Do we ever get too old to need our mothers?

I was doubled over the toilet recently being sick for the third time in twenty minutes, when I realized something … I wanted my mother. It wasn’t like I’d never been sick before, but something felt just a little scary this time. So what if I was 54 years old, does the statute of limitations run out on being mothered?

My parents live with me, which makes it easier for me to take care of them as they have multiple health issues. Over time, it seems, I have become the parent in this relationship. I take them to medical appointments, I control medication, and I worry about changes in their condition.

But now it was about me. As I recovered from my third visit to the toilet bowl, I grabbed my trusty Blackberry and dialled the home line downstairs. My mother picked up the phone and I suddenly started to cry and blurted out “I’m being sick, come upstairs please”. I didn’t even hear her hang up the phone and she was upstairs beside me. She got a cold wet facecloth and pressed it against my fevered forehead and immediately took charge. She asked pointed questions trying to determine the onset of my illness and possible cause.

Over the next two hours I made multiple trips to the toilet bowl and by the end I was as weak as a kitten and could hardly make it back to my bed. As I lay spent and sore, she tried to entice me with Ginger Ale and Camomile tea, having success with neither. I tried to sleep but was unable to. She lay down next to me on my bed and began regaling me with an account of the baseball game she had been watching when I phoned her. As she spoke, I remembered back to November 2002 when I had surgery and she helped me get in the shower one day. When I thanked her for being there to help, she prophetically said “Maybe someday I will be sick and you will have to take care of me”. Less than two months later she was diagnosed with cancer. Our roles reversed that day and I cared for her through radiation, chemotherapy, surgery and a blood clot. My once invincible mother had become mortal.

Seven years later, she still has more energy than anyone else in our family. Despite ongoing medical issues with an ulcer that simply will not heal there is no stopping her. In her spare time she knits and crochets beautiful baby items which she sells to raise money for the Canadian Cancer Society and come June 11 she will be the centre of our Relay team when we participate in our sixth Relay for Life.

I’m a grown woman, financially independent, mature, confident, but when I’m doubled over a toilet bowl being sick, I am still my mother’s little girl and I’m not afraid to need her touch.

                                                    Happy Mother’s Day Mom!

Hug me like you mean it ...

I always wanted to meet Dr Leo Buscaglia but he died before I could. It wasn’t just his extraordinary lectures that I wanted to experience firsthand; I wanted to line up after the lecture with thousands of others to experience a Buscaglia hug. He was a master and an advocate of the hug. He had this to say about hugging:

“Nine times out of ten, when you extend your arms to someone, they will step in, because basically they need precisely what you need.”

I don’t know if it grew out of his doctorial studies or the fact that he was Italian but he surely elevated the hug to an art form.

I love being hugged. Not the air hugs from those who lean in to hug you without actually touching you. No, I’m talking about the hugs that leave you breathless and just a little bit sore. Those are the hugs that cry out “Hey I want you to know that I’m here”. My nieces and nephew hug that way. Their hugs are exuberant and uninhibited and usually accompanied by a kiss and an “I love you Zia Nadia”. My gay friends hug that way. Their hugs say “Thank you for your acceptance and your love”. My relatives in Italy hug that way. Their hugs say “Why do have to live so far away… Oh my God you look just like your aunt Flora… why didn’t you phone, I would have made gnocchi… I didn’t think I’d live to see you come back and visit again”. There are Italian co-workers at the office that will stop me in the hall to give a hug when they haven’t seen me in a few months. Italians certainly don’t have the market on hugging. I recently discovered in our Costa Rican Service Centre that Costa Ricans will hug anybody and everybody. I felt right at home there.

The hugs give me comfort, they sustain me and they feel so good. Hugs don’t cost a cent and they are healing. Dr Harold Voth, psychiatrist has said: “Hugging can lift depression – enabling the body’s immune system to become tuned up. Hugging breathes fresh life into a tired body and makes you feel younger and more vibrant.”

HOW TO HUG

Hugging may sound like the simplest thing on earth, but it will help to keep a few things in mind. Non-hugs are no good. In his book Caring, Feeling, Touching, Dr Sidney Simon describes five non-hugs:

I. The A-frame hug, in which nothing but the huggers' heads touch.

2. The half-hug, where the huggers' upper bodies touch—while the other half twists away.

3. The chest-to-chest burp, in which the huggers pat each other on the back, defusing the physical contact by treating each other like infants being burped.

4. The wallet-rub, in which two people stand side-by-side and touch hips.

5. The jock-twirl, in which the hugger, who is stronger or bigger, lifts the other person off the ground and twirls him.

The real thing, the full body hug, touches all the bases. Dr Simon describes it like this: "The two people coming together take time to really look at each other. There is no evasion or ignoring that they are about to hug... You try as hard as you can to personalize and customize each hug you give... With a full body hug there is a sense of complete giving and fearless communication, one uncomplicated by words.”

So if you should meet me some day and open your arms, know that I will step right in for a hug. Dr Buscaglia and Dr Simon would approve.

Our Bedroom

I awake on Christmas morning and look up at the branches of our Christmas tree. It is my 6th birthday and I feel like a Christmas present as the tinsel catches the sunlight coming through the chintz curtains of our bedroom. My whole family sleeps in this room. It is one of only two rooms which we rent in this house, the other room being our kitchen. It is 1961 in Toronto’s Little Italy and the semi detached two story house is on a street where English is rarely spoken.

Our bedroom is at the front of the house on the second floor. It is a square room crammed with all of our worldly possessions. Entering the room there is a dresser on your right and then my single bed against the wall. Beside my bed and directly in front of the window is my Mama’s Singer pedal sewing machine. My Mama sews magic with that machine, transforming used clothes into dresses for me. At Christmas time we always buy a small real tree and place it on top of the sewing machine which is how I always end up sleeping under the branches and picking out pine needles from my bed.

On the other side of the room is my parent’s double bed. Hanging over their headboard is a plaster relief of the Holy Family which they brought from Italy in the steamer trunk as a memento of their wedding. Beside their bed is another dresser and then on the far wall, the crib where my sister Anna sleeps.

The room smells of a strangely comforting mixture of mothballs, camphor oil and Mama’s perfume “Evening in Paris”. Every evening my Papa winds up his alarm clock and sets the alarm. The ticking sound measures the night time, along with Papa’s snoring. The 5:00am alarm heralds the start of another work day for Papa. Mama will get up and make him breakfast, pack his lunch pail and he will head out on foot, to be picked up by the construction company truck.

On top of the dresser is a framed picture of a beautiful blond boy holding a ball. This is my older brother Renato, who died early the year I was born. This room knew sorrow again; when three years after I was born, Mama lost twin boys she had carried full term. After that loss she was bedridden for months, overcome with grief and rheumatic fever. I would play at the foot of her bed all day with my doll, oblivious to her grief, until Papa would return from work to make us supper.

The house is rarely quiet. The owner drinks heavily and often beats his wife and children. As a child I remember feeling like our small family was living under constant siege and that bedroom certainly felt like a refuge. Yet I have such fond memories of that room, that house and that time in my life.