Smoke 'em if You Got 'em

 

Well, it is raining and storming and it just seems like a good day to continue on with the story. Also, thank you to those who read the first installment and commented. Writers and bloggers are a greedy sort who get their self-worth from their readers and the opinions of their writing from said readers. Not really....but sometimes. So onto our story. 

In order to understand me and my story, first, you must understand my mother and her story. I never realized it so much growing up as I do now. My mom and I were so much alike, that at times it tore us apart. To this day though, even all these years after her passing, sometimes I open my mouth and her words fall out or I do something, and it's as if she was the driving force behind it. I guess many mothers and daughters are like that. So when I say, she created me and formed many of my ideas about life, living, and even dying, I am really not kidding. 

Today I am going to talk not so much about genetics but more about societal norms, what we are taught, what we believe, and what can seem good and turn out very bad. None of us are immune to this and all of us have likely experienced some form of getting caught up in craziness served up as societal norms. So imagine it being 1954. My mom had just graduated from a small Oklahoma high school in a town that barely held a thousand people. Mom had played basketball all through junior high and high school and was pretty darn good at it. (Let me just interject here that I got NONE of her athleticism). She was an amazing dancer too. That gene also bypassed me. 

Along with her prowess on the basketball court, she was also homecoming queen, and to quote her own words, she thought she was a pretty big deal in her town, not because of her athletic skills, but because she was Ray Dougherty's daughter. This translated into, my mother idolizing her dad and thus assuming the rest of the world did too (to be fair, many that knew him did), so this somehow elevated her status in not only her school and town but also the world as far as she was concerned. 

Being the youngest of eleven, Mom was of course spoiled (by attention, not material things. They had no money for material things) and she was a bit of a rebel, which often did not bode well for her. So when she graduated in 1954, she was not going to be the girl who got married and immediately settled down and had kids. No, her aspirations were loftier than that. This may have been spurred on by the fact that as poor as they were, all of her older siblings (including the girls) either went onto college, nursing, the military, or some kind of certified training. Mom had no desire to go to college but nursing interested her, so fall of 1955, she was enrolled in St. Anthony's two-year RN nurses training. 

Now Mom's impetuousness to be an adult and to do adult things was probably not her best feature at this point in her life. However, she was not alone in her desire to grow up and be a woman of the world. As Mom told it, nursing school back then was much different than it is now. There was some classroom work, but much of the training was on the job. In fact, at this point in time, they didn't even call it nursing school. It was called "nurses training" and a great deal had to be covered in that two years of training. Not only was classwork expected and in-hospital training, but they also were required to work shifts during all of this. Apparently falling asleep on your feet was not an uncommon activity among these overworked and underpaid young women. 

Part of the training was that each nurse in training had to work in every department for a month to six weeks. This was everything from obstetrics to cardiac to ER and psych. It is here where I am going to let you know why at times I question the intelligence of the medical community. My mom was in a class of about 25 girls. When they began their psych rotation, not one of those girls had ever touched a cigarette. Six weeks later, all but two were smokers, and most became lifelong smokers. At one time before my mother died, she told me that she had already outlived most of her nursing class. It is just unfathomable.

So why were all these smokers created in a hospital of all places?  Well, if you know anything about past history, smoking was considered a social norm well into the 1970s. The cool factor and "health benefits" were touted by models, actors, the media, and even the medical community. In fact, there was no place where you couldn't smoke, including in hospitals. So along with the social acceptance of it all, apparently psychologists and psychotherapists were of the mind that it was somehow therapeutic for patients in the psych ward to smoke on a regular basis as part of their therapy. It didn't stop there though. The therapy points were somehow really upped if the nurses smoked with the patients, so every time a patient smoked, the nurses would hear "smoke 'em if you got 'em," and they were expected to smoke right along with the patients. 

These poor girls were pack-a-day smokers before they even graduated. Along with what seems today like the sheer insanity of all of this, these girls were under extreme stress with their schedules and they learned that smoking was the cure for hunger, sleep deprivation, coping with their busy lives, and all the stress that accompanied all of their lives. Yes, these girls were not just physical smokers, in six weeks they had become emotional smokers too, completely dependent on menthol, tar, and nicotine to get them through their days, their stress, and in many cases, the rest of their lives. 

Jump ahead to the 1960s. Yes, if you are wondering, she did smoke when she was pregnant with me. No one thought it was dangerous or destructive to do so. In fact, she was allowed to smoke while in labor. Let's not kid ourselves though, with the stress of being an unwed mother, trying to hide her indiscretion from her family, having all those that did know her situation begging her to give me up for adoption, and still having to work full time to keep food on the table, even if society had believed at the time that smoking was dangerous, she was so emotionally and physically attached to cigarettes that I doubt she could have taken nine months off of smoking, even if she tried. 

