Be a Good Girl and Do as I Say

My life has become an informercial in my head.  You know the one with the plastic bags that you can fit a swimming pool in, turn on the vacuum and voilá! You have an ice cubed sized container.  You can nearty store it under your bed, and next year wipe off the cat pee, unzip the zipper and again, voilá!  Swimming pool, cabana boy and a floaties all ready for you.

I am a inside that bag and someone has turned on the vacuum.  Only at an excruciatingly slow level.

Each day I feel my world shrinking.

Normally I would prefer this, being the anti social-socialite that I am.  

Normally I would be in control of the vacuum and at what speed, and what I will or will not bring with me inside my clear (yet durable) bag.

Now I feel like I have been shoved in the bag and as I desperately cling to the things I want with me, they are being grabbed out of my hand.  Like a cruel parent taking away a baby blanket.

I have also been eating my feelings, trying to stuff them down even further, with  half a gallon of cookie dough ice cream on top.  Surely if I cover those feelings with enough food they will stay down?

Sadly, all this has gotten me so far is ten extra pounds and a lot of silence and anger building up inside of me.

A fellow writer friend of mine warned me years ago to be honest, but know that I will piss someone off with my writing.  Mostly that has been my family.

Not always pissed off, okay maybe once or twice, but usually a phone call saying I got the facts wrong, or the dates wrong. Or not owning up to my mistakes and being a sympathy seeker.  If only they knew how much a hate sympathy.  I am not good at receiving or dolling out sympathy.  It does not mean I am unsympathetic, I just feel awkward with it.

If they are my facts as I knew them, they remain.  I can't do anything about the timeline.  Too much partying in high school has taken away exact dates.

Today living with Mom is a challenge would be an understatement.  My brother had it right when he said "Brutal".  That was after a quick two day visit.  His take away was one word, "brutal."

Oh how right he is.

One family member suggested I watch I documentary about a person with dementia, which I will but do not want to.

To me that is akin to telling someone in the throws of labor pains during natural childbirth to watch a movie on natural childbirth.

I will eventually watch it.  Maybe during one of the long hours I sit with Mom.  Not during my precious little free time.

People have the best intentions for me, which makes everything even harder to swallow.  I feel an obligation to read the book, or see the oscar award wining movie about alzheimers, which has absolutely no baring on my life.  My life is not nearly as neat and tidy as the book (or movie).  The only resemblance is the person with the disease had her partner leave her, (conveniently glossed over in the movie.)

"Wasn't is great?  So sad right?"

"Umm yeah." Thinking I wish it was that easy for me.

To make matters in my life more shrinking into the durable life sucking bag I am in, I have had a multitude of suggestions of what I can do, as a caretaker, as a person, as a friend, as a "daughter".

As if people collectively got together and said, "Hey! wouldn't it be awesome if we took away any last thing that gave Amy any pleasure at all?  Oh and on top of that let's tell her she needs to go to confession for having an abortion when she was not yet fifteen, because "You were not properly punished for it."

Oy.  This person also wants me to take Mom to mass while I go to confession.  I understand the meaning behind him wanting her to go to mass; to try and stir up any memories.

It was a bit much to tell me I have failed at ever endeavor in my life because I was not punished for something that happened when I was 14.

My entire life has been failure because of that?

I feel the bag getting tighter now.

Being the pleaser that I am, I will take Mom to Mass, I will not go to confession.  Not because the church does not want a lesbian, divorced, pro choice woman in its pews (which it doesn't), but because people think Catholics get a free "do not go to Hell card" when they go to confession.  They forget that one must be "heartily sorry for having offended thee and detest all my sins,"

I do not feel that.  I am not sorry, much less detest myself.  I am sorry for the little girl that chose a fast life and had to deal with some tough issues.  I have mothered that little girl for years.  So no, I will not ask for forgiveness, and no I have not failed at everything I have done in my life.

The bag is getting smaller now, like a little black dress that clings to everywhere, including my head.

Wait! before we zip up the bag, let's take away any free will.  Grab her cigarettes, grab her diet coke, grab her intellect and reasoning to choose for herself!

