Category Archives: www.mollyfield.com

Sep1

Grief: Confusion and Clarity

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“The storybooks are bullshit!” -Ronny Cammareri, “Moonstruck.” 

I’m back again. 

It’s folly of me to suggest that I’d have this licked, especially during the first year. And I don’t. So that’s how it is.

I say without any snark or irony at all: It’s fitting that my complicated mother would die on a brand-designated federal holiday.

Her actual death was September 2, 2013, which was also Labor Day. It’s like another death in my extended family which I believe occurred on President’s Day, if not, the weekend. So … what’s a person to do? April Fool’s Day is always April 1. Christmas is always December 25. Thanksgiving is always a fluid date. If we happen to be born on New Year’s Day then it’s a celebration and happy time. But if we die on a designated “holiday” or date of significance, what the what? 

True to her form in life, she will keep us guessing. That’s cool, I suspect, up until a point. I simply have to make a decision. One of my brothers said, “September 2 is when she died, September 2 is when I will deal with it.”  

I use the word “Mom” for my own sanity. I’m reading The Prince of Tides (I know, a knee-slapper) at the moment and I’ll get in line to hand it to Conroy, he paints a vivid picture of “mother.” “Mom” was a brand, a label; my mother was always Mimi. My father never referred to her as “Mom” either. It was always, “your mother,” or “Mimi” or “Mary Joan.” I suspect it is generational. She referred to him as “your father” or by his first name or other monikers. 

She was Mimi. “Mom” simply didn’t really apply; she was her own.

So when she died, or the news of her ailing came down, I was home with my husband. We were on our deck and he was off for the holiday. That was really quite nice: I didn’t have to bear alone the suspicious and crystallizing incoherent news from my father that she’d fallen from a probable heart attack. I didn’t have to deal alone with management and oversight for my kids because my neighbors were home. I didn’t have to drive, much less navigate to my parents’ house amidst the constantly changing roadways. I didn’t have to tell me to be quiet to hear the cop interrupt me in my teenage front hall to repeat the news that she’d died; my husband told me to be quiet. I didn’t have to try to console my rigid and overwhelmed father upon recognition of the news. I didn’t have to again drive, to follow the well-intentioned young cop to the hospital where I would meet the doctors who said she went so fast it was painless. I didn’t have to bear alone the vision of her worn, calcified and finally rested body under that white sterile sheet in the dimly lit, quiet, cold hospital room alone, there on that gurney with no machines or lines hooked up to her because she simply had no use for them.  

That day sucked. I mean: really sucked. Death is hard, I get it now. I watched my father-in-law take his last breaths and that was hard. He was a good man and to me, terribly uncomplicated. Doesn’t mean he was simple, because he wasn’t. He, like his son was very “what you see is what you get,” and that is what I loved about him. There are no games. This is how it is. That’s how I am. 

Mimi? Not so much. This isn’t an indictment. It’s just a fact. I spent much of my life when she was alive wondering about who she was and what motivated her and then why it motivated her.

The next time September 2 lands on Labor Day will be in 2019. My oldest will hopefully be a senior in college; my middle son will hopefully begin his freshman year in college and my youngest will begin his freshman year in high school, and I will be a fantastic writer with a few published books under her name. RIGHT??? There is much living to go on in my life and theirs and yours between now and the next “on-time” commemoration of my mother’s Labor Day death. I gave her so much of my head and heart space when she was alive, I can’t keep doing it. Continuing that charade changes nothing. 

I see in myself the trap: if I tarry over this kind of thing too much, I invite my old friend chaos. So I have decided that I’m taking back my Labor Day. We don’t change the date of our birth even if it occurs on a leap year, I’m not going to let this transition of my mother’s steal the final holiday of the summer. So her death date is September 2, a year tomorrow.  And I’ve come a long way. I thought the depths of the grief I felt over her death would never shallow. There were pits of grief, and sobbing, bereft moments that were unyielding. I had to “feel all the feelings” though, as they say, or else it would just keep coming back, like keeping them held up in US Customs. It gets better; I and those who’ve felt these depths know this now. Just not then though. But we do now.

