Guess Who's Coming to Visit?

Next week my parents are flying in from Florida, where they spend their winters, so my mom can have a procedure done as a check-up. She started experiencing some health challenges in the last year and this is just a follow-up appointment. I sort of fell into the role as her patient advocate last year, which meant we spent many, many days together. I escorted her to numerous doctor appointments, medical procedures, and blood draws. This was all so new to me, because up until last spring, my mom was walking three miles a day. She had never been hospitalized other than to give birth to three children. I thought to myself "what the heck, woman!" Then, it dawned on me that she IS 80 years old and I suppose she is entitled to have a little hitch in her giddy up every now and then.

It's kind of ironic, really, my mom is all of five feet tall and probably weighs in at 99.7 pounds and my dad, suffice it to say, is neither of those. After years of her "gently" reminding him to limit his sugar and fat take and to ration his vanilla ice cream, she's the one who had a heart attack.

My sister inherited my mom's teeny tiny frame. I inherited my dad's swedish "big boned" body. I'm like an amazon woman compared to the two of them. My sister and brother also inherited my mom's perfect teeth. I wound up with the crowded jaw, crooked, gonna-need-some-braces swedish teeth. I can only hope that I'm fortunate to inherit my dad's swedish coronary genes as well.

My mom is a hoot. She came to this country from the Philippines upon completion of nursing school in the 1950's. She met my dad, who was in the service at the time, they corresponded for six months, and then got married. Can you believe that? She'd kill me if I had done that. They lived with my grandparents for awhile in Detroit, renting part of the flat from them, and then moved to Garden City in the early 1960's.

Having come from a well-to-do family in the Philippines, my mom was not what you would call the "domestic" sort when she started living the American dream. When they first set up house, my grandfather wrote to her and asked if she wanted him to send her someone to help out with the domestic chores. She quickly rejected that and told him about all the modern conveniences they had, like vacuum cleaners.

I remember her telling us a story of when she and my dad were first married. He came home from work and saw her sauteing ground beef in a pan. He asked her "what's for dinner?" and she replied "hamburgers!" Unfortunately, she didn't know that you had to form them into patties first. How could she? Thankfully, her cooking has improved ten-fold. From homemade eggrolls, Christmas butter cookies, marinated country ribs and her sock-it-to-me cake, to fried rice that we have with every family gathering, including Thanksgiving. We are probably one of the few families that I know of that has homemade fried rice on every holiday.

Her native language has smatterings of the spanish dialect. In english you might say "the red car." In spanish, the order of the words is more like "the car red." Thus, we grew up saying many words and phrases backwords. I'm not sure how old I was when I realized all those years I had been using the incorrect term "closet hall" instead of "hall closet." Farmer Jack's supermarket was more commonly known as "Jack Farmer" in our house. To the grandkids, she's known as "abuela" which is spanish for grandma.

After a lifetime of knowing her, my siblings and I are now able to understand what it is she's trying to communicate. We can finish her incomplete thoughts. My dad knows what she's trying to say too, but he likes to mess with her and pretends he doesn't understand. When we're out and about and she encounters another Filipino, she always asks what their last name is and where they are from, like she could possibly be familiar with every family from the Philippine islands (even though she hasn't been there in over 40 years).

My mom used to be a nurse in the operating room. Of course, she doesn't let 30 seconds go by upon meeting another nurse or doctor before sharing this information with them. I find it absolutely incredible that my mom was so very capable of working on human bodies in the operating room but can't remember a person's last name, the rest of a joke, or the name of a movie. All I can do is secretly think "I'm glad she wasn't my nurse."

Don't get me wrong, though. My mom is one sharp little cookie who taught me how to be strong and stick up for myself. She was a working mom through many years of my childhood. She learned to cook, cut the grass, maintain a beautiful garden, sew, dance like nobody's business, and has always been very active. She is kind and giving of herself and has never been interfering or overbearing. She is generous to a fault. Stubborn, but generous. She also's a wicked poker player.

My parents really haven't done much flying since 9/11 and all the security and liquid carry-on restrictions just might send them over the edge. My sister is a little nervous about them flying up here by themselves. In fact, she was so nervous, she thought that maybe she should fly down there just to escort them up here. I think they'll be fine, though. It's the chance encounter with a Filipino security guard or doctor on the plane that I'd be worried about.