A Day for Mothers of All Kinds

On this Mother's Day I'm thinking of some mothers special to me . . . Dotty, my first mother, who was at a party in Greenwich Village when she told her husband she wanted to go home and make a baby, and nine months later I was born . . . my father's cousin Peggy, who never had children of her own but who mothered me so affectionately . . . Marion, my stepmother through thick and thin for 42 years and the best grandmother I could ever want for my children . . . my daughter Suzanne, my little nurse when she was a child and I had the flu, who grew up to be a wonderful mother to her own daughter and a remarkable stepmother as well . . . my daughter Gillian, who nursed her dolls when she was little, babied her animals when she grew up, and told me she loved Lizzie, her niece, as her own . . . my daughter-in-law, Leanne, another natural-born loving mother and a pleasure to observe with my grandson.

I'm also thinking of Bonesy, a cat who gave birth in our ice house two years ago. She had no books to guide her, no pediatrician, no Internet. Yet a more devoted mother I've yet to meet. So thin when she first appeared on the property that her bones were showing, she nursed her three babies and kept them clean and warm. When it was time to start weaning she brought them baby rabbits to kill. I'm afraid I interfered with this natural process by removing the rabbits before the hunt commenced. I justified it with the knowledge that I would find homes for the kittens where hunting skills would be optional.

But the thing I remember most about Bonesy's maternal behavior was the way she kept her babies safe. She fiercely drove away all animals, wild or stray. A more territorial cat I had never seen. She had some unusual ideas on what constituted a threat to her babies. One of these was the common pickup truck, which she saw as one of the true forces of evil. More than once I saw her go out into the middle of the road and stand her ground against an approaching pickup. This resulted in more grey hair for me, but I must say she succeeded. In all that time, not one pickup truck entered the ice house and made off with the kittens.

Happy Mother's Day, everyone. May we all attend to our young so diligently, and protect them with everything we have.

La Leche League Counseling Notes

Thirty-six years ago I qualified as a La Leche League Leader and started the first (and so far the only) LLL group in my county. I was afraid no one would come to the first meeting, but 22 mothers showed up—some pregnant, some with babies. The group eventually grew to the point where it split in two, and I shared Leader duties with two others, who became my close friends. When we were ready to retire (having lost those lactation hormones, I guess), no one stepped up to replace us and keep the group going. But although I was sorry to see it die out, I was still glad I founded it, and it remains one of the things I'm proud of today.

Last night I came across the notebook I used when counseling mothers on the phone. Here are some of my notes from that first year:

May 21:  Has breast infection w/104º fever. Dr. X had ordered nursing no oftener than every 4 hours, 5 min. on a side. Infection probably resulted from overfull breasts. For treatment, Dr. X advised no nursing because it would "hurt the baby."

June 14:  Baby 6.5 months, nursing every hour. Mother reluctant to start solids, even though baby gobbled up banana and cereal.

June 16:  Daughter, 8 mos., bit her.

June 23:  Son, 7 mos., biting badly whenever breast is offered. Does not bite when he asks to nurse.

June 28:  One-week-old son hospitalized with a fever. Hospital nurse insisting he should be on a 4-hour schedule. Nurse referred to him as an "older baby."

July 5:  Baby 3 months. Mother forced to wean him because of her husband's jealousy. He said they were his breasts, not the baby's. He had refused to give his son any attention as long as he was breastfed.

July 21:  Daughter, 11 mos., abruptly weaned one month ago on doctor's orders because the baby had a virus. She cannot tolerate any other kind of milk.

August 8:  Mom wonders if it's OK to nurse every 2.5 hours, which her baby wants. Hospital told her no more often than every 4 hours. Also, her teenage stepdaughter was thrown out of her own home and is arriving soon.

September 12:  Interested in nursing an adopted baby.

September 30:  Baby 3 wks. nursing well, but screams every evening when her father comes home. Husband is against breastfeeding, and attempts to discourage his wife.

