patience is a virtue that most of us don't acquire until well into adulthood, if then. i have to say that i am still not the most patient of people. put me in traffic, or in a line that i can move along, and patience retreats from me at a rapid clip. but as i have gotten older, i have started to slow down a bit and see the big picture...at least sometimes i see it. and sometimes i see it, but i just can't accept what i see. result: i fruitlessly rail against the world. the result is as
you 'd expect: nothing changes. the temperature is still the same, the sun is still in the sky, the mail is still delivered and the world moves on.
this summer could have been a disaster emotionally and physically had i not recognized the bad karma i had brought upon myself, and then just decided not to fight it. my agonizing, awkward split with my mother could be argued in a lot of ways. i could spend a lot of time defending my actions and giving my side. but immediately i realized that despite my belief (even now) that i was correct, i probably should have shown a little more patience. however, in the long run i think the higher powers lined up the conflict. it was the perfect storm and the wave capsized my life.
four days after this conflict, the world takes back what i had taken...a belief that i controlled my life and my destiny. not so. a wave slaps me down, and then another, and despite my best efforts to protect myself from it, i keep my glasses, but lose my ACL in my knee. it hurt, and i knew as soon as it happened that in that second my whole summer was altered in a direction that i knew i would eventually have had to go in, but the moment was then now. no vacation to san francisco. no doing the things i had planned to do in my yard and house. no contact with my mother and banishment from the family.
personal injury wasn't the end of it. austin's struggle with alcohol and his emotions deepened to the point where he fell down steps drunk, got a concussion and split open his chin. this occurs after his arm hurts enough to get him retired for the summer from the waynesboro generals. now he is in the apartment by himself, nothing to do but summer school, struggling over his infidelities and his quasi-relationship with swimmer girl (who dumps him) and his struggles with his temper. his temper gets him in more trouble two weeks later when he is drinking because he is depressed and punches a kid in the nose, breaking it in three places and knocking him out. he is drunk, again, and this time he earns his second substance abuse strike at uva. he is temporarily banished from the team. he has to go to the judicial council at uva. the end results are that he gets probation to match the 2nd strike. he no longer has any wiggle room. he cannot drink, period. he struggles with the concept that he can not party. but some good comes from it. he begins to learn who his friends are and that some of his influences are not good ones. he learns about the chemicals that control his body. he succumbs to going to see the school sports psychologist and begins the hard work that he will have to do to become a better person. he is in the tunnel. there is a light at the end, but only he will know how long it will take him to get to that. the journey is slow and often you can get lost in the dark and things get out of proportion. but he is moving forward. as someone once said, you can't move forward until you stop running. i am hoping he has at least slowed down to a walk. his pain hopefully will lead to a gain in him as a person and help him mature and become a better person. and his pain has taught me that no matter how hard you try, you cannot control all things, even the things that affect the people you love.
i spent the summer in the same chair watching the tour de france and the olympics and a lot of cooking shows. i rediscovered perry mason, route 66, old hawaii 5-0's and the naked city. but i also learned that you have to sometimes embrace the pain and revel in the fact that the new journey isn't as painful as the old journey. i have 50% less pain than i have had in sooo many years. the lessening of that pain has cleared up a lot of ways that i have viewed my life, and that has tended to be in the negative. i don't feel as rubbed raw as i often did. i no longer feel defeated and helpless in the grip of pain. i have gotten a glimpse of what my life can be if i am willing to endure some temporary pain. what is a month or so of pain if you can get the rest of your life without it? we always associate pain with physical pain, but can't we also apply this concept to emotional pain? the physical things we do are just a reflection of the underlying emotional issues that fuel that physical fire. the human body is most definitely governed by its emotional counterpart. we manifest our emotions in disease and physical ailments. they don't call it DIS-EASE for nothing. when we are not at ease in our hearts, our bodies reflect it. we chew our nails, have upset stomachs, become paralyzed by panic attacks, have migraines, restless sleep, tics and any other variety of outward symptoms. our physical reactions are often subtle and occur and grow gradually. this makes them less immediately noticeable, thus making us less likely to pay attention to the warning symptoms that they are sending us. and so it goes...we eventually implode and then the work begins.
