Habit

by Susan Morse

  I know how hard it is to put food on your family.

  But she’s really in the groove—cancer-free as far as anyone can tell, and her Wizard surgeon is very pleased. In fact, Ma’s had a pretty smooth recuperation in her apartment throughout most of the autumn, attended by cheerful home health aides thanks to the Long-Term Care policy. She’s now ready to risk ruining everything by going on a Christmas adventure.

  The siblings were full of helpful advice for how to handle this:

  Colette: That’s not safe; it’s a terrible idea. Tell her she can’t afford it.

  Felix: Tie her up and lock her in a closet.

  Home care had taken some figuring out at first. When the acute care rehab clinic released Ma about a month after surgery, their social worker (a rather limp, portly man named Fred who seemed to have pressing business elsewhere) told us she needed twenty-four-hour supervision for the first few weeks.

  Me: Who pays for that?

  Fred: Well, the family usually provides it.

  Me: I can’t provide it. I have kids and my husband’s away and there’s nobody else in the family who can do it.

  Fred (offering me a printout): Here is a list of home health care agencies. . . .

  Me: Long-Term Care Insurance only pays for about eleven hours a day of that. Who pays for the other thirteen hours a day?

  Fred seemed at a loss. He gave me a number to call for city services to the elderly: our tax dollars at work. This was really just an experiment. I knew we could finance aides on twenty-four-hour care for a short time, but I was curious about the not-so-distant-future when needs like this might be more permanent, so I decided to get the ball rolling and see where it went.

  First we got a visit from another social worker: Vicky, a short, roundish bustling Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle sort of person who started with some questions about general fitness. I like to be there to translate for these interviews because Ma pretty much speaks a language unknown to the average person.

  Vicky: Do you use a commode at night?

  Ma: Yes.

  Me: No, you don’t; you go into the bathroom with the walker.

  Ma: Yes, I use the walker, but then the commode.

  Me: Not exactly. She goes into the bathroom.

  Ma: Yes, I go into the bathroom and then I use the commode.

  Me: Ma. A commode is a portable toilet by the bed.

  Ma: I know that.

  Vicky: So you go into the bathroom and then you go back out and use the commode?

  Me: Oh, I know what you mean, Ma. The toilet is down too low, so we took the commode apart and put the seat bit on the—

  Ma: Yes. The commode is on the po-po.

  Next was the mini-mental. This is basically an oral memory test, very quick and easy to pass for someone as together as Ma, but somewhat nerve-wracking due to strong convictions and her need to share them when opportunities arise.

  Vicky: What country are we in?

  Ma (pityingly): The United States.

  Vicky: Who is our president?

  Ma (smiling smugly at me): Well, we’re very lucky it isn’t Hillary.

  Me: Ma, just answer the questions.

  Ma: It’s George W. Bush, thank God.

  Vicky: What holiday is coming up next week?

  Ma: Halloween, but that’s not a real Christian holiday. It’s a made-up excuse to sell candy and confuse the children.

  Vicky put in a request for home aides and told us not to expect the HMO to agree to more than two hours a week of help. This seemed pretty useless, but you never know. A week later, Ma called me:

  —Susie, who was that person?

  —What person?

  —She was crazy. She didn’t introduce herself when she called, she just said, “Would you like me to come over and give you a bath?” I said, “No, I wouldn’t. I don’t even know you.”

  —What was her name?

  —I never found out. An hour later, she called again and asked for directions. I thought you must have sent her so I told her where I was. But all morning, she kept calling over and over, lost. She’d say things like “I’m at Talbot’s. How far are you from Talbot’s?” and I’d say, “Who ARE you?”

  —Who on earth was she, Ma?

  —Susie, you don’t know, either? Finally, she called from the street outside and said, “Where should I park?” Then she called from the fifth floor and said, “Where are you, I can’t find you,” and I said, “I’m right here on the tenth floor, where are you?” Then, Susie, when she finally got here she was DETERMINED to give me a bath.

  —This is really crazy. Maybe it was—

  —Yes, it was crazy. I didn’t want a bath at all. I’d already had one, but she wouldn’t listen.

