The Waiting Game

So my sick mother had a CT scan a few days ago to determine the cause of her liver inflammation. The scan revealed a blockage in one kidney but not much else so an MRI and other tests have been ordered. Next week, she'll go into the hospital to try to get most of the tests done in a timely fashion.

I'm a bit of the agnostic type but as I knew some results were coming in yesterday afternoon, after I dropped off Eliza at school, I swung back around to a local church and took Elena inside. I expected an empty church and some quiet time to light a few candles and say my own prayers. Instead I walked in on a mass already in progress. I decided to stay through the mass which was mercifully brief because to say Elena is not well versed on church etiquette is putting it mildly.

I sat in the last pew so I could made a quick exit if necessary. Right behind me was a pedestal containing a basin of holy water. Elena apparently mistook the pedestal as a water fountain and when I let her disappear for a moment behind me, I was shocked to find that she'd somehow managed to climb the pedestal and was slurping holy water. Horrified (and yes, I'll admit it, entertained), I wrestled Elena away from the holy water. She exhibited her displeasure by screaming at full volume for about two minutes. The Priest continued to speak, a few heads turned, the elderly couple closest to me scowled but finally the screaming fit was replaced by Elena's enthusiastic imitation of my shushing, followed by her slapping at my legs, saying, "stop that shh, no shh." Hoping for quiet, I let her toddle to the pew in front of me and ignored her as she lay down and say, loud enough for people in the next county I'm sure, "Nappy nap!" I'm sure you can imagine the fun she had with the kneeler at the bottom of the pew. Finding a "fan" at the end of that pew, ie an elderly man who was charmed by her noisy antics and waved, Elena responded by running over to him and promptly hiking her dress high over her head to show off her tummy and bloomers. The man looked away, I imagine not sure of what to make of this mass-attending strip-tease.

But the mass ended swiftly, I had my quiet moments to say, well beg, what I needed to say. Later that day, I brought both girls to see my mother. They fell asleep in the car so I left them in there while I asked her what the results were. Finding that everything was still up in the air but that my mother seemed a bit stronger, I woke the girls one at a time and led them into the house. We had a lovely evening. Elena ran into the house saying "Gandma! Gandma!" She jumped into my mother's arms and all the weakness seemed to leave my mother. Eliza ran up to my mother's chair and draped herself across my mother's lap. I didn't know that Eliza had been worried but I saw it in that moment, saw the relief in her eyes as she nestled against my mom. We ordered a pizza and my mom managed to eat two slices. Then we headed out to Rita's for an ice, my mother's first non-medical outing in a month. My mother surprised me by getting out of the car to eat the ice at the table. Eliza was cold and headed back into the car, waving to us from the open window. Elena waved back, calling "Hi Sissy! Hi 'Yiza" when Eliza disappeared inside the car. Eliza poked her head out the girls seemed to have their own moment.

So we wait but for now, after that wonderful night, I have more hope than I had a few nights ago. I'm so lucky to still have my mom after all the health issues she's had and I try to cherish each good time as much as I can because I know, there's no guarantees here. I know that life is a finite thing, that death is something none of us escape. But that doesn't mean I'm in any way prepared to lose my mom.

So for now, we had last night. I hold onto that, the image of her seated at the table with me and Elena, happily eating her mango ice, while Eliza waved to us from the car.

Recital Day

Eliza's second recital was a wonder to behold. I think it's more of a special occasion to me than it is to my daughter at this point. It's certainly one of the highlights of the year. This year's recital was marred by my mother's absence. My mom is very sick and knowing she was too weak to attend her granddaughter's recital made the event very bittersweet. I tried to put on a game face for Eliza but all day I felt like crying. I know how much my mother wanted to see her in her costume, up on stage. I'm so worried about my mother right now but that's a whole other issue.

Eliza looked so beautiful in her costume. She was definitely much more into the experience of performing this year. She loves all of it, getting her hair "bunned," the makeup and then stepping into her gorgeous costume.

I thought I'd be depressed but once the lights came up on my girl, I felt nothing but joy and pride. There she was front and center, displaying a real grace and quality of movement. Not only did she know most of both dances, she smiled for much of them. The nerves and joylessness of the first year were gone and she seemed genuinely happy to be there.

As always, these days seem long when the recital drags on forever and my poor girl is tired, but then it's all over and that's it. I spent the entire afternoon with these girls today and now I probably won't see most of them again next year. So often in life, just when you're getting to know some one or something, it disappears.

But still, what a wonderful day. I happily look forward to next year.

