Looking back

It's interesting how limited our vision of our parents is, even if we think we know them very well, have them all figured out.

When my mother passed away two years ago, my younger sister sent me most of Mother's old pictures, since J is "not a picture person," and she knew I was. I have gone through the box a number of times, including when I was pulling pictures of my younger self to go into the Melody photo album that my mother had started for me, and never finished. However, just the other day I began a serious effort to re-do Mother's own old photo album -- the kind with black pages -- which had several pictures of her first wedding still attached, and some small, old snapshots, but from which most of the photos had long since become detached. I made the administrative decision to untie the album, put the wedding pix more toward the back, and fill the earlier pages with the pictures of her at two and six (would never have known that was my mother) , at 12 (yes, by then she was Gary), of her in her little Scotch lassie outfit, which was the costume of the pep squad at her high school, where she twirled baton, eventually becoming drum majorette, of her as football queen, beaming alongside her high school sweetheart who had been elected Football King.

I have said numerous times that my mother was beautiful, but it was only in looking through these pictures that I saw how true that really was. I remember perfectly well that I never thought of her as beautiful when I was young. She was just mother, who could be very strict, did not hesitate to spank, but who was wonderful to you when you were sick, whom I was mortified by when I was in junior high because she was so much younger than most girls' mothers (she had me when she was 18, making her only 31 when I was 13), and did young things like lie out in the back yard in shorts and a tiny halter, sunbathing.

In these pictures I see not only her beauty -- which became dramatic when her youthful blond/light brown hair turned a darker brown, and was eventually helped along by Lady Clairol -- but her vitality, her humor, her sense of fun. Most of the pictures were taken at family gatherings, because family was always very much at the center of my mother's life. You see her being playful with her old uncle, who is smiling despite himself. You see her crossing her eyes in the picture that was taken by a professional photographer at a nightclub she, my father, her brother and his wife, and one of my father's best friends visited in Juarez, Mexico. You see her hamming it up with three other ladies in front of a table that is beautifully laid for cake and coffee -- my mother had excellent taste, and always knew how to make things look "nice". In another photo she's laughingly feeding cake to a woman who is obviously just as pregnant as she is (the woman was the wife of one of my father's friends, whom I have a bare memory of); and then there they are, lying on the floor -- still laughing -- with the obvious remains of a party all around them -- cake plates, cluttered ash trays, champagne bottle and glasses (back in those days they didn't know you weren't supposed to drink, or smoke, when you were pregnant. Since my mother did both during all five of her pregnancies, I suppose it's a wonder my siblings and I aren't in worse shape than we are.)

To me the true irony of my mother's beauty is that she had three daughters, none of whom came close to her in looks. Mother used to say about all of her children that if she didn't know she'd had us, she wouldn't think we were hers, and it was true; we all took after our fathers (and there were two fathers involved, since my mother married twice.) I used to say that the only things I'd inherited from my mother were a flat chest, and a temper.

From the time I was about fifteen my mother and I did not get along. I was too independent-minded, and Mother was too determined that I was going to "mind." In today's parlance, I think it's safe to say that my mother was a control freak. She initially hated with a passion the man I fell in love with and married -- but then, none of her children's chosen partners was ever good enough. With time her religiosity and tendency to be judgmental increased, making her less pleasant to be around. All of this colored how I "saw" my mother. But oh the wonder of photography: I can look back now, and see her as she was, as I never saw her before. And experience a little enlightenment.

Role reversal

Not really able to do much in the way of blog postings right now, because I am currently in San Antonio, helping my sister care for my mother who, at the age of 81 1/2, is making her final journey, dying of lung cancer. Many, many of us baby boomers are in this position these days. If our parents aren't actually in the process of dying from some form of cancer, they are still undergoing the relentless deteri-oration of aging, requiring special care and attention.

As in other families, our situation is complicated by the fact that we are spread out, geographically, and all of us are financially chal-lenged, so that traveling forth and back is not an easy matter. In-deed, my status as Starving Librarian has been especially frustrating for me during this past year, when my mother (and one of my brothers, who also became ill) needed so much; and I could do so little.

A few years ago I watched my father die a slow death, and it was grueling and heartbreaking. Now I am seeing my mother in the same position. To see your once strong, healthy, energetic parents reduced to frailty and incapacitation, to a state where they don't want to have to move because it will cause pain, and require more energy than they have, is of course distressing. And maintaining the necessary patience, stamina and cheerfulness when helping them is very draining.

We all jokingly say things like, Well, I guess it's payback time, and Everything that goes around comes around; and we know that in fact this is true. But one big difference between our parents dealing with smelly diapers and cranky babies and everything else that went with rearing us, is that they were living in the same house, not 1400 miles away. And the beings to whom they were dedicating so much time and energy, to whom they were giving care, were every day growing, developing, becoming more human; they were waxing, not waning. Our parents were watching, tending, something hopeful, something with the potential for giving joy, if also, at times, heartache and worry. Watching, tending a parent who is dying is, at best, a matter of sadness; at worst, of exhaustion and depression.

I am amazed by my sister, as she has been dealing with this for over two months, and there was a lot of care in the previous year, as Mother had to be shuttled to doctors and hospitals and have endless things done for her even when she was still able to live on her own. The other siblings and I have been taking turns helping, but J is always here, determinedly patient, conjoling or firm as required, performing the same relentless and unpleasant tasks day after day, no matter how she feels. There is almost always one such in every family, the one who is there, and does what must be done.

The rest of us do what we can, and think "I'm never going to get that old," or (those of us out there with the money), "I'm making arrange-ments for long-term care right now."