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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
As a mother battles cancer, her daughter turns to cigarettes for comfort.
Sep 16, 2002 | The first time I tried talking to my mom about her cancer she said, "Hamper? What hamper?" When I repeated, more clearly this time, "Cancer," she shrugged and said, "You know what I was thinking about? When I was a little girl and I went to my uncle's farm. I slept on the hay and milked the cows. There were acres and acres of green fields. I was happy then."
That was Stella. Wandering a green field of denial, Lucky Strike cigarette in one hand and a rum and Coke in the other.
There was a phrase I heard once that delighted me because it confounded me: Black is the absence of all color. Growing up, I was the absence of Stella. We weren't just night and day -- we were Haagen-Dazs to Turkey Hill Frozen Delights, Rachmaninov to Liberace. Every kid wanted June Cleaver. I got Lucille Ball -- with attitude. Stella got these urges. And when she did, god help us. If Sears had a sale on gray paint, she'd buy six cans and proceed to paint every white surface in the house, including the kitchen cabinets, the kitchen sink and the bathtub. For months after, I'd sit in the tub with my yellow ducky, slick with gray, bobbing in the oily surface that comes when you slather enamel with the wrong paint.
Once, she bought me a pony. Every little girl's dream, right? I'll never forget the sight of my poor dad's face the night he came home after a hard day at the chemical plant to find Baby the pony tied to the oak tree in the front yard. There was no hay, of course. No grain to feed it. No stable. Just Baby, tied to that tree. Stella had bought him for $50 from a drunk in the bar with a hard-luck story. That was Stella, all heart and inspiration and to hell with the consequences.
Cancer, though, has consequences. Not even Stella could wriggle out of that. Neither could I. When she got sick, I was living the high life in New York City, an executive with a corner office and a neck-craning view of the Hudson. It was a different kind of green field, buttressed by concrete and hazy with exhaust. My mother's cancer gave me the opportunity to change all that, to come home -- to the fabulous Jersey Shore.
So there I was. Cloaked by a chilly late winter, trapped inside with a crotchety 81-year-old woman lugging around an oxygen tank and a bad attitude.
I did the only thing possible: I started smoking.
Until then, I'd been an adamant nonsmoker, the kind who gleefully threw away other people's cigarettes and gave hell to smokers who dared puff in my presence. I knew all the statistics. When it came my turn, I embraced my new habit with gusto. Cigarettes became my new best friend.
My mother smoked every day of her life for 65 years. When I was a child and lost her in the store, all I had to do was listen. When I heard the coughing, I followed the trail to Mom. Even crippled by cancer, she still craved her nicotine. And now, so did I.
Whenever I could, I'd sneak outside like a guilty teenager, prop my feet on the porch railing and watch the waves pound the shore, one cigarette in my hand and another smoldering in the ashtray. Instead of Prozac, I had Parliament Lights. That sweet inhale was the only thing that got me through a day with Stella, wrapped tight in her ratty afghan, her only source of amusement Regis and Kelly, Rosie and Oprah. And me.
The day she came home from the hospital was the day it finally hit me. For the first time in my life, another human being was completely dependent on me. My mother was helpless as a newborn, confused and in pain. Any thoughts that this would be a lark were erased the first time I changed her diaper.
