Love and Compassion

For my 40th birthday my best friend from college gave me a beautiful bracelet from Peridot, a company with products I'm now always coveting! There is sanscrit on one side and English on the other. The charm she chose for me reads "Love and Compassion." I'm reminded of them hourly, since I always wear the bracelet, but it took me months before the meaning really set in. With everything going on in my life these days, the insecurity, the confusion, the pain, the mid-life identity crisis, I can't help but reflect on these words. The most important values in my life are Love and Compassion. I suppose you could add Kindness, but there wasn't room on the charm! I certainly do not always reflect Love and Compassion, especially in my most confused and self-pitying moments, full of jealousy and insecurity, but these are the values I prize more highly than anything else in the world. They are what I want my life to reflect. They are what I [should] seek in every friendship I have. They are what I should share with my children, my family, my community.

When I approached my husband with my self-discovery, describing to him why these words meant so much to me and how they are the most important values in the world to me, he replied with a characteristically brief reply: "Of course they are. Don't you know that's why I married you?"

So thank you so much, dearest Alissa, for the constant reminder of what I hope is my purpose on this Earth! Thanks for grounding me through the vehicle of a hanging charm. Thanks for seeing in me what I often bury out of sight.

And before anyone reading this thinks I'm setting up shop on Maudlin Lane, I'm off to spread some Love and Compassion around this house. Because I'm telling you, every time I see these crazy piles of paper I can't seem to control, I want to go postal on the lot and chuck it out the window, scattering pages all over Maudlin Lane.

The Water Main Event

With all the bringing-Tulsa's-pipes-into-the-21st-century work combined with redoing part of Lewis Avenue, we've had our yard torn up about 6 times and several water mains breaking or totally bursting in the last year or more. Once, work at the intersection of 41st & Lewis caused our main to break. Now, it looks like a big one burst in the middle of the road in front of our house - it cracked the asphalt in 2 places; they've dug an enormous hole; it's taking 10h+ to fix...hopefully they'll only dig up part of the yard and curb. The kids do like drawing in the wet concrete, though...Tulsa will always have something to remember us by! :-)

When I was in active labor with my third child, although I didn't realize it for hours, they were digging up my yard. I wish I'd gotten a photo of the street sign lying in our yard...it was quirky, seeing it so close. I have a photo of me, holding my 2nd child, right in front of a digger parked on our grassy corner. Six hours later, my 3rd was born.

Sweet Dreams

Daddy: Kids, are you going to have sweet dreams?

Girl: Um, I'm going to have sweet dreams about Barbie dolls.

Boy: Um, I'm going to have sweet dreams about dinosaurs. 'Cuz they're really loud things.

Every Tagline Means Something

I used to laugh whenever I realized I was a stereotype, or statistic. "Sweet 16 and never been kissed." "Southerner." "Child of Divorce." "Loud American." "Advanced Maternal Age." Like, what did it all mean? Who keeps up with this stuff? But now...now, I'm a member of the Sandwich Generation. And from where I stand, there are precious few of us. I'm an "older mom" of 3 young children with a mother suffering from moderate-stage early-onset Alzheimer's Disease. This has been one crazy, confusing ride so far, and I waffle between total confusion, abject misery, painful laughter, and complete isolation, several times a day. So I'll have my Sandwich Generation, and a bag of chips, please.

Tomorrow Is Another Day

I'm a coward. A practical, efficient coward, but still a coward. I postponed Mother's trip to Tulsa. I have no idea what a visit from her should entail at this point. There are no beds in the places I like; which we probably can't afford any way. So I'm going to keep looking for a home for her, revisiting places I saw in June and trying to determine what to do. Because clearly I have no idea. Maybe tomorrow I will make a decision.

Panicking

My cousin just called. She's willing to give up tons of frequent flier miles to fly Mother from Birmingham to Tulsa for the visit that will help me determine where she can live.

But now that I've thought about it, I think the real deal is just...to find a place that's nice that she can afford to die in. Is this an unnecessary expense and effort? But I promised Mother she could come. But I've focused more on getting my family back in order than on finding another nursing home here. So I don't know what the hell to do. If she comes here, does that mean I have to drive her back? With the baby? May as well, I guess? What.the.hell.am.i.doing???!!!

More importantly, they'll leave Birmingham at 7:45 a.m. Through Love Field. Tulsa at 1:15. Then Julia, our cousin, will get back on the 2:10 to Birmingham. Mother - with her one-way ticket - will be in Tulsa. Indefinitely. What's my game plan? What's the purpose? What's my goal?

I can't handle this. I'm scared shitless.

There's no where for her to go but back to Birmingham, at this point. I guess she needs to see what I'm dealing with here. For at least another year, maybe longer, she'll be aware of what she's doing and where she is. I want it to be a nice year for her. I want the facility to be nice and have good programs.

oh, fuck it. just got off a very annoying phone call. no one wants to hear what i have to say right now!!!

1 for 3

Today I was supposed to re-hit the ground running in search of a Tulsa nursing home for Mother. I got a sitter, went to my Ballet Guild board meeting, then toured St. Simeon's before school pickup for the big kids.

St. Simeon's annual half-million-dollar fundraiser is tonight, so needless to say, the marketing person was livid that I just showed up. She was perfectly nice about it, she was gracious, she answered all my questions and showed me everywhere I wanted to see. But she was so boiling mad if she'd swallowed eggs they'd have cooked whole.

Anyway, it's lovely. Open, airy, excellent views over the valley down to the city of Tulsa (if you can call a small dip like that a valley; this is no Ruffner Mountain we're talking about here). It's a spankin' new facility, and has an amazing Wellness exercise center with heated pool. But...it's so incredibly expensive. Why, why, why is Tulsa so much more expensive than Birmingham?

So after picking up the big kids I stayed on the school playground and chatted with some other moms while the kids all played together in an impromptu playdate. Instead of running the kids straight home and then checking out at least one, if not two, other nursing homes, before rushing back to take my daughter to ballet. No, I just vegged out on the playground. My brain felt so numb, I could barely form thoughts about which home I wanted to see next.

Hard to tell if that had more to do with being emotionally overwrought after that first visit - knowing there is amazing care out there but we can't have access to it - or with the fact that all I'd eaten til then was one granola bar. Nothing like nursing homes to squash your appetite.