The Mother Of My Reinvention
She’s tucked in her lift chair, chilled and uneasy, waiting for the tea and dry toast to work their magic. With raised eyebrow and a sardonic grin she says, “It ain’t easy gettin’ old…” She’s tired, though she’s been in bed since breakfast; it’s a long day by 2:00 and not necessarily a good one. There are good ones, though, ones in which she plays cards with other tenants, joins the sing-alongs, exercises from her chair and gets to Mass, even if it is video Mass projected on the community room screen. She enjoys a good movie and relishes her three squares. She uses a walker consistently now but still listens to rock and roll and finds it astonishing that I’m the age I am (as do I!). She’s almost 81, a widow for over ten years and a diagnosed dementia patient for the last two. She is my mother.
I left home – and her – a long, long ago. I left hard and fast and with blind conviction. There was no quibbling, no waffling, no weepy boomeranging. After too much family and just enough college, I left the state of Illinois in my little blue Porsche (my first car, courtesy of rock n’ roll) and didn’t come back for over three years. And when I did, it was all short stints with long spaces in between. My exodus was decisive and exhilarating, and for the first time since conception I felt unencumbered by obligation to anyone or anything but myself.
My mother referred to this as “when Lorrie ran away.” For me it was Necessary Freedom.
I am the third child, the third girl, in a family of eleven children. My two older sisters and I, by virtue of gender and placement in the family, became Little Mommies, caring for smaller, younger siblings while we were still smaller, younger siblings ourselves and while the responsibility and high task demand did lend a certain skill set found useful later in life, being truly “in charge” of an infant brother when you are six years old is, perhaps, too steep a learning curve. Particularly when there were several more brothers and sisters to come who would also require hands-on involvement. I learned how to change diapers, feed a baby, wrangle a toddler, do laundry, make meals, iron a business shirt, clean a house, and run interference for a mercurial, often erratic, always confounding mother…and that was all before I got to high school.
By the time I did get to high school, I was bone-weary of family life and chomping at the bit so hard my teeth hurt. Graduation couldn’t come fast enough and after a short summer, my departure for college was so swift that old high school friends claim I vanished before anyone could say good-bye. I came home between freshman and sophomore years but spent the summer working in Chicago, and by the end of my sophomore year, was gone for good. Real good: My first apartment was a $90 a month single with lousy furniture and a stuttering landlady and it may as well have been heaven.
It wasn’t just the weight of trading too much childhood for Little Mommy-hood. It wasn’t the just the burden of bearing up under my parents’ religion and their restrictive views of interpersonal relationships (re. boys, sex, dating, sex, commitment, sex, etc., sex). It wasn’t even that the one-on-one time allotted to each of us in such a large group was spare and seldom satisfying. It was that I could not find an honest way to consistently and compassionately tolerate my mother.
She was a true paradox. One minute clever and creative, the next enraged and irrational. She was impossible to predict and easy to trigger. The moments when she laughed and dragged boxes of construction paper and lace doilies out to make Valentine’s cards for the entire neighborhood were golden and so thrilling that every kid on our street would tell me how lucky I was to have the mother I did. She loved passionately and could make any day a party. She played music, did a mean jitterbug and had a wildly romantic relationship with the handsome man who was my father. All of those things provided The Good that pushed against…The Other. The Other was her dark side; those terrifying moments of fury followed by weeping or cold silence. Rages that shook the house and scattered us all like terrified animals. As a child, I would literally tremble at the sound of her stomping down the stairs to mete out some punishment for failings I could never seem to avoid. She was physical and vocal and unrelenting and when the controls snapped and life got the best of her, we all suffered. And life got the best of her too often. She had a good heart, she tried; I believe she sincerely tried, but she was undeniably overwhelmed.
So I stayed away and kept her away…she and my father didn’t even meet my husband until a year or so after we eloped and I had already given birth to our son. They were that distant and I was that intractable. But life is a surprising thing and it changes you. You grow older and live longer and you begin see how difficult it can be when expectations are not met or you feel the sharp, twisting pang of disappointment and heartache. You look around and realize that not all dreams come true and the promise of what life has to offer is not necessarily within reach. Life humbles and sometimes softens you. And as you experience more, you begin to accrue compassion for the stories in life you might not have previously understood or empathized with and that alters and expands your view. It wasn’t until I got married and had my own child that I began to see my mother outside the childhood box I’d kept her in for most of my life. When I attached to my own child I began to have some inkling of what she went through, many times over, in her own role as a mother. 
