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2006-05-20 || 4:50 p.m. || here comes trouble || because my mom is my mom, we decide kelly will get her a rascal scooter complete with oxygen tank and i will get her the trucker hat that reads "here comes trouble." she is lying in a hospital bed picking at a turkey dinner. dad bought her a consolation bridal book and they are describing dresses over the phone because she isn't here. she was supposed to be here. she was to fly up yesterday morning so that i could take her on the grand tour of our wedding site and she could ask all the nuts-and-bolts questions that would never occur to me. i had made an appointment to an obnoxiously fancy bridal salon in which my mother would recline on a stately white couch while i stand on a platform in loaner bustier bra and underthings, shaking my head at all the dresses the poor salesperson brings me to try on. i had never been so excited for someone to visit. Mom-proofing the house took four days. I couldn�t sleep Thursday night. I printed out an itinerary, because I am like that, of places for us to go while she was here: boutiques for dresses, antique stores because I can�t get michael to go with me, restaurants I have categorized as mom-friendly. I imagined us walking down the sidewalk to fancy shops, arm in arm, stopping for lunch somewhere and drinking wine. I don�t hang out with just my mom ever. I wanted to toast our grown-up relationship. I�m getting married. She�s taken a plane to see me. so dad called yesterday morning. he has perfected the even unemotional voice after having acted as the spokesperson to mom's cancer updates. he says it like she stepped out to fetch the paper: "mom won't make it up there today. we had to go to the hospital last night." and i am good to the end when he says goodbye, and then I cry in the kitchen while getting ready for work. She hasn�t been breathing well. It occurred to me that now that she�s gotten used to regular trips to the hospital, to the fact that being healthy is no longer something to take for granted, she is more in tune with possible problems. She couldn�t breathe so she went to the hospital in the middle of the night. They ran tests on her lungs and heart. She�s in there now, regularly breathing with a tube I imagine, and will continue to be there to the middle of next week. She�s getting a biopsy. She�ll spend a day in the ICU. Last night I drank too much. I threw up and went to bed. This morning as punishment I walked in the sun to where my car was parked and thought of my mom. My dad called with the even voice to say they were still running tests, that it looks like pulmonary scleroderma, that he�s gone home for a while. He asks if I�m going out to look at dresses. I say I don�t want to do it without mom and choke up enough for him to get uncomfortable and excuse himself from the conversation. guestbook || notes || archives || profile || photos || d-land |