About My Mother March 23, 2008

My mom is finally sleeping nearby, after a rough afternoon. She thinks something may be wrong with her surgery, and it’s hard to know whether her instincts are right (as they often are) or whether she’s just not progressing as quickly as she wants to be (she’s stubborn that way). At any rate, it’s Easter Sunday and answers are in short supply today (maybe they’re hidden with the Easter eggs it was too cold to look for at length here.)

My mom is one of the nicest people you will ever meet. But she doesn’t have the Stepford scariness that generally accompanies that level of niceness. There’s definitely an edge, there, too — she’s strong, she can be stubborn and opinionated, and you really don’t want to cross her (although you might not know that you had, since to your face, she’ll not give much away.) When one of my cousins told a younger family member that she was in the hospital, my younger cousin asked for clarification about which aunt it was (necessary because she has two aunts with the same name). Upon learning it was my mom, she said, “Oh, she’s really nice.” (She might have said more than that, but the point of this post is not to insult the other aunt with the same name.)

She provides the stability, the grounding for my family. When the farm economy tanked in the 80s, her income as a doctor’s assistant meant the only reliable source of income for our family. But when that doctor (whose office she kept running for 10 years) tried to cut her back to part-time so he wouldn’t have to pay her retirement benefits, she left the keys on the desk and walked out. She taught me that being nice doesn’t mean being a doormat, but there are days I’m not sure which part of the lesson I’ve learned most fully.

She’s the sports fan of the family — my dad couldn’t really care less. On Thursday, when she was still in recovery, some hospital employees came into the waiting room where my dad was to check the game scores against their brackets. My dad told them, “if my wife were not having surgery today, she could tell you who was going to win.” During March Madness, or the NFL playoffs, or the World Series, you can usually find her glued to the TV set, with strong opinions about who she thinks should win. (It’s often because the coach is religious or the star is cute, but who am I to quibble about that?) I really like that it’s a matriarchal thing in my family.

I’m not the only person who considers her Mom. Aside from my brother, she’s also helped raise four cousins and her grandson (my brother’s son.) She regularly visits the relative in prison that most others have forgotten about, and made sure another relative had a job after leaving prison when no one would hire him. She regularly asks about my gay best friend, and my other friend and his partner. She’s not wild about homosexuality — those religious views get in the way — but she’s always respectful to my friends. She loved my ex dearly (he called her mom too), and was nearly as devastated as I was when the marriage was over, but made sure that I got through it.

My mom has a sweet tooth. She doesn’t like to be addicted to anything, and went cold turkey off the Vicodin a couple of years ago, even though nothing had changed about her pain. She never drinks, consistent with her religious beliefs. But she just might be addicted to carbs. She’s been diabetic as long as I remember, and on insulin since my childhood. There’s always a home-baked dessert (or several) when I come home to visit. She thinks that there always has to be dessert, even though none of us need it.

My mom has dieted all of her life. I remember back when I was a kid, she took Ayds, an appetite suppressant candy. She’s done Weight Watchers, eating next to nothing, and has asked me a few time about Nutrasystem. I got her to do Atkins for a little while, but it was hard for her to undo the lessons she’d learned over her lifetime that fat was truly okay, and ridding her house of carbs was impossible. So she starves herself to the point of eating next to nothing, and loses and gains the same 25 pounds over and over again. Then she can’t do any more, and thinks it’s her fault. I resolved not to do that, so I just kept gaining. But with low-carbing, I’m now losing. I did it once, and resolved not to do it again, but life intervened. I have to do it this time.

My mom is diabetic, has high blood pressure, arthritis and inflammation, and fights depression. She’s missing a gallbladder, a uterus, a breast, and now a knee joint. She’s spent most of the last two decades in significant pain and without full mobility. She says that she’s now in more pain than she ever has been before, but having surgery on weight-bearing joints will do that to you. I don’t want to end up like that. I’m still young enough to make the right changes, and am hopefully armed with the right information. She’s been doing what the doctors have told her for a long time, and has still been miserable.

I still don’t fully appreciate how close we came to losing her earlier this year, from a blood clot in her leg. Luckily, my dad was home and able to apply pressure to her leg, and then she had to be life-flighted to the hospital where she is now. She was terrified to have surgery, but terrified of ending up in a wheelchair, and weary of the pain. Nearly sixteen years ago, she was told she needed a knee replacement, but has been postponing it for this long until she no longer felt she had a choice. Even with the incident in January, she was brave enough to move ahead. She’s angry and frustrated today — not making the progress she thinks she should be making, but I’m very proud of her for finally facing the demons.

We never say all we need to say to our parents and other loved ones, but today I’m making an effort.  I love you, Mom, and I’m glad I’m here with you now.

On Being Right March 15, 2008

Even though I have a law degree, I don’t typically have an overwhelming need to be right. You know the type, the person who will argue until they beat the other side into submission. Actually being persuasive often takes a back seat to focusing on the sartorial weaknesses of the opponent, and victory is often confused with bullying the other side into submission. I never wanted to be one of “those” people. So mostly I’m not.

