Tag Archives: mothers and daughters

Sep2

Love The Sinner, Hate the Sin

Posted on September 2, 2015 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

Today is the second anniversary of my mother’s death. I’ve written extensively here and privately about my experiences in grief. I’ve written about her death two years ago being the final somatic death which followed so many other of her deaths I felt I had grieved over my recent lifetime.

Last night, when going over photos of her, the one below in particular, I wept silently while my husband slept beside me, oblivious and recuperating from a sinus infection.

This photo was taken about six years ago in my parents’ house in Canada. A place we used to joke about having in case there was another military draft. Now it feels like a good idea to hang on to in case Donald Trump becomes president.

Mimi and the boys, summer 2009.

I wept for many reasons. I feel now / today / this moment and felt during that moment that I weep because I will never have that sweet older lady in my childrens’ lives any more.

She wanted so very much to be present in their lives. She was, in her way. I got in the way. I see that now. I sort of robbed them of her sprite-like ways because I was so hurt by it, her lack of an anchor, as a child. I wanted to protect them from that, but I see now, that by just being their mother, I was protecting them from that. They weren’t going to be with her 24/7, as I was, yet I couldn’t really unplug from those memories, at least not then. I was aware of it too. What I mean by that is that I was aware that I was in the way and yet I wanted to be out of the way, and yet, I wouldn’t be out of the way. I was and am so hell-bent on providing for them a healthy life that I suppose in some ways I’m stifling an unanchored life…? that doesn’t make sense. I sense now that I’m becoming my own judge, jury and executioner. Breathe.

Mom used to say, “Jesus said to ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ or something like that…” and I’m being a little flip in my treatment of that memory, but she did often say something very similar to that, depending on the tenor of our conversation and her state of mind.

As I wept last night, my throat hardened and tightened and I knew that it was because I was and have been disallowing a truth for almost all my life: that I loved her and needed her so very much and that as much as I wanted to hate the physical incarnation of her addictions: her, I know rationally that doing so limits my exposure to her, even now in her death. So I thought and mostly felt some more (even though it was reeeeeally difficult to feel the feelings) and said to myself, “I do love you, and I always did and I guess I always will, even though I hated how things went down between us.” And my throat softened.

I always have to allow that reality, that caveat (that she was messed up too). I’m not one to paint a dead rose as one in bloom: shit was hard between us. We were each others’ teachers, of this I have no doubt. I am easily able to say now, that I am grateful for her being my mother and that she taught me the most important lesson of all: to get real with yourself, because she had such a hard time doing it herself.

I realize that Mom was an instrument of God for me and my brothers and that her mission was to teach us, in one way or another, about the dangers of addiction and alcoholism. And to live as an example, as harsh as it was (and it was harsh) so that we would be able to break a cycle. So that we would be able to live consciously and as deliberately as possible.

Mom was such that there was no patois of our dynamic, after all, she was an actor and an illustrator. As good as she was at stringing words together, Mom really seemed to fail at times in speaking and writing… it sometimes devolved into a bathos and her notes to me could cut like a backhanded compliment. “It was the booze talking…” I remember her saying one time. In vino, veritas, I would hiss back. In a way, she ended up unduly sacrificing herself for our sobriety. The tenor of our relationship was mostly mistrust, which really … sucked.

If my mom existed so that I could spare my sons an alcoholic mother and hopefully influence their own lifetimes in awareness of alcoholism and their genetic predilection, then her existence and my forgiveness of her is not for nothing. That’s the lesson I feel I’m steeped in right now. That’s where I can step into forgiveness. For me, right now, forgiveness has to be or at least look like a transaction.

I have actually begged for her to appear in my dreams. She does, sometimes.

The current book I’m reading, A Manual for Cleaning Women — Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin, is an emissary of sorts for me right now. In it, Berlin writes clearly about alcoholism, witnessing her mother’s and her grandfathers’ own travails and also her own. The shakes and delirium tremens, the self-loathing and mental anguish. Through her, I have a glimpse of my mother’s struggles and demons and I am leaning toward “forgive the drinker, hate the booze.” I suppose I could’ve used this book a few years ago. But it is what it is. Mom and I were as good as we were going to be around the time she died, we’d had several real adult and womanly conversations. Berlin has also made me a little braver in my own writing. Life is too short to have to fear what other people (through their own filters) think of anything I do.

When Mom aged, she softened, as so many of us do. Gone were the harsh and defensive edges of projected self-recrimination and doubt. At least around my kids, they were softened or completely worn away. She still had her self interest, poised above all others, but her kindnesses toward my children were absolutely sincere. In a way I was envious of them, their ability to be so at ease with each other. She had no worries about failing them and they had no fears of not living up to her expectations. It was like a little team of back-patters. I am happy that they all had those moments together.

