The Unsinkable Molly Brown
My mom always compares herself to Maggie Brown, otherwise known as the Unsinkable Molly Brown. Molly was traveling on the Titanic when it hit the iceberg. She refused to leave, helping others to board the lifeboats, and had to be convinced to get into Lifeboat No. 6. She was dubbed "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" by historians because not only did she help in the ship's evacuation, she also took an oar in her lifeboat and insisted that the crewman in charge go back to try and save more people.
Born poor to a family of Irish immigrants, she married J.J. Brown who became wealthy after their marriage when he discovered a substantial ore seam. Molly was an amazing woman. In 1901 she was one of the first students to enroll at the Carnegie Institute in New York. She became fluent in French, German and Russian. In 1909 she ran for the U. S. Senate. Throughout her life she used her wealth to fight for women’s rights and suffrage and to improve social services. She worked with Judge Lindsey to help destitute children and establish the United States’ first juvenile court which helped form the basis of the modern U.S. juvenile courts system.
I’m not sure that mom knows Margaret’s entire history but she does admire her for being a survivor who never let anything bring her down--who always picked herself up and moved on. That pretty much describes my mom as well. She may not have run for Senate but she has accomplished amazing things in her life despite the horrors that she lived through. Now mom is facing the challenge of getting older. But still she sees herself as unsinkable and I’m on the sidelines cheering her on.
Mom lives in independent senior housing near us. She exercises everyday, including practicingTai Chi, but her greatest love is walking. Even now when she depends on a rolling walker, which she calls her Mercedes, she tools around at a pretty good clip. But her greatest challenge these days is her balance which can desert her without warning.
Last June on her 88th birthday, she woke up feeling weak. Steve and I were with her in her apartment when she walked to the window. Suddnely she lost her balance and fell over hitting a table. She broke three ribs. I always tell her that she never does anything half way. She couldn’t just pull a muscle or perhaps fracture one rib—nope—mom goes for breaking the whole rack. When people heard about her accident they winced and said, “Oh broken ribs. That’s so painful and you can’t do anything for them but wait till they heal.” The doctors were determined to give her pain killers but she would only take Tylenol. Within a week she was off the Tylenol and buzzing around the rehab place like a speed demon. Each day when we came to visit we would have to search for her because she was always out somewhere strolling. She was the marvel of the floor.
Then a few weeks ago, once again while Steve was within six inches of her, she fell this time on the pavement. When I got to the emergency room and saw her I nearly keeled over and had to run for a chair before I fainted. She looked like someone had worked her over.
She took one look at my white face and said, “So I guess I must look gorgeous!”
I answered, “Well mom, I would cancel that beauty pageant appearance that you had planned.”
Shatz just looked at the two of us and laughed. He knew that we needed our silly jokes to get us through. But when she told me that she wanted a mirror to see what she looked like, I put my foot down.
“You don’t need to see what you look like right now”, I told her.
“Hey you know me,” she answered. “The Unsinkable Molly Brown!”
Later on as we waited in the hall for her to be admitted, she suddenly said, “You know all these ambulance drivers are really handsome!” One of the nurses heard her and cracked up. I smiled relieved to see that her spirit was getting her through this latest set back. I sure could have used some of that spirit. In the end she had to get seven stitches over her eye and suffered a fractured pelvis. Once again we waited for her stay in the hospital to end so we could get her to rehab and home.
But this time has been harder. Because of her fractured pelvis, walking, the one thing that gets her through the rough patches, is painful. When we come to visit she looks sad or exhausted and my heart hurts to see her this way. We bring her food and flowers, take her for walks, talk to her and that helps for a bit but some of her spirit seems to have abandoned her. Each morning when I wake up I say a prayer that today will be the day that she feels a bit stronger, today will be the day when she will look at me with that look I know and love so well--the one that says, “Don’t worry, I’m not giving up, after all I’m the Unsinkable Molly Brown.” Because I can’t even allow myself to think that she isn’t.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Sick Days
Sick Days
People can be divided into two basic groups: Those who can handle being sick and those who cannot. In our family Steve is the one who suffers in silence and I’m the total wuss. Well, maybe not total. If I’m not running a fever I’m up and working but I’m not happy and I let everyone around me know it.
