Robin Hood and Maid Marion: and All My World Grew Still

Be prepared. This memoir draft is neither funny nor light.   It was difficult to write, and my guess is that it will be difficult to read. I understand if anyone chooses to wait instead for Runaways to Red Bank III, which I will put online in a couple of days! Thank you, all of you, who somehow keep choosing to read what's uncomfortable.

It is my story, and I have to be able to write "ugly," as I used to say when I could not write anything that was darker than  Anne of Green Gables meets Pollyanna. As always, though, the power for me lies in the beauty, the beautiful power of my brother Jack in the face of evil. And the power of a little girl's love.

My brother's and my journey together is in bits and pieces of other blogs, but primarily in  Approaching the Pain, Keeping the Love  --  "I move to Robin Hood" well down, across from my Blog list.  That entry holds pieces that can shed light on more about our years between childhood and his end.

 'Tis I, Robin Hood!

When I was three, my brother Jack got a Robin Hood outfit. My mom and Jean Ellen made me a Maid Marion cape with genuine fake diamonds all along the bottom. Together, he and I would listen to our Robin Hood records with the books. You turned the page when Friar Tuck sang. Then we would run into the front yard where the ancient ... magic tree with roots that were above the ground, not just below it, stood.

We had adventures. Sometimes I got to be Friar Tuck or one of the Merry Band, but mostly I was Maid Marion. She was not a wimp, so I got to ride away with my Robin Hood to foil another plot of the bad Sheriff of Nottingham. We had sacks of acorns from the woods to throw to the poor in the village below (our neighbor's three horses in a corral).  We smite the mighty smoke-belching Tractor Dragon one evening, sneaking out of the house just before bedtime.


Just as we were about to revel in victory, "John Harvey and Jeannette Louise, YOU GET HOME NOW!" My father's voice could be heard three towns away, we thought.

A typical ending of our days -- mostly running home.

I followed him like a puppy, and not once in my memory did he shoo me away.

I had the measles when I was four, right after we moved, and nearly died of kidney failure and double pneumonia. Jacky was by  my side more often than not.  A head would pop in my door.  "Tis I, Robeen Hoooood!" he would cry, and bow before his lady in her room-darkened bed.

"You sound like an owl, not a hero," I'd say. And he would wing around the room "Hoooooooting" for me, making me laugh. Then I would start to cough and he would stop, a study in worry. He would sit on the side of my bed and  hold my hand, stroke my forehead. I was deathly ill, but I don't remember that; I remember how kind everyone was, especially Jacky.

"Jetty, get better, now," he'd whisper.  "We have to build that city for my trains, remember? You promised. You know I stink at making the trees and all the little stuff right.  I just break everything. I need you." That was the thing, you know; Jacky needed me. I got better.

Our dragon-slaying days had ended, though; we had a greater fight.


The Monster who Lived in our House
Our older brother Jim was the Sheriff of Nottingham. I will never know how Robin Hood truly fared in the tower he shared with Jim. I had Princess Jean Ellen in mine; he had Jim. I was protected until she left the house when I was in third grade, at least at night. But daytime was a different story long before she went away. The Princess was seldom home in the afternoon...


Sometimes the queen fell into a deep, deep slumber, with her royal glass of amber on the table by her throne. Worse still, sometimes she went on royal errands and left the Sheriff in charge. Those days Jack's call held urgency, "Jetty run and hide! He's coming!" Wherever I was in the house I ran like hell for my daddy's bedroom closet. The back had a slanted floor for the bathroom plumbing, but there was a little ledge at the top. I could just crawl behind Daddy's Old Spice clothing and tuck myself in tight, wrapped in a sports jacket, and simply wait. To wait and wait where no one ever came.

I would hear the muffled cries, the sounds of a chair scraped over wood. Other sounds. The laugh, a barrage of staccato explosions. I tried to cover my ears. There were other sounds I could not name. I would wait in the safety of my father-smelling dark. I would wait. Wait for the only sound I wanted to know.

"Maid Marion, the Sheriff has gone!"

Out I would fly to Robin, to my brothers' room. I'd look out the bathroom window first, making sure the sheriff was headed down the road, whistling usually. Then I would go to the boy in a chair, just a boy no more than six or seven, tied up and silent, with dark eyes and long lashes heavy from trapped tears.  I would untie his hands and let him be, while I fetched the cotton balls, the iodine, and held a facecloth under the cold water.  I did not rush. Robin Hood did not want me to see him cry. Heroes are like that.

Our ritual was silent. Full. Maid Marion dressed the tiny wounds, and turned the dampened, cold cloth on his forehead.  I would kiss the places where blood was drawn, but there never were many. The sheriff grew quite skilled at leaving no marks beyond pin pricks all over his skin.  He hurt the places that never showed; it was a mission for him.

Sometimes Jim found me, but only when Jacky was not there. Besides which, Jim preferred to find me at night...

And the reign of terror did not end until I was in seventh grade, and Jim moved out for good.

Those years held too much darkness, and so I learned to forget; to forget all but the fairy tale, to forget the reasons my brother's light simply dimmed, and finally went out. I became expert at forgetting the moment something happened, keeping only what I chose. And yet, somehow we know. I began to remember in 1987, after my father died. I wrote this poem after waking from a "nightmare," however, in 1980.

Brotherssong

A hole fills my heart where a childhood should breathe

 and a blood-dripping moon floods my dreams.