Just me

My mother has been sick for so long, to hear her say she's not feeling well has become background noise. She's had lyme disease, two rounds of cancer (stage one), heart disease and a brain tumor that kicked into high gear when I was very pregnant with kid#2. That brain tumor was excised, determined benign and seen as "highly curable."

That brain tumor prompted me to act. I moved out of a bad relationship, rented an apartment I had no idea how I'd pay for to be closer to her, and set out to raise two small children, then aged 3 and two months, on my own.

Except I wasn't on my own, I had my mother. She wasn't quite herself, I don't think too many people are after a craniotomy. But she managed to take care of my kids when I commuted into the city to work. Gradually the work increased and with the help of my father and my mother's invaluable next door neighbor Karinna, my girls were in good hands.

I worried about my mother's health, that taking care of my kids was risky, I was two hours away, what would happen if she dropped dead while taking care of my kids. But one job bled into another and she managed to make it through and everything seemed to be okay. When a job I thought might bring me back to NY didn't materialize, I was relieved. I was happy with our current status quo.

Except now my mother's sick again, the cause at this time still undetermined and I've never seen her this weak, this exhausted, this done with living. April started out just fine, with her taking care of my kids while I worked a pretty demanding job. By the end of April, she was almost incapacitated. She hasn't driven in over a month now and hasn't left her house except to see the doctor twice. She is jaundiced, exhausted, resigned. I could be wrong but I think my mother is dying. I know, we're all dying and who's to say that this is her time. Except just like that, she's lost her independence and I'm not sure that little thing is coming back.

There are so many other issues at play here--how do I get her out of the house without stepping over her and declaring her imcompetent, how can I afford an attorney to advise me on what's best for her, how the hell do I get seven years of bank paperwork in order for medicaid when my mother is a hoarder and extremely disorganized to boot? But beyond all the business end of things, I am watching my mother fade out right in front of my eyes and other than shuttling her to doctors and picking up her groceries, I am powerless.

People have said all along, how have I handled taking care of these two little girls on my own and the answer is so clear--I haven't been on my own. With my mother I've been less alone than I ever was with my daughter's father. Even post-brain tumor, she's been there for me. Because she's the only one besides my father who's looked out for me. While C might be there for our daughters, while he's a decent provider and he loves them, he has never, ever been there for me. My brother is autistic, my father's involvement is sporadic.

And now I look at the future with my girls and I see just me. I don't know how I'm supposed to do this.

My girls

I feel like no one's reading this anymore so I've stopped writing. But I suppose that's writing about my delicious girls for the wrong reasons. Yes, I am a writer who craves an audience. But if I don't write about them then everything just goes away. I'm amazed at how little I remember with Eliza. If I hadn't written down certain days and certain discoveries, I'd have no recall of them at all.

Elena turned two almost a month ago. She is so much fun right now. I love this age even though she's much more high spirited and easily frustrated then her sister was at two. She is communicating up a storm. She wants to do everything her sister does and is very screams when she can't. She doesn't like it when we drop off Eliza at school and she's stuck with me. I've been letting her run into Eliza's classroom this past week and this morning, while the older kids clustered around the incubator with the newly hatched baby chicks, Elena raced over to the fish tank, then sat the in the reading chair like Queen Elizabeth on the throne. When I came to retrieve her, she held up her hands and said, "No, come back!" She wanted me to leave her there and come back.

Elena loves to sing and dance. Her dance moves now mostly consist of her running in circles, spinning in circles or doing these little knee bends with her hands on her hips. Yesterday she was so engrossed in her dance moves, she really didn't want to leave when it was time to take Eliza to school. I had to forcibly carry her to the car while she screamed. Once we got to the car, she resumed her little knee bends and hands on hip action. I don't know what song she was dancing to in her head but she really didn't want to get into the car.

At a school meeting on Friday that I had to attend with Elena, she kept running for the closed door saying "I want to go home." She also likes to say "I can do it" with if a smile if she can do it and screaming angrily if she can't do something. "I get out," she says when I meet her at the crib or she wants out of the high chair. "I get down," she says when she wants help getting off Eliza's bed. It's so cute to see her hanging off Eliza's bed on her stomach, her little feet dangling to the floor. It's not a far distance but she won't get off Eliza's bed without help. She is cautious.

She is wonderful, even more independent than Eliza. She is happy to entertain herself and needs little beyond food, drink and diaper changes from me. She loves the bath, wandering around the playground, strawberries, pressing buttons on the phone and board books. She loves her little body and is increasingly proud of all the new things she can do. She repeats a lot of what we say and imitates Eliza to a hilarious degree.

