Dysfunctionally Fun

I've been considering writing a book about my family. The working title at this point is "WTF". This may be subject to change, depending on where I go with the story. I'm not even sure if I'll be in it. I may know more after the first chapter.

Not too much left of the family. We started out a big, happy, loud mouth Italian bunch, and then people started to die and marry Germans. My family knows how to have fun. They have wild and crazy get togethers at which people grow closer and congeal together like jello. I'm not usually invited but I hear things through the grapevine.

Still, I long for my remaining family members the way my poodle longs for an extra biscuit before bedtime. I even sit up and beg once in a while. Because of that I had been planning a nice little family brunch with my generation and a few of the younger half breeds for several weeks. I Emailed, called, texted and threw a bit of guilt around like fairy dust to get as many family members as possible to accept my invitation. I was really thrilled with the response. It seemed my family wanted to be together as much as I wanted them to be together. I had many warm fuzzy moments over it. I knew we would all enjoy the company, the setting and the food. I was so right.

I was so absent.

A few days before our little event was to go off, mother needed to be taken to the hospital again.
Mother is not good in a hospital. She loses her sense of time, space and the names of her children. More specifically, she can only remember mine. (also, her manners have been shot to hell for at least the last three years, so tending to her is not a real pleasant job.)

On Thursday, we sat in the emergency room for four hours while they poked, jabbed, prodded, folded, spindled and mutilated mother. And mother complained bitterly, in between labored breaths, about the physical abuse she was suffering at the hands of the medical staff. Several quarts of extracted blood and a potty full of urine offerings later, she was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure again and admitted to the hospital, kicking and screaming and calling me names.

On Thursday evening, a very tired sounding nurse called me to let me know my mother was refusing to have a chest xray and a kidney scan - which was, of course, of the utmost importance to determine what and how much medication was needed to treat her illness. I ran over to the hospital to bribe, threaten, cajole and weasel momma into getting the xray and the scan if she ever wanted to sleep in her bed at my house again. Everything was rescheduled for the next day. Crisis diverted.

Only until Friday, when she forgot that she was going to have these things done. Another call from another harried staff member and another drive over to the hospital to go through the whole routine again.

Saturday morning, mother calls and asks me why I haven't come to pick her up at the house where I left her. She doesn't know anybody there and she needs to leave. Another hurried trip to the hospital to convince mother she is not at a stranger's house and that there is a reason for her to be where she is and to stay there. We eat breakfast together and by the time I leave she seems to be more clear about where she is and why.

Saturday afternoon and the bad romance song plays on my cell phone -"why did you leave me at this house? come and get me right now. I don't even know where they put my damn teeth!"

Back to the hospital I go for more of the same. After an appetizing (not) hospital kitchen dinner, contraband caramel apple pie and more contraband starbucks, mom once again seems cognizant of her surroundings and agreeable to hanging around for the sake of her health. Great.

Not so great.

Early on the morning of our family get together, Lady GaGa sings loudly in my ear. My cell phone is lying on my pillow next to my head. "This is Judi Newman from Shore Memorial Hospital. I'm your mother's room nurse. Your mother took off all of her monitoring equipment and tore out her I.V.'s. She's refusing to let anyone touch her and is all dressed and ready to leave. Only she shouldn't leave. When can you get here?"

My sense of urgency is dulled from all the running back and forth to the hospital so I take a shower, deep condition my hair and dress for the upcoming brunch, which I have been looking forward to for three weeks. I arrange with my husband to meet at the hospital so we can leave together and get my show on the road.

When I arrive at the hospital, mother is eating (mushing up) her breakfast. "Get this stuff packed up for me. I'm going home after I eat. Don't forget my teeth in the top drawer." She is dressed from head to toe and missing all of the devices that monitor heart, pulse and a slow trickle of blood slides down her arm from the hole she made getting the IV needle out of it.

I march out to the nurse's station.

"Are there no professional medical people in this friggin' hospital?"

"What's the problem", a male nurse in tight scrub pants asks me.

I take him by the hand and lead him to where my mother is happily gumming up the last of her pancakes.

