, "No you can't fly back to see your sick mom." I am an asshole of epic proportions. Almost a month later, her cancer back back a second time having spread to her liver.
After two rounds of cancer, her and I both spent most of our time in a perpetual state of crazy. Needless to say I am pretty sure anyone who met me for the first time viewed me as cold and uncaring as quiet frankly, I was in permanent countdown mode until her next test results and in the interim, attempting to spend as much time with her as possible and could have cared less whether or not anyone else was ok with that or if I was stepping on others toes. I had bigger things to care about.
In December 2010, the week of Christmas, I awoke at 2 in the morning. I had one of the most realistic and intense dreams I had ever had in my life. I was back in my best friend Christie's childhood house. Christie and I were standing in front of their wet bar, reflecting on the craziness of our lives and drinking (because who does one without the other) when we both heard her mom's legendary whistle, the joyous little whistle that she needs her attention an in all likelihood you were about to get something good. Little sidebar/back story, her mom had died only a couple of years before.
Christie turned white but then grew excited, chasing after the sound of the whistle, trying to find her mom. All you could hear was Carol laughing. There rooms were set up almost like a reverse donut, the ring being the rooms and the center being the walls. Carol did hot laps around stopping in each room to laugh or whistle. Christie became increasingly frustrated and after circling a couple of times decided she was going to sit on the living room couch and wait because Carol had to go back through again.
But she didn't. I just stood by watching this spectacle unfold, dumbfounded Carol was playing such ridiculous games. She didn't make it to the couch to go talk to her daughter. She approached me. She pushed my hair out of my face and before she could say anything I looked at her and chastised her with, "What are you doing? She needs you. She's been waiting for you. Go to her."
"She's not ready yet," she said gently. "And that's not why I'm here."
My heart sank. I knew why she was there. I didn't want her to say it. "It's time to gear up cookie."
"What?"
"It's time to gear up cookie. I am coming for your mom. You'll need all your strength for the both of you."
I woke up crying. I knew what it meant. I knew my mom's cancer was back even though all the test results said otherwise. I knew the battle was over.
I called my mom the next day. I lied through my teeth; she knew all about the predictive dreams I had about her. So I lied because if I lied maybe it wouldn't come true. "That's great. That is such a relief. I get the cat-scan results back next week. That's great Carol said that you wouldn't need her," (Carol had long ago reassured me that if my mom didn't win her battle with cancer, she would be there, always, and always represent my mom, she was my second mom and my mom's best friend), "That gives me such hope." I am an ass hole of epic proportions.
Needless to say on December 31, 2010, my mom found out her cancer was back. This time back in her liver, on her spine and in some lymph nodes between her heart and lungs. They were inoperable and all they could hope to do was shrink them for a few years and she would have to do chemo every few years. But after having weekly chemo for close to 3 months, the tumor grew in-spite-of treatment. "Jackie I am so sorry. I am so sorry I am leaving you."
I couldn't hear the words I already knew in my heart and knew for months before the reality kicked it. "I know you want me to fight but I can't win. I'd rather spend time with you and the family and just be together than be profoundly sick." Two months after this conversation she would pass.
The night she was actively dying, I was staying in a hotel. You see my lease was up and I was frantically trying to move everything into storage as she wasn't doing well and I needed to have everything out of the house by the time the lease was up so that I could get to her and just be with her. Her and I had a plan. I was going to be with her. I wanted to be with her. I needed to be with her. I needed to tell her thank-you for being my guide, my mother, and my best friend. She needed me there to tell her I'd be ok and I'd look out for my brother and that no matter what I would keep talking to her, keep seeking out our connection. That night in the hotel, I woke up again at 2 in the morning, panicked, desperate, scared, paralyzed by the mass quantity of emotions I was feeling. I thought I was being irrational because I was always irrational when it came to anything relating to my mom. I knew I just needed to finish up moving that morning and I'd be on a plane by late afternoon and seeing her the next day and I just needed to push down the irrational thoughts of just burning down my house and belongings and getting out there because it would happen and I would see her.
I wouldn't. She was actively dying that night. By 8:55 in the morning she passed away in her bed among hospice workers, a childhood friend and my step-dad. I was packing up boxes at the house and my phone told me I had an email. I opened it only to find a message from my step-dad informing me my mom had passed. My world came to an end. I missed it.
