I came to Tulsa with a definite agenda that had very little to do with amassing blog fodder or finding good stories to tell (and it’s a good thing, because the good stories to tell are few and far between) but I did think I’d have more time to write blog posts.  For the legion (read as four people) of fans who read my blog with any regularity, I apologize for the sporacity (?) with which I’ve posted.

Tonight though, I’ve been thinking about things and felt as though maybe I should write about it.

You see, I came here with a great deal of apprehension.  The last time I was in the same physical space with my mother, she mistreated me greatly, culminating in her threatening to hit me just for standing up for myself.  When I went home after that visit, I was not at all sure that I’d ever come see her again, and our relationship and communications have been strained to say the least.  When I found out my mother was having triple bypass surgery and was going to need help, I didn’t hesitate to do what I had to, but I wasn’t sure what to expect from her in our interactions.

I won’t rehash the whole thing.  If you’re not one of the four, and you don’t know what’s been going on, peruse my last few posts and you’ll understand.

It’s been a week now, and I’m happy to report that she really is making great progress in her physical recovery.  She tires out easily, though her stamina increases every day.  But she has not been resistant to making the effort to keep moving.  She’s not resistant to taking the medication she’s supposed to be taking and she’s not resistant to changing her diet… exactly.  She refuses to change her diet to what they prescribe but is determined to do what she must to take off the 100 extra pounds she’s carrying around with her and for her, that means a low/no Carb diet.  I think (and hope) that this time, she’ll actually see it through to the end.  This heart situation has been an awakening for her, in that respect.  She means business this time around.  I just hope she continues with this level of determination and finishes what she’s started and maintains what she accomplishes.

Our relationship has held up under the circumstances.  She has not been unkind to me.  As I mentioned in my last post, the real test will come when and if I’m ever around her at the same time as my sister, or my sister’s children.  Historically, she’s not very good at loving more than one person at a time and, well, the males are always the ones to get the short end of the stick.  I don’t know what she would do if one of her children were to have a boy child!

No, she has been kind and non-judgmental and even somewhat complimentary of me.  I expected a big to-do over my tattoos and she barely said anything and didn’t drag it out.  She might even be used to them by now and not even notice them.  She hasn’t said a word about my ear rings.  As I mentioned previously, she may not remember that I haven’t had two all along, but if she does, she hasn’t felt it worthwhile to comment.  This is a good thing.

I have learned some things, gained some perspectives from this visit though.

I’ve realized that my mother’s incessant, never ending discussion of Faith and God and Christianity, all of which are things that are important to me too, are, for one thing her way of coping with her own hardships.  She needs to talk about it, to reiterate it over and over for her own sake.  It is her coping mechanism.  Yes, it makes me uncomfortable, and yes I wish it wasn’t so constant, but it’s not actually hurting me and it helps her, so why not let her have that.

It also occurred to me this week that my mother works for a minister, in an office building full of ministries.  This is not a conventional work place.  These peoples’ lives revolve around ministry.  These peoples’ lives are all about telling other people about God and his teachings.  It stands to reason that they would be in that mindset even when they aren’t “at work”.

So maybe, I understand why they (she) feel the need to talk about it ALL THE TIME.

Maybe it’s not such a big deal for me to listen to it when I’m around them, which is not really all that often.

Maybe it doesn’t matter if I don’t agree 100% with everything they say.

And maybe I should take some of my own advice and just listen to what is actually being said, and not read so much into it.  Because maybe, just maybe, no one is actually condemning me for not believing or feeling exactly what they are saying at that moment.

Once again, there will likely be a post, after I return home, about my mother’s perspective on Faith and where I fall on the Faith Continuum, but for now, suffice it to say, that I am a Christian and I do believe in God and faith and healing.  I just believe there’s a lot more to life than just that and I don’t feel the need to make everything I say and do about that.