I recall a day when she wanted to be with us, but logistics made it difficult (or maybe just I did) and so we all played Monopoly with her on the speakerphone. One of the kids would roll dice for her, the other would move her token (usually the thimble) and the other one would deal with her bank (that was usually my oldest son). She just liked being on the other line, hearing us all play together. I remember wishing she’d had an computer or iPad or something so that the boys could play online Scrabble and Pictionary with her; she would have loved it.

The day she died is different from today. Two years ago, it was Labor Day. Everyone in my family was with their own families, no one was alone to have to hear the news. I remember, clear as it happening right now, that when my father called that day, I was on my deck with my husband. I just knew. You know — how you just know? I just knew. Dad’s voice was unsure, but upbeat, like he was calling me to tell me that he’d cracked up my car but that everyone was ok… “Your mother has collapsed in the driveway. She’s in an ambulance now… the officer here wanted me to call you…”

…. ‘Officer…?’ ….

We went over to their house as soon as we could. I’ll never forget it. The angle of the sun. The heat of the day. The wait in their front hall for an update. Then the update from the officer, “Mary didn’t survive…” and I thought he had the wrong person… “Mary? Who is Mary… ” … “Your mother, I’m sorry… she didn’t survive…”

Oh.

Then the drive to the hospital. And the phone calls and texts to brothers — where was my younger brother?? — and cousins and in-laws and close friends from the back seat of my own car as my husband drove and my father sat, granitic, in the front passenger seat. It was about 4:30pm at that point.

So tonight, I will have another root beer float, as I did that evening when I’d found out she’d died. She was on her way to get one that day. I got mine from the Baskin-Robbins down the street from the hospital. I remember for weeks after that, just telling people that my mother had died. I told my cleaning ladies. I told people I barely knew. I always got a hug for it. The freshness is still there, of that moment. I feel like that’s the greatest gift of being sober and in touch with your feelings: that joy and pain and all the others in between are right there, just beneath the surface teeming to leak out. We should let them every once in a while, it keeps us real. If your mom is still around, give her a hug for me. If she is not, think softly of her for yourself.

Thank you.

May12

50 Things about Mimi

Posted on May 12, 2015 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

Standard

Sunday night, Mother’s Evening, a friend shared a post she read on Salon. It was written by a surviving daughter about her mother who had died when the writer was 25. I was struck by the seemingly enormous task of writing 50 fifty FIFTY! things about my own mother, in ways which did not repeat themselves from things I’ve shared here (likely impossible). I would also like to do my very best to keep things positive, because as we all know mother / daughter relationships can be storied. Mine was no different in that I suppose.

God did not give me daughters. There is a reason for that.

Yesterday morning, I watched the penultimate episode of Mad Men. The scene when Sally reads a letter from her mother (whom she always called Betty) was so lovely, especially that she signed the letter “Love, Mom.” Betty and Sally were a bit like me and Mom. But I was Betty and mom was Sally. But one thing I heard a lot about myself from my mom was that she knew I would make it. In much the same way, Betty tells Sally that she knows she doesn’t have to worry about her anymore because Sally moves to the beat of her own drum.

I’ll not bore you again with our history, but we were two souls who intersected for 45 years and I know we loved one another deeply.

So, off the cuff and mostly positive if not striving for it and it’s likely you’ve read a couple of these before if you’ve read anything I’ve written about Mom…

=-=-=

Mom always had a glass of water by her bedside. It was never a cup. Never plastic. Always a glass and it was always, amazingly, filled.

She did not understand electronics. I think in some very primitive Irish way, she suspected they were instruments of faeries and pixies.

She loved her Polaroid camera.

She loved photo booths. Alone, with her kids, with my dad. She loved the capture of a moment, staged or organic. She loved to remember.

She would listen to Caruso at very odd hours at a concert-hall volume.

Her self-applied hair colorings were inventive. I distinctly remember a purple time and a green time. (Keeping things positive.)

She had cheekbones and a facial serenity which belied her inner consternations. She often was looking into the middle distance.

When she was a child, her left? eye / pupil was damaged, horribly, by a classmate and his pencil tip. She would recount that story with bravery and bittersweetness. I don’t know if she could see out of that eye; she said it was often difficult. I remember looking into that eye, she would never tell me not to, and feel pain in my body at the thought of the injury.

She never said a really mean or critical thing about anyone she knew socially. She was always very positive and sincere. I remember one person who was particularly unattractive, in more than a physical way, and she said, “He’s very smart.”