so i am in the sunshine now. my pain is less. my internal pain is less, though i doubt it will go away until i have a conversation with my mother. i have adjusted for the most part to the awkwardness of the situation. it makes me sad, but in the broader world i have accepted my mother's reasonings and don't have much anger about it. occasionally i get annoyed by it. but then i think like she does and understand why she must cling to this course of action. as more time goes on i will either become more sad or more hardened. or i could become more free and more accepting. i am hoping for the latter. i have many more challenges ahead, but i am hoping i can maintain the focus on the future that i have today.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Monday, August 27, 2012
she did do some things right
my mother and i have a lifelong love/hate relationship, and it would be easy for me to spend the rest of my life cataloging what was wrong. but what is the point in that? i am dead to her, have been written out of the will, am forbidden to be anywhere in her presence. i could rail against this, but again, there is no point. i would prefer to look for things that she did right, versus what she did wrong. they don't give you a manual when you give birth that tells you how to parent. you do the best you can. i think in her own way she did the best she could. she wasn't equipped to emotionally handle a hyperactive, emotional child. no one gave her the tools, and the childhood she had did nothing towards helping her find those tools. she learned to survive, and to do that she built an emotional wall that i have not been able to often breech. i am sorry about that. i have tried, and i wish it were different. but i cannot make her like or love me, and i can't spend my life saying i had a terrible childhood. i didn't. there were things that were good.
the memory that comes to me first is that of my mother reading to me. she ordered me the books that came once a month and i was enthralled with them. she did read some to me, and she made sure i went to the library and the bookmobile with her. i have to attribute my love of reading to my mother. she was and still is a voracious reader, so she set a good example. she never censored me or checked what i was reading, so i pretty much had carte blanche when it came to checking out books or reading about any subject.
third grade was not a good year for me in so many ways socially and otherwise. however, it was the year that my teacher read us CHARLOTTE'S WEB and that i fell in love with the books about davy crockett and daniel boone. we had a day when we could dress up as our favorite book character, and i choose these two. my outfit was a suede jacket that my mother had. she cut up the jacket somehow so that it looked like it had fringe on it. she also somehow managed to make me a makeshift coonskin cap. it was not a full cap. just a ring around my head and a tail. i also got to wear pants i think and maybe a white shirt that was too big. i was dressed like a boy character. i don't think she was thrilled, but i was. however, a much richer boy at school came completely decked out as daniel boone/davy crockett, complete with the very real fringe jacket and a coonskin cap that was not makeshift. it made me feel lesser, but i still loved the jacket and the outfit. however, the jacket disappeared somehow after this day. i wanted to wear it more, but it was gone. why i don't know. however, i do know my dad to this day still teases me about wanting to wear a coonskin cap!
my mother gave me records a few times, which is something i loved, and i especially remember that she tried to buy things she thought i would like. one christmas in high school she bought me some albums: Jim Croce, who i didn't know much about (but who i came to love and ultimately purchased all of his albums); the soundtrack to MY FAIR LADY because at that point she had figured out i liked musicals and was watching a lot of them in reruns on tv, including that one. barbra streisand because i thought she was wonderful. she didn't know enough about me to be able to buy anything specific, but she tried. my first 45's were at christmas when i was in the 4th or 5th grade. i remember them as well: "WE CAN WORK IT OUT" by the Beatles; "OVER AND OVER" by the Dave Clark 5, and "I AM A ROCK" by Simon and Garfunkel. i played them to death, and saved up my 75 cents to be able to continue to buy 45's. when i went to the kings departments store or with my grandmother to the dime stores on granby street, i always went to the records department to see what they had. i didn't always get to buy, and sometimes i really had to struggle to pick the one record i could buy and take home. i spent a lot of time in my room listening to the 45's over and over, as well as the albums i eventually bought. i still have many of them.
from reading comes good writing, and while i have often shirked from showing her things i wrote, i think she has been proud of that, especially when i have been published. she has rarely encouraged me to do much, but writing has been one thing that she felt i should continue to do, maybe write children's books she said. in one way i am fulfilling that request by writing on this blog. she will never read it, but i am doing it and i feel good about that part of me.
i was never much of a doll kind of girl, and when the barbie dolls came out, i did not have one. i did want one, and my recollection is that my father went to kings and bought me just the barbie doll. it was around $3 or so. the clothes for the barbie were outrageously expensive and i over time had very few outfits for barbie. however, my mother did knit a blue outfit for her and made a few handmade outfits for her. i appreciated that and i know she did it because she wanted me to have some clothes for the doll when i played with the other kids.
