Back from the Salt Mines

For stay-at-home Moms, summer is not always a pleasant time. All those hours of school-provided babysitting suddenly evaporate, to be all but forgotten once the grueling round of kindertainment is underway. This summer was particularly cruel. The sullen and unhappy teenager had to be carted to a lot of places. Money had to be spent, for little benefit. Or no benefit. I booked an entire art class for her, one she could never attend because the class seemed to always conflict with some crony's arrival to, or departure from, New York.

Not only was it a stressful summer, it was a long one. She was out of her Texas school on the 3rd of June, but classes didn't start here until the week after Labor Day, on September 8th. But even on that happy day, the summer still wasn't over, not for me. I had one day of glorious freedom in my own home before it was time to again haul myself over to JFK (I can almost get there without the GPS now!), this time to collect Mother. For a fourteen-day visit.

I was dreading the trip because Dearest Mum had, without any regard to a doctor, decided to drop her anti-depressants. Because she was feeling better. And that's how it is with my Mum. You know how some people love Alice in Wonderland and others just find it unsettling? Some people revel in Carrol's startling, dizzying eruptions of illogic. But I'm in the other group, the one that gets deeply troubled by non-sequiturs and free associations. Mom's style of reasoning can best be labled, "oh-just-hack-your-way-to-the-conclusion-you-want-and-cackle-as-the-bodies-hit-the-floor."

Fortunately, she'd shaken off the worst of the anti-depressant's withdrawal symptoms by the time she arrived. We still managed our crash-and-burn moments, of course. I'd planned a trip to the Hamptons and had to cancel it at the last minute when it became clear that if I could not guarantee her a better time than she'd have watching television, I'd regret it. Well, then, I thought, I'll just keep her busy helping me in the garage. It was a beautiful day and she had complained of being bored (but not so bored that she wanted to make the 3 hour drive to Southampton and back). As I pointed to boxes that needed unloading, she became so filled with performance anxiety that she could do nothing but complain. I removed a dirty plant pot from a box and reminded her that she was good at cleaning things. She washed the pot, then came back to complain that she wasn't sure what to do now that the pot was washed. That's my mum. A normal person would just ask how they could help but she likes to cut straight to the whining. I sent her back to her TV.

Then there was the mad whistling that accompanies her every step in the house. Having lived alone now for four years, she finds herself incapable of doing anything noiselessly. She's always making tuneless little whistling sounds, little pips of startlement that almost drove me insane. And she's taken to brushing her teeth in the living room while others are trying to watch the telly.

All I could do was tell myself that this, too, shall pass. One thing I've learned is that your mother is not really your mother; she's your Siamese twin. Take a knife to her and you'll be the one that ends up bleeding.


As it turns out, Mother was right to have her doubts about the Hamptons, that region where the veddy, veddy rich of New York hang out in sprawling mansions with sea views. I mean, I can go gawk at ghastly wealth with the best of them, but on a recent 50 mile bike ride, I got pretty sick and tired of what you can actually see in the Hamptons: the backsides of vast estates, hidden by hedges. And more hedges. This particular hedge is unusual because you can actually glimpse the structure behind it. There were a few vistas on that 50 mile ride, but very few. Once I got away from the estates and the hedges, I rode through woods. And they were lovely. But not particularly special, not for Long Island.

Still, it was great to be on a long ride again, to sweat my way past the doubts that I'd make it, to finally conquer those doubts and get back to the ride's start. It was great to wallow in the bath later and to feel truly tired in the bones. At 14 mph, I'm still not at my pre-cancer-diagnosis peak, but I'm hopeful that my body can return to a kind of normal that I can live with.

And that will have to do.