When my marriage met challenges or I felt distanced by a distracted husband, I began to realize that some of what she suffered was the result of her own husband’s penchant for distancing. Basically, I began to see the human behind The Mother. And I began to have empathy.
She was a third child herself, a brother and sister preceding her. Her mother died shortly after her birth and her father abandoned all three to be raised by her mother’s extended family of a grandmother, maiden aunts and Irish uncles who loved and took good care and kept kegs flowing in the dining room. She claims it was a happy life – I’m sure some of it was – but when my father died many years after that childhood of hers, she cried about having been abandoned by all the men in her life, wondering plaintively how a father could leave his three children without a look back. Because regardless of her revisionist view of her childhood, she suffered for all of it. She suffered for growing up without the immediacy of a mother’s love and guidance, she suffered for the raging alcoholism in her family, for the lack of intimate role models and mentors, and all this left her ill-equipped to be the wife of a loving but internalized and sometimes preoccupied man and the mother of eleven individuals who were wildly independent and self-possessed. As an adult, a mother, a wife, a survivor, I could understand what her story had been. It made me ache for her. It made my heart open.
Many people I know, most of them women, are caring for or have cared for their aging or dying parents. It seems a Rite of Passage for women in mid-life. It’s a task like no other and requires a certain kind of heart and an enormous depth of soul. Heart and soul I had never felt for my mother and wasn’t sure I could conjure. But ten years after my father died, my aging, rudderless mother was lost and in need. Her short-term memory was diminishing more every day, she was often sick and in pain, incapable of caring for herself responsibly, and my siblings had run out of people and places to care for her in the ways she needed and with the income she had. Last summer we celebrated her 80th birthday, wondering if she’d make it to the next. I took that moment to assess: I looked at my life, my capacity for change. I looked to my dear brother who lives in the same city as I, I looked to my husband, my sister-in-law, my son, and I could see, clear as the day I left home, that I had to step up and take it on. To get my mother to a place she could once again call Home. To participate. But a voice kept interrupting to say, “No! Not you! You don’t have to! You left her 35 years ago for damn good reason and it’s not your job. You have your own life!” Damn, that voice was loud.
But I could feel it. It was my job. It was my turn. It seems a louder voice had crept into the dialogue and was making some sense. It assured me I knew what she needed and…I did. I found a place that would be a sanctuary for her, perhaps for the rest of her life, and in the blink of an eye, it seems I was in. No turning back, no quibbling, no waffling; no lack of conviction. I was bringing my mother to live in my town. And with my brilliant and indispensable brother, Tom, his family and my own, I was going to participate in the day-to-day care and feeding of the mother I so long ago had fled.
I am not a saint. Seriously, I could not be further from it. Some days I suck at this job. I wake up and feel my teeth grinding again, resentful that I have to leave yet another unreturned message with her doctor or rifle through reams of paperwork to get some insurance issue worked out. I don’t want to drive over to her facility to have the same conversation over and over in a two hour period or play that infernal card game she loves so passionately (Kings In a Corner, if you’re interested!). I sometimes feel real anger when it seems I’m just expected to schedule my life around her myriad of doctor appointments or give up time with my family to get her over to Target for items she’s lost or broken. I shudder when I see the name of the facility on my caller ID, waiting to hear she’s been taken to the hospital or she’s confused because she doesn’t believe they administered her meds. My workout schedule has gone to hell, I’m stuck in freeway traffic more than I’ve been in years, and I can’t seem to find the rhythm of my own schedule. Sometimes I feel, once again, like a Little Mommy, only this time the child I’m caring for is my Mother. The irony is inescapable.
