Just a couple of boobs out for a good time

It seemed like a good idea at the time, but who knew it would turn into a giggle fest? Mom, who survived breast cancer 23 years ago, and I both needed a mammogram, so why not Breast Fest 2010?

Maybe the weirdness runs in the family. In his first year of college, my nephew, Michael, and a friend dressed up as breasts and went to a Halloween party as a couple of boobs. My mom and I followed in their footsteps.

First, the all important check in. My mom and I have the same last name; she’s Genevieve, and I’m Catharine and not only do we not look one bit alike (she’s blonde and blue eyed), but she’s also 34 years older than I. Since I’m not a spring chicken, that makes her elderly, a word I use with great caution as my own dotage approaches. But let’s face it, friends: If Woodrow Wilson was president when you were born and Warren G. Harding became president before you could crawl, that doesn’t exactly make you Hannah Montana.

Conversely, if Ike was in office when you were born, your name could not be Genevieve Hamm. But it didn’t seem to occur to check-in chick when she asked me, somewhat conspiratorially, how long it had been since my breast cancer. It had, in fact, been a very bad day, but was it so bad that I really looked like someone whose DOB clearly said 1920?

“Bad news,” I told my mom when I returned to her in the waiting room after straightening out the confusion. “They think you’re 55, and frankly, for 55, you don’t look so hot. “

And then we both started to giggle.

I knew what was coming next. It’s an old joke between us. “Did you tell them to charge me half price?” she said. “I only have one, you know.”

More giggling.

We sobered up a bit in the undressing room. We had one wheelchair, two smocks, two purses, and three breasts that needed attention. We pushed and pulled and wiggled and squirmed. I have seen my mom’s mastectomy scar, but it has been only in the last couple of years. She was ashamed, I think. But now it’s just another reminder that she’s one tough broad. So she let me wrestle her out of her top and into her smock. Again, I knew what was coming: “Do you know my Chinese name?” she said “It’s One Hung Low.”

Giggling.

So we were both dressed in pink smocks that opened toward the front and sitting in the waiting room. And sitting and waiting and waiting, watching some DVD that looked like the Cirque du Soleil acroclowns running and jumping and leaping and twirling. It very much approximated what we had just done in the undressing room, except they had on cooler makeup.

And certainly better costumes. Our little pink numbers were a bit drafty. I was fussing with mine and realized that people were looking at me as if to say, ‘”Just because your mother is having a mammogram doesn’t mean you had to get into costume too, you attention whore.” My face flushed, and I wished for a sign that said, “I'm Having One Too.”

Waiting and more waiting. Only a couple of women had been called in the hour we’d been there, and more were arriving. My mother leaned over and said, “It’s like the roach motel. They check in but they don’t check out.”

More giggling.

Finally, they called us. Actually they called her, so this gave a whole new group of people the chance to think of me as an attention ho.

It is not easy, under the best of circumstances, to do the mammo dance. It’s kind of a cross between the Tennessee Waltz and the lambada, and if you’re 89 and you never followed directions well and now you can’t really follow them at all, well, it's more like doing the Monster Mash.

I stood behind her and held her up while they took both sets of pix. I absorbed her radiation and, then, my own. No big deal. She would have done it for me.
And as I stood there, holding this fragile little old lady, I prayed—that we’d both be fine and that, God willing, we’d get to do this again next year, just a couple of boobs, giggling, giggling, all the way.

A Christmas Gift to Remember

On Christmas Eve, I came over to my mom's place so her caregiver could go home for the night. I wasn't looking forward to it. I had been up since 3 a.m., and I know from experience that I never get much sleep because she gets up frequently.
About 10 p.m., I went in and she was rolled over in her bed with her face against the security rail.
I touched her hand--it was baby soft--and said, "Mom, move back over. Yu're going to fall out."
She woke up briefly and smiled and grabbed my hand. "Am I dreaming this?" she said. I smiled and said no.
"My baby girl," she said. And she went back to sleep.
I dozed until about 3 when I heard her again and went in.
Did she need to get up? No.
Did she need anything? No. No, wait. Yes.
"I need you," she said.
So I said, "Why don't I get in bed with you?" She nodded and so I did. She reached over stroked my hair. "My Christmas bedfellow," she said.
All at once, I was 5 years old again. The stockings were hung on the sofa with care, and I knew in my heart that Christmas was here.