  —Well, I didn’t schedule anyone other than the usual people you’ve already got, so it must have been from Vicky—

  —Who’s Vicky?

  —You know, Ma; the one who came to talk about George Bush and Hillary and the po-po.

  —Oh yes.

  —So what did you do?

  —Well, I told her I wasn’t interested. Then she took out an apron and started filling the bath, and I told her to GO AWAY.

  And this is our tax dollars at work.

  So we’re using Michael’s ladies, paid by Long-Term Care Insurance, and as predicted, Ma is slowly becoming more self-sufficient. Now the walker’s in my basement, and she is down to a few hours of help in the mornings and evenings. We have her two favorite aides on a schedule, and things are pretty smooth.

  We also managed to get Ma over to our house for Christmas, which was not a real holiday, just another made-up excuse to sell things and confuse children. The Orthodox Nativity of Christ is on January 7, and the main thing to do is church, for like six hours or something. Ma is psyched. The rest of us are braced.

  Ma’s church, Saint Mark of Ephesus in Carlisle, is a two-hour drive along the Pennsylvania Turnpike in the farmlands. Nothing was going to stop her—she found a cheap but well-referenced driver to take her there, recommended by her friend Babbie. The idea was that he would drop her at the church and leave right away. Ma’s friends there had a place for her to stay, and someone to drive her home the next day.

  The night before the trip, I stop in to say good-bye and drop off a paycheck for the aide who’ll be coming early next morning to get Ma ready. The lights in Ma’s apartment are dim and the candles lit. She’s in the bedroom, all settled under the covers with a cozy pink cashmere shawl around her shoulders. When I lean down to kiss her good-bye, I’m more aware than usual of this role reversal we live with: I’ve been the mother of my mother ever since that turning point in Ireland with the gardener. In therapy, I’ve identified this seemingly unavoidable habit of mine as something I should watch closely. I have to remember to protect myself because of the intense frustration it causes. Tonight Ma seems so happy, like my children when they were small, wriggling with anticipation and delight, Santa’s cookies and milk set out at the foot of the bed. I’m surprised by a flood of real maternal passion, an urge to capture this precious moment and take a picture. Like Ma’s real mother could have felt, but most likely did not.

  I spend January 7 tying up yesterday’s paperwork mess and taking down our tree, thinking about how excited Ma must be, and wondering if she managed to get into that nun habit on time this morning.

  Sometime late in the afternoon, the phone rings.

  —Susie.

  —Father Basil?

  —It’s—yes. How’s your mother?

  —What? I thought she was with you.

  —No, I had to stay at the church. I’ll try to get over to the hospital tonight.

  —The hospital?

  —Didn’t Seraphima talk to you?

  —Who?

  It takes a while to piece this together from different eyewitness accounts, which include Father Basil, Ma, and a soft-spoken young church member named Seraphima. Seraphima’s been leaving me a series of updates on the cell, which I won’t pick up till the next day because m
y phone is turned off in my purse:

  Ten-fifteen a.m.: Susie? This is Seraphima. Mother’s had an accident but she’s all right. My number is 267-555 . . .

  Twelve noon: Susie? Mother Brigid’s hip seems to be broken, but her arm may not need surgery and the doctor is talking to her now. Can you call me? God bless you. . . .

  Two p.m.: Susie? I’m with Mother at the hospital, can you please call us? Christ is born, it’s Seraphima, and my number is . . .

  It seems Mother Brigid (in full costume) was delivered safely and efficiently by Babbie’s driver, a retired gentleman named Hopper who was missing a leg (really: Hopper, with one leg, on crutches).

  Saint Mark of Ephesus has a big open worship space with no pews. You’re supposed to stand. How they put up with this for hours at a time, I’m not really sure, but apparently it’s not unusual for worshipers to come and go and generally mill around. They do have seats on the perimeter for the elderly, and that’s where Father Basil immediately put Mother Brigid when Hopper went crutching back to his car. Ma was a lot earlier than expected, and Father Basil didn’t want her to get into any trouble, so he instructed her to sit still and not go anywhere.