The bats start flying

In the house of my death and the songs of my night spin to screams.

There's a blank at the table where my brother's face should feed;

 his hands in my night sprout to claws.

Then the bats start biting while my brother grins on

while the moon drips blood from his jaws.

A newspaper breathes where my father's face should see,

a dead wind rattles at the door.

While the bats bite deeper and my other brother screams

the half moon's bleeding on the floor.

There's a dead mouse in the dark where my other brother cries

and Mother grows drunk on the tears.

While my father keeps reading and my brother grins on,

while my other brother withers with the years.

Too Soon Gone...
He was only 50 and I was not yet 48.  His son, John, had hanged himself in February and I had not seen Jack for several months when I saw him at the cemetery.  He had aged at least a decade and could not walk without a cane. Jack seemed shorter, smaller entirely and his hair and beard were white now. But he eyes were there, the eyes that got to me always, darker brown than the deepest wood, with thick long lashes that made them stand out all the more. And they were so very large and lost that day.

He was surrounded, though, by teenagers. Teenagers with piercings and tatoos. Teenagers with pink hair, purple hair, no hair, black hair. Punked out, gangsta'd, of all types. So sweet, so tender to him. When they found out I was the baby sister of his stories they surrounded me and I saw what the real Jack's life was all about. I will not take away from the love for his children, but in the love Jack gave these emotionally bereft, hurt, abandoned, throw away children, I saw that Robin Hood lived for them. And they loved him back. His colleagues knew me, too. I was surprised, since I had been non-existent in his adult life.

When I walked to him, he opened his arms, but when he held me, I knew Jack was leaning on me, this time. And he was as nothing in my arms. I pulled away a moment, looking him straight in those grief-haunted eyes. "You're dying," was all I said.

"I'll call you," was all he said. But I knew.

His liver was shot and the only answer was a liver transplant. This was now April and he was at my  house. It was late. His visits were always at night. His banjo was in his hands, because it was easier for him to talk that way.

"Why don't we test mine?" I asked.  "Jean Ellen's not a possibility because of her diabetes, but I don't have diabetes."

He smiled and reached his hand out as Daddy had always done, stroking a wandering strand near my face. "No. Not a possibility. You need your liver."

"I KNOW THAT, But they can take just a lobe and--"

"NO, Jetty. NO." His voice was harsh. "No. Don't you get it? I told you. I'm not going to stop drinking. I'm not a candidate for a transplant. I don't care what they do for celebrities. It's wrong. I did this to myself and I know it. Just the way Mom did, I did this. And I have NO desire to stop drinking." He stopped a moment, and registered that I was shaking. He took my hand, again with the familiar Daddy gentleness. "Jetty, the fact is, I really don't much care about living. I've had to retire. My back is worse and pretty soon I won't be able to walk at all. I won't be able to take care of my family; they'd have to take care of me. Jetty, you gotta let me go."

And it just burst out of me, "But, Jacky, I just got you BACK!"

And we cried ...

In May, he was admitted to intensive care, where he stayed for the next two weeks. He could not run away from me. I was editing catalogs for Northeastern University at the time, and Jack's wife was still teaching, as were all his friends. So during the day I got to see him. The first day he could still talk a little and he said he' would never go home. I saw tubes coming out of him in all directions. I knew what came next. The hepatic coma, where he could sense everything done to him, but would not be able to speak, where he might come in and out of it, but would slowly become someone who did not resemble himself. I knew the swelling in the feet, then the hands. I knew, I knew, I knew.

I said, "But why do you have to be hooked up? Why can't you just GO, Jacky?" I was sobbing. I was useless to him like this. He looked wildly at me, but speech was so hard for him.

I heard "Family" and I realized. I held his hand and said I was sorry at least a dozen times. I told him I understood and would never mention it again. I promised. He was letting his family prepare; he would let his wife pick the time. It was his last act of love--an overwhelmingly selfless act of love. We both became calm and we simply held hands in silence.

I asked whether I could come back every day and work beside his bed, if I promised not to be maudlin. Jack usually disliked company in the hospital. I awaited the answer. His eyes filled with tears and I felt him squeeze my hand. He nodded. He did not stop nodding for the longest time.

Maid Marion's Turn to Rescue
The ritual became a staple for his longest days. I would get there at about 11, after the cleaning and the poking and the prodding were done. By then there was a tube down his mouth and he was on total life support. The sound of the respirator gave us privacy. I was given permission to untie him every day for the durations of my visits. His hands danced, just as Mommy's had, only they grabbed at the wires and the tubes--randomly, not with purpose. They grabbed at the sheets resting against over-sensitive legs. I knew what to do. I was more experienced than they knew. I would create a tent of the sheet over his legs, so they would not touch the calves, so swollen and mottled purple now. I combed his hair as HE liked it, so the follicles could rest from over-stimulation.

Sometimes he got angry, because I had to grab his hands to keep him from pulling out the wires or tubes and his angry eyes were like Rasputin's.  My eyes would fill; I couldn't help it. Robin Hood NEVER looked at Marion so.

I had to raise my voice to reach through this lightest of comas. I don't know why they even called it a coma, but it really doesn't matter. He had slipped into it before his mind was gone, so I could bring him back just enough, at times. "YOU HAVE to STAY ALIVE, JACK. You promised yourself. JACK. I have to keep your hands from dancing there, dance them over here!" And I would point to somewhere safe.

