A Case of the Mondays and the Martians

August 14, 2014 ~ Mandi

I know it’s Thursday.

Whatever.

But Monday happened, and I feel compelled to share this with you. It’s necessary for my psyche, for my sanity, and maybe so that when I end up on an episode of Snapped, you will all understand. You’ll say, “Oh, well she’s the girl who woke up to shit prints that morning when she was peacefully dreaming about sexing with Adrian Grenier.” And maybe you’ll riot outside of the courtroom with signs that say, “Set Mandi Free For Adrian” or not. Again, whatever. I’m not planning on murdering anybody. (There you go detective. It wasn’t premeditated.) I digress. Continue reading →

The Penis Monologues Have Not Forgotten You

July 31, 2014 ~ Mandi

It’s been a while, but I had to bring back the Penis Monologues because basically, I still have questions, and they’re not even mine. Remember back when you all submitted your questions and I said, “Hey, we’ll do this every week until we answer them all?” Yeah, well, then summer happened, and I got sucked into the sunshine and water and jumping up every time I open my lap top to get a snack or break up a fight. But I haven’t forgotten you, my loyal readers, and when I make a promise, I keep it…even if it gets a little postponed. Forgive me? Good because I have a treat for you. Continue reading →

Did Somebody Say Cake?

June 1, 2014 ~ Mandi

I may be a little late to the party, but there is no way I’m missing this one.

Happy Frist Birthday to the Ten Things of Thankful hop!!

I may not write a post every week, but I do in fact read several of the thankful posts, and I am always so inspired by all of you who are able to find the sunshine through some rather rainy days and post about gratitude.

Having a bit of a rainy week myself, and not just because it started out in fact raining, but because…pfft…life, I thought it might be difficult to summon ten things, but as it turns out, I have a lot for which I should say “thanks.”

My mother is going through the mean stage of her dementia this week, so I’ve spent most of the week on the phone to her getting berated and feeling terrible and helpless and wondering what I can do to help my father. In the middle of an almost all out breakdown on my part, I decided it was time to check my mail, which I’m pretty sure had not been done in over a week because…pfft…life. I sifted through bills and catalogs and junk mail, and then laid my eyes upon an envelope that was addressed to me in writing I did not recognize, and I instantly knew that my favorite Brit in the entire world sent me something. Immediately, my frown turned upside down and I ran into the house and carefully opened the package excited that there might be my first official glitter bomb waiting to explode. Inside was not just a glitter bomb, but a very pretty decorative ornament that is just so Lizzi, a beautiful and kind letter written way before my mother started her downfall, and a poem that is so perfect and so beautiful that it should in fact be song lyrics. Wow. To be loved by Lizzi, how did I get so lucky? And the timing was just perfect.

My son plays baseball with other kids his age (7), and although he had a rather good season last season, he has struggled this year and had a difficult time finding his mojo among his team who all seem to be more advanced in skill than he. I worried for a while that he was going to want to give up with all of his strike outs and missed outs, etc., but this week, something clicked in him as we made up three rained out baseball games, and he found his mojo. He hit the ball, and scored, and even got a kid out on second base, but most importantly, he scored the tie-breaking winning point, which with aged 7 year old boys is not that big of a deal, but his coach made a huge deal about it, and my son’s esteem soared. He said to me on the way to the car as I was forcing him into a hug with mom, “Hey, Mom. Did you know that I won the game for my team?” And the smile that spread across his face, and the pride in his shoulders almost made my heart leap out of my chest. That boy…sometimes I wonder if he makes the world turn.

Having had such a great game, we treated him to a late dinner at his favorite restaurant, where he got to tell the waiter about his glory and order the dessert of his choice, and while we were there, my three year old daughter finished her dinner and with a messy face and sticky fingers climbed into my lap, and fell asleep in my arms. I’m not sure there’s any better feeling than having your sweet child sleep on your chest.

Sleep Baby Sleep

Early in the week, my best friend, Kimberly, called and invited me to the first official “sister day” with her and her two sisters. Being that I have no sisters of my own, I adopted Kimberly and her sisters the minute that we met. These girls and I share our childhood. We grew up next door to each other and lived in each other’s homes. Where they were, I was. Where I was, they were. Without them, I wouldn’t be me. We’ve been through everything together: first loves, first heart breaks, first marriages, teenage pregnancy, loss, so much loss, and we’ve held each other’s hands and loved each other and cheered each other through every heartache and every milestone. This is our 30th year of friendship. That’s right…Thirty Years. And I have no doubt that thirty years from now, my pseudo sisters will still call me and invite me to sister day. I am so thankful to share my life with these gorgeous amazing women. Oh, and we watched Dream a Little Dream (a childhood favorite of ours), from which I’m pretty sure I learned life’s most valuable lessons.

