What more could a mom want on Mother’s Day than to lay in bed all day, have meals prepared for you, no dishes, people asking how you’re feeling, a few hours to yourself without the yelling and bickering of children, full control of the remote? Spending Mother’s Day recovering from brain surgery in the hospital is all that and more. I certainly can imagine worse days, like having an absentee husband, and being responsible for entertaining the kids and your mother-in-law, who refuses to participate in anything that costs money and…well, that’s a whole other story. Yes, I am continually reminded that there are worse things that brain surgery.
On Mother’s Day last year, the nurse removed most of the tubes and connections. I was a puppet liberated from the strings. No more catheter. I could walk to the bathroom. The nurse also gave me a hat made by kindhearted volunteers. My hair was a knotted, bloody mess piled in a peak on the crown of my head. The incision ran across my scalp from ear to ear and formed a ridge darkened with blood and dark stitches. Pretty gruesome. My kids, especially my son, were fascinated and frightened by it. My parents drove the kids up from Athens for what turned out to be a very brief visit on Mother’s Day. I was thrilled to see the kids and worried about how they would react when they saw me. They were somewhat standoffish but less so than I expected. They brought me a nightgown for a present.
Despite being confined to a small room filled with gadgets and buttons too tempting to resist and being told to stay quiet, they behaved reasonably well. But the sound of their voices felt like daggers in my brain. High. Loud. Piercing. Still tired, and extremely sensitive to light ( I kept pulling my hat over my eyes), I finally had to ask them to leave and felt very guilty for doing it.
In past years when we lived in Sacramento, we spent Mother’s Day at the county fair. At the free event, carnations were passed out to all the mom’s. Both David and I love fairs — the animals, the crafts, the food, the rides. One of our first dates was to the California State Fair. I went into labor when I was carrying Ethan at the state fair and then brought him back as a newborn the following week. Ava went to her first state fair when she was a week old. Until we moved, we faithfully attended the fair every year and usually spent at least two days roaming the fairgrounds because there was so much to see.
So, that day in the hospital I was nostalgic for the past.
This year, David made breakfast. I opened my gifts. The first was a portrait of the kids in a beautiful picture frame. The second was a tiny video camera. Then David headed to work. I took the kids to the grocery store, had lunch, and then we went to Chuck E. Cheese’s for two hours of loud noises, whirling lights, and general over-stimulation. It felt a little bit like my recovery last year.
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