Little Traumas Everywhere

Growing up with a (very) sick mother

My darling mother, many decades long departed, and mostly gone many decades before that, was a fragile child and a very sick adult—her later years punctuated by one severe illness followed by another in quickening succession and increased severity.

Despite her inability to complain, I don’t believe self-pity ever crossed her mind; her years-long endurance of doctors, hospitals, and pain did not (I’m certain, dear reader, it won’t surprise you—although it’s only recently occurred to me) go unnoticed by my child self.

It turns out that as an adult, I am, again, to my own severely delayed acknowledgment, somewhat health-obsessed.

In my early 20s, sometime after her cancer and between strokes, my mother’s teeth fell out. Infection followed or started the process. I am an incompetent archivist of my own timeline and even worse for my mother’s catalogue of medical horrors.

Her hand, fragile as bird bones, would flutter to her mouth and rest there, pressing a crumpled tissue to her lips to absorb the endless drool trickling from the corner of her mouth. The pain drained her of color, leaving her face flat and hollow.

Again, the only one shocked here is me; I, despite my Swiss dentist’s insistence that it’s an American affliction and overkill, get my teeth cleaned twice a year—and have done so since forever. I also make my husband and son do the same. I told my husband early in our life together that he could lose his hair and not his teeth—he thought I was joking.

Moreover, I floss and brush my teeth every night without fail. No amount of jetlag, alcohol, or newborn baby exhaustion can keep me from my appointed rounds. I used to joke that if I had to bring two items on a deserted island, one would be dental floss. Bananas, right? Anyone else not similarly afflicted would pack matches and a knife, but not I.

The ensuing brain damage from my mother’s strokes made her childlike and defiant. She would refuse to wear her false teeth because they hurt. My father, like all who struggle to face the decline of the people they love most—willing them not to fall into the grave by refusing to acknowledge the awful truth—would hound her to wear them: angry at her refusal, embarrassed by her gummy smile, and scared because she could not eat, not solid foods anyway.

There were arguments at the table, arguments in the grocery store, and before he would load her up in the car for whatever doctor’s appointment they were currently running late for—but not too late to fight about her teeth—he would bully her to put them in. The thinking went something like, if she looks fine, then she is fine.

Later, she would slip them into her ever-present tissue and, with a conspirator’s glint in her eye and genuine glee, hold a finger to her lips and whisper, “shh, don’t tell your father.”

When your mother becomes your child, it is a confusing day.

I’d smile back and promise not to. She’d take my arm, happy in our shared secret. Later, I would cry.

Her illnesses, combined with her dislike of food (if she could have taken a pill to get her nutrition, she would have gladly done so) and likely undiagnosed restrictive eating disorder, evaporated her corporeal form. Butterflies and smoke inhabited more space than my mother.

My father, on the other hand, was a larger-than-life personality. He told the best ghost stories at my sleepover birthday parties. I was proud of how he scared all my friends so thoroughly that they couldn’t sleep. He was the favorite uncle and the interesting man whom everyone gathered around at parties—a drink in one hand and a full plate expertly balanced in the other. He was a big eater, and under his tutelage, my brother and I learned early how to break down lobsters, eat steamers (with the foot), and enjoy all manner of strange meats (pro tip: if you want your kids to eat it, don’t tell them what it is).

Now, knowing what we know about me and my many lingering traumas, what do you get when you combine a man with no regard for his diet except, if it’s delicious, I’ll have seconds, and a woman who eats air and declares herself stuffed? Yes, that’s right, friends, you get a gal who has not gone a day in the past half-century without calculating her fiber, fats, proteins, and calories.

While some strive for excellence at work or perhaps on the athletic field, my holy grail is eating five a day every day. Fruits and vegetables are magic talismans imbued with mythic properties of micronutrients, antioxidants, and, like Xanax, if I consume enough of them, they quell the low-grade panic that good health, like my mother, is ephemeral: you can’t catch it, and you can’t hold on to it, but by God, a girl must try.

My Aunt Ruth seated at the bow, and my future mom lounging behind her.