Next month I have to
travel to Florida to say my final good-byes to my mother, and being since I
have to go and do that, I decided that I would share a memory of a time I had
with my mother. I will start of by
saying that this is not going to be peaches and cream type of memory. The reason for this is that I really don’t
have any with her like that. We were
never particularly close and in fact I don’t have that kind of mother and
daughter relationship with her. Alright
so here goes…
In November of 1990 I
gave birth to my son. At that time my
grandmother was living in Florida, but she just happened to be visiting New
Jersey for a short spell. I am thinking
that maybe my son was aware of this and decided to come along two days early
from his due date. Anyways, I call my
mom and let her know that I gave birth to him and that since Gram was going to
be going back shortly thereafter, I asked mom to please Gram to the hospital
that very next day. Back when my son was
born, the hospitals only gave two times during the day for visiting hours,
because the babies came out and having too many people around could bring
diseases to the babies.
Anyways when the first
visiting hours came, I waited with anticipation to show my son off to my
Gram. The first visiting hours came and
went and still no Gram. At that point I
was not worried at all, because I knew there was still one more visiting hour
before Gram had to return back to Florida.
I just figured that my mom had something she had to do for work and
would bring Gram in the evening. I had
called Gram to make sure though that mom was still planning on coming and Gram
had confirmed what I figured. I could
tell from Gram that she was ultra excited about seeing the baby and me as
well. We talked for quite a while and
she shared her experiences with bringing babies home from the hospital. I loved when Gram shared her stories.
That evening my sister
arrived for the second time along with my son’s father’s family. My sister Tammy was so excited to see a new
addition to the family and the only grandchild of my parents. Tammy made sure she visited each and every
visiting hours, but her reason for this visit was to see my Gram as well. After my son’s father’s family left and Tammy
still remained she could tell that I was getting nervous that mom would not
show since there was only a short time before visiting hours were over. She asked my son’s father to get something
just so he would leave the room.
Tammy told me that she
was sorry that yet again mom had failed to do what she said she was going to do
and that I should know that Gram was super excited about my son’s birth and not
to worry about Gram missing seeing him.
I am not a crier, but anyone who knows about hormones after giving
birth, knows that I had lots of them and began to cry. When the nurse came in and told my sister
that she needed to leave, she gave me hug and told me that she loved me and
would see me the next day.
My son’s father returned
to see me alone and the nurse brought in my son for a feeding. About a half hour later, my son’s father and
I are engrossed in caring for my newborn son, when in walks my mother with my
Gram. I am not sure how they were able
to get past the nurse’s station but somehow they did. Within a minute I could smell the alcohol on
my mother and could tell by her excited personality that she had well then
enough alcohol to be considered drunk. I
could also see the concern in my Gram’s eyes that she was worried about my mom
as well.
Gram tried to make the
best out of the situation and was happy to actually get a chance to touch the
baby and tell me how very cute he was.
Mom tried to touch my son, but I kept him to me and Gram. When the nurse came in she was astounded that
mom got in and then when she asked mom and Gram to leave, mom said that he was
her grandson and she was not going to leave.
I could not believe that she was about to pick a fight with the
nurse. All I could do was give her a
look like I am so sorry. Gram was the
one who gave me a kiss and grabbed my mom by the elbow and escorted her out the
door. All the way out you could hear my
mother saying how it was unfair that she could not stay any longer.
Because my Gram felt bad
about the situation, she decided that she would change her flight plans and
stay a few extra days and visit me and my son in our apartment, and again my mother
showed up drunk, as she also did when she brought a family friend to my apartment
as well.
Since I was a teenager, my
mother was aware of how I felt about people who make that decision to drink and
drive and even though I was mad about how she was in the hospital, I was even more
mad about the fact that she decided that it was ok to drink and drive with my Gram
in the car. Through the years, my mother
and my father have had issues with drinking and I have learned to accept that. What I always found the most difficult to deal
with was their complete disregard to the dangers of drinking and driving.