She worships her sister. When it's time to pick up Eliza as school, she says "Yay, Eliza!" and runs to the door to get in the car. When Eliza comes running out of her classroom, the two girls hug. Then Eliza takes off to run outside with her classmates and Elena screams and sobs behind her. "Yiza!" she wails. "Wait!" She screams when other students take Eliza's hand. As the little sister, Elena wants to be the sole owner of those perfect little Eliza hands. Eliza and Elena will walk up and down the sidewalk together. Then Eliza will want to play with her friends and she'll extract herself from her sister. Elena will reach rather pitifully after her, screaming with abandon. Poor Eliza feels guilty about it but I tell her to go ahead and have fun.

We are having so much fun now. We are such a cool little family. The other night, the two girls were entertaining each other in the bedroom and I realized, it's only a matter of time before they barely notice my presence. As proud as I am of their relationship, this saddens me. My days as the be all to end all in their eyes has already passed. I hope to get a life beyond them, sometime soon.

But for now, they are delicious, they are my little loves, my wonderful girls. I am looking forward to a fun summer.

Four Fridays

Wow, it's been almost two months since I've blogged. I blog mainly to go back and remember great times with my girls. If I don't write stuff down, it goes away. One day bleeds into the next and before I know it, my girls will be in double digits and I'll have little memory of the day to day stuff of their younger years.

So what can I say of them now? Not very much, I'm afraid. I've been working on an exhausting job for the past three weeks so I've seen very little of the girls. We shoot all night long on Friday nights (tonight is a Friday and it's no exception) so I see the girls for most of the day Saturday and all day Sunday. On Monday, I return to work before the wake up and get home long after they're asleep. Fortunately for me (and I'd like to think for them), I'm a freelancer and this job will end the morning of April 13th. During my all too brief phone call with Eliza last night, she asked if I'd be at her spring concert next Friday and I gleefully announced I would be.

So three weeks, is not all that much to miss out of my girls life. Except today it really feels like it is. With four more very long days still laid out in front of me, this time away feels incredibly long.

On March 11th, my grandfather died. He was 104 and not doing all that well, but still seemed insanely healthy for a man his age. What I'm trying to say is that I should have expected he'd die but still I didn't, I had no idea he could. March 11th was a warm, fairly sunny day. The girls and I were recovering from the flu. In celebration of our new, healthier bodies, I took the girls to get some spring clothes. I bought several outfits for each girl and one pair of shoes each. I came home and got the phone call shortly after our nice evening together. There it was. My grandfather was dead. I sat there holding the phone after my mother had hung up, wondering what I was supposed to do now.

C came down with the girls the following day for his weekly visit and was his usual, unhelpful self. I tried to figure out how I'd get to Pittsburgh to be with my family. Flights were over 1,000 dollars a piece. I cried, thinking I'd not be there. A little perseverance paid off as I discovered vastly cheaper flights at a different airport. While I booked mine and Eliza's reservations, C took the girls to the park. Not long after he'd left, he called to say Elena hurt her leg. We took her to the emergency room and after a few ankle Xrays yielded no broken bones, they diagnosed her as having a sprained ankle. Two days later, with her still not walking, I delivered Elena to my father and traveled to Pittsburgh with Eliza. We weren't there for much longer than 24 hours. Faces I hadn't seen for many years blurred in front of me as my grandfather lie motionless in a casket. The funeral was beautiful. Four of us grandchildren got up to say how much we thought of him. It was nice to hear everyone's words and stories about him.

I came home to find Elena still not walking. After finding an orthopedist willing to squeeze us in, I came home several hours later with a daughter in a full leg cast. It all seemed surreal. I'd left my beautiful baby girl with some one else, not knowing she had a broken leg. I had them put the cast on in pink so Eliza would like it. She later told me she'd rather it be purple. I shook my head feeling like I'd failed on more than one level. I put the new shoes I'd bought Elena the week before in the closet. I remembered the prior week, shopping at the Jackson outlet, the girls playing in one of those motorized cars you feed quarters to. All this while my grandfather lay on a bed, his heart failing.

The following Friday I spent up all night shooting a scene on a boat. We wrapped at 6:30am. Exhausted, I powered through that Saturday with my girls. I had little time to think about the events of the past month and what I've missed.

Now here it is, four Fridays later. As I type this, my parents are taking Elena to the doctor to have her cast taken off. Hopefully everything will be okay. Yes, I should be there but I'm not because I'm here in New York, soon to leave to meet a van that will take me up to our dreadful night shoot upstate. C will come down tonight to spend the night and tomorrow with the girls so I can rest a bit before taking over as Mama for a little more than 24 hours.

