I’ve been writing a lot, both on my own and with writing groups I’ve started. \u00a0I want to use some of them as blog posts.<\/p>\n
The first memory I have of my mother involves some tiny clear plastic animals.\u00a0 I remember them being about 2-3\u201d and very flat.\u00a0 I had some of them in my desk drawer for a long time. \u00a0I have a vague memory that my mother hid a lot of them down on the little beach as part of a birthday party for me.<\/p>\n
Good memories \u2014 taking me out of grade school to see a movie \u201cKnights of the Round Table.\u201d\u00a0 Season ticket to Playhouse in the Park.\u00a0 Going to Shakespeare plays in Litchfield when I lived in Brunswick.\u00a0 The time she lost her wallet and was so afraid of Dad\u2019s anger.\u00a0 I think by that time I thought of him as a petty tyrant, and I had told him \u201cYou don\u2019t have to lose your temper.\u201d\u00a0 A college classmate had said this to me, and it was the first inkling I had that one didn\u2019t have to lose one\u2019s temper.\u00a0 Then there was the time Mom bought me the Russian box, and the time she bought the loom.\u00a0 She could be generous, but only if I showed how much I wanted it and didn\u2019t ask.\u00a0 If I asked it would be \u201cMoney doesn\u2019t grow on trees,\u201d or \u201cyou can\u2019t have everything you want.\u201d\u00a0 When she said she\u2019d buy me a loom for my birthday, I said \u201cMom \u2014 you don\u2019t know what it costs.\u201d\u00a0 She said \u201cFour hundred dollars.\u201d\u00a0 So she got it for me.\u00a0 Then there was the stuffed lion.\u00a0 I wanted it desperately, so she got it (I assume), and then once I had it, it lost its magic.\u00a0 That was when I learned that buying something didn\u2019t guarantee happiness.\u00a0 The time she said \u201cI\u2019m not feeling good about myself right now\u201d and my heart went out to her and I hugged her.\u00a0 That\u2019s the only time I remember my heart going out to her.\u00a0 No, there was another time.\u00a0 After Dad\u2019s funeral, when the others had gone home and I was still with her, and we went to have lunch at a friend\u2019s house.\u00a0 They asked what she wanted to drink and she said \u201cWater on the rocks.\u201d\u00a0 I was so proud of her.\u00a0 Alas she didn\u2019t know what it takes to keep it up, she never admitted that her life was unmanageable, never went for help to AA, never worked on the twelve steps.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve start writing about Mom.\u00a0 I feel like there\u2019s so little I know compared with the women in the writing books.\u00a0 One woman wrote life stories for both of her parents in order to understand why they were the way they were.\u00a0 In some ways the 4th of July Monologue<\/a> is the most complete document I have of my life with my parents.\u00a0 I have stories that other people told me, but not much in the way of memories.\u00a0 I have so little evidence.\u00a0 Bare facts: my father\u2019s mother died while he was at war.\u00a0 This was hard for Mom too, she loved her mother-in-law.\u00a0 My mother\u2019s brother died during the same time period.\u00a0 All I have for evidence of him is the picture of him carrying me on his shoulder (I wonder where that is now), the Indian War bonnet he made (it must have been eaten by mice, I couldn\u2019t find it when I looked for it), and mother\u2019s story of how he was her \u201clittle boy,\u201d she dressed him, etc.\u00a0 Losing him must have been very hard on Mom and her parents.\u00a0 But I\u2019m sure they didn\u2019t feel it was OK to mourn, there was a war on.\u00a0 I always imagine mother saying \u201cCarry on, with head held high,\u201d holding her head high as she said it proudly.<\/p>\n I want to write something deeper.\u00a0 I think of what I wrote about mother, how she might have felt as bad as I did that day, that my life had been wasted.\u00a0 (It was October 1<\/a>)\u00a0 Mother must have known that she was failing her children but refusing to see it and reaching for alcohol instead.\u00a0 I wonder if she was depressed, as Char said.\u00a0 Char was the woman who helped me get on medication.\u00a0 She asked if Mother got nasty when she was drunk.\u00a0 I said yes.\u00a0 Char said \u201cShe\u2019s probably medicating depression.\u201d\u00a0 If she was depressed, that would account for her inability to enjoy things like us kids washing the Christmas dishes while singing The Twelve Days of Christmas.\u00a0 I remember when she said \u201cI was promised a maid and a mink coat and I ain\u2019t getting it,\u201d or something like that.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think it was a mink coat, but I can\u2019t imagine her saying \u201cwealthy life style.\u201d\u00a0 I know she talked about her \u201cmink coat\u201d a lot as something she thought she ought to be given.\u00a0 I think she believed the myth that things, and social status, were meaningful so that\u2019s what she counted on.\u00a0 She talked a lot about \u201cloving others more than self,\u201d but as far as I can see she never practiced it.\u00a0 Even the words sound like a clich\u00e9, a \u201cshould\u201d not a \u201cwant.\u201d\u00a0 She drove for the Red Cross, but she was also a member of the Colonial Dames.\u00a0 I think the Red Cross thing was the lady of the manor condescending to help the less fortunate, rather than truly being of service.<\/p>\n Father Greg<\/a> says that to be of service you have to see the one you\u2019re helping as kin.\u00a0 I\u2019ve almost always felt that way.\u00a0 I remember the time I drove the couple to the grocery store for Family Service.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t know how to read, but they knew what they wanted and somehow managed to come within their budget.\u00a0 I admired their coping skills.\u00a0 And the woman I drove to her shock treatment, who looked so nice when she went in, and came out looking so battered and confused.\u00a0 I felt compassion, not pity, and angry that she\u2019d been subjected to something so destructive. \u00a0Years ago I had a dream in which I was the poor relation in a Victorian household, a kind of unpaid servant who could be turned out if she failed to keep up with whatever work was given to her. \u00a0I realized that I had always felt like an unpaid servant in my family home, I never felt like “the daughter of the house.”<\/p>\n I remember the time Mom was complaining about going to the hospital with Dad and acting like she was the only one who had ever had to do that.\u00a0 I jollied her out of it by saying \u201cThere will be other women there with their husbands.\u00a0 Maybe you\u2019ll even like some of them.\u201d\u00a0 She hesitated, wanting to maintain her injured stance, and then gave in and said \u201cI\u2019ve always liked people.\u201d\u00a0 I wonder what she would have been if someone had been able to jolly her out of all her narcissistic ways.\u00a0 I remember how Aunt Sally gently brushed aside some criticism of her that Uncle Grant had made.\u00a0 I had never seen either Mom or Dad do that for each other.<\/p>\n Seeing how Mother must have thoroughly repressed\u00a0her intuition that there was something she needed to do differently.\u00a0 I remember sitting with her on the screen porch in Cincinnati sometime after Daddy died.\u00a0 She was drunk as usual.\u00a0 It was while Jack and Milda were getting a divorce.\u00a0 She said \u201cJack said I was a bad mother, but I took care of you little peeps.\u00a0 But Milda \u2014 fft! (throwing her hands up)\u00a0 Those little peeps are hurting…\u201d\u00a0 meaning Jack & Milda\u2019s children.\u00a0 I remember feeling slightly sick, sad and disgusted while listening to her.\u00a0 There was nothing I could say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been writing a lot, both on my own and with writing groups I’ve started. \u00a0I want to use some of them as blog posts. The first memory I have of my mother involves some tiny clear plastic animals.\u00a0 I … Continue reading