March 22, 2007

Anyway.

I've been on a sort of informal family avoidance stretch for the past few days. That simply means that since they haven't called me, I haven't spoken to them. I was supposed to [meaning I told them I "might could"] go to Virginia over the weekend to see my mom. I chose not to go for various reasons including fatigue, lack of clean clothing, and the fact that I don't want to show up at a hospital to simply "pay my respects." She ain't dead. I hate it when people have their own ideas of what YOU should be doing.

Anyway, my aunt called last night and I just answered the phone to go ahead and let her pull that guilt-tripping shit they're so fond of doing. Not only did she criticize me for not going, she tried to give me the fucking third degree about my circumstances. You would be very proud of me. Not once did I raise my voice, or make bullshit arguments for my defense. I think the deafening silences I was creating sort of humbled her a bit as silence is not the norm when people in my family get confrontational.

I told her that Scott and I share a car now, so taking off for a weekend would mean stranding him here. From that information she questioned me on:

1 - how much my Jeep payment was that I wouldn't want to keep it.
2 - why I didn't use the Accord as a trade in (when I told her that it wasn't my car to sell, but rather my grandma's, she basically made it sound like I was stupid for selling it and giving her the money.)
3 - if Scott makes so much money, why don't I get him to pay my bills? (a - what my husband earns is nobody's damn business. b - I handle my business as I see fit.)

She then told me that I should just take any old job and pay a ghetto-ass babysitter (paraphrase) to watch the baby in their house until I could "afford real daycare." Yeah, like those babysitters my mom always left me and my sister at who would keep us for hours and never even give us a snack?

First of all, did I not say that I might not want to go back to work? Why should I go back to work just for the benefit of having a car? Does that make sense to anyone else? Because it's sort of going over my head. If I can break even by staying at home and NOT having a car, wouldn't it be preferable to stay here with the kid?

Next, she suggested that I should have taken the bus there.

Yeah, FUCK THAT. While it may be a three hour drive by car, by bus it's 8 1/2 fucking hours. I'm not sitting in anyone's fucking smelly bus station with an infant, I'm sorry. Nor am I going to cram myself in a seat next to some slumbering, snoring weirdo.

*sigh*

Well, the news is that my mom is out of intensive care, but it looks like she'll be in the hospital for a while. I couldn't get a read on her actual condition based on what my aunt was telling me (her claim was that the doctors/nurses all talk negative and they all tell you different things and blah blah blah).

Posted by Tiffany at 11:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 15, 2007

Makes me yearn for hard liquor.

Okay, here's an update. There's been some confusion about the true nature of my mother's condition. My sister and I have been fed information that was altered to elicit the mildest reaction possible. Here's the problem with lying to family members (especially adult ones): the truth is going to come out whether you want it to or not.

The information the neurosurgeon and hospital staff gave my grandmother and aunt on Monday was that my mother did have a stroke, and that there was massive bleeding and damage in her brain. She has both receptive and expssive aphasia, doesn't recognize anyone other than herself, and can carry out no higher thought processes. She knows that if her bladder is full she needs to go to the bathroom, but she can't analyze concepts or engage in any critical thought. The doctor does not feel she will return to her pre-stroke state.

What my grandmother told me on Monday: "They're letting her out of the ICU tomorrow. Yeah, when we left she was eating and her speech was much better. She was having a conversation with us."

According to my sister, my mother will be in ICU for at least another week. It seems that my sister and I are, in the absense of my mother's husband, next of kin since we're her adult children. Not my aunt. Not my grandmother. So even though they're standing right there, they can't really make any decisions for her. That's why a representative from the hospital called my sister in New York yesterday. My sister, thereby having a different account of events than what she had been fed, called my aunt to catch her in a lie (seeing as how my aunt was standing with the hospital rep. when she was speaking to my sister on the phone). My family is choosing to dilute information so that we can't make decisions.

Here's the thing - faith is all well and good, but medicine has its place. The decisions that my sister and I would make for my mother are likely to be vastly different from those that my aunt and grandmother would make. We're intelligent enough to research and ask technical questions and to know when hope isn't enough. I really, truly want my mother to get better. Just because I don't like her doesn't mean I don't love her. She is my mother, after all, and even though she's done me a lot of dirt (and felt justified in doing so), I wouldn't wish her current condition on anyone. My sister and I would never be so dirty as to throw my our mother into a home and let the state do whatever with her (even if we thought that it was Karma catching up to her). We would want her to have the same degree of care and therapy that we would want if we should happen to be in a similar situation.