I am not a big believer in psychics, mostly because I think they are often scam-artists who pray on the weak. Before any of her cancer had popped up, I was visiting her out in California, enjoying my summer before I started college. We went for laughs to see a psychic who proceeded to say something that stuck with us both forever. This very large pacific-islander man looked up at us and even before he started the reading or we could state what we wanted said, "Oh, you two have fun chasing each other around in your lives. Your souls follow each other on each journey. Though, this is the first time you got to be the mom. How did it work out this time?" He was staring at my mom, then he turned his gaze on me, "Do you think she learned from you? Did she meet your expectations? " We were both equally creeped out, particularly as he followed up to tell us what an old soul I am and how my mom was a new young soul, hence why things often hit her much harder than they hit me. How usually I am her mother and this life must have been the test round to see if she was ready to venture out on her own. I don't know that he was far off.
What I learned from our connection, more than anything is those gut instincts, those visions or dreams where things feel so real, it's because they are. Call it god, call in premonitions, call it whatever makes you comfortable enough to allow yourself to acknowledge their magnitude and respond accordingly. Listen to them. Don't ignore them and convince yourself you are just being crazy. The universe is telling you to wake up, to gear up, and to prepare so you don't miss a single moment.
Oh, and yes I realize at this moment I am a wee bit bat crazy, but don't hate the player, hate the game ;)
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Lesson #1: Sex is a beautiful wonderful thing. Have as much of it as you can, just make sure he is worthy of your fun parts
Sex. What a better way to start out the motherly advice than with a bang. Hahaha, I said bang (yep the maturity level will stay at that of a 10 year old). My mom lived her life in utter transparency and raised me to be the same (at my own detriment at times). This began at a very early age but became uncomfortably realistic come puberty. She wasn't one who liked to constantly repeat herself, so at the ripe age of 10, the sex talks began. My brother was 13 and was getting them, so she decided it was smart to start in on it with me as well. Probably wise on her part given that at 10, I like more like a 15 year old.
"We need to talk about sex." I felt my whole body turn red. Really? Was this really happening to me now? I just stared at the floor, hoping to god that this would be brief and maybe more about talking about my newly acquired period than actual sex. Nope, I couldn't be more wrong.
"Sex is a beautiful and natural thing. Your body was made for having sex." Yep this was happening, this was my mother telling me this. She trapped me in the family room under the ruse of watching innocent cartoons, her sitting on the recliner, my trying to shrink and become one with the couch.
"The thing about sex is that it feels good and it's a lot of fun. You are far too young to be having sex but I am not stupid. Boys who look at you will not see a 10 year old and you may find yourself in a situation in which you might want to have sex. If you don't, kick him in the nuts and run, and when you get home, tell me so I can go kick him in the nuts. Make sure whoever you invite into that part of your world is worthy of it. That he loves you and puts you and your safety above anything else. But if you do, I don't want you to feel ashamed. I want you to be safe. I want you to be healthy, safe and not get pregnant. So I have started storing condoms in my bathroom in the cabinet above the toilet. Take them if you need them. I won't ask questions, I will just randomly check to see if I need to restock them. I would hope that if you do find yourself needing them, you'll come talk to me. I won't be mad, you won't be in trouble. My number one concern is always your safety." And just when I think she is done...
"Now I have put those condoms there for your safety and I expect you will use them. If you come home pregnant, I don't want you to have to worry about having a baby or having an abortion because I'll kill you. So don't get pregnant."
It was over. She got up from her recliner and went into the kitchen to start dinner. I grabbed a blanket, covering myself, feeling super dirty and uncomfortable. Embarrassed that my mom just offered me condoms and so freaked out by the idea of it all. I just wanted to find a boy who wanted to hold my hand, maybe sneak a kiss on the playground. I wanted nothing to do with anything that pee came out of. Wait, did my mom JUST say she would kill me?
Fast forward 6 years. I had been dating my boyfriend Special K (yep, any time I reference a boyfriend in this thing, I will be giving them a nickname, probably something ridiculous that makes me secretly laugh) for 6 months which in high school terms, might as well have been married. It was a bitterly cold morning in January, well that's every morning in Michigan, but on this particularly grey and awful day, I had skipped out on school because *cough, cough* I was far too sick to go to school that day, and my mom was in need of a mental health day (she was a psychologist, you better believe she viewed just wanting to veg and check out for a day as a necessity). This day was also known as, we just wanted to hang out together so we blew off school and work.