She loved roller coasters. Again! Again!

As an obsessive, she had collections of things: books, audio tapes, handbags, clothing… much of it never opened. I see that in myself, to a very small degree: just having something, and it reminds me of her a little.

She would take my drawings of flowers and vases, pulled from those tiny little spiral notebooks, and she’d nudge them between the frame and her vanity mirror, alongside singular or folded frames from photo booths.

She loved a Reuben. Pickle on the side. The musher the better. She was all about the sauerkraut. I see the allure of the Reuben but I prefer its cousin, a grilled ham & cheese on seeded deli rye. Pickle mandatory.

Rosaries. Rosaries were practically everywhere — not out in the open, that would be too weird, too “ethnic” (my assumption, not hers); she had them in drawers and on bookshelves, tucked away. In a coat pocket. In a teacup on a shelf. In the spoon compartment. In the ashtray. I never saw her use one though.

Sometimes I would encounter a filled glass of water in a cabinet. And it would spill all over me. Sometimes I would encounter a glass of water in the refrigerator. I remember asking about putting a pitcher of water in the fridge and having it that way, but she didn’t like it cold. She just wanted to “keep it fresh.”

She had her own climate with her mother, who was lovely, but psychologically encumbered to a degree that she made my mother look like the trapeze girl at the circus.

Speaking of the circus, Mom was a majorette, in her all-girl’s high school. I can see her now in her felt wool skirt twirling her baton and marching in her little boots. I remember finding one of her half-dozen batons in her closet in our Canada house and running downstairs with it to try it. At first she was all, “Where did you get that…?” but she relaxed. It was safe, she was safe. She loved to watch me, and she gave me tips. “Here, like this…” she’d say and she’d take the baton, and show me how to twirl it between her fingers, running it up one side and then flipping her hand and coming back for more… “like this… just … you know … start here … ” the sun glinting off the rifled, chrome finish and one of her hands on her hip while her feet gently marched in place, feathery footfalls, just to keep a tempo. I’d end up sitting down, dazzled by her trancelike state as she twirled it and tossed it up in the air, spinning to catch it, as easily as breathing. “Now you try!” I passed. I suppose at some point in my life I took her talent with the baton as an affront, showing off, but as I type this, I recall it with awe and pride.

At Sherks’ Hardware in Canada (which sold everything, not just hose nozzles and 3-in-One oil), I got a hula hoop the next week. I was better at that. She was terrible at it. I remember coaching her, “Here, like this…” We laughed.

She loved the Canada house. Loved the sound of rain on the roof and the click-click-click of the squirrels running over the eaves. She would cry when branches were cut from the tall sugar maples because they were breaching the roof. She liked the idea of being in a forest, hidden, secluded and quiet. She rests eternally beneath a sugar maple now in Crittenden, NY.

She would cook coffee on the stove in a pot. Just pour the grounds right in the pot and let the water boil and then just pour the liquid, deftly, into her M. A. Hadley mug.

I think she took milk in it.

She was one of those moms who could peel an apple with a knife; I still can’t do that. Her hands were like a surgeon’s.

She would capture a moment or a phrase and plug it into a cartoon in a breath. Her sense of humor and observation skills were keen; in my jaded years, I used to think she was just projecting, but I do believe she was acutely aware of her own issues and used the cartoons as a vehicle for releasing them. Some people make lists, my mother did too, but she also made cartoons. I think she was acutely aware of the ephemera of the human condition.

She would bound around the Canada house at times quoting Moliére or Shakespeare or Wilde, usually their funnier stuff. In moments of strife, I’m pretty sure she would quote them too, but I tried to hit the road.

She had favorite things to wear: a green and orange “bumble bee” dress her sister-in-law made her.

Her Dr. Scholl’s sandals. I remember begging her for a pair for myself, but that never happened. She said they didn’t make them for kids, but I saw them … (keeping it positive…)

She would wear five static gold choker necklaces at a time. If you gave her jewelry, and it was valuable, it went on and never came off. If it was plastic or you made it at camp, she wore it, but it would end up in the jewelry box on her vanity. I see this in myself now; and I suspect it’s for a similar reason: the gold and silver are durable, they will last and be able to withstand daily domestic life. Those cute little plastic beads strung together with elastic won’t. There’s a part of me which wants to preserve those pieces, I think that was her angle too.

Family. Family Family Family. She was a master triangulator. I can feel her now, at times, nudging me to go one way or another. To be softer. She hated rifts. She hated divorces. They tore her apart, in ways I’ll never understand. I think watching her brothers go through theirs and the damage it did to the entire extended family network was galvanizing for her. She would never ever divorce. Never.

