Trigger Warnings.

As a human being with an extensive history of therapy, I've been trained to recognize emotional triggers before they overwhelm me. I have an uncanny ability to compartmentalize and diffuse. According to a friend, "Rach can take a punch."

But the problem with resilience is that it's not always there. Sometimes there's a tiny crack that can be infiltrated, like bacteria slipping into a cell, and the whole organism is damaged. And that's what happened for a few hours yesterday.

"I'm giving myself the afternoon off," I called to my mother as I packed a backpack with a towel, sunscreen, headphones, and my biology textbook.

"Good, enjoy it!"

Ed had been a mess all morning. One of the side effects from both TBIs and end-stage Parkinson's is inappropriate sexual conduct. Every so often, he'll have an hour of tongue-wagging and awkward pick-up lines, and we laugh it off. I always head to laughter and clever one-liners, because the sadness of the reality is just too much for anyone.

But yesterday, he was relentless in his desire to bang out somebody, anybody. And it was very difficult to see someone who used to be so modest be so crude with his language and gestures. And the tiny cracks in my well-preserved facade began to open, so I GTFO and went to the beach.

(For the non-texters: GTFO means "Got The Fuck Out".)

In the early recovery days, when we thought he might come back, even a little.

I thought that when I came back, my adventure-related endorphins would carry me through anything. And apparently, Ed was well-behaved for the few hours I was gone. But somewhere between his afternoon and early evening meds, something kicked into him and there he was, inappropriate as ever.

And there I was, bottling everything. 

And later, there our aide was, this sweet older lady, who didn't even have a chance to take off her shoes before I was in front of her, warning her, using the last fraction of composure I had to tell her that these horrible things were not indicative of who he was or how he ever behaved, that this man was a decent human being who was not..who was just not there anymore. And how I was reacting to my own abusive childhood, one he wasn't a part of, and had no way to stop.

And then, like a radically conservative preacher getting invited to a gay wedding, I lost it. I went to my mother's room, and just exploded emotion everywhere.

While feeling and observing at the same time, I knew what I was saying, how I was reacting to my mother's attempt to soothe me was hurting her as well as myself. I knew this outburst didn't help her recovery. But it was there, and she was, not a patient or cancer survivor, but a mother, trying to bandage my hurt.

Sometimes, the only solution is wine and laying outside in the grass. And more wine.

The challenging childhood I had has made me a ridiculously strong person. And I realized last night that to be ridiculously strong, you have to be able to make yourself ridiculously human. 

"I don't want kind robots in my life," she said.

"Not unless they can do other things, like cuddle and make omelets."

"...Give me your wine."

Half a liver makes her a cheap date!

It's not (just) the things he said. It's the continuous decline. As my mother's health ascends, his seems to be plummeting. And as tragic as Alison's accident was, at least it was over in an instant. I went from having a sister to not having a sister on impact. I am slowly watching my father die, and it's one of the most inhumane things I've ever experienced.

How do you grieve for someone that's still breathing and conscious?

UGHHHHH THE FEELS MAKE THEM STOP

OK, to make sure we're not all going to be miserable, let's play a game: in the comments, write your best memory of your people. They don't have to be your parents. I'll start.

Ed used to play Santa Claus (I mean, just look at him in that wedding picture). He would be the talk of the town the entire month of December. One year, he went to a salon and had his beard bleached. It was whiter than you could believe, but he almost choked on the fumes. Still, any time we went anywhere, kids would stare at him, slack-jawed that Santa was shopping at Publix. And he'd wink, tap his nose, and sometimes - if it was later in the month and he had worn the same pants to work - he'd pull a mini candy cane from his pocket, and literally make this kid's life. It was fun being Santa's kid.

You Say It's Your Birthday

"You can be damn sure I'm not dying at a prime number."

She had been saying that since her initial diagnosis. "70 or 72. No way I'm dying at 71."

Sometimes I wonder where my neurosis came from. Sometimes it's obvious.