But like I said, as a freelancer, this job will end and next Friday, I'll be there for Eliza's spring concert. I'll be there at her school's bake sale. I'll be there, hugging my girls and Elena will hopefully be walking again and these past few weeks will feel like they hadn't happened.

Except my grandfather will still not be here. I last saw him alive in August of 2010. I tried to get a photo of him with Elena but anytime I put her anywhere near him, she cried. So no photo, no proof of their meeting will ever exist. Yes, I am lucky to have had this man in my life for 43 years but he was a man of such vast, of such inexplicable greatness, his loss is huge.

Valentines Day, Mama Style

A long time from now, in a galaxy far, far way, my girls will have their friends, boyfriends, spouses to spend Valentines day with. But for now, it's another wonderful day to celebrate just how much I love my little family.

When I was pregnant with Eliza and unsure of what kind of mother I'd be, my father said, "One thing I know for sure, you have a lot of love to give."

He wasn't wrong. It turns out I have so much love, oodles and oodles of it. Mount Vesuvius sized oodles of it, just bubbling beneath the surface, waiting to be lavished on some one worthy enough.

I filled little gift bags with small gifts for the girls: matching swimsuits, strawberry shortcake coloring books, one age appropriate book for each girl, new toothbrushes and a little chocolate. The way Eliza acted, you'd have thought I'd given her a million dollars or at least the key to the universe.

The way I see it, a Mama's got a few good years, a few years where she's the equivalent of kings. A simple goody bag or home made Italian ice has the power to make her little girl's day. An oversized Tinkerbell card is good enough to go into bed with her daughter at the end of a wonderful day. When I walked by Eliza's room after bedtime tonight, I saw her lying in bed with her Tinkerbell valentine in her hands. Beside her on the floor was her little goody bag.

I could lament my lack of a mate but that doesn't bother me in the slightest. I suppose when my girls have their own mates, I'll feel alone and neglected. Or maybe, I'll buy myself flowers, treat myself to a nice dinner and look back on the photos from those days when I, just an average mama, was truly the equivalent of a king.

Mama!

While I folded laundry, Elena made a discovery. She came running into the hallway saying, "Mama! Mama!" I met her in the hallway and she turned towards the living room. She took a few steps away from me and then looked back at me.

"Mama," she said, pointing towards the windows on the far side of the living room. Realizing she had something to show me, I followed.

I found this little exchange so charming. This is probably not the first time Elena has communicated, without words, that she has something she'd like me to see. But being that she's the second child, so many of the wonderful little things she does go unnoticed. Oh I remember the big stuff; the first night she slept alone in her bassinet instead of practically on top of me, her first word (Hi), the first steps she took on the tennis court at the park down the street. But the little stuff; the first time she smiled, the first time she sat up on her own, the first time she rolled over, even though they all happened more recently than Eliza's firsts, I don't remember them. It seems like the first 21 months of Elena's life have passed in a blur.

In fact, most days while Eliza's in school, Elena and I barely spend any time together. I am forcing myself to excercise so I do that while she plays in the playroom. Then I get sidelined by chores, phone calls, work-related activities. She and I hardly ever do things together where as with Eliza I hosted puppet shows, we went to the park constantly, I took 1,000 photos per week.

So today, I followed, excited to have this tiny interaction with her. I hoped that she wasn't going to show me another broken lamp. She toddled over to a shelf that holds several photographs, all of them including at least one of the three of us. She pointed to the only photo of me with both girls, her finger resting on me.

"Mama!" she said, grinning so broadly I thought her face might break. "Mama!" she said tapping the glass again.

The photo was taken sometime in the fall. It's from our back porch. I know it was taken after mid-August because we're sitting on an overturned canoe that belonged to my neighbor. On that day, she pulled up in her car and we waved down to her. She took out her camera and snapped the photo. I'm in the middle, the farthest from the camera. Elena is camera right, in the foreground, her hands on the bars of the porch. Eliza sits forward on my other side, grinning. I remember being so happy when my neighbor gave me the photo. There are very few photos of the three of us.

Elena was so happy with her ingenuity. She had recognized me in a photo. I'd like to say she recognized herself and her sister but she just kept pointing to me and smiling. There I was, her Mama, grinning unblinkingly from someplace else while I also stood beside her. I held up a photo taken six years ago of myself with baby Eliza but she didn't seem to recognize me. I tapped another photo of myself, cuddled against an actor for a show I worked on a long time ago. Elena didn't say anything, going back to the photo of the three of us and saying "Mama!"

I kissed her round, cottony cheek. My little Elena. I might not spend much time with her, but every now and then, we have a moment. It's not enough, I don't know that it's ever enough but it's going to have to do.