So happy birthday to the most uplifting blog hop I’ve seen in the blogosphere. Cheers!!!

The Cycle

January 27, 2014 ~ Mandi

It starts again. The cycle. The never ending punch in the gut, jolt to the heart, baffling cycle.

The first stage:

Denial

“Have you talked to mom?” The question I hate to hear when one of my four brothers calls.

“Yes.” I close my eyes before I ask, “Why?”

“She just seems,” sigh, “Out of it.”

“No. I haven’t noticed.” I lie.

Then I end the call and pretend it never happened. I go about my day. I play with my children. We do homework. I cook dinner for my family, a mediocre, limp mess that we call a meal. I sit in my chair at the kitchen table, fork some food into my mouth, chew, and swallow, all the while trying to push her illness away from my reality. I smile at my son as he tells me something really important about one of his Lego Star Wars characters and nod my head feigning undying interest. I wipe my daughter’s mouth and ask her to use her fork and listen to her hum a song she learned at preschool. We all sit and eat, and I pretend it’s not happening. Again.

It’s not happening again.

And so on until she reaches the next stage … everyone’s favorite.

I’m back!!!

My phone rings. I look at the name. “Mom” lights up. I want so badly to hit the red Decline button, but I can’t. I cannot ignore her call. I long to hear her voice, to feel her, to hold on to just a little bit of her normal, so I answer.

“Hi, mom,” I say and hold my breath.

“You’re coming to see me Spring Break, right?” She says, rapidly, faster than her usual Southern drawl.

“Um. I haven’t thought about…”

“I’m cleaning out my closet,” she interrupts, “Do you want that brown suit that I bought with you at Dillard’s? You could use it for work.” Flight of ideas. Keep up. It’s not always easy.

“No, mom. I don’t work anymore.” I haven’t worked in 7 years.

“Oh.” She pauses, trying to make sense of that in her head but only briefly.Onto the next thought. “I’m so alive right now. I’ve never been better. Did I tell you? I’m back. I’m back, and I’m better than I ever was. I have so much energy. I stayed up until 6:00 this morning, organizing my closet. Organizing my cabinets. Organizing the laundry room.”

I picture my childhood home always tidy and neat, immaculate actually, and then I picture her organizing, her new way of organizing. Her clothes drape over her bed and litter the floor next to her closet. The plates I ate so many meals from stack on top of each other on the kitchen counter next to the silverware and her cast iron skillet, the one that she used to make me fried okra and French fries anytime I requested. Her prized teapot collection no longer collects dust in her antique display cabinet. Pieces of it scatter all over the house, unmatched. She uncharacteristically went on a catalog shopping spree and spent almost a thousand dollars on junk. My parents’ formal living room couples as an advertisement for the As Seen on TV store. I imagine my dad rubbing his lips together, kneading the soft wrinkled skin on his forehead back and forth with his fingers, trying to ignore the mess … the clutter … the illness.

“I’m glad you’re feeling well.” I lie. She’s not well. We all know it, but she feels great. Some synapse in her brain rapidly fires over and over and sends her on a temporary high. A high that she feeds on, that she enjoys, that makes her look “crazy” to the outside world, but just fragile, porcelain plunging to tile about to shatter in a million pieces, to me. She will break. Soon. So I brace myself. And I hold onto her happy, to her synthetic high with all of my force from behind my phone.

“I love you, mom.” I say, swallowing the huge lump in my throat.

“I love you, too.”

“I know.”

I know.

And I do, which is why I can handle the next stage:

Anger

Her name lights up on my phone for the eighth time today. I sigh. I can’t do it. I can’t pick up and hear what I know she is going to say. I can’t, but I do. Every time. Because I can’t ignore my mom.

“Hi, mom.”

“I don’t know what your problem is.” She spits at me.

“I don’t have a problem.” I say, grinding my teeth.

“You and your dad are assholes. Do you think I’m a child?” Says the preacher’s wife who rarely uses profanity. Sick Mom has no filter. Sick Mom uses words Well Mom would never, ever say.

She heard a conversation that took place between my dad and me, one where we were trying to decide what to do with her. She’s abused my dad to the point where he can’t stand it anymore. She hates him, hates the way he smells, the way he looks, the way he breathes, the way he walks, the way he sleeps, and she tells him this. Every minute of every day. I fear for him. I know that she would never hurt him, the well she, but the sick she hates him, and the sick she often references things like butcher knives and frying pans, so I speak to my father every morning when I first wake up to make sure that he’s still alive.