Happy birthday, MOTHER

I'm going to make this post short, as there are hugs to (gently) dispense and wine to be consumed ("I'm not even going to ask my surgeon if I can have a sip of wine on my birthday, in case he says 'No'."), and thoughtful, quiet moments of another year, a hopefully benign 365 where we're not going to have to wait for another crisis.

I'd like to hope our 20-year tragedy plan is all paid up, and it's smooth sailing for awhile.

I was going to plan a big "Paris Party" for her birthday; telling all her dearest friends and family to come down, eat baguettes, and decorate the house in black and white stripes with hints of pink. That plan, of course, was when we assumed she'd be so close to the end that it would be a true send-off, and thinking that she'd never get to see Paris, so this was a close second. She'd be jaundiced and wheelchair bound, weak beyond measure, but would smile effusively, wearing a silly beret and slipping away the night after her party.

F that noise now.

I didn't plan a party. Daughter Of The Year, right here. Not like I've been distracted, or anything.

Instead of a long-winded post about how much I loooooooooovvvveeee my mother, I've compiled my favorite action shots of her. I've inherited my sense of adventure from her, and I'd love to have you join in on the celebration.

Happy birthday, Mommles!

Sharon and Ed, 1968. "You never posted a shot of how handsome Ed looked." "God, stop telling me what to do!"

Carbs carbs carbs carbs. NYC 2009

Skating with CTRG, 2008. She's a killer pivot.

Yoga in Brooklyn, 2013

Sharon and Jim (don't judge, I was born into a Jets family)

The closest she'll ever get to skydiving, 2009

Cuddles, 2013

Have a great year of kicking the shit out of cancer, Mom!

Total Head Case.

Yesterday I experienced one of the happiest moments and saddest moments ever.

First, the happiness.

After just under seven days of hospitalization, and having the last tubes and catheters removed by "Dr. Eye Candy" as she called him, my mother left the hospital, clad in a fluffy white bathrobe and slippers, and clutching a hospital pillow to her midsection as a splint.

"Make sure you tell your patients to splint their surgical site," she instructed while grimacing as she entered the van, "it makes it easier for them to move if they're braced against something."

Helloooo, Dr. Eye Candy. Way to pull those JPs out of Sharon's belly with a smile.

This is the woman who asked me about EKGs and SA nodes while waiting to be wheeled into surgery. If I make it through nursing school, I'll have her to thank.

I was hyper-cautious on the drive home, convinced that with this family's luck, we'd be T-boned by a pickup truck on Lynnhaven Parkway.

"Watch out for the light!"
"I know, I'm being careful. The last thing I want us for us to die."
"I"m not worried about dying, I'm worried about a ticket."

The drive home was quiet, only punctuated with a tearful sentence about the trauma of the past six months, or an apology for going over a bump too quickly. It reminded me of being in the car with my newborn daughter, and that feeling of concern over something so delicate being jostled in any way.

"You just ran a red light."
"Sorry."

Jim had put a sweet sign on the door, "WELCOME HOME MIRACLE WOMAN". I wanted to add "AND THANKS, SURGICAL DREAM TEAM".



Now, onto one of the saddest moments I've seen in two years. And christ, I've seen lots of sad moments in these past two years.

Ten minutes home, and she's sitting at her usual morning spot with her puzzles. Typical.

"Ed? I'm home."

He was murmuring, fidgety in his own world, hands working on an invisible key, completely oblivious to his wife, or the fact that she had been gone for a week. She curled into a chair, reaching out, and asked if he wanted to see her scar (it's pretty badass). It was agonizing. Not even a glance in her direction, or a gesture of recognition.

I can handle Ed not knowing me, but in that moment, nothing felt worse than him not knowing her.

Today is the two year anniversary of his accident. How crazy that these compounded stressors (Alison's death anniversary, my grandmother's death anniversary, Ed's accident, Sharon's surgery) all clump together in the spring. And some people's biggest catastrophes in this season are allergies.

