Let's Skip the Fight and Just Make Up

Noone believes me when I say this, but Juergen and I have never had a fight. I honestly don't know why. We are both incredibly hardheaded people. But as a general rule, we agree on just about everything. On the rare occasions we do disagree, we end up teasing each other rather than fighting. Now this is not to say that we haven't made each other mad, or hurt one another's feelings. Its just that we wholeheartedly adhere to the sunset rule: don't let the sun set on your anger. Neither one of us can sleep if the other one is upset. It doesn't matter who's right or wrong. If we want to sleep, we have to hug each other and say "I love you". That way noone admits guilt, but by the time the hug is over we forget we were mad in the first place. Works every time.

For Juergen

The room is dark but there is just enough light from the moon coming through the window that I can see him sleeping next to me. He's on his side with his back to me, which is the way he likes to sleep. "So I don't snore in your ear," he always says with a smile. I want to touch his back but I'm afraid I'll wake him and he worked so hard today. I knew he was tired when he made love to me, but he wanted to anyway. Now I want to touch him, and ask him why he loves me so much. But I lie still and watch him sleep instead. And just as my eyes get heavy, he stirs, and shifts, and rolls over to face me with his arm draped across my stomach. And he snores in my ear.

The Good Daughter

I don't believe I'm cut out for this.

I've been caring for my mother for 12 years. She came to live with me when she and my father separated, and I was moving to Tennessee. She had suffered a heart attack, and had been diagnosed a few years earlier with colon cancer, had gone through treatment, and was recovering. She was beginning to feel well again, and we looked at Tennessee as the beginning of a new life, for her, and for me. I had alot of plans and dreams, and I was happy to have her with me to experience everything.

But Tennessee was hard. We found a nice little house to rent, and I got a job in a Tanning/Nail salon. Business was slow, however, and Mom wasn't getting any of my Dad's military retirement benefits. I took a second job, managing a mall beauty supply store for minimum wage. I worked there all day, and went to the salon at night and on weekends. We still couldn't survive on my income, and to make a long story short, we moved back to Ohio after two rough years. Dad was very frail by then, and he passed away not long after we got home. He and Mom never reconciled, and she continued to live with me. Over the next several years, she developed more health problems...heart trouble, severe hearing loss, macular degeneration which is robbing her of her sight...and just general age related maladies that have her feeling bad alot of the time.

Mom is a stubborn woman. So am I. We've been close my whole life. Being the baby, i had her sole attention a good deal of the time, and we went everywhere together. We loved to go shopping and have lunch, and just run around doing nothing. As she grew older, and I grew more independent, our mutual stubborness began to cause problems. Now, she's 84, and I'm turning 47, and the occasional differences of opinion have turned into full fledged, more-often-than-not arguments.

I try to remember that she is old, ill most of the time, and set in her ways. I try to give her the respect that I know she deserves, and that I want to give her. Most days, I succeed. But other days, when the TV is so loud that the walls are vibrating, and I've folded all the sheets incorrectly, or I've come home from work an hour earlier than I said I would (?), it just doesn't work. When we're making a 20 minute trip to the Wal-Mart across town because she doesn't like the one 5 minutes from our house, and spending 10 minutes deciding which package of paper plates to buy, I forget that I'm supposed to be patient. And when she throws my mail away because I left it on the desk instead of putting it in the drawer, I blow my top. I yell, and slam all the doors I threaten to put locks on, and come very close to getting in the car and just driving away.

I have never given birth to a baby. I've never raised a child. I joke and say, "I don't have kids, I have old people". I've had Mom with me for so long, I should be used to her quirks, and the compromises to my lifestyle that are necessary to keep her with me, but I'm not. I am only human, ONE human at that, and I get tired and frustrated, and I lose my temper. I feel like a heel when that happens. I always apologize, and she always forgives me, and then a few days later, I get something out of the kitchen cabinet without washing my hands first, and all Hell breaks loose.

I'm NOT cut out for this.