November 11:  Mother was put on a 1,000-calorie diet by Dr. X, and developed toxemia. She is frightened of hospitals, but the doctor admitted he—no treatment except for strict low-calorie diet. A friend made the call to me. We are concerned about protein deprivation, probably the cause of the toxemia in the first place.

December 1:  Five-day-old baby. Dr. X wants her to give him sugar water between feedings.

Mystery Fans: Do You Read Harlan Coben?

I'm on my second Harlan Coben (audio) book, and I like him--but with reservations.The first was in the Myron Bolitar series, probably somewhere in the middle of it. It was generally entertaining, and it held my interest. But I had questions.....like how does Win get away with opening fire in the middle of the city? For that matter, how do Myron and Win get away with various forms of violence? And will Myron ever learn to shut up? All those wisecracks......some are funny, but sometimes he'd be better off remaining silent. The one in my car now is Just One Look. It's not in the Myron Bolitar series. I would have given it high marks until this morning. This morning I was listening to a scene involving a character who is so bored and alienated in her marriage that she enjoys enjoy modeling skimpy lingerie in her window for the creepy misfit next door. (That alone put me off somewhat.) A lot of earlier text (way too much) is devoted to how distanced she and her husband have become to one another. So in today's scene she is about to do something extremely dangerous at night involving a serial killer. It's a suspenseful premise, and the writing should reflect this. She needs to move quickly in order to accomplish what she wants to do. She runs downstairs, and on her way out she encounters her husband in the kitchen. Bam! End of suspense. The book launches into a lengthy description of how his eyes penetrate her soul, or some such thing, just like they did when they first met. On and on and on, while the serial killer does who knows what. I admit I'm a critical reader, but it was such bad writing. I would be ashamed to bring something like that to my writing group. Coben also has his characters thinking endlessly in situations where there is not nearly enough time to mull over all the thoughts he attributes to them. I get impatient with this. It makes them seem a little slow-witted at times. At home I'm reading Dennis Lehane for the first time. No complaints.

Poem for My Cousin on Her 70th Birthday

Barbara has been a flight attendant and a toy designer. She was a preemie. She paints in oils, does a lot of yoga, and is creative in everything. 

To Write the Number 70

                                    - for my dear Barbara, on her birthday

To write the number 70 we begin

with a short lateral line, a line

that goes from a premature Point A

to a paint-drenched Point B, knowing

Points C through G (or perhaps

as far as K) are still to come.

We have much to pack on that line. We could

make paper dolls . . . the two of us at three

in costume, the two of us at ten, en pointe,

blank paper dolls for you to dress in fashion

for the teen and college years, then one of you

perfectly turned out for flight, and the two of us

modeling skirts made with Singer and vodka.

The maternity doll,  the do-it-yourself doll,

the designer doll, the doll designed,

the decorating doll, the homemaker doll, the widow

doll, all beautiful. And then the sister dolls

again, in gardening clothes, wirelessly connected.

To write the number 70 we then

make a graceful downward line

(like a downward dog, not a downward

spiral), stopping when we want to and not

a millimeter before or after. We are in charge.

It is our space and our number.

Then it is time to move our brand new

pencil, sleekly sharpened, up to the top.

Always aware of our handwriting, especially

on important occasions, we assess

the seven, the lifeline and its symbols,

the texture of the paper, the light,

the silence (or lack thereof), whether or not

our bangs are in our eyes, if we’re hungry

(if we are, we take a moment to contemplate

popovers), and then we make our move:

not a zero—never a zero—but a perfect oval,

bringing everything together, just for a moment . . .

before we set ourselves free to live some more.

                                    Susan Luckstone Jaffer

Three Months With Sandy

She arrived around the time of the hurricane, a somewhat small, pretty white cat with large black markings, dainty paws, and horribly infected eyes. She moved into Bonesy's dog house on the porch. Bonesy, our very territorial outside cat, moved out without challenging. This surprised us, but maybe Bonesy knew how sick the newcomer was and wanted to steer clear of her.