All this chatter reminds me of a moment in “Moonstruck” when Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello) is calling Cher (Loretta) from his mother’s home in Sicily. Johnny is paralyzed with anxiety over pleasing his mother and denying his loins. Mothers have a tendency to do this to us. (Good God, I hope I don’t do this shit to my boys…)  Tomorrow, September 2, I will deal. 

In the meantime let’s watch this clip instead. “Love don’t make things nice. It ruins everything. It makes things a mess.”

Mom loved Moonstruck. I still do.  

Thank you. Thanks for indulging me. Really. 

May28

Pondering Why I Write What I Write, Then Maya Angelou Died

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Gabriel Garcia Márquez said, “All human beings have three lives: public, private and secret.”

Clearly, I write lots of things about myself and things that have happened to me and my family on this blog. I used to judge myself and accuse myself of unabashed narcissism; that my writing about my life must be a token overcompensation due to my incredibly low self-esteem. But I don’t really have low self-esteem, as a chronic condition; most of the time, I’m quite OK with who I am. What’s funny is that I’ve read so much about narcissists over the years that I’d be mortified if I were one. The last thing I want is everyone agreeing with me or living the way I say.

But I have been mulling it over: Why Do I Write What I Write here, anywhere?

I started the blog as a form of love letter to my sons. As a glimpse into my head and as a testament to how I wish to live a rich, succcessful and fulfilling life, without mansions, yachts, white parties and our names in lights. I continue it because I find that life is constantly throwing curve balls. Just when you think it’s time to sit and relax, that you can exhale and zone out, up sprouts another “adventure” (that’s what we’ll call them, ok? cheers!).

So why DO I write about what I write about here? I had been thinking about it for several months. I had an idea, I was inspired several times, to march out onto the worn, grainy wooden stage of my blog, with a top hat and cane. I would push through the massive, tattered, heavy and dusty midnight blue velvet curtains, move forward in a giant hip-swingy, little kid “big step” and SIIIIIIING in my best Steve Martin, “It’s beeeeeecaauuuuuuuuusssszzzzzzze …. >inhale< …. I'm ahhh-liiiiiiiiiiivvvvvvvvve!"

Then Maya Angelou died.

Reading about her life, has made me feel like a princess in an ivory tower. Immediately: I felt small, stupid, uncertain and silent. I thought I had a story to tell. I thought I was a survivor. But I know that if she were here right now, she would put her hand on my shoulder and look into my pitiful face and say to me, "Molly, we all have a story. You don't have to feel small. You don't have to compare, because comparing and competing and trying to be first and measure up… against what? Against who? All of that is to no use. Have you not been listening dear? You write because you simply ARE. That's why. And no one knows your life but you. So you sing it." And she would lean back gently and laugh in that amazing, loving and confident way she had. And she would vanish and I would be OK. But not really. But eventually.

It's because of writerly women: Maya Angelou, Joyce Carol Oates, Joan Didion, Anne Lammott, Dorothy Parker and other bloggers, that I feel I can go on.

I've had people in the flesh, tell me, "Wow. What you write is sooooo revealing. Be careful of what you write… Don't you want to protect your children?"

I answer: "From what? The truth? My absolute WORST fear in life is that my kids won't know who the hell I am; that they won't know how I'd deal with something long after I'm gone and that they'd have no one to consult… Much as how I did not know who my mother was nor what she would have done…" Some moments absolutely exist when I know what Mom would do. (And that's not necessarily a good thing she'd do.) For other moments? Maaaan, she was completely unpredictable. Her capacity to indulge caprice was boundless.