But there’s another side to this. The growing awareness of some sprouting evolution. In her case, the dementia that is creeping more and more into her personality has done a curious thing: it seems to have stripped away her anger and narcissism. It seems to have pared her down to a purer essence of herself, a human being who can be grateful and appreciative. Who can smile even when she’s nauseous and tell me it makes her happy just to see me across the room. A woman who can be gentle and attentive to her new great granddaughter and patiently (if reluctantly) teach a more challenged housemate how to play her card game. A woman who can genuinely thank a son for a dinner out or a daughter-in-law for doing her laundry every week; who can be delighted by a grandson who makes her laugh or another who brings in a crew of fellow students to interview her for a class. Who can listen and take note of the person in front of her. This is different woman, a different mother. And this different mother is allowing me to be a different daughter.
I often look at these photos of her because it’s important for me to remember, and to show evidence, that she was once young, as young and vibrant and concerned about her looks and appeal as any of the ubiquitous young girls we endlessly read and hear about. She had sexy legs, a smashing sense of style and dance steps that could knock ‘em off the floor. She was flirtatious and sought after, ultimately loved by a man who found her beautiful and exciting. She could laugh raucously and make others laugh as loud. She adored her husband and loved her eleven children – she still does. I look at these pictures of her and say to myself, “She was young once, just as you were. And you’re going to become an old woman just as she is.” We all are going to grow old. All of us who are lucky enough to endure. Even that perfect three year old, that gorgeous teenager, that seemingly impervious young man. We’re going to grow old and need help some day, just as she does. It’s not an anomaly – it’s life. For all of us.
And so my mother and I continue our Mutual Reinvention Tour. I’m learning patience; she’s learning humility. She looked up at me recently and said, “I’m scared.” When I asked why, she said, “Because I’ve made so many mistakes, especially with you kids.” She further clarified that she was concerned that at the Gates of Heaven she would be harshly judged, but mostly she wanted me to know that she loved us all and was sorry for all those mistakes. I felt a tug. I took her hand and said, “Mom, don’t worry, if you’re truly sorry, you’ve already been forgiven.” And as I said that, I realized that, like St. Peter at the Gates and God in the Heavens, I, her third daughter, her runaway, her lost child, had forgiven her as well. And in that swirling eddy of emotions, sweet and simple love could be found. Precious and timely as the Tour continues…
September 4th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Hey, Your website looks wonderful, I can tell how much time you have put into it. If you get a chance you should check my blog as well. I hope you have a good day!
September 4th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Nice post!
September 3rd, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Hey admin, very informative blog post! Pleasee continue this awesome work..
September 1st, 2010 at 10:47 am
Happy to view this good blog.
August 30th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
I really like your site. Very good posts! Please continue posting such awesome content.
August 28th, 2010 at 2:44 am
I enjoyed your article – great job!
August 26th, 2010 at 7:48 am
Hi buddy, your blog’s design is easy and clean and i like it. Your blog content are superb. Please keep them coming. Greets!!!
August 23rd, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Thank you for the work you have put into your nice blog. We will bookmark it because it is very informational. We love the site and will come back to see your new posts.
August 21st, 2010 at 9:09 pm
I admire your work.
August 20th, 2010 at 7:19 am
Thanks to your nice blog. I enjoy your writing.
August 19th, 2010 at 10:58 am
Good one, accurate and interesting as hell.
August 18th, 2010 at 4:59 am
That is quite interesting. It presented me some ideas and I’ll be placing them on my blog soon. I’m bookmarking your site and I’ll be back. Thanks again!
August 18th, 2010 at 4:16 am
I think this website’s structure is developed well.
August 14th, 2010 at 10:15 pm
Keep posting stuff like this i really like it, Good job My friend ;)
August 14th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Thank you for building your blog site, I located you on Google and I need to say I’m impressed. Appreciate it yet again…
August 14th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Thank you for the sensible critique. Me and my neighbor were just preparing to do some research about this topic. We thought about grabbing a book from our local library but I think I learned more from this post. I am very glad to see such great information being shared freely out there. Good luck with your Mom.
August 14th, 2010 at 10:30 am
Hello. Thanks for making my morning a little bit better with this great article!!
August 14th, 2010 at 7:37 am
Such a really good discussion you have happening. I like the mix of good and correct information together with a few intellectual thoughts. It really is wonderful to be able to finally come across excellent articles where I think I could believe in the text as well as respect the individual that published it. With all the web waste nowadays, I always value finding some real voices online. Thank you for posting and continue the good work, please!!