There, all zipped up.

What remains?  

Everybody is the Guru

"A woman on the radio talks about revolution
When it's already passed her by."

I often daydream about what it would be like to buy a gigantic ancient house in Italy or Spain.  You would be surprised how many of these there are available.

I would bring over my family and their partners or friends, and hopefully grandchildren and we would all live together.  There would be plenty of space for everyone to wander, to be and do as they please.

Everyone would bring their own talents to the mix.  There would be a garden, and large feasts set outside on a long wooden table.  No dishes or chairs matching, tapestries hanging in the trees.  The grandchildren would run naked, not afraid to pick up the errant lizard or paint themselves with mud.

A midwife would come for each new birth and we would light candles and all silently wait, or cook, or wrap our hands around beads to give them something to do until we heard the new cry of life echo through the walls of the tired house.

A tired house brought back to life stone by stone.  Laundry would hang on a line and let the Mediterranean air dry it with a smell of adventure.

My mother could let the dogs out the front door all she wanted because the grounds are safely protected by more stone rocks, once put in place to keep out intruders from wars, or famine, or plagues.  Now the old walls sit and relax into themselves not having to stand at attention.  They relax and witness an odd family that takes naps in the afternoon sunlight.  On the grass, in hammocks, in beds nursing their babies.

We have among our many chickens one named Lasagna, a nod to the fact that the chicken will never become its name.

"I was alive and I waited, waited
I was alive and I waited for this."

I was born too late.  These completely run down yet venerable and dignified estates sell now for millions.  Many are up for auction.  I cringe to think of the buyer who will tear them down all to have marble countertops.

I was born too late.  I want to wear flowers in my hair, and often do, but still I was born beyond the revolution of peace.

I can not even say this was some past life of mine, since I was alive, born just after the Summer of Love.
We lived in Los Angeles, during the time of the Manson era.  We lived just over the hill from the Manson house.  A few doors down was the Source Family house.

I can not say I blame my mother for packing up what she could after a particularly large earthquake and driving us across country where my father would eventually meet us.

I am aware that people aggrandize that certain time.  I know that if asked more people claim to have been at Woodstock than were actually there.  I know there was a war and it seemed to be a country divided. It was not an idyllic time.

But it could have been.  For the hermits, like myself, that in their twenties dove into books by Ram Dass, Krishnamurti, Timothy Leary.  I read about Buddhism, Mysticism, Hinduism.

I thought "YES!"

I raised my children with art and music and mud puddles.  But they were raised with the soundtrack to RENT.  They were raised in an era of the fading of AIDS being the biggest threat.  They took comfort from the Japanese and Pikachu, Charmander, Squirtle, Meowth.

"Bob Dylan didn't have to sing about
you know it feels good to be alive"

I am on a quest to find a feeling.  An elusive emotion that lives in an abandoned mansion in some distant country.

When I find it, when I feel it, when I live it, I will feel in place.  Was I born too late?

"I was alive and I waited, waited
I was alive and I waited for this"

The Filling

Watch any movie or TV show that has a woman giving birth and you will see: screaming, yelling, hurling obscenities towards the husband, swearing to never have sex again.  I assume this is always supposed to be humorous.  Or at very least some sort of abstinence lesson for people.

These scenes annoy me.

I have given birth a time or two, and I can tell you what you see depicted is not the norm.

I have been a birth partner for a friend and I witnessed her silently go to a place where she breathed and rocked through each contraction.

Watch any movie or TV show where someone is dying and you will see a loving family surrounded at just the right moment to hear the words of wisdom said in a pained whisper of the dying person, just before he closes his eyes an the machine goes flatline.  A nurse magically appears and shuts off the monitors, as the closest family member shuts the eyes of the departed.

Death is not like this.

Unless it is an opera, then the dying person has enough time for one last aria before collapsing of consumption.

Like birth, death is messy.

Birth and death can be slow or fast, never knowing the exact date or time of either.