It's not all bad, though. In spite of this ration of sadness and tumult, we've had golden times: my mother's birthday is on May 22, my brother's wedding on May 26 (six days after Ed's accident in 2013, because fuck it, the show must go on). We are a family of survivors, pushing ourselves after every nightmare scenario to be better, stronger, more resilient.

 Not Pictured: The dude who was at Bellevue's ICU. May 2013.

The only problem with being so "strong" and "resilient" is that you become impatient with the relatively small struggles of others. I had a friend in high school who couldn't come to Alison's funeral because she was devastated over her cat's death.

Her cat. I'm burying my sister and she told me about her cat.

Now, I would absolutely crumble if Lenny or Tess died, but come the fuck on, Bridget.

If I sound harsh, or callous, it's not intentional. It's that dealing with a large amount of sadness puts things in perspective. Two days ago, a bottle of wine shattered as it fell out of the van. Rather than kicking and screaming, I shrugged it off and sprayed down the driveway, joking about "alcohol abuse". 

YOLO. Thanksgiving 2014. One had cancer, and the other had a drink.

I have to pick and choose where I expend emotional energy. As I said before, it's a finely crafted "anti-armor"; I can write these words or say these phrases, and although it's all true (well, sometimes embellished a little, but mostly accurate), I am so gifted at staying calm that I can go almost completely numb. 

Sometimes, I can be so overwhelmed that I can't even feel things, on a physical level. Crazy, these learned defense mechanisms.

She had been quietly sitting at the dinner table, puttering with her cell phone. Tears slowly, steadily racing down her cheeks. A side effect of all the opioids, I thought to myself.

"It....It really hurt that he didn't know me."

I slipped next to her, again that seven year old, trying to fix something shattered within her.

"I know, Mom."

"And I can't answer anyone's stupid questions."

"I know." I was silent. I'm usually so good at finding the right words, but there was nothing I could say.

Except, "So...want to do a shot? You still have half a liver."

Putting the "Fun" in Multifunctional

You're so vain, I bet you think this Awkward Pose is about you.

The phone rings at 7:45.

"So, you're going to be writing this blog for another five years?"

I swear, my heart can't take these roller coasters. I'll be the next one in the ICU.

Recovery from a hepatectomy is no small feat. Between the phrenetic phrenic antagonization (see what I did there?) to the surgical pain, managing her symptoms over a several-hour period became a pharmacological pain in the ass: the epidural worked, but not for the neck pain. The epidural came out, but the roxicodone didn't work well enough. She couldn't be discharged without the ability to only take meds PO (orally). Some things made her lethargic, other things didn't hit the discomfort at all.

Ugh, SOMEONE is the mayor of Boring Town.

Have you heard of ICU psychosis? It's a real thing (and really not limited to intensive care). When someone loses an excessive amount of sleep, doesn't know if it's 07:00 or 19:00, and is coming out of the trauma of surgery, they can go a little nuts. Often, that's why patients are so emotional between 2-3 days post-op. 

Sharon didn't start banging her head against the wall or seeing visions of antelopes (I don't think, anyway), but the stress of ICU and med/surg weighed on her.

Not to mention the fact that she had MAJOR surgery. Did you know she had MAJOR SURGERY?

(She's going to hit me when she reads this.)

So imagine how happy I felt when I walked into her room yesterday morning, and found this sight:

Any hospital food is good hospital food after a week.

That, my internet friends, is the sight of a 70 year-old post-resection eating the first solid(ish) meal in nearly a week. 

"This orange juice is the best thing I've ever put in my mouth."

"And let's face it, you've put a lot of things in your mouth."

The Speed Racer is improving well, which leads me to this morning's phone call.

"So, you're going to be writing this blog for another five years?"

"....What was the pathology report?"

"Good. 95% of the tumor had been killed from the radioembolization. The margins are clear. They got the whole thing."

