Keeping Grounded in Hard Times

My middle sister, Savina, with my mom, Betty, back when things were really great.

Stress. Living in New York, working in New York, traveling within New York- these things cause stress. Or they don’t. I was never born with a thick skin. I wish I had been.

My mom got to touch the ground with her feet today. She can no longer do that on her own because she is bedridden. The kind folks at the nursing facility moved her to a chair — we couldn’t do that at home- we just don’t have the manpower to do that. She was so pleased she passed right out, fell into a nice slumber. She gets fed, given baths and hair cuts, all in her bed. So it’s a pretty big deal when she leaves the bed for any reason.

I call — or rather I FaceTime or Skype — my mom as often as I can. My sister and true caregiver, Saya, tells me how mom is doing and how mom is feeling, because my mom can’t speak anymore, either. I still marvel at her willingness to fight this fight. I don’t know who she is doing this for, or why. But I love her for it.

Answer me this: what matters most? When your day-to-day is stressful because of things out of your control, or you are fighting debt, or troubles at home, how do you put things in perspective. I’ll tell you how: you learn from your mom.

In New York they run you over with their feet. You are too slow, too confused for this town. As a fellow New Yorker and a pedestrian, I am equally responsible for this toxic behavior. My mom, when she used to walk, was unflappable in New York. People bumped into her, she didn’t blink. Maybe because she was just visiting. I remember being relatively unfazed by the city’s quirks. But I didn’t like it when they would get annoyed when I was walking my mom around, with her on my arm in case she fell, or when we used the wheelchair around town. We were just another group of people who were in the way.

But now, imagine. My mom, the one who used to be invincible with her feet — who used to dazzle postwar, sepia-toned Tokyo with her stunning red heels — who would as a mom, relentlessly hit the pavement with her bike wheel, can barely move a muscle these days. But her toes got to touch the ground today.

Since writing this, mom has finally made it back home. My intrepid sister decided that mom needed to have her bed in the living room, so the machines that keep her alive don’t overheat the room, as they did her bedroom. Mom gets full view of the tv set now, unlike at the nursing facility, and there’s a chance that at home, as well, she can be moved from bed to chair, and maybe, just maybe, she can touch her toes on the floor again.

My mom, her resilience and her strength are a constant inspiration to me. We all need role models like my mom to help us pull our feet forward, one in front of the other, to step ahead and move ourselves along.

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Sylvia Rupani-Smith
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