A Sorry Little Tale

Once upon a time, there was a mother and daughter who hadn't spoken two words to each other in several years, on account of several heinous and often bloody injustices perpetrated on the mother's part and a state of grief, anger and confusion on the daughter's part -- which, it bears saying, came to a head after she came out of the closet and received from the mother an extensive list of Christian scripture purportedly outlining why persons of the homosexual persuasion are doomed to an eternity in Hell. And so, to preserve what was left of her sanity, the daughter cut ties with the mother and went on with her life.

She was reasonably pleased with this arrangement until word got out that the mother had cancer. When she received this news, the daughter felt horribly guilty and wrong and bad. She cried for weeks. Finally, unable to bear the uncertainty any longer, she called the mother and asked after her health. All of her questions were met with noncommittal "ums" or changes of subject. Thinking that the mother was uncomfortable facing her own mortality, the daughter made do with these clueless clues to her mothers well-being. Mother and daughter set up a semi-regular communication of emails, and the daughter only asked after the cancer when her mother hinted at surgeries and procedures. "Did they get it all?" she'd ask, but the mother would ignore the question.

Having come to realize that she still loved her mother in spite of all the nasty, evil, rotten things that had been done to her, the daughter worried and fretted. She cried a lot. She suffered debilitating anxiety attacks that left her shaking and unable to catch her breath. She sent her mother a gift of loose leaf green tea and a special pot to brew it in, with a nice card that had a letter inside saying she hoped the tea would bring the mother comfort. When she went close to where her mother lived to have a visit with some other members of her family, she called and set up a lunch date with the mother. The two of them sat across from each other at a small booth for over an hour, and the daughter listened to her mother detail how much she loved small children without vomiting into her french fries or clawing out the mother's tongue, though she's always been 10,000 kinds of pissed off that her mother could find it in her heart to love other peoples' little girls, but not her own.

The daughter debated asking after the mother's health -- because how can you wriggle out of a question like, "So how's your cancer?" when you're face to face? -- but decided against it on the grounds of not tearing down the shaky bridge of peace they seemed to have built between them. But she needed answers, so the next day the daughter went to visit her grandmother and asked her about it.

And that's when she learned her mother had never actually had cancer.

What she had was a serious vehicle accident, and the ensuing MRIs showed a series of tumors that proved to be benign and were ultimately removed with zero fuss, and not even so much as a round of cautionary chemotherapy. (She also has a rod in her spine from the accident, but as far as the daughter is concerned at this point, it serves her damn right and she ought to have a few more rods, and maybe some missing limbs, and a caved-in face and a plate in her skull.)

The daughter is not as angry as she knows she should be. She can manage occasional anger -- see above -- but it's mostly for show. She wears the anger when she needs to hide the fact that she doesn't feel anything else in regards to this situation, except maybe a fatalistic sense of resignation. Her mother is evil, always has been, and always will be. Such is life. What makes the daughter most angry isn't that her mother lied by omission and failed to tell her the cancer scare was false, or even that she got her hopes up again and thought maybe the two of them could forge some kind of relationship out of the vast pile of shit between them. What makes the daughter most angry is that now SHE looks bad. SHE looks like a fool for all the guilt and the tears and the times her friends had to comfort her, and she has to tell them her mother is a filthy liar who's happiest when she's making other people look like filthy liars. And for this, the daughter is sorry. She's sorry her mother is a conniving, controlling bitch who hurts other people by proxy as often as she can, and she's sorry she inadvertently told a huge lie when she damn well should have known better, and she's sorry she loves a sociopath because she's too weak to help it.

She's sorry.

END

33 Things I've Learned in 3 Weeks

1. If you go five minutes without hearing a peep from your 17 month old nephew, chances are good that his sister has locked him in the bathroom.

2. Ketchup and blood look terrifyingly similar when matted in a small child's hair. Also, even after you wash the child's hair, the child will still smell like ketchup for a period of several hours.

