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For My Mother: 1-28-1926 to 3-9-2010

My mother had a stroke and fell flat on her face on February 26th, ironically also my daughter's 28th birthday and the day on which her long-term boyfriend asked her to marry him. At first everyone here was taking a wait-and-see position, but I had planned a visit to Sacramento for this week anyway, so I drove up on Monday, the 1st. Mom was still in intensive care and looked horrid, all black & blue & purple from the fall, in which she had broken off several of her upper teeth. She still had all her own teeth at 84. As the days went by my kids, sister, younger brothers, niece and I visited with her, as did some of her friends, but we could never tell how much she was comprehending because she wasn't speaking. At times she seemed wide awake and responsive; at others she just seemed to stare into space. On Friday the 5th I drove Caitlin home to her new house and spent the night, but I drove right back to Sacramento in the morning. On Monday the 8th, I arrived at the hospital to find they had moved Mother out of the ICU onto a regular floor. She looked miserable and I didn't see any recognition in her eyes. They asked me to sign paperwork so she could be transferred to a different hospital and put under the care of her own doctor, whom my sister doesn't like and hadn't notified about Mother's condition at all. My niece and I had decided to contact him after my sister went back to San Francisco. Once Mother was settled in the other hospital, her doctor visited her and called my sister to say Mother didn't have long to live because her lungs were full of fluid. In the meantime, after signing the transfer order, I had driven to S.F. to visit my middle son, thinking I was on the way home. During the night he got a phone call from my sister that Mother was gone. He didn't wake me, but told me when we got up in the morning. I spent the day with him as planned and then drove back to Sacramento. My older brother flew in from Boston and we've spent the past few days packing up all of Mother's stuff so we can put her house on the market. On Sunday I'll drive back to my daughter's and store some things in her garage. Then on Monday I'll either visit S.F. again or head home directly. We couldn't book the church for a memorial service until April 10th, so I'll drive back up here then with Steven and his girlfriend, who has lived with us since August.

It's going to be so strange not having this condo in the family any longer. Mother has lived here since 1984 and all 4 of my kids have lived here at different times over the years... Steven when I lost custody of him for a short time in 1995; Jacob one summer when he was in high school; Caitlin during her first two years of college; and Josh after we moved to Los Angeles. Josh was here the longest, about 4 years, before he got his own place. He still lives in Sacramento and I saw him a couple of times at the hospital before Mom died. I've seen more of my brothers this past week than I have in the past many years, including the youngest, whom I've had no contact with since moving to L.A. in 2001.

I should be home by Tuesday the 16th at the latest. By then I'll need to deposit my check and return my paperwork. I will be going into my 2nd extension by the end of this month. A high school girlfriend has offered to take me in back in Michigan and won't charge me room or board, as my being there will free up her husband to return to work after stopping to raise his two sons. I'll stay with the 16-year-old while they take to the road as long-haul truckers. I can't leave L.A. until Steven and Beverly find a place to go. My fall-back plan was always to come live with my mother and you know how unexcited I was about that prospect, but that is because I hate Sacramento in general. My mother and I made up years ago, although some resentments have a way of never quite healing. When I visited last October for my 40th high school reunion we got along very well. She was just old and slightly demented, but she managed to live alone, in her own home, right up until the end. We never had to worry about putting her into assisted living or a nursing home. I like to believe she was OK with the way things ended. She used to say that if her doctor's face was the last one she ever saw on earth, that would be fine with her.

Two Long Years That Went By Too Fast

When last you heard from me, I had rear-ended a young lady at the Jack-in-the-Box drive-thru by accidentally hitting the gas instead of my brake. That was two years ago and so much has changed! Let me list a few pertinent occurrences, in no particular order.

No more trips to Jack-in-the-Box. Two years ago, Steven and I were eating fast food several nights a week. I was either too tired and/or too lazy to prepare dinner most nights, so I spent a lot of time in line at the drive-thru. We alternated among JitB, McDonald's, Taco Bell, Burger King, KFC, Subway, Carl's Jr. and In-N-Out Burger. When we wanted something not quite that "fast" I would hit up a Japanese restaurant for take-out teriyaki bowls or an authentic Mexican place for burritos. My favorite was Taco Bell and my meal always included at least one caramel apple empanada. Steve liked Whoppers or Big Macs, usually accompanied by an additional double cheeseburger and large fries. It wasn't enough that I ate fast food for dinner most nights, I got into the habit of driving through McDonald's in the morning for iced coffee and cinnamelts, often with a couple of pies thrown in for good measure. I made the rationalization that we could eat less expensively at Taco Bell than we could if I bought and prepared something fresh. Plus, it could be really convenient and there were no dishes to wash. Many evenings I definitely spent more time in traffic than I would have by avoiding the drive-thru, but then I would have had to actually drive home and cook something!