It began innocently enough, sitting in a booth in the back of Coney Island so that my mom could smoke (disgusting habit she picked up post-divorce). I am happily gorging myself on chili cheese fries for breakfast, because I am 16 and I can, not thinking twice about any alterior motives and plotting what else we could do with our day.
"So, you and Special K have been dating awhile now."
Crap.
"And I was wondering if you two have started having sex yet."
Double crap. I swallow the mouthful of what amounts to meat gravy, liquid cheese and soggy fries and manage to utter very sheepishly, "yes." At that point we had had sex. Once. A month ago. Hadn't tried again.
"Ok. Well when we get home, I am going to set you up to see the doctor and get you put on birth control. You'll have to have a full gyno exam and that is awful but we are going to make sure you are safe. I'll pay for birth control and condoms, you just make sure you are protected." Ok, not so bad. She kept it responsible and respectable. Damn, I have to see a fucking gyno who is going to poke and prod my fun parts.
"So..." It was the longest so I had ever heard in my fucking life. She leans forward, continues with the most ridiculously pervy and giddy look on her face.
".....did you like it?" Really? Really mom? You are really asking me this? Do I have to answer this? Who talks to their parents about their sex lives? Fuck. There is no getting out of this conversation, I can't get her to shut up.
"No," I respond in barely a whisper, shaking my head back and forth, probably resulting in brain damage in the exaggerated way I was doing it.
"Well, keep practicing, it gets SO much better."
And just when you think this delightful little story is done and lesson learned about open and honest communication with your child, nope, the saga continues.
After breakfast we head to Meijer as now she is on a mission to replenish the condom supply. Being 16 and with your mother, I am too mortified to even be in the vicinity of the aisle that informs the world I am letting someone plunder my fun parts, so I innocently hide in the make-up aisle, comforted by the likes of Maybelline and Cover Girl and the sweet 80 year old lady who may have fallen asleep while perusing the many shades of chapstick, while my mom conquers the condoms.
And then I hear her. Long before I see her, I hear her. Her laughing. Her pausing to catch her breath. I feel the bile rising in my throat, the sweat taking over the palms of my hands and my heart relocating to my stomach. This will not be good. This will be awful. I know it. I feel it coming.
She gasps for breath and declares for all of Meijer to hear, "Is he a magnum or a regular?" Yes, she is holding up two different boxes of condoms and shaking them in my face. "I mean, every guy thinks he's a magnum" (her now sticking the magnum box in my face, "but we all know he's a regular." She keels over at this point, laughing so hard she is crying and unable to stand upright as all civil humans should be able to. I feel the heat of embarrassment consume first my face, then spread like chicken pox down the rest of my body. I glance over at the sweet little old lady who by now has to be thinking I'm a raging teenage whore and that my mom is my pimp. This was my mother, this was how I learned to be safe and protected and make smart decisions. Somehow, despite this conversation, I learned by talking to her and being open and honest I wouldn't be a disappointment and that she would support me.
By my mother not demonizing sex, by being open and honest and talking to me about it as if I were a responsible adult, I had nothing to rebel against; nothing to hide, sneak or throw her in face and because of that I was able to make the right choices in being selective over who got to play with my fun parts. I was with Special K for 6 years and learned what it meant to express love through physical touch.
She had this approach of transparency with so many different things. She even used this approach when dealing with drugs and alcohol with me. "I am not stupid Jackie. I know when you are out with your friends there will be drinking and probably kids smoking pot and doing all kinds of stupid teenager stuff. I expect you'll want to and even might actually decide to try it yourself. Am I full on condoning this? No. But if you do, call me. Doesn't matter what time of night it is, I will come pick you up. I'd rather have you home safe than doing something stupid because you are afraid you'll get in trouble. You will never get in trouble for being responsible." Fucking mother. Gave me nothing to rebel against as a teenager. Didn't drink until I was 21 and never did a drug.