From my first memories, I don't ever remember my mom not smoking. She smoked socially and at home. She smoked at the store, when she came to open house at my school, working in the yard, and sometimes even in her sleep. The fact that she never burned down our house was nothing short of a miracle. In fact, for most of my childhood, she was at least a two-three pack-a-day smoker. 

Now here is another reason I question the medical field so often. Remember me telling you that my brother and I were both asthmatics? Well, Mom, as most smokers did back then, smoked in the house and in the car. I would be in the throes of an asthma attack and Mom would put me in the car, and run me to the doctor. On that car ride though, I would be wheezing and gasping for air and she would have the car windows up and be smoking the whole way. Once we got to the doctor, they would rush me into a room where both the doctor and my mother would be smoking and discussing what might have instigated this attack. What were they thinking? Today, I have scars on my lungs from all the asthma-related pneumonia I have had in my life and I struggle at times to remember that if a doctor thought it okay to smoke while I was having an asthma attack, why would my mom have thought she was doing anything wrong by doing the same? Sometimes it is hard to forgive the unforgivable. 

By the time I hit junior high school, my mom had set a pretty firm example without even realizing it, that stress required self-medication, whether that was food or cigarettes. Cigarettes though were starting to get a pretty bad wrap among non-smokers and funny thing, the medical community was starting to change their tune on the "health benefits" of these little cancer sticks. No more were there commercials or ads promoting cigarettes and the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association were creating big campaigns, warning us all of the long-term dangers of cigarettes. Even at school, we were starting to be educated on the health risks of smoking, albeit there were a lot of mixed messages for my generation as we were told in health class not to smoke and then the students went to the bathroom to have a cigarette and the teachers went to the teachers' lounge to do the same. Re-educating the world was a long and tedious process, mostly because of people like my mom. 

When I would come home parroting what I was told at school about the dangers of smoking, it truly irritated my mom. If I brought literature home and ask her to read it, she would immediately file it in the kitchen trash without a single glance. She was invested in her smoking. It was a part of her and she was not about to listen to the medical community tell her cigarettes were dangerous and she shouldn't do it when that very same community was who introduced her to smoking in the first place. 

As I got older and realized how much I hated her smoking, I would beg her to quit. I knew how much my mom loved me and my brother and I figured if I asked her to do it for us, she would not refuse me. What I didn't realize or understand at all, was that my mom was an addict. She was addicted to smoking and she couldn't stop at that point, although I do know that at times she tried. She and I would have terrible fights over her smoking and yet it always resulted in me giving up and her continuing to do as she had always done.....smoke! 

Eventually, I became a young adult, and try as the medical community might, they still had not totally erased the "cool factor" of smoking. My friends and I hung out at bars and when you drank you smoked. Because of my asthma though, I was never truly married to smoking and I did it exclusively with my friends. During this period though, I did try to blackmail my mom with my newfound skill and told her if she didn't stop smoking that I would start (she at the time didn't know I already had.) My mother, not one to be blackmailed and in no mood to stop when I was trying to strong-arm her, did a classic mom move and handed me a cigarette. I was stunned but not as stunned as she was when I lit it and smoked the entire thing in front of her. That little game though got us nowhere and didn't get either of us to change our views or our actions for quite some time to come. 

My last cigarette happened the minute someone told me my breath smelled like an ashtray. My vanity was far greater than my desire to smoke. For Mom though, her lightbulb moment didn't come until she was diagnosed with her first cancer and after her surgery, her lung collapsed. At that point, she was smoking over four packs a day and upon going into the hospital she had every expectation to light up the moment the surgery was over. In fact, she had even snuck cigarettes into the hospital (they were a no-no in hospitals at this time and had been for quite a while). However, her lung collapsing scared her so badly that she left the hospital on the patch and never touched another cigarette again. 

This woman was definitely a conundrum having such a strong addiction for so many years and unwittingly teaching us that life required self-medication with catchphrases like "Cigarettes are the only enjoyment in my life" (guess us kids and grandkids were a little lackluster next to her smokes), and "Mind your own business. It's my life." Suddenly though, she just stopped. I know it wasn't easy but the willpower she showed, even if it was fear-induced, taught me a great deal about commitment, strength, and the desire to do better when she finally knew better. 

So how does this all affect who I am? How does it not? All the life lessons woven into the years of smoking, addiction, and all that went with it, left lasting impressions on me, both positive and negative, as well as physical consequences. My health was impaired because of it and her health was drastically changed for the worse because of it. 