Now, Steven and I are pescatarians. We became vegetarians in January 2009, then added some fish last summer. If we really crave fast food there are fillets o' fish at MickyD's or Garden Burgers at BK. Also, Steve has learned to cook, so if I'm too tired he's able to fix dinner. I don't miss meat, especially not handling it raw. Down the road I may go all the way to vegan, but I'm still hooked on dairy; things like ice cream, cheese and yogurt still taste too good to me.

I'm Rear-Ended Rather Than Rear-Ending. I have been hit by other drivers three times in the past year. The first time was the worst, resulting in over $4,000 damage to my poor little Honda. It was the Monday before Thanksgiving 2008 and I was on my way to work. Having just missed hitting the car in front of me by mere inches, I had taken and exhaled a great cleansing breath. I was in that totally relaxed state when I was slammed from behind by a big old tank of a BMW. Since I was totally loosey–goosey at the time, I suffered no ill effects. My car, on the other hand, was hit so hard the frame buckled. Not initially realizing that my car was damaged, I almost let the other driver take off, only at the last minute asking for his contact information. As soon as I started up and tried to drive, I could tell something was not right. I headed straight to my mechanic, who was located on the way to work anyway. He took one look and sent me to the body shop next door, where they originally assessed the damage at $1300. In the meantime, the BMW owner had taken his big old tank home and changed his clothes, arriving at the collision place -- when they phoned him for insurance information -- in a suit and tie, as well as in a brand new BMW. He first got pissy about my choice of body shop, then when the estimate was finished, he put away his credit card and sped away in his shiny new Beemer.

Steve and I were planning our annual Thanksgiving trip to San Luis Obispo for dinner at Jacob's place and I had already prepaid a motel room for two nights. The Honda played a major part in our holiday plans. Although the guy who hit me had originally claimed responsibility, he was now reneging, which was delaying my getting a rental car. One of my coworkers suggested I open my own claim under my own policy (we both had Mercury anyway) to expedite the rental. Enterprise finally picked me up Wednesday evening after work and I soon found myself behind the wheel of a new Kia Rondo -- a funky little mini-van cross-over. It's best feature was the satellite radio, which I never really figured out how to work, even though I drove that funny-looking vehicle for five weeks! One of those weeks, on the way to work, I was rear-ended. Fortunately, the rental suffered no damage. The third time I was rear-ended in the past year was on the 10 Freeway, when a pick-up tapped me on the off-ramp, tearing the cover on my spare tire. I promptly received a check from Mercury (yes, that insured was with Mercury also) in the amount of $183.74, which I didn't spend on a new tire cover.

Disaster at the Drive-Thru

I rear-ended the girl in front of me at the Jack in the Box drive-thru tonight. I don’t really know how it happened, but I committed the most cliched driving faux pas ever -– I stepped on the gas instead of the brake. It all happened so fast. One minute I was rocking out to John Mellencamp and the next I was listening to the sounds of breaking glass and crunching metal. It was the battle of the Hondas. The damage was all to her Civic. My CR-V came through unscathed. We exchanged names, phone numbers and insurance information in the parking lot while our food cooled. This was a big mistake, even bigger than the accident that caused it in the first place.

A couple of months back, I constructed a fruit fly trap from a fast-food cup and a drinking straw. You pour about 1-1/2 inches of apple cider vinegar into the cup and add a few drops of dish-washing liquid, apparently to break the surface tension. The fruit flies are attracted to the vinegar, fly down the straw and drown outright or just get trapped in the cup. Either way, they are no longer milling around your bananas, peaches or grapes. I love summer fruit and this summer there was an excellent crop. I had some of the best peaches and nectarines I’ve had in ages. I also discovered mangoes and was eating them faster than I could stock up on them. There was also a horrendous fruit fly invasion. The day I made the trap there were at least a dozen flies buzzing into my face every time I entered the kitchen.

The first trap went on top of the refrigerator, next to the banana hammock. That trap worked so well, I made a second and placed it on the counter, right next to the fruit colander. That spot proved, dare I say, unfruitful, so I moved the second trap right next to the first one. Although my son kept complaining about the vinegar smell, I was so happy with the lowered fruit fly population that to me it smelled as good as my best cologne. I was also quite proud of myself. Dumping the traps was really fun too, in a gross kind of way. I was actually doing body counts and comparing the effectiveness of the McDonalds trap to that of the Burger King cup. When the wax coating on the cups started to dissolve away, and my son complained nonstop about the odor, I put them on saucers and continued my fruit fly war. Then I realized there were plastic soda cups, which worked even better.

The weather cooled down for a while in early September and I figured summer was over and the fruits and their flies were gone. Even though I’ve lived in California my entire life, I’d forgotten all about Indian Summer, which showed up a couple of weeks later. There was more fruit in the markets and likewise more flies. At that point I had thrown away all the old, yucky fruit fly traps, so it was time to make a new one. I searched the trash (come on -– only in my own apartment) for a new soda cup and the one I discovered was blue and white, with a great big breakfast sandwich on it and the words “Breakfast Served All Day.” From that point on (having verified the menu information with my son), I wanted breakfast for dinner and that’s what finally took me to Jack in the Box tonight.

