Happy Mother’s Day to a mom who never stopping mothering

I had spoken to my mother on the phone the morning of the day she died nearly 21 years ago.
She was in end-stage lung cancer and tumor fever had her back in the hospital for the umpteenth time in two years. Tumor fever is when the body says, “That’s it! I’m going to take on this insolent cancer myself,” and turns up the heat to fry the intruder while scorching the landscape along the way. They’ll treat the fever, the doctors said. Palliative measures.

When I had called Mom that morning, she picked up the phone and told me she had just taken a shower and was about to get back into bed. She sounded like she had just run from the shower to the phone to the shower to the phone about a hundred times before she picked up. She was out of breath. I told her my wife, my then four-month-old son, Zachary, and I would be there in about an hour.
Mom was in the same hospital where my dad had died of bladder cancer only seventeen months earlier, two doors down to be exact. She knew what tumor fever was. She knew what it meant. She had seen it as I had seen it before.

When we arrived at the hospital, Mom was in bed. Her breathing looked like a fish out of water. She had an oxygen tube that looped around the top of one ear, to her nostrils, and disappeared around the top of her other ear, but it didn’t seem to be doing much good.

“I -- breath -- breath -- breath – can’t -- breath -- breath -- seem -- breath -- breath -- breath -- to -- breath -- breath -- breath -- catch -- breath -- breath -- breath -- my -- breath -- breath -- breath -- breath.”

That’s alright, I told her in a forced nonplussed tone, we’d do all the talking. My wife and I made as much banal banter as we could to fill the quiet spaces to prevent too much thought while Zachary played in the walker we had brought with us.

“This is – breath – breath – breath – my grand – breath – breath – son,” Mom said proudly to the woman in the bed next to hers. My mom asked my wife to bring the baby closer to her. Then, although Mom struggled for breath, she began to sing.

“The itsy -- breath -- breath -- breath -- bitsy spider -- breath -- breath -- breath -- climbed up the -- breath -- breath -- water -- breath -- spout -- breath – breath – breath…”

She held her hand up high, raising up with it the tube that ran from the bruised bend in her arm up to the plastic sack half-filled with clear liquid. Zachary’s eyes were glued to her hand.

“Down came the -- breath -- breath -- rain and -- breath -- breath -- wash the spi -- breath -- breath -- der out…”

It was as breathless as it was breathtaking. The effort this newly crowned grandmother put into a simple song for her child’s first child was paramount to pyramids. Every note so delicate, so deliberate.
Soon after the song ended, a nurse appeared. My mother explained her breathing difficulty, and the nurse, smiling, asked if she was ready for the morphine shot now. It seemed she had held off the palliative measure so she could be awake and alert for our visit, putting her struggles aside. Yet another heroic act.

Mom said yes she was ready for the shot now. The nurse smiled at her and then left the room. Mom motioned that she wanted Zachary up on the bed. My wife propped him up between her feet. The nurse came in with the needle. She walked around to Mom’s IV and proceeded to inject the medicine in an opening high up on the tube.

“What will that do,” I asked the nurse.

“It will relax her so she doesn’t have to work so hard to breathe,” the nurse said. She finished then left the room.

I smiled at my mom; she smiled back and closed her eyes. Later that afternoon, as my son lay happily by her feet, my mother died. She was 56 years old.

That was my mom…being a mom…even to her last breath.

Thanks, Mom.

Happy Mother’s Day.

 

 

from

http://www.nj.com/parenting/index.ssf/2013/05/happy_mothers_day_to_a_mom_who.html

 

Deodorant Identity Crisis

According to a 2010 report by Global Industries Analysis, Inc., by the year 2015, the market for men’s grooming products will exceed $33.2 billion. Although many male and female oriented personal grooming products have basically the same ingredients, marketers seem to have successfully convinced us that women perspire while real men, like me, sweat.  Does this marketing further divide the sexes or simply highlight the already seeded inequalities?

One morning in the not too distant past, I involuntarily and quite innocently grabbed deodorant and began gliding it under my left arm.  As I switched hands to give the other side a swipe, I noticed that I had mistakenly grabbed my wife's deodorant.  I looked at my brand still sitting there on the shelf.  I looked at my wife's in my hand and then back at the shelf.  I had applied my wife's deodorant, women's deodorant.  pH balanced deodorant.  Instead of smelling of sport musk, I'd be lilac fresh all day long. 

I had options.  I could simply apply hers to the other side; I could put my deodorant on the other side; I could step back in the shower, scrub it off, and apply anew. 

I glanced back at my deodorant on the shelf and then back to hers in my hand.  Oh, the heck with it, I thought, and evened up the other side with her stick.  I told myself if anything out of the ordinary happens this day, I'd know why.

I stood halfway inside my closet trying to decide what to wear.  With my deodorant identity crisis now full blown, I was cautious about every move I made.  Why had I just pulled out a silk shirt?  It wasn't what I usually wore to work.  Plain, breathable cotton is what is called for, certainly not silk.  Was it that I now wanted something softer against my skin?