  —But you know your mother, Susie. She does what she wants no matter what you tell her.

  The fall occurred ten minutes into the Nativity service when Mother Brigid of Carlisle defied orders, got up, and started bumbling around fixing and lighting some candles near the front of the church (of course, the Baumards’ rapprochement!). Apparently, she tripped on the hem of her voluminous nun habit, and splat.

  Ma is now in the emergency room at Carlisle Hospital, two hours from home. She is in no shape to be brought back here for the surgery. A hip and a shoulder are broken. Some doctor I’ve never laid eyes on, Winkleman, wants my permission to operate first thing tomorrow morning. So Ma is looking at an extended stay.

  On the phone, Ma is giddy from painkillers:

  —I did not trip on my habit. I just wasn’t steady on my feet. Somebody’s candle had fallen on the floor; it was still lit and nobody noticed it. I could have told someone, but instead I got up to fix it myself.

  —Oh, Ma . . .

  —And then I decided to light my own candle, and when I turned I stumbled and landed on the anbvon—

  —What’s an anbvon?

  —It’s the platform in front, where the priest stands during the service. I was right by Father Nectarios when it happened because that’s where the candles are as well. I was so thrilled to be there, I must not have been thinking straight. It was very stupid of me. Impulsive. You can’t be impulsive like that. And Susie, Hopper may be missing one leg, but it’s only the left leg, so his driving is perfect.

  —So what did Father Nectarios do?

  —Well, the service had already started, and he was so marvelous, he didn’t miss a beat of liturgy at all. Susie, it was amazing, he was saying all the prayers and I lay there on the floor next to him and said OUCH! and DON’T MOVE ME!

  —They tried to get you up?!!

  —No. They called the ambulance. We waited till the paramedics came to put me on the stretcher and that hurt. I’m afraid I made a lot of noise then, saying OUCH, OUCH, OUCH, but that Father Nectarios, he is amazing. He just chanted louder and then before they wheeled me out, he asked me if I wanted communion because it was time for communion.

  —That was thoughtful of him.

  —Yes, it was. He gave me communion right there on the stretcher by the altar and the candles. And Seraphima put a little prayer rope in my hand, and off I went. It was a lovely service from what I could tell; I wish you could have seen it. But Seraphima’s here and Matushka and I’ll be all right, don’t feel you have to come right away.

  —Of course, I’m coming. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay, but I’ll get on the road the minute the boys go to school tomorrow.

  I look up Doctor Winkleman on the Internet while he’s with me on the phone. I have never heard of the schools he attended. His group is called the Susquehanna Clinic, which doesn’t exactly have a reassuring urban ring to it, more of an ominous Deliverance/Dueling Banjos twang that makes me think of creepy mutant people in the wilderness with Burt Reynolds’s broken leg bone poking out of his skin. Winkleman does appear to have two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a mouth in his picture, though, which are all essential for any good surgeon, and he explains the situation very clearly and patiently.

  I call Felix, who quickly gets an old buddy from Yale in orthopedics to bestow his blessing on the proposed procedure. So I give surgery the go-ahead, cancel the aides, update David, arrange a ride home from school and dinner for the boys tomorrow, email the siblings, post the bills, drag the tree out to the curb, and pray. For another Orthodox miracle.

  15.

  Run Susan Run

  THERE’S THIS GERMAN MOVIE David and I love: Run Lola Run.

  Franka Potente (in a wife-beater undershirt and light green pants, sporting a big tattoo around her belly button and an awesome chin-length neon-red hair mop) is a young woman named Lola. In the opening scene, Lola gets a phone call from her boyfriend, Manni. He’s frantic because he has lost a satchel containing 100,000 Deutschmarks that belongs to his crime-lord boss. She has twenty minutes to get the money and save his life.

