Supportive Mothers and Delusions

After the first day in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter I got back to the hotel and spent several hours writing letters to a bunch of people. After I wrote the letters, I sealed the back with wax and pressed my house crest into it. I sent them by owl later on in the trip.

While with most people I simply told them random bits about Harry Potter World, the conversation with Mom was very different. 


We have a lot of these sort of (hypothetical) conversations - about anything and everything. 

Here's a glimpse into our relationship.

My owl to Mom:

Mother,

I write you with ink-stained and aching fingers. The Three Broomsticks offered a hearty and filling feast - I was unable to eat until 10 hours later. A refreshing mug of butterbeer chased the heat from my body and Ollivanders was a chilling experience - this is meant positively, of course. Classes begin soon and I hope this owl reaches you before I am overcome with deadlines, textbooks and experiments gone horribly wrong. Do you notice I'm stalling? Hopefully your Gryffindor bravery will not fail you know. As you may have feared I've been sorted to Slytherin. Ramona - as expected - has gone to the pansies - I mean, Hufflepuffs. I asked a Gryffindork the time and they could only show me their watch, they couldn't read the arms. The language barrier has nothing to do with it. I've had one too many cauldron cakes and I fear my dreams will be of the Horntail and dementors. 

<3 Melissa

As I feared my letter came AFTER I returned home and started school, it arrived last Thursday, while I was in class. She responded immediately via Facebook:

An owl just landed for me!!! I suspected you would be sorted to Slytherin, perhaps you will be able to facilitate an end to the animosity between the houses. Speaking so derogatory of members of the other houses...Gryffindork and pansies....is not the greatest of starts. Sigh......I am sorry I am responding via Muggle technology but the owl  ate a bad mouse and is quite ill. See you at break my little snake. Study hard.

I know family is supposed to be supportive. But it's no wonder I have voices in my head and issues dealing with reality - what with her supporting all of my delusions so flawlessly. 

Do you have relationships in your life where you have this sort of fun? Have you told your family you love them lately (cause you should!)? Anyone as silly as I am?

Word Of The Day: Phantasm - Illusion.

Getting It Out

This isn’t good writing. Hell, it’s probably bad writing (I haven’t read it, just wrote it five minutes after the bottle of water). I’m posting it on blogger because I need to get this crap into the universe. Maybe then the world will start to make sense again. I feel like I’m in some alternate reality and I’ll wake up and my mom won’t really be here, like I’ve made a better reality in my own mind – one where she lived. 

She screamed my name, I turn to see the surf beating her down. She surfaces and I’ve never seen such terror. My heart stops beating. My terror rises to match mom’s. She’s going to die. I can’t watch my momma die. Momma. She tries to reach my outstretched hand. I needed her to reach my fingers. If I could just touch her fingers I knew it would be okay. Every time she got close another wave slammed into her, ripping her further away from me.

I can’t get any closer to her, the stone is soaked and the moss will steal my footing and I know, know despite my desperate need to reach her, that if I move closer, I’ll be gone as well. And then there will be no one to help. As I kneel the waves sweep over my legs and lower abdomen. It’s supposed to be cold but I can’t feel anything.

I scream. For her. For help. For anything that will make it better.

Running steps. Voices.

Hope.

Other partygoers have come to help. P steps into the surf, his hands close around my mothers. Another wave comes to sweep him out. D, his son, jumps in the water to help his father. A crowd is behind me, someone brings a lifesaver.

My baby sister comes running, ignores her self-preservation and goes to leap after my mom. She’s grabbed as she slips, and is pulled backward. Uncle S throws the lifesaver out. It doesn’t reach.

P and D get my mom to stand. Her dress is around her waist. Pull down your dress before you embarrass yourself – god, what am I thinking. My mom could die and this is what I think? A wave smashes them down. P and D move with the tide and push her forward. Sister grabs her hand and mom is dragged out. J, P’s wife and D’s mother runs in to save her family. I feel her pain.

My mom stands behind me, surrounded by others. Crying, chanting over and over “Look what I’ve done.”

I’m glad she’s safe but I’m too petrified to turn to her. To see her. Because I thought she was going to be gone and I don’t know how to deal.

I watch the other three get pulled out.

My cousin M turns towards me. I start shaking. Tears pour down my face. He wraps an arm around me and tells me its okay. I get myself under control. I walk back to my Uncle’s house, get a drink of water – my hands won’t stop shaking.

July twenty fourth my heart stopped beating. For one, horrifying, moment I thought I was going to lose my mother. I wasn’t ready.

The water mesmerizes you as it crashes against the beach, the waves sparkle and entice. You’re seduced by the sheer magnificence stretched along the horizon. You want to join, to feel just for a moment, what the ocean does. You dip your toes in. Relish in the freedom.

Peace settles over you, nature’s beauty spread beneath you. Maybe you feel powerful.

And then with a mischievous grin, the water tries to steal you, to assert it’s dominance. To prove that no matter how strong man feels, he will never have the upper hand.

