The Personal is Political: Part Two of Two
Death Wish
(a partial listing of parenthetical Truths)
by Lilian M. Friedberg?1992
She is never more than eleven touch-tone digits away this phantom at the receiving end of the line whom I have pursued like the chimera of dreams not yet dead or the flight of a bright blue butterfly. Each time I pick up the phone, my otherwise murderous memory fails me
it steps
quietly
around the bend –
of possibility dormant in the blackness of a blank slate beside one last chip of chalk that might not screech. Maybe, just maybe I will get an answer. This time. This one last time. She might be there.
Hi. Mom? the questioning never ceases.
A moment of silent sorting through the voices, then, slowly, memory creeps from the depths, Oh. Hi, Honey, How you doin ?
I m okay. I have come to speak in half-truths. How are you? And to pose rhetorical questions. I have called to tell her they have come. The fleeting has stopped. And the pursuit. Finally, they have made their way to paper. I am as excited as a typewriter that s lost its stops. My tabs, pulled and tallied–I have begun re-collecting. The memories. A lifelong stringing together of facts unfolds now in a tapestry of words as I sift fiction from the fabric of this heretofore unspeakable truth. (This, mother, is the ineffable.)
I ve gone into print, Mother. Someone has published my work. The letter of acceptance, already stained with coffee from a night of rat-te-tatat and tears, quivers, still crisp, in my hand. Can you believe it, Mom? Really, can you believe it
But the familiar voice at the other end deadens archaic memory, squelches the primal urge. Ancient eruptions emerge.
I m dying, she says. My lips tighten and clench between their fleshy red palates the unanswerable question. (Still? Are you still dying? Haven t you always been lying there on that same deathbed? When will it end, this long dramatic death? When will the theatrical throes subside? How many fathoms must we both endure before you sink like a treasure embedding in the sea floor with a gentle, yet emphatic, thud?)
It s more than I can take, she says, your brother Dan and your sister Jeannie, they bring their children. Day in, day out I sit with them thirteen hours a day. I am too old. The doctor says I am too old for this. These cuts and scrapes, bandaids and Bactene. They scream and cry, begging for attention. They pull at your legs and tug at your purse strings. Never have I known anything but this nagging, I want. I want. Now it s Gimme some gum, gramma. These are supposed to be the best years of your life. The golden years. You d think that now, at my age I am 62 why this? Why now? And for what? A couple fifty bucks. For this I slave and sweat? All day, I have them at my feet, in my hair. My nerves are shot. I m up to two packs a day. I m down to 88 pounds. The doctor says I should quit. Too much stress, he says, the kids and all. (Yes, mother please quit. Please do. Please do what you haven t done before.)
I m working on a book, Mom.
Oh yeah, honey? What s it about? For a moment, she is there.
About your life and mine. I thought maybe you could tell me more about the times when
Now you ask. When I m dying you ask. Why didn t you ask years ago, when it might have mattered? When you were sixteen, fifteen, fourteen? All those years you never cared about my life, you never bothered to ask& (Mother, you were locked away in alcohol treatment centers when you weren t stumbling down drunk. At 16, I was in jail, don t you remember? The time you came home from the third shift at the foundry and caught me partying with my friends? Have you forgotten the way we crawled through the basement window, escaping narrowly into the wintry dawn before you could fuel your rage with what remained of the whiskey bottle we left on the table in our haste? Remember, Mom, I came back just a few hours later? In your solitary stupor, you d piled my belongings in one corner of the room. The drawers were as empty as the whiskey bottle and the shadows cast by a woman s face on the wall, sketched in shades of black and gray on white pasteboard traces drawn by the young artist s hand. I was so proud of that picture. They said I had talent in the seventh grade, at the school where I went when I left you, mornings they tried to tell me to draw, to paint, to tell the tale in black and blue tones, not red. Mine is a ruthless memory, Mother, it retains every detail; every line on every face. I could not forget. Not even the whiskey that cleared your conscience could erase from my mind the memory of all that had been. And all that had not. It whetted, sharpened, honed, whittled everything down to one thin white line: the line you crossed when you tore that face in two, leaving it hanging in tatters on the wall of what had been my room. The gaping wound where the mouth once was still begs for audience today. This line, more than any other, has cut out my tongue. Those dark eyes still seek in yours an answer to the question: Why? Have you forgotten how quickly the police answered your call? Coming, ordering me out of my nightgown? Demanding that I proceed peacefully with them? I was so weary, then, wanting only a crisp white sheet and a pillow to cradle a head worn with worry. Still, they handcuffed me and threw me in the back seat as though I d had the will to put up a fight.
There, on the steel cot in a cell under the cover of one threadbare blanket, you were more than eleven digits away. How could I have asked you then, when there was no black telephone no receiver, no dial tone. Just one line gone dead, the unsteady hand of a child, and one more drunken Indian in the county jail. Another statistic, just for the record.)
You don t know how much trouble you kids were. Twelve hours a day I ran between the tables in the cocktail bars, the factory shifts, the smell of oil and grease. (Whiskey is all I remember, Mother, whiskey and gin.) I tried. God, how I tried. I was a good Christian woman. Episcolpalian. Do you know what my life was like? Do you know how I searched the bars up and down looking for my mother? Do you know how I watched my father beat her? Do you know what it is like to see your own mother beaten? (Yes, Mother, I do. God, how I know.) And what did she ever do for us? She left us there with him. Took off for Boston. Or somewhere. At thirteen, I ran away trying to find her, and landed in reform school. For trying to find my mother they put me away. Since when is that a crime?
I know, Mother, I know. I know it hasn t been easy. I know what your life has been. (Because you ve told me this goddamned story so many times, in the very same words, you have painted it over and over and over again on my mind. I know this story by heart. It is imprinted on my memory for eternity and I can still recite the names of the taverns I called looking for you. Did you know there are more bars per capita in our home town than anywhere else in the United States? I have dialed those numbers, punched them out in the dee-doo-doo-dee-dee-doo-doo rhythm of touch-tone totality more times than I care to remember. And, yes, I still know my line by rote: Have you seen my mother? ).
I never wanted you kids in the first place, you know. (Yes, I know, Mother, I know.). We didn t have birth control, then, or abortions, not like you kids have now. (Even without them, mother, I have managed. An ounce of prevention, they say; one thing you managed to give. I was never able to risk having a daughter I might hate in your place for becoming everything I might have been, but did not).
The welfare. They took you kids away. They got no right. Then they had to tell you about the adoption. They told you. Aren t adoptions supposed to be secret? What s the word? Co fidential? Where was my right to that? What made them think they could tell you?
