Missed bite of the sandwich generation

I could hear the persistent beep of a second call coming in on my phone this afternoon as I was talking to my mother in California.

In my mind, I told myself, "It must be Craig; he always calls about this time to see when I'll be getting home."

Actually I was already on the train heading back from Queens to Manhattan, having the usual-but-not-so-usual call I have each weekday with my mother, who lives by herself in California -- or did until a few weeks ago when she took her third fall in 20 months. This time she broke a rib that punctured a lung. She was in the hospital twice for it, and now is on oxygen full time. She hates it, connected to an oxygen generator and dragging around a clear plastic tube wherever she goes, the way Marley dragged his chains in "A Christmas Carol."

The beep continued, then a pause, then the long beep, signalling a message left on my cell phone.

My mother, who is 83, now has my sister living under her roof. My sister and my mother are like kerosene and flame; they ignite each other with sparks of painful angry slights and long-time hurts and neglects. Craig and I get to mediate, although lately I've been more cowardly and let Craig, whom both women admire and respect, do more intervening.

My mother needs care and my sister is trying to do it as well as she can, but sometimes she is bossy and blunt. My mother is trying to survive and express her will to live by denying she's ill and by keeping her independence with a fierce sort of do-it-myself attitude. I'm better at dealing with her, but I know my mother's demands can be endless, while my sister's orders can wearing.

I end the conversation with Mom; she's feeling depressed and unhappy.

I check the message; it's not from Craig, after all, it's from David, trying to reach me after two weeks of phone cutoff at the FOB.

He understands; "I guess you're in the subway; I'll try to call tomorrow."

I'm devastated.

News from David and Southern California

We have heard from both David and Fort Lewis that his unit's Welcoming Home ceremony at Lewis will be in mid-October. The Lewis e-mail set a tentative day, but I'm not going to publish it here yet until we are closer because at this point, it's a moving target.

David said he will be in Kuwait three weeks prior to coming home, doing paperwork on equipment, matching numbers on vehicles and equipment to inventory tracking materials, so he may possibly arrive back a little later than the rest of the company. Ah, the glamorous life of an Army lieutenant! But at least he'll be out of harm's way.

I have added a new link: Stryker Brigade News, which appears to be written and/or moderated by someone at Ft. Lewis. No big secrets revealed but does have an inside view of those attached to Lewis, both in Washington and deployed.

The other bit of news which kept me from posting for a while was that my mother has been in the hospital twice in July, once for a fall and then back due to breathing problems. She was returning to my sister's car after a lunch out when she fell and broke a rib, which slightly punctured her lung. Fortunately, my sister rushed her to an emergency room, and the hospital re-inflated her lung. However, she was in ICU for a few days, and then came home, but then had to return for two nights.

Craig was able to stay there almost two weeks, and did a lot to help her, and I visited for three days last week, and was almost useless except to cheer her up. Dusty is staying with her now, but that is only temporary and we are trying to persuade her to allow a helper to come in more often, but she values her independence above her health.

Sometimes this feeling of being stretched one way to concerns about David -- worrying but not being too protective, letting go what is already gone -- being pulled to protect what is fragile and needing more protection but resisting it, such as my mother -- and then stretched by a job that eats time but pays little -- just frays at me until I have little time and energy left. I think that's why I want to crawl into my historic-feminist novels and Harry Potter's world to get away.

Craig has been tremendous; he knows what to ask the doctors, how to set up the home health care, what to ask the nurses and physical therapists. I don't know what I'd do without him.

A beginning

The phone call came Wednesday morning, during the middle of deadline for the weekly newspapers I work for. I immediately grabbed my cell phone out of my purse, put down the proofs I was editing, and answered. I knew it was from David, my son, in Baghdad.

He was heading out to Baquoba, about 35 miles north of Baghdad, by helicopter, that night.

By night, I asked? I tried to imagine flying over the surface of the desert, which he had said looked like pictures of Mars, in the night.

Yeah, that's the way we do it, he said.

I grasped then the safety of flying at night, lights low, making them less of a target. But I also thought of the copters that had been shot down. I did not say that.

I asked instead if he felt ready to go.

He had heard me ask this before, and had his answer rehearsed.

He felt well trained, he was ready to meet up with the (platoon? sorry, David, if I have the term wrong) of Stryker team members he'd be guiding. This is his first tour of duty, and he is joining a team from Ft. Lewis, Wash., that has already been in Iraq for at least eight months.

I told him, unhelpfully I'm sure, it was OK to be afraid, that fear would keep him sharp.

He didn't want to hear that, so instead we talked about movies, Tony Soprano, bit torrent software, and that his grandfather had been in the hospital briefly but was back at the assisted living facility where he resides.

Then there seemed little more to say. I told him, I loved him, to stay safe, and that we would send him things when he got a permanent APO. He reminded me that in the Army, no news is good news.

And since then, no word, no e-mail, no post on his blog. It is now late Saturday night. I don't to hear from him for a while. Too say he is busy is some kind of understatement, but the definition is unclear. I don't know yet what he is doing. Did the Army send him out to fight right away in the active Diyala Province? Or, is he doing what he has done each time he goes to a new post: fill out reams of paperwork and sit around and wait?

I just know it is past 10 p.m. here, which means no one in a chaplain's uniform can knock on my door until the next morning.