And suddenly, after what seemed like hour-long seconds, something would click and the eyes would soften. On the two occasions when he reallized he'd hit at me, he started to cry and I had to get him to stop by threatening to sing "Muskrat Love" to him.

Gradually the eyes would soften, the hands would drop to rest at his sides, and usually by noon he was thoroughly relaxed. I would sing softly, the songs we both knew, while I'd work for an hour or so. By around 1:00, he would drift into what looked like sleep, and I'd stay awhile longer, watching him when he looked comfortably at rest. When he could not see me cry.

The nurses saw, and would usually come over in another fifteen minutes or so and ease me out of the room so they could do their afternoon care. It was all right then, because I knew his family would be there by 3:00. They did not know I came every day.

I was his only visitor. And all I could give him were those minutes when his hands were free.

Singing Our Way Home
The day came at last; the nurse told me that his wife had made the call that morning. She had asked that they wait until after she had visited at dinner time.  I asked how that could work so he would die alone, and the nurse said they expected he would be able to breathe for a little while but that the effort would be too much for him within a few hours at most. I didn't get it; I didn't have to. But I knew it would be the last day.

He was looking for me and I asked him if he would like me to sing the entire Wildflowers album. He blinked and his eyes seemed to smile. I untied his hands, but he seemed almost present there that day.
I began to sing and forgot to sing softly; a nurse came in and I began to apologize.

"No,  no," she said. "May we open the curtain a little longer, so we can hear?" It made me shy a moment, but Jacky took my hand.

I knew it all by heart. We had so many songs and I could hear his guitar in my heart as I sang. He began to drift away it seemed, but, well, I AM his baby sister. I got to "The Sisters of Mercy" and deliberately botched the words and his eyes flew open, glaring at me.

I know my grin was evil. "Oh. Gee. Let me see. Squeeze my  hand once, for Jetty I love you so. Twice for  you colossal little bitch." Two squeezes and all was right with the world; I finished the album without further incident.

By the end, I knew he was resting, and I sang my final song, changing the words just a little. James Taylor's Close Your Eyes. I often sang that to him. Only this time I ended with my own reprise,
"Darlin' close your eyes.
You know ... I'll always love you."

I got up to go, but he grabbed me and squeezed my hand just once. I kissed him and left.

***
His wife called me at 11 and said he was going and I could go to the hospital if I wanted. I took off. I raced to the hospital, but I was too late. No, I probably was exactly on time for Jack. The doctor was removing the stethoscope and the monitor was turned off. His eyes were open.

I shooed them out and said, "Let me do this." Both had seen me before and the nurse touched my shoulder gently as she left. I slowly removed the restraints for the last time.

"Robin Hood. It's Maid Marion. Sheriff Nottingham's gone for good and no one will tie you up ever again."  I smoothed his johnny and washed each hand, then gently crossed them over the sheet I tucked it around him, as if he were sleeping.

And I began to sing "Close Your Eyes" again. I heard a gasp from somewhere nearby, but I kept going. It got so quiet. I brushed his hair as I sang. His silky, pure white hair .. and I combed his beard. Robin Hood lay there so very still. And I finally got there,
"So I'll close your eyes
'll just close your eyes, cause it's all right. 
I'll sing you this last love song. 
But I won't sing the blues any more. 
Cause we have sung our songs. 
And I'll still sing your songs, now you're gone. 
I've closed your eyes. 
You know I'll always love you."

As I walked to my car, making this one last trip, all I could think was this:
Robin Hood slept; Marion wept. Now all the world is still.

Approaching the Pain, Keeping the Love

I am coming upon the end of my first year of this blog. And I want to say up front that there will be some  uncomfortably vivid entries about my life. The hints have been  here, a couple of stories ... memoir includes the ugly sometimes, if ugly is there. I do not live in the dark places, but those places made me myself as well. Surviving them and using the gifts of mother and sister, other brother and father--using those gifts of people at their best allowed me to fly out of the worst.

Anyway, I will not include those entries without caveat, so that those who would rather not read, who are used to my blog, have the choice to wait for a lighter day. Abuse is never pretty. Another blogger I follow pointed out the our past has only the weight we give it. I think of it in terms of power.  The things that no longer rule my nights, confuse my days, those things have no power left over me.  Now that I think about it, nor do they have weight.

Yet they are part of my truth, part of what has ripped me to shreds, part of why I was and am so determined to be whole, to love, to try to act out of love when it is hard to feel love, why I would prefer to slough off anger or bitterness as soon as I can honestly do it after being hurt or wronged. I do not always succeed particularly well, but I try and I'm getting better at it as I get older.

This Entry May be One of Those!  
I have no problem if people pass this over. I still have to write it, for my own sake, because I am a writer and because I think every person's story can offer comfort or hope or benefit to others.  I see that over and over in the blogs I follow--stories of HEALTHY families offer as many lessons, and offer me joy. I love reading about solid marriages and families that treat each other well. I do not assume there are dark secrets, or that other families are perfect. The voices of the writers and your visions are powerful, from wherever you come.

Enough. It is enough for now to alert you followers, for whom I am grateful. You all are giving my writer's voice a power I never knew I had in me.  If I want to write a memoir, I MUST be able to find a public voice for what is not pretty, and this blog is the place where I am finding that voice. Sometimes I may not do it as well as I want, but writing is a learning process. I hope to learn to tell fewer and fewer of the details, but still make it clear what happened. I want the living details to be about seriously flawed, yet remarkably human people bound by MORE than just their illnesses or pain.