No, mother, it wasn t right for them to tell. (But they wouldn t have had to. I remember it all. Every last detail. The way you got sick and how they took us to live with the preacher when you went away. I remember the empty crib and the whiskey bottles crashing against the wall above it, leaving shards on the sheets to shatter deep sleep. I remember it, the interrupted rhythm of your mother s broken heart. Beaten, barely beating, busted heart. I can still hear the cry of the child that never came home).
How did you find out about that?
(I ve told you a hundred times at least, Mother, but I ll tell you again). It was in the squad car on the way from the county jail to the reform school in the city where they took me when you said you didn t want me back. They were just trying to explain, Mom. Certainly it wasn t my fault, and it wasn t yours either. It was just that there was no place else for them to put me, so I had to go. The social worker gave me my file I don t know why. Maybe she thought then I would understand. I just remember the thrill of opening the brown manila, forbidden documents, an insider s view of my life and yours; stunned, I d blurted out to them, I didn t know I had another sister. It wasn t until years later that I made the connection between the preacher s house, the empty crib and the adoption. But really, Mother, even if they hadn t told me, I d have figured it out sooner or later. I saw it. I saw more than you know. (Which is why I believed what the file said about my father, and how you told the social workers you really didn t know. You couldn t remember. You weren t quite sure. Who he was. Where he was. Which one he was.)
I am struck by the tenacity of maternal memory and how, even after all these years, she still seems to read my mind.
You never believed me, goddammit. Never. I told you have the same father as the rest. He d remarried by then. How could I have said I was shacking up with my ex-husband? In 1961? He is your father, I swear it, he is.
Mom, it really doesn t matter. It doesn t fucking matter. (And it wouldn t matter, really, if you would only have faith in this scathing memory of mine. It does not lie. Never, ever has it failed me. Not once. Your ex-husband was 500 miles away when I was conceived. I am six years younger than the youngest of his sons. Frankly, the who of it is irrelevant, and the why, but this constant battery of lies is more than I can stand. I saw them pass through your life, Mom. The men who never stayed more than a day. I remember the drunken fiascoes with my brothers buddies and the night the cops came in through the bedroom window to break it up because the neighbors couldn t sleep. I know how much you do and do not know).
You never asked me for the truth. You always believed what those goddamned foster parents told you. Now, when it s too late you ask
I am without words. (And the others, Mother? Do they bother to ask even now? Do they know your life like I do? Oh the way you lavished what little you had on Jeannie. Jeannie who drank like you do. Jeannie who couldn t help what her life had become any more than you could: she had, after all, had it so hard: she never was pretty, never was smart; at thirteen, gang-raped in the city, she came home in the aftermath broken to you, where she has stayed to the bitter end. She is there now. And when she hauls off and slugs that baby or puts a little whiskey in the bottle to get the screaming to stop, you pretend not to hear. Together you drown out the sorrow and the sound, driving each other to drink. You drink to remember, then drink to forget. And finally, drink a toast to regret).
You, with your foster homes, you had it so good. All the time you were gone traipsing around Europe, Africa, who the hell knows where all those years, they kept calling, asking me where you were. They never stopped calling, Do you know where I can reach your daughter? (What bothered you more, Mother, their questions, or the answer you couldn t give?)
You think those phone calls have made my life any easier, Mother? They couldn t take your place. Hard as they tried, they could not. I will spend a lifetime cleaning up the mess the foster parents couldn t sop up.
She is quiet. Ruminating. I never had that kind of money.
It wasn t the money, Mom. Not then, not now, not ever.
You kids were all I had. (And why couldn t it have been enough?) Then they came and took you away. I fought for you kids, believe me, I did. It was you who didn t want to come back. (I tried, Mother. I am still trying.)
I know it hasn t been easy, Mom, I know. (And yet, I have somehow found a way. In my back pocket, I carry a passport bearing your name and mine. In spite of it all, I have been happy to share your name. More than any line of poetry engraved on any stone anywhere in the world, this name has sufficed. Somehow, it has been enough. Isn t that perhaps what stands between us now? The fact that you hate this name as much as I have come to love it? You despise it. Yours has been the constant struggle to shake the memory of a man who left you with nothing but eight letters of an alphabet and the taste of whiskey on your breath. Mine has been the relentless search for a woman who left me with a mind that could not forget. You have hated your past as much as I have loved the prospect of the future. But the past cannot be pacified, mollified, nullified or mummified. You can t sculpt it into a past perfect event: The memory of what might have been, if it hadn t been this. Keep hating your past, Mother, and you ll never have to relive it because you ll despise your present and your future with the same Pavlovian zeal.)
I can almost hear tears trickling down her face and in my mind s eye, I watch her rise in search of a bottle, a beer, brandy, anything but the damp regret falling from her eyes. I m not sure what s driving her to drink today: fear of love or fear of hate. Maybe just an automated response to a bell ringing ten thousand miles away.
Listen, Mom, I have to go now. You take care of yourself, you hear? My wish is sincere. But I m no longer afraid of losing something I ll never find.
You, too, honey. I love you.
I love you, too, Mom. I mean it but in truth I am wishing she d just hurry up and get it over with cause I m tired of watching her die.
~ Lillian Friedburg
Historical Footnotes
Reprinted With Permission
Posted by Karen Sugarpants @
4:32 pm |
Collab that pushes buttons
This is a direct reprint from the author’s blog for a collab. It fits here as well.
Dear Michele,
Your prompt for January’s collaboration is “mother.” Please write about your role as a mom and how it’s changed the woman you were, positively and negatively, and how you feel about this role. Has being a mother made you a better person? Did you always know you wanted to be a mom? Explain your relationship with your mother and how it’s affected the mother you are today. What makes a mom a good mom? What kind of mother do you want to be to your children? What would you like them to remember about you?
I look forward to reading your entry.
Cheers,
Rasee
I’ll probably post this at Motherless as well. It’s hit a few buttons for me so I’ve been putting it off.
My role as a mother has changed me, yes. Not so much “me” but more my own perception of myself. When I started out, I wanted many children - always have. I wanted to be a stay at home mother, white picket fence, lots of kids, the works. I’m starting to realize now - now that my reality is so very different from my young dreams, that it was more about what I didn’t have than what I wanted. What did I get? A strong marriage, two special needs kids, no money, and the necessity to work for the health insurance for the kids, living next door to my parents in a craptastic sham of a house. Only two. I can’t handle any more - physically, mentally, fiscally, you name it.
I realized that I don’t think I am a good mother. I realized I have no patience. I realized what my limits were, and that it was important to recognize them. I want to do the things that in my mind make a good mother - but at the end of the day it’s as if I don’ t have any more in me to give. Do I think that motherhood has made me into a better person? Actually, yes. It’s made me, with all our problems, recognize the big picture, and what is and isn’t important in the grand scheme of things. It’s made me more tolerant if some things, but totally less patient with the bullshit - I don’t have time to coddle a grown up.