She was an absolutely terrible driver. Just … the worst. I think the first accident in modern times in Northern Virginia — when the vehicle in front which was rear-ended was blamed for the accident — was hers. She did NOT understand turning lanes… coming from a city, they just didn’t exist. They proliferate suburbia.

She hated suburbia. She just did. She liked the energy of a city, even a small town. I watch Mad Men, she’s a contemporary of Betty Draper’s, when Betty moved to the suburbs, a part of her died. In 1980s suburbia, Mom never fit in. I wish I were older, maybe 18 or so when we’d moved here, maybe I could have tooled around with her.

Pens. Pens were everywhere. Notepads too.

Kleenex in the pocket. Balled up. Unused for the most part, save for a lipstick kiss. Standard Mom issue. Smelled like leather, wool, Chanel No. 5 and dust.

Lipstick. Never left the house without lipstick. The one time I encountered her without it was at my younger niece’s 2nd birthday. Mom look positively ashen without it. I went through her purse and asked if I could put it on her. She brightened at the offer. I’ll never forget putting it on her. Her lipsticks were always flattened. Mine are pointed. We always joked about that: how hers were blunted and mine were not, “How did you do that?” we’d ask each other.

Cashmere. Every season was the reason.

Upper lip sweat. I remember it so clearly. She would be be drawing or cooking or sitting or reading. Sweat would form on her upper lip. She never brushed it off.

Skin. Her skin was beautiful. She had a car accident in the 70s and had to go to the ER. She needed stitches on her lower lip. She was devastated by the news and the scarring. After a few years, you could barely see it, but she knew. Lipstick helped her deal with that.

Egg nog. Duck lips. My mother had an egg allergy but loved egg nog. You couldn’t stop her. Mom had a streak in her: if she found out that something was tasty or delicious or good for you: she took it all at once. She encountered someone’s egg nog, I want to say “Giant brand” from a store down here and she drank an entire quart. Her face swelled up and her lips reminded me of the lips on Daffy Duck’s girlfriend, “Daphne.” She would get so mad when I said that to her, but I was terrified she’d never be OK again, so I think it was my humor kicking in to save the day and to keep me from coming unglued.

Bike rides. She had an old 3-speed “Why would you want anything more?” bike with a wicker basket. It had a bell on it. She would ride that around, again, free as a bird.

As the mother in the Salon article, Mom, too, liked to stay for the credits. I don’t remember watching movies in a theater with her, but on TV, she would wait for the credits. “It’s THOSE PEOPLE who make the film, Maaallly,” she would say to me. “They’re the most important.”

“I’m doing yoga,” she would say, lying on her back on our olive green wool living room carpet with one leg elevated straight up at 90˚ and the other leg on the ground. Knowing what I knew of yoga in the 70s: turbans, contortions, the Maharishi and the Beatles, I suspected it was just another Momism. Little did I know then, but I do now, she was doing yoga. She was.

Local was better. Mom loved the idea of Broadway, but preferred local genius. She directed many plays benefiting Buffalo’s charities. She was a volunteer who knew her strengths. I have apparently followed in her footsteps that way. Mom was not and I am not a baker. Bakers are great people, we just aren’t them.

If you could buy it at a Hallmark store, it should stay there. Mom was all about the handmade, unique, “esoteric” being one of her favorite words. “Provincial” and “providential” were others.

She used to say that “symmetry was overrated.” I have come to understand symmetry as balance. I feel I have a better handle on what she really meant but didn’t know she was saying. Balance was hard for her, maintaining a rhythm, equal footing; I suspect so because she felt uneasy about it, internal conflicts and all. I don’t know if she strove for balance, ever.

“Cool it, Mimsy!” was one of her favorite phrases for me. She borrowed it from Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suites” — look it up, it suits me.

“Piffle” was another word of Mom’s. It’s perfect, actually.

My father bought me a long red cashmere overcoat. My brother bought me a red wool hat to go with it. She would call me “the raging pimento” when I would be off somewhere. Usually in a huff, I guess. I feel like red was her favorite color. It had to be a blue, cool red though. Nothing hot. Not “cherry” red, that was too common for her.

Bangles. Mom wore bangles like how the Kardashians wear false eyelashes. Her collection grew after her mother died. She took those on as well along with her monogrammed and cuff bracelets. Sometimes those danced along her forearm with a rogue pink or taupe rubber band, perfect for the impromptu hair bun.

She never did pony tails. Always did hair buns. I remember putting her hair, it was very thick hair, in pig tails and pony tails once. She indulged me, but when I saw her, it never felt right. She wasn’t athletic, so pony tails were out; she wasn’t coquettish either. I remember her saying that pig tails on a grown woman always seemed forced, raw. Unless the woman was a hippie or a farmer. Or in a play.

