Humor is one of my favorite coping mechanisms and again hello McFly, I’m certainly not lacking a sense of humor, nor am I easy to offend. If you read my last essay, you also learned why my ability to say deuces to anyone who wastes my precious time, is pretty much unparalleled. Although I love to share my stories, there is a point to sharing some of the things I share here.
As a mother, I look back and feel even more grateful for that wild and feral, garden hose drinking, no sunblock wearing, GenX childhood of mine. I have always been purely fascinated by our generational differences.
For the first time in history, there are multiple generations learning to work together in our nation’s hospitals and this is very different from working in the tech or entertainment industries. Some of the youngest Registered Nurses I work with are younger than my 22 year old daughter and the most senior are in their seventies — and a few of them, have literally been nurses since I was born. For many reasons, nurses don’t retire young anymore. These generational differences always make for interesting conversation and I always learn a lot from those seasoned nurses. In fact, I learned a helluva lot of valuable tricks from those old pros that served me well during the pandemic.
Once upon a time, I was a young girl who lived in close proximity to both sets of my grandparents who were members of the Silent Generation. I spent much of my childhood with my grandmothers, who were housewives who lived with chronic illnesses and neither lived to see their 70th birthdays.
I’ve mentioned my maternal grandparents—Pop Pop Tony a WWII veteran, who came back from The War and happily spent the rest of his long life working at the A & P during the day, then at a liquor store in the evenings. My Nanny Shirley raised their large family, minded her many grandchildren and played a lot of Bingo. In the 1980’s, staying home sick from school meant I got to sit in the corner of a basement at a Catholic church and watch Nanny play bingo. If Nanny had to take a bathroom break, which she often did because polyuria is a sign of Type II Diabetes, I’d be tasked with minding her table full of bingo cards. Hell hath no fury like my Nanny Shirley and this pressure was intense, but also taught me to focus in a chaotic environment with flashing lights and a lot of loud, screaming women. The Nursing profession is still almost 90% women and we are a passionate bunch indeed.
Every year on Christmas Day, my family tosses back a few shots and plays a rousing game of Bingo. On one of our recent Christmases, my mother warned her burgeoning young adult grandchildren to never attempt, to outdrink any of their parents. Then the real adults sat back and smiled as two of my children started to beat the ever living crap out of each other during one of those games that ended with some Bingo cards being hurled across the room. My children will simply never understand the childhood of their parents or why we all sat back and laughed.
As for my father’s side, picture if you will an Italian version of my Big Fat Greek Wedding. Pop Pop Rocky was a NYC born, fast talking, smooth dancing, once semi-professional boxer. The man was louder and larger than life, also lived with Diabetes and although I love to dance, I used to dread dancing with him. Pop Pop Rocky was a broad shouldered and heavyset man, but my God he could float across a dance floor, like a cross between Fred Astaire and Rocky Balboa, in a way that made me trip and stumble over my own two feet. My teenage cheeks would flush over my clumsiness, but Pop would continue to spin me with a nostalgic smile on his face that I could not comprehend back then.
Oh boy do I have a soft spot for my patients who are your great grandparents. You know those silly old people that post the even sillier memes on Facebook that so many feel are harmful? I’m not disagreeing or debating the validity of this potential harm, but I’m not a proponent of cancel culture. These days I possess a Master’s degree in Nursing Leadership and Legal Nurse Consulting. I say this though, usually only to remind myself that at this stage of the game, I could be doing anything other than bedside nursing. I choose to stay simply because I love what I do, find it personally gratifying and care deeply about the patients. Make no mistake, not half as much as I love and care for my own children or feel gratified by the simple joys of motherhood. This tough job allows me to work 3 long days a week and gives me plenty of time to terrorize my children with my wild and unwell ways.
I wish I could share more of my professional nursing stories with you; tell you all about the brave, beautiful patients and families that I’ve met over the years. Share their unimaginable levels of faith, courage and determination, but I just can’t. Just know that hate lands a lot of patients in the Trauma ICU, but it always comes down to someone’s love to bring them through to the other side of their journey. Whichever way their journey ends. In the moments before they die, many patients will look over and call out to their deceased loved ones, so I also know, their love never leaves us and death is never the end of us.