And of course it all always goes back to the way I grew up. At first I was terrified I’d end up being like Jeannette. Not a maternal bone in her body, and no real need/desire/capability of making real relationships. I thought maybe it was genetic, so I aborted my first pregnancy at 21 years of age. I could have made it work, but pressure from my ex and my fears of being genetically incapable of love both won out. It was later that I realized (when I met my husband) that I really did have the capacity of true love, and there was something in me for someone else to love. Ironically, we lost our first baby too. All my life, I both compared myself to, and fought against the genetic legacy of my biological mother. When our oldest hit 4 years old, I thought, “Okay… Here’s where I find out if I can stay. Here’s where I find out if I’m truly like her.” - but I stayed. I had no thoughts of leaving, of giving up. That’s the age I was when she abandoned me.
As for my mom (great-aunt, the woman who raised me) - She wasn’t your “typical” mother either. Older than the other kids’ moms. Generally sickly. Concerned with her own elderly mother. Absolutely NO interest in the PTA. But she loved me I knew that. She was (and is) neurotic and crazy and exasperating. But has ALWAYS been there for me. In an weird way. I called to tell her I was getting married, and she knew before I told her (she didn’t even know I was dating - it was a difficult time in our lives). Each pregnancy & the miscarriage - told me before I had the chance to tell her. We’re connected. but it can be a strange conflicted adversarial challenge for power. But she’d die for me or her grandkids.
I have no real “quality mother” role models for motherhood, so I struggle. Hoping I’m not visiting the sins of the past onto my children. What do I want them to remember of me? That I loved them. Wholeheartedly, with everything in me, forever, without a doubt - and that I did really try my very very best.
~Michele
Reprinted with permission
Sparks and Butterflies?
Posted by Karen Sugarpants @
2:36 pm |
The Personal is Political: Part One of Two
Lilian Friedberg?2005
Scooter boys and Argentineans
Europe shed the blood of the Indian
Here I sit in the land of plenty
Crying about my own virginity
–the Indigo Girls, Scooter Boys
The Story of a Coat
The personal is political. It was the catchphrase that fueled the feminist movements of the 70s and 80s. Looking back on those times, it s hard to remember what the phrase even meant. But I ve still got that old Feminist Dictionary (Kramerae and Treichler) on the shelf, so I look it up:
The Personal is Political: A major slogan of feminist theory and politics which argues that personal and intimate experience is not isolated, individual or underdetermined, but rather is social, political and systemic (333).
Yeah, well, OK, so the phrase has gone out of fashion, and the phenomenon filed in the annals of his-story under A for anachronism. Better to be objective, not to admit that there really is no such thing as objectivity. Better to write and speak from a perspective of distance from the subject matter and to pretend that it s really not about you no one wants to be accused of being full of himself, even though any writer who contends s/he is not full of him or herself is, in my opinion, full of shit because being full of yourself is the nature of the beast that is the written word. In other words, writers all writers regardless of subject matter, genre or tone write from the basis of their own experience and in the attempt to lend expression to their personal (and often political) views, the difference being that some are honest about this subjective aspect of their writing, while others seek to hide behind the fictitious veil of objectivity.
The personal is political. Well, we saw how that dynamic worked when the Republican smear machine got its hands on Monika Lewinski s blue dress. But we also saw how that dynamic acted as a positive political force when one heartbroken mother took her personal grief to Crawford, moved a nation to tears and gave the peace movement a sorely needed jump start. I m still waiting for stories of personal grief from the FEMA fiasco in New Orleans to have the same cathartic effect on the American public.
The personal is political all right, but acknowledging that can get you in a helluvalot of trouble. Well, I m no stranger to trouble and never will be. I am a born troublemaker. Trouble. Trouble. Trouble.
And most of the trouble I ve gotten into in my life has started with some skeleton of a story buried at the bottom of my closet. But I didn t make the connection between those skeletons and my most recent bout of troublemaking till I read the personal stories of a coupla women on the Boomantribune website, A Tale of Two Strong Women , or the story of how Diane of the Wind, meets Shirl of the Stars .
After a few days of eavesdropping on these personal stories (some might call it lurking ) acutely aware of their political implications and the power of personal narrative they at once contained and released I got up from my chair and went to the closet to pull out a winter coat. I don t know what it was that prompted me to drag that old thing out of the closet today of all days I can only surmise that it had something to do with these stories I was reading.
The coat is black cashmere, knee length, classic A-line cut. It was a gift from a woman I once knew (or tried to). When she gave first it to me, I was tempted to throw it away because at the time, the coat was not at all fashionable. But, as the woman who gave it to me had stressed it was cashmere, after all, and she d gotten it as a gift from her grandmother, the Avon lady, so it was a family heirloom of sorts.
The woman who gave it to me was a welfare mom with an eighth grade education and a heavy drinking problem who had a hard time holding down what jobs came her way waitressing at the local yacht club, working third shift at the foundry, or cleaning houses for wealthy landowners on the far side of town, so the fact that the coat was cashmere was not insignificant. She was giving me the good stuff.
Her grandmother the original owner of the coat had been born to an Indian woman on some reservation up in northern Minnesota and both of them had left the reservation decades before the coat ever entered the picture. I don t know what they were wearing when they left, I only know that they left on foot, where they went and what they did next.
They left the reservation, and like most Indian women in their day, desperately sought to marry up which, in those days meant to marry white ; to marry white so that their offspring would be light enough to pass and perhaps then would have a better shot at surviving in a world utterly hostile to Indians and the other dark-complected people in God s country. Well, that grandmother almost succeeded: she landed a man who was at least half white, so that the children, from that generation onward were light enough to pass. In the adoption records for the sixth child of the woman who gave me the coat, she is described as being dark-complected. That was code talk for potential adoptive parents, warning them that the child they were about to adopt wasn t quite white, may not turn out to be quite right in the end. Yeah, there might be a streak of savage in this darksome one. There was a time when it was not fashionable to be Indian in this country, and if you could get away with it, you pretended that you weren t. French Canadian ancestry. Yeah right, Beaudoin, Archambeau. These days, seems the opposite is true.
So that damn coat s been hanging in the closet for well over a decade now every five years or so I take it to the cleaners to have the dust collecting on its collar removed. I have worn it perhaps once in all those years, and was actually reaching for another one today when suddenly I found myself standing there with this cashmere coat in my hand. I put it on and realized, Wow. Amazing how fashions change, this is one sharp coat. Indeed, precisely this cut has come back in style. Today it is the height of fashion. Ten years ago I wouldn t have been caught dead wearing it.
