My Mother, Once Again

My mother can laugh and make me laugh like almost no one else. I still remember finding my mother in her bedroom watching I Love Lucy, laughing so hard she could hardly breathe, tears streaming down her face, holding her stomach, literally rolling on the bed in hysterics. It was the episode where Lucy and Ethel are in Hollywood and Lucy's been gawking at William Holden when he decides to give her the same treatment just as she puts a big forkful of spaghetti into her mouth.

Side-splitting laughter is a gift and a privilege, and I'm so grateful to have had that door opened to me early by my mother. I have an instant affinity with any person who can laugh like that, and, I can't help it: I feel sorry for people who never seem to be able to give themselves over so fully.

Our conversations in this her eightieth year have tended more towards her anxieties, complaints, and daily menu plans, so it was delightful to call her the other morning and hear this story:

She'd gone to see her "intern", her name for her internal medicine doctor, who had told her she might have a blockage in her "corduroyed" artery, which made me smile and file away with the other medical terms she botches like "radio-ologist". Later she called it her "cahterahted" artery, and was upset when I told her that, no, I don't think there's a medicine you take to just clean it out. When she had lung cancer, she insisted on telling her oncologist that on Oprah Doctor Oz says "now there's a laser and you can just zap it".

But that wasn't side-splitting, and I probably can't tell this story to be that funny. Maybe it was funny to me because of our history, because when my mother laughs I laugh, because I'm ever-ready for a good laugh, because I'd not had one in a long time. Here goes and I'll try to recapture her telling of it:

"Terry, It was just awful at Dr. Enzer's. He had me in there talking for 3 hours! " (I questioned that. My mother is very prone to hyperbole, but she held fast, saying, "Well, in and out, but it was definitely 3 hours!)

"Anyway, they put me in that cold room and gave me a gown like they always do, but it was different. It had all these snaps and I couldn't figure out how they worked. At first, I must have been trying to put my head through the sleeve which of course I couldn't. Finally, with just one arm in one of the sleeves, I finally gave up, didn't snap a single snap and just sat there trying to hold the ends together so I wasn't hanging out everywhere. Then I got cold on that shoulder that was outside the gown, so I got my scarf and draped it over that side.

I can just see my mother with her ample bosom, hunched over, trying to keep the gown closed, her stockinged feet and skinny legs dangling off the table, with one sleeve sticking out, her black fuzzy scarf only half-covering her naked shoulder.

Between fits of laughter I ask her, "What did Dr. Enzer say about that scarf when he came in?"

"Oh, he just took it off and threw it over to the side."

"But that wasn't all. Have you heard about those long silk underwear? June gave me a pair and they're wonderful! But they didn't really fit my waist, so I'd cut the band in about six places."

"And you had those on with that gown?"

"Yes, with that band all cut up." By now she was laughing at herself as hard as I was.

"I know I looked like some kind of character. But he's used to me. Remember that time I couldn't tinkle, so I scooped some water out of the toilet for my urine sample?"

I remembered. And laughed again.