Peeping

I come from a long line of spies. Not the cool military kind with gadgets and weaponry and governments begging for their services, I'm talking about the Peeping Tom kind. Not the perverted kind either, just the curious kind who like to look through people's windows and lean over at restaurants to stare intently, yet subtly, at other diner's entrees.  I was a fantastic eavesdropper as a child; I regularly feigned sleep when around adults and learned most of the important facts of life that way. When my mom had cancer, which I called The Cane-Ser, her Peeping Tom habits became fully pronounced and difficult to hide. There's not a lot to do in the hospital if you don't like to watch TV and are probably dying from The Cane-Ser; I pronounced it that way almost all the time and only one of her doctors laughed. The others corrected my diction with a confused look on their faces as my mother gestured feebly with her shrunken arm and glared at me as best as she could through her hemorrhaged eye sockets, trying to get me to do right and quit saying The Cane-Ser in front of learned men and women.

There my mom was, laid up with The Cane-Ser, and she refused to watch TV all day because it gave her a headache and triggered her phobias, many of which had lain dormant up until her illness. The list of phobias that reared their heads during her time in the hospital was long and laborious and included astronauts, snakes, high places, space shuttles, submarines, fresh vegetables, scuba divers, and kittens. So any TV show or commercial that showed any of these items had to be turned off immediately. These phobias made it difficult for me to leave the hospital room or grade papers since my mother's croaky voice interrupted me or called me back from the hall approximately every seven minutes to turn the television channel because there was a kitten batting around a tomato or a shuttle launch.

She enjoyed watching the soap opera called Port Charles, which we called Port Gibson after a nearby town that contained the ruins of a once magnificent plantation home as well as a ghost town immortalized by Eudora Welty in spooky photographs and to which my mother aspired to journey as soon as she beat The Cane-Ser. We would peruse Eudora Welty's book of photos, poring over the ghost town of Rodney, and my mother would gesture with her bony finger and whisper, "As soon as I'm better, we're going." We did go and it was everything you could hope for from a ghost town, but that's a story for another day. But when we watched Port Gibson, we had to mute the sound and I supplied the dialogue. My mother didn't like the way the characters talked; I guess they sounded too much like astronauts eating lettuce. This particular season of Port Gibson was also one in which vampires had taken over the town for some reason, so it was relatively easy for me to put words into the actors' mouths. I would say things like, "I do declare, Lord Bertram Pantywaist, my heart is just a poundin'! Why, Lord Bertram! Whatever are you doin'? Halp! Halp! Oh mah stars! Halp!" My mother would laugh hysterically, or as hysterically as someone who was currently receiving her own blood transfusion because she had blood Cane-Ser could.

After Port Gibson, it was a bit of a wait until lunch, then nap, then a long wait until The Cosby Show, a show mercifully free from items that would trigger my mother's phobias. During the afternoons we indulged my mother's Peeping Tom tendencies. Despite the fact that my mother had a wasting disease and looked like she had a wasting disease, which is to say, a walking nightmare come to haunt my waking hours, she insisted on "dressing" for our daily jaunts up and down the fifth floor oncology unit. Dressing meant putting on a hat, duck bill mask to protect her from infection, her fashionable kimono robe which I diligently laundered every three days, socks, and house shoes. At first, she insisted on getting fully dressed to go shuffle up and down the hall, but after she became too exhausted to venture out of the room after getting dressed, she consented to wear sick people clothing, i.e. easy to slip on and off. Appropriately outfitted, I would push her IV pole and she would begin her shuffling spy walk out into the environs of the floor. We tried to coincide our spy walks with the appearance of the hospital's drug robot, named Rudy, because my mother enjoyed walking faster than Rudy could roll. It was a huge accomplishment for her to be faster than anything because during her treatment her mobility was reduced to a shuffling half walk that would make a senior citizen blush. She refused a wheelchair, insisted on walking, and would smile triumphantly when we passed Rudy, delivering pain killers and anti-emetics to the blighted souls on the fifth floor. My mother also enjoyed watching the nurses unload Rudy's cavernous chest drawers which held the drugs; she would mutter, "Do you think those are mine? What are those? Look at that! Never seen ones that color!" It was more interesting than Port Gibson I guess.

