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I’ve been going to my mom’s apartment every day to take care of her since she broke her ribs earlier this week. She doesn’t know how she did it but because she has osteoporosis, she could sneeze and break them. She lives in the slums of Metairie and I’m always shocked to go to her apartment. It reminds me of that song that Diana Ross used to sing about a mother who died in the projects, who the singer was ashamed of. I’m not ashamed of my mother, everyone makes choices in life. I’ve offered her to come live with me many times. Steve and I offered to put her in a condo many times in the past but it always had a stipulation that it was a condo for her, not a place for her to invite my sister to come live in. She couldn’t accept that as a condition, so it never happened. 

She lives in a four-plex between Veterans and the I-10, an area that used to be peppered with young families but where most buildings went Section 8 ten years ago when that was the vogue thing to do – buy and convert small multiunit buildings into Section 8, a sure thing for landlords – after Katrina, it is just the slums. 

About twice a year,  my mother finds someone to plant flowers in all the pots she has outside her door and down her stairs, so sometimes the plants assuage the insult of the trash strewn around. But most times they are barren and only add to the sense of despair that colors the building.Inside the apartment is a dark, crowded smokey space. Her furniture is back from a time when she had more space and more luxurious digs. However, the hoarding of magazines and newspapers and groceries have escalated the feeling that there is no air space between the smoke and the wood. Her bedroom sports a large king-sized bed with a dark canopy on high pillars that adds to the sense that these furnishings were intended for larger and brighter spaces.

I took Jake with me there on Monday to take the brace off of her that I had put on Sunday. He stood by the foot of the bed staring at her with curiosity and then asked her if she had been on a motorcycle because his Poppy had broken his ribs when he crashed his motorcycle in the Smokey Mountains.

Last night, I brought her medicated patches a nurse friend had given me to isolate and control the pain. Loca came with me. She sidled her sleek black body up to the side of the bed and sheepishly asked to be petted. 

The lyrics to Diana Ross’s song in no way apply to my mom – she lived a life of luxury in hotel suites to homes when married to my dad until he died in 1985. She then lived in my brother’s condominium for a decade where she worked and could have saved money for her retirement. She then worked up until this year – again having the ability to save for her future. When she bemoans that she is going to be a bag lady  I tell her she’ll be the only one on the street in Gucci shoes.  But for some reason, that song always plays through my head when I get out of the truck.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 10:29 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.