The woman who gave me the coat was my mother. She died a few months after she handed me that coat and it is the only one of her possessions that I have. So I suppose that s why I ve kept it. Her grandmother outlived her by two weeks, and when my great grandmother died at the age of 107, she may well have been the oldest living Ojibwe in the state of Wisconsin. She d been light enough to pass, but was still registered as American Indian-Ojibwe on her death certificate miraculously so, because on her birth certificate, she is registered as white. I am reminded of a story she once told, when one of her caretakers at the nursing home adopted a black baby. The woman s husband, it seemed, was skeptical, and this was not lost on my great-grandmother who cast a dubious sidelong glance at the adoptive father and said, wryly: Don t worry, he ll get lighter.
So, yeah, the personal is political. And the rest of the story I m about to tell is political in the sense that it is a story every Indian I know could probably tell, and most could probably tell it better. In some of the circles I travel in today, my story is the exception to the rule: it is shocking in the mere telling of it but in Indian country, this story is the rule. In fact, mine is only a very diluted, tamed down version of the tale. I was one of the lucky ones. I was light enough to pass. This story is typical, but it is still a slap-on-the-wrist/by-the-skin-of-your-teeth story. As tragedies go, it really is a cakewalk.
The rule that is, the average story of Indian boyhood is probably closer to the story of Jeff Wiese, the kid from the Red Lake Indian Reservation who was so profoundly shattered by his own version of this sordid tale that he went out and shot ten people before he turned the gun on himself. I was struck dumb by Wiese s story when it happened. Mostly because I knew: that kid could have been me. And there are many more of us who were sitting there thinking, knowing the same damn thing: Yeah, that coulda been me. At the time, I went out and read the now infamous internet postings that kid had written. As gruesome as they were, one thing was clear: that kid was a writer. He was a talented writer. Extremely so. That kid s writing was better than a lot of what I get from my freshman undergraduates at the university today. His stories are still out there. You can google his name to find them. Yeah, they re there. For the record. They haunt me because of what they could have been.
His story could have been mine . Rather, my story is a but a milder version of his. My story is my mother s story, and her mother s before her. It s always the same story. It repeats itself in a pathology that is passed down from one generation to the next in a continuum of tragedy that extends from the Trail of Tears to the Red Lake Reservation, a pathology of suicide as a clinical condition in Indian Country . And anyone who has studied the written record of the trail of tears that Jeff Wiese left behind will also be acutely aware of the fact that a big part of the problem was that no one wanted to listen to him and his story. At the end of one of his stories, the one last desperate plea … Any comments? Any at all?..
There was one comment, it read: One. R.I.P. But by the time that was posted, Jeff Wiese and nine others were already dead.
Yeah. It coulda been me. But it wasn t. The point is that Jeff Wiese was trying to tell people that they really do need to listen to these tales from Indian country. You must take the good with the bad. Non-Indians love to hear the stories about how corn came into the world, love to hear the stories of the way muskrat dived down to the depths of the ocean to bring back the clump of earth to make Turtle Island, to recite Navajo prayers and recant Hopi prophecies, just as much as many of them love to believe that if we would just sit down together at the table on Thanksgiving Day, everything, yes, everything would suddenly be OK. The universe takes care of itself. Forgive and above all forget, leave the past behind. That was then, this is now.
What they don t want to hear, it seems, is the narrative of uprooting, of suicide, homicide, and genocide: they don t want to hear about these trails of tears things that have been described elsewhere, and aptly so, as chronic intergenerational post-traumatic stress syndrome. Trauma heaped on trauma heaped on trauma, over generations. But most people shy away from the story that every Indian knows could have been, maybe even would have been….were it not for this twist of fate or that…Well, with the absolutely alarming increase in suicide rates among Native American youth , the universe does not appear to me to be taking care of itself. Not unless you believe that the only good Indian is a dead one.
So here s a fairly palatable version of that story, one that pales in comparison to most. These stories need to be listened to because they are ubiquitous, not because one survivor of this sordid tale is sitting here in the land of plenty crying about her own loss of virginity. Every Indian knows some version of this story. And these are the stories that need to be heard before we can all get together and move on to the good stuff the coyote tales, the trickster tales, the stories the grandmothers told. Because these stories haven t been listened to, and just about every time we try to tell them, someone comes along and tells us to STFU. God, you re just full of yourself, aren t you?
If that s what you want to call it. It is my story, and my mother s story, that of her mother before her. It was not the story of her grandmother s mother. I must have written the first version of this about the time my mother gave me that coat. Today, it is the story of a coat. But that s not what it was yesterday.
Thanks to all who listen with open ears, attentive eyes, compassionate hearts and honest minds.
~ Lillian Friedburg
Historical Footnotes
Reprinted With Permission
Posted by Karen Sugarpants @
9:18 am |
BPD: Lori’s Story
I am a single mom of a gorgeous baby girl…and I am also in many ways, an orphan……my poor father killed himself several years ago after living with a borderline woman for over 35 years. She is so crazy….she found him blue one day from inhaling a deadly substance….he responded that the family would be better off w/ him gone……she lost it with him…..and since he was a doctor, told him that he would have already killed himself if he was truly suicidal. When she told me of the incident….I told her she needed to take him to the hospital….since she had been down this road before she said “no” SHE couldn’t handle it…….three days later he shot himself in the basement of the family home.. My mother ranted and raged at the police officers….telling them to get the fuck out of her house…..acted like a complete loonatic….I could tell from their faces that they understood why this poor soul pulled the trigger. He had been in treatment that summer for some emotional issues, and the tx team recommended a halfway house after discharge…..again, she raged at the providers, refused to let him participate , and even had him leave early. he had been down that road several times….and every time the poor guy was in treatment…..she would torment him…..call him nonstop….crying, hysterical because “I’m the one left alone….” It was always about her. She started dating a month after he killed himself, to a complete jerk….left me alone to watch her house and her dog while she went off to Florida with her new fling……I begged her not to go….but she was in Florida with her new man on what would have been my father’s 60th birthday….and the 6 month anniversary of his death…… She was dumped by this guy……and spent many a nights drunk, crying on my shoulder…..only to jump right into a hot and heave relationship w/ yet another man…..they were an “instant ” couple…..she brought him and his ENTIRE family down to my fathers place on the lake the first summer my father was gone……w/out talking to me or my brother about it…… For the next year and a half it was all about her new love….and not about her kids who were still traumatized by their father’s suicide…….he has 8 kids….so it was constant trips ……all about getting “in” with her new man’s family…..the whole time basically ignoring her owne two children……dinner once or twice a week to vent about her dead husband….but then back again to enjoy her new life….When I would get angry for her lack of respect…it was always my fault…..and still is…..five years later…..and neither of her kids really want much to do with her…..It’s always about her……the issues are so complex….
