It is finished.
    The Mother Poems page, that is, and I have some time to journalize a bit.
    My favorite Mom's Birthday event this year took place hours before her family celebration at MPS's house. MPS called me and left a message asking "what to do about a birthday dessert for Mom." I heartily appreciated and was touched by her concern. The answer was that for my mother "birthday" and "sugar" are spelled the same, sound the same and are, essentially, the same word. Before I was able to get back to MPS, she had already come to her senses. "You have to have birthday cake at a birthday celebration," she said.
    Absolutely. Very recently I decided not to worry too much about my mother's fluctuating sugar level. Firstly, she has only had diabetes since her 82nd year. Secondly, her blood glucose is mostly normal or only slightly out of whack (depending, often, on whether she eats late in the evening before bed or arises in the middle of the night to scrounge the refrigerator). Thirdly, the physician whose word on her diabetes I trust the most is not worried about any long term debilitating side effects. He is the one who first diagnosed her and gave her a choice about whether to treat it or not. Fourthly, her current physician began to harass me about her fluctuating blood glucose levels only when he was harassed by a consulting physician who is not intimately familiar with her history. Finally, over the last several years we have significantly reduced the amount of sugar she consumes and is stored in the house. Her history shows that an occasional sugary celebration is not going to hurt her.
    I was curious though, late in the evening after her family party, how her blood sugar was going to register so I took it at about 2300. Yeow! It was 323! This number stuck in my head for well over a day until, yesterday afternoon when relating this to MCF, I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to administer her diabetic medication at my sister's house the night of the party! Despite the fact that I had not only packed her medication but her Glucometer, too, in the contingency bag I often carry with us when we'll be away and eating for hours at a time, I had a very clear flashback of never accessing the bag during the family party evening! I even had trouble locating it when we were preparing to leave.
    She slipped right back to normal the evening after her family party and has stayed this way (at least during the times I measure her blood glucose) since. I rarely, now, measure her midday levels, as mild spiking seems to be the order of this period of time. I sometimes still wonder what her blood sugar is doing when I'm not chasing after it with a test strip but I've learned more than once that worrying about it is ridiculous and accomplishes nothing.
    The last birthday event unfolded this morning. On August 1st and 2nd my mother received two lovely bouquets from MCS and MFS. My mother loves fresh cut flowers and they've heightened our appreciation of each day since they arrived. Yesterday when I returned from my visit with my friend I noticed a third bouquet on the dining room table. "Who are those from?" I asked, secure in the knowledge that they were for her.
    "From MPS," she said, which seemed odd since, when she gets my mother flowers, she usually presents them at her home at the time of the celebration, but I didn't think anything else of it.
    This morning as I was passing the table on my way to make coffee, the card, still waving above the flowers, caught my eye. My name was on it! It was from MTNDN as a thank you for me keeping an eye on her house and collecting her mail and newspapers while she was gone for two weeks!
    I'll definitely mention this to my mother. She'll get a kick out of the fact that, being this month's Birthday Girl, she assumed that all bouquets belonged to her! This aspect of my mother's character is one of my favorite aspects. I have only once known her to shy from a celebration in her honor and then it was only for a moment and because she was overcome that she was being celebrated.
    My mother is a woman of a modestly displayed but firmly intact sense of self-possession, so you wouldn't guess this about her unless you'd seen her during those times when she is the object of celebration. Nonetheless, I consider it my great good fortune to have been raised by a woman who revels in being celebrated because, I believe, she knows she deserves it.
- posted by gail rae @ 09:42   email...this post