I was pretty shaken up on the drive home this evening. It's hard enough just keeping two large sodas in the cup holder when I'm turning left or going over speed bumps. I know for a fact my insurance rates will go up. The darn accident probably happened because I was stressing about my finances in the first place. I haven’t had an accident in 20 years! But that stupid breakfast Ciabatta on the fruit fly trap looked so good, I just had to have it. I now know it had 713.6 calories, 35.8 grams of fat and 1731.2 milligrams of sodium. And take my word for it, they taste lousy cold.

It's Halloween Again

The earliest Halloweens I remember are from my elementary school days. Prior to that, i.e., the first five years of my life, I have no Halloween memories. I have heard stories about an infamous panda bear costume that was passed down from my big sister to my big brother to me, but I can't recollect the actual black and white relic. I wonder if my younger brothers ever got (read "had") to wear it. Strangely though, my own kids had a panda bear costume at one time. My by-then ex-husband bought it for our daughter when she was about 4. She was always his favorite, as he proclaimed to me just 4 nights after the birth of our third child, a boy. Her panda costume came out of hiding when my youngest (8 years younger than his sister) was the right size for it. It was never a matter of the costume being the correct size for you -- you had to be the correct size for the costume. This way it lasted much longer and eventually became worth the ridiculous $20 he had paid for it (in 1986 $20 was a lot, especially when I was getting such pathetic child support).

Back to Commonwealth Avenue Elementary School, still standing in Los Angeles and looking so much smaller than it did that first day I walked into their kindergarten as a transfer student. I was assigned a spot on a rug, where we sat "Indian style." If I try to sit "Indian style" these days, my knees are way up in the air and I sure hope they were lower in kindergarten because this was many, many years before little girls, or big ones for that matter, were allowed to wear pants to school. Perhaps this had something to do with my mother being so adamant about my wearing clean underwear.

I guess 5-year-olds in the 1950s weren't worthy of chairs. Every morning we rolled out the rugs and each was rolled back up at the end of class. Or maybe there was a rug monitor. I forget. Anyway, I was assigned a spot on the rug next to Clain, may he rest in peace. When the Internet was very young I used it to locate Clain, who apparently was the only swoon-worthy kid at Commonwealth Avenue back in the day. Most of my girlfriends also had crushes on him at one time or another during grades K-6. In those olden days elementary school lasted through the 6th grade. Grades 7-9 were held at a place called Junior High School, while those 10th through12th grades happened at the "actual (?)" High School.

So, back to Clain. After finding him online I wrote him a chatty email about my life and what I'd been up to since we were 9. Clain wrote back within a couple of days. He remembered me and my tenure at Commonwealth. I had been there from the second semester of kindergarten until the end of the first semester of fifth grade. I was excited to hear from Clain and pictured a long and interesting correspondence. I emailed him back immediately. This time his answer didn't come so quickly and when it did it wasn't even from Clain. It was from someone claiming to be his girlfriend, who wrote that he had died suddenly of a heart attack. (We were only 47 that year.) She asked if I cared to write a few words to put into a book that would be given to Clain's grieving parents. I told the cupcake story.

Clain and I were in the 3rd grade and I was upset when he took the last chocolate cupcake off a tray of classroom party goodies. Maybe it was Halloween. Anyway, my mother had baked those cupcakes and although she wouldn't let me sample one before school, I had faith that I would eventually get my hands on one. Clain sat (yeah, we had chairs by then) about three seats to my left. As the tray circled the room counterclockwisely, I counted down from an even dozen cupcakes until there was only one left. Clain's parents were known to be very strict. Surely he wouldn't have been allowed to scarf down a chocolate cupcake baked and frosted in some strange mother's kitchen. Boy, was I wrong, and his taking of that last cupcake lived on in my mottled brain. I was really shook up by Clain's death. It was years before I attempted to locate any other old friends online.

It's now after ten on Halloween night 2007. I'm sitting here at the computer listening to Regina Spektor and John Legend, waiting for my baby boy, who just recently turned 17, to get his butt home. He knows it's a school night! So, about Halloween. I'm grateful I no longer have kids to take trick or treating. For some weird reason I never felt comfortable doing that. One year we wound up at the San Francisco flat we had occupied for over 8 years. The stairway was nicely carpeted (unlike in our day). When I told the woman who answered the door that my 4 kids and I had all lived there, she invited us in to look around. I declined. I wanted to remember the place as it had been -- teal and lavender bedrooms with a bright red kitchen and pretty blue tile in the bathroom. They have the exact same tile in the ladies room of one of my favorite dives up north.