So for those moments I don't share, my third, secret life? I have plenty of things I needn't nor will ever share. Boxers or briefs? Who cares?! How you overcame unbridled narcissism in your mother, only to unconsciously rehash it again and again in females you met as you matured until you FINALLY! realized the damage it had done and broke the pattern it manifested in you? I think people want to know about that.

Some stuff you just can't make up. Some things that people do –intentionally flying airliners into buildings for instance or falsely impugning a child in his own home– defy common, rational imagination. That Maya Angelou accessed the strength inside herself to share her truth which let people in on her harrowing past, is the reason people continue to write. She is the reason I will Write What I Write.

There will always be plenty of other things to write about.

For now, I simply write because I Am.

Thank you, Maya Angelou, for giving all of us, each and every single one: a voice.

Thank you.

Feb12

While I’m Away …

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I think I’ll be away from here for a bit. My recent posts of addiction and Mr. Hoffman have stirred in me an unrelenting nag or nudge to write about my life and how I’ve overcome some realities. I’ve hinted at it before, writing a memoir — it sounds so lofty, doesn’t it? 

Don’t worry — it is. 

Ha ha. 

My challenge thus has been about the “where” in all of this. 

Where does one begin a memoir? Do you start at the beginning of the central life? What if circumstances which preceded the beginning of that life coalesced to create the reason for the memoir? 

These are the things I get caught up in. These are the moments that keep me from writing it. The nagging distractions and details. 

So instead of dicking around and wondering where I’m supposed to start, I’m just going to begin where I can. Just get it done, right? It’s the one thing that simply won’t go away. I can stop thinking about chocolate, I can stop thinking about a glass of wine to have with that chocolate; I just can’t stop thinking about writing my memoir. 

Every time I write something else, I feel as though I’m cheating on it; as though I am being unfaithful. But unfaithful to whom? To my ego?  No… I figured this much, and it will sound so affected: I am cheating on the truth and telling people that change is possible, that the old story about Ebenezer Scrooge can happen to all of us any time of the year. 

Dickens wrote an entire story about it, forgiveness and kindness and truth; Vonnegut just said this, as my yoga teacher read in class yesterday, and it made such sense. Were I not already seated, it would have knocked me over:

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.

Then there’s this: WHO THE WHO AM I THAT SHOULD BE READ? I dunno. That’s a distraction from a negative side. Both of you have told me to get on the stick, life is about living and I really love writing, so…   

The other aspect, which is critical, is that writing any of this can’t be about exposing or hurting. It must be about moving forward with some semblance of an end point. I’ve read some memoirs by the adult children of famous writers; Saul Bellow’s son’s memoir comes to mind and I hated it. It’s all yucky and bitter. That’s not how this should go. It’s about healing, forgiveness and that all-too bruised word which means so much and creates anxiety in all of us: “growth.” I just gulped. 

After months and months of wrestling with the concept of a memoir, and my predisposed notion that memoirs really ought to be written by people who are near death or famous, or famously near death, I have determind that the best “memoir” construct I can emulate is that of Joan Didion, per her Blue Nights and The Year of Magical Thinking, which are amazing books if you’re unfamiliar with them. She is self-indulgent in them, absolutely, but aren’t we all?

In those books, Didion collected thoughts, observations and wrote essays about her experiences in the wake of her husband’s death and in the midst of her daughter’s. I don’t think her books “helped” me with anything, other than showing for me, the other side of the world my parents inhabited: the side I didn’t see, the 1970s and 1980s double-knit, sweaty-longneck, chunky-bangled, high-ball, leisure suit lifestyle and parenting style that has caused so many of my peers a form of adult unrest and unease which can only be described as “fucked up.”  

Ahhh… that was funny. 

Didion was already famous. But that didn’t matter, she wrote these things because she simply had to get them out; that she did it brilliantly and in a way that didn’t necessarily require you to jump in on page one “AT THE BEGINNING” caused me ease. It helped me to understand that life needn’t be linear, and our recollections of it are OK — life is a tapestry. Not everyone remembers everything the same way. Isn’t that the point?  