Apples and Potatoes

(Picture from here)

The mysterious, ever illustrious they always say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. And, readers, I think I’m starting to buy into their propaganda.

Today after my English final (harder than I thought, though I love my essay topic – how people cope when faced with their mortality. In short in the essay there’s necrophilia and vigilante superheroes, you can’t get much more intense than that) I went home, did a bunch of boring things then went to my grandparents.

My grandma broke her elbow two weeks ago and had to have surgery, so she needs help with things like filing her nails and washing her hair. Anyways, so I was just going to file her nails and help her wash her hair but my Uncle B came over to make my grandparents supper. We end up staying.

Now my Uncle B has a talent for saying uncomfortable things at the perfect moment and his humour is fairly dry. So is mine. I also have traits from my grandmother (brutal honesty). And even a bit of the Absentminded Professor from my grandfather.

But the real reason for this post comes after dinner, when my mother and I went to the supermarket after supper.

We go through the store, grabbing trail mix and Eggo’s and other random bits for our trip to Whistler this weekend. My mom laughs because whenever I grab the boxes I grab the one hidden behind the first. It’s something she does and never thinks about. Neither do I.

After a rather mundane shopping trip, we take the gaudy yellow cart to the car and I hold said cart while my mother unloads the bags. A giant cooler sits in the middle of the trunk; loading is a little slower than usual. There’s also a pile of leftovers, for Sister, sitting in the one corner.

A lady honks her horn, startling me. I drop the grocery bag I’m holding into the trunk. I glare, grumbling about rude people, as I move the gaudy cart out of the way. It’s blocking a section of the parking space beside me. I would feel bad, if, you know, the parking lot had more than three cars in it. There’s ample parking and she just has to pick the one beside our car, that’s blocked because I’m trying to help my mom get everything settled, so we can leave (we both really had to pee!).

I mean, why can’t she pick somewhere else?

My mom comments on the multitude of spots available and I pick up the dropped grocery bag. Oh shit. When I dropped the bag, it knocked over the pile of leftovers, dislodged the lid on the mashed potatoes and corn and now there’s mashed potatoes and corn all over that corner of the trunk. The potatoes are mashed into the carpet since the bag was lying on them.

I apologize, feeling bad, because my mom is upset. Meanwhile, Lady in the silver truck parks.

My mom grabs a handful of the potatoes and corn, looks at it for a moment, and then chucks it at Lady’s truck. The potatoes make a wonderful splashing sound upon impact and coat the back wheel with gunk (that was, quite honestly, delicious).

I stare. My mind not really comprehending the childish behaviour, as if to assure me it had happened, my mom does it again. And again. And again. She’s laughing and I find that I am too.

“That’s not the kind of reaction you should have when someone annoys you.” Mom says, all serious, until she starts laughing again.

So that’s where I get it. My mom. All those random fits of immaturity, that are oh so satisfying. Pretty much, my mom with her projectile potatoes is saying: don’t mess with my kids.

Lady in truck leaves said truck. She glares at me as she walks by. She hasn’t noticed the potatoes and corn splashed on her truck. I smile back, because she’ll find the mess later.

My mom says after, regarding her outburst, “I know I shouldn’t have done that. But if you think about, the potatoes would never have been spilt in my car if she hadn’t have honked. So really, it’s her fault anyway.”

And there’s how I rationalize my actions too. Oh mother, the life lessons you teach me...

Tricks and Treats

I may not have gone on a party bus with forty five of my closest friends and gotten smashed last night (like my eighteen year old sister, who consequently, ended up going to the hospital because of her drunken escapades...her knee started acting up – what is with the two of us and inflammation this week?)

But I enjoyed giving out candy and watching scary movies with my Mom.

Since my Mom was giving out treats, she decided that she should also give the kids some tricks too. Half the time she would quickly swing the door open and yell “BOO!”

A darling little girl, just taller than my mom’s knee in a princess outfit looked up at her (in a way only little girls can) and said, “You didn’t scare me!”

My Mom, however, did have some success. She got one kid. One. And you would not even believe how proud of herself she was. There was a happy dance and several retellings to the parents of other Trick-Or-Treaters. Her treat for scaring the little (jumping) boy was some M&M’s.

Pet Semetary was on TV last night. Holy shit. I thought I was dark. I have nothing on Stephen King. Nothing. That guy is twisted (he also kind of looks like a turtle...).

I am now forever afraid of any little boys named Gage...heck, I think I’m now afraid of little boys in general. They are so deceptively cute, and they giggle and want to play games with you. It’s all fun and games until the little boy takes Daddy’s scalpel and slits your Achilles tendon and rips out your jugular with his two-year-old teeth. Yeah, not so much fun anymore, is it?

Hope everyone else had a good Halloween.