This past week Steve once again proved to be one of the, oh-just-suck-it-up half of the sick world. The Sunday after Thanksgiving he began showing all the symptoms of an affliction that through the years we have affectionately called, crashing. Crashing occurs when you’ve pushed yourself beyond your usual limits and become so tired that only sleeping through an entire week-end can cure you.
The first time that I encountered this phenomenon was shortly after we were married. Before kids, our week-ends were for reserved for errands and chores but mostly we just relaxed. On Sundays Steve would wake up early, eat breakfast, go back to sleep for a few hours then join me for the rest of the day.
But this particular Sunday he kept sleeping and sleeping, showing no inclination of arising. I had no idea what to do with myself, so I decided to bake a honey cake from a recipe I had found in that day’s newspaper. As the wonderful aroma wafted through the apartment I kept thinking that it would surely awaken Shatz who would be eager to gobble it up.
Little did I know the smell was making him sick. Later he explained that whenever he had to stay up late for a long stretch of time he would be fine for a while but eventually the lack of sleep would catch up with him and he would crash. To this day he can’t stand the thought of honey cake.
So last Sunday he thought that he was in crash mode but then it stretched into Monday and Tuesday and then Wednesday, despite all his efforts to pretend as if nothing was wrong. Each morning he was still sleeping when I left in the morning and each afternoon when I came home he looked worse. But he kept popping Advils and insisting that he would be, “Fine, just fine!”
On Wednesday I couldn’t take it anymore and I forbade him to go to his tutoring appointment though he kept insisting that the Advil was keeping him going. It wasn’t until I reminded him that maybe the parents of the kid he was tutoring wouldn’t appreciate him getting their kid sick, when he gave in and made a doctor’s appointment.
His doctor’s initial diagnosis was a tick borne infection called anaplasma (fancy huh?) and dosed him with antibiotics. But I couldn’t relax until his tests came back. I stayed true to my paranoia that entire weekend imagining Shatz with some horrible, incurable disease, even though we could see that the antibiotics were working. Maybe that’s why I’m such a marshmallow when it comes to sickness—I always assume that it’s going to be deadly.
I seem to be surrounded by sickie heroes lately. Last week I wondered why I hadn’t heard from my boss, Mike, for a while when he finally called. He had been suffering from Shingles--that delightful virus that attacks anyone who has had chicken pox, especially those of us over 50. When I had heard that there was a vaccine available I was first in line at my doctor’s office and then bugged Steve mercilessly until he got one too. When I told Mike that there was a vaccine available (talk about shutting the barn after the horse has escaped) he said, “Yeah, I know. I was scheduled to get one this week!”
I felt so sorry for my poor boss until he told me that, despite the shingles, he was going to be in Washington D.C. that week-end. I thought to myself, “Oh no not another misguided hero!” assuming that it was for business. But when he told me he was going to D.C. for the Patriot’s game, all my pity flew out the window. Pain or no pain, this guy was going out of state to attend a football game. There’s a limit to pretending you’re not sick.
Why can’t these guys understand that there’s a certain beauty in giving in to sniffles and sneezes? In embracing the fever and simply lying in bed and groaning like a wounded animal while your husband scurries about getting you tea and cold compresses and cough syrup. At least you’re making only one other person miserable and not an entire office. Who hasn’t wanted to club the person in the cubicle next to theirs who coughs and hacks his way through an entire day, spreading their cheery germs to the world? No amount of hand sanitizer in the world is going to prevent you from catching whatever rotten virus it is that they’ve brought in to share with their co-workers.
So everyone, I beg you, embrace your inner child and stay home when you’re contagious. Stop fighting the fact that you feel like you’ve been run over by a truck—let’s face it you’re not going to get much done in your condition anyway. Get into your jammies, grab a tissue box and the remote and bid the world farewell for a couple of days. Because believe me, no one loves a sick hero.