~ Lori
Posted by Karen Sugarpants @
2:51 pm |
A Tale of Two Stockings
Every child has a Christmas stocking. It s tied up with their identity - symbolizing family and tradition. Every year it is lovingly unpacked, creases smoothed, the story of its making passed around like some treasured heirloom. Up on the mantle it goes next to all the others, its owner s tiny face shining with anticipation, reflected in the light of a cheery fire. Soon& ..soon it will be filled with tangible evidence of the love that created it peppermint sticks, a small stuffed bear, that card saying Merry Christmas and signed With Love from Mom & Dad . Perhaps Santa will add something special something unexpected.
I had a Christmas stocking one that I treasured. Every Christmas I d free it from that box in the attic, wipe the cobwebs and soot away, get a white tack out of the kitchen drawer and hang it from our fireless fireplace. It was made of thick red felt, with faded sequins and brick-a-brack - each sewed on with a single stitch. Not very big maybe a foot in length - but I didn t care. Yes, it looked rather puny next to my niece s larger, store bought stockings; and my friends all had fancier versions too better made, better cared for; yet I loved mine all the same. I clung to it as a symbol that I belonged in my family even though the story of its making belied that very fact. Still I would clutch it against my chest every Christmas and ask, Mommy tell me about my stocking.
She d make a face, she d sigh and I d begin to beg. Please, mommy. Please tell me again. And out it would come the same story I d heard every Christmas for every year of my life. How when I was two the next door neighbor came over and asked why there was no stocking for me hanging on the mantle next to those of my brother and sisters. My mother would then dismissively wave her hand while coming to the next part the telling of the neighbor as how she just hadn t gotten around to making me one. That I was too small to even notice but I did notice. I remember not having a stocking not feeling like I belonged. I remember crying when my brother would tease me with all the candy in his say how I was adopted and adopted children didn t get Christmas stockings. Anyway - this neighbor, out of her own sense of compassion, went right home and made me my own stocking. She cut some red felt, she stitched it together, glued silver ribbon around the edge, sewed a few sequins here and there, and presented it to my mother for me to use until something better could be provided . How could she know that nothing better would ever be provided. That her single act of kindness would be treasured by me for years to come.
Pretty sad little story yes? Yet I insisted on its re-telling each and every Christmas. It made me feel loved, you see; as if the person making the stocking had actually been my mother, instead of some faceless stranger I have no memory of. I still have that stocking, by the way; even though I replaced it myself when I became an adult celebrating Christmas on my own. The sequins are rubbed bare of glitter, of course - and its inside is stained with coal dust. Yes my mother actually put coal inside my stocking on Christmas. Not every one, mind; but enough that I remember how bad it felt. Any transgression warranted it in the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. If I so much as looked at her wrong out came that coal. Yet I d still put my stocking up every year just in case. And I believed in Santa. I believed he would come help me. Just like I d pray to god for rescue around Christmas I d pray to Santa; that he d whisk me up the chimney to Christmas Town.
I no longer hang that old stocking but I lovingly unpack it every year, smoothing out any wrinkles, looking for tiny stains or tears. There s a permanent hole in the felt where the white tack used to go. It s not very big. There was never anything heavy enough in the stocking to stretch it out. The silver on the ribbon trim has flaked with age and the sequins are now transparent. I marvel that it has lasted all these years. The memories it invokes are thick and heavy; though not all bad. If not for that stocking I would have had nothing of my own on Christmas. Whether it contained coal or candy those things were for me and me alone. Nothing in my stocking was ever re-gifted to one of my nieces something I remain thankful for. Had this unknown woman not stepped in no stocking would ever have hung from my chimney with care. In a very real way she gave me a family, a tradition. I think of her every year wonder who she was and why she did it. Wonder if she went out and bought the felt, or already had it at home for her own children. She must have been a very special person. She must have been very much loved. Somewhere in the world there is an old woman who made her little neighbor a Christmas stocking a long, long time ago. I d wish I could thank her.
Written by The Fat Lady Sings
Posted by Karen Sugarpants @
2:47 am |
Out of The Darkness
Three words best describe Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Lake effect snow.
I remember winter nights, cold, dark, and contemplative. Bundled up like a well stuffed sausage in the early twilight I would go out into the front yard where I built a snow fort. Hollowed out from the mountain of snow my Dad shoveled into a pile, the entrance was a small circle at the bottom facing the house with a peep hole at the top where I could look out into the street. It was like an igloo or a wolf’s den. When I climbed inside it was incredibly dark and quiet. The walls of snow glowed. Another world.
That’s where I waited for my Mom to come home from work.
My Mom worked at a funeral home. It was mysterious and creepy and normal. She managed the front office and was the first person you saw, the one you talked to when your mom died. So emotionally, the job was sometimes difficult for her. But my Mom was warm and friendly and empathetic, and everyone loved her.
I would stop by during the day when nothing was happening there and it would seem very casual. The maintenance guy and the director would be sitting in the office on the sofa or chair and they would all be laughing and telling jokes. Other times there would be a visitation going on and I would creep in walking across the cushy carpet unobtrusively, whispering to her in hushed tones, trying not to disturb the family mourning in the next room. More than once I came in the back way only to find a dead body on a gurney in the back hallway. I would feel my pupils shrink and stifle a gasp while the hair on my neck and arms rose away from my body as if it were growing faster from the shock.
But death is a part of life, and this became clear without any one ever telling me. Dead people are not ghosts. They don’t get up and walk around. The life and soul escapes them leaving behind an inanimate object no different than a rock or chair. They resemble people, but they’re not. They lie in a brass handled casket with their hands folded across their chest, quite different from the swarming, sobbing humanity that fills the room around them.
Eternal rest give unto them, O Lord
And let perpetual light shine upon them
Lord, have mercy
Christ, have mercy
Lord, have mercy
I could not touch their sorrow. It was like a precious crystal; something I stepped delicately around, lest the china in the hutch rattle and break. But my Mom touched it. All the time. Carefully, gently, she handled their sorrows, cradled them in her hands and heart.
When she came home from work in the winter twilight, walking through the snow that swirled in the street lights, I could see the weight of their sorrow on her. More people die in January than any other month. Her head bent, I would see the top of her beret, not her face. And I would think someone died today.
That’s when I would crawl out of my dark, silent den. I would walk toward her along the crunchy sidewalk and slip my mittened hand into her gloved one. She would look at me and give me a sad smile. Then together we would walk out of the darkness, up the front steps, and into our warm, little house. She would hang up the darkness and death with her coat and beret and enter into the light of the living.
I have always hated January.