That’s what sickness does to a family. It makes it doubt the legs on which it stands. It makes it doubt the heart that makes it beat. It makes us doubt our mom. And it’s terrible.

“No, mom. I don’t think you’re a child.” Even though we sort of treat her like one. My dad unplugged the stove to keep her from catching their house on fire. He disconnected her car battery so that she can’t drive away when he isn’t watching. We whisper behind her back and tiptoe around her, not wanting to strike her ever ready match. We make plans for her without her approval. But we don’t think she is a child.

“Mom. Please stop being mad at me.”

“You know what?”

“What mom?”

“Your husband should leave you. He should take your kids and leave and never look back. Those kids deserve better than you. And so does your husband. You don’t appreciate him at all.”

“I know, mom.” Because agreeing makes the conversation shorter, and I’ve heard this at least four times today. She’s also told me that I’m a whore and a piece of shit and the worst mother on the planet.

She’s angry with me because last time this happened, I made the decision to put her in the hospital, the one she calls “the loony bin,” the one she refuses to go back to, the one that did nothing but make her worse. I hate myself for making that decision, but we didn’t have a lot of choices. My brothers weren’t brave enough to do it, and she became too much for my elderly father to control, and frankly, I didn’t want her to kill him in his sleep, but that I don’t tell anyone.

She also does not understand why I cannot visit her, why I won’t allow my children to see her this way. She can’t understand. They need to remember the well Nana. The Nana who always kept candy in her pocket and secretly handed them a piece each time I turned my back, the Nana who sang “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” off key but with joy and giggled every time the song ended, the Nana who would sit and hold them on her lap, rocking in her chair, reading them books, content to have the chatter of children all around her, who played hide and go seek, who threw the baseball in the back yard. The Nana whose laugh was contagious and the best sound on earth.

“I’m sorry that you’re mad at me, mom.”

“Sure you are. You don’t care about me.” And with that, she abruptly ends the call. I put down my phone. And I cry. Because my mom is sick, and nobody can answer the question: “Why?”

She’ll call me at least twenty more times this day, and I’ll answer every time. And I’ll listen to her assault of words because she’s my mom, and I know she doesn’t mean it.

I know she doesn’t mean it.

And I brace myself for the next stage. The worst stage of all.

The lights are on but nobody’s home

“Mom” hasn’t flashed on my phone screen in days. Yesterday, on her birthday, I called her, and we spoke. A simple, “happy birthday, mom,” conversation. I said, “I love you,” and she said, “I love you, too,” and we ended the call. That was yesterday.

Today is my birthday. On normal birthdays, my mom calls me and recounts my birth. She tells me for at least the 35^th time that she went into labor with me at her birthday dinner, two days late. They rushed to the hospital where she continued to labor with me over night. “Everyone from the church was there, and all I wanted was to be left alone,” I hear her voice in my imagination, her normal well voice, tell me, “My room was full of people,” and she goes on to tell me who was there. She labored all night and then finally, with no aid of medication, she delivered me at 9:35 the next morning. The doctor announced, “It’s a girl,” and the room fell silent. A girl after four boys. “If you would have been another boy, I think I would have told them to put you back in,” her normal well voice tells me with a chuckle, normally. Normally, on my birthday, my mom and I talk about her going into labor on her birthday with me, “the best birthday gift she ever got.” Normally, but not this year. And not last year. Because my mother forgot my birthday. Again. It’s not her fault. It’s because of the illness. It’s because of the sickness in her brain that we cannot explain.

But it doesn’t hurt any less. Because it’s our thing. Our birthdays … our birthdays are … special. I’m the best birthday gift she ever got. Remember, mom?

Remember?

But she doesn’t. Her brain has checked out. And she doesn’t remember. She doesn’t even know if she brushed her teeth this morning. She stands at the sink and pours herself a glass of water, forgetting to turn off the faucet as water pours over the side of her glass and splashes her hand …and she doesn’t know it.

I’ll check my phone a thousand times today, and her name won’t appear. She forgot. It’s okay, I tell myself.

It’s okay.

She’ll get better. She’ll come back. She always does.

Until then, I’ll ferociously go through my card box and try to find one from my mom. A card with her voice, where I can hear her, the real her, the well her. And I’ll read every card she’s ever given me. And then I’ll find a little gem in the box, a note that she put in a pile of mail she sent me when I first moved to Dallas thirteen years ago. And there she is. Just like that. Two simple sentences.

“Here’s your mail, sweetie. Sure do miss you so much. Love, Mom”

I miss you, too, Mom.

So much.