I'm a little stressed right now. I need to call this woman and verify what she told my sister. If what she said as true, there's a lot of business that needs to be put into order. I'll deal with my grandma later and will just avoid calls in the meanwhile.

The second issue is what will happen to my brother. Should the decision fall to my sister and I, and this is another reason why I'm sure my grandmother and aunt don't want us making decisions, he would either be off in military school or else be a ward of the state. I don't have the energy to explain that situation right now, but I'll just tell you his reaction when my grandmother told him to get dressed to go see his mother at the hospital: "Fuck that bitch."

He's 15.

Posted by Tiffany at 08:52 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 12, 2007

Bad daughter.

The Tiffany is feeling not too cheerful right now (surprise, surprise, right?). Well, it seems my mother has had a stroke. Before you get all "Oh my God, Tiffany, I'm so sorry," let me just preface this discussion by saying that I'm not broken up over it. I do, however, feel bad that I don't feel broken up.

Let's rewind. I went to my grandmother's house in Virginia on Friday to escape the fumes while the painter works in the t.v. room. You'll recall from posts way-back-when that after my grandmother was last hospitalized a few years ago, my mother moved down to keep an eye on her short-term. Short-term turned into long-term and one husband and two houses later she's still down here. My grandmother could probably move back into her home in NC and do fine with a well-trained dog or Life Alert.

Anyhoo. My mom took off work early on Friday and was at the house by 3:30. As she works on the other side of the state line and at least half an hour away, I was momentarily flattered that she had taken off early to see her grandson. So, that wasn't the case. She had a bad sinus headache and left work early to lie down - she said that it felt like something had "popped" behind her eye and it was excruciatingly painful. She sent me driving all over creation to find Tavist Sinus (which I never found) and made me endure standing in line twenty minutes clutching a pajama-wearing baby at a hellaciously crowded Wal*Mart in the den of Hillbillysville.

The next day she woke up, felt a little better and ventured downstairs for coffee. She commented that she was still feeling really nauseous, and I wondered if instead of a sinus problem if she could be having PMS-related migraines (I'm sorry to admit that I felt she was being unreasonably bitchy). Several hours later, I packed up my kid and drove home because, as usual, she'd said something that pissed me off. I promised Scott that the moment she irked me I wasn't going to stick around like a little silent bunny and take her vitriolic spewing without retaliating. When it comes to my family, I normally keep my mouth shut because they can't take what they dish out. Being a momma has sort of zapped my ability to censor myself, especially when it comes to my own self-defense, so I left before I could cuss her out.

Yesterday, my grandma called and told me that they'd taken my mother to the hospital and that she was pretty much out of it. She was speaking jibberish and didn't really know what was going on. They couldn't diagnose her for anything without doing tests, but as of today based on the symptoms she's displayed, they think she had a stroke. They're going to do some scans to make sure, but I have no doubts that's probably what occured.

The frightenting thing is that I don't feel the way a daughter should about the situation. If it had been my grandmother and not my mom, I'd be on the first thing smoking towards the hospital. Because it is my mom and because of the nature of our relationship (strained), I'm taking a wait and see approach.

My sister said she cried about it while she was in the laundromat this afternoon. That seemed so strange to me - my sister and mother spent much of my sister's adolescence engaging in fist fights. All I could say in response to that was "Wow." Then I gritted my teeth and wondered how anyone could sit around feeling like death warmed over for TWO DAYS and not take themselves to the hospital. I would personally be so fucking afraid that I'd close my eyes and die in my sleep if I felt that way.

She always says when people suggest diagnoses to her that they're speaking "of the devil" and trying to "put sickness" on her. She only needed to pray about it, and all would be well. I'm not one to knock people's spiritual beliefs, but don't Cristians believe that God helps those who helps themselves? Doesn't the highly-evolved human brain that developed scientific method and medicine have a purpose in the Christian God's great scheme? Maybe I'm just pissed off because in all those years I was laid out with endometriosis every month she told me it was in my head. Or maybe it's because when my grandmother was so ill, instead of letting the doctors run the tests they needed to, she became hostile and behaved as if they didn't know what they were talking about. I should have never called her in to make those decisions, but at the time I was too young to be the one to have to deal with the consequences if I chose poorly.

What's more frightening? And without wanting to date myself, my mother is fairly young. She could still have a kid and be agile enough by the time they graduate from high school to help them move their shit out of her house. My uncle had a stroke at about the same age and was affected for a long, long time by it. I worry both that this is something that she'll require a caretaker for afterwards and that this is something that has seeped into the next generation of family members.

