The Big Fix (18 page)

I assured her, “We're coming right after I finish school, Mom. I just have a few more months.”

“Keep those goddamned cats away from her, Tracey,” she told me. “They suck away the baby's breath!” I rolled my eyes.

Katie started to whimper a little. I could tell my mom was worried.

“Is that Katie?” she asked. “Put her on the phone.”

I put the phone next to her ear.

I could hear my mom. “Hi, Katie. This is your grandma. I love you very much, Katie. I am going to see you very soon. Be good for your mother.”

I felt my eyes start to well up with tears.
I am her mother.
My mother tried so hard to be there for me. Just as I would be there for my daughter. Katie doesn't care that I was a junkie. She just wants me to be there for her. I pressed her gently against me. The cycle of life had come full circle for me.

When I got off the phone with my mother, I reflected on how much things had changed. I had tried so hard to kill myself. I had tried to suffocate my emotions. I wanted so much for someone to love me. When that didn't happen, I started poisoning myself. Now, here I was, surrounded by people who loved me. I had my family, my friends, my fur babies, and my precious daughter. I had always seen myself as a victim of the inequities of fortune. Now, my life was completely different. My heart was full of love. For the first time in my thirty-seven years of life, I truly felt loved. I was going to get over this sickness, this funk that had hung over me for so many years. I was going to enjoy this family that was mine. I had searched in a million different places to find something to fix me. The solution was within me the whole time: love. As I closed my eyes with my daughter on my chest I felt a love beyond what I had ever imagined. I was exactly where I needed to be.

Chapter 10

THE BEST PRESENT

“W
hen I die, at least I'll know my children are taken care of,” my mother whispered.

Her comment gave me pause. I had one last reservation in my recovery. I was not sure if I could withstand her death without using drugs. I felt that the pain would be unbearable.

I was rocking Katie gently to sleep. Apparently, she had cried the entire time Christian and I had gone out to dinner. My mother had insisted that we have some time alone. I would have been satisfied staying on the couch with my feet up. All this traveling was making me feel swollen. I didn't dare tell my mother yet, but we were going to try for another baby soon. I wanted just to enjoy the few days we had together. Four days visiting my mom wasn't a long trip,
but it was all we could afford. I had no vacation time left. Since returning from maternity leave, I was barely keeping my sanity. Between clients, I was either pumping or napping at my desk.

Katie fell fast asleep in my arms. She was all cried out after her big night with Grandma.

As I set Katie down to rest, I asked my mom to repeat herself.

“When I die,” she repeated, “at least I know my children are taken care of. Your sister, your brother, you . . .” her voice trailed off.

“You have a long time left to go, Mom,” I reassured her.

I put my arm around her shoulder. My mother seemed so much smaller now than before. She had a big personality that filled up a room with her funny stories. She loved to dance. She loved to scream at the television during the Cincinnati Bengals football games. She loved her country music. Even when she was resting in her favorite flannel pajamas, she always seemed to be in motion. Now, she seemed down to life-sized. I could see her mortality in the way she walked with her shoulders slightly lowered. She had lost a lot of the pep in her step.

The last three years of dealing with my father's illnesses had taken their toll on her. For many years when I was a young child, I had thought she must somehow be the cause of his drinking. In my teen years, I was angry because I felt she was too accepting of his condition. In my twenties, I gained some humility—I was in no place to judge anyone. In the years when I was actively using, some would say my mother “enabled” me. In fact, she probably saved my life.
She found the strength to help me unconditionally in the same way she had helped my father. Our relationship had grown to the point where now I understood their marriage was none of my business. This made my life infinitely easier.

My mother had never talked about her death until recently, as she was getting into her late sixties. She was still trying to convince me to take a cruise for her seventieth birthday. I reluctantly agreed. Our family had started taking destination vacations together around the time I started dating Christian. We created some happy memories together. I was enjoying my family as a unit. As we all had families of our own, our resentments had subsided as our relationships matured.