"This woman is #1- bleeding, #2 - demented, #3 - suffering from congestive heart failure and #4 - is planning to leave the hospital against medical advice and NOBODY here is trying to talk her out of it!!

"We can't keep a patient against their will."

"I need to speak to her doctor. I need to speak to her NOW! And I am going to report you as being lazy, unconcerned and negligent (and entirely too sexy) as soon as I see the nurse in charge.

To make the rest of this long story short:

The doctor arrived, Nurse McDreamy got written up, mother was medicated and advised that leaving the hospital could result in her imminent death or worse, no more Gunsmoke reruns, clothing was removed and pajamas donned, lunch was served and I was the only one to miss my well planned family gathering.

But everyone has been kind enough to tell me what a great idea it was , what a good time they all had and how fabulouso the food was.

Family. How I love 'em.

Bringing Up Momma

Who's your Momma?

Never in my wildest dreams, and really, my dreams have never been wild in a good way, did I imagine that I would have the responsibility of tending to my 90 year old mother the way one tends to a boil on the ass.

It's hard.

It's a full time job.

It's thankless.

And the paycheck sucks.

Not too long ago, I had to send her, kicking and screaming, to the hospital for the third time in six months. She was disoriented. She could barely move around. She wouldn't wake up and couldn't eat. I walked into her room to find her in her bright purple balloon panties and bra lying on a heap of dirty clothes on the floor.

It is almost impossible to lift someone off the floor who isn't able to lend the smallest bit of assistance. I may as well try to carry off an army jeep. This is not my first try with the lifting and dragging. Ma seems to give in to gravity more often these days.

She couldn't tell me how she'd gotten there. Not because she didn't know but because she couldn't form the words.

I said "you're going to the hospital". She found her words. "I am NOT going to the hospital and you can't make me".

Got her settled on the bed and went to make a cup of tea for her. She never touched it because when I came back, she was draped corner to corner over the bed with her one leg hanging off. This is called the stroke position.

I call her name- one, two, three times. No answer. I give her shoulder a shake and she shoots up like a bottle rocket.

"Whaaaa?" she wants to know.

"I'm calling the EMT's."

"You are NOT".

"Something's wrong with you, mom."

"The only thing wrong with me is you won't let me take a nap."

"OK, fine but could you not lie on the bed like a dead thing?"

So she squirmed and gyrated and slapped my hands away when I tried to help her straighten up. Finally, she's lying straight with a pile of pillows under her head.

"Here, drink this tea."

She strains up to take a sip of tea.

"Bleeechhh!! This shit is cold. Now leave me alone for a while, dammit and get my holy mother pin. It should be pinned to my bra."

This I do, get shooed out for my trouble and come face to face with my husband who wants to know when the ambulance is getting here.

We have two feet of water on all sides of us. We'll need a gondolier to transport my mother to the hospital. I know she has to go but she's such a baby about it. Maybe she's just stressed because she's never seen the ocean sitting on front step before. (No, I don't live BY the ocean today. I live IN the ocean)

I tell him that hopefully, she's just being 90 years old and we'll see how the rest of the night goes.

An hour later, momzilla comes shuffling out of her room, holding on for dear life to every stick of furniture and doorknob on her way to the bathroom. She slides along the wall, kicks at the dog when he comes to see what the hell is going on and then, after a short scuffle with the door, slams it closed. Ten seconds later I hear her throw herself on the toilet.

"Ma, are you ok in there?"

"Can't I even pee in peace?"

"I'll talk to you when you come out"

"Tsk"

Time goes by. Time goes by s l o w l y when waiting for a 90 yr old to come out of the bathroom.

"Ma, are you alright?"

"Jesus Christ, do you have to badger me on the toilet?"

"I just want to know if you're alright"

The sound of muffled weeping comes thru the door.

"Ma? I'm coming in there now."

I enter the holy of holies to find my mother shakily trying to pull up her pants.

"Want some help".

"I can do it myself" she's in tears now and falls back on the toilet.

"Now can I help you?"

"Just leave me alone"

"Well, I'd like to but other people might have to pee tonite and your butt is hogging up our only toilet"

I forced her to let me pull up her pants and then we discover she can't actually walk back into the bedroom.

I call my husband and between the two of us we "drag" her back to her room.

