The HAL Project

 Donna’s Choice 

 

I tried to keep my composure as Mom told her story.  I’ve never wanted a drink so bad in my life.  And, a cigarette.  I didn’t smoke or drink in front of Mom.  In fact, I denied that I smoked; even though, I’m sure, she smelled it on me. 

 

Mom, I suspect, also smelled smoke on Cheryl and me and that’s how she learned we got our babysitter to buy us cigarettes – at twice the price – when we were in grade school.  It was also understandable that Mom accused me of smoking when my best friend and I accidentally set a field on fire.  We did put it out.  Two nine-year-olds never moved so swiftly.

 

I did admit that on special occasions I would have a glass of champagne.  (It sounded ritzy.)  On the other hand, I never lied to Mom about being Gay.  I knew she wouldn’t think that was a sin like smoking and drinking.  To be fair, Mom didn’t really think these vices were sins; they were a matter of being a choice unlike one’s sexual preference.

 

Mom was a firm believer in mind-over-matter.  This was a convenient belief to have when you are doctor adverse.  For the most part, we didn’t suffer major health issues – just the normal childhood diseases and mishaps.  Being two years older, Cheryl would first come down with the measles, chickenpox, and other juvenile illnesses.  Mom would tell me to sleep with Cheryl since it was easier to have two children sick at the same time. 

 

Whenever we were sick with non-childhood illnesses, Mom would say “It’s the flu.”  I’m sick, “It’s the flu.”  I don’t feel well, “It’s the flu.”  Rather than taking medicine when we were feeling puny, we were given 7 Up.

 

Right after my seventh Christmas, I started feeling sick.  Each day I became sicker; each day Mom diagnosed me as having the flu.  After a few days, I was unable to get up for breakfast.  Mom came into my bedroom and said “I guess you must be sick.”  Before leaving for work, Mom told me that Grandma Shorty would look in on me later.  Within a few hours, grandma was glancing down at me and, without saying a word, picked me up and carried me to her car.  She drove to the hospital; a couple of hours later I was getting prepped to have my appendix removed.

 

Mishaps were few and far between which was good, especially since they seemed to happen to me.  Periodically, Mom would take Cheryl and me, along with a few neighborhood kids, tailgating.  This was a real treat.  The back of the station wagon had a row of young legs hanging over the tailgate.  Cheryl was at one end and I was at the other.  On one occasion, Mom took a corner a little too fast.  Momentum shifted the young bodies to my end.  I flew off and landed onto the graveled road.  Mom jumped out of the car, picked me up, and calmly explained to hold on tighter.  And, off we continued our tailgating.

 

A couple of years later, a piece of bread got stuck in the toaster.  As someone who abhors carbon to this day, I used a fork to lift it out.  As I was laying on the kitchen floor, fork clutched in hand, Mom walked over and calmly said “Well, you won’t do that again.”  Donna’s mind-over-matter health care plan.

 

When I was in seventh grade, Mom routinely picked me up after school.  As soon as the bell rang ending the last class for the week, twelve-year-olds charged out of the classroom ready to begin their weekend.  I had taken a few steps into the hallway when a fellow seventh grader, carrying a pair of scissors, ran into me.  Or, more to the point, the scissors went into my left hand. 

 

One of my classmates rushed to get a teacher.  I stood there looking down at my hand that was the resting place for one of the scissor blades.  When the teacher arrived, the crowd of kids suddenly turned quiet.  She took my hand and swiftly withdrew the offending blade, which had pierced a vein.  At the next heartbeat, blood squirted out like a mini fountain.  Heartbeat, squirt, heartbeat, squirt, heartbeat, squirt as we went into the boys’ bathroom.  Soon, additional teachers arrived with bandages.  They wrapped up my hand and sent me off to catch my ride. 

 

As I was getting into the car, Mom asked me why I was late.  I showed her my bandaged hand and explained what had happened.  She glanced at my hand, started the car, and in her matter-of-fact manner told me that I would still have “to work tomorrow.”  As a carhop carrying trays of food and drinks for six hours was not an appealing thought. 

 

I protested that my hand had just been stabbed.  “Oh, working will keep your hand from freezing up” Mom calmly replied.  She was right.  Donna’s mind-over-matter health care plan in action.

 

Because Mom and Cheryl worked, I took care of Angie after school and on weekends.  When Angie was two, she developed thrush.  Angie was in a lot of pain for several days.  Try explaining to a two-year-old our family’s mind-over-matter health care plan.  One day she stopped eating and drinking.  It was time to see a doctor. 