no fifth grader wants to be unfashionable, and i was no exception. my mother made some of my clothes, but i didn't like wearing them because the kids at the bus stop made fun of me about them. i had heard the stories from her about not having nice clothes when she was growing up, so i wore them with both a sense of shame and a sense of sorrow. i felt bad for my mother and what she had been through. i couldn't really tell her that i didn't like them because i knew it would make her mad and hurt her feelings. i finally did get mad and tell her that i didn't want anymore homemade clothes. she did not take that well and said a fair amount of mean things back to me. but i didn't have anymore homemade clothes either. from then on, she bought me what she wanted me to wear, regardless of what i wanted. there was a compromise somewhere in the middle, but she marshaled my fashion choices up until i was way into adulthood. i have maintained the same attitude about those choices, in that she only buys what she wants to buy me. but i think in some way it was her attempt to have me look nice and that drive to do so is a direct response to her own upbrining and the lack of nice things. she has worked to have nice things and appreciates them much more than most people. i have never cared much about expensive things and clothing is not a priority. unfortunately, we are not on the same wave length and i am an embarrassment to her in just about every way physically. but at this stage of my life, i still understand. i have tried to be grateful and to give her the accolades that she felt she deserved for the gifts of clothing despite whether or not i wanted it or would have picked it out for myself. i have given her free reign over makeup, hairdos, haircuts and all sorts of clothing because i thought it would please her and make her like me better.
we have a shared interest in dishes and recipes and some cooking. she has often gifted me with dishes and serving trays and bowls, etc. i have often thought that it was easier for her to buy something like that versus saying anything meaningful. so i have taken the gifts of dishes and cookbooks and things of that ilk as her way of making some connection with me. i have kept many things, almost ALL things, that she has given me in that way. they have no market value, but were just symbolic to me.
my grandmother and i were much alike, much to my mother's consternation, and i spent what seemed to me to be most every weekend with my grandmother. there could be lots of reasons why, but my mother had no problem letting me go, and i think my grandmother somehow knew i needed to be with her. there was no pressure from her, and she was quirky and happy for the most part, although never fully healthy. my mother's intentions may not have been surfacely based on any feeling for me. however, i want to believe that deep down inside she knew she could not give me what i emotionally needed from a parent, so she sent me to my grandmother who was (in my mother's eyes), never much of a parent. my mother has still a great resentment for my grandmother. she believes that my grandmother did not care about her children's appearances or needs, that she was weak. there probably was a lot true about that, but i will never know. my grandmother gave me room to just do what i wanted, be it reading or watching tv or writing up recipe cards. that kind of one on one time did not happen with my mother. she was busy with my asthmatic brother and focused on him. as she told me, i didn't need her. he did.
a few months ago the mother of one of my colleagues died at age 90 and i went to her graveside services. her children and grandchildren spoke about her and things she had done over her life. there were a few tears, some good laughs, and the emergence of a person who was multifaceted and apparently well loved by her family. as i drove home from that service, i was thinking about what i would say if asked to speak at my mother's funeral. what good things would i talk about with fondness? what could i say about her that would be sincere? in a very horrifying moment, i realized i could not think of a single thing. not one. anything good that i thought of would be immediately countered with the ugly flip side of the situation. she was a good businesswoman and a professional...but she was also ruthless sometimes in how she dealt with people. she often appears to be totally sincere and interested in you. she will compliment, chat, do all the things friends will do. but at the same time, if you cross her in anyway or your actions displease her, she is like the human camcorder and the "recorded" mistakes that you have made are set loose and marched in front of you. i don't think i can think of a single person that she has ever liked completely. everyone has faults and has garnered her distaste at some point. but the plus is that she at least tries to be nice. she is very much the southern woman in that she is never insulting, rude or sarcastic to anyone, even if she loathes them. it is amazing to see her operate sometimes. i just don't have that ability to be that insincere, but she is probably better off for the ability to do it than i am. i bruise way too easily. she doesn't appear to bruise at all.
in all crisis situations, my mother is the one who is level headed and organized. she shows no emotion and knows exactly what to do. when my uncle teddy died when i was in college, my mother was the one who organized the cataloging of all of the food brought in so that my aunt would know who brought what and would be able to be specific in thank you notes. my mother kept everyone in the kitchen organized in the preparation and delivery of food and drink. she kept everyone on time. she did respect my wishes not to view any bodies and came to my defense on the days when there was a family funeral and i was mortified at the thought of seeing bodies. she did run interference with my dad's family when uncle teddy died and nan, my father's mother, died. i am grateful for that.
i have, unfortunately, inherited in my old age the ability to not tell family members about bad things, at least not in a timely basis. ironically, it is my parents that i have kept information from, almost all of it dealing with austin and the sometimes disappointing things that he has done and that i know will upset them. my father actually knows some of these things, but a number of them my mother does NOT know about and daddy and i have agreed that we would all be better if she is kept in the dark. she was the one i learned this from. she more than a few times let me finish exams or get through some sort of crisis before letting me know that something worrisome had happened.
