her exclamations of righteousness fill every hour of every day as she proclaims her piety she protects her façade of devotion with her illusions of perfection she announces her good deeds by never saying no she weaves wreaths of sacrifices she carries the cross of expectations over her broken body her fears wrap around her when she judges herself harshly with condemnation for human failings she kneels in supplication asking forgiveness for her sins
Coppyright 2024 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman
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A few days ago, we ambled into a “remember when” conversation after our son commented that he’s never met a woman from his generation who embraces a view that the partnership of marriage can start from nothing and work slowly forward over many years. The women he knows want a partner established in career with a steady income, vehicles that run, and the promise of eventually becoming “stay at home mothers” instead of remaining in the work force. So different from my own beliefs.
Our first apartment, in Bryan, Texas, had orange shag carpet. For the first four months of marriage, we sat on the floor, eating off of a large paper box. A friend had given us the foam mattress from a hide-a-bed to use as a bed. Our clothing, folded into neat piles, rested directly on the floor. We didn’t even have a laundry basket at first, and the few wire hangers we had held heavier items like our coats and jackets. The television set, black and white, didn’t have working horizontal hold. It rotated the single channel we tuned through rabbit ears. A wicker chair with matching stool and a white pole lamp, pieces I purchased while in high school, finished the furniture we owned. David entered marriage with one small old suitcase, one paper bag of clothing, his guitar (a gift from a friend), his bass, and cabinet with amplifier. My uncle had given us a partial set of American Airlines silverware. Our pots and pans, mix-matched, barely filled our cooking needs. That was okay. We barely had food for groceries. Those months, before our first paychecks arrived, were our pinto bean days.
Around September, one of David’s aunts loaned us an old mattress and table. We picked up a couple of folding chair, which graduated us to fine dining! We pooled our wedding gift cash to buy unpainted wood chests. Finally, our clothing had a home. The foam pad shifted to the living room for a “couch”.
Those sparse first months gave us the ability to do sacrifice for later goals. My college loans got payed off at a double rate. Once we moved from College Station to San Antonio, we kept our budget strict. Together, we roamed through department and furniture stores to select the furniture that fit a style we both loved.
For us, part of the success of our long marriage started in those first months of struggle. It gave us a foundation for working together for long-term goals.
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her exclamations of righteousness fill every hour of every day as she proclaims her piety she protects her façade of devotion with her illusions of perfection she announces her good deeds by never saying no she weaves wreaths of sacrifices she carries the cross of expectations over her broken body her fears wrap around her when she judges herself harshly with condemnation for human failings she kneels in supplication asking forgiveness for her sins
A huge part of love means sacrifice. I don’t mean martyrdom where you bemoan your losses or announce to the world the costs of your grand gestures. I mean the simple day-to-day surrender of your needs because someone else’s needs prove greater. Placing another person’s wants first isn’t fashionable anymore. This saddens me. I believe too many people seek happiness by chasing a mirage when the reality is that contentment comes from helping the important people in our lives.
I don’t believe anyone can traverse this life alone. I don’t believe in some magical cut-off point where parents should no longer aid their children. I don’t believe there comes a time when a child shouldn’t strive to care for his or her parents. I’m not talking about just financial support, either. We must give emotional sustenance when we see someone we love “starving.” If you look beyond all of the hype of what’s “acceptable” or “normal,” you’ll find multitudes of families who bond together, work together, and sacrifice together to reach a goal. That goal may benefit one family member more than another, but that’s okay. Some day in the future, it may be that beneficiary who steps in to offer support—to sacrifice.
A few summers before my mother
became so very ill, I’d started the ambitious project of scanning pictures into
our computer to save upon an external hard drive. I began with the pictures
my mother had brought up to San Antonio, which included a hodge-podge from her
childhood, my father’s childhood, and their married lives. She’d given up on
labeling each item, and instead wrote a brief timeline of their life together,
centering upon my father’s various assignments within the military. She devoted
part of each album to each of her children. Grouped over several pages would be
pictures of my sister, my brother, or myself from infancy through our adult
years. I didn’t scan every photograph, but I did do the majority of school
pictures and major events. I placed, on a special shelf in my closet, some
large photographs that would need to be scanned in pieces, reassembled, and
repaired in Photoshop. And then I forgot about all of my aspirations when Mom’s
needs changed and her care became more demanding.
The first weekend of November, I
spent part of the visit to my brother’s house delving into my parents’ closets.
Curiosity enticed me into old boxes and bins, where I discovered my brother’s
baby book and infant shoes along with my grandfather’s passport. Stashed safely
into a weatherproof bin, I uncovered some old photographs that I’d never seen.
I asked my brother if I could take the bin home to scan the contents with the
goal of having it back to him by his visit at Christmas.
Days have a way of slipping by
unnoticed, until I realized last weekend that we hadn’t scanned a single
photograph. And so my husband and I set about organizing and scanning pictures.
David’s a whiz with Photoshop, and he managed to refresh color, repair missing
sections of photographs, or reconstruct missing parts on people’s faces. As our
project continued, I realized just how wonderful it will be to have this at my
fingertips and to make copies for my sister to keep within her own files. We no
longer have to worry about something getting lost in a hurricane because copies
exist in several places.
Anyway, in with all of the pictures
of places we’ve lived and people we’ve loved, I found a small shot of the
saddest Christmas tree. For the 363 TEWS, this little tree symbolized their
lives spent away from their families—all of the anniversaries, birthdays, and
holidays missed. I found myself, after viewing so many of our family pictures,
drawn to this image.