***
"What doesn't kill us makes us strong." Perhaps, but sometimes I have wondered whether, I mean really, just how strong do people have to BE anyway? I never liked that statement. Sometimes one can wonder what the definition of "kill" is. Killing innocence does not necessarily make anyone strong. Plenty of people are strong without that. And sometimes those whatevers DO kill. Why should survival of the fittest include surviving what is unconscionable to most of our culture, to most of the world?

Yet I accept that, if we are given tools from somewhere within or without, withstanding enormous adversity has created remarkably strong people in some. I was given something very early on--a child's faith. God is Love. Why I got that at three, I'll never know, but I did. And I am so grateful. I have written of this. And that was my secret weapon against my brother Jim--I loved him out loud and it usually threw him so far off, he would stop... for a while. I loved my mom and it allowed me to see beyond her psychoses and ultimately opened the door to our closeness by the end--a reconciliation that my siblings never had with her.

I did not learn that all by myself. It was a gift given to me... probably BY my mom, when she was neither drunk nor psychotic.  I am surrounded by love for much of my life now. The phoenix women, laundry eagles. My sister's love wraps around me, all around me in my home and in my heart, as do my mother's, my father's, and my brother Jack's.

I survived. Sometimes the survivor of suburbia has survivor's guilt. Why did I get the gifts that my siblings did not? It's not an important question, nor even relevant. The fact is, I am here and I love life more than the others did. All I can do is hold onto that, to honor it, and to honor the two siblings who gave me the safety and the love to be here now, ready to start fresh. To tell the whole story to the best of my memory and ability, to include the music of their lives, not just the pain, is my only way to honor what they gave to me. I think their souls are worth revealing, and the stories worth the telling.

In the telling of these stories, I try to recreate them as I experienced them at the time.   I write them that way, but understand that I no longer have flashbacks. I no longer feel conflict about my family. There was a lot of work, therapy, pain--all of it. But now? Now there is sadness, sure, but  mostly there is love. And a deep-seeded appreciation for that rain forest of a family: lush or rotting, with little in between.  And for the exquisite beauty of each member when they were at their best. I may have gotten each person's worst at some point; I also got their best. In that, I think I was uniquely blessed among my siblings. I am not sure that any of the others got the absolute BEST from all five other family members.

It is a hard story, this story of my family. We take it in stride when we read The Prince of Tides because it's fiction. But, in real life, sometimes families hold the same horror and beauty, humor and meanness, kindness and cruelties--and over-the-top stories. We had no tiger. we had other things.

Onward to today's attempt.

***
I move to Robin Hood. My brother Jack.

My protector, when he was big enough to stave off Jim's attacks long enough for me to run and hide in my father's sloping closet, perched on the shelf at the back, wrapped in Old Spiced jackets with patches on their sleeves.  I would hear the muffled mysteries. "Whatever" did kill him, just slowly.  I watched alcohol kill him by inches, and he died at only 50.

The year before, he showed up at my house one early summer's  night. I had not seen him for three years, and he realized inside he was ill, and that his own pain had made him refuse to see his little sister who had been, for 23 years,  his best friend and confidante--until he got married. Then he cut me off and cut Jean Ellen off. Just like that. Boom.

I saw death in him that night... I had seen it in my father's and mother's eyes, and it was there in his that night. His skin was just beginning to be tinged with yellow. But his gentle spirit seemed to have returned, and he sat very near me, holding my hand. I tried to remember the last time he had done that.

***
The day my daughter died.

Jacky came from school and sat beside me. We did not know where her body was, how she had died, or even where she had died. We knew only that she had. Jack volunteered to go to Jessie's Mom's house and to go to the police station. I'd been given  no answers in calling, but, then, by that time, I had already called our senator's office to locate Jessie's Mom in el Salvador, tried to locate her father and his new wife off on a vacation, and had had to tell my son, on the phone, that his sister was dead, and arrange a flight for him to come. I was all out of practical.

That afternoon he sat with me, silent for ten minutes. Just as we had when we were children, we were face to face, and he leaned toward me and we rested our foreheads together a moment.

"I will find her." He left, and an hour later, he had found out all we needed to know for that time.

That night, her dad had come to give ME the news, having driven seven hundred miles to try to get to me first, and he and I had gone into my sister's living room to escape the twelve women who hated him for deserting me.  I'd had to tell HIM what had happened--he knew only that she was dead. The police had called to tell him to come home, she was dead, and had hung up! So I comforted him, to the disgust of my friends. I had had to tell her MOM what had happened--on the phone to el Salvador! EVERYONE came to me for answers, for comfort. Five kids came over to cry. But the women came, and they managed to flutter the rest away. When they, too, left, it was Jean Ellen, Nancy (her best friend and my non-related big sister) and me. We heard guitar music on the front porch. I walked out to Jack and he said, "Come out and set a while and we will sing each other to peace." He was NOT drunk, and Nancy took my sister up to her side of the house.

We sat outdoors,  with the nighttime cacophony of August insects, and we sang. I drifted off, and he began some familiar old riffs, then suddenly all was silent. My brother took me by the hand and walked me to my room, sat me on my bed, removed my shoes and tucked me in. I heard him play a while more, the sound drifting through the distance of three rooms and I finally slept.

He came to the funeral mean drunk, though. That afternoon he slurred, "You need anything more?"

"Not today, no. thank you. I'll call you if I need more."

