Shop Til You Drop

My mother, albeit loving and nurturing, is a real Suck-It-Up-Buttercup kind of mom. Just as there is no crying in baseball, there is no whining in her presence. She was raised with the understanding that for almost any injury she had, her daddy had had worse in his eye on any given day. So Mom is not a complainer by nature and she raised my brother and me with the understanding that whatever our wounds may be, my Papaw most certainly had worse in his eye, a thought that always left me wondering what exactly had been happening to this man's eyes. I feel I should tell you that he did indeed have both of his eyes and they were fully functioning.

While our boo boos and owies were usually minor, there were those few times when Mom's reassuring sentiments of  "you're fine" or "shake it off" missed the mark. As mothers, haven't we all been there? I know I have. There was that time my oldest son, Jacob, was practicing handstands in his bedroom and landed on his foot wrong. He was trying not to cry when he crawled on his hands and knees down the stairs. I looked at his foot...no swelling, nothing protruding from the skin..."You're fine. Prop it up with some ice on it. No biggie." A couple of hours later when he was still complaining (very unusual for Jacob), we took him to the doctor. Turned out he'd broken not one, not two, but three bones in his foot. Yep....and the Mother of the Year Award goes to yours truly. I really should have known it was something worse than what had been in my Papaw's eye because prior to that mishap, the last time Jacob had shed any tears with an injury was when he broke his collar bone earlier that same school year. All that and the kid still earned the Presidential Award in Physical Fitness.

At least when I missed the mark with Jacob's broken foot, I had the luxury of doing it without an audience. Mom had not been so fortunate. I was about 15 and she and I were shopping at our local Target. This was before Target had eaten all of its Wheaties and grown into the super store we all know and love. I tell you this at the risk of showing my age because you need to know that the checkout lanes were the old school style with the steel railings separating each lane. Mom and I were just wrapping up our shopping excursion when I said to her, "I don't feel well. Can I have your keys and wait for you in the car?" To which she replied, "You're alright. We're almost done." So there we were waiting in line as all of our items were making their way down the conveyor belt. Time was slowing down and my head was starting to spin. I moved to the other side of the railing from Mom so I could support myself on it as my stomach was starting to flip flop and I was getting tunnel vision. Then suddenly, everything was quiet and black. I had passed out right there in the checkout lane at Target. Luckily, I had been leaning on that shiny cold steel railing so when I dropped, I didn't hit the floor. Instead, my body draped over the railing, my long hair and longer arms dangling to the floor. I must have been like that for a minute or what seemed an eternity to my mother who was embarrassed and concerned all at once. I'm not sure if Mom noticed me right away or if the cashier or the people in line behind us brought me to her attention as she was busy paying for our items. I wish I could have seen the expression on the cashier's face. She wasn't much older than myself and when I awoke to the sensation of Mom trying to pull me up by my hair using one hand, her other hand still clutching her wallet, I could hear the worried cashier ask Mom if I was okay. Mom was laughing as is apparently her custom when someone falls, faints, or otherwise makes a scene. I  then heard Mom say "Allison, get up. Get up. She's alright. She does this all the time. Get up, Allison!" 

For the record, I didn't do that all the time. I came to fairly quickly and we managed to make it home intact minus just a smidgen of my dignity. Apparently, I had the flu and that, my friends, was worse than anything my Papaw had ever had in his eye.