julierichmond

I’m not sure when it started. Maybe last week. Maybe just before Christmas. That’s the way it is. One day I wake up and realize that we have entered a new phase. And it hurts, the surprise of knowing the last phase is done. I didn’t mark it with a cake or a photograph or even a moment where I looked around and made a point of remembering what it felt like.

I’m talking about the movements of my families life. The segueways are less than graceful as I passed thru being a mom to babies, to the stressful role as guardian to toddlers to suddenly waking up and finding my role is that of driver, provider of dinner and cash. Tonight I became aware that I am no longer the central figure in my kids lives.

Katy, my 10 year old daughter, is off with a friends family skiing. She has always been a “mini me.” I never asked her to be. She stumbled into swim team, and playing the flute, and long afternoons hidden inside a book, all by herself.

I have never been much of a skier, I have problems walking down our back steps after it snows three inches. And trying to slide down a hill, on boards, wield poles; well I have problems juggling my purse and a bag of groceries. So I was a little worried about how successful she’d be on her winter weekend in New Hampshire.

This morning, she called me on the phone and told me she had gone down the intermediate slope and ridden a chair lift and asked when I could take her shopping for ski socks. Then she said “I love you mom.” I love you, mom,” is Katy code for “let me off the phone now, breakfast is waiting, and then I am going back out to hit the slopes.” i think. I’m not quite as sure of her as I was yesterday. 

Colin, my thirteen year old, is over at a friend’s house. I got to drive them over there, and tonight there were no awkward pauses in their conversation. They spoke easily about basketball and video games and homework.  I drove, quiet, and listened to every word. I like to hear my son talk to his friends. He is casual and confident and funny. We were supposed to watch a movie tonight, but I’m fine with his defection. I wouldn’t have liked the movies he suggested. Last night I forced him into an evening of sitcoms so it would have been his turn to pick. The last time he picked we watched “The Purge”. I got off easy.

So here I am, home alone. The kids are with their friends and I am the last thing on their minds. I will wake up early tomorrow and go the gym with a friend while they sleep in, exhausted from whatever the hell they are up to tonight.

And that is the way it should be.

When they were little, and we had to go somewhere, or leave somewhere, or even have dinner, I’d call out at least ten minutes in advance, “five minute warning, guys.” And five minutes later I’d do it again. And everyone would get to the table or to the car or into their swimsuits at just the right time.

This time, I really would have appreciated a five minute warning.

I had a plan for my next post, a topic, an outline, I’d bought myself some time to ruminate on healing and community, personal limitations and a way to redefine those limitations as opportunities. And I was going to write the word opportunities in italics. It was a well thought out plan.

Then, came a minor health scare with my daughter. And a power outage that, long story made so much shorter, ended up with us all sleeping in the living room last night.

After that night, I didn’t feel that time in front of the computer ruminating was called for. I needed to dive right back into our lives. First up on the new agenda, a trip to our church. Next, an adventure at the local ice skating rink, probably against doctor’s orders, followed by the highlight of everything-I’d watch the Super Bowl with my son. (I don’t care about the Superbowl, but my son does.)
Two years ago we took up skating, me and my kids. I hadn’t skated for thirty years. When I went, I had visions of leading them out, Colin clutching on one gracefully outstretched palm, Katy the other.
It was horrible. Thirty years is a long time. Colin and Katy grabbed milk crates and held onto to them while they figured it out. I held on to the wall and prayed and cursed a lot.

That was two years ago.
Since then, I’ve practiced. So even though I’m not cleared for the gym, I thought a few spins around the rink would be good. I’ve been sick. Katy had the glitch. Our power went out, now it’s on, but we all needed sometime to glide around in circles because who knew what was coming next.
And we skated. Katy, me, her friend Pennie and probably hundred other people. And for me, at least for a moment or two, it was easy. Which means as I slid across the ice, I was hearing Katy Perry and Keisha and some boy band sing, instead of me- breathing noisy, or cursing, or muttering= “what am I thinking… I’m too old for this.”

