I never had kids, never could afford them was part of the decision. I also didn't settle down with anyone or anything long enough. I was always what my family called a Free Spirit. I had some pets, but not much as an adult. I had a cat in my twenties, but I still considered myself a kid then. And I fostered a Eastern Slider Painted Turtle, but then I set him free with a colony of other Sliders. I felt it was wrong to keep him away from his kind. I cried and cried after I set him free. He didn't even wander away from me toward the lake on his own. I had to give him a few nudges and pushes down the hill. My heart still breaks as I recall seeing him look over his shoulder at me before he took the final steps into the lake toward the other of his kind, laying on logs and swimming around, looking at us curiously.
He used to come when I called him. He was very smart, interested, followed me around. When he was first bestowed on me, he was the size of a quarter. He ran around so fast I called him Scooter. When I released him into the wild, he was the size of a big hamburger. So I returned to the Lake later on and called, "Scooter, Scoooooot-errrrr..." I was crying and people on the trails were looking at me with concern. A turtle came up out of the water, his body partially floating under the surface, his cute face pointed up, his eyes focused on me. I prefer to think it was him.
Last year I got a kitten. It was love at first sight, I think on both our accounts.
My brother-in-law used to always comment on my great maternal instincts. I was like, who me, what-the-what?! But having this wonderful kitten and the opportunity to care for her, I guess he's right. I have known that I am my best when I have the opportunity to help others. I am a better person for serving others.
Just a like a Mommy, I have to clean her paws and her little bottom sometimes. I have to carefully clean her ears at least once a week. She doesn't like that, but I have to do that so that she does not get ear infections. I have to trim her nails, check inside her mouth and teeth. Clean her up after we have been playing outside. At times give her medications and treatments that she might prefer not to have, but I am always soothing as I firmly administer to her needs. I believe that she knows I am doing Mom things for her benefit. She might try to hide her face when I clean her ears, but she lets me. I tell her if she wants to cover her eyes and it makes it easier, "It's okay Sweet Pea."
I was a sickly, little kid. I was at the doctors' office for treatments every few days as a kid. I probably had just as many treatments at home as at the doctor. I really hated the administration of medication. I can remember lots of eye infections, laying on my Mom's bed, a white bedspread, laying on my back for long minutes at a time while the eye drops did their work and getting a half an Almond Joy bar, a section with two nuts, when the time was up. My Mom didn't want to hurt me. She just wanted me to feel better. In taking care of my kitten, I have understood more of just how good my Mother was to us, was to me.
Now my Mother who just celebrated her 88th Birthday has age related Dementia. One of the things about Dementia is that one tends to go backwards through time, living in further away from the present moments. Some people tend to dismiss the capabilities of those with Dementia as not being able to grasp what is going on. I personally believe that you don't know just how much the affected person is comprehending, if they cannot express something back to you. They may be receiving, they may be only partly processing, but unless it is your mind, you really don't know what they are getting.
The time regression has actually helped my relationship with my Mother. My Mother didn't really like me from teenage years on, until she started forgetting that she didn't like me. I think we both have started remembering just how much fun we had when I was a little kid. Most people who know me, would say I have always been that free spirit, that I never grew up. I'm not looking for my inner child, I haven't found my outer adult yet. We live in different towns, 300 miles apart. When I went to see her last year, I took pictures of us when we were both much younger, and we could both relive those memories. Age related dementia cuts into short term memory, the long term memories are usually the last to go. So we have renewed our early Mother - Daughter Love.
But she still has some other good sense. She will tell me she misses me, and I should come visit more. If she couldn't understand what's going on, she would not come to the conclusion that I had not been to visit recently. Although when I have been visiting, left her room for a few minutes and returned, she has asked me when did I get there. Dementia will break your heart, but the alternative of not having a Mother still on this Earth that you can see and touch, and never enough tell, how much you love and appreciate them, well someone forgetting some things is no big deal. We all need a little help every now and then.