my time spent with my grandmother i believe was a way for my grandmother to have a second chance at doing something right with a child. my mother did not think that she had been given what she needed. rightly or wrongly, my grandmother got a second chance when i was born, and at that time in her life she was able to do that. i felt this way when austin was born, and i have encouraged him to have a relationship with her that is NOT based upon anything other than one on one with her. if there is anyone that she really loves and is fierce about, it is austin. she has spent a lot of time buying him things, doing things for him, taking interest in his baseball. she follows his games on the radio, sitting with her little computer watching the game tracker. until this last falling out, she would talk to me after the games and she knew exactly how many strikes he had thrown, how many walks he had had. she was rarely critical of him, although she could certainly shred his teammates and his coaches. i have always viewed this attitude about anyone who would be a rival or a threat to austin as being a protective gesture. the nastiness of it is very disturbing sometimes, but at this point i have to believe that despite what she says, the real basis for it is love. if she has that capability, i want her to express it as best she can. if austin is the recipient, that that is good. i am not jealous of him or his relationship with her. i am happy about that.
she is not a hugger, and watching her trying to hug or greet someone is sometimes painful to watch in its awkwardness. she is not one to tell you she loves your or to compliment you. she once said to me that she didn't need to tell me she loved me...i knew it. well, that didn't fly with me, and it still doesn't. most people express their love for people. but i recognize that this generally accepted behavior is not something that my mother can do, or at least not easily. i appreciate and am often saddened by her efforts. it makes me sad that it is so hard for her to try. but that is who she is and she can't do much better. she doesn't want to change at this point in her life, and i respect that i think. it does not uncomplicate my life or the awkwardness of my current family situation. but it is life, both mine and hers, and it has to be taken one day at a time. i am trying hard to see the bigger picture and to let go of my anger and sadness about the course of our relationship over a lifetime.
the love of reading that she gave me led me to many worlds that i could escape to. the irony of it all is that from those many books i learned to believe that people could or should act like the characters in books. people should have good virtues and practice them as often as they could. we should always strive to be kind. yet in my real life, that has become a great expectation that was not always delivered. in my mother's real world, and in mine, there are no guaranteed happy endings, and quite a few disappointments. however, you don't get soul growth from having a life of bliss and easiness. you get it from the trying and difficult situations. so in that way, i have my mother to thank for a lot of soul growth in this life. if nothing else, that may be the greatest thing she did right.
the memory that comes to me first is that of my mother reading to me. she ordered me the books that came once a month and i was enthralled with them. she did read some to me, and she made sure i went to the library and the bookmobile with her. i have to attribute my love of reading to my mother. she was and still is a voracious reader, so she set a good example. she never censored me or checked what i was reading, so i pretty much had carte blanche when it came to checking out books or reading about any subject.
third grade was not a good year for me in so many ways socially and otherwise. however, it was the year that my teacher read us CHARLOTTE'S WEB and that i fell in love with the books about davy crockett and daniel boone. we had a day when we could dress up as our favorite book character, and i choose these two. my outfit was a suede jacket that my mother had. she cut up the jacket somehow so that it looked like it had fringe on it. she also somehow managed to make me a makeshift coonskin cap. it was not a full cap. just a ring around my head and a tail. i also got to wear pants i think and maybe a white shirt that was too big. i was dressed like a boy character. i don't think she was thrilled, but i was. however, a much richer boy at school came completely decked out as daniel boone/davy crockett, complete with the very real fringe jacket and a coonskin cap that was not makeshift. it made me feel lesser, but i still loved the jacket and the outfit. however, the jacket disappeared somehow after this day. i wanted to wear it more, but it was gone. why i don't know. however, i do know my dad to this day still teases me about wanting to wear a coonskin cap!
my mother gave me records a few times, which is something i loved, and i especially remember that she tried to buy things she thought i would like. one christmas in high school she bought me some albums: Jim Croce, who i didn't know much about (but who i came to love and ultimately purchased all of his albums); the soundtrack to MY FAIR LADY because at that point she had figured out i liked musicals and was watching a lot of them in reruns on tv, including that one. barbra streisand because i thought she was wonderful. she didn't know enough about me to be able to buy anything specific, but she tried. my first 45's were at christmas when i was in the 4th or 5th grade. i remember them as well: "WE CAN WORK IT OUT" by the Beatles; "OVER AND OVER" by the Dave Clark 5, and "I AM A ROCK" by Simon and Garfunkel. i played them to death, and saved up my 75 cents to be able to continue to buy 45's. when i went to the kings departments store or with my grandmother to the dime stores on granby street, i always went to the records department to see what they had. i didn't always get to buy, and sometimes i really had to struggle to pick the one record i could buy and take home. i spent a lot of time in my room listening to the 45's over and over, as well as the albums i eventually bought. i still have many of them.