And then, I got a text from a son of a friend of mine, could he come by tonight to talk. He had something to say.

When this boy, I will call him “A”, says he has something to say, he has something to say. He is fifteen, but he is not a sports fan, or an alarmist.

So I skated my way to the bleachers, and called my son. Colin is a sportsfan. He is a Sports Fan. A is his friend, but I needed to clear his visit with Colin. The Super Bowl definitely isn’t a big deal to A.

Colin said I could invite A over, wanted to know what it was all about. Told him I didn’t know, but it sounded big, it might interfere with kickoff. Colin agreed, and sent me to the store for more buffalo wings.

This is not a long story. I shouldn’t have milked it. This is the thing. A came over to say he is leaving on Wednesday for private school. He hugged me when I fell forward a bit, he hugged me and lifted me up and held me strong, because he’s a strong boy. And I’m a sad woman, because I will miss him, but not so sad to not let him lift me up.

We spoke of Skype and cafeteria food, and how much Colin loves him. He showed me three or four vines, those short videos that are supposed to make everyone laugh, and I laughed, I think, when I was supposed to. I melted cheese in the microwave for him, I made sure he remembered his math homework. I drove him home after half time and talked about Skype some more. I’ve never skyped anyone in my life.

But I will learn. I learned how to skate, after forgetting. So I can certainly figure out how to stay in touch with my friend who is moving to Maine.

I was in the middle of folding some clothes, scooping clothes out of the dryer, sorting them into vague piles, peering up at socks and shirts and warn thru towels. I was wondering, even wandering, which respective pieces were ready for the rag heap. None had. I am kind, and have a variety of uses for holy socks- cleaning coffee tables, warn thru towels- kids don’t get the fluffy ones till they are working fullotime, and dated, faded teeshirts- on many days I totally identify with dated, fading tee-shirts. It would not speak well of my self esteem if I discarded the tee-shirts.

I started coughing, just when I was piling piles on piles. I started coughing so hard,the laundry fell over, cottony, sweet, smelling dominos. I kept coughing and I couldn’t stop.

A call to Sheldon, a lurching trip up the basement stairs, still clutching handfuls of stuff, not sure what. I couldn’t breathe anymore. I couldn’t even cough. My chest was rising and falling and from inside it’s walls were a thousand screeching voices of Whos from Whoville after a very long night hanging out with the cast of Breaking Bad smoking all the meth in the world. It was a nightmare that I don’t remember at all, but I can hear the screams coming from deep inside of me that stung and broke me forward.

I went to the ER. I was admitted around 7 pm. By around midnight, they gave me a bed. I was there from Thursday until tonight, Monday January 20. I am so glad to be home.

Being sick is tough on everyone, and I had the additional challenged presented by being financially struggling mom of two remarkably talented kids. By remarkably talented kids, I’m talking children that collectively belong to three basketball teams, one swim team, one studies flute and the other is working very hard to learn the fine points of skating. The logistics were a nightmare, but with the help of friends, and other moms, who I now consider friends, we got thru it.

But the hardest part for me during every step of the process, was I never really did find out what was wrong and still don’t know. The oxygen saturation in my blood was and still is low. I have a deep growl of a cough lodged in my belly that seems to be hibernating for the season, even when coaxed by Mucinex and Prednizone and nebulizars and prodigious quantities of tea. Today,since my blood is saturated with a little bit more oxygen, my body was allowed to return home I need to make an appointment with a specialist later on in the week.

All this not knowing weighed and weighs heavy.

