Nature’s Timing: Those Things We Can’t Control

I am experiencing one of those rare times in life when I am completely out of control.  And I mean that literally.

My Mom has only a few weeks left with me in this world.  And this is truly one of those times when nature is in control.  Like pregnancy, I am fretting over “when” and whether I will be strong enough to handle it.

My son Jake, who is my mellow one, gave me false labor pain for three days.  It was a random uncomfortable feeling that never really moved in the direction of full labor – refusing to start moving closer in timing.

Off John and I went to the hospital – naïve thirty-somethings with a neatly packed bag containing a little baby onesy, a framed picture of my Dad protectively watching me throw crackers to a duck beside a pond, stuffed toys and a CD player with carefully selected birth music.

The nurses sent us home twice.

Then the pain stopped as mysteriously as it started.  48 hours later the real process started – and when it all got going suddenly the whole thing made cosmic sense.

John ran around like a crazy man once it really began – so different from our preparedness earlier.  To top it off, when he went out to get that bag for the hospital he discovered that in the process of going back and forth from home to George Washington University, we neglected to lock the car somewhere along the line and the precious bag was stolen between home and the GW parking lot.

The second child, Monica – my hot-blooded one – refused to participate in the entire process.  My doctor told me that if she didn’t show two weeks after her due date, she would have to be induced.  Oh how I walked around the blocks of Eastern Market in Washington D.C. and Capitol Hill until almost the two week mark.

I knew she wouldn’t come by the deadline so I tried to take control and arranged for her birthday to occur before the two week deadline.  I picked day thirteen because the fourteenth day would have been the occasion of my Auntie’s birthday.  My Mom’s sister, the mean one who was always yelling at my cousins (and me) for no good reason.

She was the one who threw the aquarium out in the trash with all of the fish still in it because no one lifted a finger to care for them, complained about cleaning it, and neglected their feeding day after day.  This was after her boys made a huge scene in the pet store promising the moon if she would buy it for them.

She was the one who broke the BB gun their Dad bought them for Christmas (without consulting her) after my cousin Phil shot my cousin Gabriel in the back at point blank range.

When she saw Gabe crying she broke the gun in two.  But it was Gabriel’s instead of Phil’s.  Gabe was still crying and now had a broken toy on top of it!

We laughed a lot about that at my Auntie’s funeral a few months ago.  And I realized what little I knew then about how hard kids are to raise.  How thankless the job is, and how you should never expect a thank you.  And how hard you try each day not to lose your head lest your kids (and their cousin) think you are truly deranged.

I had them induce me the day before my Auntie’s birthday for that reason – I didn’t want to give birth to someone as “crazy” as she was.  And I was so wrong.

Monica still took her own sweet time, coming out like a boxer with a punched-out face – all pink and puffy – and angry that we had made her come out sooner than she was ready.

So now my Mom is now in hospice care and she is sleeping a lot more than she used to.  When she is awake she tells me she loves me and what a great a daughter I am.  I am there every morning to make her breakfast before the caregiver comes and the very good people of Yolo Hospice look in and hold my hand and call me on the phone with updates.

I know I am powerless to stop what I know is coming but I still wish with all my heart that I knew how much time I had left.  Of course, I don’t, and that kills me because I am used to being in control and I’m worried about conversations I should be having but can’t bring myself to have yet.

I watch my Mom sleep all curled up like a baby, and I try to think about timing and how you can’t force it, and how you really don’t know so much about the world, even when you think you do.  And I am still praying for courage, patience and wisdom.

Maybe that’s what I’ll say to her when I have the next opportunity.

She would love that.