The hospital work environment continues to improve, but it’s still life or death 24/7, so lunch breaks and polite language are not always possible. I usually don’t whine about this, or the displaced rage that is a part of the lateral violence. Unless I’m starving because I am a real bitch when I don’t get lunch, but my younger colleagues post a lot of memes about our workplace disparities. Although I do laugh, it doesn’t raise awareness about our working conditions and only makes our profession look bad. I also eat in the car on my way to work and pack my lunch. Oh and haha to the little armchair activists, posting stupid shit only causes patients to fear going to the hospital, more than they already fear going to the hospital. This has NO effect on the nurse to patient staffing ratios that are often determined by a computer program or an inhumane corporation masquerading as a non-profit.
When I am at work, I know full well that I am taking care of your family members, your mothers and grandparents, and this tremendous responsibility is the number one cause of my workplace stress.
It’s certainly no secret that my mother Debbie is a pain in my ass, but I cannot imagine my life without my mother, even though I will likely outlive her. When I’m feeling really irritated by what I know is only her sensitive Cancer nature, I like to remind her how we could all just poof,—up and fucking die at any given moment. This usually shuts her up for the few hours I need to calm down and remember I’m an adult now; one who emphatically loves, cherishes and respects her mother. Rest assured that Debbie will never go to a nursing home even if that means I have to chain her ass to a wall in my spare room and watch her on one of my cameras while I’m at work.
No these days, I don’t sugarcoat anything and this is yet another one of those job hazards that has spilled over and polluted my personal life.
When my younger daughter was about 4, we were walking hand in hand through the gardens at the lush, large estate of her paternal grandparents. I was always envious of Nana’s spectacular gardening capabilities, ones that are impressive enough to have landed her on the Garden Tour of Princeton a few times.
We happened upon a dead mouse— this disgusting gray and decaying thing, lying there on the pavers, with a tiny, violent splash of dried maroon blood permanently bleh from it’s fangs. Oh Jesus Christ I am terrified of tiny mice.
Audibly I gasped and instinctively moved my body to form a shield in front of my daughter to prohibit her sparkling hazel eyes from witnessing this awful sight.
Hearing my gasp, Nana hurriedly rushed over, clearly terrified some tragedy had befallen one of her Narcissus jonquilla. I very quietly, shhh—whispered through my teeth that there was a d-e-a-d mouse on the garden path.
Without missing a beat Nana knelt down, pried Little Chloe’s tiny hand from her mother’s death grip and exclaimed with a voice that was shrill, judgemental and clearly irritated,
“MY GOD, what is wrong with you?—Let the children see death.”
My ex-husband always liked to say his stepmother looked like a young Dolph Lundgren, so do please picture this woman as a tall, fit and fierce Austrian.
See Nana is a little on the staunch, abrasive and direct side, but she’s also just European. I know she usually means well, just like I know she understands the importance of teaching our children, early on that death is a natural and certain part of life. Our very own beautiful gardens are actually the perfect place to learn about this natural life cycle. We don’t know how the mouse died, but Nana and Chloe stared at it and talked about it for a minute. Nana’s garden is organic, the woman loves her multiple rescue cats, so I am confident this mouse died of natural causes.
One fall day, many years ago, Nana called to run through the list of reasons why she could not invite me to her Christmas Eve dinner, even though she personally wanted to invite me, now that her stepson and I had parted ways. I vividly recall standing on the nice pavers in the backyard of my own dream house, listening to her rattle on about seating arrangements and not wanting to upset anyone.
I listened intently because my life’s work has blessed me with the knowledge that listening to a little harsh truth is always a gift.
I wondered what I would do without my own little children that Christmas Eve and at that moment, decided I would rather go to work and potentially watch people take their last breath on December 24th, than sit and force myself to smile with my extended family.
It was challenging to understand Nana sometimes, but her and I always got along fine. She actually came down with cancer one year, back when her stepson and I were still married. We showed up for one of her always formal holiday dinners, prepared for less formality and maybe some catering, but no. There is nothing quite like the threat of death, to make one sort of ferociously come even more alive and pull out all of the holiday stops.
After dinner, Nana sat and read some age appropriate books, about CANCER, to her young grandchildren. Then she rolled up her sleeves to reveal her impressive bilateral antecubital veins, and said pfft, there would be no need for a silly port to inject her treatments.
When this Cancer-themed dinner was complete, we piled into the family station wagon and I drove my family home. One of the children asked if Nana was going to die and before I could answer as the always voice of reason/family healthcare professional, my then husband interjected. He reassured our children that Nana would not die because, in his opinion, his stepmother was way meaner than any cancer.
