Lesson Number Two...Always Worry About the Worst That Can Happen.
When I talk to my mother, I have not yet finished the sentence when she starts listing everything that can go wrong. “Mom, I finally joined the YMCA today, and...” “You can hurt yourself on those machines.” “It’s crawling with germs and you’ll never have a healthy day again!” “What if they aren’t insured? Did you check on that? You’ll get hurt and lose your job and your medical coverage and you won’t be able to sue them and you’ll run out of money die living under a bridge.”
Mom wasn’t that cautious when she was a teenager. I remember stories of stealing spare tires to sell to the Wartime rubber drive. She told me that she started smoking at fourteen and had her first engagement at fifteen, to a boy named “Al.” She dropped out of school at sixteen, and the engagement was broken off. Now, when my mother was around nine or ten, and with Great-Grandma Berner feeding her only eggs and Pepsi Cola...Mom made friends with my Aunt, Betty Lou Boring, who was the same age. And she also was not an Elizabeth, but a Betty.
Betty Lou’s family had a house and Grandma Boring, while being a bit retarded...sorry, intellectually challenged... was a great cook and Grandpa Boring’s alcoholism hadn’t yet wrecked his ability to a living, so they had food and real breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Mom saw the advantage to being Betty Lou’s friend because she was invited to the dinner table. She was twelve years old when the oldest Boring son, Carl, went off to war.
She was fifteen when Dad returned from the Pacific Theater and as he said...he noticed that she had grown up.When the engagement to the mysterious Al broke up a year later, they started dating and, despite the smoking and the engagements, my Mother was a virgin on her wedding night. She was very proud of that...and very angry that my father had been with two hookers in his life.
Poor Dad! He had spent the war driving officers around Honolulu. Yes. He joined the Army, ready to die and spent the entire war in Honolulu. When the Oriental soldiers of the Fighting 100, the One Puka Puka were sent to Europe, they had to be replaced by Americans and that was my Dad. Motor Pool. Driving officers from bar to brothel.
I mean, come on! The girls felt sorry for him sitting out there in the Jeep all night and gave him a few freebies. Who wouldn’t accept the gift? I’m sure they are all cream of the crop, beautiful and desirable. And I thank them for their contribution to the morale of our fighting men.
Lesson Number Three: Do Not Allow a Man to be Human.
Now, things got confusing when Mom had a second daughter. One daughter was fine, but the second child, the one who demanded to be born despite Mom’s attempts to prevent it, was supposed to be a boy. Mom’s always said that there was “something wrong with me” from the day one. She implied it was mental, but I often wonder if there was supposed to be a wee wee down there, meaning that I could take care of her. Now, she had two girls to marry off to rich men and she was not happy.
Dad decided, the day I became taller, to treat me like a son. I mowed the lawn, I changed spark plugs and I was never trained about hair and makeup and clothes. My biggest flaw, you see, was a 142 i.q. Oh, the cliché! A loner! Reading her books and writing her plays. Advanced Math, which I was terrible at, and Advanced History, where I was brilliant and became an unrepentant Left Winger Liberal forever. Classes full of geeks and nerds and loners. All of rushing home to our rooms at night.
Kathy, my sister, was the twin set belle of the ball with a hundred giggling friends and a busy social life. Therefore, when economics forced my mother to work...God forbid...I was ordered to take over the house at the ripe age of eleven. Kathy had a social life, I did not, so the choice was painfully obvious. I burned the first meal I cooked and was severely chastised for not having food for the family.
Lesson Number Four: If You Don’t Have a Prince, Clean the Hearth.
Mom took the three to eleven shift as her act of revenge on having to work and basically, I never saw her again except for this snarling creature on weekends who sat brooding on the couch, flicking the end of her cigarette and yelling orders to everyone except my perfect older sister, who wore twin set sweaters and dated a steady stream of boys.
My Mother told me bluntly, that I had to earn my keep. They had not planned me but I had insisted on showing up, I had to earn my food and my bed. At the age of sixteen, they stopped paying for my clothing, so I had to get summer jobs at nursing homes and baby sit for children I neither liked nor understood. I asked my sister a few years ago if she had to earn her clothing money. She did not know what I was talking about.
I was trained to serve. I was trained to feel bad about my mother’s horrible life and that all I was fit for was to take care of her. And the only way I could make her happy was to lie and say I didn’t mind. It was fine. Sorry, I burned the pot pies.
Lesson Number Five: It is up to Me to Fix Your Life
There is nothing so selfish as claiming to care and to love. Ergo, you want to change the object of your affection to something better, something happier, something more that suits you...all right! Suits me. Me. Me. That suits Mom.
To truly Love is to accept. "Love alters not when it alteration finds." I repeat Sonnet 116 over and over but do I really believe it or is it just to make myself look better? And the sad part of this is that all the lying and begging and improving is that I have twice had to leave the men in question and I left them in tatters, unable to function. I did all the work and paid all the bills and they were left more helpless than ever. To say "be a man", is something both men and women should aspire to as it makes us feel more human. We survive on our own and sometimes as equals, but never when I am the Mother, easing the way far too much. Sometimes, I have simply not let my men be men. I have not let them find their own way and feel their own success. I destroy with Love and that is a terrible fault I should apologize for the rest of my Life.
There’s nothing more liberating than realizing that all the lessons you’ve learned...are wrong. They have taught you through error. Through disaster. And I can see them so clearly. They’ve been drummed into my head and all the words stand out as WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!
I was reborn. I am my own Mother. I was finally able to learn.
It flew into my life last July. Like a wild California Condor. As noisy and as free. Don’t try to stop it. Don’t try to fix it. Beautiful! Oh, yes, the creature is in great danger, but I will not interfere. I will not try to fix it or help it. It has to find its own way through hills and valleys that I can’t comprehend. Don’t translate what it’s saying...let me just hear the Music of its call. If it wants to light on the ground near me and let me touch its feathers, I will, but if it just wants to show me the spectacle of it flying overhead, then I count myself lucky. I wrote this piece of verse to show the new lessons I am learning on my own, with the help of true friends.
No More Deals. No More Expectations:
You know what The Deal is.
It means, if you Love me...
You will do x, y, and z.
So, if you do not do these things,
you do not Love me.
It’s not that difficult.
Just do the x, and y, and z I choose
What are they?
You shouldn’t have to ask.
If you have to ask...
You do not Love me.
So, I leave.
And have nothing.
But why does anything at all have to happen?
What a lovely mind.
What lovely hands.
That I want to stare...
Does not require the same of him,
But if I sit quietly and undemanding,
I will never have to turn my back.
Scream Feminism as loud as you like
Age makes a woman less desirable.
Weights, running, botox, dye.
You’re still the same.
Read.
Paint.
Think.
Enjoy the Freedom.
Enjoy the View.
Of his lovely hands.
And ask nothing more.
How sweet it then is,
When he chooses to do something for you.
Especially if it’s not on that damned, silly list.
Like Mom says...Susie has a vivid imagination.
No comments:
Post a Comment