Because of the hurricane connection, my son named her Sandy. I wasn't crazy about the name because she didn't look like a Sandy. But I used it often, and hope she eventually recognized it. Every cat should have a name.

She was feral, and we couldn't get near her. But she stuck around, dining on the porch, occasionally curling up in an old tire in the sun, and spending her nights in Bonesy's dog house. We set up another dog house for Bonesy, in the shed across the road. But it wasn't satisfactory. In fact, nothing was satisfactory about the situation. We didn't like Bonesy banished to an outbuilding, and we couldn't sit by and watch Sandy's eyes get worse. As it was, they looked so bad we feared she might have lost some vision. Plus cold weather was coming, and my daughter-in-law observed that Sandy's breathing was congested. Who knew what would happen to a sick cat in winter?

We've had a lot of cats, and in one way or another they were all rescues. I belong to Alley Cat Allies, and I'm familiar with the practice of trap, spay, and release/return. We did it ourselves years ago with several strays. My life is full of happy cat stories. I decided to trap Sandy and get her spayed. I was certain how this would go. She would recuperate in a dog crate in my guest room, where I would see if I could tame her. The vet would treat her eyes, and give her a rabies shot, and after two or three weeks I would find her an animal-loving farmer who would be happy to have a nice spayed barn cat.

I set up a Havahart trap on the porch, and as I watched Sandy check it out from all sides, including the top, I realized her vision was just fine. Good. We'd get the infection fixed, and she'd be in great shape.

At the vet's, Sandy tested negative for feline leukemia. But she had fleas, the eye infection, an upper respiratory infection, and a bad infestation of ear mites. She was treated for all this, given the rabies shot, and spayed. I picked her up that afternoon.

After a couple of weeks Sandy was tamed to the point where I could pet her on her head. Even though the dog crate was fairly large, I felt she needed some exercise and would be less stressed if she had some freedom. So I opened the crate and let her have run of the room. The way I envisioned it, I would spend some time in the room with her every day, perhaps reading on the bed. Sandy would gradually come closer and closer to me until we were cuddled on the bed together. It was a nice vision.

What actually happened was that she spent most of her time hiding under the bed. She was up on the bed when I wasn't there; I could tell because the bloody discharge from her infected eyes was on the pillows. I was sure it was elsewhere in the room, too, so I reluctantly lured her back to the dog crate.

A week or so later we were back at the vet's. The eyes hadn't improved, nor the congested breathing, and the ear mites had returned. Another round of treatment ensued, and this time the vet told me I'd have to put ointment in Sandy's eyes twice a day for 10 days. This took the taming effort up a notch or two.

After the 10 days, I could pet her from her head to her tail, but her eyes were no better. In fact, they looked so raw that I was glad I could stop torturing her with the ointment. I consulted with another vet, who told me both the eye and upper respiratory infections were caused by a herpes virus that should have been treated when she was a kitten, long before she showed up on my porch. The vet said I could try giving her 500 mg. of l-lysine twice a day, dissolved in food, for a month.

So I did. To me, lysine tastes vile, but Sandy was so good about eating it in her food. She loved her food, canned and dry. I kept her supplied with the dry as soon as she finished each meal of canned. Once a day I tossed her favorite chicken-flavored Temptations treats into the crate, and she would make a tiny pouncing motion, or step on them—fast—with one paw. Her reflexes were excellent. This was her only play time.

The dog crate was lined with a piece of carpeting. It held both food dishes, her water dish, a small litter box, and a large pillow. My daughter-in-law hung a little toy from a string on top, but Sandy never played with it. A couple of times I put a furry mouse toy in the crate, but both times later found it outside. I got the feeling it landed there not from play, but from being banished.

