Guest blog post: Love, Mom

Regular readers of this blog have heard me talk about my mom many times. Now you can hear her talk for yourself! (Well, I guess you can't really "hear" her, unless you go here. In which case you are also watching her. What I meant was now you can read something she has to say. Well, at least we know my brain is on vacation.)

When Lori asked me to write a post while she was away, I was honored. And since then I've been stumped. And puzzed. And awed by the fact that my daughter writes once or twice a week about things that cross her mind, things that inspire her AND inspire others. Am I crazy to do this? Am I in over my head? Well, I'm just unprepared! Then I began to realize that in the 50 plus years that have lived, I've been unprepared for just about everyhing I've ever set out to do; choosing a career, getting married (twice), getting divorced (twice), starting an advertising agency, selling my home of 26 years. There's more, but you get the picture. (This, by the way is why I couldn't hack Girl Scouts) However, in pondering my ever-present state of not readiness, I looked back on my achievements and am quite impressed at how they turned out. One of them being my daughter Lori.

Yes, I was prepared to have a child (you have 9 months to get ready for that). And of course I read Dr Spock (not theVulcan). But the truth is, I was never in love with kids. I never baby-sat as a teenager. I didn't googoo at infants in the supermarket. I just didn't relate to them. But Lori was different. Lori was special. Lori was the first grandchild in my family. She was that bundle of delicious joy that all families, especially grandmothers wait their entire adult lives for.

So, the only preparation made for that event, was that my mom would come for a week and help with the baby and I would relax and recover. Back then we milked that recovery time to the max- 4 day hospital stay, no breast feeding trauma, and grandma, ever-present with diaper and bottle in hand. During one of my relaxing periods I smelled something burning in the kitchen.

"Not to worry," said my mom. "The plastic bottles melted in the dishwasher."

"It smells poisonous," I replied.

So we opened the windows and mother and baby took a nice breezy nap. Dinner was a little late that evening because while grandma was out replacing the bottles, the rubber nipples that were sterilizing on the stove-top burned. We slept with the windows open a lot.

One afternoon my mother quietly informed me that there was something wrong with Lori.

"Come look at her. Her skin is an unhealthy color," she said.

I looked in the bassinet and saw this beautiful baby, sleeping like an angel, and yes, she had sickly, pale green skin. I tried not to panic, remembering in the back of my mind the time my mother rushed a kitten of ours to the vet for serious breathing problems, only to find out the little darling was purring. So, I gently picked up my baby and brought her into the hallway for a better look. To make a long story short, it's amazing how the reflection of newly-painted, 1970's sea foam green walls can play such dirty tricks on a new mother and grandmother.

And on a general note, how about the old falsehood, "Infants are so easy to take care of. All they do is eat and sleep"? I have a good response to that one. They eat, but they never fall asleep IN their cribs. My husband and I used to take turns on a nightly basis driving our sleep deprived selves and baby through the streets of Norwood, MA until one of us closed our eyes.

So, as the days went on, the expected became the unexpected and vice versa, and the new challenges became ordinary. Take for example the blog I was unprepared to write, it is now finished.


Funny how that happens.