People can be divided into two basic groups: Those who can handle being sick and those who cannot. In our family Steve is the one who suffers in silence and I’m the total wuss. Well, maybe not total. If I’m not running a fever I’m up and working but I’m not happy and I let everyone around me know it.
This past week Steve once again proved to be one of the, oh-just-suck-it-up half of the sick world. The Sunday after Thanksgiving he began showing all the symptoms of an affliction that through the years we have affectionately called, crashing. Crashing occurs when you’ve pushed yourself beyond your usual limits and become so tired that only sleeping through an entire week-end can cure you.
The first time that I encountered this phenomenon was shortly after we were married. Before kids, our week-ends were for reserved for errands and chores but mostly we just relaxed. On Sundays Steve would wake up early, eat breakfast, go back to sleep for a few hours then join me for the rest of the day.
But this particular Sunday he kept sleeping and sleeping, showing no inclination of arising. I had no idea what to do with myself, so I decided to bake a honey cake from a recipe I had found in that day’s newspaper. As the wonderful aroma wafted through the apartment I kept thinking that it would surely awaken Shatz who would be eager to gobble it up.
Little did I know the smell was making him sick. Later he explained that whenever he had to stay up late for a long stretch of time he would be fine for a while but eventually the lack of sleep would catch up with him and he would crash. To this day he can’t stand the thought of honey cake.
So last Sunday he thought that he was in crash mode but then it stretched into Monday and Tuesday and then Wednesday, despite all his efforts to pretend as if nothing was wrong. Each morning he was still sleeping when I left in the morning and each afternoon when I came home he looked worse. But he kept popping Advils and insisting that he would be, “Fine, just fine!”
On Wednesday I couldn’t take it anymore and I forbade him to go to his tutoring appointment though he kept insisting that the Advil was keeping him going. It wasn’t until I reminded him that maybe the parents of the kid he was tutoring wouldn’t appreciate him getting their kid sick, when he gave in and made a doctor’s appointment.
His doctor’s initial diagnosis was a tick borne infection called anaplasma (fancy huh?) and dosed him with antibiotics. But I couldn’t relax until his tests came back. I stayed true to my paranoia that entire weekend imagining Shatz with some horrible, incurable disease, even though we could see that the antibiotics were working. Maybe that’s why I’m such a marshmallow when it comes to sickness—I always assume that it’s going to be deadly.
I seem to be surrounded by sickie heroes lately. Last week I wondered why I hadn’t heard from my boss, Mike, for a while when he finally called. He had been suffering from Shingles--that delightful virus that attacks anyone who has had chicken pox, especially those of us over 50. When I had heard that there was a vaccine available I was first in line at my doctor’s office and then bugged Steve mercilessly until he got one too. When I told Mike that there was a vaccine available (talk about shutting the barn after the horse has escaped) he said, “Yeah, I know. I was scheduled to get one this week!”
I felt so sorry for my poor boss until he told me that, despite the shingles, he was going to be in Washington D.C. that week-end. I thought to myself, “Oh no not another misguided hero!” assuming that it was for business. But when he told me he was going to D.C. for the Patriot’s game, all my pity flew out the window. Pain or no pain, this guy was going out of state to attend a football game. There’s a limit to pretending you’re not sick.
Why can’t these guys understand that there’s a certain beauty in giving in to sniffles and sneezes? In embracing the fever and simply lying in bed and groaning like a wounded animal while your husband scurries about getting you tea and cold compresses and cough syrup. At least you’re making only one other person miserable and not an entire office. Who hasn’t wanted to club the person in the cubicle next to theirs who coughs and hacks his way through an entire day, spreading their cheery germs to the world? No amount of hand sanitizer in the world is going to prevent you from catching whatever rotten virus it is that they’ve brought in to share with their co-workers.