She took all the fun out of being a teenager. Thank god.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Coming to the Realization that Indeed Your Mother was Always Right
Loosing your mother is one of the oddest experiences you can have, especially when you are young and have so many big moments you expected your mom to be apart of. When my mother called me at work March 16, 2011 to tell me about her doctor's appointment, I innocently answered the phone given that only the day before we had discussed the fact it was expected to yield a positive result from the doctor. Instead, my mother very calmly informed me that despite weekly chemo, the cat scan revealed her tumors in her liver, spine and lymph nodes between her heart and lungs had grown. Treatment was not working. The only options at this point was to decide to try a more aggressive form of chemo, that at best would buy a few more very sick months and never eliminate the cancer, or let her live out the remainder of her life comfortably and spending it with family. She decided to take the latter of the options and had been told she should have 6 months to a year.
At that point I am not hearing her, I am barely standing or seeing. She said to drive home safe and to call her tonight. I am in the middle of discharging a kid at my work and looked at my coworker and asked her to stay. Breathing is becoming increasingly difficult, my throat felt like it was swelling and I could not feel my legs. I take off down the hall to find my boss to tell her I have to leave and I have to leave now. I don't do emotions well, even less so in public, in less than that at work in front of coworkers. I find it embarressing and unprofessional and I know there is no hope of my holding it together so I have to leave. Luckily I am able to locate her and take off. It was my boyfriend's (at that time) 30th birthday and he was scheduled to work. I call him on my drive home, asking him to just talk to me so I can focus long enough to drive to his house. He is sweetly waiting with wine and lots of comfort food, doesn't say anything (and thank god for that) and just sits with me. I am angry, I am scared and I don't want this to be my reality. I don't want it to be her reality. I am scared it'll one day be my own reality.
The thing about my mother is that she has lived an incredibly hard life and yet nothing seemed to break her of having such light and a strong belief that everyone gets their happy ending. I am angry that her happy ending involves her dying at 57 after battling breast cancer for 10 years. That her whole life was her over-coming one difficult experience after another to amount to her losing. I am terrified that so much of my life has mimicked hers, that despite my own perserverence and life-long dedication to reaching normalcy, that I too will end up in a body I can't recognize that now more resembles a jigsaw than a human and will one day die at a young age. Makes you question whether the journey is worth it when the ending just sucks so much.
I wasn't given the time I was promised, by May 22 she passed away. In the time she was learning to come to terms with her own death, we spent hours talking on the phone about it, her making sure I would be ok when she finally passed. Her reassuring me that even though her life has often been turmoil, it's focusing on the turmoil that has me missing the beautiful moments she would never give up. She emphasized that dying was one of the strangest experiences she had ever had. Moments when she was angry she would never see me graduate from grad school, get married or have children, and other moments when she was at peace, ready to take on the next journey at hand. Mostly, she said, she felt love. All around her she felt love and supported and it was in her dying that she was able to realize what it means to be human and to accept the love that is all around you on a daily basis. A message she missed during her entire life as she took on the world as a one man army.
After her passing I just pulled away from anyone who wanted to talk to me about her, or the funeral. I was so used up after spending a week having people tell me how amazing my mom was (as if I didn't know), how much she'd be missed (duh), and how they just feel like they were robbed (sorry for your loss, must be difficult for you, clearly I am still bitter and angry about the responses but bare with me). Everyone just stared at me, had to hug me and approach me. You see, I look just like her. Have my whole life. I sound like her, I have her mannerism and ability to communicate in a way that people can hear easily. So everyone needed to be near me to say goodbye to her. After the 30th or so death hug (what I called people hugging me, they weren't hugging for comfort, it was a totally different experience where it felt like it was their last hug with her), I was just done with people and being supportive of others, I needed to hide out and avoid anyone who insisted on bringing up what I just couldn't do anymore. I spent the summer avoiding phone calls and talking to anyone who loved and supported me and instead found myself seeking out those who didn't know me or her who could help me in my avoidance.
Now, I find I think of her all the time. I miss her all the time. I feel her around me all the time. I find myself thinking of her, the things she said and did and realizing how amazing my mom was. How well she did teaching me everything I need to know and in ways I never could have imagined. So why am I starting a blog about all this? Not entirely sure. I was driving to class tonight and was thinking about the random stories and memories and about how she had aspirations of one day publishing a book, impacting people in the world but she never quite had the energy to do so. I wanted to honor that about her but also honor everything she had to share. There's also the selfish reason of this being about me and dealing with grief in a more productive way as I don't like to "talk it out" or journal. I find I get far too annoyed with either of those options for them to be beneficial. I guess this is my journey in grief and finding myself now that my guide in life is no longer here. I will post as I remember things and share her tidbits and stories. Feel free to contact me or post as you want as this doesn't have be all about me (but lets be totally honest here, everything in this world is all about me :) )
Happy Reading!