from reading comes good writing, and while i have often shirked from showing her things i wrote, i think she has been proud of that, especially when i have been published. she has rarely encouraged me to do much, but writing has been one thing that she felt i should continue to do, maybe write children's books she said. in one way i am fulfilling that request by writing on this blog. she will never read it, but i am doing it and i feel good about that part of me.
i was never much of a doll kind of girl, and when the barbie dolls came out, i did not have one. i did want one, and my recollection is that my father went to kings and bought me just the barbie doll. it was around $3 or so. the clothes for the barbie were outrageously expensive and i over time had very few outfits for barbie. however, my mother did knit a blue outfit for her and made a few handmade outfits for her. i appreciated that and i know she did it because she wanted me to have some clothes for the doll when i played with the other kids.
no fifth grader wants to be unfashionable, and i was no exception. my mother made some of my clothes, but i didn't like wearing them because the kids at the bus stop made fun of me about them. i had heard the stories from her about not having nice clothes when she was growing up, so i wore them with both a sense of shame and a sense of sorrow. i felt bad for my mother and what she had been through. i couldn't really tell her that i didn't like them because i knew it would make her mad and hurt her feelings. i finally did get mad and tell her that i didn't want anymore homemade clothes. she did not take that well and said a fair amount of mean things back to me. but i didn't have anymore homemade clothes either. from then on, she bought me what she wanted me to wear, regardless of what i wanted. there was a compromise somewhere in the middle, but she marshaled my fashion choices up until i was way into adulthood. i have maintained the same attitude about those choices, in that she only buys what she wants to buy me. but i think in some way it was her attempt to have me look nice and that drive to do so is a direct response to her own upbrining and the lack of nice things. she has worked to have nice things and appreciates them much more than most people. i have never cared much about expensive things and clothing is not a priority. unfortunately, we are not on the same wave length and i am an embarrassment to her in just about every way physically. but at this stage of my life, i still understand. i have tried to be grateful and to give her the accolades that she felt she deserved for the gifts of clothing despite whether or not i wanted it or would have picked it out for myself. i have given her free reign over makeup, hairdos, haircuts and all sorts of clothing because i thought it would please her and make her like me better.
we have a shared interest in dishes and recipes and some cooking. she has often gifted me with dishes and serving trays and bowls, etc. i have often thought that it was easier for her to buy something like that versus saying anything meaningful. so i have taken the gifts of dishes and cookbooks and things of that ilk as her way of making some connection with me. i have kept many things, almost ALL things, that she has given me in that way. they have no market value, but were just symbolic to me.
my grandmother and i were much alike, much to my mother's consternation, and i spent what seemed to me to be most every weekend with my grandmother. there could be lots of reasons why, but my mother had no problem letting me go, and i think my grandmother somehow knew i needed to be with her. there was no pressure from her, and she was quirky and happy for the most part, although never fully healthy. my mother's intentions may not have been surfacely based on any feeling for me. however, i want to believe that deep down inside she knew she could not give me what i emotionally needed from a parent, so she sent me to my grandmother who was (in my mother's eyes), never much of a parent. my mother has still a great resentment for my grandmother. she believes that my grandmother did not care about her children's appearances or needs, that she was weak. there probably was a lot true about that, but i will never know. my grandmother gave me room to just do what i wanted, be it reading or watching tv or writing up recipe cards. that kind of one on one time did not happen with my mother. she was busy with my asthmatic brother and focused on him. as she told me, i didn't need her. he did.
a few months ago the mother of one of my colleagues died at age 90 and i went to her graveside services. her children and grandchildren spoke about her and things she had done over her life. there were a few tears, some good laughs, and the emergence of a person who was multifaceted and apparently well loved by her family. as i drove home from that service, i was thinking about what i would say if asked to speak at my mother's funeral. what good things would i talk about with fondness? what could i say about her that would be sincere? in a very horrifying moment, i realized i could not think of a single thing. not one. anything good that i thought of would be immediately countered with the ugly flip side of the situation. she was a good businesswoman and a professional...but she was also ruthless sometimes in how she dealt with people. she often appears to be totally sincere and interested in you. she will compliment, chat, do all the things friends will do. but at the same time, if you cross her in anyway or your actions displease her, she is like the human camcorder and the "recorded" mistakes that you have made are set loose and marched in front of you. i don't think i can think of a single person that she has ever liked completely. everyone has faults and has garnered her distaste at some point. but the plus is that she at least tries to be nice. she is very much the southern woman in that she is never insulting, rude or sarcastic to anyone, even if she loathes them. it is amazing to see her operate sometimes. i just don't have that ability to be that insincere, but she is probably better off for the ability to do it than i am. i bruise way too easily. she doesn't appear to bruise at all.