People, including myself,  have put a lot of emphasis on both events.  One of joy, one of sorrow.

But what about the in between?

Do we not measure the myriad of events in our lifetime as eventful as a birth or a death? Are they not as compelling to make note of?

Sitting next to me my mother has read the Sunday paper three times already.  Fixating on folding the paper in just the right way to make her happy.  A simple repetitive act that brings her both frustration and joy.

No, it isn't a birth, or a death.  It is just an act.  Probably muscle memory, and yet she does it with so much emotion it must count for something.

When I lay in bed in the morning I can feel that the bed is so much more comfortable in the morning than it was a few hours previously when I crawled inside the sheets.  I wonder how the sheets became softer, the pillows more supportive, the blanket placed in just the perfect way to make me happy.  Complete joy.

Knowing I have to leave my cocoon is a dreaded task, I linger in joy as long as I can.

Will this be written about in my obituary?

"She loved her bed, especially in the cool crisp mornings of fall..."

Not very noteworthy is it?  But to me it is.

My mother has now moved on to removing leaves from my deck where we are sitting.  She beds and picks them up one at a time and gently throws them off the deck.  The leaves bother her now.

I want to go back to a time where leaves were raked pile high and  I would run and jump in them creating chaos and laughter.  My mother wants to organize them.

Between birth and death are so many small trivial moments that are often not even shared with others, and possibly not even noticed by the people doing them.  They are forgotten, discarded.

I was once told that my father fought his death to the very end.  I was not there.  The image of him boxing a figure in black always came to mind.  A match to the Death.

But what of his life?  I do not mean the items listed on a resume, or in an obituary.  He loved to sit with his mother on her front porch.  Much as I now sit with my mother.

What did he think about during those times?

Are our personal thoughts just as important as our actions that occur between birth and death?

I have been accused of "living in my head".  Maybe.  Does it matter if I stop what I am doing when a cool breeze passes?  Isn't it enough that I stopped and noticed it and maybe even recalled a time in my past when I felt a similar breeze?  Or do I need to document my thoughts so they take form and and matter and therefore my obituary can also say, "She used to stop to feel every cool breeze."

I had a friend who lived on a farm.  You could tell that her joy came from her animals, and the harvests she produced.  Physical actions that made up her life.  What was she thinking when she took from the earth what she planted?

I do not know what  I thought when I was born.  I do not know what I will think when I die.

I know that right now there is a breeze, a respite from the heat, albeit brief.  My mother and partner are laughing, I crack my knuckles.

We three sitting here, often in silence, or in convoluted conversations that make no sense at all.

This is life.  My actions, my thoughts, my bed, breezes, the babies I raised, the books I stopped reading because they bored me, the cigarettes consumed, the lovers I took and left, the trips to the emergency rooms, the muddy dogs I cursed at.

I do not think about the fashion shows I did, or the magazines I have worked for, or any of the things that would impress on the page of a resume.

I think about now.  Now is all I have.

Lauri Hove

"Today I woke up."  Those words were written in my very first diary.  A small one with a lock and key and Winnie the Pooh on it.  Those words began my unknown passion of being a writer, and observer.  I have had the fortune and misfortune of documenting my life, and as a result other people's lives.

I refuse to wax poetic on the recent and tragic life of a dear friend of mine, instead, I dug through my trunk and found a journal.  Just one year.  I will without comment or further preamble copy parts of these years1984- 1985.

December 28th, 1984 Thursday

In the car a song came on that Lauri and I always sing.  It's called "You and Me Against the World".  Just the perfect song for Lauri and I.  I can not wait for her to get home.

December 29th, 1984 Friday

I have to tell you, after I finished writing on the bus on the way back from the city I leaned back and listened to the music the bus driver was playing.  You and Me Against the World came on.  Weird  huh?  So I bought the album tonight.  I am going to sing it in the talent show, but not tell Lauri, I will tell her I am singing something else and surprise her.

January 13, 1985 Sunday

Bonjour! Ca va? How are you my dear sweet innocent journal?  Oh if only you could answer all my questions I would ask so many!  But I fear my purpose in life is to tell of my life and others as I try to figure out the answers myself.

