Riley

Riley, my mom's cat whom we adopted, is in the vet hospital as I type, receiving treatment for "fatty liver disease."  She hadn't been herself for several days, and last night, we decided we should take her to the emergency vet.  They kept her overnight, gave her IV fluids, then we picked her up this morning and took her to our vet.  She (our vet) seemed a little grimmer than the emergency vet, and now Hannah is a wreck.  She's kicking herself for not having said something sooner.

We've got 24 - 48 hours without her, as the doctors drip more fluids and see if she will eat.  She'd become almost skeletal, and, handily, the treatment for this is food.  We are hoping she'll be able to eat on her own, or with the help of a syringe.  Worst case scenario is a feeding tube.

The bill last night was $630.  No telling what a few days at our vet will be.  I do know my monthly visits will have to be off for the rest of the year.  At least I got one in.

I stop acupuncture, too.  It's costly, and I'm not getting any good things out of it.

Right now, I'm just very sleepy.  We didn't get back from the emergency vet until after midnight, and I was still lying awake at 4.  Doubt that Hannah got much more sleep.  And she's supposed to work a 5-hour shift today.  All I have is therapy.

If Riley doesn't make it, Hannah will be devastated.  First Esme, now this.  And she is not the best at telling anyone what she needs, so I'll just have to sort of stand close and let her come to me.

And, if Riley doesn't make it, that's one more way I'll have let Mama down since she died.  Another thing I didn't handle well.

Lunch Out

With fresh-from-the-salon daughter:

Are You Like Me?

When your son has passed along the stomach horror that has had him abed for the last 3 days, do you browse around on etsy, or cowboy boot sites, or online yarn shops?

Or do you think about the days when your son was little, and even then susceptible to high fevers?  And do you think about the number of times you've put him in the tub at ungodly hours to pour cool water on him and try to help him out?

And then does your mind go to both your children, when they were both little, and you remember having babies was so sweet:

But then you realize there were an awful lot of days like this:

And you down some Gatorade and ibuprofen, slump down onto the couch, and hope that your fever brings you warmly weird and satisfying dreams.

Newtown

I am 52 years old, and have experienced my share of sadness.  But what happened yesterday in Connecticut has me, for the first time ever, wondering about and questioning God.

It's been a long time since my two children were in Kindergarten.  Those two first days, however, are very clear in my mind.  After I left them in their classrooms and walked back to my car, I cried both times.  They were so small, and they were setting out on such a big adventure.  It never crossed my mind that, on any given day, I might not be able to pick them up in the line of cars, but would have to go to the medical examiner to retrieve them.

That someone the same age as my younger child could walk into a school and shoot 6 and 7 year-olds over and over again defies reason.  That parents had to wait after getting that horrifying news, that those babies were still lying where they fell and they could not get to them, is something my heart cannot bear.

Memory

Yesterday was the first year anniversary of my mother's death.  I was the only one who remembered.  Which would have mortified her.  She was one of those write-the-thank-you-notes-the-evening-of-the-event-type.  She never wanted to look anything but completely together, with everything handled.

She was determined to be perfect, to stay on top of things because of pride.  She wanted to stand alone because of what she was capable of.  Her isolation was due to her idea that dignity was the goal, and dignity is usually a one-person-at-a-time event.

I find myself doing almost everything by myself.  Remembering dates, occasions.  My children don't have a clue.  Don't even show an interest in paying attention to anyone's lives/feelings/activities but their own.  I'm the only one who seems to realize that there are things that simply have to be done, just have to be thought about.  Even if it interrupts a DVD or a text or a phone call.

My isolation is loneliness.  An only child, never the best at making lots of friends, raised by a woman whose message was always "backbone" instead of "heart."

I Don't Like It

Halloween, that is.  This comes from a mother who loathed it, who complained loudly about having her evening interrupted by a bunch of silly children dressed in costumes.

As you can imagine, I didn't go trick or treating much --- I remember exactly two times, and one of them once spent trying to cut two simple eyeholes in a sheet so as to be a ghost.  My mother and I fought over that for some reason --- viciously.  Either she didn't want a sheet ruined or she felt I was cutting the holes in the right way and/or right place.  I threw on a v-neck sweater, borrowed some pom-poms from a neighbor, and tried to pass myself off as a cheerleader.

