[This (love) song is for the parents. Just thought I'd throw that out there.]
Near the new year, Dad took Mom out for the dinner they had the reservations for, as promised.
Mom had dressed him up in his best suit (which I didn't know he had, but God was it nice), his lankiness somehow hidden. By then, he had advanced enough in physical therapy that he would go out in public with forearm crutches. He still tired easily, and used the wheelchair more often around the house. She had even put makeup on him to liven his practically monochromatic countenance. His hair was combed through, but not parted "correctly", giving him the look of an urban aristocrat or an artist rather than a homeless man. I speak as if he looked different, he didn't, but he looked nicer for the occasion.
When my Mom descended the stair, we all saw the sheer magnitude of that dress. It stands in my memory as monolithic as a grand chateau, decorated and flawless. The dress itself was plainer, but fit her perfectly, the greens making the houseplants jealous. A dainty sash rested in the crook of her elbows, trailing behind her onto the reverse side of her waist. Her hair was sprayed, tied, and manipulated in such a way that it reminded me of a lion with greek-inspired details.
Even with the crutches and shaking hands, he picked her up and spun her once, reminding me faintly of the human spirit. She was, after all, a great deal heavier than he was, so she said. He was taller than her, yes, but he also was a near-rail. My mother was generally curvy and powerful, a dress size 16 because of her bust. She had a rack. She HAD a rack.
Don't neglect the fact that he suffered a mass brain aneurism (technically a subarachnoid hemorrhage), followed by a vasospasm, sat in a coma for five years, the last month or so his muscles atrophied (slightly) due to hospital staff neglecting to get a stand-in physical therapist to manipulate them when the usual therapist went on maternity leave. He survived this, and he found the strength to lift my mother up.
As I said earlier, things like this didn't affect me like they should have.
From what Mom had said, the date went well. She had some brilliant crab-scargot (crab prepared as escargot) and bruchetta, she also convinced Father to finish a chicken florentine. You see, she would convince him every once and a while to eat properly so that he would retain a level of health. He ate it for her comfort, I believe. Then, they had white wine and a dessert, and left.
He came home pleased, also, but exhausted. They slept as I had found them previously after the holidays, well and all over each other in ways reminiscent of newborn pups. Clothed, but blind pups.
How one sleeps in a suit is unknown to me, but my mother's dress was unzipped down the back, her naked torso face down, but just out of the sheath.
Past her birthday in January, things began to meet rocky shores.
First, the headaches.
He would suffer headaches in the front, putting pain behind his eyes and giving him double vision. Once, he slumped down a wall and laid on the floor, until I found him. In the latter days of January, his speech had begun to have episodes of regression. Mom, being wise, took him to the ER one afternoon when he had a particularly bad episode with all of the above symptoms.
They made him stay. The next day, he told us that he felt numb and significantly weaker. Mom half credited it to something psychological relating to hospitals, half to the two sizable (unruptured) aneurisms they found on his prefrontal cortex. They hadn't burst, but they weren't about to let him die after all.
The hardest night was the night that followed. We came home alone, all of us gathering for hybrid fruity pebbles/strawberry special K for dinner at 8:48 P.M. Mom served us, and we ate in silence until she spoke.
"He'll be okay."
And she continued to eat, sure as stone. Erica followed, but I wasn't pleased. In the forgetful solid cold of darkness, I walked outside with his wheelchair (Mom had resolved to carry him to the car and into the hospital) and lifted it over my head, preparing to slam it into the trunk of a shapely maple tree, or the shadow I could find of it, but dropped it down and sat against it as the gentle wind shredded through my sweater and clawed at my shoulders. Feeling myself tremble, I thought to tell myself what would be true, only to realize that I did not know what exactly was a lie.
When I got up, my legs protested and shook beneath me from the frigid air engulfing me; I wobbled like that pushing the wheelchair back into the house. Upon entering, my skin ached from being warmed, and Mom was brewing honey chamomile tea. She ran over and hugged me into her as she handed me her cup and told me to taste it. With care and excitement in the eyes we share, I sipped the mixture, the balmy thickness of chamomile filling my mouth and running down my throat.
I'd never tell anyone, but I loved tea. As a little kid, I'd share it with Mom. Even when she drank her crazy homeopathic teas when she was pregnant with Erica, and after she was born. I'd drink it and have diarrhea, fall into a six hour nap, and other wacky things, but it was worth it to feel the warmth and revel in the taste. I loved it. I loved Mom, too.
She never understood sibling rivalry. Growing up an only child, she only planned on having one from the start. But, as she told us, she decided she wanted another after I came. She said that she knew exactly what to do, and knew she could take on two. It's been a lingering thought that I wasn't enough, or that I wasn't what she wanted. And I get jealous. I get jealous like a girl. I get sofuckingjealous.
