For all the years that the Kid and I lived in the hovel in Hawaii, we didn’t have room for a Christmas tree. Last year, after the craze of moving here, I didn’t really have time to get one, and when I did have time the Christmas trees were all gone. So this year, I wanted as large a tree as would fit in the current apartment, which happened to be 7′ tall, which happened to be beautifully shaped with branches clear to the floor, which happened to fit next to the television set, by the front door.
As was the tradition in our household while growing up, the tree was to be kept up until Epiphany (January 6th, the day the Three Wise Men allegedly found the baby in the manger). This is something OSM borrowed from OSF’s family, and it really was nice to have those sparkling lights on the tree until after New Year’s Day.
But OSM being the sort of woman she is at this point, having just had the discussion with me yesterday about said Epiphany tradition, proceeded to demolish the Christmas tree while I slept. At some point in the wee hours of the morning she took shears in hand and, starting at the bottom, began reducing its branches to garden fodder and stuffing them into little bags. The coils of lights, still bright and twinkling (!), rested beside the bulbs she had taken off the branches. I emerged from my room, stared at the carnage, then stepped over the ornaments and grabbed a cup of decaf.
In her mind, it would take her a few days to get the tree cut down enough that I could easily dispose of it. She doesn’t know whether this is December 26th or January 6th, all she knows is the job needs to get done.
I love my mother. I long ago relinquished any resentments I held against her for anything and everything she’d ever done to me. As I said to my ’ster, the mom living in my house isn’t that mom, and with the passing of that mom went all my anger and hatred and sorrow. There is precious little time for me to learn the things I couldn’t stand to learn before. She’s an exceptional craftswoman, a miraculous gardener, an amazing cook. She harbors stories of the days when Korea had a king, of courts and customs, of the inner workings of a noble household. She also remembers what it was like to beg for potatoes from G.I.’s and to suffer the loss of everything you own because some other country was taking over. As age ravages her neurons I want to glean whatever I can from the healthy connections. Her family’s history. Her culture’s history. Things that will matter to my own daughter in the years to come.
Since May, my home has been a cacophony of craft projects, drying underwear, mail that she’s asked me to read over and over again for weeks on end, and a small futon setup that she folds up and stuffs under my sofa when she remembers to do so. She is awake for a couple of hours, then asleep for a couple of hours. If I have a rough night with GERD and need some peace and quiet, I can count on the TV blaring from the living room, reminding me that the only way to achieve peace and quiet is to close the bedroom door. If I attempt to enter the kitchen at 3am I will be engaged in a random conversation that I can’t really turn down because she’ll follow me around and talk until she’s ready to let me sleep. She’s lonely for her friends back home, and I’m the only adult she speaks with most days.
She used to teach me how to fix things. Lighting fixtures, small appliances, a refrigerator or two. When the handyman didn’t show up for work in the days she’d managed our apartment building, she’d pitch in and do the mechanical stuff herself. Today, she can’t figure out the PUR water filter on my kitchen faucet. I taught her how to turn the knob. She can’t recall what she needs to do to get the filtered water.
Nearly every week since May, she’s told me she’s going home. On Wednesday, because it’s cheaper. I remind her that someone is renting her apartment so she doesn’t really have a home at the moment. She asks how long they’ll be there. I always say, “Until August, mom.” And she is always surprised they will be there that long. She asks if they are paying rent. I say yes, that she and I went to the bank just the other day to deposit the money. She pulls out a bank statement and asks me to read it to her. This woman, who managed to put two children through private school and kept us fed and clothed on her very meager salary, who knows more about Asian holistic medicine than most Asians I know, who survived the Korean occupation and all the prejudice the United States could throw at her, can no longer distinguish between a debit and a credit.
She forgets that I am sitting in the room with her when she feeds a part of her food to the dog, after being told by everyone around her not to feed her food to the dog. If I turn my back for a moment I find her stooped over the mutt, her hand outstretched, some tiny morsel passing between the two of them. I scold her. She chuckles at getting caught. “You told me not to feed him,” she giggles, “so I’m only giving him a snack.”
This has been my year, week in and week out, with OSM. It’s been an interesting year, and it’s changed some of my thought processes. It’s been hell on my kid, though, so I’ve applied to the city for some referrals to agencies that can help me put her in a better situation. They’ve been sending me a bunch of information.
Yet I don’t really know if I want her living elsewhere. I’ve rather enjoyed that she’s around, I’m just sorry I don’t have a spare room she can call her own. But these past months have shown me that her condition will only continue to deteriorate, and my focus has to be on the Kid who really needs me to turn down the craziness.
OSM’s about 3/4ths of the way up the tree. In another four or five hours, after she’s had a nap, she will be finished. I’ll haul the tree to the rubbish area and vacuum the floor in preparation for the carpet shampoo. Not exactly the tradition I wanted to celebrate this year but that’s ok.
I have Xanax.
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