Mom & Me Two Archive

...about 0730. I'd heard a cough, although not really a reconnaissance cough. She opened her eyes, looked at me, looked at the clock and said, "Not yet."
    I'm feeling a little anxious about today. My intent, going into the weekend, was to have a busy one with Mom in tow. Didn't happen. When I noticed neither of us was feeling up to "busy" I decided to work on getting a vacation weekend in the middle of caregiving, in which I am tuned in but only peripherally available. Mom seemed up for this. This didn't happen, though, since it was this weekend that my body chose to contract its yearly bout with spring fever. Every year around this time for 24 to 36 hours I get a fever. It comes on quickly, is usually accompanied by sinus irritation, I mistake it for all kinds of other conditions until it fells me then, after a demonic sleep, a good sweat and about 24 hours of feeling wasted, I'm fine. The first bout of spring fever I remember happened when I was mid-4 when we lived in Sunnyvale, CA. 235 Twinlakes Drive. At that time I was more likely to hallucinate. It may be that I remember that bout because it was the first time I experienced a fever hallucination. Sometimes I still hallucinate but I didn't this time.
    I notice and am sometimes irritated the tiniest bit by her habit, as she ages, of being less sympathetic, let alone empathetic, toward others' illnesses. I sometimes wonder if this peculiarity is eccentric to her character or inevitable after living through a spate of illnesses that could have been one's last. I know my mother was knocked down (and thought she was going to be knocked out) in a nationwide flu epidemic when she was teaching before joining the military. I know she's had at least one killer bout of "walking" pneumonia. I've witnessed some of her very painful structural frailties. I know that my mother considers pain part of the package now. I suspect she uses a type of behavioral feedback on herself to endure it. Still, as I've mentioned here before, not a fortnight goes by but what she doesn't look me dead in the eye and say, "Don't ever get old, Gail."
    I asked her last night, when she was particularly tired and pain ridden, as she was lowering herself into the rocker for her before-bed foot rub, if, all in all, she thought it was worth it getting old.
    She had to think before answering. "Yes, it is," she said, settling her butt into the reinforced cushion.
    I was immediately reminded of recently telling a friend that my mother still thinks she is going to get out of being old in some other way besides dying. I considered mentioning this to my mother then decided against it. She would deny it. The trick to immortality is not being aware of one's belief in one's immortality.
    Knowing that we are meant, at least for the time being, to follow evolutionary dictates and wear out, I am both amazed and grateful every time my mother's body hesitates, considers the odds, the pain and the inconvenience involved and decides to heal itself. I don't know whether she continues out of habit or courage. I do know, though, she continues despite non-alternative medicine.
    Maybe she'll be up to going to Wal-mart today. She's wanted to take a tour of the new Super Center. She'll get confused but if she's up for it she'll have a good time.
    Later.