I wondered what would happen when I became a parent, and how the event would be handled.  Our firstborn was so shy, so withdrawn, that even the mention of Halloween would put a look of abject terror on his face.  Plus, he didn't like candy that much.  Problem solved.

Until secondborn.  Whom no one could ever describe as shy, who adores not only dressing up, but designing costumes, making costumes, wearing costumes on days not even near October.  So, some serious bucking up was called for, and we made it through the trick-or-treating years without either of them being too damaged or disappointed.  I think.

But I still don't like it.

Scream

My clothes are aggravating me.  My skin is aggravating.  I want to rip the entire world away from me, or me from the entire world.

I am angry and I am hopeless and I want to scream, but I have no idea what I'd say.  Nothing --- nothing --- is calming me.  I have the TV on because silence is deadly.  But noise makes my skin crawl.  

My son is having very serious mental health issues, but he is not sharing (and he certainly has every right to keep his business to himself.)  My daughter is all over the map emotionally.  I gave each of them until December 31st to save enough money to live on their own --- I can't imagine that either of them have even a tiny percentage of what it would cost.

If they cannot pay rent somewhere else, I will allow them to live here, but there will be rent and bills and rules.  Frankly, the idea of all three of us under one roof again scares me.  We are not good for one another in a long run.  And the feeling that they will have that they have failed will only blacken their moods.  And as they go, I go.

Why can't I get better?  My therapist and my psychiatrist and I are trying all we can, but I'm just sinking more.

Let Me Paint You A Picture

The University of Georgia and Athens, Georgia are virtually the same thing.  UGA sits just about in the dead center of Athens, and Sanford Stadium sits just about in the center of UGA.  When there is a football game here, life is insane.  Today is a game day.  Well, game night --- kick-off is 7:45 PM.  There aren't that many roads into Athens, and as fans come in, they are all clogged to within an inch of their pavement.  The closer it gets to game time, the emptier the "out" streets become and the fuller the "in" streets.

Amidst all the Knitters' Hunk and Chick goings-on, I failed to tell you that my son got a significant promotion at his job, and my daughter got re-hired at a restaurant where she worked during high school.  The restaurant has 2 locations: the one she usually works, which is about 3 minutes from our house, and the other, which is downtown.

Downtown borders the UGA campus.  It is full of restaurants and bars and funky shops and bars and pizza places and bars and music venues and bars and sandwich shops and bars.  For today, she was assigned a shift at the downtown location.  From 5 PM to 3 AM.

I just got back from taking her down there, and --- and this is three hours before kickoff --- you cannot move downtown.  It is absolutely crazy.  Tonight's opponent, I should mention, is Vanderbilt.  (ANCHOR DOWN!)  The people we saw tailgating as we drove in had not just begun to party, if you get my drift.  And they've still got hours to go.  And my baby girl is in the middle of all of it.

She's kind of torn, she says, because while she really wants Vandy to win the game, she knows a bunch of drunk, angry Georgia fans probably won't give her very good tips.  Drunk, happy Georgia  fans probably would.  I told her just to keep her head down, but that if any Vandy fans come in, be sure and sneak them the sign:

Photo(ish) Day

Current project:

in terrific green tweed Nashua Isabella yarn:

while watching "Rifftrax Life: 'Reefer Madness'."

Ongoing project:

My babies.

Torment

When your children are small, birthdays are easy.  There's a TV show or a movie that they're hooked into, so decorations and gifts are simple.  There are a handful of friends that they like to play with, so you invite them, and --- WHAM --- happiness abounds.

As they get older, it gets a little trickier, because character decorations are NOT cool, and the 2 or 3 friends that they seem incapable of living without are easy company, because they spend the entire time they're together as far away from you as possible.

Now, I have adult children.  And one of them has a birthday today.  I've spent the last week, week and a half pleading with her to tell me what she wanted as gifts, if she wanted a cake, what she wanted to do.    She didn't know, she didn't know, she didn't know.  Maybe get some of her Atlanta friends together and go to Six Flags.  But I never saw or heard her trying to get in touch with anyone.

