My Dad is disappearing

I have been through a lot in my life. I was once in an abusive marriage..like the real kind. The kind with back damage and bruises. I was a single mom of 2 very young children for 5 years while going to school full time. I have seen pain is my point.

Nothing, and I mean nothing compares to losing my dad a tiny bit each day. My mom and him are the reasons that I have sailed relatively easy through my bumps in life. They have always loved me, always supported me, always let me cry on their shoulders.

Some days, my dad is just as always. He is the smartest person I have ever met personally. He is an engineer, and artist, a philosopher, a politician.

Some days, my dad wears a face that I have only seen in pictures of his youth. A tiny bit unsure, a tiny bit curious.

Some days, my dad is so frustrated and scared. He doesn't remember things. He gets frustrated with my and calls me my mom's name.

I had hoped to write an eloquent little essay about it. I am going to fail. There is nothing eloquent about it.

Things are going to get harder and harder as the years go by. From what I read there won't be too many - evidently the Early type is more aggressive than good old fashioned regular Alzheimer's. So things are going to get harder and harder and harder and then supposedly relief will come. That is what a few people have told me. My question is how is not having my dad, one of two people that have loved me under any circumstance in the world, the best man I have ever known, a relief in any way?

The sister

My mother has been very ill this week. She was in the hospital from Sun-Wed. My mom is back home and doing better and my dad is settling a bit, but they are not going to be able to watch my nephew when my sis goes to Spain for a week in 10 days.

I have agreed to take him for that week and it is going to be so interesting. We have very different parenting styles. I have always taken to the theory that I am raising adults, not babies. I think that she looks at things differently.

I am a little torn. I don't know if I should take care of him my way or her way. He doesn't sleep through the night. That scares me. I generally have 2-4 kids in my house in the morning. That could be rough.

Tooth Doctors Suck

I have a family doctor. That means that I can go to the same guy if there is something wrong with my toe, chest, head, butt, everything. It is awesome. He can even treat my lady issues. He is a genius.

I don't understand how one doctor can treat 99% of my body but it is going to take THREE to deal with my toofy issues. Evidently I need a dentist, endodontist, and oral surgeon to fix my dysfunction. (Not to mention 14K AFTER dental and medical insurance).

You see, my sister is a wuss. When she was delivering her baby boy that mind you was smaller than my 2 children, she accidently punched me in the face. The jaw to be exact. Being the good sister I took off and didn't mention a thing. She knows now, 2 yrs later however.

I have several teeth that need to be removed because she broke them beyond repair. My jaw needs to be worked on too. I have to get a bridge.

I AM TERRIFIED OF DENTISTS. Like, super terrified. My goal was for someone to knock me out for a day and a half and get all of the work done. (I am sure my sister could punch me out for cheap).

Instead, it is going to take over 6 visits, 3 doctors, and 14,000 single dollar bills.

I should have been a dentist is all I am saying.

Mama

I am 31 years old. I still really need my mama. I had a very tough morning yesterday and had to take a time out. My manager let me leave early and I went straight to my mama's house. She always makes me feel better. An hour later I was able to go back to work and everything was ok. It is amazing how mamas can make everything better.

I can't imagine a world without my mama in it. The idea is terrifying.

Trashy

I wrote this awhile ago....It is still true....

My oldest daughter learned the term “trashy” at a very young age. When I first took her clothes shopping as a toddler, finally moving past the little creepers and the independence that comes once they emerge from them, we tended to butt heads quite a bit. She liked to stand a good 3 yards away from me and browse the racks on her own. Naturally anything that sparkled was in her fists and her eyes would glaze over when talking to me about how much she NEEDED that particular shirt or skirt or dress. This was infinitely frustrating. It needn’t be, but someone in our marketing society decided to sexualize three year old girls.

When you browse the racks in the little boy departments you see the same t-shirts with trucks, trains, and cars on them that have been around since screen printing began. They aren’t marketed shirts that say “Hot Thang” “Girls love me” or other inappropriate sayings. It is preposterous to think about it. But the girls section is a different story. I fail to see why a 3 year old would need a shirt that says “Hot” on the front and I live in Texas. It gets pretty damn hot here.

To make it easier to navigate through the world of halter tops and mini skirts that someone decided that my little one needed and actually find clothes that covered her freshly un-diapered bottom, I taught my little one the word “trashy”. It was easy enough. She had a cousin that at 6 was well into the over sexualized world of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. My daughter wanted to know why she couldn’t listen to the music or watch the videos that her cousin so freely perused. I explained that Britney Spears was trashy. That young women should cover up their belly. That women don’t behave like that. I told her that I didn’t want her to watch things that she didn’t understand.

Shortly after that conversation we landed at JC Penney’s. The little one found a particularly horrific shirt and came up to me and asked very simply “mommy, is this trashy”. I responded in the positive and she gladly walked the shirt back to the rack and began looking for something else. Another mom was clearly not pleased with the vocabulary and I simply stated to her “Well, it IS trashy” and returned to searching.

It was very easy then. Because I was at home my daughter was with me 24 hours a day. Her environment was completely monitored and censored. Now, as she is in school with other children whose mommies think belly shirts or tube tops are great for 8 year olds things are getting difficult again. I find that we argue again. I tend to shop on my own for her clothes.

We don’t have cable so there is no MTV or other pop culture kiddie porn for her to watch. I explain to her everything that I can about being a woman and the difference between our morality and the morality of Abercrombie and Fitch and The Limited II. I explain that someday she will be buying her own clothes and she can wear as much or as little as she chooses then. I have drawn lines on her tummy with a permanent marker so that she knows where to pull the pants up to and the shirts down to. But somewhere, somehow, my daughter was exposed to enough of our societal trend to turn tweens into tarts that it is a constant uphill battle. It makes me angry and it makes me sad.