My mother is strongly, strongly opinionated about pretty much everything.  She feels like the world is a horrible place where the majority of the population is in the wrong about one thing or another.  She doesn’t hesitate to express that opinion and she’s remarkably emphatic about these beliefs.   She’s staunchly republican and ultra conservative to boot.  She believes that George W Bush was a good president and that Barack Obama is insane, but she’s not open to any discussion on the subject.  There is no other acceptable alternative.

Her mind is made up on just about everything.  She’s certain of her rightness in all things and the fact that most of the world doesn’t live up to her rightness, just gives her that much more piety instead of giving her pause to reconsider her position.  Everything is an opportunity to pontificate about the evils of whatever situation is at hand.  And God forbid I should have and express an alternative point of view.

Seven days I’ve been here, sacrificing my time and my desires to care for her while she needs it.  Don’t misunderstand me; I’m happy to do it.  I’m glad I was able to and I know it’s the right thing to do.  But seven day’s I’ve been here just for her, just for her needs.  And seven days I’ve listened to her rail about one thing or another from one minute to the next.  She thinks she’s merely expressing her views, and she thinks surely I agree with everything she thinks and that what she’s saying isn’t the least bit controversial. Seven days I’ve held my tongue, not said a word while she preaches about her belief structure and seven days I’ve tried to steer clear of any topic of conversation that might set her off.

I’m getting tired.  I’m getting completely fatigued from biting my tongue, from listening to the ridiculous rhetoric she dispenses without responding because in order to respond to her, she’s got to be able to carry on a mature, bi-directional conversation in which she actually listens to what I have to say, and even if she doesn’t agree with my point of view, still honor it and respect me for it.

She constantly interrupts me to refute what she thinks I’m going to say, even before I’ve said it, and doesn’t allow me to finish my line of thinking to see if it might actually make sense.

After seven days of this, I really have to fight the urge to roll my eyes, laugh at her and say, “Gosh, it must just be exhausting being so emphatic all the time!”  I just don’t think she even realizes how frequently she judges what goes on around her, and how disgusted and angry she sounds so much of the time.

My track record with a statement like this one is not too great, so if I retract it later, don’t hold it against me, but I think I may have achieved some sort of a break through…

Most of my life, my estimation of my own self-worth and the worth of just about everyone and everything else around me hinged so much on her opinion of it.  I knew that my belief system and opinions about things weren’t the same as hers and yet, for some reason, I needed her to accept me and my perspectives.  For the first time, I really see that she’s a flawed, damaged being that doesn’t have the ability to do that… and that really is OK.  I don’t need her approval and acceptance to be complete and whole.  It’s a really good feeling to know that.

I regret that conversations cannot be had.  I regret that true openness and honestly can’t exist.  But I see it now and accept that it’s just how it is.

I can’t change her.  I can’t make her more understanding and accepting of society.  I can’t make her see that she is judgmental and demeaning of most everything.  And I realize that in a way, if I tried, I’d be just as bad.  So from now on, I’ll focus on accepting that she is the flawed, damaged person that she is, that she will go on being that way as long as she sees fit and nothing I can do or say will change that.

At the same time I will honor myself and no longer hang my value on her approval and no longer be afraid or ashamed to feel what I feel when I feel it.  I may continue to hold my tongue, because no one is served by starting an argument and I do believe that my silence speaks volumes.

And I’ll continue to recognize and honor the strides she has made:

She is not picking fights with me.

She did not truly judge and condemn me for my tattoos and earrings.

She has not directed any of her political or moral venom at me specifically, even though she must know that I don’t agree with her.

She has not reacted to the fact that I refuse to react to or engage her and her tirades.

Oh and she’s complimented my cooking non-stop to everyone she’s spoken too since I’ve been here.

This is the end of my second full day in Tulsa, caring for my mother after her triple bypass surgery.  As I haven’t gone to sleep yet, I consider this to still be Friday (past midnight makes it really Saturday, but who am I to heed details?)  As I’m still considering this to be Friday, it has been one week since my mother’s surgery and her progress in that time is simply amazing!  Miraculous even; that’s truly what it is, a miracle.