Finally, she said that all she wanted was money.  She told her friends via Facebook that she wanted cash.  I knew this was going to be a bit of an issue with her brother, who never has any disposable cash, but I figured he'd somehow manage a card or something.

This morning, when I got up, I went to Starbucks and got her favorite coffee.  I gave it to her when I got back, along with a check for a good chunk of change.  We called her brother, told him to come on over, and we'd get the day started.

He came over grumpy and empty-handed.  The discussion about where to eat went on FORever.  People were out of sorts before we even got there, and, once seated, he said something (I didn't hear it) that had her threatening to go wait in the car.  It was a quiet, tense meal.

Afterward, she decided she wanted a cake from Baskin Robbins, and on the drive over there, she started sobbing.  "I only got one thing for my birthday.  One thing.  And it wasn't what I really wanted."  What did she really want?

A kitten.

A kitten.

Barely able to breathe, she went through how empty she has felt since last October, when we lost Esmeralda.  That she's tried to fill the hole with all sorts of things, and they didn't work.  She just wanted a kitten.

My mother's cat, Riley, spends every waking moment following Hannah around, waiting for her to come back when she goes downstairs.  I reminded her of that, but to no avail.  We were at Baskin Robbins now, and she wouldn't even get out of the car.  I just pulled a cake out of the freezer, paid for it, and we came home.

Where she started crying again.  And Briton had heard enough, and got violently angry about how dirty the house is with the animals we have already, and that she'd better not bring another one in.  She reminded him, forcefully, that he no longer lived here.  He said he knew that, that he really wasn't even part of the family anymore.

I had to physically stop her from pouring a drink on his head, at one point she stood up on the coffee table to shout her position. . .  It was just about as ugly as it's ever gotten around here.  Now he has left, she has escaped to her room, and I'm left, as always, wondering where in the world I went wrong, what I can do to help either of them, or maybe if, since they are both now in their 20s, it's time for me to step off and let them hurt, trusting that the pain won't be permanent and that they have the tools to manage it.

Control

A few years ago, a friend of mine asked me what my son wanted to do, career-wise.  I told her he wanted to be an actor.  Her reply was, "And you're going to let him do that?"

The question made me feel simultaneously surprised and sad.  Surprised that she thought I would (or should) have dominion over my son's job choice, and sad for the three children she has who were obviously heading where MOM wanted them to go.

As much as I adore my children, as aware as I am that I gave birth to them and raised them, I have never, ever thought of them as "mine."  They've never been my possessions.  They've never been mine to pour into a mold of my own making.  They've always been people.  Two very different people.  I doubt either would have bent to my will.

My daughter has begun to get tattoos.  She has one on her wrist, and yesterday she had text and flowers inked across her back.  She also has sketches and ideas for --- this is strictly a rough guess --- half a dozen more.  

I have a tattoo, which gives me a wee bit of legitimacy when discussing the topic.  I don't want her marked from neck to toes.  I don't want her doing something now, at 19, that she, at even 25, might deeply regret.  And yet, these aren't my decisions to make.  I've explained my position to her, and she has listened, and that's really as far as I can go.  It's her body and it's her money.

Wonder what my friend would think of this development?

Labels, Titles, IDs and The Like

Though I have been a mother for almost 24 years now, I've never felt that "Mother's Day" was for me.  I can't explain it, and I realize that from out there it makes little, if any, sense, but in here, it's clear as day.  Mother's Day was for my Mama.  That's all.  I suppose that's how I'll always feel.  Especially today, my first one without her.

My children are always so eager to please on this day.  They tell me over and over that it's my day, that they'll do anything or go anywhere that I want to go.  All the decisions are mine.  And I can never come up with anything.  Ever.  For 23+ years!  Is it because of not feeling I have a claim to the day?  Or is it being a real mom, and trying to think of things to do, places to go that the children will enjoy/won't fight over?  I'm guessing enormous parts of being a mom are wanting your children to be happy, and, not to be overlooked, keeping the peace.  Even at the cost of your own entertainment/comfort/preferences.

All that said, today's Google doodle brought me to tears:

Two little ones and a simple flower.  Happy Mother's Day.

This May Be An Age Thing

But when did people stop being quiet at the movies?  Did I miss some edict which lessened the degree of common courtesy one shows in public?