For mercy's sake, will somebody please yell, "Cut!"?

One of the great maxims of life is this: People like people who are like themselves.
I see people like me all the time—in the elevator, in the hallways, in the parking lot.

They are the daughters of the mothers who live in this complex.

They come in all shapes and sizes and colors, but they are just like me. Their faces are a strange mixture of apprehension and fatigue and concern.

And they sound just like me
“Are you warm enough, Mom?”
“Wait, I’ll get the car. I have some junk In the back, though, that I’ll have to clear to get your wheelchair/walker/cane in.”
“Yes, it’s lovely out. Isn’t it? I mean, it’s just beautiful. Good day to go out, don’t you think? I said GOOD DAY TO GO OUT, DON’T YOU THINK?”

We have the same vocabulary. We’re mostly the same age. We drive the same car (mostly Priuses or mid-size SUVs), we have the same cell phones.

So if people like people who are like themselves, why don’t I like them?

Because they remind me too much of what I’ve become. I am the helicopter parent—not hovering over my children, but hovering over my parent and not always as gracious as I should be.

Once, on the long elevator ride downstairs, I said to a daughter, “Is your mom in here? How’s she doing?” (“Yes. OK.”)
“You know,” I said, “we really ought to have some sort of group for us daughters.”
She looked up at me, and her eyes flashed. “Who has time?” she snapped.
I smiled and said, “Good point.”
The woman was rude. I’m a serial overreactor, but for once, I wasn’t offended because I knew it wasn’t really lack of time that ticked her off. And it’s not a matter of who has energy. Or even who has patience.

It’s a matter of who has answers, and the answer to that is that none of us does.
Putting on a brave front has turned us into a bunch of bad actors with bad attitude.
If we had an award for Best Performance by a Daughter Who Doesn't Think Old Age Is a Complete Disaster, I couldn't think of one nominee.

Could you?

Now who needs the anti-depressant?

This won't be a news flash to anyone who knows the situation, but I am not going to win Daughter of the Year (or wife or employee or friend, but those are separate columns). And I also have to acknowledge that Big Pharma does have something going for it.

About three days before a business trip, I was scrambling to make sure my mom had all her meds and that I had placed them all in the proper containers so her caretakers could dole them out at the appropriate time. Three needed to be refilled, so I called them in and went to pick them up.

The pharmacist, who is sometimes my BFF and sometimes the Spawn of Satan, apparently had chosen Personality No. 2 and would not, not, not refill the Lexapro, an anti-depressant, because it was too early. But, I said, I'll be out of town. Way too early, she said.

So I was two for three. If Manny were that good, we wouldn't have had that cliffhanger vis a vis winning the division. But in the world of elder care, two for three isn't quite good enough. She had enough for five days, and I would be away only for seven.

So I went off and came back. And then I did the bad thing.

I forgot.

I forgot that the one script that remained unfilled was the anti-depressant, and I didn't remember until the first Sunday I spent with her. We could have made a movie called "The Devil Wears Depends" that day.

I quickly had the script refilled and re-started her on it. This Sunday, she is like a different person. She is smiling and laughing, and a moment ago as I was standing near her, she reached out to pat my hand.

She should have slapped my wrist.

Because 88 is no time to lose a day to depression.

The Mom Chronicles: How Can I Be Blue?

My mom and my dog are best of friends. I think Mom identifies with Blue (at right).

Blue (a.k.a. Puppy Girl) is a rescue Dalmatian who came into our lives about six years ago. She was a quivering mess. Still is, somewhat. We're not sure how old she is, but we believe that she was one of the puppies born shortly after the last "101 Dalmatians" movie, which was 1996. Which means neither she nor my mom is any spring chicken.

From what SavetheDals.org tells me, Blue was used as a puppy mill and when the family moved, she was kicked to the curb. We don't know much more, except that the hair is gone from her joints because she apparently slept from concrete; that she is afraid of brooms and sprayed water, which may have been used as discipline; and that, despite it all, she lives to please. Her tail could challenge any metronome and win.