"ONE day offer. You're just like Ma. Give one thing, you ask for it all."

My son said, "Jack, go home now." We looked at one another and Jay said, "I think he's next."

That had been the last time I saw my brother for three years. When I called at Christmas to get together, the response was, "Well, if nothing better comes up, maybe you could come over for a while." My sister and I declined the offer, tempting though it was. I moved to PA the following May, for two years. I sent Christmas and birthday cards from there, but apparently no one noticed. They sent joint cards to Jean Ellen and never looked at mine. I had sent them a note with the card, but it was thrown away.

***
The night he called to come over, it was because he'd heard from his best friend that I was back home after being in Pennsylvania for two years; Jack realized he'd never known I had left. It haunted him. He told me, "Jetty, I made the mistake of throwing out you and Jean Ellen because you both made me remember Jim, just because you are part of my family. I could not look at you without... without remembering things I hate."

"I've been a crappy brother to you since I got married, haven't I."

I looked him full in his impossibly deep brown eyes. "Yes, Jack, you have."

"Is it too late for me to be your brother now?"

"Never. You're Robin Hood and I'm Maid Marion."

The tears made his eyes shine in the dim light. I saw the hollows around them, that muted brown-gray of pain.
"You're not well, Jack."

"Well, no. It seems I'm more like Mom than you ever were or will be. It would seem I am drinking myself to death."

"You gonna stop?"

"Nope. Just some nights, like tonight. I go some weeks sometimes, when I feel like actually seeing my life. Which isn't all that much. But tonight I want to see."

He had my hand by then and I asked, "What is it you want to see?"

"Did Jimmy rape you?"

I said, "Yes, Jack."

"Was I in the house? How come I didn't stop it?"

"You were over at your friend's house, Jack. You weren't even there. Jim was there with Mom and me and Mom was, well. Drunk in her chair of course." The horrified laugh escaped us both.

But Jack was shaking now. "Well if I wasn't there, why do I remember? How come I KNOW?"

I said nothing for a while. We had never spoken of it. Well. We'd never had a conversation. "I'm not sure," I lied.

"Okay, did Daddy backhand Jim into a wall at dinner?"

"Yes Jacky."

Pause.

"Do you want to know more than that, Jack?"

Excruciating pause, and my brother began to shake. And he mouthed "not about that." No sound came out.

"HOW DO I KNOW WHAT JIMMY DID?"  He was in agony now. And then, "Did I rape you, too? Oh, GOD, did I do it, too?"

I looked at him, his fear palpable, his pain intense. He had been 21 and I just 19. He had been stumbling drunk and I'd run to his and Jean Ellen's place because Mom had been drinking and was rather more horrid than usual. Dad was "away on business" and I did not want to be alone with her.

Jack shared some more wine with me, and we were sitting together on the couch, watching tv.

"God, you know how gorgeous you are?" he'd said.

His tone was weird, but I simply said, "Yup." And he had his arm around me and I stood up. So did he, and he came at me and kissed me on the  mouth.

When I could pull away, he was touching my breasts and I smacked him. Then I shouted and smacked precisely,  "NOT"--smack--"YOU"-- smack-- "TOO!" Punch, right in the kisser.

With which he went, "huh?"And he tipped over like a felled tree onto the floor. I stood over him and screamed, "YOU are NOT JIM. YOU ARE NOT HIM!" And I left, humiliated, shocked, disgusted, hurt. But mostly inordinately sad.

But I was absolutely right.

He was not Jim. It never happened again and until that moment, I assumed it had happened in one of Jack's alcoholic blackouts. There, I was only partly right. But maybe that's the nature of blackouts--you remember dim images of the truth, but cannot sort it out.  I took both  his hands, and I turned to face him full in his horrified and pained face.  We tipped forward once more, foreheads touching, tears dropping into our laps. Robin Hood had come home and I did not have to lie or hedge.

I simply said, "No, Jack. Not you, too. You did not rape me." Something made me smile a little, and I added, "Honey, you are not our brother Jim. Nothing like our brother Jim.  And you never really came CLOSE."

He looked as if he wanted to say more, to respond to that crack in the door to come clean, to face that demon. He tried, but the words stuck. We were crying, those big tears that it seems only children have... silent tears. It was more than enough for me, so I did not ask for more.

I released one hand and sang, "Ride, ride, ride, won't you let it ride."

And he picked up his guitar, which he'd brought with him... the same guitar he'd brought to play outside my house, just for me. We moved outside and sang, as was our custom, from back in high school, on the hot summer nights when Mom was drunk, Dad was "away" and we needed the cool of a nearby lake and the peace of music. And our tears ran into the "Song of the Great Silke" and faded into the accompanying chorus of late spring tree frogs.

No brother loved a sister more. No sister misses a brother more. I missed him for those decades he could not face us, could not bear the memories that haunted him until he drank to go numb. I did not force him to remember what I, myself, had blocked for so long. His secrets and pain were not mine to expose.

 I had my brother again, if only for that year. I am alive because he was there to save me and to spare me pain he endured too many times. Robin Hood died; Maid Marion lives. That story is for another time.

I have to stop here for now. I have to listen to Judy Collins' Wildflowers CD and sing to him a spell.

***
It's a start.

About Forgiveness

So My Mother Died ©2004
When my mother died the eleven o'clock news said nothing.
The flag flew high at the post office.
My morning coffee still smelled good.
My kids still wanted their supper.
When my mother died the sun still found my prisms
And my Christmas cactus bloomed.
When my mother died the willows didn't weep real tears;
I did.