I’m more an empathetic, relative-truth kind of person. There are so many so-called facts out there that when you get right down to it, aren’t really facts at all, but reflections of a person’s — or a group’s — experience at a certain point in time. As became the catchphrase for some of my friends in my political philosophy (that wasn’t its real name, but its real name was particularly fey) major: “truth is that which works.” So truth for me took on a practical, functional nature that allowed me to focus on what was real in my life, as opposed to what people have told us for decades, centuries, etc.

I’ve been a little tested, lately, however. A few things have happened lately which have made me want to pummel the truth into other people until they cry “uncle,” or whatever. Despite the fact I know that doesn’t work, I’ve become impatient waiting for people to see the light. And no matter how I justify it, it doesn’t sit well with me. I like the idea of being a more forceful advocate — there have been times I’ve felt like I just wuss out in order to keep the peace. But it’s a new style for me, and I’m still working through it.

The first incident involves someone I recently met whose political views and employment history could not be more opposite to my own. He commented on that fact, and wanted to “cross swords,” his words, not mine. We discussed doing that over a couple of drinks, which would have made it much more palatable to me, but ended up doing it via e-mail (well, via Facebook messages, but same difference.) I’m always more comfortable writing than speaking, so was up to the challenge, and tossed off some reasonably well-crafted missives. I even got him to agree with me on some things, although that really doesn’t matter so much — it’s highly unlikely to have changed his life.

But in person, I realized I didn’t have much of an interest in continuing the debate. That’s not so surprising — that’s not what I go to a networking event to do. But what was surprising to me is that I engaged in the debate in the first place. I happen to think that most people have pretty immutable views at this stages in their adulthood. (Although that’s ironic, since I’ve been in the issue advocacy biz for most of my career, so is it Washington that’s making me cynical?) Am I getting sucked into more personal debate than I used to? Possibly, but I should probably pick my battles where it matters more.

The next incident: I just finished a book that is just f-in unbelievable. It’s called Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes. I already knew that Taubes was capable of some really good stuff — an article of his back in 2002 convinced me to take a good hard look at the Atkins diet, which helped me lose 65 pounds back in 2003. But I’ve slacked off recently — even knowing that I should be low-carbing has not kept me actually doing so. Taubes’ subtitle is “challenging the conventional wisdom on diet, weight control, and disease,” and boy, does he. Everything you think you know (even me, and I’m pretty well educated on low-carb diets) is picked apart and deconstructed until you get to the source of the metabolic research that has been conducted.

Reading this book is going to make me incorrigible about diet issues, I think. It’ll help to actually use the book’s lessons to take off all the weight I regained in the last couple of years dealing with breakups, divorce, loneliness, and all the other things I was self-medicating using sugar. But people have died not fully appreciating how they spent their lives killing themselves.

My family is a perfect example. My mom is the only survivor among her siblings and spouses. Her mother died of diabetic-related conditions, and was blind and crippled when she died at age 62. She seemed so old when she died, although now that seems so young to die that way. Her sister died of a massive heart attack, after having a toe removed and being on dialysis for the last year of her life. Her two brothers, one older and one younger, are gone as well. Now her 52-year-old nephew is gone, as of last week, after having a foot amputated and a kidney transplant. So now it’s happening to my generation instead of hers.

So when you read a book that basically says that for the last 50 years, the evidence that carbohydrates are the culprit of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, certain cancers, and even Alzheimer’s has been suppressed, what do you do? I’m already a wacky low-carber, but this is different. I look around and see some pretty obese people, including my ex-boyfriend and some other good friends, and just want to hold them down and force them to read the book. But the truth is that most of them won’t. They’ll keep going on diets and starting fitness plans that just won’t work.

It reminds me of the Southern Baptists that I grew up with. I can’t quote it exactly, but the idea is…if you saw a house burning, of course you would do everything you possibly could to warn the residents inside of the danger. So if you see someone who’s going to burn in hell, you’re compelled to witness to them and do everything in their power to ensure that they are saved. Yeah, I know — I hate that stuff, and have decidedly ambivalent ideas about what the hereafter may contain. I’ve even driven off Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses by saying that I won’t talk to anyone who is part of a religion that proselytizes.

So what’s a non-religious person to do, when they’ve read what is in essence the diet bible? I haven’t found a single thing that dissuades me from believing this book is the absolute truth. The only thing I know to do is to be successful myself. I may get a little argumentative on a few blogs, however — I’ve always felt more comfortable doing that.

The third incident happened today: talking with my mother about the presidential candidates. The candidate I support has been the subject of a big smear, that I’m sure is big news on Fox right now (it would make my job so much easier if she would step away from Bill O’Reilly and friends.) Even though the statements in question were not from the candidate, but from someone the candidate associated with, and were almost certainly fed by the rival campaigns, it has still made a big impression.

In this case, I just found the candidate’s statement and sent it to her. I’m not sure she’s persuaded, but the way I see it, the candidates have to be able to respond to the crap that’s being sent their way. I can help, since my parents don’t use the Internet, but I can’t be the truth squad for the entire election. There are people with far more ability and interest to do that than I right now. How well they do that job (and I’ll be doing my share as part of my day job, so I’m including myself in that — it’s just a matter of degree) could determine what happens in November, so there’s a lot at stake.

As you can probably tell, I’m still pretty ambivalent about the whole truth and righteousness thing. But it’s helping me define what’s the most important in my life right now.