My mother was furious with me when I showed up at her house with Blue (so named for her blue eyes). "You work too many hours to have a dog!" she barked. (My mom, not Blue.) And in one of the more famous nonsequiturs, I said, "Let's go to the beach." And we did. As we sat on a bench, I told her what I knew about Blue, and her heart melted, as she heard the sad story of puppies taken away and punishment meted out.

Puppy Girl was in. They've been the best of friends ever since.

When my mom still lived in her own home, P.G. would say with her. Nowadays, Blue comes for short visits or my mom comes to the house to see Blue. Absent a personal visit, we have photos of Blue in the apartment and a Dalmatian calendar and a Dalmatian blanket that Mom has dubbed "Puppy Girl."

At 5:45 this morning, my mom is ready to get up. I am not, but it doesn't matter. We get up anyway, and she totters into the TV room. The blanket is ready to assist. Its companion is a blue blanket, which my mother has dubbed "Puppy Girl Part 2."

As I spread them over her legs, I say, "Here comes Puppy Girl!" and then "Here comes Puppy Girl Part 2!" and my mother says, "Oh, Puppy Girl. Oh Puppy Girl Part 2. I need you. I am so cold. You warm me up."

You do too, Mom.

The wisdom of the cousins

I tease my cousins a lot about being older than I—I am the youngest of about a dozen-but it is precisely because they are older that they bring such richness to my life.

My cousin Rosemary, after reading my last post, sent this e-mail to me about caring for her mom, an elegant, raven-haired lady who always seemed to me to have a magical quality that she passed to her children. I wanted to share Rosemary's note to me because it’s full of the kind of wisdom we need more of.

“You have a child who won’t get well, but who will love you -- as no one else ever will -- for loving her,” Rosemary wrote.

“In my final days with my mother, I realized that she had always been the endearing, willful, complex, difficult child she was then, but I hadn’t ever seen it before because I needed her to be powerful. When she needed me to be powerful, I fell in love with her as never before -- and now, as time passes, I’m so grateful that I had the chance to know and love her as a child.

“Though it was all so scary and sad, she was enchanting – as she always had been, but I hadn’t fully realized it. Of course, in a way it made losing her even more painful, but it was an important lesson in through a glass darkly.

“Life is what it is and you’re making the best of it now – even if you can’t know it because it’s so hard.”

Thank you, my cousin, my friend.

Listen to your intuition: It could save a life

Dr. Mary Louise Hatten, who taught economics (or in my case tried to teach me economics) at Simmons College Graduate School of Management, used to say, "Listen to your intuition; it is your experience at work."

As women, we often discount that inner voice.

But I'm writing today to tell you a story that has reminded me to listen.

Many of you recall that my mom was transferred to a convalescent hospital in June 2008, after hospitalization. I was so unhappy with the care that I removed her from the place against medical advice. When the hospital tried to place her in the same facility after her hip break and replacement this spring, I refused, vehemently.

Meanwhile, a work colleague recently moved her 80-something mother to the same senior residential facility as my mom, partly on my recommendation. Her mom was there about three weeks before she fell and broke her ankle. She also was having some other medical problems, and she was hospitalized. When the time came to discharge her, they sent her to the same place my mom was sent in June 2008.

New name, new owner.

Same bad care.

After a few days, my colleague told the personnel she was taking her mother out. They told her that her mom was getting better, so against her better judgment, she left her mom there.

A couple of days later, she found her mother slumped over in a wheelchair. She called 911 and had her transferred to another place, where she was diagnosed with pneumonia.

Her mom died last Sunday.

My colleague is a wonderfully nice person. She doesn't have a hot little temper, she doesn't overreact, she doesn't have screaming matches with nurses. She doesn't just walk into a place and put her mother into a wheelchair and take her home, never telling anyone. I confess to all of that.

I wept when I learned that her mom had died. Her mom isn't suffering anymore, but she is.

It's a huge lesson. I hope to God I've learned it. My intuition tells me to share it with you.