Habit (11 page)

Okay.

We got through
that.
And now we'll try
this.

Yes. I can do this. Yes.

On March 12, 2007 wrote:


Dear Siblings,


Don't mind me, I just need to get something out of my system.


Till now, Ma's actually been pretty decent about asking me to pick things up for her. She usually gives me some warning and says not to worry, just get it when I have time. Now that we're in the third week of radiation, she's becoming desperate and lunging at anything she can think of to ease the discomfort. We have reached this frantic stage where she's not able to be considerate, and it seems like there is no way to win.


•
   Item:
Calming Pills


She called her acupuncturist, Bella, to ask for more homeopathic Calming Pills to help her sleep. Bella told her she would order them and would call when they came in, hopefully Friday. Ma calls me on Friday without checking with Bella, and tells me
Bella has the pills and can you pick them up.
I go to Bella's. No pills. No Bella. I leave Bella a message and she calls me later to tell me she told Ma she wasn't sure about Friday and she will call when they come in. I hear nothing more about the pills, including from Ma who doesn't appear to mind that she doesn't have them because she never mentions them again.


•
   Item:
Triple X Ointment


A home health aide told her it would help with the burning. Radiation burns the skin, as we know, and we're all very glad the radiation nurses talked Ma out of using Holy Oil to heal the burns because now she has stopped basting herself like a turkey before getting roasted. It's time to try Triple X Ointment, and at the drugstore there was a small package and a large one. I got the small and told Ma if she liked it I would get the large. We went through this whole big thing about trying it and she decided it was
marvelous
so I later got her the big box. Marvelous marvelous.


•
   Item:
Bras


Ma said her bras were wearing out. This should have been easy because I knew what bra she had -- I introduced it to her. I said do you want the same size and what is it because I am going to the mall tomorrow. We checked her bra and noted the size. The mall doesn't have this bra anymore, I discovered, but this was okay because I could order it online. So I ordered it. The bra arrived a week later and I dropped it off ASAP.


Ma calls me and announces that in the last week she has noticed that she is
one cup size smaller
. I say why didn't you tell me before I ordered the bra. She says she didn't know I would get it right away.


•
   Item:
Night frigging shirts


Ma has had to simplify her wardrobe because of all the discomfort. She wears nothing but these nightshirts so she can lie on the sofa with her legs in the air no matter who is coming over, like she used to do when she sunbathed by our pool. (Colette: This habit of exhibitionism is something I know you accuse me of inheriting from Ma, and you're probably right. When the twins were born and David's teenage niece Caeli was visiting, I used to parade around wearing nothing on top but a back brace and a nursing bra with the flaps open. So I don't really have a right to criticize, but the Triple X Ointment Ma uses for the burning and itching gets all over the nightshirts, and she walks around with stains on the back.)


When I pointed this out to her, Ma was really unhappy about it. She said it was hard to clean the only two she
has
often enough, and I offered to buy a couple more. This meant ordering from Vermont Country Store online. I called her while online and asked what size she wears because I can order them right now. She checked and said
large
. I said are you sure it's not medium since you've lost the weight during treatment, and remember the bra.
No, it's large.
I order the nightshirts. Ma calls the next day and says she thinks she should get
medium
. I say why didn't you say that when I was ordering them.
Oh,
she says.


•
   Item:
Cancer tea


This is some stuff Photini's husband recommended, an herbal cleansing tea he uses for his lymphatic cancer or something. They want to give him chemo, but he's been taking this nasty swill for years and seems to be hanging in there. This is the one holistic cure elixir Ma's asked for. I've indulged her, even though I had to run around buying all this stainless steel paraphernalia to brew it and strain it. I have to store it in
dark glass bottles only
, which believe me are nowhere to be found except in a liquor store. I went and bought three bottles of some expensive god-awful vodka because it comes in dark blue, and poured ALL OF IT down the sink so I could use them. I sterilize all this crap every couple of weeks when I make a new batch, and then we have a huge witch's cauldron-type pot bubbling all day on the stove and nobody wants to linger in the kitchen. I really hope it helps, but still . . .


•
   Item:
Regular olive oil


She uses regular olive oil to make Holy and rub on anything that hurts that's not in the radiation zone, and to put in her religious lamps. If I get Extra Virgin, I have to go back and get the right kind. We have been through this. She literally goes through a gallon or two a week. She has just recently asked me for another of the large cans, and I'd better take care of it right away.


•
   Item:
Kleenex


She likes the small boxes because they are prett
y, but not if the box is decorated with bright colors. Neutral, please.
She uses Kleenex when she is out of toilet paper. I ransacked the store for neutral boxes the other day and delivered a ton of them in beige stripes.


•
Item:
Toilet paper


Ma goes through reams of toilet paper, and I have tried about three different brands; each one hurts. She wants the kind from Superfresh. While I was gearing up to find out what that brand is, she called to say
Josie just came and dropped some off.
Yippee! Four days later, Ma says she has
no toilet paper.
By then, I know what I'm looking for. So I am going to Superfresh, on a special trip, because Ma sounds pretty desperate. It is a
toilet paper emergency
right this second.


•
   Item:
Bubble ice packs


This is the best description I can get from Ma:


—You get them at CVS and dip them in hot water and they become ice packs.


She also wants some of my ice cubes from home because she has run out and she needs to put them directly on her
tail,
because it turns out she is allergic to the Triple X Ointment after all. And she is allergic to the Kleenex in the neutral boxes because the Kleenex inside the boxes is beige and she is
allergic to beige
. She has welts all over herself and she describes them to me in minute detail:


—There are enormous bumps in the creases that turn into bubbles and
--


—Stop, Ma. Call the doctor.