To put it mildly, I feel inconvenienced. And mad. The whole situation has clarified the fact for me that I really don't like my mother as a person. I hate that I feel that way. I'm really an exceptionally sensitive person, but I feel like I've been used, taken advantage of, and disparaged just enough times that I don't give a shit anymore. You have to do a LOT of dirt to someone to get them there, and I'm just worn down now.

Perhaps I'll feel differently tomorrow and will be more willing to open that emotional door again. Right now, all I can do is focus on making sure my grandma isn't stressed out. From afar, because travelling out there again with my baby is out of the question.

More news when I have it.

Posted by Tiffany at 06:11 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 11, 2007

Resemblances and lack thereof

Scott feels I should post something, even though I don't feel particularly interesting right now. He apparently is easily entertained by bullshit.

I finally finished composing the aforementioned email to my sister. It read pretty much like a blogger's "100 things about me" post. I talked about my general appearance, hobbies, interests and so on. I kept it fairly casual, stopping to add the obligatory "and what about you? What do you like to do?" questions.

Honestly, I didn't know what I'd expect to get as a response. I didn't know if she'd be timid or guarded or what. Well, she's neither of those - as far as I can tell from an email anyway. If I could imagine what she'd be like in person from how she writes email, she's probably all over the place and super-energetic. She doesn't have time to capitalize, she moves on to the next thought before she completes the first, and she takes full advantage of smiley images. I imagine that she'd have no problem dominating a conversation, but that's what teenagers do, right?

We definitely differ in that she loves to shop. I pride myself on being able to run into a store and be out within fifteen minutes because I have the store layout memorized to maximize my efficiency. I'm not much of a browser, except when it comes to baby gear and crafting supplies. Those categories are sort of retail black holes.

What's facinating to me is that I myself have limited resemblance to any of my half-sisters. I look enough like my full sister that it's obvious we have the same parents, but because my sister really looks like my father and I have more of my mother's features, it's my sister who actually looks like she's related to them. In fact, my sister looks so much like one of my half sisters (or vice versa) you'd think that the two of THEM were full sisters. I think they all have my father's jaw, cheekbones and eye shape. I don't feel like the odd man out or anything, but I do get fairly annoyed when people (women) comment on how attractive my father is/was. Yeah, that's great. I look like my mother.

I'll scan a picture of my parents as soon as I can get into the t.v. room and root around for it. The painter is in there spraying some stinky shit.

Posted by Tiffany at 11:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 08, 2007

Composing an email to my li'l sis.

You're all aware of the degree of dysfunction ensconcing my immediate family. My half-brother is a hooligan. My mom is a nut-job who's been married three times (going on four). My dad is a man-ho who moves from woman to woman like Henry VIII trying to have a son (my theory). He has six daughters (I'm number three), only two of which I've met (one is my only full sibling so I didn't really have much choice there).

Daughter number four, who I'll refer to as "A" is just barely a teenager: she's 13. My full sister spent some time with her when she was a wee baby back in the nineties but hasn't had much contact with her since then. I don't know a whole lot about her and I'm certain she knows little to nothing about me, other than the fact that I exist.

I recently reestablished contact with my eldest sister after seven years and she's been hooking me up with contact numbers for both my father (haven't gotten around to THAT call yet) and my younger sis. Younger sis is chomping at the bit for some communication from me.

I don't know what to say. I've had her phone number for a week and haven't called. It's not fear. She's 13, for chrissakes, what's she going to possibly say that could offend me? It's some other emotion that I can't really describe. I've always been the younger sister and have never had a reason to take on the brooding protective mother hen role until Rosco was born. I feel like I'm stepping into the game sort of late, know what I mean?

Eldest sister forwarded me A's email address a couple of days ago with a little wondering why haven't I called her and can I please email her. It made me feel like such a heel. I can make excuses and say I've been really busy with my non-napping child (which I was) or that my internet connection has been down (which it hasn't), but it wouldn't be good enough.

The writer makes a confession: I just don't know what to say.

I'm starting that email now. I'll start with simple information: where I am, what I'm doing, what I like. Then I'll let her ask whatever she wants.

I was 13 once. Though I've selectively blocked out most experiences from that year, I can say that if I were in the shoes she's in right now, I'd be upset and curious as to why I haven't reached out to her more quickly.

Posted by Tiffany at 12:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack