"Mom?"
My 8 year old self had just finished washing my hair and noticed a small bump on my head. I picked and picked at it but it wasn't coming off.
"What's wrong sweetie?"
"There's a bump on my head and I don't know what it is."
My mom parted my thick wet hair in search of the bump. I felt her poke it and then suddenly draw in her breath. Very quietly, she said "Oh my god, it has legs."
The thought of something in my hair WITH LEGS was much too horrifying to be real so I decided that I hadn't heard her.
It was Sunday night, we were getting ready for work and school and now suddenly, I had something on my scalp that was (or once was) alive. What did my mom do? She handled it.
She put me in the car and drove me to the emergency room. She told me to sit in the waiting room while she walked up and down the hallways in search of a doctor who would be willing to deal with whatever was living in my hair. Shortly after, she came out with a nurse who plucked the villain out with a pair of surgical scissors. I even got a lollipop.
In hindsight, taking me to the hospital because I had a tick on my head was probably a bit of an overreaction. But the point is that my mom took care of it. She got shit done. It may take tears, crying, begging or even stalking a financial aid advisor (true story) but she took care of things.
In turn, she taught me to get things done. In the wise words of Vanilla Ice... "if you got a problem, yo, I'll solve it." (I didn't even have to look up that lyric. That's how full of useless information I am.)
And now, as she approaches her twilight years and I approach my... my... ummm... middle age years (*ahem*), I find a shift taking place.
On a recent visit, we were shopping and her credit card was declined. The company noticed an out of state charge, thought it was fraud and turned off the card. No big deal, right? She nearly had a meltdown in the store. With her credit card in one hand and her phone in the other, she looked back and forth helplessly at me and then at the cashier. It started to get awkward so I whipped out my credit card, directed her to put her things back in the purse, paid and took her out to the car. Meanwhile, she was flipping out. Having had my card recently shut off because Edward was buying things from China, I knew this was an easily remedied situation. I had to get her credit card from her and actually dial the number for her. She freaked out at the the credit card representative. She yelled at my stepdad when he called her to let her know what was up. That conversation was actually kind of priceless:
"Hi honey, how are you?"
"Well, I'm PISSED because the fucking credit card was shut off."
"I'm glad you're having a good time. I wanted to let you know about the credit card..."
The whole thing was weird. My mom aka SuperWoman had a mental breakdown in a CVS because of a credit card. Having watched her deal with a homicidal boyfriend, an abusive baby daddy (which would be mine), and coping with doctors plunging adrenaline into her daughter's heart so she wouldn't die of an asthma attack... well, this was peanuts.
Suddenly, my mom has become get-shit-done handicapped. This is something that needs to go in the manual - eventually, your parents turn into toddlers and you get to deal with them even though you were very responsible and never had spawn on purpose.
My therapist has assured me this is very normal. And I suppose, if I take a big giant step backward, I see that it's pretty logical. But there's always that voice in my head that says "But that's my MOM." And moms know stuff. Moms know stuff so they can teach YOU stuff.
And that is why I'm having a difficult time reconciling all of this. I'm not a parent ON PURPOSE. The thought of being responsible for another human life is horrifying, awful, and extremely inconvenient. Yet I find myself having to parent her in these very basic, everyday situations. I remember having a conversation very recently about her friend. My mom was upset that she had emailed her friend and her friend hadn't emailed her back. She was taking the whole thing extremely personally and essentially deciding the fate of their friendship based on this exchange. I remember HAVING THE SAME CONVERSATION with her when I was in middle school. And she told me not to sweat it. And here I was reminding her that people get busy and it's irrational to break up with someone because they didn't sit with you at lunch.
I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready to hand-hold my very capable mother who suddenly isn't anymore. Unfortunately, this is probably just the beginning.
And this is why we drink...
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