In this blog entry, I was going to relay the events about our visit to Milwaukee ad nauseum. I had planned to tell the reader how Zinnia was delightful and traveled well on all except the second leg of a three-flight marathon back to New Mexico where she cried and cried and cried until the plane at long last leveled off, and I was allowed to walk our squirmy, ears-popping child up and down the aisle. I might have written about how we feared my mother's C-Diff infection had returned and we decided to hold all family meetings between grandmother and granddaughter in the lobby of the Jewish home, which was fine, except that we were interrupted multiple times by every ilk of Jewish crone including one vulture-backed nonagenarian with coke bottle lenses who, beaming a dentured smile, toddled over to our party, interrupted our conversation as if we hadn't be talking at all, leaned her face toward a tentative Zinnia, and with a tremulous, penetrating voice told Z. over and over, "You are so wonderful! You are so precious. I love you very, very much!" I might also have noted how my mother--eager for any sort of affective response from her active, exploring granddaughter--would crane her neck toward Zinnia whenever she could catch her eye and say, "Boo!" And how everytime she did this, I would think to myself, Really? We came 1500 miles and this is all you got? I might have relayed how, out of all the pictures Jenn and I had sent my mother over the last ten months, resting on her coffee table were two--only two--framed photos: one of Zinnia, and one of Zinnia and your humble author, with Jenn nowhere to be found, which irritated her a bit being that, you know, she was Zinnia's mother and all; and the fact that Jenn took it a little personally gave me much myrth since the omission of Jenn's image from Barb's coffee table is so in character with who my mother is that it's pointless to take anything she does personally.* And no doubt I would have written how my mother became so confused when we went to our friend Liz's house for a fantastic, gourmet dinner that she said, as we helped her out of the car, "I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but where are we again?" and how I drove Barb home mid-appetizer, as she had suddenly become
so chilled that even a thick blanket couldn't warm her up. And how my mother got really upset because after I escorted her to her apartment, not only would I not give her a goodnight kiss on the cheek (because of my concerns around C-Diff and, lets face it, a lack of desire on my part), but I wouldn't even blow her a kiss after she blew me one (a gesture that not once in my 51 years had we ever exchanged and, frankly, creeped me out a bit). And how Barb stood in her doorway and grew even more upset that I wouldn't offer her this simple but (to me) weird gesture until I said at last, "How are you not getting this? I don't blow kisses," to which she responded with wounded silence, her eyes pleading for me to do this one simple thing for her, to which I responded with a blank stare and turning toward the elevator to give the button one more needless jab. Bing! I bid my mother a perfunctory goodnight--no eye contact--before the elevator doors slid shut. I might have also added with a chuckle how when I did return to Liz's house, I raised a glass, wished everyone a l' Chaim (to which the party responded in boisterous kind) and took a large swig of wine as I caught the tail end of a story told by Liz's hilarious brother who finished with, "...so they said the body was found in the freezer stuffed between the frozen peas and a 100 pounds of beefsteak," to which I responded by laughing until tears rolled down my cheeks. Then, of course, I would have had to include how two nights later my mother was found unconscious by a nurse on her bedroom floor and was taken to the hospital** where the next morning she informed me--and I quote--"I don't want to be here" (i.e. the hospital), to which i replied with something less than the Buddha's compassion, "Of course you don't. Nobody wants to be here," and we proceeded to spend my surprisingly pleasant last five hours in Milwaukee shmoozing about this and that before I left to meet Jenn and Zinnia at the hotel to pack and catch the above mentioned flight(s) back to New Mexico.
(Breath in, out.)
And as I left my mother's hospital room, who knows, perhaps never to see her again since she is rounding the corner to 80 and sickly, she blew me yet another goodbye kiss and then stared at me intensely, waiting, and I thought to myself, You clever fox. Did you arrange all of this just to get a fucking air kiss?*** but then I thought, What the hell, we could all be dead in two years, but more likely her, and I gave her what she wanted.
As I headed out of the hospital, I reflected on how my mother's credo can be summed up by that line from the Cheryl Crow song, Strong Enough: "Lie to me, I promise I'll believe," and how sad to be heading down the homestretch of one's life, so starved for love and attention, that one would prefer a dishonest blown kiss from across a hospital room over true contact of the heart; and sad, too, that I would choose to leave my mother at her doorstep in fuming silence at rather than offer her a brief act of kindness.
* Although G-d knows I have a long, sordid history of taking much of what my mother says as personal attack.
** Kidney infection, not C-Diff.
*** If so, it was no doubt unconsciously done, but still.