My mother had always been the glue that held all of us together. Before this trip, she had never seemed to age. A little grayer, some more wrinkles, but basically the same appearance my entire life. She liked Christmas sweaters with brightly matching earrings. She liked to decorate every inch of the house for the Easter Bunny or with pilgrims at Thanksgiving. She always left a lipstick mark on her cup, always had tissues in her purse, and always kept a piece of chocolate stashed somewhere for emergencies.

My father, on the other hand, had been living in a cycle of hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and residential care homes. His old hospital bed, left over from the period of time when my mother had attempted to care for him at home, was on the back porch. The doctor had told my father directly: He needed to quit booze and quit smoking. These were an impossible task for him. I did see him drink less, but to him beer was a regular beverage, not the gateway to alcoholic
despair. I and many of my friends had success in twelve-step, yet my father, despite attending meetings regularly after having a series of strokes in recent years, was never able to achieve lasting sobriety. He was one of those people they describe in the AA literature as being “constitutionally incapable of being honest” with himself. In many ways, I think AA was harm reduction for him. He enjoyed the social element of being with other alcoholics. It helped him drink less and drink in a manner that was less harmful. If only he could have found a program that was more tailored to his goals. I never asked him if he wanted to quit drinking, but his actions told me he did not want to deal with whatever he would be facing without a drink.

After being unable to discontinue alcohol use, my father slowly gained a laundry list of medical conditions that ended in him spending the last of his years partially paralyzed from a stroke and intermittently confined to a bed. I often wondered how it felt for him to have my mother as his caretaker and sole advocate. He had spent so many years complaining about her, yet here she was showing up for him on a daily basis. There was no way to avoid the forty-plus years of history between them. Now, he had to spend every waking moment thinking about how he had fucked up his life by choosing alcohol over his family. It made me see him in a different light. I had done some of the same things he had done. It wasn't that I hadn't loved my family. I just did not know how to stop using drugs. I empathized with his predicament as one I had been in myself. As my father had told me many years before, the only places we addicts end up are recovery, the cemetery, or the penitentiary.

Here on our visit, my mother insisted that we visit him in the nursing home in the morning. The idea of seeing him both sober and fragile was terrifying to me.

My mother had been forced to take a part-time job to cover her expenses. There would be no golden days of retirement for her. Advocating for my father and his medical care had become her obsession as having a baby had become mine. Our lives were so different, yet we could be so similar. Getting me to visit my father was the culmination of her dreams—one chance for our family to be together again.

In the morning, we all stuffed ourselves into the rental van. Signing in at the front desk, I took a deep breath. I wasn't sure what to expect. I hadn't seen my father in a few years.

He was watching Fox News when we entered the common area.

“They are talking about the global warming,” he told us. He clicked the remote.

He wasn't much for starting a conversation.

I asked, “How are you, Dad?”

It seemed so strange to call him “Dad.” As if we were a normal family.

“I was watching this show talking about that global warming crap,” he said. “You know, scientists say that stuff isn't real.”

Oh, really!
I thought. Please let's start the day with an argument. It will be just like home.

I had barely sat down before my mother snatched Katie from me. She set her firmly on his lap and wrapped his partially paralyzed arm around her. Inside, I was freaking out. I knew he had a catheter and a bag to collect urine. I
tried to pull my mother to the side but she wouldn't have it. My daughter was going to sit on his lap whether I liked it or not. I started to feel both small and outnumbered again. This is what she had wanted all along. She knew I would have balked at the visit if I had known the main purpose was to have him hold Katie. I was confused by my lack of compassion. I spent all day with clients asking them to be gentle with themselves, yet it was extremely tough for me to have any sympathy for my father. I felt angry at myself, yet the results were the same. I wanted to get out of there, but I forced myself to stay.