August 14th, 2010 at 1:06 am
I’ve read some good stuff here. Definitely worth bookmarking for revisiting.
August 13th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
I find your article very interesting, and I am interested to put this article to my blog. Do you also have another post about this?
August 12th, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Top notch dude.
August 11th, 2010 at 7:27 am
Thanks, Shane!
August 11th, 2010 at 6:26 am
Great article, I am typical visitor of your blog, maintain the great job, and I will probably be a normal visitor for a extended time.
August 11th, 2010 at 12:43 am
Thanks for taking the time to write that, I found it very educational. If you get a chance you should visit my blog as well. I hope you have a good day!
August 10th, 2010 at 11:17 pm
Keep up the good work, I like your writing.
August 10th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
I hope you have a good day! Very good article, well written and very thought out. I am looking forward to reading more of your posts in the future.
August 10th, 2010 at 6:55 am
Hey, I just hopped over to your site via StumbleUpon. Not somthing I would normally read, but I liked your thoughts none the less. Thanks for making something worth reading.
August 4th, 2010 at 7:03 am
Thanks, Louli! You were there, sis, in your particular “family’s” chapters of this amazing story. I loved your comment…and being your Little Mommy, too!
August 4th, 2010 at 7:00 am
Steve: Such a heartfelt, honest story. It’s amazing how so many of us have our own versions. It just seems the human saga contains variouis chapters of this ever-spinning circle of life and each of us is involved, in whatever part of the circle we occupy at a given time; hopefully with as much compassion and empathy as we can muster! Obviously the details of each of our stories are unique. How beautiful that you have your mahogany piano to remind you of your parents and their complicated but meaningful love for you! Thanks for sharing your chapter…it’s important that we pay homage in whatever ways we can to the people who got us here. xxoo L.
August 4th, 2010 at 3:41 am
Lorraine,
Revisiting your blog, to reread this extraordinary tribute to love and perserverance, freedom vs family, I wanted to share with you what happened between my mom and me.
My mom started to become debilitated. My father as well. Then my dad suddenly died. One month later my mom was in a hospital. She had never been a burden to anyone. She had always been the caretaker, the one who made decisions, the policymaker at the endgame for my grandmother, my grandfather, my great-aunt, my great-uncle, my father, her brother – all had had long drawn out illnessess that required great sacrifices, great amounts of energy that had sapped her health; she had been the one to do it. Now she was incapacitated. I was ready to go on a trip to Vietnam. Plans were set, tickets bought, hotels reserved. I called her 5 days before the trip. She asked me when I would return, I told her in 3 weeks. She let out a great sigh and said OK and at that moment I knew I had to cancel my plans. I booked a flight to Utah. I called her back and told her I was coming home. She sighed in relief and thanked me. I caught a cab to the airport and was in Salt Lake City within 10 hours (coming from California)
My brother and I stayed up half the night figureing out how he, I, and my sister could care for and make my mom comfortable, fully knowing that we were in for a long haul but we wanted to make my mom have a more dignified existence than that she was experiencing in the hospital. We went to bed at 3 in the morning. I was woken up at 4:30 by a call from the hospital. She had died.
I am so convinced that she had made that final decision to sacrifice for her loved ones once more – to not burden us with the burden that she had had to endure all of those years – taking care of someone who could not take care of themselves.
Whatever sins I lay at my mothers feet, and I admit, I do… she was human after all (she got pregnant at 19, with a married man in a bad marriage – my father – then tried to do the best she knew how – all in 1962!), I love her for loving me first, for being kind yet fierce, a lioness looking after her cubs, never mind that blood could sometimes be drawn as she moved us about the den; the warmth of baking bread and scones after school, reading to me on a warm summer afternoon at 3 and 4 and 5, cradled in her arms – my love of words – teaching me to be kind to others, honest to others, polite to the world, even if it meant a harsh word or a slap to get the point across; nourishing my dreams at the expense of buying groceries (a new piano because I discovered I could write music).