So everyone, I beg you, embrace your inner child and stay home when you’re contagious. Stop fighting the fact that you feel like you’ve been run over by a truck—let’s face it you’re not going to get much done in your condition anyway. Get into your jammies, grab a tissue box and the remote and bid the world farewell for a couple of days. Because believe me, no one loves a sick hero.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Holiday Cheer
Holiday Cheer
Holidays are funny things. Thanks to our Norman-Rockwell-Hallmark state of mind we expect that they will be all American perfection complete with abundant food, well behaved children, and gifts that we’ve always longed for. No one argues, no one is cranky or dissatisfied or sad. We create a minefield of disillusionment for ourselves. Every year we think our holidays will live up to some ideal and every year they fall short. What is the saying? Madness lies in doing the same thing over and over again and always expecting a different result?
I’m as bad as the next person when it comes to holidays. When the girls were little I’d decorate the house within an inch of its life. For Halloween every piece of the living room was covered in pumpkins, witches and ghosts. During Chanukah menorahs and dreidels were everywhere--in the window, on the fireplace in the front hall. Even Valentine’s Day wasn’t safe from my expectation that this time everything would be chocolate-and-roses perfect.
And of course it never was. It couldn’t be. Something was always missing. We were lucky that it was never the essential comforts like food or shelter—but rather something that we never got around to doing or saying or accomplishing. A curse of ridiculous expectations.
I always felt that Thanksgiving was especially disappointing, perhaps because it is the quintessential American holiday with visions of large dining room tables crammed with happy people waiting to dig into a magnificent turkey. Problem was, we were never a big family—it was usually just the four of us sitting down to the smallest bird I could find. There were a couple of years when we were invited to friends’ houses, but Lisa and Mariel rebelled. They wanted to stay home and never get out of their pajamas until I called them to the table.
As they got older though, things got complicated. They each had their idea of what we should be eating, especially after they became vegetarians, and they wanted to help cook the meal. Now I know that sounds like a fantastic scenario—the entire family cooking together—but the reality was not so rosy. Mariel would insist on making at least three or four different breads and desserts, all of them requiring the oven, while I tried to figure out how we were all going to share said oven and our limited counter space. And Lisa would also come up with her specialties which required major preparation and, of course, the oven.
So the day would disintegrate into a constant chorus of: “When are you going to be finished in there I need to peel the potatoes, cook the stuffing, mash the yams, bake the corn bread??!!!!” Eventually one year it all culminated in the great soup debacle when we ended up eating at 7:30 at night, cranky, miserable and generally out of sorts—not exactly the feelings you want to associate with Thanksgiving.
Every year I dreamt of having Chinese take-out for Thanksgiving dinner, or having the whole meal catered, or simply going out to a restaurant, but every year I got voted down with the words, “Don’t worry mom, this year it will be much better you’ll see.” Sigh.
So this year, once we invited our friends Mike and Mary from Georgia to join us for the holiday, I knew that it would either be a disaster or the holiday that I was always longing for. I didn’t suffer under any delusions that it was going to be perfect since I had no time to even think about anything until our friends got off the plane. Steve and I cleaned the house, ordered all the food and drink and figured it would work out somehow. And to my utter delight, for once, it did.
This time we had one more chef in the kitchen to add to the usual mayhem, Steve, who took on the chore of the salads and veggies. I took a deep breath, made up a prep schedule, brought in an extra table for a work space and we were off. It helped that Mariel got up at 4:30 in the morning to bake. That girl is nothing if not determined when it comes to her baked goods. We told her that she was crazy to bake so much since we had an apple pie for dessert. Afterwards, when we realized that the pie had somehow never gotten into our shopping bag, she flashed an I-told-you-so grin at us. I promised everyone apple pie for Chanukah.
We sat down for our meal at 4:00, exactly when we had planned. That has never occurred in our entire history of Thanksgiving dinners. Lisa wanted to take a picture of the clock. And we did all the Hallmark things—we made toasts giving thanks for our good fortune, we stuffed ourselves, we laughed, we ate, we relaxed. For the first time that any of us could remember, it was truly perfect. I still have no idea why. Was it because we were so excited to have Mike, Mary and mom with us that everything else just fell into place? Was it our perfected cooking skills and schedules? Was it the wine?
I don’t know and I don’t care. All I know is that when people ask me how my Thanksgiving was, for the first time in a long time I smile and answer, “Perfect.” Because it was.