Tomas and I walked over to Lauri's house and there we stayed for a few hours, she was cleaning her room.  She does that a lot.

January 21st, 1985 Monday

I cleaned my room again and Lauri came over, we laughed all night and then she slept over.  It was fun.

January 27th, 1985 Sunday

Hello Dear Friend! A very lazy weekend but I enjoyed every moment of it.

Friday night Tammy and Lauri came over and we watched a gross horror movie. Saturday, Tomas, Lauri and I watched another gross horror movie and we just hung out and laughed.

January 31st, 1985 Thursday

On a lighter side, Lauri came over after school and we got all dressed up, I mean DRESSED UP.  Then we went out and bought film and took pictures, it was so much fun!

February 10th, 1985 Sunday

Have I got a story for you!  Last night Tomas had a costume party.  Laura went as a dead Grace Kelly even with a steering wheel around her neck!  I went as Boy George (of course).

Tammy came over and we all got pretty drunk, but I was more drunk than anyone.  Laura walked me home and put me in to bed

(I want to interject here that I am going to skip a bit, no need to share everything just yet!)

February 21st, 1985 Tuesday

After school I went over to Lauri's and we had a really nice talk about life, parents, all that.  When I got home my mom and I talked for a long time.  Basically about the same things Lauri and I talked about.  I guess I just wanted a parent's perspective.  I really do love my mom more than anything else. She is my true salvation from whatever is bothering me.  She's really got it together.  I don't know what I would do if my mom wasn't here to help me out.

February 17th, 1985 Sunday

Tammy, Lauri came over.  For some reason Lauri and I got into a huge fight and she left. There was a dance at the high school and I went even though I cried the whole time.  I came home and called Lauri, we fought and she hung up on me.  I called her back, we fought an I hung up on her. This went on for about 45 minutes.

Then we finally talked it all out, thank God, so here I am happily crying on the phone.  We can't stay mad at each other for long.

May 6th, 1985 Monday

It is raining and thundering.  Laura is here and we turned off George Winston.  We decided we are in love with rain and thunder.  I guess it is weird to be in love with rain and thunder, but it is just so beautiful.  Laura said it is music that will never sound alike.

We decided we are backwards people.  We like Monday's, staying in on the weekends, and rain and thunder.

May 20th, 1985 Monday

Friday was one of the strangest nights of my life, it is way too complicated to explain.  I think I will keep this one as a memory.

(Side note, I recall every moment of that night, and am still keeping it a secret)

Lauri's little brother in 8th grade had a party and it was insane.  At around midnight it starting pouring rain.  Hard.  So Lauri and I decided to take roll up our pants, take off our tee shirts and go play and walk in the rain.  It was amazing.

I want to leave off on that note.  There are many many more stories and journal entries, but I like the idea of leaving this one on the note of us, young, stupid teenagers, playing in the rain.

It's you and me against the world.

A Friend Museum

While removing myself emotionally, I have been looking at "friendships".  I find the entire idea of them fascinating.  How we get them, how we maintain them, what we have to do to keep them, and many time how they are lost.

I do not in any means consider myself a social person.  I feel I am much more of a hermit.  I would prefer to stay home on any given night than be forced to socialize. My children are the only exception to this.  I always want to see them.

A number of years ago I was very much in an industry that required socialization.  It was pertinent to my career.  My cell phone was handed off many times with a blithe, "Here, add your number and I will find you on Facebook."

I acquired a mass amount of of friends rather quickly.  We worked together and commented on each other posts.  I made sure to comment on a "new" friend's Facebook page.  The act of securing the "friendship" so that I might gain work in the future.  It is an odd business, late night bookings made in clubs while waiting backstage.

"Can't wait to work with you again!" Shouted over the sounds of local music playing.

And then I left.

I stopped working in that business.

The phone calls dropped off, the names forgotten, the comments less and less until nothing from either one of us.

I was known, then I was not.

A ghost.