Knowing now what we know about smoking, we know that it likely caused major issues with her Lupus as well as helping her lung cancer along. Her battle with the addiction of smoking also taught me to be obsessive about certain things even if they aren't good for me. I learned to be wickedly stubborn, even if it wasn't to my benefit, but I also learned that my actions can at times affect my children negatively and I have to be careful so as to not give them lasting repercussions and even fatal consequences.  

Please don't get me wrong though. My mom was more than just her smoking and I would not trade her at her worst or our relationship at its worst for anything. While I don't like to ever think of my mother as a victim, the truth is, she was at a very young age. She was a victim of misinformation and her own worst inclinations. She was also brave, fierce, loving, kind, wise, and smoking aside, a truly great mom. For better or worse, my life with her molded me and gave me both the positive and negative which I am still learning to navigate my way through. Perhaps if Mom had realized that she really was a big deal and the head-long rush and rebellion into the world weren't quite as necessary as she once thought, her path and choices might have been different and consequently so might mine have been. But then again, had things been different, I might not even be here today, so maybe everything does happen with a purpose and maybe that is why I am writing this today. 

(The next installment is coming. I don't know when, but I promise not to disappoint. As always I welcome your comments and hope you get as much from reading this as I do from writing it. Until next time......)

The Creation of Me

I'm not exactly sure where this is going. I guess we will see when we get there. This morning my pathway to this blog piece was much clearer than it is right now, but that is what having to be interrupted by an IEP, two loads of laundry, dishes, and cleaning the house will do to a creative process as well as a mental plan. It's fine though. I will muddle through and take you along for the ride. Shall we?

So let's go back to the beginning. In my best Sophia voice, "Picture it. It was 1960's Wichita." My mother was so thin, even after having me, her first baby, that she could almost blow away in a strong gust of Kansas wind. To look at her, she was thin and beautiful and you would think that she came from some pretty impressive genes. That would later prove to be incorrect...for her anyway. 

My mom was the youngest of 11 kids. They were all farm kids, full of unpasteurized cows milk, farm fresh eggs, garden-fresh fruits and veggies, their own home butchered meats, and not a processed item in any food they ate. Of course, there was also a fair amount of DDT, asbestos, and other farm chemicals floating around, that they had no idea would prove to be deadly later on, but at the time, except for some asthma and an aunt with a heart ailment due to rheumatic fever, they were a healthy bunch, but they had no idea what genes and environmental issues were doing to their bodies or what the outcomes might someday be. 

My grandmother was a short woman at 4'11" who after all those births, held a little weight. My grandfather was a tall thin man reaching about 6'2" who never put on much weight his entire life. Grandma in her later years suffered from heart issues and strokes, most of which she fully recovered from, until her last one. The one that took her life. Grandpa also ended up with heart issues and this was what took his. 

Their kids came in all shapes and sizes, my mom being 5'4" and the tallest girl to my aunt who like her mom, was also 4'11" and the boys ranged from about 5' 9"  to about 6'2". In this mix of 11 kids, there turned out to be everything growing and mutating in their bodies from multiple forms of cancer, to lupus, to heart disease and aneurysms. Funny though, while some died as early as their early 60's, others hit their 90th birthday, and then some. We also learned that our family had a nasty little genetic mutation called the Lynch Syndrome Gene which is a cancer gene. If a parent has it, there is a 50/50 chance their children will also have it. It has wreaked quite a bit of havoc in my family as a whole and in my immediate family as my mom had it and it was believed to be the root of her four primary cancers throughout her body. She also had Lupus Erythematosis and with the combination of Lupus and all those cancers, it is a true miracle that she lived as long as she did. 

So why this genetic history of my family? Because I am learning that genetics, environment, hormones, societal norms and views, emotions, physical activity and everyday habits ALL have a huge effect on who we are, our emotional and physical health, and how we look and feel about ourselves. Some of this we can control and some of it we can't, but sometimes what we can't control seems to overwhelm and confuse us to the point that it seems to outweigh what we can. 

I have started this blog piece (or likely pieces) with my mom because she created me in more than one way. She created my very being, blessing me with the good, the bad, and the ugly of my genetic makeup, but she also created my eating habits, health habits, and my view of myself and my body. Don't get me wrong, my mom was an amazing mom, but like most women of our modern world, she too was not immune to magazine models, social persuasions, and the constant advertising of what the perfect woman should look and act like. So on that note, let's get back to the 1960s and my mom. 