Linen napkins. If there was one available, Mom was using it.

She loved nature. Trees, birds, clouds, torrential rain and then a clear sky. She loved the unpredictability of nature. I dare say she preferred it to people.

She was cool to animals. I blame her mother for that. She loved cats though and we had many as children. She resoundingly did not like dogs. She was bitten as a child. The dog we had as a family, Toby, was a mess. He was untrained and just having him made her twitchy, I’m sure of it. But she knew I loved them and that when we had “big news!” as a newly married couple, we told her and my father to welcome their new grand-puppy, Maggie, she probably wanted to stab me. But Maggie was sweet and trained and she grew to like her. She even trusted her with my kids. My dogs, as you know, like anyone with a chip. I remember many times, how Murphy often would sit by mom, even if she didn’t have food. I think he enjoyed her mellowness as she entered her twilight.

She would chirp and squeal with delight at anything we did; I used to think she was unhinged. I didn’t understand such huge reactions to what I considered to be just something I got to become good at. “DO IT AGAIN!” She would cheer. I wouldn’t. I don’t regret that; she was in her space. I see my own kids astound me with their intelligence, reserve, kindness, humor and talents and I cheer once and then gush later. This is theirs, not mine.

She used to chew her milk. I never understood it and the sound of the compression of her jaw sent shivers down my spine as a child.

Her favorite stroke was the butterfly. She used to swim it, laconically and loudly, in Lake Erie lake outside my cousin’s house in her star-spangled Speedo swimsuit. Her hair coming loose and wild from her bun, like tentacles.

She said to me often, “When you’re a mother, you’ll understand.” I used to think she was nuts. Now I know she was right.

I loved seeing that sweet message at the bottom of her mug of hot cocoa. She used salt, butter and brown sugar in it.

Gratefully, I could go on. That was nice.

Mom, know that you are remembered. Your most favorite thing of all to do, to remember. I remember you. I miss you, I wish I could undo a whole bunch of stuff I said and did, but I don’t dare ask anymore.

Thank you.

Jan27

Do No Harm.

Posted on January 27, 2015 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

Standard

My previous post, written mostly as a way to share a voice to those of us who grew up or are in relationships with people existing in tremendous dysfunction, was not difficult to write (although I was taxed heavily by writing it). It was difficult to share. I have tried to maintain a “code” of sorts in my heart, along with my appeals to Archangel Gabriel, that what I write “do no harm” — at least not intentionally.

I feel as though I did not honor that code as effectively as I would have liked. I was filled with regret, an urge to take down the post, and a feeling of shame after writing it. Those feelings were deeply similar to those I would experience after an argument with someone, as though I’d said something horrible, unforgivable to a person, to my mother.

Those feelings were again familiar. I recalled, and have recalled, numerous times when Mom and I would disagree about the course of things, and how I would suffer emotionally for telling her exactly how I felt.

Regarding that post, my greatest wish, to forgive — to actively forgive! — eludes. It’s like some prison I’m in, but it’s not all day, it’s not a life sentence and it’s open. It’s as though the prison gate is ajar and unlocked; there is no key. Yet I go in. I sit there, with my back to the window, avoiding the light. I do not understand it. I have a great life: a loving marriage; beautiful, healthy children; hobbies I thrive in; activities which fulfill my heart … yet … it eludes.

Like she did. She eluded.

Do you know how tired I am of thinking about this?

“Then don’t. Think about something else,” someone I used to know would say all the time about me or other people whose activities or looping thoughts drove her mad. It’s not that simple, or maybe it is. I used to be like that: super black & white. I could flip a switch and move on.

But then I had kids. It all changed after the kids were born. It’s like the DNA was activated: I joke now, but suddenly I cared about China. Like how an addict’s dopamine response to a certain pleasure-giving stimulus was heretofore asleep. I was always hard on Mom, but I could flip the switch when I was younger: lash out and move on.

But once I became a mother, I had a narrower window of forgiveness. It went suddenly from a case of “I don’t know what it’s like” (and to a degree, I will never actually know her life’s depth, so it still applies) to “I know what this is like, and I choose X.”

So back to my premise: do no harm. I feel like I hurt her again. I feel like I was mean to her again and that the shame and the hairshirt of regret I wore was there, cold, stiff and waiting for me to put on again.

I went to sleep that night, fitfully. I woke around 2:30 with a thought based on a quote from Rumi that I read the night before during yoga:

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

I woke with the thought:

Regrets are like bricks that we use to build walls around ourselves to keep love out.