In some way, the memoir I’m writing does reflect a death: the death of my comparisons of myself with others; the death of my crusade to be everything unlike my mother, the death of my hardness against my mother (which was ultimately a hardness against myself; we all get there in our own way, hopefully), and the death of a way of life, codependency and enabling, which stole years from me despite my fervent interest in seeking and speaking truth. 

So if I’m not here, that’s where I’ll be. Working on that. Charlie and Murphy tell me they have some posts planned. Charlie got a new collar, a “Gentle Leader” which is based on a horse’s halter, a “head collar,” and which is supposed to evoke feelings of his mother gently and firmly coaxing him to do what she wants, but Murphy tells me that Charlie just thinks it’s a mother-something. It certainly reminds me of a horse halter because that little 20-pound microBear does some serious bucking when it’s first on. 

Wish me luck; I’ll be appealing to the angels Gabriel, Raphael and Michael to keep me clear, honest, healthy and protected from negativity during this experience.   

Thank you.

Dec30

30 Days of Brené Brown — Day 30! #heart #love #risk #joy #grace

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Welcome to it. Day 30 of 30! The final day. I have enjoyed this series a great deal and I’m a little sad to be packing things up, but it’s time. Really. I definitely got out of my rut. I didn’t see my family much nor get much memoir stuff going but … this final quote below is really such a boom!

To love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn’t come with guarantees – these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain. But, I’m learning that recognizing and leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability teaches us how to live with joy, gratitude and grace.
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

It’s like sailing. It’s like dancing. It’s like trust: you lean in, you let it take you somewhere, you give up all your fears, for just that gust of wind, for just that song or just that singular moment and it’s as if you could fly.

This quote excites me. It reminds me of those moments when my boys were little and they would run at me with their arms wide open and I’d hunker down in a squat, open my arms wide too and put my weight on the fronts of my feet and they’d come in for a landing and we’d huuuuuuuuug and huuuuuuuuuug so tight! I would press my face to smell their heads and squeeze them tighter.

I don’t know if it was their energy, the wind, the sun, their fearless love that made me fly or my unbridled love for them and the feeling of “everything is SO all right” in that, in those fantastic moments, but whatever it was: I wanted more of it.

This is a level of euphoria that I don’t think people could subsist on constantly because we need to get stuff done, but to me, it is those moments that help me keep going when I get distracted by the transition of not being grateful or feeling the feelings. Showing up, being real, letting it all out and saying, “Here is my emotional spleen!” (that’s the ’emotional pain’ Brown is talking about) and not sweating the repercussions nor worrying about the “oversharing hangover.”

Who knows what will become of our goals and our dreams if we give it all we got and we keep on giving? Most likely success! But we know what will happen if we do nothing: nothing.

It’s in those moments when we share with those we trust and love that we feel safest. When even though we might feel a hint of doubt, as if to wince upon the final syllable or after sharing, we are living. It’s as though we are standing at the precipice of hope, letting the uplift of air, cool and exhilarating or warm and enveloping, as though it were buffeted by the rocks below, that we are in our moments of truth.

“Take me as I am, world! This is all you get!” We shout from the edge, alive with defiance and dreams.

And then we can exhale!

Open one eye, look around.

For we have done it!

Open the other eye!

We have lived. We have risked backlash and we are still standing. We might be alone, but we are no longer afraid.

And that is living.

Welcome to your life. This ain’t no dress rehearsal; this is real. This is it. People are born and people die every day. If you’re struggling with something, lean into it. Grab it by the short hairs and get in the dirt with it. That’s where you will find yourself.

Thank you for joining me on this little Brené Brown journey.

This completes our program. Think about what 2013 has done for you and think about what 2014 can do for you.

Make a vision board, be audacious! Plan one with your kids or your spouse. Make your goals real. I bet you’ve gotten more done in 2013 than you think you did.

Thank you.

Ps. A little reminder of how life is so fleeting:

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