I love that when I first got my kitten last Fall, and I was calling my Mom up to chit chat on my night off, and I was ironing and talking on the phone and I was dealing with the new challenge of trying to keep my kitten from pulling on the ironing cord or the ironing board cover drawstring, telling my Mom this. And she who others dismiss for having dementia, told me I also have to be very careful to keep her away from the iron when I am through, so she doesn't get burned. Hmmmm Thanks Mom. For all of my single adult years, I don't have a worry about anyone being burned on a hot iron except myself and I have put the iron on the table to cool down. Now I have to put it away out of reach so a kitten can't get burned. She was right.
I thought about how good my Mom was not only to me as a kid, she really took good care of us. But she also took care of my childhood kitten when I was too little to do as much. He was mostly an outside cat that did get to sleep in the garage, basement or landing when it was really cold or bad weather. I remember in an ice storm and the power was out, my Mother let him sleep in front of the fireplace by us on a little yellow rug. In the winter she would cook him a hot breakfast of a scrambled egg. She would cook up or serve raw those innards they used to pack away inside a whole chicken back in the day, chicken broth soup, gizzards, heart... I wish she gave him my share of liver - ugh - I became a vegetarian probably because of just the smell of liver. What is one of my kitten's favorites? You guessed it, Liver! I gag every time I serve it to her. But I love her.
One of the bad things about the regression of Dementia is that when one starts living their life in reverse, they are going to have to relive the bad moments as well as the good. My Mom was exceptional to us in light of the life and struggles she had. She would probably die if if she knew I was airing her dirty laundry, she certainly never aired her struggles with her children or many of those who thought they knew her well. Some knew of her struggles, but we were all from an era where you just shouldered the burden, didn't ask anything of anyone else and carried yourself forward. My Mom was born in the year of the Great Depression and sometimes things were worse.
Her Mother left her and her brothers and her father when she was about 13. Yet my Mother never shared any of that with us children growing up. And I have only heard bits and pieces in recent adult years of her disappointment, broken hearts and trust, the fracture of all of their lives. I can see the impact her mother leaving the family made on my Mother, her desire to be a good mother. My parents NEVER fought or raised their voices at each other around us. So, I guess there was probably some fighting between my grandfather, that I never knew and my grandmother, who I did know. He passed away a few years after she left, when my Mother was going to go to college. An uncle gave her the money to pursue college. Then the uncle died and she gave her endowment from him to go to Graduate School to her younger brother to pursue his Undergraduate Degree. My parents didn't drink. My Mother said that her parents drank and that caused the problems between them, and her father began drinking (more) after her Mother left.
In the formidable years that my grandmother was living in the home, she did a number on my Mother and her two brothers. Mom was the middle child. Both uncles passed away in recent years, and this had to be explained more than once to my Mother with her declining mental acuity. It broke my heart a few times when my Mom would say something in these recent years about her Mother and how she was, (demanding and meticulous), as if she was still around and my Mother did not know if she could meet her expectations. I began to understand why my Mother was like she was, demanding of herself. My Mother was rigid, and I always thought that was just her, and I was so free form and opposite, only recently realizing it came from her mother and probably her mother before that. My grandmother lied about her age and left to get married at 13, or so she told me. Anyone who wants to leave home and be a child bride, had some worse reason to want to leave home I suspect.
I wish I had known all those years about my grandmother and my Mother. When I first started learning the history, I thought my Mother didn't say anything not wanting to taint our perception of our grandmother, but I have grown to realize that probably wasn't it. I know that my Mom still tried to do things for her Mother up until she died back in the 90's and she was in her 90's. I have also come to realize that my it felt like my Mother tried to do everything she could to get some approval from her mother, which I don't know if she felt that she ever received. That's just horrible.
We all seek approval. I know I was a big disappointment for both my parents. But as a kid I think I was in such an ether, that I really didn't care about approval from anyone, especially my parents.
I think my Mother didn't talk about her mother leaving her and her family because of the shame, pain and embarrassment. Had I known that, I probably would have been a better daughter.
So, now I can just try to be a good enough daughter, to thank my Mother for all the good she did for me, for her children and grandchildren. I know that I am a good person who loves and respects all living creatures. I'm an excellent Earth Steward due to both of my parents. I am an excellent cook due to my Mom. I have her Irish, dedicated, hard-work ethic. I was pretty like her. I have her much sought after wavy hair. I have her love of long walks. I have her cheekbones and small build. I don't have her studious focus, but I have resolve.