Eventually, as time passed, the conversation became more fluid. There was nothing eventful about the visit itself. It was actually quite ordinary. But there was nothing ordinary about what that visit taught me. After two hours, it was time to leave. I told my father I loved him that day. I think I actually meant it. Sitting there with him, a prisoner of his disease, I finally started to feel an empathy for him that was nearly indescribable. If I had taken one hit more, had just one more infection, just one more needle shoved in my skin, would my fate have been the same? What was it like being so distant from the child who had once worshipped you? What was it like being taken care of by the person whom you had treated so badly? I felt a wave of pain as I touched his hand for the last time. My father started crying uncontrollably. I had no words for what I should say to him. I only knew I gave him one last chance to be in my life. My child had looked up at him as I once had. I had only known my father to cry a handful of times in my life. I was glad it was upon meeting my child and not at my funeral.

In the end, the visit wasn't about me resolving things from the past. There is a recovery saying that when you hold on to a resentment, the only person you are really hurting is yourself. When I first heard this from my seat in the rehab center, it was a revelation. It would have been easy to go on blaming my father for the past. When I let myself go to this place of anger, I frequently felt as if I was causing my own suffering. It was not that I needed to “forgive” my father. I just needed to start from the present tense. I could not change the past. I could only evaluate my life starting with the present. In the moment, I chose to try to get to know him again. I didn't want him to leave this world thinking that I hated him. My gift to him, maybe even to myself, was to acknowledge that I cared for him.

Sometimes I end texts with “l love you,” even to people I don't know all that well who are struggling. Because we all need a little more love in the world.

By the time I had worked through my issues by journaling, attending groups, and talking with friends, I realized the ex-boyfriend who told me I was worthless needed an eviction. I had given him too much time and too much space. Bye! This is just one example. Working through my past patterns had allowed me the room in my heart to be prepared for the final trip to see my father.

We receive so many messages about perfection. I do not want to be perfect. I just want to be okay in my own skin. I want to be happy with myself. That is enough. In that moment, in that best present, I chose to let go. I chose to give him what he needed. I told my father that I loved him. Not
for me, but for him. I know it made a difference. I didn't forgive him. The visit wasn't about changing the past. I still acknowledged how I felt.

When we left the home, I got the bold idea to make my mother a healthy lunch before we left for the airport. Without anyone to eat with her, the refrigerator had become a graveyard of meals from the past. One thing after another was expired. From meat to cream to condiments. I had the bright idea of making her something I thought was fresh and delicious, a stir-fry with lots of vegetables. I had added healthy cooking to my self-care list a few years back. I wanted her to see how I had evolved as an adult woman capable of taking care of myself and my family. My effort was not well received.

“Tracey,” she barked, “you are making a mess.”

She started wiping the stovetop.

“I am not even done cooking, Mom!” I told her. “Sit down!”

She kept moving around me as I stirred the sauce.

“Are you going to let me finish?” I asked.

“Well,” she told me, “I am not really hungry.”

That was the last straw. I put the lid on the pot and turned off the food.

“Let this sit for ten minutes,” I told her. “This is done. And so am I.”

It was time for us to leave. My mother was starting an argument with me. IT WAS TIME FOR US TO LEAVE. I didn't know when I would make it back here again and she was starting an argument with me over food. I was so frustrated. Why wouldn't she let me help her?

“C'mon, Christian,” I yelled to my husband. He finished putting our bags in the car.

Katie smiled as she cruised along the furniture. She was completely oblivious to what was taking place. I picked her up and handed her to my mother. She touched her face as if to say goodbye.

As we drove away from my childhood home, I cried my tears of frustration. All these years of struggling to rebuild my relationship with my mom only to have the visit end like this. A fight over fucking food. Why? I was shaking my head. How could the visit end any other way? Things had come full circle in my family. I was no longer the person who needed to be helped. I was no longer a young woman in need of a rescue. I wasn't begging to come back home. I was a strong, independent woman with a loving family of my own. It wasn't the meal that made her upset. It was the fact that no one was left who she felt needed her.

When the plane touched down, I called my mother immediately. I felt so horrible that we'd had a stupid fight.

“Mom,” I told her, “I am hoping you are okay. I am home and I love you.”

I could hear that she had been crying.

“I am proud of you, Tracey,” she told me in a soft voice. “I ate the food. It was delicious. How did you make it?”