This is an entry for Blogging for Books at The Zero Boss and is cross posted at Missy’s Big Fish Stories
Posted by Karen Sugarpants @
6:01 pm |
My Mother’s Death, The Final Chapter
This is a series?about my Mother’s death. This is part six, the final chapter. If you haven’t read them yet, here are parts one, two, three, four, and five.???
I drove out to the Chippewa County airport with my brother Bob. It was an intensely sunny and cold day. I checked on Todd’s flight at the desk and found out it was about to come in. There was only one worker in the whole place from what I could tell. Then he got up from the desk put on a hat, grabbed two bright orange spears and went out to the runway.
“Hey Bob, check it out. He’s flagging the airplane in by hand. How many different jobs do you think this guy has?” He shook his head and laughed.
“Ticket seller, ticket taker, security, air traffic control… Dude probably does it all.”
Todd was one of five people getting off the small twin engine plane. He looked worried, cold, in a hurry. His jacket was too thin.
“Hey brother!” I greeted him as he came into the dinky terminal. We gave each other a long hug. He bent down low to kiss my cheek, then turned to Bob. Their hand shake turned into an embrace.
Todd stomped his feet. “Holy shit, is it cold. It was 60 degrees when I got on the plane in Texas.”
“Welcome to 6 degrees,” said Bob with a laugh.
I felt suddenly uncomfortable with the news I had to deliver. I couldn’t do it there with the other people milling about. “Well,” I said, “let’s head out to the car. The sooner we get out of this place, the better.”
“Yeah,” said Todd with an anxious look. “Let’s get moving.”
We all put on our gloves and headed out into the bitter sunshine. I started the engine while the guys climbed in; Bob in the front passenger seat, Todd in the back seat. I stared at the steering wheel for a moment then looked over at Bob for help.
“Should we head straight for the hospital?” asked Todd. Neither one of us said anything. I felt the tears begin to well up in my eyes.
“Todd…” I began as I turned in my seat to look at him. He shook his head.
Bob tried, “Mom passed away this morning…”
I will never forget the sound he made.
“NOOOOOOOOO!” he wailed at the top of his lungs, filling the car with his anguish. “NOOOOOO–NOOOOOOOO–NOOOOOOO!” All three of us were sobbing at once. We put our arms around each other in an awkward three way hug. None of us could say anything for a long time. We sat like that hugging each other and crying. Three orphans mourning their mother. Finally Todd was able to speak.
“When? What time?” he asked.
“About four hours ago,” said Bob.
“No, No, No,” said Todd sobbing again. Another round of hugging and crying. When he was able to speak again he said, “I knew it. I knew it when I was flying in. I don’t know how I knew it, I just did. It was so cloudy over Chicago and lower Michigan. I was looking out the window and suddenly the clouds broke and there was sunlight radiating off of everything, blinding. That’s when I knew. I saw the outline of the UP below me and the sunlight breaking all around and I thought, ’she’s gone.’”
“We’re meeting Grampa and Dad at the funeral home in half an hour,” I said. “I can go straight there, if you want.” Todd nodded. I put the car in gear.
~
“My mom used to work here,” I said to the director as he lead us to a table.
“I know,” he said. “She was a woman of astonishing reputation.”
It made me start to cry again.
~
I started going through my mom’s wardrobe looking for something to bury her in. There were two dresses; the rest was all sweats and jeans. I distinctly heard her voice telling me, “I don’t want to be buried in a dress.” She actually said this to me several times. There was nothing to do but go shopping. I refused to put her in a dress and risk my immortal soul, and I just couldn’t do the blue jeans and sweatshirt thing. Maybe some people would, but I had to find something tasteful. I grabbed one of her bras for coverage, not bothering with the underwear. I knew they wouldn’t need that.
I headed up to JC Penney’s and found a white tuxedo blouse and a pair of black dress pants in her size. I graduated from high school with the woman working the check out. I had been up all night and I looked like hell. I wasn’t in the mood to make small talk with anyone, but there was no other check out open. I braced myself.
“Missy? Missy McKerroll?” she said as I put the clothes on the counter.
“Hi, Lori,” I said with a weak smile. “Good to see you.”
“Hey! It is you! Good to see you! Did you find everything okay?”
I nodded. I must have been giving off don’t talk to me vibes. She rang up my purchase without too much chit chat. We finished the transaction and she gave me a friendly, “Take care,” as I walked out of the store. It was quick.
~
After dropping the clothes off at the funeral home I went back to my parents house. I walked into my mom’s craft room with a large shopping bag. I began picking out things I liked; tole paintings, an afghan, the porcelain gramma and grampa dolls she had made. I found her graduation portrait and wedding picture and added them to my bag. Then I headed out the door again.
I parked in the back of the florist shop and went in through the back door.
“Can I help you?” asked a large woman in the back of the shop. I nodded.
“My mom died,” I said simply.
“I’m so sorry,” she said immediately. “I’ll be happy to help you with whatever you need. I’ve got some books that show different arrangements. Would you like to start there?”
“Actually,” I said lifting the bag to the counter, “I’d like to start here. My mom was sort of an artist. As a hobby. She made so many beautiful things. I thought maybe we could incorporate some of her work into floral arrangements.” I began pulling some of the tole paintings from the bag and the woman gasped.
“Your mom was Norie?” I felt tears again as I nodded.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I loved your mom. She was so wonderful. I’ve bought a few of her things. You know, she was still at the funeral home when I started working here, we used to talk on the phone all the time. She was such a beautiful lady.”
I reached for a tissue in my pocket, unable to speak.
She looked down at the things on the counter. “I love what you’ve chosen. The colors are wonderful. Let me take care of this. I can use these in a standing display. And these smaller ones in a casket spray. We can drape the afghan at the end. Why don’t you take the portraits and the dolls down to the funeral home yourself for them to set up, and I’ll handle the rest.”
“I want something that says, ‘Beloved Wife.’ Also, ‘Daughter,’ ‘Mother’ and ‘Grandmother.’”
“Yes, of course,” she said writing things down on a tablet.
I left her my information and went back to the funeral home to drop the other things off.
~
I walked out the front door of the funeral home into the blinding winter sunshine. It was 1:00 in the afternoon. I had been up 32 hours straight. I finally felt like I couldn’t cry anymore. Everything was done. All the plans were made. I thought I had done things the way she would have wanted. I thought I might finally be able to sleep.
~Missy
Missy’s Big Fish Stories?
Reprinted with Permission
Posted by Karen Sugarpants @
5:43 pm |
Alice
This is Part Two in a series by Susan D. You can read Part One here.
