Back to the Land of the LIving

I feel, as the month draws to a close, that I can breathe freely again. This will be short. I simply wanted to end the month on a high note.

I have begun three more paintings of my own. I have a good amount of work from Stanford to keep me going for the next month or two. I try not to look past that, because one just never knows. I have work. It's work that I find rewarding. Maybe it's wise NOT to look past that point for now!

I will be submitting my short story called "The Secret Life of Mindy Walters" for a contest. Those who are too young to understand the reference won't be put off by the title one bit, and that working title makes me laugh. The challenge was to write a story of fewer than 3000 words or so, that show some aspect of modern life. Mine was 24/7 accessibility of moms. Mindy has taken off to go on the family vacation three days before her husband and daughter will join her. She has DESERTED them for her daughter's last two days of school, even. It begins with the cell phone call from the husband, with the texting from the daughter coming, too. She has a running conversation in her head about driving straight north to Canada instead of "turning right" to go to the Island.

The story may stink, but I sure am having fun writing it... my defense of all modern moms who seem to have bought into our culture's decision that we must be accessible, available, ON THE READY every hour of every day.

How I loved being wholly dispensable.

What else? There are major construction vehicles outside my home digging up the road to put in the remaining sewer lines. They decided, SIX years after finishing the sewer lines, that the twelve existing homes without sewer lines were not "dead." The town said we were a dead neighborhood. I asked whether that meant we no longer had to pay taxes, but they did not laugh. Turns out they'd put one of those places for MY home already. I live on a corner. So they are stopping at the house next door. When I asked, "So we've had the option all along to hook up?"

He said, "Well, I don't know. We may not have put the line deep enough for you to ever use, even though, technically you could. But because it's there, we'd have to charge you about ten thousand if you wanted us to extend the line to the the low part of your house. Isn't that funny?"

I said, "No, not really. This town gets me coming and going, huh."

He went, "Oh, yeah. You're the lady who just wanted to teach art, huh? Man. You probably don't think much of this town, huh."

"Not so much, no."

Fortunately, so far the septic tanks work. And we do have the lateral hook up... Maybe we could connect if it came to that. Perhaps this is one of those lessons in life again about NOT looking for trouble. I don't have to have anything done for now at all, and that's a good thing. I think I'll call the septic folks in the morning though, and have the two tanks pumped.

Uh-oh. There goes my cell phone...

A Post script to Jessica

This week marks the anniversary of the blur that was Jessie's death. Perhaps I will one day find the way to write about that week for public consumption--bizarre does not begin to describe. I found out from the mother of a friend of hers. Her Father was riding a horse at Virgina Beach with the girlfriend he'd left me for--the girlfriend not two years older than Jessie. Her Mom was in El Salvador, having refused to cancel her trip with her second husband and their adopted child, after all others on the tour had canceled because of riots... Her brother was in Indiana, having just returned to school from a summer visit home, not long before.

I did not know how she had died, nor where. Only that it had happened.

It was not a usual day, nor a usual week.

And I miss her still and always and through to my core. Which is something that has complicated my week without the complications.

I do not care for August, and I do not need to. I may choose to dislike it all I wish, even though it is punctuated with good. I think I'll choose to refrain from liking the month, okay?

... I MEANT to add "for now."

Thank you Pauline for your comment, which made me look at this entry again!

And now we can Breathe...

P. had a massive second stroke, but miraculously there appears to be little, if any cognitive damage. And his personality is there. He can speak, albeit with difficulty, since he has no feeling in the entire left side of his body, including the left side of his tongue!

But his sister was here again and she was relieved beyond words to see that her brother was there behind the swelling and the frustration. In fact, with no alcohol there, he was more himself than he's been.

I will not dwell there, because I realize that, even without last names, it could be a bit too much that I am revealing in here. I may have to go back and change some first names. Folks who know me, who know her? They may not know other things. The virtual world. So if you notice my moving to initials in here, understand why I've done that. I can talk about myself, but perhaps not about others.

All of this has brought August galloping into the fore and I have absolutely no shame in admitting that this is harder this year than others. I have not yet seen him... I know what the swelling from liver damage looks like. And he is in the same intensive care unit my brother was in, so I am not sure how well I will cope. I will look at that tomorrow.

Thank you Erika and Kookie (YES, I know that's not your name, but I feel bratty) for checking in. It may not be until next week that I find my creative writing voice. I'm working on a piece for Stanford and that's not coming easily.

I DID, however start and finish a painting. I have no camera, so I can't put a picture in here. I simply call it "Four Seasons, New England." It began as a mistake. For some reason, I just like that thought. I was painting some handmade paper that has many holes in it, in preparation for collaging onto a New Mexico painting I'm working on. To do this, I'd put that paper onto some heavy weight tissue paper. When I lifted the handmade paper, the backing was beautiful to my eye. It looked like a deep New England woods--tertiary, overgrown, lush, and dark. With hints of Fall and spring in there.