Our perplexed children gasped then giggled as I removed one hand from the steering wheel to smack their father who was riding shotgun because he was too drunk to drive. Nana is alive and well and we all had brunch together this last New Year’s Eve. My ex-husband's mother was visiting from Florida and also in attendance. Since it was the only day for everyone to get together and see their very busy mutual grandchildren, they put their many differences aside. They invited me along too, and I went because it’s my actual birthday. One decade and pandemic later, I now know this life is too short for nonsense and bullshit, but most 80 year olds already know this.
Little by little, I’m working on softening some of the parts of me. No it’s not easy, actually annoys the shit out of me, but I do it for the sake of my personal relationships. I’m always appropriately hard or soft at work, depending on whatever version of me the situation calls for.
Maybe it’s the tomboy in me, the little girl in the flannel shirt with the Dorothy Hamill haircut, that followed her daddy absolutely everywhere, who hates to see your stubborn fathers in an ICU. Maybe it’s the little girl in the pink footed pajamas, who ran down the stairs one Easter morning, all smiles until she heard her mother scream when we got the call that our matriarch was dead. Instead of celebrating, I watched my family rage over the fact that no one in the hospital could seem to explain how or why our Hopewell Nanny died unexpectedly that Saturday night. Maybe it’s the pre-teen bookworm in me, the one who went to a Diabetes education class to take notes for her grandmother, that is not ready to call it quits just yet. Nanny Shirley was already half blind and could barely walk, from walking around with uncontrolled diabetes.
My family will tell you I’m a snooty bitch and this usually makes me laugh. Like it or not, they do now know I remember where I came from and besides, Nanny Shirley was a really big bitch, so I take this as a compliment. We all make a point to find new ways to bond with each other, especially when we are unable to agree on all the things we used to agree on. My children and I especially bond over the books we collectively love to read and the old photos we love to laugh until we snort over.
I bond like this with my patients and their families too. There is much to disagree over in this world, but I can always bond over music, gardening, love of— family, family game nights, family pets, nostalgia, awkward photographs and the books. By the way, the whole damn world read 50 Shades of Gray and Verity. I’ve seen copies of those books on hospital bedside tables and in waiting rooms and CT Scan control rooms everywhere.
Debbie is slightly perturbed with me at the moment. This time for calling her Debbie here online, even though we all lovingly call her Debbie in person. She passed the Christmas torch to me in Christmas 2007 after I’d popped out my third child in 5 years. Now I host Christmas morning brunch and we all wear matching pajamas. My little publication might irk my mother’s last nerve, but it has caused us to have more meaningful conversations this year alone, than in the last 5 years combined.
In Christmas of 2020, I hadn’t seen my parents in almost a year, which is normal for some, but I walk around with this knowledge that we could all die at any minute, so it was heart wrenching for me, not to see my family. The cloth masks are just cute and match our holiday pajamas, so there is no need for anyone to comment on their efficacy. When this photo was taken, my family was spread out in four states, working in hospitals and prisons, or living in isolated college dorms. I was ecstatic to be vaccinated the night before on Christmas Eve with one of the first batches of the vaccine, and trust me I felt like complete crap, actually thought Holy Shit what have I done, but I am beaming in this photo. In 2020, I didn’t smile a lot, but I smiled any time I got to hold my new nephew.
At the time, it was the best decision for me and who knows what the hell my mother let the doctors inject me with back in 1975. I had my reasons and this is emphatically not a vaccination commentary. By the way, my father calls the virus a cold and nothing will ever detract from my love for that man. We all have our many reasons to choose to love, or not love our families. Personally, I will always choose love. Many of my coworkers chose not to get vaccinated and I respect every single one of them. One of them told me she wanted to, but promised her grandmother she wouldn’t and I will never argue with that sort of logic. Especially when that logic is spoken from the mouth of someone who happens to also be a member of a population that has historically been irreparably harmed by the healthcare system. I truly do believe Nanny Shirley could strike me dead with a wooden spoon all the way from her kitchen in the beyond, so I have no room to talk there. I am also the biggest fan ever of Nanny’s home remedies, incorporate them at home, and would love to find a bottle of real mercurochrome somewhere, just to keep in the house.
All I know is this—we simply must talk about the past, learn more about each other, commit to learn from our experiences and blend the new with the old—if we ever want to see the health of our nation improve.
So Bitch Smile, I love all your crazy families and my own. Now please go love yours and stop waiting for a Christmas that might never come.
Love the photo of all of you I’m matching Jammie’s..
Ps. Amazon has mercurochrome.
Great article, Kristin. I would say more in praise of your writing and advocacy, but however, Chris and Jasper Kitten have taken control of the keyboard, tapping tapping with their toebeans to say how much they luvluvluv the photo with the kitty and the glass of wine. They get it. The end.