So it was all going well. You know like a regular morning, I've been getting up late to feed the horses because it's vacation, so like 8:30 Huck scratches on mom's porch door to say hey bro get to work, come out.
I go out with my hair like afro, like if the sun dressed as a lion, and I feed everybody, bunnies cats chickens horses and then exercise quick and get to work getting my mom ready. Tip her up to try and her get body remembering how to bend upwards so she can sit up. Then notice that her diaper has some extra smeary surprises for me which bummer, but thank god is a rare encounter. Luckily I learned from Johnny the washer man to lay her bed back flat and heft her over and clean that shit up literally. Then I'm able to tip her up, get her feet over the edge, all while she looks terrified at me and says WAIT WAIT but once she's sitting she chirps like a bird and has forgotten the horror of the move. I heft her over to the little potty and then I feed her and we eat while looking at the dogs and then I switch her clothes to dry ones and today she seems a little restless on the toilet so I figure that chair is hard, it's time to move her to the wheelchair.
Then today is the day. I am moving her and her legs buckle and suddenly I have a 700 pound mad walrus balanced all on four little pieces of my lower spine holding her up. I try and heft her to the chair and pull up her diaper which I can usually manage but not with her legs waving like ribbons on a windy Canadian hillside clothesline. She is going down like titanic, brother. So then she's on the floor. I try and wrestle her up two times but man why are chairs so HIGH. I don't ask anyone for help because I'm a stupid lumberjack and I like impossible and probly a variety of other reasons I don't know about like I don't want to need anyone and I want to be better than I am and I have a god complex.
I cannot get her up. She slides through my butterfinger hands to the floor for the fourth time and I have a full on tantrum like Mark Ruffalo's Hulk. (I just watched ten minutes of that because Emma likes Avengers) (also I love Mark Ruffalo, if he's reading this). I have a tantrum like they do in movies starring Dolly Parton with people dying of cancer. I hit the pillows and pound the bed and it feels kind of good. Barry comes in and I tell him to shut up.
I'm not MAD I say. I like the doing of things. I like that I can peel an orange and make an egg and make someone in my eyesight feel good, and full. These are tangible everyminute successes. This dumb writing is the stupid shit - I'm not even writing for me, but no I am definitely writing for me. Maybe I'm writing for you.
So yeah, unpause. It's going pretty well. We still have mom on the floor and she doesn't even mind. She's just talking to herself down there like she's in a cafe. We start to lift her up and see the tragedy of where I couldn't get the diaper up now looks like she took a brown shower. Like all the way to the new socks I just put on her. Like if brown was a musical, she would be in the long-running kind. So Emma comes in because she ordered the wrong book for school and I'm pretty sure she's instantly sorry she walked in. This little guest house by the pool is a Sam Shepherd play, and all the characters are my family. We are very confident in our roles, and the stage feels like our house.
Then Nathan is there roused from sleep, and I'm on the floor with gloves and wipes and there's shit on the top of the paper towel roll that I eventually have to cut off so I don't waste the whole roll. But I wipe her all down with hot water, and wipes and paper towels and we change all her clothes and we just do it all on the floor. Like, why was I trying to get her off the floor? The floor is helping. It's holding her up. We wipe the floor. The floor needed it anyway. I'm guessing the kids are okay, I never had to see my grammas on the floor all shitting everywhere, but I did love them and I'm guessing I woulda done the same thing. Help her out, and help her up.
We are lifting her and with Nathan it's like toting up a small bag of Doritos instead of trying to lever a wet forty ton million dollar Malibu mansion sunk in a mudslide.
Then she's in her chair like nothing happened.
We're standing there in our half circle. Barry who came in when he heard trouble on the monitor, Nathan, home from college, Emma heading to college, me, never going anywhere again.
We're just standing.
So apparently her constipation is cleared up, I mention.
We sort of tidy ourselves up and no one really says anything at times like this because in real life no one talks, they just gather the laundry and help put the feet on the wheelchair and we all hope for maybe a piece of costco pizza soon. Emma says maybe we need a nurse but I say usually her legs don't buckle. I tell her I guess eventually I just leave her in bed but if I can get her up, who wouldn't want to sit in the sun?
I take her out to notice the blue pool flowers and nap in the sun. I see we are at the leg buckling stage where I learn that I am a humble spine in the body of a daughter. I will be more careful and ask for help. I don't want to ask for help because then it will be over, I guess, this ability for life to just be easy and not hard on anyone. So we can pretend that my mom didn't stop walking. Now I have to pretend that she loves the wheelchair when she would be happy never moving from bed. I'm trying to be a good listener, to her needs. But part of me knows the sun is important as long as possible.
I know her.
Yesterday I was gone for awhile shopping for Emma's college dorm, longer than I usually go out, and when I got back my mom smiled so big at me and hugged my arm and when I leaned down to hug her she said, squeezing me "I love you. I know I do."
You see why.