Jackie
At that point I am not hearing her, I am barely standing or seeing. She said to drive home safe and to call her tonight. I am in the middle of discharging a kid at my work and looked at my coworker and asked her to stay. Breathing is becoming increasingly difficult, my throat felt like it was swelling and I could not feel my legs. I take off down the hall to find my boss to tell her I have to leave and I have to leave now. I don't do emotions well, even less so in public, in less than that at work in front of coworkers. I find it embarressing and unprofessional and I know there is no hope of my holding it together so I have to leave. Luckily I am able to locate her and take off. It was my boyfriend's (at that time) 30th birthday and he was scheduled to work. I call him on my drive home, asking him to just talk to me so I can focus long enough to drive to his house. He is sweetly waiting with wine and lots of comfort food, doesn't say anything (and thank god for that) and just sits with me. I am angry, I am scared and I don't want this to be my reality. I don't want it to be her reality. I am scared it'll one day be my own reality.
The thing about my mother is that she has lived an incredibly hard life and yet nothing seemed to break her of having such light and a strong belief that everyone gets their happy ending. I am angry that her happy ending involves her dying at 57 after battling breast cancer for 10 years. That her whole life was her over-coming one difficult experience after another to amount to her losing. I am terrified that so much of my life has mimicked hers, that despite my own perserverence and life-long dedication to reaching normalcy, that I too will end up in a body I can't recognize that now more resembles a jigsaw than a human and will one day die at a young age. Makes you question whether the journey is worth it when the ending just sucks so much.
I wasn't given the time I was promised, by May 22 she passed away. In the time she was learning to come to terms with her own death, we spent hours talking on the phone about it, her making sure I would be ok when she finally passed. Her reassuring me that even though her life has often been turmoil, it's focusing on the turmoil that has me missing the beautiful moments she would never give up. She emphasized that dying was one of the strangest experiences she had ever had. Moments when she was angry she would never see me graduate from grad school, get married or have children, and other moments when she was at peace, ready to take on the next journey at hand. Mostly, she said, she felt love. All around her she felt love and supported and it was in her dying that she was able to realize what it means to be human and to accept the love that is all around you on a daily basis. A message she missed during her entire life as she took on the world as a one man army.
After her passing I just pulled away from anyone who wanted to talk to me about her, or the funeral. I was so used up after spending a week having people tell me how amazing my mom was (as if I didn't know), how much she'd be missed (duh), and how they just feel like they were robbed (sorry for your loss, must be difficult for you, clearly I am still bitter and angry about the responses but bare with me). Everyone just stared at me, had to hug me and approach me. You see, I look just like her. Have my whole life. I sound like her, I have her mannerism and ability to communicate in a way that people can hear easily. So everyone needed to be near me to say goodbye to her. After the 30th or so death hug (what I called people hugging me, they weren't hugging for comfort, it was a totally different experience where it felt like it was their last hug with her), I was just done with people and being supportive of others, I needed to hide out and avoid anyone who insisted on bringing up what I just couldn't do anymore. I spent the summer avoiding phone calls and talking to anyone who loved and supported me and instead found myself seeking out those who didn't know me or her who could help me in my avoidance.
Now, I find I think of her all the time. I miss her all the time. I feel her around me all the time. I find myself thinking of her, the things she said and did and realizing how amazing my mom was. How well she did teaching me everything I need to know and in ways I never could have imagined. So why am I starting a blog about all this? Not entirely sure. I was driving to class tonight and was thinking about the random stories and memories and about how she had aspirations of one day publishing a book, impacting people in the world but she never quite had the energy to do so. I wanted to honor that about her but also honor everything she had to share. There's also the selfish reason of this being about me and dealing with grief in a more productive way as I don't like to "talk it out" or journal. I find I get far too annoyed with either of those options for them to be beneficial. I guess this is my journey in grief and finding myself now that my guide in life is no longer here. I will post as I remember things and share her tidbits and stories. Feel free to contact me or post as you want as this doesn't have be all about me (but lets be totally honest here, everything in this world is all about me :) )
Happy Reading!
Jackie
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