Please excuse the length, but this might prove informative with some of my D's writing. How we all see/remember things differently,
or as I will now use, whatever will make said person feel on superior
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This is something I‘ve been told that I have, then pshaw it as it ‘doesn’t belong’ to me. It’s for someone else. Some elderly person somewhere else in the world. I think that has been my reaction to many things, and I just carry on as though it weren’t true!
Nevertheless, my brother felt it serious enough, to notify my 3 sisters, and one sister notified my daughter. D wrote and talked about her heart attack and upcoming double hip replacements. The part of my hip that was removed from my osteoporotic condition, to leave me left hip-less is the exact part she is having replaced. Well we have those in common.
She has steps to contend with (5 up to the front door, 13 up to the second floor, 10 down to the basement.) I cannot particularly feel sorry for her or anyone else who lives in place like that and hasn’t considered the future. Currently my brother’s knee replacement has him talking about downsizing and moving, but I feel he was not prepared to yet be “an old man” 71, this month. His wife had a hip replacement last year? Not last year, in 2007. I cannot judge, knowing the little I do but I think they ought to have begun looking back in 2007.
Everyone over 50 ? ought to hear these stories, as I have one from about 1996-7--after my D divorced and moved with the kids to a stairy/scary place. I went there once. It was outside steps (10?) to get to the front door, climb over the doorsill and climb about 8 to reach kitchen, dining, and living room, with maybe 8 more up to the bedrooms---what? 8? This was a Xmas.
Well I found a blog from her on line about 10 of her Xmases: here is one.
8. My relationship with my mother had been rocky since my adolescence. Maybe she couldn’t stand my growing up. Maybe she was afraid to be alone. Maybe she still wanted to have some semblance of control over me. But in my teenage years, whatever closeness we’d had had blown away like the ashes of my house. We never regained that closeness, but we tried various versions of a superficial relationship. Short, casual visits, were all I could endure. My mother’s disability prevented her from visiting us often due to the many stairs in our townhouse, stairs being a sin for which she has not forgiven me. She did deign to come one Christmas and endure the difficulties of mobility, a grand gesture on her part which I recognized and for which I was indeed grateful. As she made her slow way up the tall entry steps, I fetched the Christmas presents from the trunk of her car. My fingers slipped to cover my nose as my mind slipped to the day in my childhood when I got in the car with my Sunday School group for our annual trip, and revolted all the other passengers with the offensive odor of stale tobacco smoke on my clothes. I had no idea how bad I smelled until that day amongst the non-smokers. I could not even offer to go change my clothes, since I knew they would all smell. I was humiliated. And here was that smell again in the trunk of her car, saturating the wrapping paper of the children’s presents. Such a trivial thing to be so deeply affected by, but remember, I am a sensitive, foolish child.
It was a day visit. An overnight would have been intolerable. We ate, and then the children opened their presents from their grandmother. Pajamas for all and a few trinkets besides. Maggie said it first and clearly. “Oh Gram, these ‘jamas smell like smoke. Eww.” This was the first time that my mother had any idea how bad she smelled. She’d been smoking for 40 years.
7. This is a story about the one over-and-above thing that I can remember my husband doing for me during our marriage. I mentioned that I played the violin as a kid. I chose the violin because my Grandfather was a fiddler. Self-taught. Grandma played the piano, and Grandpa played the fiddle and they would go to the Seniors’ Centre near my house and play cards or music and get to know the others. Grandpa died shortly before my first child was born. The hubby and I had fallen on hard times. Well, we were always on hard times, but he was too clueless to notice, and I married him before I figured that out. Anyway, we’d moved from Toronto to some acreage about an hour east. The idea was that we’d live simply and cheaply and try to grow as much of our own food as possible while we recouped our losses from his bad money management. It turns out that the hour’s commute, the lack of running water or electricity and lack of refrigeration meant that we were actually spending a lot of money just to get by. And guess what else I learned? When tomatoes are in season, they’re pretty cheap. Same with peppers and peaches and apples. You know what’s expensive? Meat. Did we grow any of that? No, because I laid down the law pretty quickly: either it’s cute and furry, or it looks like I bought it from the store. I don’t want to know about any of the in-between parts. Anyway, he was a guy who was pretty easy to read, and while he could keep a secret, you always knew that something was up. He was VERY excited about Christmas that year. I suspected what he was up to, but couldn’t imagine how he would pull it off, since we had no money. So, it was with cautious anticipation that I opened my Christmas present that year. It was a rectangular box, poorly wrapped since he was no good at it, about 10 inches square on the ends and about 3 feet long. When I drew it out I feigned surprise with a gasp, since I’d guessed correctly. He had contacted my family, and bought my grandfather’s best violin for me. It was not a masterpiece of workmanship nor some dead famous person’s violin, but the tailpiece was inlaid with mother of pearl, and it was my Grandfather’s and so it was beautiful. I was still shy about playing, but as we were boiling sap in a cauldron one year back in the maple bush, I took it down to play while I tended the fire. Sometimes I would get it out and show my firstborn the instrument, and let him draw the bow across the strings. My last memory of that violin is when it went up in flames on March 19th, 1992, with the rest of the house.
8. I cannot say she has written untruths, but there are certain aspects-- 1. She NEVER complained about my smoking, and I never smelled the odour---why? Being a smoker? 2. It was her adolescence, as that is when she swallowed the aspirin. ‘Whatever closeness’ is what I’ve said that she said it was my disability and I couldn’t change that. She describes quite well how I felt she felt, superfluous! 3. She doesn’t mention that I went to the cabin 3 x per week to care for her children, and climbed steps into it and out of it all the time for 3½ years. The townhouse in 1996 was 5 years AFTER I was dismissed. And she is right that I didn’t know how much I smoked up hers and my things my house, my furniture, BUT, never did I pack a bunch of girls into my car for a trip. That surely must be read as another mother’s car and D’s inability to come home to change into other ‘smoky clothes
7. I wonder if she would have a different report if she knew that *I* bought the violin from my Mom’s estate (as my brother was having them appraised.) I asked him for the best one and would write a cheque to each of the siblings for 1/5th the price. He did and kept me out of it but delivered it to SIL at the fire house and the rest of the story is hers. Her time period runs from adolescence to after her divorce...some 20 years.
In her blog she tends to be either the victim or the heroine! But I’ve not said a word, except when she, in her recent email, mentioned all her steps to conquer, I doubt she was thinking, but I mentioned regarding steps, that anyone who has them, and doesn’t look ahead, will have to deal with them when older, as is my brother, and are entitled to have steps if they want, but I am also entitled to not use those steps for fear of falling and have refused a number of invitations ‘out here’ based on that privilege. (Out here, many houses are built on a mountain side so there are outside steps, then indoor steps and I’m sure these people will be sorry when they “break their backs”!!!!
For now
Izzy
Merry Christmas