My mom was a miracle of a mom ... when she was not drunk and when psychosis was not her mistress. This means that most of the time, my mom was a miracle of a mom.

But to deny the depth of her darkness is to deny the depth of our love, the depth of both our strengths. I am not sure that forgiveness is about accepting that horrible things were done and we say it's okay. I am not sure but that real forgiveness lies in looking at the darkness full in the face and accepting that there were riches we gleaned from the very worst of the other person. That the person we want to forgive was, perhaps, a source of magic in part because of the darkness.

I start with two poems I wrote about my mother's pain and of my worst responses to it. When my mom was in a psychotic state, she was violent. She lost control. She would then, after the haze was lifted, remember... and drink to forget. There were three moms. Drunk mom, Mommy, and "Not mommy." She fought the psychosis with every fiber of her being, but sometimes she lost--rarely, in fact. Yet those times when she did lose the fight were horrific and terrifying. And it took me many, many years to understand just how much she worked to cage that. To kill it. I wrote this early on, when I was trying to understand, trying to put myself in her position and experience what her pain must have been.

Lion's Eye ©1985
Spring-tight tension, beyond my control
It watches without blinking,
Ready to attack; I'm held rooted, fixed by
The lion's eye.

Gold-brown, glittering mellow,
Colors of sun-dried grass,
Glints of blind-bright dancing water, my joy,
My lion's eye.

My child cries so close,
I refuse to hear, so hypnotized
By the dry-ice murdering beauty behind
My lion's eye.

Her fear encroaches,
I wrench free her bleeding hand
To loft my molten topaz, sacred cup,
This lion's eye.

Back-hand slap. There, she’s silent.
Amber-kissed lips parted,
I drink deep the warming flame from the lid of
The lion's eye.

Fangs pierce my soul without pain,
Claws rip my flesh without blood,
Blessed Southern silk-gold Comfort, sweetest love,
My lion's eye.

I loved her.

When I was little and climbed into her lap for comfort, when I was too small to understand that the vacant stare and amber drink meant stay away, I would find myself on the floor before I'd even found my comfy spot. I would sit, stunned, holding my hand to the burning spot on my cheek. I was lucky. I had my sister to whisk me away to her land of drawings and paper dolls and color wheels and asymmetry and other big words. I also had Mommy as herself 59 days out of 60, and, back then drunk Mommy only about 3 days out of 30. Yet you know something's amiss. You sensed that the house wasn't right, that always, always, there was an undercurrent, the possibility of an explosion. Maybe that's why Jean Ellen was always there, ready to soothe at just the right times.

It was not until I was around thirteen that I began to again sense, more than understand why it was that mother got very strange when our father went on his semi-annual business trips with his secretary. Or why my mother wanted the gift of the secretary's piano in the basement, where she never saw it; or why she left the house when Jean Ellen was given the blue convertible Marie had driven for so long.

I learned that my father was not faithful and early on, I learned to be variously angry with him for his arrogance and sleaziness and angry with her for "driving him away." Oh, the allure of the country western song. The drama of it all.

In college, she once crashed a party I was at. She humiliated me, called me names, rambled on about wanting my father to come home. I was furious, but something about her, after I'd brought her home and she let her hair down and danced in the moonlight. My heart opened. I did not understand to what, exactly. Not until my own loneliness in my marriage, in almost every relationship I ever knew, smacked me in the face. Not to ever feel pretty enough, smart enough... enough. Or to be told you are too smart, too attractive, too alive. All of them added up to a loneliness I saw in my mother.

I learned that she was a woman who was desperately alone, who loved people with every fiber of her being, never leaving enough to be able to love herself. She had subjugated her own dreams to my dad's. She had settled for less than she knew she could be, and she began, once I was out of the house, to kill herself a bit faster, to drink more and to do it more often. I left her alone.

Naturally.

Dervish of the Empty Nest ©2001
Mama dances all alone in the moonlight,
When Daddy doesn’t bother to lie,
Kickin’ off the saddle shoes, Lettin’ down her braids,
Waltzing with her bottle of Rye.

Mumbling to the boys from the college,
Prettiest faculty bride.
Young men tussled for a dance, for a twirl,
For a midday tumbledown ride.

Mama silhouetted by the starlight,
Round eyes lifted to the sky:
Dulled ears listening, straining for his footsteps,
While tears start their tumbledown slide.

She dances on, lonely in the moonlight,
Praying for my father to lie,
Barefoot and glowing; dervish in the dead night,
Whispering to her bottle of Rye.


I learned to see my mother as she really was, her wit, her compassion, her pain, her passionate love for my dad and the best of who he was, her imagination and her many talents. She was not her drinking. That was a sickness that ate her up and spit her out.

Perhaps the biggest thing to learn about forgiveness is that very often there is nothing to forgive; instead we accept the absolute humanity and we choose to love that and let all the rest fly away.

I did not understand my own poem until after my father died. In those two years, as my mother's drinking cycled so far out of control that I had to walk away from her entirely unless she got help, and, ironically, only then did I come to understand her. Thank God I did. I will always be grateful. My own stupidity, selfishness, struggles, and pain opened at last that enormous castle door I'd shut against her. Six months before she died, she got sober. Mom and I were able to talk, to connect, to be with one another in a way that none of the others were able to do. I don't know why; it doesn't matter.