I'm silent. If I had one of those phone cables, the spiral kind, I would have been anxiously twisting it around my fingers. We've had so many moments of hope, then trauma, then reprieve, then more sadness. This could be the end of it all, I thought.

"So...we need a new title."

Today we walk to the window. Tomorrow, we walk to POLAND! Wait.

Mommles should be heading home tomorrow, which is fabulous, because I'm running out of funny looks for The Old Man.

The Old Guy has no time for blogging.

It will be so nice when this six month ordeal with cholangiocarcinoma is way past us. Then, I'll just have to blog about nursing school. I hope.

Yesterday Was Thursday.

It's Friiiiday, Friiiiiday, and I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it!

Wait, I did that wrong.

Poor Rebecca.

But truly, we (we we) are so excited because Sharon will most likely be moved from the ICU to a regular med/surg unit today. She could have been moved yesterday, but there were no beds available.

I quipped, "We're just waiting for someone to die."

"That's horrible. We're waiting for someone to be discharged."

"Right, like, discharged to Heaven."

"....Go get some coffee."

"Hello, I'd like to order all the pizza. They're starving me in this joint."

I learned a new anatomical term yesterday: the phrenic nerve. The phrenic originates between the C3-C5 and travels down into the diaphragm. I learned about this because the biggest complaint my mother has so far is excruciating pain in her right trapezius area as a result of the trauma of a diaphragmatic incision.

I wish I hadn't learned about it so vividly.

She's slowly losing all of her tethers: her arterial line and naso-gastric tubes were removed yesterday; today they take out her epidural and foley catheter. Not sure about the chest tubes. I'm at the bedside now watching her sleep, thankful that she's resting decently for the first time in days.

Yesterday she was able to sit in a chair twice, but the second time she became very nauseated and lightheaded, and started to stand and became tangled in the many lines. While Brian and I tried to gently get her back to bed and reestablish some organization sans RN (there was chaos in an adjacent room), her O2 sats suddenly dropped to 87 and I panicked, scrambling to find her nasal cannula. Soon after, I was reprimanded by her nurse (and she was 100% right to do so, even if the whole thing was my mother's idea.)

There was a ruckus.

For someone who spent her entire life caring for others, for encouraging patients to take their first steps after weeks of bedrest or holding their hands as they took their last breaths, this transition to patient can be maddening. Of course she recognizes that she is not even 96 hours post-op from major, major surgery ("If one more fucking person reminds me that I just had liver surgery, I'm going to say, 'No, I had no idea!'"), and the life-threatening condition is potentially behind her, but that doesn't take away from the current stress and pain. Forest for the trees, and all that.

In the meantime, here's a mommy and daddy goose with their babies. I didn't realize this hospital was so animal-friendly.

Animals are people, too! Wait, that's not right.

Are You Washing, Girl?

"Whoa, this heating system must be turned too low. It's making my coochie cold."

"Your COOCHIE? That's going on the blog."

"You can't put that on the blog. You can't talk about my coochie."

"Censorship doesn't work here, oppressor. Watch out for your IV, you're leaning on it."

This woman may or may not have had a "cold coochie" at the time of this picture. Pre-Op, yesterday morning.

When I was a child, one of my favorite books was "Bony Legs". Bony Legs was a "horrible, mean witch" with metal teeth, who lived in a house that stood on chicken feet. She liked to eat children, and was generally a mega-bitch.

Oh, the huge nose stereotype. Cute. Dig the curtains, though.

A little girl named Sasha wandered into Bony Legs' lair, and was locked in the bathroom and forced to bathe (in retrospect, that was a little creepy) before being cooked for dinner. Through the door, Bony Legs would croak, "Are you WASHING, girl?", and Sasha would meekly reply, "Yes..I am."

(There was a record that went with it, so my mother and I emulated the voices whenever we read it.)

So when I needed to time my mother's pre-op antimicrobial scrub on Monday night, I screeched, "Are you WASHING, girl?". Guess how she responded.