I enjoy taking charge with a calm focus in crises. There was no 9-1-1 when we were kids. Seat/Safety belts were not mandatory.There were no street lights on our windy, suburban, hilly road. Several times a year some young driver out late at night crashed into our stalwart pines in the front yard. (Thank God we had those big trees, or the cars would have crashed into our house.) I recall one night my Mom going out to investigate a crash and my Mom ran back into the house. She had to get towels and told me not to come outside. A young girl had gone through the windshield. I don't mean a child, my Mom called a young female driver a girl. My Mom would have been in her mid to late 30's. In retrospect, I now wonder if the girl didn't survive. I am sure I didn't ask her if she died. My mother said that she went through the windshield and I asked her how did she know. She said because she left her scalp on the windshield. I had to think about that then for awhile. I did not know about exsanguination or ejection injuries. My Mom left a lot of unanswered questions when I was a kid that I was supposed to figure out on my own. Replaying the sounds from that night, the look on my Mom's face later that night after she came back in the house... it wasn't like the other times. I guess back in those days you dialed "O" for Operator, to call the Police and report the accident. But I think about my Mother being first onscene to that and many more vehicle accidents in front of our house. And how she would have been a comfort to those in dire need, who had lost control of their vehicles, crashed and been injured waiting for their folks or Police or an ambulance.
We lived in a time and place where neighbors helped neighbors. I knew that the other Moms on the street or my Mom's friends would take care of me in a heartbeat. And my Mom was a sympathetic and supportive Mom to all as well. If you have ever heard someone cry with the broken heart that only the cold and surprising hand of Death can coax, you have heard the sound of grief I heard one afternoon. It was just after we got home from school one afternoon. I was maybe 10. My neighbor who was about 3 or 4 years older than I, who I had known since I was a little kid and she sometimes babysat for us came across the street to our house. Immediately my Mother sent us upstairs. I wasn't sure what I had done wrong this time, but we went upstairs. And from there I heard the most heartbreaking wailing I have ever heard, until I cried those same tears of grief some years later. My neighbor's mother, one of my mother's best friends, had been in the hospital to have a common, cosmetic surgery performed, removal of varicose veins. It was safe enough. Her husband was a doctor, but not doing the procedure. And her mother suddenly died during the procedure. My neighbor was the only child living at home, still in high school. Her older brother and sister were away at college I think. And she was all alone. My Mom already knew that her Mom was going to be at the hospital for the procedure, and I think I did too.
My Mother was there for that girl when her mother died suddenly and she was devastated, absolutely heart broken. I'm glad that she was there for her. I however could never go to my Mom with problems once I became a teen. I don't know what happened. The disapproval?...
Does my kitten bring me toys to get me to play with her for herself or for me? She does bring me toys when she can tell I don't feel so well, or when she just wants me to wake up to play with her. And I get out toys to instigate play with her as well. It's the love and fun we have together. I have read that in training a cat, a cat will perform for your approval. I don't know how I want to feel about that, wanting her to do things so she feels that I approve or disprove. I prefer she knows that I love her. I think she does, why even though weekly ear cleaning is not her favorite thing, she knows that I care for her with great kindness and Love. We would both rather run obstacle courses in the house, play Cat-Fight-Club, catch or hide-and-go-seek, sleep, go for walks in the park, run in the snow, play tag or ambush, okay play anything or with anything.
When I go see my Mom now, she may or may not be making new memories of the new times we are together, but I am. As long as the memories of those you love live on in your memory, you keep those you love alive. My Mom can still laugh with me the way she did when I was a little kid. She still loves me, and I her, and we aren't real concerned about approval these days.
My Mom gave me a happy childhood. I can try to give her some happiness now. So, all of you out there, don't worry so much about not giving your kids the material things. Give them happy memories. Give them the tools they will need to be self-reliant, responsible citizens who will stay out of jail, help others and be good Stewards of this Planet Earth, Mother Earth. Give them Love.
You can follow Lucy on Instagram at and YouTube .
Lucy was bred at the Love Branch Cattery in Toney, Alabama. You can also visit the LoveBranchCattery on Facebook.
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