Last Friday, my mother was taken early in the day for an angioplasty that revealed one artery 100% blocked, one that was 95% blocked and a third that was substantially blocked though no one seems to remember the percentage.  We now know that my mother was having a heart attack, which she believed to be severe acid reflux, for four days.  Over and over again medical personnel at the hospital told my mother it’s amazing that she even survived the attack.

I’ll go into more detail (maybe) at another time about my mother’s belief in “faith healing” and where we do and don’t agree, and how her opinion has been affected by this experience, but the bottom line is, she admits that this experience was the result of her not listening to her body (and the holy spirit) telling her to make changes and that while this was a terrible thing to have happen to her, she is doing as well as she is and feeling as well as she does because she has faith.  I can go along with that.

I left San Francisco International Airport at 7:30 PDT on Wednesday morning, arriving in Salt Lake City a little after 10:00 Mountain Time.  My flight out of Salt Lake was schedule for 1:35 Mountain time but after being pushed back to 2:10 we actually departed at roughly 1:55.  We landed at Tulsa International at a few minutes after 5:00 PM and I called my mother while the plane was taxiing to the gate.  She was just about to leave the hospital and told me that my friend Heather, who was picking me up and I should just come straight to her house instead of going by the hospital.

I wasn’t entirely prepared for what I’d find, but in a lot of ways it was better than what I suspected.  She looked old and pale and tired, all of which I’m sure is to be expected.  She was sitting in a straight backed chair and didn’t seem to be moving much but she insisted she wasn’t in a lot of pain.  I don’t suppose she is in too much pain as she only takes half of a 7.5 mg hydrocodone pill every 4-5 hours.  When I spoke to her during my layover in Salt Lake City, she told me that she gets tired really fast and that I’ll probably have to help her walk everywhere for the first little while.  By the time I arrived at her house she was able to stand up from the chair on her own and walk into her bedroom to use the restroom without assistance.

Thursday, she was able to dress her self, put on a little make-up and fix her hair, and I drove her to her office where she is the sole employee (Office manager, shipping and receiving clerk, and generally personal assistant) to a Gospel Singer and his wife.  Their office is just one of many in the building and the receptionist at the front office was unable to contain her absolute shock to see my mother not only out of the hospital but up and walking around under her own steam.

In her position with the ministry my mother is a signatory on the checking account and she needed to write her self a paycheck. Twelve years she’s been in this position and it still amuses me that she writes the check to herself signs it with her own name and then endorses the back of the check to deposit in her bank account.

We left her office, went by her bank to deposit the check via a drive up teller window, dropped one piece of mail at a drive up mail box and then went to the grocery store where, according to my mother, “Kevin forced me to ride around in one of those motorized carts.  You know the ones that beep when you back up, as if I weren’t enough of a spectacle already?”  The truth is she was pretty tired when we went in, but she needed to be there with me, and by the time we left she was feeling more energized.

I took her home and while I cooked dinner, Salmon and Asparagus with a salad, she rested.

Today, I drove her to her doctors office to have some blood drawn and tested, and then to pick up a new trial pair of contacts and then took her to the nail salon to get a “buff and polish”.  She missed her regular appointment last week and just needed a little something to tide her over till next week-end… apparently.  I brought her back home and while I cooked dinner, she pretended to do a crossword puzzle, while in reality she was in and out of sleep.  She was ready to go to bed at 6:30, but she knew if she did she’d wake up in the middle of the night and be up for the duration so it was my job to keep her up.  I kept her up till bout 8:30 when I presented her evening medications and helped her into her bedroom.  She was out cold by 9:00.

It’s hard to see her like this.  She has bruises all up and down both arms from all the IVs and things, a massive bruise and much smaller than I expected incision on her left leg near her knee from where they extracted the veins they used for her bypass, and naturally, a long incision down the middle of her chest with bruising and redness all around it.

On the other hand, no one expected her to be this mobile and strong this soon and that’s good to see.

