I started another writing course this week. This one is 21 days long and includes weekly lectures, tips on starting a dream journal, and daily writing prompts. Today’s prompt and question for today’s post is:
Write about a time you were uncertain
and took action anyway.
Life at home during Covid
Here’s mine.
It was 2013 and my father had checked my mother into the hospital. She had advanced esophageal cancer and was not able to eat.
I’d been in several conversations with my mom over the course of six months about the pain she was in, about her ultimate capitulation to see a doctor, and all the tests she had undertaken. Then the diagnosis. I can remember spending hours researching esophageal cancer on the internet to get some feeling about what was ahead because once they had shared the diagnosis with my brothers and me, they stopped talking about it. The topic became verboten. No one had the courage to ask for more details about the cancer. It was as if there were some shame attached to the diagnosis.
Things became strained between us. In reality, there had only been a handful of times I’d gotten along with my family since I’d moved out to California in the early ‘70s. My presence in New York and the trips they made out to see me almost always resulted in a dramatic flare-up. Not only was there conflict over our divergent lifestyles and political views, but there was always friction since I had stopped drinking in the early 80s. Alcohol played a big role in my family, with daily cocktail hour beginning at around 4 pm. The denial was so thick you could almost feel it on your skin like a greasy lotion you weren’t quite able to wash off. The tension was aggravated by the fact that my little brother and I had partied hard together for a good ten years, particularly when he was still a college student in San Francisco. We did the bars together, shared the same drinking buddies. I felt as if I had somehow let him down when I got sober, that our relationship would never be the same. Unfortunately, I was correct.
We never really talked about the fact that I no longer drank, although now and again my mother would comment on what incredible will power I had. They didn’t want to acknowledge that I was an alcoholic because that would mean shining a light on their own drinking behaviors.
Anyway, back to the trip to New York. I knew if I offered to fly back my father would say not to come because my presence always caused such drama. Arguments between my mother and me ruined most family visits. So I went without letting him know. I didn’t make any hotel reservations (hadn’t been comfortable staying in my parents’ house for some time) because the larger part of me anticipated I would be heading back home later that day. That my dad would see me and say “Please just leave.”
I took the ‘redeye’ from San Francisco and rented a car at JFK. Drove to the hospital. It was only 6:30 in the morning and already traffic was backed up on the Van Wyck and Cross Island Parkways. I had managed to sleep for a few hours on the flight so I wasn’t quite in that twilight zone which often defines how one feels with insufficient sleep in the midst of a time change.
Arriving at the hospital, I checked in at the desk to find out my mother’s room number and got on the elevator. As the doors closed, I could see into the cafeteria. There was an old man with uncombed hair in bedroom slippers pouring himself some coffee. He was dressed in matching navy blue velour pants and a zip-up top. He looked disheveled, as if he had just gotten out of bed and into the car. It wasn’t until the doors were closing that I realized the vulnerable, lost man was my father. My father, who was always so meticulous in his appearance, so very much the one in control of any and every situation. It was quite a shock. I exited the elevator at the first stop and hit the down button to return to the lobby.
He was waiting in line with his coffee when I walked up and touched him on the shoulder. He turned and his face just melted, transformed by joy and disbelief. It was as if someone had stepped in to share a huge burden he was shouldering on his own while being frightened he wasn’t up to the task.
I stayed for two weeks. I became the point person for the nurses and doctors. I found the best rehab center for mom following her discharge and slept in the chair beside her bed as a night nurse so my dad could go home and get some sleep. I snared the doctor to sign her release forms so she could go home with home health care. I ordered all the supplies and had them delivered that afternoon.
In the evenings, my dad and I would either go out to dinner or eat at the kitchen table. I found a Whole Foods a few towns over and shopped for him. He, who always echoed the line that the entire organic food market was a sham because, after all, look at him: He was in his 80s and healthy and hadn’t eaten organic a day in his life. And here he was, loving kale, beets, and butternut squash soup. Free-range chicken and sumptuous salads.
We would sit there over the kitchen table and he would ask questions about my life and really listen. Without judging. Then we’d go into the den and watch an old movie on Turner Classics.
Just before I headed back to San Francisco, I was out at the pharmacy when mom asked the nurse to clean out the refrigerator. When I returned home all the groceries I had stocked for my dad were gone. The house was hers again.
And so was my dad.
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that many who post in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table and hope to make some new friends as well.