Jetty got Mommy back. And the daughter got to know the woman at last.

Before she went into the hospital, before the liver failure killed her. we were sitting in her living room, sharing some iced tea. She was looking at some empty liquor bottles she had made my brother Jack and me leave there. We had not discussed that she was dying, though I knew it. I was the only child who had said to her that I knew this was so, and we had agreed to leave it alone. I was so sick of secrets, though, I had had to say that much. She was staring into an empty bourbon bottle and then looked at me, tears in her eyes.

"You know what really stinks now, Jetty? All this time I've worked so hard to kill myself? Well, now that I've actually gone and succeeded, turns out I really don't much want to die. Isn't that a kicker?"

I loved my mother. I love her so much my heart hurts. Isn't that a kicker?

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.

Recalling My Jessica

Let's just say I gave birth to an eleven-year-old, but only after her mom let me. My stepdaughter's name was Jessica and her mom's name is Marilyn. Marilyn gratefully and gracefully allowed me to be a mom in the areas she knew she could not--so I got to have a daughter. The word stepdaughter from here on won't be used. Marilyn would agree; there was no STEP in our relationship.

I met her for the first time, when she was six, and huddled with her brother on top of a picnic table because of a BIG, black, scary dog. They were friends with other children I knew, back when I was the traveling surrogate aunt to all my friends' kids. I calmed down the dog and led him away and, for some strange reason, Jason, Jessie's brother, began calling me Santa Claus. Back then, I was not fat, nor particularly jolly. NEVER had a beard, not even now, at 58. But he liked calling me that. He was not yet 4.

Jessie had hair to her waist, and loved to run and to skate, her hair streaming like one of those banners behind a prop plane. "I am HERE!" her hair proclaimed. Most of the time, she was too shy to let people know she was there at all, except when crossed. Then her nimble brain came out in sarcasm and few kids crossed her more than once. The second time was to see whether the first was a fluke. I got her when she was hitting puberty. Some might think this was a mighty tough time to get a child. They would be right; yet Jessie didn't test me the way I've heard others test stepmoms.

The one time she tried to play her mother and me off one another ... Marilyn was picking up the kids from our apartment at dinner time, and I had made Jessica do a couple of chores. This was in the first months of marriage, and I was in a body cast. I needed help with things, and I was the primary caregiver most days. My ex-husband worked late from the first week we were married through that first year. I picked the kids up from school and sometimes fed them if Marilyn was late. This day, Jessie was annoyed that I had made her--dare I say it--empty the dishwasher.

She hugged her mother and was overly affectionate. Jessie's normal greeting was, "Yeah, Mom. I'll be ready in a minute," rather than, oh, say, "Hello." Today? "Oh, Mom, I missed you. I'm all ready."

She buried her head in her mom's body and Marilyn looked at me. I had a smirk plastered on my face. "Yes, she's ready. I made her empty the dishwasher."

Jessie came out for air, glaring at me. Marilyn took a step toward me and we looked at our child, together. She was so confident. "MOM. She makes me do chores. YOU would never do these things to me, right?"

I felt Marilyn's arm around my waist and I rested an arm on her shoulder. Jessie took her favorite pose. Hip out with a hand on it, the other hand behind her back. "Well. I can see THIS isn't gonna work at all!" And the smile broke across her face like dawn, and she giggled her way down the hall.

This was the thing about her. Her fears were enormous as was her anger. Yet she could find the humor as an escape almost all the time. Almost. We used to play "What's the worst that can happen?" with her fears, and it always end that she was homeless in the parking lot of K-Mart, without money for a Blue light special. And so it would end with us laughing.

When we had the "Feminine products" talk--that she would HAVE to learn to get them herself, and, to her absolute disgust, she realized that even grown women still felt a little ooky buying them from teenage boys, she said, "So growing up does NOT make all this stuff go away?"

I said, "No, we just learn to cope with it all better, that's all."

"Well THAT'S just peachy. What on earth is the point?"

"Beats me, Jess, but at least you won't be in it alone."

"In the words of my stepmother who shall remain nameless, BIG WHOOP." And she got out of my car to buy her first box of that which will not be named. I wrote this for her and left it on her bed a couple of nights later.

Jessica's Lullaby © May 5, 1989
Tears my heart, when cries her soul in the night:
Her tongue too loose
Too stiff her walk;
Her passion too slow
Too swift her mind;
Her courage too faint
Too stout her convictions.
All new woman feeling all wrong
In this wrong-feeling all new place;
Alone, afraid,
Hush.

Soothing words and enfolding arms,
Small comforts in her night:
Rest.
You are enough as yourself --
More than enough, though less than all,
A symphony in yourself,
Sleep.
Now stroke her hair and kiss her eyes: You are enough as yourself,
Dream.

Then rests her soul in the night,
With enfolding arms and soothing words.
But how long will comfort last
When she wakes to find nothing changed? Hush.
We are enough as ourselves,
Rest
Dream
Believe.

Jessie knocked on our door at about 1:00 a.m. the night she found that poem. I went into her room, and it was clear she'd been crying. She loved the poem, but there was something bothering her. (It seemed to me that Jessie had a law that nothing would hit her until after midnight.) I sat there and, as was our custom, I gathered her in my arms and rocked a while. Finally, she came out with it. "I can't seem to keep a grandpa and they are both dead now, and even my grandmas are dying."

