The operative word being "balance."
My husband stoically stayed silent as he watched me wrestle the wind for a giant purple balloon adorned with butterflies across the grocery store parking lot. He didn't complain when the balloon blinded his driving periphery and he was forced to rely on my dubious conjectures about whether we were safe to proceed.
The hot dog soup was met with lackluster enthusiasm. The cake, now spackled to the side of its glass housing, was pried off and consumed politely. But the balloon?!? That was a win. Mom admired it all evening...getting up from her chair repeatedly to spin it around to view it from all sides. She complimented the color and the butterflies. Pleased as punch, I floated out of there. Brad reflected on the time that I had spent agonizing about and preparing for Mom's birthday...when he knew she would have been just as happy with me cutting her up some banana coins and eating microwavable Velveeta macaroni and cheese.
But it was Mom's birthday and his wife is obsessive so he holds the string loosely...still acting as a tether but letting me exhaust myself with my efforts. He was surprised by the balloon. Vee DeLong is difficult to predict sometimes.
Still soaring from my success, I decided to call Mom from school the next day and have my class sing "Happy Birthday" to her. We were so excited about this surprise. I put the phone on speaker. We listened to the ring and heard her pick up. "Happy Birthday, Mom!" I exclaimed. "I'm in my classroom right now and the kids want to sing to you."
"Who is this?" she asked sharply.
"Mom, it's Amy. I'm calling to wish you a Happy Birthday."
"It's my birthday?" she asked, confused. Eighteen pairs of eyes were fixed on my face so I had to fake my calm demeanor for them and my mom.
"Mom, Brad and I brought you a balloon yesterday."
"A balloon? Why did you bring me a balloon?" My students were receiving a lesson in real time and the waves of empathy from them washed over me as they watched me try to spin this epic loss into a somewhat weak win.
"Mom, would you please look at your TV for me? Right next to it is your balloon. Do you see it?"
Her voice suddenly changed and my room could breathe again. "Oh! Is it purple?"
I smiled. "Yes. Brad and I brought it over last night to celebrate your birthday a day early."
"That was so nice," she told me, "Are those butterflies on it? It's so pretty!"
"Mom, my 4th graders are here with me and they'd like to sing to you. Is that okay?
My mom's kind nature filtered through the phone. "Of course. I'd love to hear them."
My honeys sang earnestly to my mom and we could hear her trying to clap one-handed as they concluded. "They sounded so nice," Mom said, "Thank you."
We all said good-bye and I proclaimed it a "W."
"She didn't know you," one of my sweethearts commented sadly. I blame myself 100%. I call Mom every day at 6 pm so a morning call would, of course, throw her off. We were on speaker phone which changes the sound clarity of my voice. I should have also factored in the confusing conglomeration of winter holidays that follow Daylight Savings...Thanksgiving, her birthday, and Christmas are just ordinary days for her...days/weeks/months melt together and only the seasons seem to stick.
I wasn't prepared for the phone call later in the week when I encountered my indignant mother asking me why I didn't bother to call or visit her for her birthday.
Normally, I live in her reality. Adapting and adjusting to how she is feeling. Recently, our daily 6 o'clock phone dates have been met with her commenting that I'm "late" and how she's been waiting for, and worrying about, me. Daylight Savings makes it dark earlier and that darkness has become Mom's clock. With no discernible routine or even just a reliable TV show that she could count on to remember, she thinks it's time for bed when it gets dark. I don't adjust my phone call time in the hopes that it'll keep her up a bit longer and simply tell her each time that I'm "late" that I'll do better next time.
But I couldn't let her live in THIS reality. A reality where she thinks I didn't care about her on her birthday. Fighting the knot in my throat and the punch to the gut that her accusation had brought me, I light-heartedly questioned her. "Oh my goodness! Do you actually think that I'm such a terrible person that I would forget my own mother, whom I love more than anything in the world, on her birthday?" I exclaimed dramatically. My mother smothered a laugh at my theatrics. "You are not a terrible person," she told me. "Well, apparently I am or I wouldn't have brought you that purple balloon floating by your TV for your birthday," I countered.
There was silence on the phone as I waited for her to look and re-discover the best twelve dollar purchase I've ever made.
"Is it purple?" she asked.
"Yup," I crowed, triumphantly. "And it's covered in butterflies!"
"It's so pretty," she said.
"Not as pretty as my mama," I told her, wiping tears off my cheeks as I thanked God for this small win.
By now, Brad Mosiman had been gripping that string pretty hard...fighting the urge to reel it in. My mother has open-access to my heart and Brad Mosiman rarely cards her. He is her biggest champion in all things...except when that demon-directed dementia aims at his wife. He is gentle and kind and always observant to Mom's needs and frustrations. Only once has he corrected her and that was when she vented her anger at me. I will happily be my mother's punching bag but Brad Mosiman wheeled his chair across the room and sat knee-to-knee with her. Quietly, he pointed at me, sitting next to my mom. "You know how much she loves you and would never hurt you?" he asked her. She nodded. He patted her knee and rolled away.
So, as Thanksgiving approached...Brad Mosiman began shortening up, and even cutting, some strings.
I had gone squirreling up in the attic...ducking beneath the sloped ceiling to unearth the tote containing my mother's fancy dishes that she had only used for special occasions. A box containing a dozen canning jars stood between me and success. Half-way between a squat and a lunge, I grabbed the box to make a half-turn delivery and immediately registered my mistake. Brad discovered me an hour later, frozen like a statue...immobile and in pain. "I have never canned a day in my life," I cried, "Why do we have these?"
After carefully extracting me (and my mother's plates) from my little expedition, Brad Mosiman began to abbreviate some of my big plans. Snip. He traded the traditional turkey for a grocery-store rotisserie chicken. He peeled potatoes. Snip. He packed a jar of gravy in the bag. He didn't complain as I went to dig out my mom's nesting bowls that had belonged to her mother...he just nudged me out of the way so he could retrieve them for me. Snip-snip.
Mom didn't notice that the turkey was actually chicken.
Win for Brad.
She didn't remember the bowls but enjoyed the stories surrounding them...how she used the biggest yellow bowl for her delicious mac salad with crunchy celery in the summer and filled it with her incredible fruit salad with extra maraschino cherries at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I'm calling it a win. Brad wasn't so sure.
Mom didn't remember her plates but exclaimed over how pretty they were... admiring their opaque mother-of-pearl sheen.
Win.
Having a husband who so genuinely cares about my mother.
Win.
Every moment, good and bad, that I share with my mother.
Win. Win. Win.
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