Time. Passage thereof. Phone calls.

So many long decades ago, when my mother and I were locked in a downward spiral of self- and other-annihilation, I used to imagine what it would be like for me to face her helpless on her hospital regulation deathbed, unable to answer all of the memories I would recall for her…

• having hysterics at me because I’d rather carry a Kleenex in my purse than a cloth handkerchief.
• accusing me of plagiarizing my first wondrous poems — “Where’d you copy those from?”

… and others. I can’t remember the specifics now. Time and commotion bring forgetfulness to any woman.

I read somewhere, a long time ago, that all the traumas of youth and childhood, if they get solved at all, don’t get solved in the way that happens in movies, or television shows, or cheap “Contemporary Women’s Novels.” No algebraic solving for x. No happy families embracing as the credits roll.

No, one simply outgrows them. One gets involved with the grandiosities and minutiae of one’s own life, the husband, the childbirth, the raising of the son, the friends, the projects. I remember the pain, and if I work at it, I can feel the pain again. Not as intense, of course. Not intense at all. Or perhaps it is simply remembering the feeling, instead of feeling itself.

I don’t want to pin her down like that with memories any more. I want instead for something to happen, one way or another — that she is better. That she goes home. Revenge seems both inadquate and pointless.

Mom’s in the hospital now. John (stepfather) called while we were out watching LOTR:ROTK this afternoon. Peter took the call, which I deem heavy enough for any 17 year old, and gave us the news when we got home.

For a few years now, she’s had lupus, and with it some bad arthritis, and a couple of bouts each of pneumonia and stroke (recovered completely from latter). And a couple of years ago, she fell at the Miami airport — John said she just fell: nobody tripped her or bumped her, there was no furniture or other impediment in the way, not even a fold in the carpet. She just fell.

And she has a sore on her leg that still hasn’t healed from that. And one hand isn’t quite right from the fall since she fell on it and the tiny little palm bones broke and shoved their way through her palm.

So she was doing remarkably well for all of that until she fell yesterday (forgot in the hubbub of the present to ask John how the fall happened). She bled. They had a hard time stopping the bleeding. Something is wrong with her blood, beyond what might be expected with the assorted blood-thinners she was on. Doctor Who-ever is trying to figure out what it is now, as Mom lies in intensive care (since noon today). She’s sedated, hardly communicative.

So I dial up Expedia.com and type things in. And wait.