3. You can apparently feel guilty enough to pull over for a cop who wasn't even coming after you.

4. THE BOOK OF MORMON ON BROADWAY SOUNDTRACK.

5. "Let us protect your asse(t)s."

6. Some people were just born mean. Sad, but true.

7. Don't feel bad if you don't recognize your cousin after 10 years. Your cousin doesn't recognize you, either.

8. Amish people might get smashing drunk and pass out driving their buggies. Their horses will then get tired and pull into the nearest garage.

9. I like rhubarb pie.

10. There's nothing in the world like hearing a 3 year old tell you she loves you for the first time -- even if you're suffering through "Yo Gabba Gabba" when she says it.

11. It is possible to be so tired that you ask where your own crutch is, even as you're leaning on it.

12. Conversations like this may take place as you are leaving a room:
              
              "How does she do the stairs?"
               "Not very good, but better than you."

13. If you are accustomed to sleeping on a twin bed, you will sleep on a twin bed even if you're actually sleeping on a queen-sized bed.

14. I can walk more than I thought. A lot more. It isn't pleasant or preferable, but it can be done.

15. 2 toilets in the same building will overflow on the same night if at all possible, most likely at 3 a.m. when you're hungry and functioning on 10 minutes of sleep.

16. It is possible to function on 10 minutes of sleep for an extended period of time, provided you aren't asked to remember your own name.

17. Spiders are amazing, because spiders eat mosquitoes and mosquitoes are an Old Testament plague God forgot to mention and/or get rid of.

18. Down Syndrome has a spectrum, just like autism.

19. If you have a camper that is cognitively around 3 years of age AND struggles with social appropriateness, you may receive a full frontal boob grab within the first 5 minutes of meeting her. This same camper might also enjoy grabbing your butt, and holding you in a headlock while patting you and crooning, "Baby … soft …." You will be able to tolerate a surprising amount of this, after the initial shock wears off.

20. I can tolerate 2 roommates in a 9x9 space for approximately 2 weeks before I start frothing at the mouth. This is much, much longer than I expected.

21. I can wipe someone's butt without gagging. I can also give someone else Preparation H, because, well, someone has to do it.

22. Generally speaking, there are 2 speeds associated with Down Syndrome: running, and not moving at all. Very little exists between these extremes.

23. It can take a camper a solid hour to eat one small container of yogurt, even with coaxing and constant cheerleading. This can be surprisingly tiring for the cheerleader.

24. CARD PARTY! (I had a camper who thought 52 Pick Up was the greatest game in the world. We called it Card Party.)

25. Cognitive delay can mean your 15 year old camper still likes to eat crayons and color on people with markers. She may even have a color preference, which can mean that after 2 days there will be no purple crayons in the entire cabin, and several other campers may be mysteriously speckled with unnaturally orange freckles. It is also possible for an entire crayon to be consumed in the 5 seconds it takes you to urge someone else to eat her yogurt.

26. It is almost impossible not to laugh when 2 campers get in a fight over which one is going to marry Justin Bieiber, and the loser ends up crying facedown on the floor in the middle of Music Time. And yet you can still get down on the floor beside your camper with a straight face and treat the entire matter as seriously as a heart transplant.   

27. It may appear that your camper is having a seizure, but she might just be indulging a habit of staring directly at the sun. You will learn to tell the difference fairly quickly -- after about the first 2 panic attacks.

28. The ASL signs for "stop," "more," "hungry," "thirsty," "angry," and "please".

29. Pick your battles. If your camper really wants to wear her panties backwards, fine. At least they're on.

30. The difference between Scottish and Irish accents, and the proper pronunciation of Sorcha. (SIR-ka.)

31. PJ Fashion Shows!

32. The beautiful sound of a Chinese instrument called the zither in the hands of a skilled musician.

33. It is possible to love a place and its people, and still be sad and exhausted. Knowing your limits does not mean you are weak, or that you love the place and its people any less.