Dr. Strangemom (or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the blog)

Oy Vein

Well, it looks like Robin is going to live. And I guess I'm okay with it.

Hahaha, I mean, I am very happy about it.

I know, I know, about five years ago I blogged about how I thought our marriage was in such great shape because I wished he were dead only about 50% of the time, and everyone got all worked up about my mean sense of humor and my cold heart and blah blah blahbbaty blah.

I still stand by my belief that if one is married for 37 years and wishes one's spouse dead only 50% of the time, that is a good marriage, but I'll debate that with you another time.  We cannot afford to fight each other on the small issues these days.

Robin has been very sick. The part you need to know is that I told him to go back to the doctor about a million times but he did not respect my degree in Ethnomusicology enough to heed my medical advice. You can see why I get aggravated with him and wish him dead.

Ha ha, just kidding. I kid.

The home health care infusion nurse came to our house to teach me how to do Robin's IV antibiotics. I paid close attention because, you know, I don't want him to die by my hand even though, from what I've researched, it wouldn't be Murder One if I merely didn't see that air bubble in the syringe because (I think)m my cataracts are growing back. Shit looks a little blurry lately and I'm concerned.

The nurse said to me, "Do you have any questions? You look confused."

I said, "Yes. Can cataracts grow back?"

Robin gave me that look. The one that says, can you not make this all about you for three seconds?

I said to the nurse, "So, tell me again...where do I insert the needle?"

She said, "As I explained already, the needle stays in his arm. It's a PICC line. You don't take it out."

I said, "And I put it in the red biohazard box afterwards, right?"

She said, "No. You do not take it out of his arm."

I said, "Then how do I get the medicine in him?"

Robin said, "Please admit me to the hospital."

Hahaha, no he didn't. At least, not out loud.

As of this writing, we've successfully gotten through his first three doses of antibiotics. I am in charge of the  cringing and gagging and taking to the couch with a cold compress on my forehead part of the deal, while Robin does the sterilizing everything, administering the medicine to himself, disposing of the detritus and fixing us both a sandwich afterwards. He lost faith in my ability to take care of him that first day when I grabbed the little bottle of Yacult probiotic instead of the little bottle of his antibiotic in the fridge and insisted it was all the same.

He told me to go into the bedroom and rest my cataracts. His tone was little bit bitchy but I chose not to mention it. He finished up his infusion, cleaned up and made us tuna sandwiches. He got winded and had to sit down on his way back to the kitchen.

The sandwich was a bit dry, truth be told.

I would have asked for a little piece of lettuce to juice it up but he was already asleep.

 

 

 

 

The Little Lord Cheeses

In the winter of 1965, the year I turned eleven, I turned my back on the Jewish people.

My sister and I were bored. Mom said to go for a walk, surely counting on the fact that we wouldn't. But it was the last days of winter break and we had nothing to do, so we put on our sneakers and hit the streets to check out the goings-on in North Hollywood. 

We walked without talking. Suddenly, Karen stopped dead in her tracks.

“Look,” she whispered, and pointed to a long driveway in front of us.

I squinted but didn’t see anything, which is not surprising since my eyesight is, like, twenty/five billion, and I refused to wear my glasses back then.

Karen pulled us both down into the bushes.

I held my breath. I was a hand-wringer by nature, and crouching down in a stranger’s pink oleander bush was almost more danger than I could bear. I felt a sharp elbow in my side.

“Look!” She whispered.

A blonde man in gray pajamas and a short blue robe was walking barefoot towards us, down his long brick driveway. He was carrying two paper bags of trash in one hand and a small blue-flocked Christmas tree in the other.

“Do you see who that is?” my sister whispered. I squinted harder as he came closer.

James Franciscus!

Blonde, dreamy, goyische, Mr. Novack from TV!