After pouring a cup of coffee, I turned on the television to one of those morning news shows.  There, during the station breaks, I was told how a mother can comfort a sick child with liquid pain relief; that women who work can come home and pour a complete meal out of a plastic bag from your grocer's freezer; and if I had decided to go strapless today, I had used the right deodorant because even though it was a solid, it goes on clear.

I wondered if I would be more or less aggressive on the commute.  Would I be more or less tolerant of sexist slurs in the professional workplace?  Would I listen far more carefully to what people say without thinking more of what I'm going to say when they are done speaking?  Would I take off one of my shoes in a meeting?  Would I clean the office microwave? 

I contemplated calling in sick and watching Sports Center all day.

Enough, enough, enough!  What was I doing?  I have always considered myself an enlightened, forward-thinking individual.  I have prided myself at being above the lure of advertising.  It doesn't affect me.  I don't need Madison Avenue to tell me what to think or how to smell.  How could I have been so wrong?

Is it that I had been fooling myself for years, or is it that advertising seeps into our collective subconscious far more than we'd like to admit?  Are we far more duped than we realize or does it go deeper?

Perhaps what we fear most is that part of us we don’t want to admit is there.  Does the liberal tolerate so much diversity because he or she is afraid of the conservative within, a suppressed trust, perhaps, in a father's words?  Does the civil rights activist commit so strongly because deep down inside there is suppressed hints of bigotry placed there by an environment in which he or she was raised?  Does the conservative demand fewer social programs so adamantly because he or she those programs just might work and level the playing field?

My wife met me in the kitchen just as I was about to leave.  She asked me why I had used her deodorant.  How did she know?  Did it show?  And here I was, thinking I had just gotten over the whole thing.  No, she told me.  Tell tale hair stuck to her stick.  Relieved, I explained to her my mishap.  She sighed and said she didn't know why we couldn't just always use the same one.

I shrugged my shoulders.  A faint whiff of lilac drifted to my nose.  I really didn't know why either.

Commuter Fitness

While enjoying my daily commute, I often ponder the messages that bombard us along the highways but tend to ignore:  “How’s my driving;” “If you can read this, you’re too close;” “Speed Limit 25.”

But there was one message in particular that had me pondering from gaper delay to disabled vehicle.  On the back of a large tractor trailer, a sign read, “If you can’t see my mirrors, I can’t see you.”

What at first seemed to be a smug, passive/aggressive warning abdicating any and all responsibility on part of the truck driver for the dreaded “blind spot,” I realized was actually quite an empowering statement for the 21^st century.  What the truck is trying to tell us is that the solution to most problems is always within view; we’re just not looking at it the right way.

Take for instance the recent study by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis showing how long commutes, more than 15 miles a day, are associated with higher weight and lower fitness levels.

Researchers, who  looked at several variables including BMI, waist circumference, cholesterol , and blood pressure among others, speculated that a longer commute leads to less time to do other things like prepare a balanced meal or take a trip to the gym.

Since 86% of us commute an average of 25.1 minutes according to 2009 Census data, it may appear that we are a portable population heading for a portly population. 

The solution, however, seems to have been sitting in our blind spot all along and is closer than it appears.  You see, we have been overlooking the wellness potential of a long commute.

When we’re already running late and have drizzled coffee down our white shirt, it is inevitable we’ll hit a sea of brake lights just as we enter the stream of traffic causing us to sigh, snort, or scream.  In wellness terms this is known as deep breathing.

Not only does deep breathing release toxins in the body as well as tension, it increases oxygenation to help increase muscle mass.  In addition, deep breathing helps burn excessive fat because the fat burns more efficiently with the extra oxygen.

As you muddle through the morning muck and people pass you on the shoulder then force their way in that tiny space between you and the car in front of you, while other drivers honk their horns, yell obscenities, and blast their poor taste in music, you furl your brow, tense your shoulders, and maintain a death grip on the steering wheel.  We’ll call this isometric exercise.

Isometrics is when a muscle contracts, tightens, without extending or shortening like it would if you were lifting, say,  a dumbbell (and not the one in the car in front of you).  Experts say that just by contracting a muscle for 30 seconds at a time can contribute to fat burning and muscle strengthening.  Just imagine how flat those abs could be and how tight that tush could get with just one rainy morning drive.

To keep your mind off of the day ahead and the tailgater behind, you turn on the radio and, in the solitude and safety of the car, you belt out that Duran Duran song you never admitted to liking.  This we can refer to as cardio-strength training.

Studies have shown that signing not only has cardiovascular benefits because of the deep breathing necessary, but certain muscles are worked out as well.  Your abs, back, groin, and posterior are all muscles that support vocal sound and projection.

Long commutes can promote fitness.  It just depends on the effort you put into it, and your point of view.  The potential for commuter calisthenics has always been right in front of us, maybe we just couldn’t see the mirrors.