My parents had died in 1987 and 1989. Her dad's dad had died in 1984. For some reason, it was getting to her. "What are they doing? Is there Heaven and if there is, maybe GRANDMA wouldn't mind flying around with a harp, but that would be kinda boring, right?"

"Well, what would their ideas of Heaven be?"

She thought and thought, then said, "Cards. First all three of them play and Grandma beats the pants off them both, but she gets bored and... she has a huge, enormous garden and she goes in it with the elves and a swing."

"Sounds about right. But the grandpas?"

She had an evil smile, that child. "Okay... The grandpas still play cards and tell very bad jokes to each other and Grandpa Jim tells Poppa stories that have no end, just lots of big words... and Poppa beats the pants off of HIM!"

We both loved that, because my dad had an ego the size of Milwaukee. But then Jessie took my hand and said, "But, you know, maybe Grandpa Jim LETS him win because, you know how they played with Jay and me every New Year's Eve? Grandpa let Jay win at least one game. I asked him why and he said, 'Because Jay's the littlest and I want him to like coming.' And I asked why did it matter so much and he said, 'Because you two are Heaven to me.' So... But we aren't in Heaven, so..." And then she cried more.

I said, "I don't know what Heaven is, but if there is any possibility for him to do it, my dad is seeing this and he's shaking his head at you and telling you, what?"

"None of this SCHMALTZY STUFF!"

Bits and pieces of my daughter. Her life. Her walk. Her gestures. They all seem profound now and so precious. I cling to them all and retell them in my head at night this time of year. Jessie talked backwards. She tried out for drill team FOUR times, until she finally made it. She was content to understudy for the musical and then got to be in it, finally, because a girl broke an ankle. She felt guilty being glad that she was in it. She wrote stories when she was eight, about Albert the Hippo who lived in a house on top of a flagpole, and whose mother would tuck him in after an adventure, and feed him chicken soup.

"As you may imagine, the climb up to home was not easy for a Hippo to make," she wrote.

She died when she was just 21. Her heart gave out from bulimia and alcoholism--she knew she had not licked the problems. She promised me to get help in September, but died in August. My amazing girl. My young woman so close to finding her niche in life, her reason to be.

Don't try to tell me she was not extraordinarily special. That her gestures and fears were just like those of other children. Oh, no. Don't try to say that Jessie was average in any way. Only superlatives fit our children. Period.

Mother and Child Reunion © August, 2005
Entering her empty room, I pause.
I hear her heart cry,
See her in her chair, long hair to one side
so she won’t catch it as she leans back,
arms bracing bridged body.
She struggles to retrieve a pencil from the floor,
Fully stretched, big toe reaching without leaving her seat.
Giggling, prehensile victory as she contorts,
Her knee pointed sideways, penciled foot chest high,
she grabs her prize,
looks up at me with tilted head and smiles.
“I guess now I’ll have to work,” she says,
More laugh than whine, and turns away.
I touch my chest at the dimming light of her hair,
Translucent image floating, still.
I reach.
I hear my heart scream.
“I guess now I’ll have to live,” I say,
More sob than sigh, and turn away.

My Jessie talked backwards, but she lived too full-tilt forward I think. There will never be enough superlatives to capture Jessie's heart.

Blaming Mom --the Good Old Days

Ah, the good old days. Having someone to blame. I had a wise counselor who, about eight months into therapy said, "Okay, your mother screwed up and you suffered for it. Your whole family made a mess of it. So now what are you going to do?"

I looked at her and blinked twice, mouth hanging open. "Well, blame Mom for the rest of my life, okay?"

For some reason or other this was not acceptable, and at last the healing began. I like to call it that because it sounds so nice. Growing Up is probably more accurate. I had to learn to simply be myself. Why can't simple things be easy, too? Feh. I had to be myself, accept myself, and--most importantly--take full responsibility for whatever mess I was making or had made and set about doing a better job.

I hate that. Having no one to blame. I liked blaming my alcoholic mother, philandering father, abusive brother. I liked giving full credit to my sister and other brother for "saving me." That's the thing. When you blame others and even when you are too grateful to others, well, you lose a sense of having been anything other than a passenger in your own life. At least that was what I did. Until I was in my thirties and well into my forties, I struggled with the novel notion that perhaps I was the one running my own life--for better, not just worse. The joy of that particular misery wound up being that, after the struggle of remembering, the pain of reliving some things, the difficulties with letting go of other things, came a time of remembering the good of my mom.

When I blamed her I couldn't handle her gifts. Now that she, along with all the others of my birth family, are gone, I have the luxury of remembering what I choose. It is no longer a matter of denial or blocking what is hard. It truly is a matter of choice. I choose to remember, to focus on her gifts: her proof of the existence of elves (for another entry), our credo "There's always something more important to do than housework," her kick in the butt after I had been assaulted, "You can get up and live or lie down and die, but I sure as hell am not going to stand around and watch you lie down and die. So come in the house." Her insatiable curiosity and her faith in the kindness of other people.

There are so many more gifts to remember than horrors. An alcoholic was the least of who she was, even though it's the part that killed her. She was the keeper of all magic, the font of most wisdom, with a smile that could take in Milwaukee, and a brain the size of a planet.

Until I stopped blaming her, I shoved all that in a drawer in the back of my mind, where it could not find my heart. Until I stopped blaming her. Yes, but now, now when my world dangles precariously near a precipice, when I cannot get out of my own way, when I mess up my own deadlines, I have to look at myself, without having Mom to blame. Bummer.

Man, I miss my mother...