I felt all watery and jittery and nauseous as a hormonal revolution awakened within me. I was still a few years away from the mortifying self-consciousness of adolescence that would plummet me into insecure paralysis, so as I crouched in the bushes that afternoon feeling the first stirrings of infatuation, I was blissfully oblivious to the weird gap between my front teeth, my hairy legs and thick unibrow, and the fact that at eleven years old I was already five foot five and had more than a slight mustache.

I was staring into the blue eyes of James Franciscus!

I ovulated on the spot.

He tossed his garbage bags into a tall metal trashcan, leaned the Christmas tree against the curb and turned back up the driveway.

Karen flashed me a smile that sent my radar to high alert. Oh good God, she had an idea. I felt a pain in the place that would soon be my first ulcer.

"Help me carry it.” 

The Christmas tree?  No, no, no, dear God, no. No.

“Okay,” I said.

Such is the power of a big sister.

We schlepped the tree home and hid it in our backyard, deep in the yellow and red flowers of the lantana bushes that grew thick in the Los Angeles sunshine. 

Mom was starting to make latkes for the family Chanukah party that night, and the smell of fried onions and potatoes filled me with hunger and guilt and fear. The Jewish holy trinity.

 

Karen and I went into our bedroom to collect treasures that seemed Christmassy. Beads, buttons, our party shoes. We had no idea, really. We brought it all outside to the tree.

I was kind of sketchy on the actual Christmas story but I knew the main characters. I draped Barbie, Ken and Midge – the three wise men - in tin foil and gave them gifts of gold-wrapped chocolate Chanukah gelt for their baby. I set out ivy and juniper leaves for straw, and placed my pink sponge hair curlers on the leaves for their beds. Karen put out a walnut shell for the baby Jesus, an idea from the Thumbelina story we loved.

The family Chanukah party began at sundown when the grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles arrived.

When the grownups were settled around the Schnapps and latkes, I tapped my cousin Andrea on the shoulder and motioned for her to come with me.

"Don't tell the babies," I told her, referring to the other cousins who are, like, seven months younger than I am. Karen opened the back door and we brought Andrea into the yard.

The other cousins, smelling danger and exclusion, followed Andrea. They filed out into the dark yard one by one, and stood with us. I ceremoniously parted the lantera bush and unveiled our tree.

It was a truly awesome moment. Karen and I, already reputed to be the naughtiest of all the cousins, ascended to Jewish sainthood at that moment. A Christmas tree! 

Feeling the spirit, we started singing “Away In A Manger”, which was a song we all knew from public school, but when we got to the words “the little Lord Jesus”, I stopped. Were we even allowed to say Jesus' name???

“Cheeses.” I said. 

"What?"

“Cheeses. We’ll say cheeses instead of Jesus. It sounds the same.”

My sister nodded approvingly.

“Away in a manger no place for a bed….” All the cousins sang softly, our young voices filling the night, “the little Lord Cheeses lay down his sweet head…”

After a while, I looked up into the living room window of my house. Our menorah sat on the sill, its candles burning brightly. In the glow I saw my mom standing in the living room, playing her guitar.  Those were the years when my mother’s guitar playing and Jewish folk singing were a source of mortification for me and I distanced myself from anything my mom did. Those were the years when I was careful in public not to use the Yiddish words we used at home, like lokshen and kepele, the years when I begged my mother not to give me tuna fish on matzo during Passover. Those were the years I wanted to fit in, to be a part of a smiling, blonde family from a Christmas card. That was long before I grew up to borrow my mom’s colorful ethnic earrings, use Yiddish words in public and – to my own children’s mortification - embark upon my own career as a guitar-playing Jewish folksinger.

We stood in the darkness of the backyard, shivering in the chilly December night. I covered the walnut shell with a Chanukah napkin, wishing Baby Cheeses a good night. Barbie and Midge and Ken hunkered down into their sponge curler beds and went to sleep.

The cousins, cold and tired, went back into the house to finish off the latkes but my sister and I sat for a little while longer, adoring the scene, eating the chocolate Chanukah gelt and gazing up at the stars, breathing in the thick, spicy aroma of the lantara flowers around us.