  Ready, set, go! Lola races to borrow the money from her banker father, dodging obstacles in the streets of Berlin along the way (an ambulance, a barking dog, workers carrying a huge pane of glass across the street). When her father refuses to help, she rushes back to Manni just in time to help him rob a store. They flee the police, and Lola is fatally shot in the chase. Just as she is about to lose consciousness, Lola says, Stop! Then the film starts all over again at the beginning with the same desperate phone call from Manni.

  This time, Lola runs in the same direction but handles each obstacle a little differently, thereby altering the outcome of a series of background stories. Things go even worse with her father, and this time Manni gets fatally injured, run over by the same ambulance Lola passed before. When Manni dies, they’re back at the beginning. It’s like a video game, with Lola and Manni using up their lives: Super Mario or Lara Croft trying to beat the level.

  I’m thinking Lola’s neon-red hair is doable for me. Something to add fun and flair to the rat race I’ve found myself in.

  After the hospital released her, my mother ended up in a rehab center not far from the church. I’ve made the mad dash to Carlisle four times in the last three weeks. I drop the boys at school and then I drive home, do the dishes, check my lists, and load up with assorted provisions (things Ma needs from her apartment, and especially food: the menu at the rehab place, Cloverfield, is limiting for a nonmeat eater). I gas up the car, drive two hours on the highway, get off the highway, bolt a quick bowl of soup at Panera, order some hot and fattening takeout for Ma, and drive through the farmlands to Cloverfield: Run Susan run.

  I allow three hours at Cloverfield tops. I unload the stuff into my arms, stagger with it down the hall to the skilled nursing wing, and dump it in Ma’s room. I then scurry back and forth between Ma and whoever I have to meet with there: therapists, nurses, social workers, business office people, whatever it takes to make sure Ma has what she needs to get better. Then it’s time to rush home: through the farms, onto the highway, run Susan run, to pick up the boys in time for dinner and homework.

  This extended stay in Carlisle has pluses and minuses. The distance is rough on me. But Ma is happy to be close to the church and all her friends, and it’s mutual. They’ve been very gracious to me, too. Father Nectarios is a nurse in real life, so he really knows the ropes. He steered Ma to the right surgeon at the hospital, and helped me narrow down the list of options for rehab facilities. Father Basil and his Matushka even offered to put me up if I was sleeping over, and everyone seems to hope that Mother Brigid will stay permanently. I’m not sure how I feel about that and neither is Ma, but we’re keeping our minds open. It’s the bright side of a tough situation: She doesn’t
get to see these people much as a rule, and she’s seeing plenty of them now. I get the impression the church members have been thronging in for audiences, which is a great comfort. Photini says they treasure Mother Brigid here, because she’s literally the only monastic in Pennsylvania. Their convents and monasteries are in other states, and if Ma had been younger and more active, she would have gone to live in one. Apparently, the people here in Carlisle feel blessed to have unlimited quality time with my little old mother. It’s sort of interesting to find I’m connected to a celebrity besides my husband.

  Today there’s a Care Management meeting at Cloverfield, and I’m invited. Ma’s not totally happy with the therapy, and I’ve got questions about health insurance. So ready, set, go!

  I get there by twelve and do the stagger thing past the front desk with my mountain of stuff. There’s a tiny woman by the nurse’s station peering into a huge birdcage with several parakeets. Her eyes are sort of rolling around in her head, and she and the birds are all screeching rapturously at one another. Ma’s nearby, in her wheelchair, determinedly reading the paper. There is an untouched bowl of pasta on a tray at her side.

  The physical differences between that Ma the night before Christmas, in bed with her pink shawl, and this Ma at Cloverfield are becoming a bit of a worry for me. She’s starting to look more and more like a molting, disheveled Whistler’s Mother. Her hair is growing; it’s at that awkward in-between stage. Along with getting used to Ma’s weight loss (more pronounced each time we see each other), I track the progress of this wispy pure white nun hair that will grow and grow till I don’t know what—it’s trailing off behind her. Soon we’ll have to figure out a way to put it up.

  On the way to therapy, we meet a favored aide I’ve been hearing about, whose name tag reads Fran.

  —This is Frohnces, says Ma. (Ma has an aversion to certain nicknames.)