If she weren't so sure she was allergic to Benadryl, I would recommend that. I pray to God that she doesn't ask me to pick up Allergy Pills at Bella's. After the wild goose chase for Calming Pills, I would like to skip Bella's for a few days.


•
   Item:
Moist Wipes


I got her four boxes last week.


Today is my day to pay bills. It takes about five hours and I can usually run one little errand, but I prefer just to focus on the bills or I will make a horrible mistake. But Ma is having a toilet paper emergency and an ice cube emergency. So. Also there is no rush, but the olive oil I dropped off yesterday
is perfect for the lamps but not for cooking, can she have a small bottle of Extra Virgin, as well?


I print up info about colostomy for her to study in preparation for the meeting with Surgeon Pete in two weeks. Maybe she will be so busy reading pages and pages that she will fall asleep or be too tired to call and ask me to pick things up for her.


I look through the bills before going out on this quick errand. A bill has arrived from Bella for the Calming Pills. I call Ma to find out if she got them somehow.
No,
she says. I call Bella, who says she dropped them off with the doorman more than a week ago. I wondered all this time why Ma was not complaining about wanting Calming Pills anymore. It appears that Ma has simply not noticed that they were dropped off, and neglected to process the evidence in front of her nose: She had plenty of Calming Pills all along, despite the fact that she asked me to pick them up ages ago and I didn't.


I put the ice cubes in a cooler in the back of the car so they will last while I am at Superfresh getting the emergency toilet paper, the olive oil, and some garlic. I arrive at Superfresh after failing to get the bubble ice packs at CVS. I have asked two pharmacists and called Ma, but CVS does not know what we are talking about. I call and get Ma's machine and tell it I am giving up on the bubble ice packs.


I go to Superfresh. In the parking lot, David calls to tell me that Ma has called to say
stop looking for the bubble ice packs.
I do not need this direction, but okay, I will continue to not look for the bubble ice packs. I get everything else, and pause by the Moist Wipes. But I think
nah
, she just got four boxes last week and she knows I'm at the store, she can't have run out.


When I arrive with the garlic and olive oil, fifty rolls of toilet paper, money to pay the housekeeper, the pages and pages of colostomy info, a bag of ice, and a big blue bottle of her cancer tea, I go in the closet to unload the toilet paper. There is a full, unopened package in there already. Not only that but it looks a teensy bit different than the kind I brought. (America's Choice Plush versus America's Choice Super Plush or something,
oh, darn,
I literally bought tons of the stuff,
oh, scheitzenheimer
.)


I put the ice in the freezer and I'm kind of pissed, so I pick this moment to not very nicely tell Ma we have to work on our system here because it feels like I am getting nowhere.


—I can't help it; I don't need to hear this I am in great distress
(she is; it's a fact).


I say I am sorry she is in distress, but getting me to run around buying her useless things is not going to change that, and I have to go pay bills. I make my move for the door.


—
Don't talk to me like that
, she says.
Do you want to see?


And she lifts up her nightshirt and waves her backside at me. It looks truly awful, but all this makes me think about is the millions of times that Ma gleefully paraded her backside at us over the years (in the dressing room at the Penllyn Club, standing in front of her fireplace with her skirt hitched up to her hipbones. Prudish teenage friends used to tease me about it) and I am sick of her flashing, I have no sympathy. In fact, I am beginning to suspect she may have asked for this problem somehow, because this whole thing seems to have a huge psychological component. Maybe Ma deliberately got this cancer so she could
legitimately
wave her backside around at me and a whole lot of other people -- why on earth this gets her off, I don't know. But I think I understand now how our niece must have felt, even though she never said anything about my open nursing flaps, and I sincerely hope I never do anything like that to anyone ever again.


As I am making my exit at top speed (unfortunately forgetting to give her the cash for the housekeeper, and also forgetting to point out that the ice is in the freezer), Ma shakes an empty Moist Wipes box at me and says
what do I do with this?
I say how about throw it away.
Oh
, she says,
have I run out?
I say, I don't know, HAVE YOU?


Yes, indeed she has.


Okay now I feel a little better, I'm going to start paying the bills. I wonder if she'll check the freezer. If any of you call her, will you tell her the ice is in there? I'm off duty for the day.


XXSusie


E
VER GET THE FEELING
you might have been adopted?

Ma and I now spend so much of our time together that our incompatibility is showing. We drive around to doctors and talk on the phone several times a day. We've been getting along surprisingly well, for us. But it's as if we're partners in an odd business enterprise, thrown together by circumstances.

Those women in the movies whose mothers are their best friends—I know some in real life, too. They go on spa vacations, shopping sprees, lunch dates. They share confidences. How do they do that?

There's a therapy exercise where you make a list of what you do and don't have in common: Let's see, Ma and I both got married young and postponed the development of our artistic talents to raise a family. And we both like asparagus.

That's all I can think of. Here's what I really like: tap dancing.

When I was eight, I loved to watch Fred Astaire movies on Channel 29's
Saturday Matinee
. I begged and begged for tap lessons, but I got ballet instead. That was all the dancing there was in our area.

Ballet was okay, but it felt restricting. I found that my toy building blocks fit inside the soles of my knee socks and I could sort of tap around a little that way. Colette used to laugh when I soft-shoed vigorously through the kitchen instead of helping her with the dishes. Daddy was nice about this. He had been through dancing class as a child, like most boys and girls in his circle. Sometimes he would put on the record player, let me stand on his feet, and fox-trot around the living room. Other than that, it never seemed like anyone in our family shared my interest.