Smoking    November 1, 2014

     I remember like it was yesterday.  I was getting dressed to meet my husband in the city for dinner.  At the time we lived in suburban New York.  My 14 year-old son Jeff burst into the room, breathless, full of questions, important questions.  “Mom, how long have you been smoking, how much do you smoke, when did you start?”  I slowed him down a bit and promised to answer his questions.  I did slowly, attaching a family story to each one: my Mother was a smoker, she wanted the “privilege” of giving me my first cigarette, my Dad objected to our smoking.  As I spoke I noted that Jeff was no longer looking at me, with his eyes on the floor, he sadly said, “Oh Mom, you probably have cancer already!”

     Jeff had just come in from his last class of the day: Hygiene.  It was 1963 they had been discussing the surgeon general’s report on smoking.  I did not know how to reassure my son and I was not prepared to make promises at the moment.  We left my room together; we parted with few words.  I had no idea that that conversation would have great impact on me.  There were three cigarettes left in my open pack.  I smoked the three and have never smoked again. 

     Jeff had gotten to me, to my mind, my heart.  I did not process that conversation; I never deliberately made a decision, did not say to myself, “I owe it to my children…my boy is correct, this dangerous,”  I never thought it through.  I just followed Jeff’s instinct. I quit.

     But the story is not ended.  No, it was not easy to quit.  When the children came home from school, I met them with anger, I was angry at everything and everyone in my path.  When I became tired of hearing myself yell, I consulted the doctor.  My husband Erv had told me that this was something I had to do myself, he could not help.  My doctor came to the rescue; a small dose of Phenobarbital at 2 o’clock in the afternoon enabled me to face the children’s homecoming with a smile. Quitting the sedative was easy when our family came down to normal. I believed we were smoke-free.

     I was wrong, the saga, however, is not finished.  I was shocked to find that my kids smelled of smoke when they came home from school, no one is more sensitive to that smell than a recovering smoker.  “Oh the kids in the back of the bus are always smoking, that is what you smell, Mom”, Judi and Jeff agreed.  For a time, I bought in until I challenged them both.  The years  passed, they went off on their own,  I had failed.  Two weeks before Jeff died at age 43 he stopped smoking because the doctor told him he was smoking up his own oxygen.  Paralyzed and ill, he quit cold turkey.

     When Judi had a serious illness before she hit 60, the hospital would not permit her to go outside to smoke. A month in the hospital enabled her to quit smoking.  I do not know that smoking was a major cause of my adult children’s illnesses, probably not.  I know that my Mother who smoked all her life died at 67, too young, that my brother died of lung cancer after 50 years of second hand smoke, he never smoked.  I am so grateful for my teenager’s courage to confront his Mom’s problem.  He saved my life, I am sure!