I'm starting to feel overwhelmed. I'm never really "good" in these kinds of situations. I don't think I'm doing much to cheer her up divert her stress. She's really worried about him. She waits each day for his call, at the designated time that they agreed on, and if she misses it, she heavily regrets leaving the house, and vows not to do it again. Even within the laughter there is immense worry. I don't feel like I'm equipped to cure her worry or her elevated blood sugar. I know what happens when diabetes wins.

None of it seems fair. Why must certain lives be rooted in struggle and sacrifice, and just when those lives have seemed to overcome a life of struggle, to then be stricken with such illnesses? Why? And how do family members aide the elderly when they are stubborn? And more importantly, how does one remain strong while doing so, and when one is not entirely sure what one should even be doing?

I took a breather over the weekend, and carved out some time and some space for a little relaxation and work. I am quickly learning that, as a work at home mom, relaxation and work will often be a part of the same sentence/idea, just as relaxation, motherhood and academics were while I was knocking out my semesters at Cal. Being everything at the same time is no easy task, but it always has its benefits. Instead of wearing many hats, I just wear one hat, with many different names on it!

In a way, I am actually happy to have a place of refuge within this newly found work, because, although I am busy creating, crocheting still gives me that original peace. Its an art, much like sewing, that allows you to lose yourself within your project. You become one with your project. You control the flow and the outcome, thus, if you don't mind a challenge every now and then, for the most part, you remain relatively stress-free.

I have been spending my days, on my grandmother's couch, surrounded by colorful yarns and warmth. My work, has become "our" thing, as my grandmother and I chit chat about patterns and colors and collaborations and needle sizes... and other things crochet. Momentarily, the chit chat provides an escape from the fact that I am still 9-to-5-less and homeless and due to the state being budgetless - I am child care-less, come back to school time. Newly created butterflies hold the smiles that were formed after the laughter from my grandfather, on the other end of the phone, from a hospital bed in Mississippi where he has had a mild stroke. As he proceeds with three weeks of physical therapy down south, and my grandmother wraps her arm in the band of the blood pressure machine, and transfers the product of her freshly pricked finger into the glucose reader here in the north, all I can do is crochet.

Why does the older generation think they know more than their doctors do?

How come they have a hard time realizing that, although they have spent way more time with and in their bodies than any one doctor has, they still don't know EVERYTHING about it nor have ALL the tools to keep it functioning for as long as possible?

Now, before you start in on me about how our mothers and grandmothers have earned the right to be stuck in their ways, let me just say, having been raised by my great-grandmother, I know that already. Doesn't mean I will ever fully understand it. And don't front, you wont either!

My grandmother has this thing about keeping secrets. "I thought I told you", she says. "YES I DID TELL YOU", she insists. "I thought I did", she realizes. And when I ask her how she's feeling, "Oh, I'm here. I wont complain", she responds. Grrr. Extremely frustrating because that tells me absolutely nothing of importance. Its the "not complaining" that lands our mothers and grandmother and fathers and grandfathers fighting for their lives from illnesses too far gone.

It was only last week that my grandmother confessed that her doctors had "found something" on her EKG. And it was only last week that she told me that she had not only spent days in bed because of a cold, but also because she had been having chest pains. And before this, she had taken her own sweet time telling me that she was now a diabetic, because, in her opinion she really wasn't. The doctors had gotten it wrong. She "wasn't gonna be takin' no more medicine", just like she doesn't take her daily blood pressure medicine because she doesn't want to. I swear, old people can be worse than kids sometimes! Yeah, I said it, because its the truth! They DO NOT wanna listen, or do what they are told, because they know everything.

Well, I threatened to administer her meds if she doesn't get some get right! And I reminded her that people drop from heart attacks all the time. And that when they do drop, you only have a window of time to save lives. She's already survived fibroid tumors that overtook her reproductive organs. She's already survived a brain tumor. So if she thinks she's gonna fuck around and have a heart attack and die on me, she has another thing coming. I will channel my great-grandmother and put foot in her behind first!