 

I carried Angie to my motorcycle, which I had recently bought for my 14th birthday, put her in front of me, holding her with one arm and steering with the other.  The ER was a half-mile away.  Angie was hospitalized for a few days to treat the thrush.

 

Mom’s mind-over-matter health care plan continued for the rest of her life.  There were periodic interruptions.  One such time was when Mom was having health issues for months before she could no longer avoid seeing a doctor.  Mom’s doctor told her she had Stage 4 cervical cancer and was seven months pregnant.  The latter bit of news came as quite a shock.

 

Two months later she gave birth.  The following month the cancerous tumor was removed.  I never asked Mom why it took three months before operating on an advanced tumor.  Also, why wasn’t the pregnancy terminated in order to have the operation sooner?  Or, at least, induce labor once the fetus was viable.  At what point was the decision made to carry the pregnancy to term?  This is yet another gap in Donna’s life story. 

 

Mom was pro-choice.  Roe had been decided by then and her life was increasingly at risk by delaying the surgery.  Legally, could she have had an abortion in order to have a potential life-saving operation?  If so, who made this life and death decision – the doctors or Donna?

 

Hospital records have long since been destroyed.  Plus, we’ll never know what the obstetrician and surgeon told Mom – in private – and what their recommended course of action entailed.  What role did the medical profession play in this saga?  Did the doctors have undue influence in the decision?  If that was the case, was there a nefarious motive?  In the final analysis, was it Donna’s choice?

 

Mind you, Donna was not one to be intimated; her will was stronger than tempered steel.  I first observed Mom’s steeliness when she was organizing a union at the only supermarket in town.  

 

One summer night, we drove several miles out into the country for a rendezvous with other union organizers.  This was the last meeting before the union vote and they were taking precautions to keep from being discovered.  The organizers feared they would be fired if their activities became known.  Mom turned off the two-lane highway and continued driving on the section line road for a number of miles until arriving at the prearranged location. 

 

Half-a-dozen cars and pickups were parked in a circle where two section line roads intersected.  The vehicles were pointed towards each other with their headlights on to provide illumination for the gathering of men and Donna to discuss the upcoming union vote.  Despite the safeguards taken, the clandestine meeting was exposed.  Mom and the other union ringleaders were fired.  Her will was unbent.

 

Mom, at least to her kids, was physically larger than her actual petite size.  Donna never acted as though she was small in stature or her chronological age. 

 

In her late fifties, Mom was Christmas shopping at a Mall.  In the parking lot, with an armful of sacks, a young man grabbed Mom’s purse strap which was hung over her shoulder.  The force of the assault broke the strap.  Mom tightly held the purse to her chest and clung to the shopping bags.  The battle was joined.  Realizing he had more than met his match, the unsuccessful purse snatcher submitted to Donna’s determination.  Fortunately, Mom had the good sense to not run after him.

 

A decade later, driving home after work late one night, Donna was at a stoplight when one of the passengers jumped out of a car next to hers and attempted to pull Mom out of her truck.  Mom hung on to the steering wheel and started honking the horn.  The would-be carjacker finally relented. 

 

He and his two accomplishes sped off with Donna in pursuit.  She followed the unsuccessful carjackers as they drove into a down-at-the-heels subdivision and parked in a driveway.  Mom wrote down their car’s license plate number and house address and proceeded to a police station to report the incident.  The three were arrested for attempted carjacking.

 

Mom denied she was courageous.  She always did what she thought was the right thing to do “come hell or high water.”  As she once told me after witnessing a childhood incident “If I ever catch you starting a fight, you’ll get a whippin’; and, if I ever catch you not standing up for yourself, you’ll get a whippin’.”  Donna’s code of conduct.

                                                                                                                                       

I can’t even imagine the pressure Mom was feeling when deciding what to do about the pregnancy.  At 42, Donna, a single mother of a nine-year-old at home, was given a death sentence.  On top of that, she was jobless after her boss learned she was pregnant.  I never suspected the intense stress my mother was under. 

 

While this was one of the darkest times of her life, it was one of my happiest.  When we talked, I was happy as a lark and relating how much fun I was having with my Foggy Top friends.  Not once did Mom betray in her voice or words that anything was amiss.  I’m in awe at the depth of my mother’s love that she didn’t want to burden me with her problems.

 

Without a doubt, Mom would have sacrificed her life to save mine and both of my sisters’.  That was Donna; that was my mother.  What I don’t know, did Mom's sense of selfless sacrifice extend to an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy that was increasingly endangering her life the longer she waited before having surgery?

 

Prayers were answered.  Life can be cruel. 

 

 

Part Two – Version 4