We got to the pre-op area around 10:30am, but they were running behind, and there were a lot of details to go over. Epidurals for her thorax. Blood samples for cross reference. The ringing of "Do you have any allergies?" over, and over, and over. And over. It seemed like the dress I wore absorbed every smell it encountered, from my brother's Axe bodywash early in the morning, to the CRNA's faint, flowery fragrance. It masked that iconic hospital smell.

She was eventually wheeled back around 1pm. I stood in the hallway, watching the nurses care for her in a way they have a hundred times before.

But it hasn't been a hundred times for me, I thought. That could have been my last kiss. The last time I hear "I love you."

I shook myself out of it, grabbed her travel bag, and slipped downstairs to text and call the millions of family members and friends.

Bye, Felicia!

They didn't get started with her surgery until 3pm. I was directed into a special intensive surgical waiting area, which, by the way, will always be nicer than the outpatient waiting area. There were anxious husbands of complicated pregnancy patients, a triple fracture of the tibia and fibula (damn, I hope they were doing something fun), a kidney resection..I wasn't trying to eavesdrop (OK, yes I was), but every time the door opened and a surgeon came out to discuss a case, all I could think was, "If I see her surgeon in the next hour, this will have been for nothing."

Then, of course, I had to compare MY tragedy to THEIR tragedy. I am a horrible person.

I mentally mocked this guy for hours. Come on with that outfit.

After about seven hours and a couple of chats with her OR nurse, her surgeon came in, and said those sweet, sweet nothings.

"We were able to remove her entire left lobe."
"There was no need to repair her inferior vena cava."
"She remained stable the entire time, and is being extubated now."

And, the phrase that made me tackle him with a hug:

"I didn't see any other signs of cancer."

She's currently in the ICU, with an epidural and a PCA pump and an NG tube and an A-Line and two chest tubes and a partridge in a pear..wait.

The important thing was: cholangiocarcinoma? You're fucking toast.

NOT TODAY, SATAN.

Some Tough Mothers.

I want to thank you for reading. I had a few people come up to me and compliment me on this blog, and it tickled me. This started out as a strangely public outlet (like Livejournal, but way less drama and cyrillic script), but you, beautiful and fabulous readers, have become a motivation to keep it going. Thank you.

You're probably sitting at brunch thinking, "Oh, here comes another post about how much Rachel loves her mom, and how they've managed to keep their footing on continuously crumbling ground, and look fabulous while doing it."

First, get off your phone. You're at mother's day brunch. Did you buy her a plant? (You should have bought her a plant.)

Second, you're damn right this is a "Look At How Fortunate I Am In The Face Of A Shitstorm" post.

However, I'm not just going to wax rhapsodic about my mom. There are others who deserve it, too.

I am fortunate to have come from a long line of strong, complex women. My grandmother Eleanor was my first fashion and glamour educator, and was one of the most dichotomous people I've ever come across.

Grandma Mitzvah, 2006. Always Fashionable, Even While Pretending To Cook.

Here was an incredibly savvy business woman, the owner of a designer clothing shop in Sheepshead Bay for forty years, a single mother in an era where that was unheard of...who was frightened of water. And cats. And bicycles.

True story: she wouldn't stay at my mom's house when she visited from New York because she was terrified of my cat, Tootsie.

Eleanor grew up in a time where women were supposed to stay in the kitchen (thank god she didn't; she could do a lot of things, but wasn't the "Cooking Grandma" type) and stay quiet, with no ambition. Like she did so many times in her life, she bucked tradition and followed her own path. She was wily, determined, stylish and chic, and a great role model. Plus, she was a looker. She died in 2009 at 92, elegant to the end.

When I think about the people who shaped my personality, Eleanor and Sharon are obviously at the front. They set me up for my own motherhood adventure, which has been going strong for five years. I remember discussing "bonding" with your newborn with other parents, and I never understood. My child has been a part of me for forever.

