1/7/91 - Part Three

The waiting room seems to have become our new home. Contemporary, overstuffed, yet extremely uncomfortable chairs in a sickening mauve color meet our backs as we wait, wait, and wait some more. The only things to look at are the tacky, assembly-line lithographs on the walls, and the occasional passer-by. These range from tired-looking doctors (probably residents) in medicinal operating room wear to patients wandering aimlessly, shuffling their feet and dragging their IV's behind them. The squeak those wheels make gives me chills. I grab onto my friend's arm like a vise. I don't remember how he got to be in that waiting room - maybe I called him? I am just thankful he is there for me to lean on. I am numb all over, still asleep, and still reassuring myself it is all a bad dream.

Occasionally, one of us will go to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee, a thick, black, bitter tasting cup of mud that will keep us awake for a few more hours of waiting. My mom's best friend Lynette leans on her boyfriend's arm and stares. My sister and I stare at the floors, the walls, at Dad, and at each other. Mom's friend Anne and her boyfriend glance anywhere but at us. She had gone out with Mom, and it seems she feels even more guilt than me. Had she let Mom drink and drive? Did Mom crash just because of slippery roads, or was it something else?

When the doctor finally comes down in his faded teal scrubs, I am struck by his youth. He cannot be more than thirty, and he is the neurosurgeon. He asks, "Are you the family of the young girl that has been brought in?" and youth again makes an appearance in my mind. My sister replies that he has the wrong family, but I know he is talking about Mom. People have always remarked on her youth, and when the doctor again states, "Well, the twenty-five-year-old, right?" I know he has made a common mistake. A snicker escapes me - I can't help it. My first thought is, "Wow, Mom would kill to be hearing this right now." She would eat it up like candy.

At an age when most women have settled down to the fact that they are middle-aged, my mother at that time seemed to be just beginning. She had always carried herself like a free spirit and it showed in her attitude, in the clothes she wore, in the way she carried herself. She dressed in clothes better suited to women much younger than she, but most of the time she could pull it off, never looking a day over 30, even though she was approaching 50. People used to compare her to Cher all the time, but she's much prettier, and without all that ghastly plastic surgery. She was always just as outrageous as Cher though, and her outfits never ceased to amaze me. She was fearless in fashion. Wearing bright colors, mini-skirts, bikinis (when most women had given *that* particular swimwear up for good) and looking fabulous. People often mistook her for my sister. To this day, when I picture my Mom, she's wearing a brown bikini - bandeau style, with a gold ring in the middle, huge gold hoops in her ears, her black hair in a bun and "Toast of New York" nail polish on her toes. Her signature outfit.

With all this youth going on, people used to mistake her for my sister. I can remember her visiting me in Connecticut (I was working at a lobster house as a bartender and living with a guy, but that's for another blog) and all the kitchen staff kept telling me how hot my sister was and was she single?

Anyway, back in the waiting room, all through Doogie Howser's speech, I keep coming back to youth, and how maybe this youth she possesses will be able to pull her through the biggest of all the traumas she's ever had to face.