That works. Right? If I stay regretful, then I don’t forgive my behavior which was a reaction to the first behavior. Up goes a brick.

So then I come back to this place of “do no harm” because I am filled with regret about the previous post. Another brick.

But then the comments from readers, and the amount of traffic the post garnered, and I know that people “clicked” to “read” it (about 300 actually) but a few people commented to me privately or on the site (2). Basically, if anyone disagreed with me, they didn’t bother to tell me. Those that were grateful for sharing what I did were extremely supportive and candid and they have my thanks.

So it begs the question: did I do harm? Make no mistake: I loved my mother. Make no mistake, I hated what she became. My dad is largely supportive of me; he’s not driving the bus, but he hasn’t come down on me and that’s just so nice.

It’s like I was still 18. I knew that was kooky, so to do what I could to move forward or investigate my allegations, I decided to open a box I had stored under nondescript stuff and wrapped in tape to supposedly protect it from little peepers since I moved out.

paranoid much? When you have a situation like I did, with a parent who clearly had self-esteem issues and who mishandled a lot of parenting due to the management of those issues, there is going to be a lot of espionage. She wanted my assessments of things, but she didn’t REALLY want my assessments of things, y’dig?

On top of it all was my diary. Which inside it, was another diary.

Many of the items were from high school and college friends. In some moment of haste, I removed most potentially scandalous content. I discovered a letter from an old beau, telling me he didn’t know what to say about the direction of our relationship, and I found the letter to be a perfect example of what I would want my sons to send to a girl should they find themselves in that predicament. It was heartfelt, written in pen without one mistake, and encouraging.

I found some school papers I wrote and was thrilled to see some comments from my teachers: “Tremendous! Your voice is strong, but the run-ons and fragments made what could have been an ‘A’ paper a ‘B-‘…” (run-ons? P’shaw.) and “Deep characterization, such imagery… this would be better as a novella…” Me again: “run-ons?” (I’ll write more about that box later, it was interesting!)

I was hopeful that I would find a warm letter from my brother written the month before my marriage but I couldn’t. I remember several years ago my mother citing that letter from him to me (it was about both our possessions of sharpened steel tongues and that we were both blessed to be marrying people who were soft and kind and “normal”), she paid particular attention to my tendency for verbal evisceration. The letter was not there, she took it. I will likely never see it again.

I looked for evidence of my tumult with Mom. There wasn’t much in the way of play-by-play. This both confused and delighted me. I don’t think I gave her much mind then. Well, there was evidence of her tampering: she’d scrawled a phone number on the corner of that old beau’s letter I mentioned, so that broke my heart a little, again. There was a comment from her in my diary, which was a very hard for me to reconcile. She was who she was. The time with that box went very quickly; it was fun, most of it.

I wrote immediately upon closing it all back up:

I read most of the content in here. The diary is full of ramblings, some funny and insightful but mostly just the neurotic, insecure blather of an American, single, young woman. Ennui, strife, doom — it’s how I got through it all. … The sum is that I had a lot of energy and was a lot of work for my parents. [My license was suspended at least twice for speeding and while I commuted to my university, I lived at home as though I were on campus, coming in at all hours.] There isn’t much of anything about Mom or from her [cards, drawings — likely because I actively disliked her during those years … brick] in here. I’m surprised by that — but I’m also relieved because despite the drama I was pretty resilient and self-absorbed. That, or it was all so ‘par for the course’ with her that I didn’t find much of it remarkable; or that I knew she would read everything, why give her an audience? … I feel lighter, not mad at all about Mom now. I saw my college work and I feel as though I’ve been rinsed delicately but completely, like an old garment. … It’s all OK now, I can let it just be…

And then the next day, that stupid regret came back. Brick… About that “actively disliking her” then, hey: that’s OK. That was part of ~~my gig~~ our dynamic then. I crossed that “my gig” out because I have to allow that I wasn’t formed in a vacuum; I was a product of an environment, just as we all are, just as my kids are. That as much as the 47-year-old me wants to understand that we are 1) connected, we are still 2) all our own people with our own choices, she has to allow the 16-20 -year-old me some rebellion, separation, and defense.

What I’m realizing as I write is that this “do no harm” code is foolishly not applied to myself. How much of this do we put upon ourselves? I’m guessing about 90% of it.

My mother had won the affections of SO many people from SO many generations and places in life that it made me wonder if I was the crazy one: she was like this silk scarf; a light and fun Daisy Buchanan butterfly to them and it was so different when we were alone. I compare myself to her as a heavy armored beetle.