Alice was the first person with whom my dad had a serious relationship after Leila, my birth mother s, death. I found out much later that he met her in a group therapy session. She was (as I remember now, correctly or incorrectly) tall, slender, fair-skinned, frizzy-red-haired, and had a big nose that was also frequently drippy. She was one of those women who always had tissues - and snotrags and tissue lint - stuffed in her handbag. [Wow, where d that come from? Starting out nasty today!] She was much younger than my dad - I d say about 30 when they got together, whereas my dad would have been pushing 40 by that time. OK, maybe not that much younger, but again it seemed so at the time.
Alice joined the family when I was maybe 3. She moved in when I was four-ish. I easily moved to calling her mommy, and she seemed to like filling that role. She took me to school and picked me up at the end of the day. She bought me clothes and played with me and let me put her makeup on my face. She brought me into her family as well - her mother and father were for many years my Nana and Gonka; I played with her brother Don s kids Scooter and Patrick and Carlin. (Don s wife Marcy didn t like me.) I had early wonderful Christmases thanks to her family, which annoyed my Jewish aunts but which my dad was too passive to oppose. For awhile, all was well.
After several years, once I was maybe 7 or 8, she began to slip into instability. She got very into astrology (remember, this was the late 70’s). Then she became a born-again Christian. She began hanging out with born-again friends and I would hang with their kids, but I had nothing in common with them. She was sometimes moving a mile a minute, and other times lashing out in rage, and other times barely unable to peel herself out of bed. Looking back, it seems likely that she had some sort of bi-polar disorder. But she was still my mommy, and I loved her very much, and her emerging, one-sided battles with my father left me feeling sick and torn inside.
Something happened where she wound up in the hospital for a couple of days (she did something to her leg I think) and she had run out of her favorite perfume, and desperately needed a fresh bottle. She harassed my dad into picking up a bottle at the drugstore and taking me in a cab to the hospital (my dad has never learned to drive) and bringing it to her. (Honestly now - jonesing hard for perfume to wear in a hospital?!) As we got out of the cab, I jostled my dad s arm and the perfume in its box fell out of his hand, smashing on the ground. Glass slivers glistened underfoot and the overwhelming alcohol-y smell of Emeraude filled my sinuses. I had this horrible sinking feeling that now was when the awful thing would happen. Fortunately, I have no memory of what happened next.
[My memory has very helpfully obliterated most of the hurtful stuff that I know happened in the first 10 or so years of my life; unfortunately it left me with the memory of about 1/3 of the painful experiences of my teen years. I was a miserable teenager and would love to kiss those memories goodbye. ]
She moved out sometime not too long after that. Seeing her, seeing my mommy, became this erratic thing. Bear in mind, y all - she wasn t ACTUALLY my mother, and wasn t married to my dad; why should she come around? This was pretty painful for me, but at least I could pick up the phone and call her fairly often, hear her voice, hear her tell me she loved me a few evenings a week.
Then one day she came in and told me that she was moving to Chicago. She had gotten a job there. But she would call me, and visit, and send letters and presents. I was numb, but accepted her at her word.
She left.
Disappeared. Fell off the face of the earth.
I had no address to write, no phone number to get her.
That Christmas she called when I was out. She told my dad that she had sent me a present in the mail, and he conveyed the message to me.
I watched the mail every day until March before I gave up. She had lied to me, and strung me along.
I can t remember if I ever cried about being abandoned by my mommy, or at least, by the woman I called mommy. I wouldn t be surprised if I didn t. I don t cry much or easily, never have, and often can t find the tears when I know, just KNOW that I have to cry to heal/move on/feel better/let it go. But the hurt sank deep inside me and festered, a festering emotional pustule affecting all my relationships. The angriest I ever was at my husband, before we got married, was when I d be waiting for him to pick me up (usually from college classes) and he d be, maybe, 20 minutes late. The feelings of abandonment instantly swept me away on tides of fear and rage. I realized entirely on my own, one day, that those feelings were the direct result of Alice s abrupt departure. Instantly, the feelings became manageable, and haven t been a problem since. But still, ten years of abandonment issues was a lot to inflict on a then-12 year old.
Over the years, she would write to my dad, or I think even call him. I d hear bits and pieces about her life from him. She had become a minister in some culty-sounding regional offshoot of Christianity. She had become ill with lupus. She had found a new boyfriend and had lived with him for all this time. But I told him to tell her not to contact me, because I didn t want to hear from her anymore.
Fast forward to the early-to-mid 90’s. I would have been about 23 or so. I got a letter in the mail FROM HER. I was with my not-yet-husband at the house of his mom s then girlfriend (she s gay) who was a psychologist (duh, I m sure she still is.) She was letting us do some laundry in her machines. Future hubby (FH for short) stopped home and came back with the mail. He handed it to me and I just froze. Then, sitting right there in her kitchen, I opened the letter and read it.
It was chatty! She opened with what was going on in her life before saying that she was sorry and knew that she must have hurt me and asked for my forgiveness. I just completely fucking lost it. Hysterically crying sitting at the kitchen island in my FH s mom s lesbian girlfriend s kitchen. She, bless her heart, drew me into her office and sat down and threw me an emergency session, gratis, allowing me the opportunity I needed to express the emotional pus that had burst forth from the pustule Alice s letter had pricked open. She and I didn t often get along [she was rather uncomfortable with my FH and his siblings being in her house and around her kids all the time], but her immediate presence and willingness to help at exactly the moment I needed help enabled me to experience the emotions quickly, face them down, and finally - FINALLY - move on from the hurt Alice inflicted on me.
I wrote Alice one letter, very long, telling her exactly what I felt. That one I put in an envelope, stuck it somewhere, and never mailed it. I expect I ll find it someday when I go through all the boxes of my crap my dad s been storing in his basement for me.
Then I wrote another, shorter one, telling her much more briefly that there was no way she could comprehend the way that she had hurt me, and that if she wanted to really think about that for awhile and try apologizing again, I d be willing to consider it.
She wrote back almost write away, assuring me in breezy tones that she had indeed thought a lot about it, and wanted to try to have some sort of ongoing contact with me. I wrote back again, saying that seeing as she had written back right away, she clearly had not thought about it long and hard enough, and that she would have to do better if she was to have any contact at all with me.
I never heard from her, or about her, again.
That s OK. I m better off not knowing what the hell happened to this woman; whether the life she chose was better than the one she would have had if she had kept me in it.
Long before then, Karen had entered my life.
~ Susan
Woman of the House
Reprinted with Permission
Posted by Karen Sugarpants @
10:44 am |
On the Relative Death of a Child
I wrote this last year following the horror’s Katrina visited upon New Orleans and the entire Gulf coast. It was the sight of all those trapped children that brought this to mind. My mother harbored a variety of mental illnesses. They had to come from somewhere. Abuse doesn t happen in a vacuum. My mother s childhood has its own demons demons she visited upon her own children. I may not forgive but I do understand.