"I'm sorry..."
"No, no. It's fine. This is stressful as shit. It's okay."
She cussed in front of me since I was 13, old enough to cuss, she said. Even though she did discourage it from time to time, it's been a rite of passage only I had (for now).
"He feels bad about it, you know."
I was beginning to get used to Mom advocating for his emotions, she was the only one who could make sense of his inner self.
"M-Me too... I mean, I didn't want this to happen..."
"He wants to be a good dad... kinda. He wanted to be here for longer."
But, past this point, it almost seemed as if she was stating it for her own benefit.
I remember Mom and Nanna (my great-grandmother who hugs Dad) once, when we were all going to a restaurant to celebrate her 65th wedding anniversary. She reached for Mom's hand and said:
"Do you remember when you were little and I would hold your hand going across the road? I do it for my own safety now!"
And, she chuckled, Mom smiling down at her.
"George, he loves us, he just doesn't know what to do about it. You know he did want you, right? He told me he wanted a kid or two, and it surprised me, but we love you."
I took guilty pleasure in the fact that she said, "you"; not, "you both" or;"y'all".
[Yes, I know that last part looks weird, but it's grammatically correct. Listing things with commas in the phrase requires use of a semicolon. If I'm wrong, tell me.]
"George, we love you."
"I love you too, Ma..."
She held me almost into her chest, my head resting on the surface, feeling the warmth of her breast against my cheek.
"Mom?"
"Mm?"
"Do we have any of that- that Christmas breakfast tea?"
"With the clove? I think so."
She broke away to make me the tea, and asked me if I wanted to watch a movie.
"Yeah..."
She brought back a small TV, the kitchen sized ones with the built in VHS dock and an antenna when satellite TV used to be a thing. Then, she checked on Erica, bid her goodnight and a hug, and returned.
She put in episodes from the second or third seasons of South Park, and we had one on one time for the first time in what seemed like years. We just sat at the kitchen table and watched Eric be racially insensitive to Jew-kind on the other end. We made microwave popcorn and licked the rumored carcinogenic butter off of our fingertips. It was as if she were Ramona again, not a single mom, and not a worn-thin psychologist getting her psychiatry qualifications. Her title was fairly new, after she got it she became busier than ever, and being raised to stand alone made her oblivious to the pains eating me alive. I wanted to kill myself when I was fifteen.
I wanted to tell her, but I also wanted to let this moment live as it should be, with her smiling and trying not to spill her tea laughing.
"You know,"
She interrupted one of Chef's musical numbers.
"-your father isn't really this rudely quiet and helpless. He's not like that all the time, it seems that is all you get to see."
"He's kind of a pain..."
"Ha! You didn't have to wipe his ass!."
She held an air of jest and sarcastic humor even with the subject matter; it wasn't a new thing. I just wanted to know why. I wanted her reason- No, I wanted Ramona's reason.
"He'll come out of his shell soon enough."
The hospital was clean, white, and unsettling as always, Dad typing away on a laser keyboard projected onto a detachable meal tabletop from a flash-drive looking thing hooked to a seldom used iPhone- cases, he briefly explained.
They were keeping him there for a variety of shitty reasons. "He's already here, so why not give him follow up testing first? His neurologist is in the Bahamas, we think it's best to wait until he comes back so he can perform the surgery. He came this far, let's watch him die for real this time!" I admit, the last part wasn't mentioned, but I felt it. He would pause suddenly and rest back against the pillows in the midst of an ever-progressing headache. A headache. So simple, but it wasn't. He was nearly helpless, and there was little we could do- maybe it was the BIG headache. But then he'd ask to be helped up after some time, shiver, and pick up exactly where he left off. A few days before Dr. Asswipe got back from his vacation, a nurse spoke to us when she caught us all in the same room.
"I think it's really cool you guys are getting the Onyx HD-500, have you seen how it works?"
When we all looked at each other, she continued.
"It fills the aneurysm with a cement that turns black on contact with blood- I've seen them in autopsies- not like it will kill you, but it's the color of your eyes, sir. It's ironic-"
"Hm? Interesting. Thank you for that bit of trivia, Miss..."
He responded politely, making the timid woman blush.
"Eh... Leslie Patel, RN."
"I'll ask for you, then, Miss Patel."
"Call me Leslie."
"AHEM- Wifey here!"
She smiled devilishly at Leslie, making her erupt in rich laughter. Dad nearly grinned, slipping his fingers to his lips to stifle signs of joy.
"Of course, Mrs. Lawliet."
"That's Dr. Lawliet-"
Off they went discussing their work, Mom explaining that she was a psychiatrist at another hospital, and thus poured in hospital humor.
He went into surgery Saturday morning.