Sitting next to her on the bed I tell her in no uncetain terms that I am calling the Rescue Squad and possibly the National Gaurd (we are in a state of weather emergency with the National Guard patrolling the streets, removing large, potentially dangerous floating debris. In just a few minutes I watched them removed a floating dumpster, a matching set of lawn chairs, innumerable big black trash bags and a shopping cart)

So she puts up a big crying, snotting fight about how she is NOT going, can't make her go, will never speak to me again, etc, etc.

It takes less than five minutes for the National Guard, fire trucks, two police cars and the Rescue Squad to arrive. Remind me to donate liberally to all of the above.

And it takes three National Guardsman, two police officers, two fireman and three EMT's to get this woman hooked up, oxegenated, wired, tied down and on a chair-looking stretcher. She has no blood pressure that can be found, her heart rate is slow, she has a temp of 103 and uncontrollable tremors.

They take her out. She has an oxygen bag over her face but I can still here her cursing me all the way into the truck. As they shut the back doors on her, I heave a sigh of relief.

I hitch a ride with the National Guard over the bridge where I ditched my car. I give my sister a call and then the fun begins...

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As Time Goes By...

My life has been one long peeping tom session. Not that I deliberately watch people perform their private rituals through their windows. It's more like I watch other people living something called A LIFE and lament the fact that I have none.








But I can't explain why... why I do the same things you do, but it seems without meaning when I do it.

I see someone walking down the avenue with a bag from one of the artsy boutiques in town and think that person has so much more going on than me. I, too, shop at that sweet little boutique but I carry that bag like a pretender. I''m sure that that other person has excellent taste and a history with the store owner. I, on the other hand, pick and chose among the items that appeal to me rather than from a knowledge of the designer, the design, the story behind it...I build a very nice house around the stranger filled with antiques and artifacts and designer originals, art given personally by the artist, a happy little family with legacy china from the first generation to set foot in America straight off of the Mayflower.






I always feel like the loner. Sitting among a house full of women I have known for 40 years, I watch them talk and laugh and interact and envy their easy conversation, their quick smiles, the way they seem to relate to each other. I sit with my melon martini, listening to my best friend since first grade talk about her summer sailing trip around the carribean with her husband and the most fabulous teenage daughter I've ever met and feel that I have nothing of interest to share. Me and my husband? We rented movies and sat around the living room drinking coffee and watching in silence. Sail? We throw up when we see a boat coming towards us. Why we live in a beach town when even the sound of water makes us sick is beyond my comprehension. But this is no life.






At work I listen to people talk about family reunions, visiting with friends far away, taking road trips on the weekend (yep, car sick. no trips without a handful of dramamine and some nicely reinforced barf bags) and I can't relate. I have no story I'm not embarrassed to tell. Road trip? My sister and I spent 15 minutes lost in a parking lot last summer. We had two GPS systems with us, both of which announced "you have reached your destination", but we drove around and around the parking lot (to be fair, it was a really BIG parking lot outside of an outlet mall in Lancaster, PA) looking for the damn Cracker Barrel. We did not find it. In a PARKING LOT!!! It's a good thing we don't wander into a paper bag. We'd die in there looking for the way out!











My only child moved (from NJ) to New Orleans last year leaving my nest with a gaping hole. She had previously lived in Philadelphia for a number of years, but Philly is almost within spitting distance. Louisiana is a different story. So now I feel that everybody in NOLA has a life that, at some point during the day, will intersect with my daughter's life.
















Lives touching lives...while i sit here at the actual jersey shore- dodging tourists on bicycles, walking in the surf with my poodle, drinking macchiatto at the Positively 4th street cafe with new friends, meet the artist of the week on asbury avenue and plan various holiday get togethers (already)with family and friends. This is no life. This is a pathetic attempt to fill the minutes with some kind of meaning.















Other people's homes are always of extreme interest to me. It's like being on an archeological dig inside a very small civilization.













Is there some kind of meaning to life, I wonder? My life only has whatever meaning I give it. How do others fall into living so easily? I'm still waiting for my life to begin. If it doesn't start soon, I'll be dying before I'm living. As it is, I'm just dying to live.