There's Never A break from Being a Mom

This past Sunday I slipped and fell on black ice while going out for breakfast with Kelly. At 60, falls certainly begin to take a toll on aging bodies. I landed on my left knee then left hip. Having RA as well as osteoarthritis, it's not so easy for me to get up off the cold wet ground as it used to be, but I got back onto my feet. Cold and wet from hip to ankle, I limped into Dunkin Donuts because a 27-year old's need to eat takes precedence over Mom's scraped up knee, sore hips, nd uncomfortably cold and wet clothing. (she did 'suggest' we swing by the house on the way to Walmart after breakfast so I could get dry pants.

Monday night, after work and dinner, I drove Kelly to the grocery store to shop of soft, squishy foodstuffs because she was having wisdom teeth extractions on the following morning. I dropped an additional $40 after Sunday's grocery shopping. Didn't have time to sit with the heating pad-I don't stand a chance of getting a place on the loveseat between cats, stuffed animals and daughter anyway.

This past Tuesday and Wednesday I took two vacation days because she needed a driver to take her to the dentist for wisdom teeth removal under general anesthesia. The dentist's office was downright cold with random weird people one would have encountered in the general assembly room of an asylum back in the day. I don't know why they migrate to dentist's offices these days. One of life's many mysteries. I just wanted to be left alone to read my book but a woman reading a book in the waiting room of this particular dentist's office appeared t be a novelty. One man in particular, who talked and chuckled to himself incessantly while completing a form of some sort, repeatedly tried to engage me in his peculiar little world, but sorry, my sphere of leave me aloneness does not intersect at any point with his sphere of giggly, attention-seeking weirdness.

Anyway, Mom was there to drive the blood-drooling patient home. Luckily I had grabbed a big blue plastic bowl having had experience with major tooth extractions during the course of my life. I got her safely home, parked her at the kitchen table so I could monitor her, changed out the gory gauze twice...and cooked her lukewarm chicken and stars soup for lunch because she was starving, not having eaten for over 12 hours.

While she rested, I hauled laundry downstairs with my knee, hip, and now low back pain and muscle spasms in my back and right hip due to the fall on Sunday. I made her a chocolate milkshake which she ate with a narrow spoon. I washed dishes, found ways to amuse and distract her from her misery, and watched over her when she dozed off.

Tuesday night, her father and I went out in a cold, pouring rain to pick up her antibiotic medication and ibuprofen (which she refuses to take, preferring Tylenol Extra Strength). I made her chocolate chip muffins for breakfast on Wednesday. At bedtime I had to find an extra pillow case and a spare bedsheet in case she bled and/or drooled while sleeping.

I hauled a trash bag full of biohazardous waste down the basement stairs to the trash can in the garage and cleaned up after her, limping around like Quasimoto, just wanting to sit down with a heating pad and rest, but a Mom's work is never done.

Wednesday morning I left her in bed while I got up early and went to a doctor's appointment. I came home to discover it had taken her an hour to eat three chocolate chip muffins because she had to break them into tiny pieces and swallow the pieces whole since she couldn't chew due to swelling and pain.

Is it cruel of me to remark that my daughter with her baby face looked astonishingly like SpongeBob SquarePants yesterday morning? I kid you not, the poor kid's face from nose to jaw looked like a cube!

But, we still went to Hobby Lobby for some colored inks we wanted for our drawing projects. She was miserable. The plan to visit Barnes & Noble afterwards was scrapped as wandering through this one store and waiting in a line because of returns, zapped her of all energy. So, bad home we went where more TLC was administered, lunch was made and the kitchen cleaned up afterwards. I had another errand to run and could hardly get down the deck stairs my back hurt so much, but I needed to get some things done. She stayed home and rested. I was back home in time to make her her afternoon chocolate milkshake. And I cleaned that up, too.

This morning I got up, made sure she had everything she'd need, and went to work, sore back, muscle spasms, staggering limp and all. Came home, started the laundry (I hate stairs right now!), shredded some leftover chicken for her in the food processor. She'd managed to make herself some scrambled eggs and shredded ham today, and a milkshake. We shredded some stew beef, mixed it with gravy and she had a "real dinner for the first time since Monday night, managing to eat soft green beans and thin egg noodles with her pasty beef pate.

And then she said we needed to go to the store to buy more muffin mix so she'd have something to eat for breakfast tomorrow...so after working all day, starting the laundry, helping with dinner, I drove her to Walmart for the muffin mix and a small hot/cold compress for her swollen face. Then came home and made her chocolate chip muffins and blueberry muffins for my husband whose nose would be out of joint if he didn't get a breakfast treat, too. I washed the dishes, folded laundry, filed her mail in the file cabinet, and put her to bed at quarter past nine.

I now have to wash up the muffin tins, empty the dishwasher, haul the trash downstairs to the garage...and then I can fall into bed...al with nary a heating pad touching this sore back, or that sore hip.

I wish my mother was still alive, but since she's not, I just want to say, "Thank you, Mom. Just thank you for everything you ever did for me and the sacrifices you made for my sake. I truly can appreciate what I never realized you were doing when I was her age." Now I'm the Mom. I hope one day she realizes I set my pain aside to care for her because she had pain. That's what Mom's do.

There's never a break from being a Mom...once you bring that little person into the world, they own you.

But, I would never say I regret being a Mom. It has it's moments, good and bad. You just ave to suck it up and keep going because it's your responsibility, not anyone else's.

Love you, Boo...feel better soon. I'll try to do the same..