And the thing is, I don't even go to that many movies!  But when I do go, there are people just yakking away like they own the place.  Well, kiddos, you don't.

My one rule for my children --- all of their lives --- when we went out in public was, "Act like you've been somewhere before."

Some folks need remediation.

When Your Daughter Is Home For The Summer

This is how you spend your Friday night:

This Is Us

My babies and me at a post-"Amadeus" meal.

Buck Up

It is almost beyond my own ability to comprehend that I cannot seem to get to Nashville.  There is no job keeping me here.  The only thing I have on my calendar is therapy one day a week.  And yet, every single time I think a chance has opened up, something else arises that means I either can't go at all, or could speed up and stay for maybe 2 days before I'd need to get back here.  Briton has a show opening.  Hannah wants to come home.  Hannah has to come home for a doctor's appointment.  Briton can't look after the animals because of work and rehearsal schedules.

I am looking at the last week of April right now.  But I have a sneaking suspicion that will turn into the week that Hannah finishes school and will need help moving back.

I know, I know, all I need to do is put my foot down and say, "I'm going.  Work out your stuff on your own."

But it's hard to say that when you're a mom.

And when the thought of going back to that house ties your stomach into acid-soaked knots.

Got out and ran errands early this morning so that I could get back and watch The Masters coverage.  I drove through Augusta on my way to Folly Beach;  a beautiful place.  I think I went through when all the flowers and shrubbery were at their blooming peak, as it has been so warm around here.  It certainly looks more green than accented with bright colors on TV.

(Some golfers appeal more than others.)

Now knitting on 5 different things, as I have been assured a spot in a local artists' market in May.  My request went in months ago, and I pretty much thought they'd decided against me when I never got a response back. Then, all of a sudden, I get an e-mail this week asking if I still wanted them to hold a place for me.  Gotta get busy.

Wrapped up A Prayer for Owen Meany a couple of days ago.  Tearful ending, but a bit of a slog to get there.  "J" is Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones.  I can already tell it's going to fly by compared to its predecessor.

No big plans for the weekend, other than knitting and golf.  Hannah was to come home this weekend, but has decided to wait until next weekend so she can see Briton open in "Amadeus."  We may still try to sneak in a trip down for a lunch or something.  Miss that girl.

How I'm Built

I'm good in a crisis.  In times of extreme emotion, I have the willingness and the ability to keep people calm, to do the things that need to be done.

My problem is, once the crisis has passed, I collapse.  Emotionally and physically.  Depending on the type of crisis, it will usually be more one than the other, but I rarely emerge from a period of intensity without some sort of suffering.

Today, for instance, I have a pounding headache.  This after the beach trip followed by a weekend of Hannah being at home, which always --- ALWAYS --- includes a cataclysmic fight between her and Briton.  

All that to say this: my nervous breakdown/extreme depression, when one stops to think about it, follows a number of crises/trying times:

Dale's death/raising Briton and Hannah

Daddy's death

Mama's declining health and death

Losing my job/dire financial straits.

I go all the way back to Dale's death because, yes, he died 14 years ago, but the crisis ran through until Briton and Hannah moved out on their own.  My work of holding things together, of actively parenting them, was done.

Obviously, losing one's parents is traumatic --- I held it together until both of them were gone.

The job/money thing is too obvious to comment on.

I guess what I'm saying is, I shouldn't be surprised that I broke down.  My work in all those areas ended, for the most part.  The next intense "event" is cleaning out Mama and Daddy's house, and making a decision on exactly what is going to be done with it.  I'll fall in some way after that is done, too.

MishMash

A dear, true friend lost her father last night.  It had been a very difficult last several months, and she is all over my heart today.

Hannah is home for half of her Spring Break.  The Usual Apocalypse broke out the first night.  Briton didn't even come over yesterday.  What have I done, or not done, to make this family shatter like this when we're together?  

Who, Me? Jealous?

Daughter in Nashville this weekend meeting these people:

But, really and truly, these freckles aside, it's mainly about

We both know it.  She'll cop to it one day.  In the meantime, I go on knitting my sad little gray shawl on a rainy day while she breathes Supernatural air. . .