While I was in the hospital, I sought solace by figuring out how to work my hospital bed. Really, you ask. Really. I had a state of the art hospital bed. It was capable not only of the up and the down that is so popularly advertised on late night tv, but of weighing it’s inhabitant, in this case, me. I was quite worried about chicken patties and cups of custard adding to all of the holiday indulgence, so by Saturday morning, I decided to figure it out. None of the nurses had quite knew how to operate it, or so they said. (There was a regular scale in the room, and there may have been one or two other patients that also needed their attention.) I read some instructions I found in the closet. I figured out how to turn it on. Then, how to zero it out. (This is a pretty important step, what with all of the stuff that piled onto my hospital bed by Saturday morning, and a complicated process. I probably shouldn’t share it because I don’t think the nurses would approve.)

Next, I figured out how to fling my scantily clad body onto the zeroed out bed so that my head fell at just the right angle to read my current weight after I pressed the right button. Finding the right button was another process, and I probably couldn’t find it again, because their were so many damn buttons to choose from. At the end of it all, I can tell you that on Saturday afternoon, at 2;03 pm, I had lost 3.2 pounds, or maybe kilometers, according to my upside down analysis of the numbers since Thursday morning. Approximately.

With that project finished, I turned to some beautiful books my friends had brought. One was “Taking the Leap”, by Pema Chodron. Anne Lamont’s latest, A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair, looked good. But when I went to open them, I realized I wasn’t in the mood for careful meditation, for taking some time to consider what in my life might have led me to a hospital room with oxygen levels that made even the most jaded nurse scowl. Of course, she might have been sick of me fiddling with the equipment.

I wanted to watch Jeopardy. I made phone calls for my work with Quincy College to students who were a little behind in registering for the spring semester. I chatted with orderlies about the best workouts for weight loss, and I told nurses where to find the most outrageous zumba class. I made notes on a recipe for brussel sprouts, angle hair pasta and bacon, then calculated the calories per serving.

Tonight, when I got home, it was wonderfu. Well, the dog was really happy. And the kids smelled really good and told me a couple great stories. But the best part- Colin needed my help with his History Pape. He let me proof read it. I got to visit a world where action verbs are always better and run on sentences are just wrong.

Then the printer wouldn’t work. I fixed it. (The paper was jammed, but it was really really jammed. I had to go in.)

And for the mighty climax, just after I inhaled my kids kisses and glanced at them head up the stairs, I tackled this. The computer. Somehow our Apple had lost it’s way. Diagnostics told me it was no longer connected to the internet.

It took a while. In the past, I’ve ever attempted anything more complicated in regards to computer “repair” than finding the wireless mouse. I am currently connected to the internet.

In these times of uncertainty, when I truly don’t know why I am not breathing easy, for real or as a metaphor for a type of spiritual foreshadowing, I find comfort in making things work. I can’t make my lungs work, I can’t make my kids work, (without causing certain amounts of stress that would probably impact the whole lung part of the equation,) but when I put my mind to it, I can make stuff work. Stuff that I wouldn’t have even attempted before I was temporarily defeated by a pile of laundry, and a choir of nasty sharp whispering gnomes temporarily lodged in my diaphragm.

Tomorrow, I’m going to have get down to the rest of it.

There was a time in my life when I became proficient in making a seal to store cocaine in small quantities, I could fold a tiny envelope out of a shiny piece of magazine in moments, without scissors. I could measure out just the right amount of powder from one of those seals onto a fingernail in a bathroom stall while ten people waited outside impatiently and waited for the toilet to flush.

There was a time where I could soar uphill a river on wet rocks and always find footing and never fall.

There was a time when I could read three Nancy Drews in one night, during commercial interruptions for the Partridge Family and the Brady Bunch.

There was the time I survived my father telling me he had Altzheimers. I was nineteen. I didn’t think I’d make it.

There has been childbirth, and sobbing toddlers, and bad breakups and great love affairs and wonderful vacations and horrible moments when I realized I lost my wallet or my house keys or faith in finding whatever I believed I lost. I’ve found most everything, even when I stopped looking for it.

It is magnificent, that this life has given me enough time to be so many different versions of idiot, mother, lover, hero and ass.

And that I still have a big, huge sprawling life left ahead of me.

I can’t wait.