askyermom

My annual update of the general sort for the specific people who are interested in such things.

This time last year I was holding my breath a lot. My mother was getting accustomed to assisted living and she quit constantly torturing everyone in earshot. She didn’t even torture me all that often last summer. During one memorable tantrum, she said she didn’t have to worry about being rude to me. Good to know.

My therapist was wonderful. After lots of practice, some weeks were bracketed by a bout with Mom followed with a detailed postmortem of the interaction where the therapist congratulated me on my excellent boundaries. With more practice, I felt that I had my sea legs for the new phase and we stopped scheduling regular appointments. Instead, I made appointments with a box of Kleenex in a dimly lit corner of my home. Not everyone knows their perfect crying habitat, but I recommend figuring it out.

I let my garden slide entirely, no new mulch, no new plants. I learned that I could mow with far less frequency and no one complained. My only project was methodically putting gravel in any rat holes that appeared. The theory was that the rats are very lazy and they will give up digging new spots and exits. It’s possible that my neighbor employed poison even after I told him it would be bad for his vegetables. I can only momsplain so much. At this point, there is nary a rat, but it seems naive to believe in the gravel solution.

My chief exercise was walking Tofu. He is the first dog I have successfully trained to do anything other than sit. Now, when we tour the neighborhood and he sees other dogs, he doesn’t lunge or cartwheel or squeal. He merely looks at me for permission to beg for a treat. Even if the other dog is having a full-blown defensive episode and gnawing on a fence, Tofu keeps his cool.

I met with an editor who was very generous and somewhat skeptical of my manuscript. Her suggestions for the introduction were excellent, but I would say that she does not take humor seriously. I hoped to find someone who could read through and make sure I’m not spouting anything harmful–not a sensitivity reader, but a psychology reader. I’m not worried about it enough to go back to school for a degree or anything, I’m not that dedicated to stalling. I just hate to imagine screwing up inadvertently–simpler to quit imagining screwing up and move along.

Generally, I think the year has been colored by grief, but a very active grief, the kind where you are busy on a project until you recognize that everything hurts and you need to sit down and do nothing or visit the crying corner and give yourself a time-out for bullying yourself. My inner child work has revealed an inner child committee and none of them are napping enough.

Mom staged a dress rehearsal for death by going to the emergency room before the hospice nurses could assess her. It was very confusing for everyone until I reminded everyone, including her, that she had elected no therapeutic measures. Even so, she received some treatment and a kind of reboot which gave her a few more weeks. She really enjoyed all the attention and had a good opportunity to say goodbye to several people, although not everyone, because she disliked her haircut and was self-conscious about her missing teeth.

Yesterday I started to sift through the final pile of her stuff, but I saw a spider and decided to put the job off until the next freeze or until the spider moves on, whichever comes first. Likewise my plan to promptly install her ashes has been postponed with no spider involvement at all. The lovely funeral director added all of Mom’s dogs to her container and cautioned me not to mention it because it costs extra if you say there are pets. I like the idea of her having stowaways and I know she would too.

My paycheck job became even more so when the Key bridge came down. What had been sometimes 10-hour days became often 11-hour days, no working from home, no time off, very old school. What the job does have is people who I love, who appreciate me, even when I’m mildly baffled that they do.

I don’t see a lot of my kids, but it feels natural now. Everyone is busy and scattered at enough distance that it’s easy to let weeks go by without coordinating a meal or an errand. I know they will all turn up for an emergency or a planned vacation and really, that’s plenty. Other people are pleasant enough, but my kids are pure delight.

Maybe I should have asked the therapist if it’s too much to take on finishing a book while grieving a parent, acclimated to a new job, starting a side hustle, re-parenting your sober self and keeping a seventy-year old house together with a sixty year old body. No wonder I haven’t used that needle point junk. Or hemmed that dress.

I planted a rose bush this Spring, and a week later, emboldened, I planted a baby tree. I probably cook one time each month, which is more than the previous zero times each month. I like to remember that my greatest ambition as a little girl was to have my own little house with a garden. Everything else is a bonus.

Sixty feels like progress, sometimes fragile and often achy.

Love,
yermom

The new book cover is coming soon. Really. If you haven’t bought the old book, why not? It’s north of very good.

AND because I don’t know how to relax, I’m offering coaching services to moms on the verge, particularly moms on the verge of an empty nest. I get it. I did it. A lot.

[The featured image is AI, oh my.]