I wondered, “Didn’t people see something?” It was the 70s. Who knows. The recurring baseline fear was that my memories were just … hijacked and rewritten. I actually considered calling a cousin for back-up, but I asked her to read the post. She did. She validated me. She saw a lot of it.

To properly understand my mom a little more, I watched Gray Gardens from 1976, and it helped so much. I gleaned from it a comment from Big Edie during one of Little Edie’s wide-ranging rants about how she could have made it on Broadway (something I heard a lot of) and her blame at her parents for her failure. Big Edie said something like this, “That’s the problem with the past. If it were right at the time, she would’ve done it. But something in her didn’t do it; I didn’t stop her… but the fact is that if it were right at that time it would’ve happened. You can’t stop fate…” Now, in all honesty, those women were a tangled mess, but I liked what Big Edie said about perception and timing — if it all was aligned and Little Edie wanted to do “it” then, she would’ve. You can’t blame other people for crap you [don’t] do. And I think that’s where I need to Work on me: I screwed up a lot then, but I was also ‘supposed’ to… the thing is though: I don’t know how much room there was in our household for more than one ‘spirited’ female.

But the regret comes back and looms. It’s born of biblical guilt: Honor thy Mother and Father (or whatever it’s supposed to say) and I don’t know of many who did when they were teenagers. Probably Jesus was the only one.

That regret is born of my fear of other peoples’ perceptions because I was such an untamed mare then. I worry so much about how I’m perceived, that I either hold things back or I don’t admit them to myself. When I was younger, I didn’t care… I miss part of that spirit, just not the recklessness.

One of my readers suggested I read Anne Lammot’s Small Victories and the chapter on Anne’s struggle to forgive her mother after her death. In typical fashion I downloaded the book, but I will admit this: I am afraid to read it. I don’t know why. No, wait. I do: because something in me only knows Mom one way, in this one-dimensional way, that refuses to let her evolve and refused to allow her other aspects. That is not “do no harm” to anyone. I know it’s a knee-jerk reaction: you hurt me, I’ll hurt you. But I’m supposed to be evolving. And Mom’s gone… so what the what? It’s like that open prison…

Brick, please.

So it’s a lot. I’m tired of this wall building.

It’s nearing the end of the first month of the year. I need to make a change I think, in my writing, if just for a little while. I’m thinking mostly fiction for February. I think I’ll read some of those old stories I wrote and share some, updated and cleaned up. See where that goes.

I bought a new set of technical pens, based on the one I found in the box. I started doodling immediately last night. Here’s my first mandala for the year.

I would like to do one a day. I would like to run out of ink doing them.

I say things like that “would like to” because I fear I won’t keep the commitment. But how hard is it to doodle every day? I guess I will find out.

One of the writing people I subscribe to is Jill Jepson. She has a blog, “Writing a Sacred Path” and she got me thinking about this “do no harm” thing most of all, or rather as I believe, it came to me right on time. I needed something to bring me back to center. I was flinging around so much blame that I was leery of becoming toxic. For the month’s final post on January 26 (it’s not up yet today), she wrote about the concept of writing generously and what it meant. And smack in the middle of the post was this:

boom. thank you, Fate. I don’t if I’ve told secrets that weren’t mine to tell. I’ve certainly been harsh. I don’t know about cruel, but I know I’ve been angry enough to be vindictive, but I don’t know. It’s a delicate balance: where does one story end and the other begin?

To be fair, she also wrote that we don’t have to write sweetly and kindly all the time either or else there’d be no satire or horror. But that’s where my bricks are lately: in that “do no harm” concept. It’s been such a whirly 18 months for me that I guess I can see how I’ve both wanted to dodge some bullets while fire some at the same time.

So there is an in-between; and maybe I’ve struck it, in a lot of what I write. Maybe I struck it in the previous post — maybe I can just move on and stop it already. I think I’ve figured it out (I took an hour away to make chili): I regret the way it all went down. I think I just really have the saddest heart about how my mother and I treated each other and how our family had to cope. That’s a big brick, but I hope it’s the keystone. So I need to let it drop so the wall comes down…

So that’s it… I have to get off this bus, and start something new. The only way to do something different is to do something different. Start some fiction writing again or at least less posts about Mom and anger and shitty experiences. Air out my feathers and have some fun. Fiction or bust. Fiction and mandalas are from the land of Do No Harm. Right?

Thank you.

Dec18

Grief: One Breath at a Time

Posted on December 18, 2014 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

Standard

Today in yoga, when I got to have svasana, I meditated on compassion and the only word that came to me in response was “unfolding.”