in all crisis situations, my mother is the one who is level headed and organized. she shows no emotion and knows exactly what to do. when my uncle teddy died when i was in college, my mother was the one who organized the cataloging of all of the food brought in so that my aunt would know who brought what and would be able to be specific in thank you notes. my mother kept everyone in the kitchen organized in the preparation and delivery of food and drink. she kept everyone on time. she did respect my wishes not to view any bodies and came to my defense on the days when there was a family funeral and i was mortified at the thought of seeing bodies. she did run interference with my dad's family when uncle teddy died and nan, my father's mother, died. i am grateful for that.
i have, unfortunately, inherited in my old age the ability to not tell family members about bad things, at least not in a timely basis. ironically, it is my parents that i have kept information from, almost all of it dealing with austin and the sometimes disappointing things that he has done and that i know will upset them. my father actually knows some of these things, but a number of them my mother does NOT know about and daddy and i have agreed that we would all be better if she is kept in the dark. she was the one i learned this from. she more than a few times let me finish exams or get through some sort of crisis before letting me know that something worrisome had happened.
my time spent with my grandmother i believe was a way for my grandmother to have a second chance at doing something right with a child. my mother did not think that she had been given what she needed. rightly or wrongly, my grandmother got a second chance when i was born, and at that time in her life she was able to do that. i felt this way when austin was born, and i have encouraged him to have a relationship with her that is NOT based upon anything other than one on one with her. if there is anyone that she really loves and is fierce about, it is austin. she has spent a lot of time buying him things, doing things for him, taking interest in his baseball. she follows his games on the radio, sitting with her little computer watching the game tracker. until this last falling out, she would talk to me after the games and she knew exactly how many strikes he had thrown, how many walks he had had. she was rarely critical of him, although she could certainly shred his teammates and his coaches. i have always viewed this attitude about anyone who would be a rival or a threat to austin as being a protective gesture. the nastiness of it is very disturbing sometimes, but at this point i have to believe that despite what she says, the real basis for it is love. if she has that capability, i want her to express it as best she can. if austin is the recipient, that that is good. i am not jealous of him or his relationship with her. i am happy about that.
she is not a hugger, and watching her trying to hug or greet someone is sometimes painful to watch in its awkwardness. she is not one to tell you she loves your or to compliment you. she once said to me that she didn't need to tell me she loved me...i knew it. well, that didn't fly with me, and it still doesn't. most people express their love for people. but i recognize that this generally accepted behavior is not something that my mother can do, or at least not easily. i appreciate and am often saddened by her efforts. it makes me sad that it is so hard for her to try. but that is who she is and she can't do much better. she doesn't want to change at this point in her life, and i respect that i think. it does not uncomplicate my life or the awkwardness of my current family situation. but it is life, both mine and hers, and it has to be taken one day at a time. i am trying hard to see the bigger picture and to let go of my anger and sadness about the course of our relationship over a lifetime.
the love of reading that she gave me led me to many worlds that i could escape to. the irony of it all is that from those many books i learned to believe that people could or should act like the characters in books. people should have good virtues and practice them as often as they could. we should always strive to be kind. yet in my real life, that has become a great expectation that was not always delivered. in my mother's real world, and in mine, there are no guaranteed happy endings, and quite a few disappointments. however, you don't get soul growth from having a life of bliss and easiness. you get it from the trying and difficult situations. so in that way, i have my mother to thank for a lot of soul growth in this life. if nothing else, that may be the greatest thing she did right.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
a lifetime of lovely books
My uncle jack gave me the most wonderful books when i was a little girl, and i have kept them as if they were golden treasures. they were mostly birthday gifts each year, and one of them THE ADVENTURES OF CAROLINE AND HER FRIENDS is one of my greatest possessions. i loved the book so much that i had it recovered to the tune of $50 a long time ago. it has turned out to be one of the most sought after and valuable books out there. apparently only a few of the books were printed in english (the author, pierre probst, was french.) the books were about a little girl, caroline, and her animal friends, and the wonderful adventures they went on. each of the creatures had their own personalities, and when you turned a page, you could almost predict what that particular character would be doing in the scenario! throughout my whole life, i only saw one copy of this book, and it was in the library of bayside elementary school which i attended from first to third grade. as an adult, i finally went to the library of congress in d.c. and was able to see other caroline books! the author wrote a number of them, but i had never seen but the one book which i had. the books were in french, but the animals and their illustrations were such a joy to look at. later, i had my friend mary jean kelly lowe purchase some of the books in france, as she lives in paris. she translated them for me and sent them over.
