FRESH YARN PRESENTS:

Something of Her Very Own
By Annabelle Gurwitch

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My dad and sister had voiced concern about the possible negative side effects of brain surgery. Memory loss, physical handicap, speech impairment. I wondered if instead, this surgery might improve my mother. Perhaps this tumor was the cause of my mother's inertia. I had always suspected her brain was like a gas stove whose pilot light had gone out; or not unlike a clogged drain, her brain, once freed from this obstruction, would be revitalized. Why there'd be no stopping her.

After seven hours, Dr. Heros entered the room. Yes, Dr. Heros, pronounced "heroes." Uh-huh, if you heard that in a movie you wouldn't believe it. We formed a circle around him. We spoke in hushed tones, nodded heads, he touched my arm, and when he left I turned to my sister and said, "I can't remember a single thing he just said." Luckily, Lisa had gleaned that my mother's tumor had been completely removed, plucked as it were, like picking a daisy. Tests would be performed later to determine if the tissue was cancerous. They were now ready to close her up. I had been so nervous, the only detail I was able to focus on were his long thin steady hands that had just been inside my mother's head.

Two hours later, we watched through glass as her inert body was wheeled into the intensive care recovery. I watched as they hooked her up next to other patients seemingly in equally or more dire condition. My mom was the only patient at the Jackson Memorial Hospital ICU that day without a police escort.

Soon we were led in to see my mother. It was inconceivable that only a few hours earlier her head had opened up, and here she was giving us two thumbs up when we told her the operation had been a success. As we sat with her, Seinfeld came on the TV in the ICU. It was an episode in which I had guest starred. In this episode, my character falls into a coma. There's my image, stretched out prone in a hospital bed, lying in virtually the same position as my mother.

The next day, it was as if she had fallen off the face of the earth. We found her alone in a room hooked up to machines. We stayed with her all day and observed as the occasional nurse... sauntered is the only word I can use to describe it, in and out of her room, on a schedule that was truly puzzling. Sometimes they came when you buzzed them; sometimes they were on a break and they were not to be disturbed. One uttered under her breath, "This ain't the Ritz, Honey," when I insisted that she look in on my mother because her IV -- her only source of nourishment, painkillers, fluids -- had run dry an hour earlier!

My family decided that someone should spend the night with Mom in her hospital room, lest reruns of Melrose Place should prevent the nurses from answering an emergency.

A rabbi once told me that you don't need to believe in the prayers, or even know what they mean. The mere act of reciting them brings you closer to God. Maybe it's the same thing with love. Maybe that's why I heard myself say, "I'll stay with Mom tonight."

Maybe, I just saw it as a chance to exercise control over her. Now she was all mine. But instead of venting all my pent-up disappointments and frustrations, what came out was: "Would you like your teeth brushed?"

"Uhmmm."

"Do you have to go to the bathroom?"

"Nnnn..."

"Are you in pain, mom?"

"Uhh..."

"Let me comb your hair, you know, I read a study that said that when women put lipstick on they don't suffer from as much depression."

"Mmmnn..."

I tended to her little needs until she fell asleep.

When that nurse said it wasn't the Ritz, she wasn't kidding. Uproarious laughter was how my request for a cot was greeted. One nurse took pity on me and procured a gym mat and a sheet, which I placed on the floor next to my mother's bed. At 2 AM, the night nurse looked in, took pity on me, and admonishingly said, "Get up, we never clean the floors, you'll catch something." She returned wielding an ancient wheelchair, which reclined just enough for me to collapse into. I fell into a twisted sleep, the last image that of my mother's sagging behind peeking out of the back of the hospital gown as she lay on her side.

In the morning, we began a regimen of walking the corridors. A really enterprising person would secure the right to advertise on hospital walls because they get a lot of foot traffic. We passed the other brain tumor patients on our way around with each rotation. Each had one clean slice of hair shaved off an otherwise untouched hairstyle, bandage covering the tumorous area -- an eye here, an ear there. My mom was sporting a kind of mohawk, one razor width sheared right up the middle of her head. Every patient on the arm of a father, mother, spouse, or offspring. Who were these people? Each one so lovingly tended to, totally absorbed in the acting of walking a few steps. We attendants, we nodded to each other as we passed, smiled encouragements to each other, little murmurs of acknowledgements. But who were they? I'll never know. I never talked to any of them, for the three days my mom was in that ward. There just wasn't any room for someone else's story.

"Does she seem any different?"

"No, no, she seems fine," I said when my sister came to relieve me. "In fact, she seems exactly the same."

"The tumor was benign," Lisa said. With the knowledge that my mother would live, I collapsed into a deep sleep on one of the army cots my father had rented for my sister and myself.

In movies, the mother dies. The mother passes on, knowing she was loved. The daughter learns compassion and becomes a better person.

In real life, my mother made a remarkable recovery. The energy of the crisis passed and a lassitude once again enveloped her.

Now, several years later, my overachieving sister and her family are marching for diseases we don't yet have. My father, at last glimpse, cell phone glued to his ear, was negotiating a settlement for some inscrutable business deal. My mother and I drifted into our usual pattern -- she, back to her lunch dates and me with my hurried phone calls. There is, however, a small but rather expertly stitched, lovingly rendered, animal print needlepoint pillow resting on my bed.

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