My mom was an RN and for a while, a single mom. Being a working woman AND a single mom in the 1960s were definitely not social norms so with both of them came a certain amount of stress. At that point in my mom's life, stress was better than any diet pill that could have ever been on the market. Where most of us eat our stress away, Mom dropped 10 pounds in three days when she was stressed. She simply couldn't eat at these times which meant that at 105 pounds on her 5'4" frame, she really couldn't get a whole lot thinner and not get sick. By this time, she had already been diagnosed with Lupus (something even most doctors at the time knew little if anything about) so throw that into the mix and while Mom had the appearance of the willowy thin Twiggyesque models of the time, her body was anything but healthy. 

As the 1960s wore on, Mom got married, but it wasn't particularly a happy marriage and soon she was pregnant. The funny thing about Lupus and pregnancy is, that often the second you conceive, all of your symptoms go away. There is a small percentage of a chance that when the baby is delivered, the Lupus will go into remission. This was not the case for my mom. Her Lupus symptoms did in fact go away during her pregnancy, but her pregnancy was not particularly a pleasant one with all the things going on in her life and the stress took over. She lost tremendous weight and her health took a major hit and she got extremely sick with strep throat. The delivery was no picnic either as she had a reaction to the epidural which nearly killed her, the cord was wrapped around my brother's neck which nearly killed him, and the second she delivered, not only was the Lupus back, but it had affected her kidneys causing her to have Glameral Nephritis. Her kidneys were not good for the rest of her life. 

So stress, Lupus, and an unhappy marriage not to mention two kids weighed heavily on my mom and it affected everything from her hormones to her emotional well-being, and her physical health. Through it all though, she tried hard to be a good mom and one thing she learned from her mom was to feed her family well. As a kid though, I don't remember food being a focal point in our life. Maybe it was because there was just too much else going on. In fact, I remember being a rather picky eater who made my parents crazy, as I could out-stubborn them every time when they insisted I eat a food I didn't like. Flaked hominy comes to mind and I, as a very young child would go on a days-long hunger strike before I would touch that icky stuff. Because of this, I was a pretty small child and I was just slightly underweight for the first few years of my life. 

My brother and I were also asthmatics at a young age and allergic to many things in our environment. Often our asthma would send us both into all sorts of infections along with bronchitis and pneumonia, causing us to both be on a plethora of antibiotics and steroids. What doctors were thinking back then, I don't know, but changing our diets wasn't at the top of their lists. They treated it all with medications and some of those medications were tough on our little bodies.  

In the early 1970s, my mom and dad were finally divorced but dad was still a fixture in our lives which I know was tough on my mom, as he was not particularly kind to her. It was at this time, two things happened in my life that changed my outlook on food and myself and that I have continued to struggle with throughout my life. 

At this point in time, my mom was in her mid to late 30s and her hormones and body were starting to change. No longer did stress take the weight right off of her, but instead, it started causing her to gain weight. Part of it too was likely the fact that she became a foodie and spent a lot of time in the kitchen baking. It was also the dawn of fast food and often it was easier for mom to get pizza or burgers than it was for her to think about cooking a full meal. Suddenly our bodies were taking in a lot of carbs, fats, grease, processed food, and sugar that they hadn't before. This was also when diet Pepsi hit the market and we drank diet Pepsi like it was our job. Gone were the days of well-planned and balanced meals. They had been replaced by Mom's emotional eating and our newfound love of fast food, sugar, and artificial sugar. So that was thing one that changed me! 

Thing two that changed my world was the fact that I was at that preteen stage of life where I was about to start my period and become a full-fledged teenager. My body held some baby fat, but it was no more or less than any girl at my stage of life, even with our newfound less-than-stellar eating habits. I was an active kid and left to my own devices, my body would have likely self-corrected and been perfectly fine, but Mom took me to a new pediatrician who had different ideas. He told my mom that I was on the heavy end of what I should weigh and that if I wasn't put on a diet right then, I would likely get fat. What was worse, he said it in front of me and fat-shamed me right there in his office. A part of me immediately shut down that day. No one I even knew was fat and yet this doctor had basically told me that I was headed down that path. I was devastated. I thought I must somehow be strange and defective. Now mind you, I was not fat and at 11 years old, that thought should never have been put in my head, but it was, and it was also put in my mom's head. She immediately felt like a failure mom for causing me to be fat (I am sure this was in part due to how she was feeling about her own body at the time) and I immediately lost all sense of my real self and saw myself only as this fat creature that the doctor had created in his office that day. Sadly, I have never looked at food or myself the same way since. If only that doctor knew the life-long damage he caused me that day and likely caused others just like me with his incorrect conjecture and his insensitive words. If only. 

(There is a story I am telling here and it will be continued in installments. This was the first installment and I hope that you will continue reading the future installments. I am thinking that some of you will see yourself in parts of this, learn as I am learning and before all is said and done, understand that true change is the only constant in our lives. Until next time.)