Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Vacation with Mother

Its been a while, eh? I've been busy, trying to eat well, deal with living on my own for the very first time ever, and right now, I'm sitting in a hotel room in Northern California, watching the light fade into fog, listening to my mother snore, and curiously wondering the fate of this beautiful state. This blog used to be dedicated to politics and other junk media before it started to bore me. Specifically, I wrote in here quite a bit regarding same sex marriage and Alaska politics.

I am for same sex marriage, and unions, and love. I think two people loving each other is a beautiful thing. Judge Walker the federal judge who overturned Prop 8 today seems to be a very brave man. I surely hope this doesn't go the way of all the other failed attempts to legalize gay marriage. That's all I have to say about that today.

As for my eating, I think I've been doing well. We went on a couple of walks today. One was hardcore (even though the trail was marked as moderate) and I didn't actually make it to the end. It started out relatively easy, but once we reached the bench, it started going down very steeply and muddily in all most a spiral. Off in the distance, I could hear the waves crashing onto the shore, and I knew if I just kept at it a little longer, I would be rewarded. But the trail wouldn't let up, and it was raining, and I just had to turn around. Of course I was a little disappointed I hadn't finished it, but climbing up from where I stopped was so intense, I had to stop every 10 feet to catch my breath. It was a good thing I stopped where I did, because just when I was about to reach where I had left my mom, I saw her working her way down the trail.

My mom broke her leg last year. Her thigh bone snapped then shattered, and there's 17 pins and a titanium rod holding it together now. She is also overweight like me, (I'm over weight like her?) and has really bad arthritis in both of her knees. She sometimes uses a cane, and can't really walk for more than 15 minutes at a time. Each step she takes is a terrible terrible struggle. Her going down that trail might have made toss in her towel, no joke. It was brutal. Gorgeous, but brutal.


She's also done all of the driving because I never learned how. It was interesting  to see her when she wasn't in control of the situation. I don't think I realized how much she needed to be in control. I always felt like she didn't have control over me, but my opinion is starting to change a little. We got in a sky tram to view the Trees of Mystery and she almost vomited because she didn't have control over the situation. It was weird.

We also had a fight about food. At the restaurant yesterday, I ordered a 1/4 rack of ribs. She then told the waiter to make it a 1/2 rack because she might want to eat some later. She insisted. I didn't want all that meat. I wanted what I wanted. There was good chance that I wouldn't have eaten all of the 1/4 rack because I wasn't really that hungry. But instead, she won, and we didn't talk for all of dinner.

Have you ever had to fight your own mother for food? I felt like I was 5 years old again, disappointed to open the fridge after school, expecting to see my dessert from the night before, just to realize it had already been eaten. This happened all through out my childhood. If I didn't eat it first, if I didn't eat it all, then there was a good chance I would never have the opportunity to eat it again. We were poor. There were many many days when we just didn't know where our next meal was going to come from.

I hate feeling that way. Its just food, and more can be obtained. I know this now. But sitting in that restaurant, with my back to everyone (so I wouldn't make faces or stare at the other guests, because that's what I did when when I was a child- don't all of them? This two year old was totally flirting with me today at lunch!), not being allowed to order what I wanted to order, made me flip my lid. I followed the beach back to the hotel (which was something I needed) which was about a mile away, and tried to work out my anger. As soon as I got to the room, my mom left. She couldn't be around me either.  (This is all figured out and water under the bridge, by the way)

(That's my "I'm stressed and I don't know what to do next!" face)

I'm about to go to bed, we have another long day of driving and not much else tomorrow. We're going up the hwy 101, and going to stay the night in some small town off the ocean in Oregon, before finally making our way "home". I don't have a home in Oregon anymore. Its weird to say that. The only home I have is the one I've created for myself in Alaska.

Okay. I'm getting a little too off topic. I must be super tired . Until next time, friends.

1 comments:

Jenn Barley | The KickStart Coach said... [Reply to comment]

Great insights about how food was growing up for you. You had to eat it because you didn't know if it would be there or not -- or when the next meal was coming.

Being on your own -- you can really start to have the security that you do know when you next meal is -- and that your food is your food and you can have it last as short or as long as you want.

Very cool.

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