Holidays are funny things. Thanks to our Norman-Rockwell-Hallmark state of mind we expect that they will be all American perfection complete with abundant food, well behaved children, and gifts that we’ve always longed for. No one argues, no one is cranky or dissatisfied or sad. We create a minefield of disillusionment for ourselves. Every year we think our holidays will live up to some ideal and every year they fall short. What is the saying? Madness lies in doing the same thing over and over again and always expecting a different result?
I’m as bad as the next person when it comes to holidays. When the girls were little I’d decorate the house within an inch of its life. For Halloween every piece of the living room was covered in pumpkins, witches and ghosts. During Chanukah menorahs and dreidels were everywhere--in the window, on the fireplace in the front hall. Even Valentine’s Day wasn’t safe from my expectation that this time everything would be chocolate-and-roses perfect.
And of course it never was. It couldn’t be. Something was always missing. We were lucky that it was never the essential comforts like food or shelter—but rather something that we never got around to doing or saying or accomplishing. A curse of ridiculous expectations.
I always felt that Thanksgiving was especially disappointing, perhaps because it is the quintessential American holiday with visions of large dining room tables crammed with happy people waiting to dig into a magnificent turkey. Problem was, we were never a big family—it was usually just the four of us sitting down to the smallest bird I could find. There were a couple of years when we were invited to friends’ houses, but Lisa and Mariel rebelled. They wanted to stay home and never get out of their pajamas until I called them to the table.
As they got older though, things got complicated. They each had their idea of what we should be eating, especially after they became vegetarians, and they wanted to help cook the meal. Now I know that sounds like a fantastic scenario—the entire family cooking together—but the reality was not so rosy. Mariel would insist on making at least three or four different breads and desserts, all of them requiring the oven, while I tried to figure out how we were all going to share said oven and our limited counter space. And Lisa would also come up with her specialties which required major preparation and, of course, the oven.
So the day would disintegrate into a constant chorus of: “When are you going to be finished in there I need to peel the potatoes, cook the stuffing, mash the yams, bake the corn bread??!!!!” Eventually one year it all culminated in the great soup debacle when we ended up eating at 7:30 at night, cranky, miserable and generally out of sorts—not exactly the feelings you want to associate with Thanksgiving.
Every year I dreamt of having Chinese take-out for Thanksgiving dinner, or having the whole meal catered, or simply going out to a restaurant, but every year I got voted down with the words, “Don’t worry mom, this year it will be much better you’ll see.” Sigh.
So this year, once we invited our friends Mike and Mary from Georgia to join us for the holiday, I knew that it would either be a disaster or the holiday that I was always longing for. I didn’t suffer under any delusions that it was going to be perfect since I had no time to even think about anything until our friends got off the plane. Steve and I cleaned the house, ordered all the food and drink and figured it would work out somehow. And to my utter delight, for once, it did.
This time we had one more chef in the kitchen to add to the usual mayhem, Steve, who took on the chore of the salads and veggies. I took a deep breath, made up a prep schedule, brought in an extra table for a work space and we were off. It helped that Mariel got up at 4:30 in the morning to bake. That girl is nothing if not determined when it comes to her baked goods. We told her that she was crazy to bake so much since we had an apple pie for dessert. Afterwards, when we realized that the pie had somehow never gotten into our shopping bag, she flashed an I-told-you-so grin at us. I promised everyone apple pie for Chanukah.
We sat down for our meal at 4:00, exactly when we had planned. That has never occurred in our entire history of Thanksgiving dinners. Lisa wanted to take a picture of the clock. And we did all the Hallmark things—we made toasts giving thanks for our good fortune, we stuffed ourselves, we laughed, we ate, we relaxed. For the first time that any of us could remember, it was truly perfect. I still have no idea why. Was it because we were so excited to have Mike, Mary and mom with us that everything else just fell into place? Was it our perfected cooking skills and schedules? Was it the wine?
I don’t know and I don’t care. All I know is that when people ask me how my Thanksgiving was, for the first time in a long time I smile and answer, “Perfect.” Because it was.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
