For a few weeks after coming home from the hospital, my daughter affectionately referred to me as ‘brain tumor’, an accurate label, especially considering that the first thing I think of every day when I wake up is, what’s up with the brain tumor? How much of it is still there? Is it going to grow back? How quickly? Will I know when it’s growing? Is it really the reason I’m so tired, so foggy, gaining weight, or is it all in my imagination? Then I start taking my pills.
Yesterday, as I was driving up to Frederick, I had a million fragments of thought running through my head. Tired, Transition, Off Balance, Holding On. Each phrase or word held a fully fleshed out idea in my head, and my OCD wouldn’t let me let them go until I wrote them down. So, as I often do and have done for many years, I pulled over on the side of the road to jot down the list of words junking up my brain. And immediately, new words popped in, each demanding my full attention. It’s exhausting, and I feel like it’s only gotten worse since the brain tumor deal, perhaps because I have a harder time holding on to things, to words, to my actual balance.
I read somewhere that we are only really capable of remembering 7 syllables in our short-term memory. This helps reign me in a bit and forces me to either lose things or write them down when I get to 7. This has always been the way. Sometimes there are dots to be connected, but often the 7 syllables are unrelated.
So, what is up with my brain? I feel almost validated in my exhaustion and fogginess. I feel like these have been with me for quite a while, but only now do I feel justified in my hours long naps each day and my absolute inability to maintain a thought through to any kind of conclusion. It’s both frightening and liberating.
So, Nat doesn’t really refer to me (directly anyway) as brain tumor any more, but she’s taken on more than her share of responsibility and worries about me in a way I never wanted my children to have to. Recently, I realized that the reason I’ve been so attentive to Natalie as a young mother is because when I was one, I didn’t have my Mom. I was taking care of my elderly and very sick father, and I felt overwhelmed and rather alone much of the time despite having a wonderful and hands-on husband and good friends and family. I really needed more than anything in the world to be mothered. So, now, when I get up early to make my daughter breakfast as she drops off her son with us, when I pack her a lunch or worry incessantly over whether or not she’s sleeping enough, happy enough, loved enough, I realize I’m mothering my much younger self. And I’m so glad I have the opportunity to do this for her. To give her the love and strength and comfort I so needed. It is the strength that I have right now. To love her and my boys. To give them what I needed and to build them up so that no matter what comes, they are full, and strong and capable. My gift to them, but also to me.
Nancy Wiley writes. 