My Mother was four years old when the Lusitania was torpedoed. I have seen her there in the documentaries a tiny girl with a big bow tightly gripping her older sister s hand. Her family lived nearby, in a village called Rushbrook so she d often stand on that hill above the harbor and watch the ships go by. From whalers to sleek White Star luxury cruisers everything passed by Queenstown and The Head of Kinsale on its way to America. So when the explosions happened, off she went, along with everyone else. No one expected another Titanic. Fire and water and the stench of burning oil she never got over that smell. Years later, she refused to get out of the car whenever my Father got gas.
They stacked the bodies in the town square like so much wood. There were so many, you see, and the rescuers were overwhelmed. Some - those less intact, or without clothing - were relegated to dirty little buildings near the docks. Queenstown was really no more than a fishing village back then. After Titanic, well the big ships still stopped; but Liverpool had taken over as the preferred port of call. Ireland was fast slipping into another wave of grinding poverty that would soon force more immigration this one to include my Mother and her family. So when the Lusitania went down it was a big thing. Everyone turned out to help and to see no one thought to protect the children.
My Mother was convinced people were buried alive. She heard the exhalations, you see; the final breath of the dead. Sometimes they would move as well, shifting under the weight of those piled on top; lips moving to expel water trapped in their lungs. I imagine Buckenvalt was like that, with bodies waiting for the ovens. Horrible, frightening my Mother tried to get adults to listen to her fears, but children back then were not to be heard. As a punishment, her sister locked her in one of the sheds near the wharf. Just a little girl, four years old, one hundred bodies bloated from the sea, and rats. Lots, and lots and lots of rats; black ones - grown fat from gorging on pale flesh. Do you know how big a wharf rat gets? About the size of a terrier. She screamed, of course the poor little thing was terrified. All it did was make the rats look in her direction, their red eyes glowing like twilight.
She took me back there, years; no eons ago - took me to stand with her on that hill. She was 60 and I barely 12. I remember the wind colored her face, and it was cold. There was no inflection in her voice, only a kind of bitterness, especially regarding her sister. I reached for her hand, but she wouldn t allow it. My Mother never liked to be touched. I cried for her. We visited the grave, that day where they put all those bodies. Mother wouldn t even enter that part of the cemetery. She waited near her family plot. Blessed soil. Irish soil. I stood near the largish square allotted to the Lusitania dead and marveled at how small it seemed to fit all those bodies. They must have dug deep, I thought. The memorial stone was discolored by lichen, weeds nearly masking the simple epitaph. It looked abandoned and forlorn. I stared back at my Mother, hands in front of her eyes so no one could see tears. I wondered who she was weeping for.
It twisted her, the terror of that week - warped her perceptions. Turned life into death; and all those fears, all that anger misdirected itself - right onto her children. Four, she had - four children - and only two of us survived to adulthood. Alcoholism, drug addiction, violence, suicide all this and more stalked my siblings into their graves. Only my sister and I were spared. I think of that, more often as I age, and I am at a loss to explain why. Perhaps it has to do with the relative flexibility of mind. Like all artists, I see life as Picasso did - all angles at once. My sister retreated into the bosom of religion, allowing her vision of God to buffer the shock. My Mother had none of my flexibility, and she didn t believe in God - not really. For her, the only way to exorcise those demons was to visit them upon others.
The sights and sounds inside the Superdome running gun battles, rape, mutilation of bodies - just how do you think the NOLA children will internalize such horrors? For those terrors were real, you know; despite recent revisionist efforts to ignore and erase them. Chaos, thirst and death from a child s eye view it would seem God had all but abandoned them. So will they be able to shed such memories? What about those left outside with the dead? Watching bodies eaten by those rats that survived the flooding of the sewers? Will they fear all rodents as my Mother did? The woman ran screaming from squirrels. Will they seek to expiate their fear and anger by acting out? What will they visit on their own children and the rest of society? Well, I guess we all will find that out in about 20 years.
Written by The Fat Lady Sings
Posted by Karen Sugarpants @
2:16 am |
Abandonment
When I was a young child, I thought my mom was the world. She was my heroine. There was nothing she couldn’t do. When I was upset, she would know what was wrong. When I was happy, she knew why I was. She could tell everything about me; she knew every single anecdote that happened about me, even more than I did myself. I never thought things would change.
However, when I was thirteen years old, that all changed. I can remember it all distinctly if it were yesterday. The night before, the wind outside had been howling ferociously, and it is one thing that scares me. So, I went in her room where she was with my dad and asked if I could sleep in her room on the floor. She agreed, and the next morning, when my dad was at work, we watched VH1- “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne was on the TV. At about 8:30 a.m., my mom told me she was going to head to work, but she was going to come back around 3 with lunch for me.
Well, she came back for lunch, but later on that night she called and said she couldn’t make it because “work was busy.” I believed her. I had no reason not to. Eventually, as the weeks passed, the excuses increased, and stuff in our house mysteriously went missing. Eventually, I realized that she left us.
I could go on and talk about how sucky my life has been these past few years. And it is true- it has sucked. Majorly. I’ve overcome depression, which comes and goes in bouts, and I overcame self-injury for 2 1/2 years, which stemmed from the abandonment and eventual divorce. But I’m not going to talk about that.
I’m going to talk about the holiday season. The one that is supposed to be the most joyous of all. Things in our house have radically changed. My dad has a fiancee, and I’m doing well in school, with my own boyfriend. Things are great. Most of the time. However, when it’s times like these, I get a little upset. The most radical things can set me off.
Like tonight, for example. We just barely got our Christmas tree, so we’re setting it up. As I looked in the boxes of ornaments, I noticed that the vast majority of the ones my sisters and I had created over the years were gone. Why? Because my mom had taken them out of storage when she left and they were with her. It might not seem like a big deal to some, but you know where I’m coming from. As I looked at the tree, I saw that all our memories were broken. All the ornaments my sisters and I had worked so hard at creating were no longer on the tree. For the first time in 2 and a half years, I cried.
My father asked me, “Why are you crying?” Looking at him, I told him, “Because it’s not our Christmas!” He didn’t understand what I meant. And what I mean is this- the Christmases he had last year was one for him and his girlfriend. This Christmas is their second. It’s for their little unit- but it’s not my family Christmas! This woman is nice, but she doesn’t understand how it feels… to be abandoned, but still want to have that little family unit.
Everytime a holiday approaches, I hope that my mom will walk through the door and say, “I’m sorry, I was stupid.” And as hard as I try to convince myself it’s not true, I believe it every year. But that’s one Christmas wish that’s not coming true.
~ Bleed Like Stars
Posted by Karen Sugarpants @
2:04 pm |