You should be happy to note that I got my Treat too (for having to go to the hospital). I got a new (also free) carpet today (well for me it’s new, but it’s in pristine condition and bigger than my old one). No more mystery (or not so mysterious) stains from drunken nights at my house with friends (meaning parties – most of them had behind my Mom’s back...).

I felt rather pathetic when my seventy-five-year-old grandparents and Mom ripped up the old carpet and put down the new one. Without my help. My bodies still recovering and I was a bit too shaky so I just watched (they also told me to get out of their way).

I wore my Swine face mask to avoid the dust and keep my grandparents safe from my coughing. There were some issues with Demon Bookcase and The Bed but otherwise all went well. It looks great and we’re all pretty happy about it.

A new carpet is a pretty nice treat, all things considered. So is having amazing Grandparents (they are hilarious, never pinch my cheeks, their house smells great, they are technologically up to snuff, and are superb conversationalists). It’s nice to have them back from Hick Town, Middle of Nowhere, Saskatchewan (they’ve been gone for two weeks visiting my ninety-nine-year-old Great Grandmother).

Anyone else out there with some nice treats heading there way?

A Trip To The Hospital

I woke my mom up at about three thirty this morning. You see, since Thursday, there’s been a pressure on my heart and I was getting random shooting pains that went into my chest and sometimes down my arm. I didn’t say anything for awhile because I thought it would go away.

But I was tired and couldn’t sleep because the pain was nearly unbearable.

On the way to the hospital, I laughed, “If this is my trick, I better get a damn good treat.”

My mom chuckled too and helped me remain positive. Whenever the pain would get too much she would start telling me a story and just keep talking until it passed.

The lady at the Triage desk was...unpleasant. My mother and I quietly discussed her miserable attitude while waiting for the lady at Registration. Key Banger (Registration lady) made us seriously miss Long Face (Triage lady).

In our haste to leave the house after calling 811 (they succinctly told us we shouldn’t be messing around with chest pain like that, “You should have called 911!”) I forgot to grab my wallet. My Carecard is in my wallet.

(You see, we were both scared about the intense pain a twenty-year-old (me) was having and the lady on the phone freaked me out when I talked to her. My Carecard was the last thing on my mind.)

Key Banger (rudely) asked for my care card. She was not at all happy I forgot it (or when I told her I had been to the hospital a hundred times already). She banged her keys viciously – she could not have hit those things any harder (trust me) while she entered in my information. Like really take a hammer to it already! It’ll get the job done quicker.

She was the kind of lady people write short stories about (I told my mom as much).

My mom was disappointed when the room (or curtained off enclosure) I got just had a swivel chair and no bed. I was too. Regardless, I sat there innocently reading the King of Horror’s book on writing again. Instead of reading her book, my mom would sneak out of the enclosure and spy on other people.

Every couple minutes she would come back with some interesting information.

“There’s a guy over there, I think he’s writing a novel.” She said, as I turned a page in my book, “He’s been sitting there for fifteen minutes writing.”

“I think it takes more than fifteen minutes to write a book mom.”

Also, the people across from us had been jumped and one guy got fifteen stitches in his head. My mom had some theories on them...

I got a blood test done (gross). The nurse (who had just finished calling me normal – for my fear of needles) looked at me like I was nuts when I asked, “My blood looks pretty cool, can I have a vial?”

My mom snorted. “I think you’ve been reading too many vampire books.”

“No, no. I read somewhere that an author had a vial of his own blood on his desk. I thought it was kind of cool.”

“He sounds crazy.” The nurse offered as she finished removing the needle (We use this needle on babies, no need to worry about it....obviously that wasn’t very comforting, for someone who is afraid of needles!)

What the nurse didn’t say but was written all over her face was, "You are crazy."

So the only time someone calls me normal they rescind it within five minutes...

My mother – being the light in the dark she is – assured me I was loopy and the nurse calling me normal was just a bad first impression.

Thanks mom.

My three hours at the hospital finished with me getting stickers on my legs, arms and chest. I felt like I was six(that was the last time I ever wanted to cover myself with stickers).

I’m not entirely past the this-situation-is-awkward-teenage-girl-giggle thing. Because I went red (apparently) and giggled hysterically as the nurse put stickers around my heart (on my bare skin!).

By the time she came back to my chest to hook me to the clips and the wires, my mom, in her unfailing wisdom, pointed out, “at least you’re not red anymore.”

“Yeah well, I figure you went through more embarrassment having me then I’m having right now.”

“That’s true.”

It was pretty cool watching the machine (all the tubes were connected to a machine) print out a picture with a bunch of squiggly lines on it. It was pretty.

A huge downfall is the pain in my chest could last up to a week. My chest cavity is inflamed (a consequence of my viral infection) and all the medication that helps with inflammation is really bad for asthmatics. So it’s just wading through.

But at least it’s not actually my heart.

As far as trips to the hospital go (and I’ve had plenty) this was probably the most entertaining. Ever.

Word Of The Day: ECG (Electrocardiogram) - a test that measures the activity in your heart