Chat with Nanon!

Tonight is a three glasses of wine kind of night. Mom had her oncology check up today, which meant a 4 hour drive from where I live in Oakland to Guerneville (about 80 miles away), to San Francisco for me. On the way up to her house I replaced the ashtray that the car wash people broke - 50.00 bucks at the dealership. Ten minutes later on the Richmond bridge it started to mist, and my windshield wiper snapped up like a broken bird wing, so I had to replace that at the next exit - another 28 bucks for both - I didn't want to take any chances with the other one. I get to her house, and although I've pleaded with her on the phone for the last 2 hours to be ready when I get there, she's not ready.

So, I sigh for the inevitability of our lateness, and we drive at warp speed toward San Francisco, only to be stopped short on the approach to the bridge by a horrendous accident. We will most definately be late, I think, and I call the doctor's office to warn them, and make alternate plans with them, if necessary. As we pass the scene of the accident, I see two bodies on the side of the road, poorly covered with yellow tarps. My mom sucks breath between her teeth, and comments that had we not been running late, that might have been us.

We make it to the appointment 30 minutes late. We wait for 20 minutes. The doctor comes in, writes some stuff in his chart, patiently listens to mom's latest plans to write a book, and then gently chides me about not scheduling her a mammogram when I should have 2 months ago. The criticism stings. Whether he meant it or not, I hear the subtext, "What kind of doctor will you make if you can't remember to schedule your mentally ill mom's mammogram on time?" And because I'm really tired now, and have 6 loads of her dank, musty laundry in the back of my car that needs to get done tonight, I bristle ever so slightly. It doesn't help that I'd just finished telling him about how my work OK'd my study proposal the day before, and that I start data collection next week. He knows I work, he knows I go to school, he should have some idea of how tough this has been for me and my husband. But apparently he doesn't know how guilty I feel for pursuing a little fame and glory for myself. But it's all excuses and I know it, and he knows it, so I keep quiet beyond a promise to make the appointment tomorrow morning. For next week, most likely. School starts next week...

My impatience shows itself on the last leg of the trip. I repeat over and over, "I don't want to talk about that right now," with each of my mom's conversational forays on her paranoid ideas about her care or her crush on her oncologist. I am bone weary by the time we pull up to my house. I pull each disintegrating garbage bag of clothing out of the trunk with the desultory attitude of a 12 year old. I think greedily about the half bottle of wine on the kitchen counter, and wonder briefly if I'm turning into an alcoholic for the 20th time this week. I nurse my guilt over making my mom, who can't help it forpetessake, feel badly.

I've finished two glasses at this point. My exhausted husband is home taking out the garbage and making dinner. My tipsy mom is laid out on the couch, watching a sci-fi movie. I'm sitting here thinking mostly of those two covered dead bodies splayed out on the median, thinking of their families, thinking about how trite my complaints are and of how blessed I am to be feeling the foggy breeze on my shoulders as I write this little missive.

Tomorrow my sister comes to escape her three children under the age of three (two of them are twins). She doesn't want mom to know she's here, so tomorrow will be a magician's trick, a deceitful slight of hand as I drive mom to her home, and then later drive my sister to my home, where she'll sleep in the same bed that my mom will sleep in tonight. It sounds odd and cruel, doesn't it? It would if my mother weren't a precocious child herself. The whole point of my sister's trip out here from Indiana is to escape the incessant daily pleas of "IneedIwant." Our mother needs and wants, and with a depth only a desperate and talented woman can have. Please don't miss understand. We love our mother, but right now we need that long, first drag of oxygen from the overhead masks. And so, we have only a few plans - a pedicure, a hottub, a hike in Pt. Reyes. My sister will spend time with her beloved scrapbooks. I'll buy text books.

I know this isn't much of an introduction, but I'm hoping that over the next few months, you'll come to know what I'm about as much as any random person on the internet can. I'm not much for small talk, mostly because I'm not the kind of person who can readily tell you what my favorite movie is, or tell you with any certainty what my position is on any topic beyond a woman's right to choose. So I hope that you'll be patient with me, and get to know me by dribs and drabs, the way everyone else does.

Book recommondation for the day: "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," by Micheal Chabon

Night all,
Nanon

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