Everyone at the hospital told her she was lucky to have the surgeon she did.  He was apparently the best and his technique is different (better) than any of the others at that hospital.  This surgeon doesn’t use a bypass machine.  Somehow he manages to do the surgery without stopping the patient’s heart, which was good to hear because it was one of the things I had been concerned about.  He also doesn’t use staples to close the incision as most surgeons do.  He uses traditional sutures and does such a tight job that until I asked about it, I thought what I was seeing was dried blood at the point of incision and that she didn’t have anything holding the skin closed.  She’s told that due to his technique and handiwork she will have little or no scar on her chest!

Some of the things I had hoped for and mentioned here seem to be quite out of the question.  I suppose it was a bit of a pipe dream anyway, but I had hoped for her condition to be bad enough that she might be open to some conversation that we can’t otherwise have.  She’s much stronger than I expected and all in all she’s actually doing really well emotionally, which also means that she hasn’t changed much in her outlook, I don’t think.

Perhaps I’m not giving her enough credit, though.  I walked into her house (where we were not alone together) wearing a pair of shorts and a short sleeved t-shirt, meaning all three of my tattoos were fully visible.  I forgot until later that I was wearing my earrings.  I was very up front with her and said, “Let’s get this out of the way while there are lots of people around.  You didn’t know about this but…” and I held out my arm and pointed at the superman logo in flames tattoo that is there and then at the black panther crawling up the outside of my lower left leg.  She saw the tribal design on the back of my neck as I turned around and walked away.  She made a comment (in a light-hearted tone) about how silly and ugly tattoos are and why would anyone do that to themselves.  But outside of asking me politely what made me decide to get them, and later what was on my leg (she hadn’t had glasses on to see it clearly) she hasn’t said much of anything and hasn’t been terribly negative about them.  I knew before I got the first one that she wouldn’t like it so I didn’t expect her to be positive, but I’m impressed that she didn’t make a big deal out of it.

As for my earrings, I got my left ear pierced when I was 18, so she already knew about it.  She may have just forgotten that I didn’t do them both then, or else she just hasn’t bothered to get riled up about it.  That in itself is an improvement on her part.

She talks frequently about God, faith and the Bible and I suppose that’s to be expected.  She lives most of her daily life in a circle where that’s the focus.  And it’s no that I don’t agree with most of what she says, I just don’t feel the need to talk about it incessantly, and I don’t really know what she expects me to say in return which is why I get uncomfortable when she does it.

When we were making our grocery list yesterday, I wrote down Diet Pepsi, because the plain facts are, I’m an addict and I can’t go two weeks without any. She said, “Yich, I don’t like Diet Pepsi.  Especially since they’ve become so vocal about supporting the ‘homosexual agenda’.”  That was hard for me to stomach, but I didn’t say anything.  There may come a time when it’s right to spring that bit of news on her even if she’s not receptive, but this is not that time.  She then said, “I just don’t even like to give them my money.  But I will, for you.”  Make no mistake.  She meant, she’d buy my Diet Pepsi, because she knows it’s the one I prefer, not that she’d give them her money because I am a homosexual.  Still I don’t wish to discount the significance of that attitude shift.

For the most part, things have been fine.  I’ve been able to express my opinions with a minimal amount of resistance from her and I’m able to listen to her opinions without getting bent out of shape about what she’s saying…  So far, she hasn’t said anything particularly derogatory about me, which is either progress, or she just hasn’t gotten around to it yet.  I believe I’ll choose to believe its progress until I see otherwise.

The next big test will be how she treats me when my sister or nieces are around.  Fortunately, that’s not going to happen this trip.

It’s the end of the second full day.  I’m about to turn in for my third night of sleeping in my mother’s house on a borrowed twin sized mattress on the floor.  The good news is that it is on the floor and so if I fall off of the mattress I don’t have far to go.  Why would I fall off of it you ask?  Because, for the last 10 years I have been sleeping on a queen sized mattress with a pillow next to me that I tend to hug when I sleep.  I guess I better get used to this.  I suspect I’ll have more of the same when I get to New York for my visit with my Sister.

Three weeks on the road, by the time I get back to my own bed, I’ll probably feel like I’m swimming in it… Actually that might be kind of nice!