After Rudy we would rest a bit, leaning against a wall, and wait for a patient's door to open. Mother was always keen on particular patients, which varied from visit to visit. She had her favorites and waited expectantly to peep into their rooms. Her all-time favorite was the fifty something year old woman with leukemia who dressed up as either a cheerleader or an Army girl every single day of her treatment. She also hung sheets from her ceiling and had blow up creatures in there; her bed was made up with a neon green camouflage comforter and matching bed skirt. She had waist-length wigs of various colors that coordinated with her cheerleading skirts. When she was an Army girl she was au naturel and went with her bald pate. My mother refused to speak to this woman, declaring, and I am not kidding, "I don't like sick people." She did, however, pump her doctor and the nurses on the floor for information about her fellow patients and found out that the woman dressed up because she was slightly crazy and this was her way of hyping herself up to beat the cancer. I hope that she did, but I never formed a relationship with her, despite the fact that the woman came by my mother's room several times and offered her some pom-poms once or twice.

Some of the patient's rooms were too boring for my mother to bother looking in and some of the patients were too pitiful for my mother to spy on. The ones near death were sacred to my mother and not to be trifled with. So were the ones who screamed at nurses and threw things. But if you had a bongo playing cousin up for a visit, then you'd better believe my mother would be shuffling your way soon. Her first hospital stay coincided with the final treatment for a man that I assume died shortly thereafter; I know he went happily because his days consisted of smoking dope on the roof of the hospital or sitting in his brother's car in the parking lot, his IV pole outside, the line running through the open window, listening to classic rock and getting high. This man came to my mother's room several times a day, high as a kite, laughing, boisterous, skeletally thin, but jubilant, the pungent aroma of marijuana wafting through the room. Sometimes he would sit and tell stories with no point, sometimes he brought his guitar and sang folk songs, but he always, always demanded of my mother, "Hey! Get up and put your walkin' shoes on! We got to go! My brother's here! Just up to the roof! Come on!" Every. Single. Day.  I encouraged my mother to go smoke dope because I wanted to go smoke dope, but she wouldn't go and forbade me to go also. I was an adult and could have gone, but then who would have been there to do hilarious voice overs for Port Gibson or reset my mother's IV machine when it went haywire? The patient got away with his antics because everyone adored him; the nurses even gave him a pager so that they could page him if a doctor was headed towards his room and he could get back in time to jump into bed, fully clothed and still wearing shoes, and act innocent, despite his illegal activities on the roof of the hospital just moments before.

I gently scoffed at my mother's Peeping Tom tendencies during her Cane-Ser but I was not surprised to notice my own tendencies towards peeping emerging the older I have gotten. Just this week I experienced an awesome moment of peeping that I think rivaled anything my mother ever did. A friend and I went to hear David Sedaris give a reading at Millsaps, a local college with lots of money. After the show, we had to heed the call of nature, what with all the laughing during the show and the beer we consumed before the show. Being a wealthy school, Millsaps has lots of bathrooms, and we made for the closest one, which happened to be a handicap one on the second floor. My friend didn't want to use it, pointing out that we were not technically handicapped. I look askance at her and she shook her head and said, "Never mind. You are. I'm not. I'll go first though." When it was my turn, I sat, enjoying the room's spaciousness, and noticed a slender unlocked door beside the sink. I, being a Peeping Tom, wondered what was on the other side of the door. After washing my hands, I slowly turned the handle and pulled the door open just a bit and lo and behold, what did my peeping eyes spy, but the man himself, David Sedaris, in his dressing room! Sadly, he was not dressing, just drinking some bottled water and chatting with someone. He did not notice my peeping, but his armed security guard did, who immediately tore across the room, waving his arms like the beefy bodyguards do on reality shows, mouthing to me to get back, get back. I whispered to him, "I am in a bathroom. Don't you think you should have checked this door? It locks from in here, ya know." I helpfully pulled my head back in and shut and locked the door, pleased with both myself and the situation. I dismissed the security guard because honestly, who doesn't check all the doors? It would have been awesome to have been arrested though. Maybe David would have taken pity and ridden in the police car with me, telling me stories to assuage the fact that I was shackled for peeping. My mother would have been proud if I had been cuffed and taken downtown. I can hear her now, bragging to her friends while they ate at a restaurant  "Just the other week my daughter got arrested! Can you imagine? All for opening a door! I do declare, I don't know what the world's come to!" She would throw back her head and laugh, surreptitiously looking over her shoulder to see what the people at a nearby table ordered for dessert.