Friends, yes I know it has been a while. I began a blog earlier and then deleted it, it didn’t feel appropriate; I felt guilty. But guilt is part of the problem. I enjoyed a quiet hiatus. I enjoyed it too much, perhaps. But peace has its price in my case. At this stage of the game, having such an elderly parent, the phone could ring at any time of the day or night. The ringing phone makes me cringe. The caller Id can be even worse: if I see my mother’s name appear I hold my breath. This kind of fear and anticipation, aside from robbing me of my present and putting a damper on my health, feeds my anxiety, stokes my foreboding, provokes a pounding heart and an aching head.

So let me fill you in. I live in a hypersensitive state, I don’t want to be here, in this state, be it red or blue. I didn’t vote for it. It is not prudent, healthy or fun. I am learning to be more mindful of my reactions to situations and to people and in the process I am facing who I am; who my self is, during this year, the last year of another decade.

This is not a blog of complaint, this is a blog of reality, of dealing with raw emotion. If I write everything that I feel, it will be too much. If I discuss everything that goes on in my life it would be way too much. I edit profusely, I ride a red pencil; I omit.

Let’s make peace with the spilled soup. It gets stirred a lot, and even if it is clear broth, something always rises to the top to be siphoned off. Let’s call it the “Good-Daughter-Soup.”

My mother lives in senior housing and food is provided. She decided about two years ago to eat in her room and not in the dining room; she no longer could tolerate large groups of people. She didn’t want to risk getting sick and subsequently, facing the end. She hadn’t the energy to talk at meals any more. She preferred to sit in front of the television with the spun-out-of-control local and national news. At top volume. At age one hundred, she would not be able to eat in the dining room anyway: she needs assistance in transport, in eating. she is at a time when she needs to be under-stimulated.

Because she eats in her room, the food must be delivered and it is often missing an item, or something has been spilled or the napkin got wet, or the chicken is overdone. Strangely, over the last couple of weeks I had no complaints. In fact, it got so quiet that I was beginning to wonder what was or what wasn’t going on. Life appeared to be serene, but it was also serenely guilt-ridden.

If my mother mentions that she would like something, or that she needs something, or not even, it may be a solution to an issue that dawns on me, I am proactive, I do something. There was a simple situation. I came to a simple solution. But what I am getting at is that in many forms, throughout all these decades, throughout, around, about, we have had control issues which boiled down to the soup being inadequate.

The complaints I frequently received have included the broth not being delivered, or was bland, or was spilled, or had vegetables that were too hard. One of the aides also suggested that broth could be used to moisten and to purée, that a little blender would be helpful.

So, I ordered a small machine and a couple of quarts of organic, low-salt and salt-free chicken broth. The Good-Daughter-Soup was shipped as was the little blender: the blender was shunned. The soup was thrown out.

My mother insisted that the broth was contributing to her swelling feet. She didn’t need it. It just took me a while, again, as always, to get over it. Because, what floated to the top of the broth this time were the hard, root vegetables of annoyance, the spice of control.  When the Red Queen would shout, “off with her head!” It must have been because Alice  brought the wrong broth.

Am I speaking too cryptically? The dumping of the soup hit a nerve. Beyond the obvious, beyond the downright waste, past the cliché of children starving in Africa, waste doesn’t seem to have and never had meaning or importance to my mother.

[I keep deleting sentences, they are too painful to write. I am usually a diplomat and I just can’t find the right words so that when your eyes bounce along these phonemes and morphemes they don’t gasp.] But the dumping of the soup is reflective of the unilateral decision that something wasn’t needed, that something belonging to someone else was not needed, that it is acceptable to give things away that someone either loved or that another person could use.

I have never understood this behavior. I have never understood my mother’s behavior, her modeling, [while raising children, after surviving The Great Depression and a War], that marching whatever she interpreted as being expendable to the incinerator was proper behavior. Other family members followed suit, but not I. As a child, I found this beyond curious if not downright shocking.

I went over to pay the rent, to get the mail and to see what was going on. This past Saturday. The door is not locked, I walk in and announce myself over the blaring television; my mother doesn’t have the vision to discern who is entering. The evening aide was preparing her meal. The room was over-heated, my senses were on edge. She was watching a talent show that took place at the Apollo Theater. She was in her little leather recliner that she never reclined in. Between her and the television was a little wooden tray, set with a napkin as a place mat and her silverware. She was trying to convey to me that the aide made her sick, that she had a cold, that I should leave immediately. She was protecting me from germs that were likely pollen. And so it goes: everyone and everything is the enemy from the smallest microbe up. Everything is a threat. We know what is really lurking. We just don’t know when it will come to take her.

Between my mother and the world on a screen is a  wooden tray, her protection is her cutlery. My mother is very tiny and her world is tiny and gets smaller and scarier to her every moment.

Mother’s Day is coming.

I will no longer buy soup.

This series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

The previous post is here

The next post is here