Mom

My mom is the best person I know.

She's the kind of person you end up spilling out your life story to.  Even if she is just your customer in the checkout lane (true story).  She is the quintessential mom, the one all our friends always called mom, the one who is always there whenever anyone needs her. 

I wrote recently about the fact that I have very little memory from my childhood.  Therefore I rely on my parents and my sister to fill in the blanks.  Most of my early memories are not actually memories of the event but instead memories based on repeated tellings of the story.  One of my favorites is from a time when I was almost three.  Cher was on the cover of Time magazine.  All I saw when I looked at the cover was my beautiful, olive skinned, long black haired mom, and I asked her, "Mommy, why is a picture of you on this magazine?"  There truly was a remarkable resemblance way back then, but the main reason my mom loves that story so much is the fact that she was seven hundred months (give or take) pregnant with my sister at the time.

My mom still has what used to be her signature long black hair.  Of course, now she must dye it to cover what would be a full head of white hair, and she wears it in a loose bun instead of flowing down her back.  And she no longer is the size that Cher was on that magazine cover.  My mom has a history of severe back problems due to Degenerative Disk Disease which have caused multiple herniated disks.  She also has weak connective tissue, which basically means that her insides keep slipping, causing hernias and prolapses of all shapes and sizes.  I honestly could not tell you how many surgeries she has endured over the years, all with their promises to fix whatever was wrong, all with their long recuperation periods.  We often joke that the surgeons should just put in a zipper to make it easier the next time around.  Ultimately nothing has ever truly stayed fixed.

What all that means is that my mom endures constant pain all day, every day.  She takes prescribed anti-inflammatories and pain medication, and often even that is not enough.  The debilitating back pain is one of the main contributors to the fact that she is now obese, and the fact that she is obese is now one of the main contributors to the back and leg pain.  It's a terrible Catch-22, and it is one of the main reasons I am so dedicated to losing the weight I have to lose.

My mom now walks with a cane and doesn't leave the house too much.  I wish I could change that.  We both joined a local gym that has an indoor pool, and she loved walking laps and wanted me to push her to go, but now when I call she tells me that she is in too much pain, or she has a bad cold.  I wish I knew how to help.

My mom is an amazing person.  I could write for days about her, but my timer has beeped, signaling the end of my writing time.  After venting how overwhelmed I am feeling with life in general, I decided to rely on my FLYlady teachings and use my timer today to keep me from getting so wrapped up in one task I end up ignoring the rest.  And since I have already given myself "just five more minutes" three times now, I really should move on to the next part of my list.  So I guess I'll end this the way I began, by simply stating the most important thing I could tell you about her:

My mom is the best person I know.



This was one of the writing prompts from NaBloPoMo.  I promised myself that I would write a post every day for the entire month.  I tried it before and only made it one day.  Let's see if I can do better this time!