I’m trying to make lemonade. I’m doing a pretty good job of
it, but I will admit I’m a little tired from the effort. I’d try to sell you a
glass, but it’s not that kind of lemonade. It’s the kind you make when life
hands you lemons…
My holiday plans were radically shifted when my father
became very ill one night. He’d been working on it for a few weeks, gradually
losing his apatite, feeling very nauseated, and, because he does love to share
such information, NOT POOPING. My father has very few boundaries.
Sunday night, he was in so much pain, my mother woke Tam at
2:30 and said, “Pop needs to go to the hospital.”
Fast forward to the ER doctor saying they need to transport
him to Portland
immediately, because he needs surgery and their surgeon won’t be there for
another week. “He will not live if we wait.”
Things get a little confusing here, because my mother
insists he was taken by helicopter, while Tam says they went by ambulance,
running lights and sirens the whole way. Whatever the method of transport they
used, Pop lost consciousness twice on the way due to pain.
When they got to Portland
they rushed him into emergency surgery where they discovered a ruptured
duodenal ulcer, approximately 3 centimeters in diameter (about the size of a quarter).
The surgeon had never seen one so large, and called in the other surgeons on
his team. They all agreed it was the biggest they’d seen and now they had to
figure out how to fix it.
Long medical story short, they patched him up, drained off
the fluid in his abdominal cavity (about three liters), blasted him with heavy
duty antibiotics and stuck him into ICU, where he stayed for two nights (and
almost ended up there for a third, because the old fart kept pulling tubes out
of places they needed to remain). Good times.
My mother, whose grip on reality keeps shifting without
warning, has been spending a lot of the time being very sad (understandable,
unless you’ve been a witness to the skirmish they call a marriage for the past
65 years). All of a sudden, they’re back in love and she’s a weepy mess. It’s
kind of weird, but whatever.
We ended up staying with my dad’s sister, Aunt “This Looks
Bad”. Seriously, she can look at your hangnail and make you want to end your
life before it does. Every time my cousin called, she’d say, “Oh, honey, it
doesn’t look good…” even though I told her he’s only in ICU until his blood
pressure stabilizes, but otherwise things are going fine.
She and I had many long chats, and I will freely admit she
was very helpful with my mother, and I’m extremely grateful for her allowing us
to stay in her lovely home. But… she’s a little shallow at times. We were
talking about my plans and what my schedule is for making it happen. I said I’m
working on it as quickly as I can, but when I’m called away for things like
this, it does hinder my progress. I had also mentioned that I work on my
manuscript in the mornings before I go to work because it’s the only time I
have right now.
That’s when she suggested I “put [my] little book project on
hold.”
Put my “little book project…”
Little. Book. Project.
Oh, yes she did.
The sky fell, my world screamed, and my heart wept. I went
numb. I smiled and said, “I only work on it in the morning, or after I’ve
exhausted myself getting the house ready and I need to stop.”
She barely acknowledged my words, just reminding me of what
my priorities are, or what she says they should be. Then I was informed that I will not be able to take care of
my parents and I need to put them in a home, because she knows what it’s like.
Funny, people tell me that, but people don’t really know
what I’m capable of doing or how strong I really am. I held back my desire to
write while I raised a family and it nearly ended me.
I work in a job where I’ve come home with concussions,
jammed fingers, and bruises in the shape of footprints on my chest, all from
out-of-control students. Yet I went back. I lifted, changed diapers on students
almost as big as I am, and kept a wild child from injuring several students
just by speaking calmly and gently.
I’m not normal. Most people don’t have jobs with those
things in the description, so to tell me I can’t do something because THEY
can’t do it makes no damn sense to me. Seriously, would you approach a cowboy
and tell him he can’t ride a horse because you tried it once but it was too
hard and you fell off? Or telling a nurse she can’t give shots to people
because YOU’RE afraid of needles???
Yeah, that’s kind of what it feels like to me. People who
haven’t been doing what I’ve been doing for the last ten years are telling me I
can’t do what I’ve been doing, only with my parents instead of students. I
can’t do it because they couldn’t do it.
So. To all those folks who think everyone is equally skilled
at every damn thing, have some fucking lemonade. I’m gonna go work on my
“little book project.”