Sandy could have escaped from her crate countless times, but she never tried. When I opened the door she would come to the edge of the opening, maybe put one of her little paws outside the crate, and then stop. I was able to pet her from her head to the tip of her tail now. She would purr and purr. But if I tried to pick her up, ever so gently, she would ever so delicately raise her feet over my hands and back up into her crate.

After a few weeks of the lysine, I had to reluctantly conclude that it wasn't helping. I read up on the herpes infection, and learned what the vet later confirmed: The infection was highly contagious. It could, with no guarantees, be treated with some pricey antivirals, but Sandy would remain contagious as she could shed the virus even in remission. And a remission, if it came, was almost certainly temporary. The virus was likely to reactivate again and again.

There would be no kindly farmer and community of barn cats for Sandy. There was no hope of integrating her into my own family of cats. We couldn't even consider releasing her to go back to living as my porch cat. For one thing, she could transmit the herpes infection to Bonesy. For another, Sandy's illness would make her vulnerable to predators and a poor candidate for winter survival. I painfully came to the realization that there was no place for Sandy.

When you tame an animal, when you succeed in gaining its trust, the absolute last thing you want to think about is having that animal put down. This isn't the first time I've talked about the end-of-life decision in this blog, and it's always a complex, multi-layered, knotted issue. Unlike the decisions I faced with my dogs, Angel and Wolfy, this decision was all about Sandy. I wasn't suffering. Yet in a way I was.

My son urged me to put Sandy out of her misery. But how miserable was she? Certainly a human with eyes as raw and oozing as Sandy's would be miserable indeed. But she had lived with this her whole life. Does a cat get used to infected eyes? I have no idea. I did know this: Sandy ate well and enjoyed being petted. I also knew she wanted more--not more food, but more attention. And I knew, too, that she didn't groom. I took this as a sign that was stressed, but the vet told me some cats simply do not groom.

One thing was not debatable: Sandy was alone. I visited several times a day, changing her water, bringing food, cleaning the litter box, petting her. But then I'd leave. Sandy was a quiet cat, never keeping me awake at night, never voicing her displeasure at anything. But she always meowed, just one sad sound, each time I left the room. She could hear me talk to the other cats--in the bathroom next door, in my bedroom on the other side of of her wall, out in the hallway. Did she interpret my tone of voice as cat-conversational? I wondered.

From the way I agonized over all this, you'd think Sandy had been a beloved family pet for years. The truth was, I did love her. But I also felt a crushing responsibility for her. Crushing responsibility. I'm trying to avoid the word guilt.

It should be hard to feel guilty about something when you can't think of a thing you would have done differently. But somehow we manage it. When a pet of long standing dies, we say, "She had a good life." But this bit of comfort didn't apply here. I felt as though Sandy had no life.

It took me a long time to make that final phone call to the vet. All the while, I went over and over Sandy's situation, past, present, and future. I couldn't second-guess my decision to trap her, although as it turned out in the end, that led to her death. As the vet told me, after she'd put Sandy down, the cat never would have survived the winter outside. She also told me I gave Sandy a warm place, a bed, and an endless supply of food. That was good, she said. But if it was good, I thought, was I right to end it? 

What it came down to in the end was my reluctance to sentence Sandy to any more time alone in that crate. To me, the crate looked worse and worse every day. My attempts to clean it scared her. White fur covered the rug and pillow like a thin pelt. Cat litter landed not only on the rug, but on the tarp as well. Her frequent sneezes sprayed the tarp in an 8" border around the crate. I kept her dishes and litter box clean, and gave her the best care I could, but it all began to seem like an exercise in futility. Sandy was in quarantine.

"Aunt Deer will take care of her." A few weeks after my granddaughter said this to me, I was as ready as I would ever be. "Aunt Deer" was Lizzie's name for my daughter Jill, who had a real gift for understanding and loving animals. I had every reason to believe in the survival of animals' spirits as well as our own, and every reason to believe Jill would indeed take care of Sandy. I told Sandy I was sending her to Jill.