I mean, I never even dropped her as a baby.

Tough Love.

We conceived Norah not long after my grandmother's death. My pregnancy was fortunately effortless, and although labor was stressful (someone yukked, "That's why they call it labor" after I had her, and they almost lost a scrotum) and resulted in a C-section, I got a gorgeous, healthy, charming daughter, who surprises me every day.

I never expected a child of mine to be an asshole, but her kindness is unparalleled. When I told her that Grandma Sharon was going to have surgery to hopefully cure her cancer, she jumped into my arms and squeezed the air out of me, her forehead pressed against mine, and her smile shooting right into my heart.

Months earlier, I had taken her to Ashley's Ice Cream, and gently told her about cholangiocarcinoma, respecting her intelligence by telling her the truth. Rather than deflect, she asked me about the liver, what it does, how it functions in the body (in less sophisticated terms, of course), and if grandma was going to die. I paused before saying, "I don't know."

Norah took a bite of chocolate ice cream. It leaked out of the corner of her lip as she said, "Well, I hope she doesn't."

Yoga With Grandma, 2012

Raising a female in this world can seem terrifying. The government wants to dictate what she can and cannot do with her reproductive organs, the threat of assault and harassment is everywhere, and I'm worried about her compassion being seen as a weakness as she progresses through school. I've told her that all we can do is carve out a small part of a big world, and do our best to improve it.

Showing Off Our Abs (Well, one of us), Summer 2014

I'm still riding the "Mom's Having Surgery To Cut That Sucker (Apropos!) Out" high. I'll be in Virginia in a little over 24 hours, armed with my Helicopter Daughter mentality. Sharon should be in the hospital for five days, then released into my care (mua ha haaa) while she recovers. She quipped, "You'll be the only nursing student who's treated a post-op liver resection."

A little liquid cement on the crumbling ground. Just for today.

It'll be hard to leave Norah for weeks, but my mother wrote something to me in her perfect, Catholic school cursive that I was never able to forge, in a mother's day card to me:

"It comforts me so much to see you love your daughter as deeply as I love you. and, when she becomes a mother, you will know an amazing love for her child.

This is the life cycle.

I love you,

Always,

Mommy"

Happy Mother's Day from the Mitzvahs!

"Cut This Bitch Out."

As I mentioned before, sometimes I don't answer the phone when my mom calls.

This morning, I was running down Prospect Street, burning off last night's pizza and beer, and blasting The Replacements. I hit "reject" (oh, that sounds so harsh), out of breath and wheezy, running on shoes that should have been replaced last summer, essentially punishing my body for punishing my body. It's a good kind of pain.

Are you there, Shin Splints? It's me, Dottie.

The odds of me ignoring a phone call are low these days, and as I rounded my last corner to my house, I started overthinking her call. She's seeing her surgeon today. What time was the appointment? Christ, can't you remember any times of any appointments? But today was her team's liver conference. Did she get a call about that in advance?

Then I started overthinking her odds of resection. Did they find something different? Is surgery going to be off the table? How hard will it be for her to recover?

It's amazing how wound up a person can make themselves in a matter of seconds.

Throughout the past week, I've been pushing positivity. I haven't tried to discount my mother's anxiety, but I thought if I puked rainbows and glitter that I could be optimistic enough for the both of us. Until I started choking on the rainbows, and everyone knows that glitter is toxic over a long-enough time.

I checked my voicemail.

"Call me when you can, I need your social security number for an insurance policy thing."

Oh, for pete's sake. 

I quickly dialed back, sending my love as she headed to her surgeon's appointment.

Pre-embo, earlier this year. One of us is high. The other is on Norco.

What we wanted to hear was that resection is a viable option, that her team is going to open her the fuck up and discover what's been going on. The ulcers from errant radioactive seeds may be removed along with the section of liver (her left lobe, if you're a bio-nerd and are keeping track), so after her post-op pain subsides, she would most likely have a more significant quality of life.