Today, when I play my little mahogany piano, I think of my father and mother; said piano purchased through a small gift of their pension to me. Two people who acted so very tough, as if the world would divide them if they were not, and yet the love they shared – their holding of hands out on the lawn in their little gazebo – one defeated by the conventionalities of the world and his inability to express himself fully, yet proud of his expressive children, my Dad; the other, my insecure mother, overweight, haunted by her looks all of her life, yet secure in the power she held over her family, who compensated by bravado and bruskness, courage, loyalty and love, they managed to raise 3 children, children who are ethically sound and care for those people who love them as deeply as their parents did for them.
That is why your blog resonated with me. I am so glad that you get some moments to figure it all out. I did, but oh so briefly. I wish I had had the last lost 8 years to do more, they were so young…
Be well,
Steve
August 3rd, 2010 at 8:43 pm
You did it again, thanks.
August 3rd, 2010 at 7:59 am
Wow!!! You are so poetically amazing!! So many touching angles, about Mom, about you and about life. And even though we’ve talked about this stuff over and over, the way you wrote this piece just made it all come to life.
xxoo (and thanks for being my Little Mommie!)
August 3rd, 2010 at 3:24 am
Thanks for blogging about this great content. I’m always looking for interesting blogs and it’s been tremendously diffficult to find with any real quality. I will absolutely keep coming back for more. Thanks Again.
August 2nd, 2010 at 2:20 am
The Mother Of My Reinvention…
I found your entry interesting do I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)…
August 1st, 2010 at 8:51 am
Super website! Can’t wait to see what you come up with next. Exceptional.
July 31st, 2010 at 4:31 am
Sandy – So great to hear from you and I’m really touched that my story struck a chord. It seems so many of us are going through a similar journey with our parents and it’s heartbreaking to see them struggle through loneliness and pain. It’s a message to us all to take good care of both our bodies and souls to better withstand the road ahead. Thank uou for your comments..I look forward to connecting again soon.
July 31st, 2010 at 4:19 am
Susan Nunes…how great to get your comment! As girls who grew up in the same part of the world and shared many of the same events and people and eras of life, I know you understand the journey. Your own words are pretty powerful, as well. Thanks for sharing them…I think it’s so important for us all to bridge the gap towards better understanding of those who came before. We’ll be those people some day!
July 31st, 2010 at 4:16 am
Swirling eddy got you, eh, Steve? :)
We’re all children who’ve had parents…no story is more universal. I’m just glad that mine resonates with so many others. Really makes us realize how connected we all are!
July 31st, 2010 at 4:14 am
Thank you, Gracie. It’s the story of our lives and you are a part of the journey we’re all on together. I appreciate your support deeply.
July 31st, 2010 at 4:11 am
Thank you, Nancy. As someone who’s in the trenches with me on this one, you have intimate perspective. It surely takes a village and everything you do is very appreciated!
July 31st, 2010 at 12:30 am
Dear Lorraine, Your writing is profound & it touched it my heart so deeply. I too am going through the caretaking process with my 86 year old mother. She comes to live with us for 3 months in the winter. She is so lonely since the passing of my father 11 years ago & misses him deeply. He was her only & one true love… I look forward to more of your stories. ox Sandy
July 30th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
Valuable info. Lucky me I found your site by accident, I bookmarked it.
July 30th, 2010 at 8:25 pm
Lorrie, you captured perfectly the essence of your relationship with your mother, your family and what its like for all of us who struck out to do something independent and make new traditions that might be more functional than the ones we learned in childhood and at the same time somehow embrace where we came from. Somewhere along the way if it works we learn not to judge so harshly and appreciate another generations perspective. I really enjoyed your work.
July 30th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
Lorraine, What a wonderful story and beautifully written and damn it, you made me cry. As I scrolled down to read the last paragraph, I saw the picture of you and your mom and I lost it. The sentence “in that swirling eddy of emotions, sweet and simple love could be found” for me that sums up the complicated relationships that we have with our parents. Thanks for sharing with all of us.
July 30th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Beautiful Lor. Thank you for writing it and thank you for taking on the task of helping Mom. I cried when I read it. Love you.
July 30th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Once again you’ve put into words what so many of us are feeling. Thank you!