Being on the web, with a blog, assures a certain vulnerability. My words are here for anyone to denigrate and yet I find myself buoyed by the kindnesses and trust of strangers.

Christmas is in a week and I miss the idea of wondering what my mother would give me as a gift. Would it be something I’d want? Would it be something she liked and she gave to me? Would it be something she’d give to everyone else or my sisters-in-law too?

I sit here, just a bit more than a year after her death and I feel emotions ranging from pure confusion about death to sadness that people, all of us, die; from deep guilt that I wasn’t a better daughter, to pure anger that she wasn’t a better mother; from a proud awareness that we are each others’ teachers to a sheepish allowance that we are each others’ pupils.

The human ego is such an odd, strange thing. It’s there to protect us from emotional harm, but for me, in the end all it does is delay the eventual pain when it protects too much. It elevates us, falsely, above and beyond our threshold of “value” so that we are uneven with that which hurts us. When we come down, to the reality that we are all connected, that we all breathe the same way, that we all eat with a mouth and chew with our teeth and fart and cry and poop and sneeze … it can be a lot to bear.

Yeah.

It’s a cold reality sometimes.

When I was a child, I held my parents to a godlike status. As I’ve aged, they did / are too and I see their humanity. I use the present tense with Mom, even today, because my perception of her humanity is ever emerging even though she has moved on.

I shared a dream, the only one, I had of Mom after she died with my father yesterday and it made me weep to share it. Not because she’s dead, but because it’s really a gorgeous message.

She was on a shoreline on a familiar Canadian beach on Lake Erie where we swam often. Her sylvan hair was in a chin-length bob. She was wearing a navy blue knit cashmere suit, her red cashmere sweater, a cashmere black, white, red and navy plaid scarf and these little blue leather loafers she loved but I hated for the same reason: because they were so shapeless. She was in her healthy early 70s. She was about one hundred feet from me, walking along the shore, just at the point where a receding wave leaves the sand still slick and wet and shiny. She stopped and looked over some tiny spiral shells on the shore. Her hands were clasped behind her back and her hair would sweep down over her face, I couldn’t see it perfectly, but it was her. The lake’s tiny waves were lapping at her shoes. She didn’t care. She bent over and inspected closer. Her fingers were glancing along the sand, turning over a little shell here, or a rounded, ancient pebble there. The sun had set behind me, behind the trees bunkering the white tent where a festive party was going on behind me, and I called out to her, “Mom! Mom! C’mon! You’re missing the party!” and she turned to me, and she said nothing. Her hair was clear off her face now. Stars were starting to show in the periwinkle sky. She beamed at me, this gorgeous wide smile she had. Her lips were red with our favorite lipstick she bought because I loved it so much. She swept up her arms as the wind swept up her scarf and her hair around her cheeks and she turned to the water. Her face looked up to the heavens and she looked back at me and shook her head “no” and instead lovingly and theatrically gesturing at all the glory of things I’d never understand in this lifetime as if to say, “No. You’re missing the party.”

I turned back to the party, to reference it, to say, “NO! It’s happening here! Mom!” and I turned back to her, and she was gone.

This is the Mom I never allowed. The one who bucked the system yet wore cashmere anyway. The one who I wanted fiercely to somehow morph into a rule-follower. The one who I wanted to tell me when to be home and to punish me when I wasn’t. The one who I needed to help me with my homework when I lied and said there wasn’t any. That one wasn’t there.

It’s hard to have so many conflicting emotions about the woman who brought me into this world. I loved her the only way I could, the way she let me. She used to say to me, “Maaaally, you’re conflicted. You’re ambivalent. You can’t ‘hate‘ me without loving me first.”

I hated it when she said that.

Snort.

Because even though I used to tell her she was full of crap, she was so right. I loved her like … a child loves its mother; with a fierce, fearful, perfect and abiding love. She could do no wrong when I was young. It wasn’t until I was much older, that I saw her humanity … and I hated it. It broke me apart; her fragility broke me apart. She lived on a different plane; where there were no rules and that all of them could be broken. I was brought here to learn that.

I was going to make it with or without her; I laugh at that now. She was instrumental in hardening me for this world I inhabit now. So at this moment, while I miss her, and I miss the idea of wondering whether I would feel rejected or loved by the Christmas gift she would give me, I realize that the gift she gave me, all along, is life. With all its ups and downs, my mom gave me life.

If your mom is around in your life still, and you are in communication with her, tell her thanks from me for giving us you. And if you’re not in communication with her, well … say something nice about yourself because she helped make you.

We do not live one day at a time; we live one breath at a time. This is the ‘unfolding.’ This is the message from svasana. When we are still, things change.

Thank you.