When you have a baby you gain friends, you find a community of like minded parents and become the very best of friends, nursing together in public while talking about nursing together in public.  Your children go to the same Vacation Bible School, you arrange car pooling, you pass your child off to your friend so you can take a nap, or do laundry, or clean the house.

Then your children grow up a little more, and realize they are nothing alike. They find their own set of friends, and you start all over trying to make friends with their parents.  By teenage years, the parents names become something in your phone "in case of emergency", not to call for coffee dates, or long lamenting conversations of the difficulties of raising teenagers.

There are many times in a life when you gain friends and many times there is a culling of friendships.

If your spouse is sick, you gain many friends.  If your spouse dies you lose more friends than you originally gained.

If you move out of town, or even to another neighborhood, you lose friends, and gain a few new ones.

If you take on a new spouse you gain friends by proxy and hope like hell you measure up to the ex that the same friends new and adored for years.  Secretly hoping you surpass the ex.  But these friends are not truly YOUR friends, they are a package deal, much like children are.

Time moves on, much to your consternation, and another culling occurs.

Again I feel the need to reiterate that I find this to more of a social awareness, I do not have any emotional attachments to it.  I did at one point, and there is one or two lost friends that I miss dearly.  For the most part I find it fascinating.

My latest perturbation arrived along with my mother.  I truly and finally let go of the career I was once so proud of.  A career my family knew little about, and even my mother in her lucid years did not care so much to hear about it.  I tried to show her the accolades I achieved and was met with a distant boredom in her eyes.  I gave up trying to achieve the accolades I thought I was rightfully due.

I feel the need to interject here that, yes I do have friends, I have a handful that I know would do anything for me, that would be there more faithfully than the US Postal Service.  Three of them I have known most of my life, more years of friendship with them than time spent walking this earth.

They just do not happen to live in the same state as I do.  None of my great friends live where I do, except for two, and they have been slowly disappearing from my life as well.

My mother arrived and life changed.  Another marker of time passing.  As she once took care of me, I now take care of her.

As a result, more "friends" have dropped off the radar.  I do not blame them, I am guilty of not keeping up with phone calls, and when I do I turn the conversation to them. ask them about their lives, tell me what it is like out there in the world.

I could make new friends now, and instead of talking about breastfeeding, we can talk about how to get our parents to take a bath.  That would require effort beyond what I am willing to do.

My mother was, is, and always has been the center of attention, and so she remains, her audience is just a little smaller now.

She naps in the sun as I write this.  She asked me today where I wanted to go.  It was an odd question and seemed out of nowhere.  I replied "Everywhere."  She laughed and said, "Well, that won't happen."

It may be true.  She used to dream of going to Italy.  She never did make it there.

There has been a song rolling around in my head for the past few days;

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
'Til it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

I would like to gather all my old and new friends on that parking lot and make it a paradise party.

For that I would leave my room and socialize with my past, present and future.

That Was Then...

If you know me, you know that I hate the month of August.  Only one day in the entire month do I like; the day my eldest daughter was born.  That's it.  That is all.

I do not like the heat, I do not like the memories of those that have died in this month.

I have tried always to find the good that lies within the bad, and recently I realized I was not looking hard enough.

I am one to point out the sky frequently to whoever happens to be near me.  My children will notice a beautiful sunset, some will wake earlier than normal to see witness the sun appear over the waves in the horizon, only to go back to sleep.

We take in nature as much as we can.  We baptize ourselves in the waters of a pool, lake, creek, and the occasional salty waters of a beach.

We witness the color of leaves as they change, and that is a hard feat to achieve in this part of Texas, as leaves tend to turn to brown and fall off out of boredom, or some sort of heat suicide.

When the children were young they played with Rolly Pollys.  Poor little bugs curling up in defense of our entertainment.

If a toad reaches our door we all go and look.

I have woken children up to witness a meteor shower, or just to see a full moon.

And should it snow?  That is certainly a reason to wake up a sleeping child and go outside and play!