This decision was so wrenching that I had to break it down into pieces. I would call the vet. On the appointed day I would feed Sandy some tuna—some real tuna. Somehow I would transfer her from the crate to a large carrier. Then I would take her to the downstairs bathroom, where I would close the door and open the carrier, giving her the first real freedom she'd had in a long time. She would walk around and check everything out, and if I were really lucky she might jump into my lap.

Maybe Sandy's psychic sense made her refuse her last meal. I did manage to get her into the carrier, but knew even if I opened it, she'd never step out into the bathroom. It would have been all too scary for her. No tuna, no freedom, no lap.

But then, some things just don't go the way you planned.

Fashion, Frugality, and Fun

I was talking on the phone with my friend Astrid this morning, and I mentioned that most of my clothes come from the Salvation Army. Astrid hasn't seen me in over 50 years, and when we hung up I thought, she probably thinks I look like a bag lady.

Astrid (hope you're reading this), I don't. At least I think I don't. I don't pick out just anything from the Salvation Army. Although I'm definitely not a fashionista—my idea of high style can be found in an L.L. Bean catalog—I admit to a certain snobbishness about labels. This side of me comes out in thrift shops, where I ferret out the best pre-owned clothes a store has to offer (in my size). I love the hunt.

Now, I don't live in an affluent area, so I'm not going to find anything you might see in Vogue. But that's okay, because I probably wouldn't recognize those labels anyway. My idea of great scores are Columbia outerwear, Ralph Lauren jeans, Caribbean Joe capris, or anything from Chico's. I did find a Nicole Miller dress once, and I attended an upscale wedding in my royal blue Liz Claiborne number, but sadly I've "outgrown" both of these.

At this point in my life I'm grateful for my frugal nature, and grateful, too, that buying used clothing is more of an entertainment than a hardship for me. Even when I had more money than I do now, I was never comfortable spending a lot of it on clothes. My mother-in-law (who wore only Belgian shoes—that should tell you something) tried to train this out of me, but never really succeeded. Once her son and I moved to the country, far from Bergdorf Goodman and Saks, she gave up.

I've found when it comes to Goodwill and the Salvation Army, there's no middle ground; people either love the hunt or are repulsed by it. In my family we have both factions. I discuss my thrift shop triumphs with one, and remain silent with the other. I wonder if the latter group ever questions how I can afford the designer silk scarves I've been sporting lately. Little do they know I paid $1 each.

The Other Thing I Made This Christmas

Several things, actually, but all in the same vein. I'd been thinking about possibly passing on my first few cookbooks to my daughter. With that thought in the back of my mind, I accidentally happened upon the idea of covering old, meaningful books with handmade slipcases for gift-giving. I jumped on it. Not only did I love the look, but this was my big chance to buy gorgeous scrapbooking paper without guilt (I'm not a scrapbooker) and play with it!

I waited for a half-price sale on the paper. With AC Moore and Michael's, one doesn't have to wait long. I chose a "Garden Tea Party" pad of cardstock. I loved the subtle colors and the "tea stains" on many of the prints. I also bought a pack of inexpensive decorative scissors, acid-free glue, and permanent double-sided tape. (After the first one, I abandoned the glue and used only the tape.) My small X-Acto paper cutter (like a big office model, only smaller) came in very handy.

I made three slipcases for my daughter to cover those first three cookbooks: Ladies' Home Journal (see text below), New York Times, and Amy Vanderbilt's. And I made one for my cousin Barbara to cover a used copy of Tofu, Tempeh, and Other Soy Delights, a Rodale cookbook I contributed to (20 tofu recipes) decades ago.

Incidentally, I bought used copies of those first three cookbooks to replace the copies I gave to my daughter so I wouldn't be without the favorite recipes myself. But she has the ones with all my handwritten notations.

I had a lot of fun doing these.....clearly, playing with paper hasn't lost its charm.