And that's exactly what we heard.

Crack those ribs! Crack those ribs!

Aside from the normal disclaimers ("I may open you up and close you back up, I'm not sure I can get it all, we need a vascular surgeon on call, this surgery has a 2% mortality rate, I'm a big wuss"), we got a Big Fat Surgery Date.

On Tuesday, May 12 (ten days before her birthday), my mother will go in for a hemihepatectomy (normspeak: she'll have half her liver, the part with the tumor, removed).

BRING ON THE CHAMPAGNE.

My Mother's Laugh

Everyone holds a certain role in their family. There can be the Kind One, the Black Sheep, the Old Soul, the Intellectual.

I've always found my place as The Comic Relief.

Funny, or Funny Looking?

One of my best qualities (and I really think it's important for people to quantify their best qualities) is my quick wit. Sure, it comes from decades of managing low self-esteem, molding it into a well-manufactured schtick, and cultivating it into a finessed ability to come up with a comeback instantly, but it's there, and it's incredibly important. I am usually able to diffuse a situation with a sentence.

My biological father didn't give me many genetic abilities (aside from the skills of singing and drinking a hairy dog under a table - is that how the idiom works?), but I am grateful to him for the innate stage presence I bring to any conversation. It has helped immensely in this challenging time.

My only reason for bringing this up is that my impulse to make my mother laugh has grown exponentially.

She has the best laugh. When you really have her going (see: "F 'em in the ear"), it's a gasping, paralyzed sight; her head falls back and her eyes squeeze shut, and she clasps her hands together like they've been glued, with her fingers interlaced and curled, and it's a millenium until she gasps for air and lets out a high-pitched squeal. I live for my mother's laugh.

And I know where that came from.

My mother and my bio-dad had an acrimonious divorce. Martin was a horrendous alcoholic, the kind that doesn't go to meetings because "all we have in common is drinking." The kind of drunk who tells you at fourteen that he could have easily gone to bed with your friend, who was sleeping over, and you shouldn't be friends with a girl like that. And, mercifully, the kind who dies in a hotel room after you've beaten the crap out of him for attacking your mother.

But more on that later.

We had a small downstairs bathroom in my childhood home. I went in one afternoon and found my mother sobbing on the toilet seat. I know that feeling too well, the instant where you want to hide your emotions to shield your child, but you just can't turn the lock on the door.

It's interesting: when she laughs, her body expands outward, but when she cries, she curls in, like she's trying to protect the deepest parts of herself.

I remember putting my small arms around her neck. I'm sure I tried to say something, but I was seven and had no concept of platitudes. I do distinctly recall the impulse to do anything to make her laugh, to pull her away from the pain, even for a second.

So, that's why I'm so funny, audiences.

Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Mama's Girl

The subject of my mother's cancer comes up often in our conversations. I have a natural instinct to throw out the line, "I'm sorry, but what about MY cancer?" or "Can we please talk about my ingrown hair? Don't tell me I don't know struggle" as soon as things get tense. It's my dark, sardonic sense of humor that has gotten me past many losses.

For instance, when we went over what will happen when she has end-stage ICC, I promised to find her the best color correctors for jaundice and the most fabulous corsetry to hide her ascites.

(Science fun fact: ascites is the accumulation of fluid in the peritoneal cavity. Have you seen a beer gut? That's not just fat.)

If you and I have met, I've probably diffused some tension with an off-color joke. If you and I like each other, you haven't been insulted. If you have been insulted..you need a better sense of humor.

I'm home in Connecticut for the next week or two, but I feel pulled to Virginia, like I have to be there to make her laugh, or to soothe Ed's progressively chaotic nature, or to make sure that gas is in the tank or food is on the table. These are all things that can happen without me, of course, but I was born with the instinct to be both a Control Freak and a Nurturer, as well as a Harbinger of Chaos, Funny Lady, and Cluttered Mess.

Thanks, Mom.

Girrrrrl, you're welcome.