Habit Read Free

brush with antibiotics. For years, I have been dreading the moment when some doctor tells her antibiotics are the only way to keep her alive and she refuses them because one time years ago in Florida, some drug nobody made a note of caused her to gasp a little and look pained. What if she is unconscious and they want me, with the Medical Power of Attorney, to approve the use of them? Do I allow it because I don’t think her explanation has been valid enough, and possibly cause her accidental death? Or do I withhold them per her wishes, which could kill her for sure?
    Which reminds me of Maxwell: a matter of Life and Death. And here we are.
    Jeffrey ponders.
    â€”Where are you from? he asks.
    â€”I’m from Philadelphia.
    â€”No, I mean originally—your accent is British, right?
    â€”This is the way I was brought up to speak, by my family and my school, Shipley.
    Ma’s people were Philadelphia WASPs. They all had nicknames like Gaga, Aunt Tiny, Cousins Buckety and Hebe Dick. Ma’s mother was born where her family summered on the Isle of Wight: a few miles off the southern coast of England, conveniently and strategically within very close range of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s summer digs. That whole side of the family had faintly British accents going back many generations. My grandmother somehow managed to pass hers on to Ma and the rest of her children, despite the sketchy amount of time she actually lived with them. This mostly depended on how long my grandmother stayed married to their fathers and whether or not the courts deemed her fit to be left alone with her own children while she was carrying on with dwindled funds and whatever dashing but equally penniless new husband she had taken up with at the time.
    Jeffrey releases Ma’s blood pressure cuff.
    â€”Shipley? We played against them in high school.
    â€”Really? It’s very different now. When I was there it was a girls’ school. In the back of one of the alumni bulletins last year, there was a picture of three young women. . . .
    (I have a feeling I know where this is going.)
    â€”One of the women was an alumna. She was posing between her new wife and the female chaplain who had just performed their wedding. I wrote the headmistress that it simply wouldn’t do .
    I watch to see how Jeffrey will take this. Not a blink. Good for him.
    They do an x-ray and there is no obstruction. They decide the cramping is due to the senna tea Ma took for constipation, and recommend she see a colorectal surgeon as soon as she can. We are free to leave.
    On the ride home, we notice it is after midnight, and I point out it is now my birthday, which I had insisted I didn’t want to spend with her this year.
    Ma crows in delight:
    â€”Right at the time of day you were born!
    My birth was not an easy one. There were fifteen years and five miscarriages between Ma’s first child (my brother, Felix) and her youngest (me). Two sisters between us survived, thanks to luck and whatever god-awful drugs they used back then to deal with our parents’ unusual situation: Ma had that rare Rh-negative baby-killing blood, and Daddy’s was Rh-positive. This incompatibility could have been seen as a sign of the greater obstacles they faced as a married couple, but it was particularly problematic when producing children. The babies in this situation tend to inherit their father’s more common blood type, which is eventually lethal to the mother. So Ma’s body had to automatically produce antibodies after Felix, her first Rh-positive child was born, in order to keep her blood cells intact. These antibodies would then kill off the rest of her Rh-positive babies one by one, her body deliberately rejecting its own offspring in order to save itself.
    Ma’s always told me she was sick as a dog during her pregnancy with me, and even wished at times that I’d get it over with and abandon ship like the other five