Can't Cry/Stuck Horse Pill (Mouse Over)

Dear Kim,

I just tried to call my mother to see how she is doing. Her blood pressure is good. But she had just choked on a horse pill she tried to swallow that got stuck in her throat and was panicky.

(Kim: So it is almost 5 am and I have to go to the hospital for a medical procedure, so I'm in the medical mode. My mother had swallowing issues when she got old. She had her throat enlarged a few times, but I don't know if that helped.

We had a man from Israel talking at the college yesterday. He brought up the advances that Israel have made to world technology and pulled out from his pocket a $5000 pill that had two video cameras in it. You swallow it and broadcast a signal to the brilliant doctors.

He passed the pill around, trusting the audience to a point that surprised me. In the end someone just left the pill on a table and it almost got lost!)

Why do they make these pills so large?!!

My mother just had nine prescriptions filled.

Nine.

I have a hard time with swallowing, too. It affects my willingness to take certain vitamins. And I feel nauseated by the smell of them.

A few months ago, when I was having a check up with my ent surgeon, he ordered a swallow test. They found that my reflex time was a tad slow. Not enough to be a real medical concern but enough to be noticeable.

My heart goes out to my mother. She is suffering so.

I wanted to say good morning and to see how she was. And to ask her about whether or not she used a tablecloth when she was growing up on Rivington.

My dad said she wasn't up to talking. He held the phone up to her and she said, "I love you, honey."

And then she was off without another word.

There is so much I want to say, or more accurately to ask her. I think she knows how I feel about her and how I spend my days. I have often tried to share my feelings and thoughts with her which has been a mixed bag,

The nakedness of my honesty makes her uncomfortable.

She likes the outline, not the back story. Unless it is someone else. Then she loves the details.

I am the wild child that has frightened her my entire life. I don't and can't know where that comes from since she won't or can't tell me.

It may have started in utero. It may have been that I was very sick as a newborn and didn't bond naturally. Or that I caused a lot of anxiety when I had major surgery at the age of 18 months. It may be that I was a girl child and that raised different issues for her.

I don't know.

I know she thinks I am courageous, gifted and deeply principled. I also know she thinks I am overly sensitive, naive and not sufficiently self protective about the harsh realities of the world.

She is probably right on all accounts.

But however well she may intuit who I am, it makes her uncomfortable.

Although I have tried—goodness knows I have tried—her feelings and her life, have been a closed book for much of my life. I don't even know if she used a tablecloth growing up in a tenement on Rivington.

(Kim: Maybe we all should be required to spend some time in a nudist colony so that revealing ourselves is not so traumatic?)

I didn't learn that she slept growing up on a cot between the sink and the stove until I was forty something.

Maybe "I love you, honey," will have to be enough for now.

"I love you, honey," is plenty.

Still, my stomach suddenly hurts. I have a pain behind my right eye again and as I write these words, I am struggling with tears that feel lodged somewhere. That want to come out but can't.

Later,

Joan

Thursday, Jan 26, 2006

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