My heart aches for those men of long
ago who longed for their families, homes and traditions. And it breaks to know
that our soldiers continue to serve “the longest year” in distant lands. My
imagination runs to another daughter skimming through family photographs and
pausing when she comes upon another sad Christmas tree in a barracks.
“Is that Daddy?” queried four-year-old Lizzy as she pointed her finger at a man dressed in green fatigues.
The young mother squeezed her daughter’s hand tighter as she answered, “No. I’ll tell you what you need to do. Look at the caps the men are wearing. Your daddy’s cap is dirty.”
Ten-year-old Paula nodded in affirmation. “Dad needs a new hat.”
Restlessly, the two children watched as airmen purposefully strode across the tarmac. Suddenly, Lizzy tugged free of her mother’s grasp and dashed toward a man wearing a dirty hat. She wrapped her arms tightly around his legs in the tightest bear hug her little arms could muster. The young man attempted to disengage himself from the small child, his face growing red as he scanned the area.
“Elizabeth Anne,” the girl’s mother dashed forward. “This man isn’t your daddy!”
“But his cap is really dirty!” Lizzy exclaimed earnestly.
The airman pulled his cap into his hands, embarrassed by the child’s observation and confusion.
“My husband’s been on a long TDY,” the mother explained.
“I understand completely,” the man said as he sidestepped the little family and continued on his way.
Hand on hip and head shaking in disapproval of her little sister’s faux pas, Paula pointed to another cluster of men approaching the fence line. “There he is!”
And there he was! Dad with a brand new cap cocked on his head. He jogged away from the other men and scooped his girls into his arms.
Karl F. Abrams--circa 1948
For years, my family teased me about the time I flung my arms around the man with the dirtiest cap, converting the story into a running joke that I threw myself at men. As an adult, though, I realize how much that childish mistake must have stung both of my parents. My mother did her best to talk about Dad when he left on long trips, but keeping his image strong in the mind of a four-year-old proved an almost impossible task. Tight on money, my parents didn’t have many photographs of each other around the house. After my mistake, my father gave me dashing picture of himself from when he first joined the Air Force to keep in my room.
For Veterans Day, we pause to honor the men and women who serve in our military, but we should also reflect upon the sacrifice the families make. When a young man or woman decides to serve our country, his or her entire family becomes a military member. The soldier misses birthdays, Christmases, and anniversaries. The soldier misses that first step, the lost front tooth, the touchdown, and the first broken heart. Every moment of every day, the families of these men and women ache for the lost moments. Our tributes to these veterans must recognize the full scope of their sacrifices.
The most difficult part of caring for my mother comes on beautiful days like today. We woke up this morning with crispness. The air carried a snap to it that caused me to pull the covers up a little higher and bury myself a little deeper into bed. When I let the dogs outside, I lingered in the doorway, sniffing autumn. Sunrise takes on a clear golden glow this time of the year, and I long to grab my journal or a novel and swing under the live oak for hours on end.
Edna Abrams and Koi September 29, 2011
Because my mother can no longer get into and out of her wheelchair without aid, she needs someone close by throughout the day. I never dreamed that her condition would mean sacrificing morning walks to the park or afternoons spent in the gardens. Her limitations restrict my movements as well. During most of the day, we stay in the same room together unless I’m doing housework. Even when I do chores, I swing into whatever room Mom occupies to see if she needs anything—and just to let her know I’m near even if she can’t see me.
My days become a difficult balancing act. On the one hand, it’s similar to having a very young child around—one that needs food to be the right temperature and cut into very small pieces; and one that requires help in bathing, dressing, and toiletry needs. On the other hand, I give care to an adult—and my own parent. I still try to defer to Mom’s desires and requests with respect. As speech becomes more and more difficult for her, expressing her wishes isn’t always easy. If she starts to laugh or cry, I’m at a loss to unravel what she’s asking for or from me.
Each day, Mom begins her bed routine around three in the afternoon. One symptom of her disease is an urgency to eat. She’ll demand meals or snacks in two or three hour intervals and waiting for something to eat proves almost impossible for her. Because Huntington’s Disease affects her ability to swallow, she’s limited in her food choices. I tried a few months ago to rely on frozen meals as a solution to getting her something to eat as quickly as possible. After a week or so, Mom commented that the food tasted horrible and started refusing to eat them. I now prepare huge meals that I know she likes and freeze them in smaller portions.
Once Mom eats her dinner, she insists on brushing her teeth and getting ready for bed. That means we’re pulling on her nightgown by four every afternoon. Since Mom gets up by 4 o’clock or 5 o’clock each morning, she feels exhausted pretty early in the evening because she doesn’t take any naps during the day. Mom will ask for help in getting into bed, get up ten minutes later with a request to go watch television, and repeat the bed-television-bed-bathroom-television-bed cycle until six o’clock. One day, she did this obsessive rotation more than twenty times!
Recently, she’s taken to ringing her service bell just to make certain that she hasn’t been left alone. Today, because she watched Children of the Corn earlier, she rang the bell several more times than usual, finally asking with a devilish grin if we had an ax in the house “just in case.”
Intellectually, I understand Mom’s need to have someone close at hand. My mother’s body traps her in space. Emotionally, it sometimes proves impossible for me to stay within the confines of her disease. Today, I escaped on a quick drive to Sonic once David returned home from running errands we used to do as a family. I keep reminding myself, though, that every day holds beauty. I simply need to look for it. Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman
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