i have a lovely book called LORNA in which a photographer took a doll that looked like barbie all over europe, photographing her as she struggled through a fairy tale. the photography was gorgeous, and it is again a book that i have never seen elsewhere. there were other books that my uncle gave me, including a cookbook when i was a middle schooler, and my first copy of THE JOY OF COOKING. he still sends me clippings from the papers that he thinks i would be interested in. i am happy to say that i think the built the foundation for my love of books.
one of my memories of childhood is my mother sitting on the stoop of our house in diamond lake estates reading to me before the bus came to take me to school. we were on split shift that year, and half the year i went to school from 8-12 and the other half from 12-4. apparently the school was overcrowded and this was what they had to do to free up the rooms. in any case, i remember her doing that, and my looking down the street as the bus slowly made its way towards us. i don't know what she was reading to me, but i do remember her doing that. she also ordered some books for me...BLACK BEAUTY, HEIDI, LITTLE WOMEN. i remember when they came in the mail and they seemed so wonderful and older than the books i was being read at the time. my mother also signed me up for the BEGINNERS book club and each month books came. the first ones i got were GO DOG GO, GREEN EGGS AND HAM, ONE FISH TWO FISH, RED FISH BLUEFISH, and PUT ME IN THE ZOO. not all of the books were written by Dr. Seuss. i would get one or two books a month and there were lots of books! i had all of the CAT IN THE HAT books, HOP ON POP, TEN APPLES ON TOP. at some point the books became less interesting and my mother stopped the club. i believe that she gave those books to my cousins after i had stopped reading them. they would be worth a lot of money today, but more than that, they would be worth a lot to me for the joy they brought me on rainy days as well as having my mother read them to me.
i have a memory of my mother reading HEIDI to me and my eating cracker barrel cheddar cheese while she was doing it. it was fitting, as i recall the book talked about heidi and cheese:)
when i went to elementary school i discovered the school library. from there i found books that i would check out over and over. those were books about davy crockett and daniel boone. when austin was younger, i went on line and started buying up copies of the books i loved as a child. he never read them, but i was overjoyed to find them and they are on the shelves of his book case. i still have the hardback copies of all of the wonderful marguerite henry horse books. my parents gave those to me at christmastime, and i remember marking them in the pages of the sears & roebuck catalog. they were hardback books with paper covers, wonderful books with wesley dennis illustrations. those books are in an old suitcase that belonged to my mother on the bottom of my closet. books that i did not have i ordered. i read all of her books, but didn't own all of them. one of the things on my bucket list was to see the pony penning on chincoteague, and that was a direct result of reading the MISTY OF CHINCOTEAGUE books! i have been to the island, but have missed the pony penning.
one of the things that they did when we were in school was to have book fairs and book periodicals. the periodicals were just printed fliers with a number of books for our age that we could order. there was a little coupon that you filled out. you gave it and the money to the teacher, and when the books came in it was a wonderful thing. the book fairs were bigger and the books were not paperbacks, but hardback. they cost more. i bought one book on cats and i believe i used my own money. i still have many of those paperbacks that ordered up through middle school. as i got older, i just changed what i read, but i don't think i was ever without books.
my mother was an avid reader and took us to the book mobile in the janaf shopping center in norfolk. i can remember getting a book called WINKEN, BLINKEN AND NOD. i am sure there were other books and she let me pick out what i wanted and i would take them home. this tradition continued up through high school when a bookmobile came to the safeway shopping center once a week. i would go up there and check out books and sometimes order books from the library to be brought to me the next week. eventually i went to libraries with my mother. when she would go to janaf on saturdays to get her hair done, i went next door to the library there and read or checked out books. when we moved to richmond, one of the saving graces for me was that my mother found the closest library, which was a little tiny one in bon air. we went a lot and i moved on to adult books. the first author that snagged me was leon uris and his book EXODUS. i read all of the books that he wrote and i became fascinated with the arab israeli conflict. i had to read books in school for english class, but i rapidly found that i only wanted to read what i wanted to read, and that did NOT include TESS OF THE DURBERVILLES or any other sort of british lit. i did read LORD OF THE FLIES in 9th grade and learned about symbolism. THE OUTSIDERS was a major book in my life and it was one of the genre creating books that defined teenage literature. up until that year 1967, there really were no books for girls other than NANCY DREW or THE HARDY BOYS for boys. i got a TRIXIE BELDEN mystery book when i was in the 5th grade, and that lead me to spending my money at King's department store purchasing all of those books as often as i could. i also have kept those books as well and all of these books bring me a lot of comfort and pleasure just holding them and looking over them.
