Gretchen Staebler - Mother Lode: Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver

Mother Lode

Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver

Gretchen Staebler

SHE WRITES PRESS

Copyright 2022, Gretchen Staebler

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Published 2022

Printed in the United States of America

Print ISBN: 978-1-64742-283-7

E-ISBN: 978-1-64742-284-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022907328

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Dedicated to my motherthe bravest person I know. And to my fatherwe did our best.

By faith we travel to a land weve never seen by a road we dont know.

Peggy Haymes

Well, in that direction lives the March Hare. Hes mad.

And in that direction lives the Mad Hatter. Hes mad.

But I dont want to go among mad people.

Oh, but you cant help it, were all mad here.

The Cheshire Cat & Alice

As I prepare to leave for grocery shopping, Mama asks me to pick up some ground sirloin. Be sure its sirloin, I dont want ground round, she says, which I already know because shes told me a hundred times in the three months since I started cooking for her. I like to have some in the freezer because I might want homemade pasta sauce. I dont like what comes in a jar. Its too salty.

Did you like the sauce we had last night? I ask.

It was missing something, she says, after a moment of silence, as if trying to think what might be the right answer. Did you make it or was it from a jar?

I made it, I say. What was it missing do you think?

Salt, she says.

She cant see my eyes roll.

July

Arrival

I cross White Pass from central Washingtons fertile Yakima Valley, Mt. Rainier rising to meet me, and roll past Packwood, Randle, Morton, Mossyrock, Cinebar, Onalaskathe names of the tiny towns a little too familiar. I dont head for Interstate 5 at Marys Corner; Im in no hurry to arrive at my destination. I drive across Jackson Prairie and text Rebecca from Chehalis, Centralias sister town and high school athletic rivalSwamp Swamptown, rah, rah!to update my arrival time. Be there in fifteen minutes, I say. Im five minutes away, but Im driving slower and slower.

I slink into town past the Welcome to Centralia: Population 16,731 sign, a block from the elementary school where I was a sixth grader when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I gulp. Good Lord, what have I done? Centralia: Population 16,732. I am returning to childhood: the small town, the people who never left, the house, my old bedroom, and my mothers need to mother. I let my doubts go on the open road; now Im terrified.

Smudge, my twelve-year-old diabetic cat who had settled down and slept most of the way across the country, is on high alert, sitting on her haunches in the dog crate behind the front seats of my fourteen-year-old Honda CRV, looking out the windshield. She is oddly silent as we drive down the potholed street through the neighborhood at the foot of the forested hill I grew up on. Transformation has not reached this part of town on the other side of the tracks, and the houses are more dilapidated than ever. The tennis courts with their sagging nets near the site of the original elementary schooldamaged irreparably in an earthquake two years before I was bornhave grass growing in the cracks. The empty lot, where all that remains of the school are the cement steps, is a tangle of pink-and-purple sweet peas.

My younger sister Rebeccas upscale gift boutique is two blocks beyond, across the train tracks on the town side of the renovated historic railroad station, out of place among the overload of antique stores. At least the sleazy taverns are gone; most of them anyway. The city has made strides in improving the few blocks in the center of town: flower baskets hang from reproduction streetlights lining the main street, intersections have been bricked and beautified. The cosmetic attention helps, but still businesses come and go in the historic buildings, and there are always empty storefronts as shoppers stick to the outlet mall and the Walmart shopping center at the Centralia I-5 interchanges two miles west on the other edge of town.

I turn right at the former lumberyard where I used to go with my father, the faded orange building a motorcycle sales and repair shop now with Harleys parked along the curb. The house on the corner has a sofa on the front porch and icicle Christmas lights hanging from the eaves in midsummer. Smudge moans behind me, echoing my fear. Danger ahead; go back, go back. But theres no going back now. My stomach clenches.

I head up Seminary Hill toward my old new home, the excitement of adventure gone. I will the car and time to slow down as I pass the National Guard Armory where a Methodist seminary sat before my time and gave the hill its name; where I caught the school bus half a mile from home when I missed its early arrival at the end of our long driveway. Across the road is the hill where I went sledding every winter. I wonder if the towns children still gather there. It doesnt snow as much now. Climate change.

After passing a couple dozen houses around the armory, the road climbs to a nonresidential stretch of bigleaf maple and Douglas fir forest, curving upward toward my destination, three-quarters of a mile from town. Unlike the hill above the hospital on the other side of town, this one never met its potential, which suits me fine, though it means few neighbors and friends. No one will be out walking in the morning, no one sitting on porches chatting up evening walkers. Not that I ever had that, but I dreamed it for my future. Im stepping into someone elses life instead.

I had wanted to come back to Washington nearly since I left, but I didnt expect to come alone, and I surely never intended to live in this town again. Another wave of nausea passes over me. Small town girl triumphantly escapes with husband to new life; quietly returns alone, tail between legs. All I need is the dead of night.

I turn off the road into the driveway and stop the car, leaning my head back onto the headrest. This had seemed like a good idea. What the hell was I thinking?

Inhaling a deep breath and sitting up tall, I put my foot back on the accelerator. Its going to be okay