Since my Mom has arrived to live here with us, it has been more like we are the ones living with her. We do as she wants to do.  Much of that is sitting outside.  I have spent more hours outside than I have within.

Mom will often look up to the sky and comment how beautiful it is.  I glance up, notice nothing unusual and say a half hearted, "Uh-huh" and go back to looking at my phone.  Anything to distract me from the heat.

I wait.  I wait for hours to pass so we can go inside, I wait for Meredith to come home from work so I can spend a precious few minutes in air-conditioning.

Day after day Mom will comment on the sky.

When the sunsets Mom has no desire to sit out back and witness it.

I try to coerce her.  She is perfectly happy where she is, looking up.  Looking for planes that will never take her back to what she once knew.  Looking up at birds, always looking up.

Yesterday I put my phone down and when she commented on the sky, I too looked up.  It was blue.  Cloudless and blank.

What does she see?  What am I missing?

Like a tornado it hit me.  I am missing the now.  

She sees infinity, she does not see blue skies of her youth, or of her child rearing years.  She does not see blue skies of the future.  For her there is only now.  She sees the vastness of the day, for her that is all exists.  Now.  Today.

I breathe in the now with her.  I see it.  For me it is fleeting, I am barely in the now with her.  I am in the past, the future, and yes the now, but the now of children with flat tires, to children who are angry at me, or meals that need preparing, to ice that is melting too fast.

I take her hand.  Together we sit in the now and look up.

And isn't it a beautiful now?

I am glad to have the now, because all too soon it will be then.

Novels novels everywhere

I sit on the front porch, or the back deck with my mom.  Day in and day out.  I follow her conversations, when I can.  Nod indifferently when I can't, hoping that is a satisfying response.

I start novels in my head.

"All Mama does now is sit on the front porch with my grammy.  Before Grammy came to live with us, Mama had things to do, places she went, she liked to go to to the lake.  Before Grammy, Mama took me places, to the store late at night, and we would giggle that we were in barefoot as we picked out pints of ice cream.  Now Mama rushes to make more sweet tea so Grammy has it when she wants it.

I can hear Mama mumble to herself, as my room is right off the kitchen.  She says things like, "I swear that woman is going to drive me to drink"
She used to say that about us kids too when we were all little, but I have never seen her take a sip.

Just her sweet tea, and her diet soda that no one else in the house is allowed to have.

Life was different before Grammy came here."

That is one book, told from my daughter's point of view, except my daughter would not speak like that.  She is an amalgam of many people.  Maybe of all my children.

I do feel like I have abandoned them in a way to take care of Mom.

The Catholic guilt runs deep and the imaginary Nun speaks looming at me.  Finger waving in the air "You should never abandon your children, or your spouse (clearly this Catholic nun has no clue my spouse is a woman) you must take care of everyone and everything!  You are selfish and needy and you will burn in hell!"

My Catholic Nun is different from my Jewish (fictional) Grandmother.

"What were you expecting?  You are the girl of the family, you have to take care of everyone.  Quit kvetching, and get on with it.  Did you think you would have a life? (she fake spits)  That is for other people.  The Gentiles that don't care about family and throw their mothers into "homes"!  What kind of a home doesn't have kugel on Sundays?

No Bubbala, that is not a life for you, now come help your Bubby out of this Fercockt chair.  would it kill you to get me a barcalounger?  The Grossman's got one for their mother, but you? (fake spit again) I have to sit in this!"

In reality it is not so colorful.

During the time it took me to write this, I fed mom a Lean Cuisine, in a bowl, passing it off as my own.  Got her sweet tea, twice, took her to the bathroom once, fed the dogs, and just now filled the dog bowl with water and started to walk out front with it to give to my mom.

Okay.  Stop.  Deep breath.  Dog bowl in kitchen on the floor.  Sweet tea on counter for mom.

It is okay.  It is all okay.

Mom is getting ready for bed, and the cast of characters in my head are arguing amongst themselves. It is amazing how  my fictitious characters all get along enough to gang up on me!

As I tuck my mom, and my cast in bed for the night I take another deep breath in.

And listen for silence.