Mother's Day 2008

NewFNP is at home, listening to Neil Diamond in honor of her mom, Nancy, who died twenty fucking years ago at the age of thirty-eight.  She had a cerebral aneurysm.  But that is the least interesting thing about her.

She trained as a journalist but worked in public affairs after her divorce.  She instructed newFNP to call her every day after she returned home from school, which newFNP did without fail.  She was hilarious.  She watched Magnum PI regularly and remarked more than once that Thomas Magnum had cute buns.  From newFNP's standpoint, she seemed to make people around her - her friends and colleagues and family - happy.  

She loved Asian design and had issues of Architectural Digest lying around the house.  She had a license plate frame on her black Nissan sports car that said, "Nancy - 90% Angel" which brought newFNP absolutely nothing but mortification.  She had thick calves which newFNP had the misfortune to inherit.  But she also had sparkling blue eyes and newFNP got those too.  She wore Obsession or Chanel No5.  She used Clinique and blue eyeshadow.  She was never without polished nails.  She doodled when she talked on the phone.

She was a single mom since newFNP was six and her younger brother two.  She allowed her house to be overrun by pubescent girls once a year for newFNP's birthday sleepovers, which always involved a lot of pizza and horror movies and tee-peeing some poor soul's house.  When newFNP had to stay up all night in order to be sleep-deprived before having an EEG after having had a lone seizure, she stayed up playing Bargain Hunter and other games that must have been mind-numbing to her. In Monopoly, she was always the thimble.  When newFNP was almost fourteen, she came into newFNP's room as newFNP was watching the Iran-Contra hearings -no joke - to let newFNP know that if she ever needed to go on the Pill, she should come to her.  Yeah, thanks Mom, now good-bye.

She smoked Kents and had a butt-ugly yellow robe that she wore every day that newFNP then hated but would kill to have now.  She bought expensive shoes on sale and had clothes in her closet, the hall closet and newFNP's brother's closet.  She wore fancy lingerie because she said it made her feel good.  She framed a painting that newFNP did when she was two and a half and hung it in the dining room, saying that she could have paid thousands for it in a modern art gallery.  It now hangs in newFNP's bedroom.

The day that her aneurysm ruptured, newFNP was waiting for her on the front porch, knowing that she was going to be late for her piano lesson and would get in trouble not only for not having practiced enough, but for her tardiness as well.  NewFNP was mad at her for the latter. It still pains newFNP to think of this.

She had been going to doctors for over a year with headaches before the aneurysm ruptured. She was stoic, however, and never appeared to be in pain, although there were days when she came home from work and had to go straight to bed because of it.  Perhaps her doctors never could have thought....?  NewFNP is keenly aware of this whenever she sees a patient with headache.  

Although absolutely off topic, newFNP wishes that she could share more of her mom with you, but she had only fourteen years with her.  

It wasn't enough.