Suddenly and image sprang to mind of bare trunks against snow. A poem I once began about being a New Englander, a child of granite and cold water, but lush, warm summers. Passion below the surface. I thought of a painting of ALL the seasons in a jumble together, like my soul.

I took a long skinny paper and then made another tissue. I painted Autumn forest onto the holey paper and there, beneath it was revealed deep summer into full autumn, with touches of spring. And I figured out how to lay them on my large layers, and I overlay pure white folded and torn tissues and hints of winter emerged. I have not done something like this before, and I found an artistic voice revealed.

I have not had the courage to try my abstraction. The things that inspire me to create use tissue, water colors and acrylics, but I've felt that anything I did would be hollow copying. I was wrong. I do not know how "good" the painting is. I know only that while I did it I grew calm. I felt peace. I felt joy.

... I could breathe as I have not in two weeks.

So it seems likely that it's "goodness" is wholly irrelevant. That's all for now.

Update on the Friend and .. I'm not sure

Alcohol in the mix messes up everything.

How true that statement is on any level you choose. P's struggle hits too close to home, as Jude and I talked about. What she hopes for the most is that he takes the wake up call and does more than simply detox... that his body can withstand the straing of detox as he does rehab from the stroke and they work to stabilize whatever is happening with his heart. That, in fact, his liver isn't too far gone.

We hope he will choose to do the emotional work that is necessary to help his son. I know the anger of the child with an adored parent who has always been a drinker. My mom was an alcoholic long before I came along. Jude knows this well. Her mom didn't really start drinking constantly until after her dad was killed, when Jude was a senior and P. in eighth grade. But he started drinking then and never stopped, so his son has that.

Our parents were the closet drinkers. The quiet, sad drunks who fell asleep for far to many hours. Numb too much of the time. Yet they loved us and we knew it. They spent magical times with us. P. was like that for his son. There was magic and joy, not simply pain. And most of the time, he functioned, as did my mom. It wasn't until I was a teenager that the scales tipped in the other way. So, too, it has been for P's son.

My brother, Jack. The one who protected me — not Jim. He began at fourteen to drink, like Pete. His children have never faced the truth and rumor has it that my Jack died of Tylenol poisoning. I guess the twisted, bottle-shaped brown bags were not a clue. Jack's family kept up the denial until, seven years after his death, his widow asked me why he began drinking after our mother died. When I seemed shocked, she said she was surprised when they said he had alcohol poisoning, that this had destroyed his liver because it happened so fast. When I told her he'd been drinking and drugging since he was fourteen, she went, "Oh, I never knew. Now it makes sense." Denial is the killer as much as the alcohol sometimes...

But our P, now has a chance. The truth is out and he has the chance to make things better.

And I know firsthand that most of us, where there has been love and we know it ... most of us simply want our parent back. I had no idea how little it would take for the healing for me to be complete. Like P's son, I tried desperately for the family to see the truth. I was in my mother's face. He was in his dad's. We tried to tell others, anyone who would listen. Nothing happened and our family's tried all the harder to shut us up.

But I had honesty with my mother, more than the others did. And so does P's son. A history of trying to have the truth be truly heard. It was enough. It was everything.

After years of my telling myself that I would let my mother KNOW what she did, that I would not let her off the hook if she ever had the guts to stop... after years of rage and then cold detachment, all it took was this:

Mom went through the DT's alone, month after I confronted her for the final time. A month after I walked out of the filth and the whining and the screaming, saying simply, "Let GOD clean your house. I'm done." That is another story.

But when she was detoxed, she called one day to say she had gone to the doctor and knew that she was dying from a shot liver. Then she asked whether I'd meant it that if she ever got real I would be there.

I said, "YES, Mom."

I went to her house and sat across a card table from her. Both legs were so swollen she'd had to cut the calves of her pants. "I am an alcoholic. Please find every bottle you can and stick them in front of my face."

I did. There were fourteen that Jack and I had missed just before Easter. She sighed. "I really haven't been drinking for three weeks..."

"Ma, these are completely encrusted in dust. I see that. Don't worry about it."

Sigh. "I've been an alcoholic since World War II."

Click. Half of me seemed to relax, yet I could feel my teeth chattering.

"I did things I'm ashamed of and I took them out on you..." Big child-tears escaped down my cheeks.

Then she asked, "Did your brother Jim hurt you?"

My eyes flew open. Here it was.

NOW she would know just what she had done. Now, I could pay her back for — something broke inside, and instead of the torrent, what escaped was just a whisper. "Yes, Mom, he did. Do you want to know any more?" I saw my mother lift her head, open wide the tear-filled eyes and look me full in the face.

"Only if you need to tell me, dear. Go ahead." The rage was gone. The anger. All of it. Gone. My mother had set me free, all by herself, unbidden, with ten small words. Like a dove, she flew back into my world, bringing only peace.

"It's okay, Mom. It's okay now." And we reached for one another's hands across the table, eyes locked together, for a very long time.

This I wish for P's son. Nothing more, because it's everything.