July 30th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Lorrainie – your recent blog made me cry….and yes, it did resonate with me…and my heart is filled with both joy and sorrow for what you are going through and what is yet to come. While it affords a closeness and understanding that could never be there before, a child having to parent a parent is not the normal way of things….and being in the medical industry, I find myself frequently wondering why we are developing methods of keeping people alive longer, without what should be the attendant better quality of life. When I was having to find ways to fool my mother into taking her unwanted medicine by crushing it into her ice cream, medicine that was extending her demented, stroked out life, which allowed her to continue living in a chair in front of a television (which she couldn’t comprehend) and which kept her so groggy that taking her on an outing was next to impossible, I wondered what the hell I was doing this for….for her? for me? So when the doctor pointed out that this was her last little grasp on control over her life and that if she didn’t want to take the medicine, she didn’t have to, I breathed a sigh of relief and let her be. A year later she died.
But for all the times she told me that she didn’t want to ever be dependent on anyone, for all the times she spat out her beloved ice cream because it was bitter, for all the times she said she had nothing to look forward to anymore, I am grateful for that doctor’s advice.
When we are little, we are encouraged to be curious, to take risks, to strive for our goals, and to be the best we can be. When we get old, we are asked to take our medicine, be a good patient, be happy to go on trips to the .99 Store in a van with the other assisted living tenants, and wait out the inevitable….unlike your Mother, my always-sweet, never-make-waves mom, who would weekly write and mail me poems about how she must have done something good for God to give me to her, became angry and mean, and went out kicking and screaming. She had come full circle, experiencing the best and worst of what life had to offer, and in the end, I was thankful that finally, after 84 years, she had the opportunity to express her disappointment over many aspects of her life, and of the fact that the thing she feared most – becoming what she considered to be a burden to her family – had come to be. The old Roz would have smiled and accepted it.
But to me, she will always be that smiling face in the front row almost every night of the year-and-a-half you and I were on stage together, the supportive, loving, best friend, never-to-be duplicated parent she always was, and I will be eternally grateful that I was able to return the favor.
July 30th, 2010 at 7:03 am
The Mother Of My Reinvention…
I found your entry interesting do I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)…
July 30th, 2010 at 6:26 am
Cris: I love hearing from you after I post an entry. You’re like my Blog Bellwether…it’s almost as if I haven’t published it if I haven’t heard from you. Thank you. It means a lot to know you’re being read, even by a few, particulary if “the few” are a choice few!
I think this story is, unfortunately, a resonating one with a whole lot of people. I know so many just in my circle of family and friends. It’s the natural order for us Baby Boomers to now start guiding our parents towards the end of their road, even as we ponder the proximity of our own concluding destination. It’s just one of those ironic and poetic circumstances of life. I have this one child, too, with a stepdaughter who will have her own parents to deal with, so I, too, know the drill of preparing that one child for the inevitable future. Dillon once said, after spending time with my Mom, “well, I know I’ll be doing this for you someday so it’s good practice.” I gulped and assured him that I hoped to be in better shape when I reached that part of the journey. We’ll keep our fingers crossed!
But your knowledge of my mother gives you a certain insider’s perspective which is sort of lovely. A witness to the story of life. Ginny Juice…I loved that!
July 30th, 2010 at 5:26 am
Wow! I can’t begin to count the ways this parallels my mother-daughter story. Dad died a year ago 7/31, Mom facing the inevitable decrepitude of time, the inexorable march that is a slow grind with a walker, the fears, the anxieties, the do-over conversations.
The burden falls largely on my sister, who has professional nursing creds and is thus, almost saint-like, the insurance/doctor appts/medical questions/fear allaying go-to daughter.
I’ve kept my distance for reasons best reserved for another day, but so much of what you write here rings and wrings true. As to your mom, the pictures enhance my memory of her and are appreciated.
For me, she was largely the dominant parental presence in your home – often seated at the kitchen table talking into the living room populated by a large number of your sibs as you and I might try to meet to get out for a play practice or long walk or …
As the mother of a lone child, albeit with two stepdaughters, I face my future and try to have these discussions with my son….about the day that surely will come when I will again need mothering or fathering. Twilight childhood beckons if I live that long. I hope, as with your mom, it is the dreams and not the nightmares that remain.
A shot of Ginny juice late at night – I hear her laugh in my mind. Loved it.