Overheard on Ward 74

Old Buster: "I need some batteries for my hearing aids."

Mom: "What's that, dear?"

OB: "Batteries for my hearing aids."

Mom: "I can't hear you. I think the batteries on my hearing aids are weak."

OB: "You have batteries for the hearing aids?"

Mom: "Are you wearing your hearing aids?"

OB: "I need batteries for my hearing aids!!"

Mom: "Yes, I have them."

OB: "Well then give them to me!"

Mom: "But then I won't be able to hear you."

OB: "Not yours, I want mine!"

Mom: "Well, I don't have yours."

OB: "Bring me some tomorrow when you visit."

Mom: "What are we talking about now?"

OB: "I WANT HEARING AIDS FOR MY BATTERIES!!!!"

Mom: "You're acting a little peculiar, dear."

OB: "Well at least . . . is this Regina?"

Mom: "I BEG YOUR PARDON."

I imagine this all went on a little longer, but at this point I admit that I went down to the hospital cafeteria to see if they have any of those excellent cans of gin and tonic. 

(They don't.)

Ward 82

I've spent the last week or so as a near-constant visitor to a hospital urology ward. So many poor old busters with leaky plumbing, you just can't imagine. I've Seen Things that I ought not properly to have seen, given that I am not myself a urologist or an aficionado of high-def photography when the subject is the insides of urethras. In some primitive cultures I do believe that I would have had to have married people based on what I now know first-hand about them. There are no braver and better people on this good earth than the nurses who calmly accept that they have converted 17 years of education into a daily opportunity to be peed on by strangers who just can't help it.

Actually, maybe there are.

I admit it: I've laughed and giggled, snickered and rolled my eyes heavenwards a good portion of the last 7 days. I mean, what's not hilarious about a whole floor of old men running around in their underpants trying to aim accurately at plastic bottles and using paint-chip cards to judge whether their pee is more like watermelon or pink lemonade or cranberry or tomato soup or beets?

But that's not the point. The guy in the bed across the hall from my patient was a British sailor who as a child was tasked with watching for Germans from the village church tower and to this day has nightmares about Hitler and balloons. One of the roommates spent the last 55 years farming on this stubborn tundra; you should see the callouses on his hands. (No wonder he can't quite manage that bottle.) Buddy down the hall is a transplant from Atlantic Canada, where he learned how to make steamed birch snowshoes from his grandfather and then used them to fish and log, hunt and trap to support his 3 orphaned sisters. Sure, he's not a big fan of doing up his hospital gown but I guess I got time for that.

I can always look away, right?

 NO NO NO I CAN'T DON'T LOOK AUGH MY EYES MY POOR EYES.

I tried. I really tried. It was horrible. They are noble and children of the universe and everything but it was HORRIBLE DO YOU HEAR ME.

The Cardigan of Becoming

A person actually said out loud today "Your mother is right." That person was talking about me. I am a mother. Someone depends on me for advice, for food, transportation, affection, common-sense hygiene protocols, the purchasing of anti-bacterial soaps when appropriate.

That this has been so for nearly 15 years now didn't really lessen my (temporary) astonishment.

It still catches me by surprise, this re-re-re-re-discovery that I'm not the person I remember myself being. I have now, for example, a wide-ranging collection of cardigans. Some are zippered argyle, some have little pearlescent appliques, but what unites them all is their boxy cardigan-ness. I used to be a creature found almost without exception in sweatshirts two sizes too big for me, cut for men. I moped around Paris dressed like a refugee for an entire year and cut a similar figure in other world capitals on two continents. No one could accuse me of dressing for the approval of the masses.

Which makes the trim little cardigans making their pleas for social acceptability that much the stranger. They have little pockets, some of them, for kleenex or hair ties or quarters. There is a Lego Theoden in one, given to me by a certain small person when I was heading off for a new client meeting (which went so well that I've carried it around with me most places ever since).

The sweatshirts and shapeless jackets were disguises that hid my youth and beauty with ruthless efficiency from every male gaze that might possibly be headed my way. There are complicated reasons for that. The cardigans, though, are a costume. They say, in a relaxed and competent way, "Lookie here, mommy is in the room. Of course I have a tissue and a Lifesaver. Let me dry your tears, affirm your hopes and dreams, and make you a healthy though delicious snack with precisely the right amount of kale in it."

I wear my cardigans like Theoden wields Herugrim. If employed at just the right time with just the right amount of flash and guile, they distract from the fact--the cold, hard, fact--that I am no one's idea of a Good Mommy. I am flighty and undependable, selfish, moody, incompetent, ruthless, dreamy, distracted, bored, worn out, uninterested, rude, and filled with ennui. I am a terrible cook. The laundry room is basically the set for The Upside Down. There are two desiccated mangoes on the dining room table that have been there since August. A professional writer and editor, it took me 11 tries to figure out how to spell "desiccated." But I am full of love, full of hope, full of good intentions--and nothing says all that like a super-soft Italian cardigan with shiny buttons and roomy pockets. Here, child, put your dreams in my pocket and I will tell you a story about how they all come true.