books have transported me to many places and were an oasis for me when i was a kid. i spent most of my middle school years devouring books, especially after we moved to richmond and i had no friends. however, i did have friends in books and when we traveled i always took books with me. when we went to colorado in 1970 i took the whole series of books about elsa the lion, which was the BORN FREE series by joy adamson. ginny tudor, a friend down the street who was several years older than me and had a job at thalhimers bought them for me the night before we left and i was so happy to have gotten them before the dreaded trip. i spent time lying in the back of warnie and uncle harry's station wagon reading about africa and lions while the station wagon lumbered across the heart of america on its way to colorado and a dude ranch.
as time goes on, the books i own become more valuable price wise, but in many ways they are priceless to me. austin is not and never has been a reader himself, so these books were never a part of his life. he loved being read to, especially about dinosaurs and he loved the CAROLINE book. he was read to up through the harry potter books, which bebo read to him. but when bebo left, austin never finished the books. he didn't want to read on his own, and that is when he literally stopped reading. my hope is that maybe i will have grandchildren who want to read and might enjoy these old books. maybe by writing this i will give them some history about myself and who i am and how these printed things shaped my life and created a love of learning for me.
i have a lovely book called LORNA in which a photographer took a doll that looked like barbie all over europe, photographing her as she struggled through a fairy tale. the photography was gorgeous, and it is again a book that i have never seen elsewhere. there were other books that my uncle gave me, including a cookbook when i was a middle schooler, and my first copy of THE JOY OF COOKING. he still sends me clippings from the papers that he thinks i would be interested in. i am happy to say that i think the built the foundation for my love of books.
one of my memories of childhood is my mother sitting on the stoop of our house in diamond lake estates reading to me before the bus came to take me to school. we were on split shift that year, and half the year i went to school from 8-12 and the other half from 12-4. apparently the school was overcrowded and this was what they had to do to free up the rooms. in any case, i remember her doing that, and my looking down the street as the bus slowly made its way towards us. i don't know what she was reading to me, but i do remember her doing that. she also ordered some books for me...BLACK BEAUTY, HEIDI, LITTLE WOMEN. i remember when they came in the mail and they seemed so wonderful and older than the books i was being read at the time. my mother also signed me up for the BEGINNERS book club and each month books came. the first ones i got were GO DOG GO, GREEN EGGS AND HAM, ONE FISH TWO FISH, RED FISH BLUEFISH, and PUT ME IN THE ZOO. not all of the books were written by Dr. Seuss. i would get one or two books a month and there were lots of books! i had all of the CAT IN THE HAT books, HOP ON POP, TEN APPLES ON TOP. at some point the books became less interesting and my mother stopped the club. i believe that she gave those books to my cousins after i had stopped reading them. they would be worth a lot of money today, but more than that, they would be worth a lot to me for the joy they brought me on rainy days as well as having my mother read them to me.
i have a memory of my mother reading HEIDI to me and my eating cracker barrel cheddar cheese while she was doing it. it was fitting, as i recall the book talked about heidi and cheese:)
when i went to elementary school i discovered the school library. from there i found books that i would check out over and over. those were books about davy crockett and daniel boone. when austin was younger, i went on line and started buying up copies of the books i loved as a child. he never read them, but i was overjoyed to find them and they are on the shelves of his book case. i still have the hardback copies of all of the wonderful marguerite henry horse books. my parents gave those to me at christmastime, and i remember marking them in the pages of the sears & roebuck catalog. they were hardback books with paper covers, wonderful books with wesley dennis illustrations. those books are in an old suitcase that belonged to my mother on the bottom of my closet. books that i did not have i ordered. i read all of her books, but didn't own all of them. one of the things on my bucket list was to see the pony penning on chincoteague, and that was a direct result of reading the MISTY OF CHINCOTEAGUE books! i have been to the island, but have missed the pony penning.
one of the things that they did when we were in school was to have book fairs and book periodicals. the periodicals were just printed fliers with a number of books for our age that we could order. there was a little coupon that you filled out. you gave it and the money to the teacher, and when the books came in it was a wonderful thing. the book fairs were bigger and the books were not paperbacks, but hardback. they cost more. i bought one book on cats and i believe i used my own money. i still have many of those paperbacks that ordered up through middle school. as i got older, i just changed what i read, but i don't think i was ever without books.
my mother was an avid reader and took us to the book mobile in the janaf shopping center in norfolk. i can remember getting a book called WINKEN, BLINKEN AND NOD. i am sure there were other books and she let me pick out what i wanted and i would take them home. this tradition continued up through high school when a bookmobile came to the safeway shopping center once a week. i would go up there and check out books and sometimes order books from the library to be brought to me the next week. eventually i went to libraries with my mother. when she would go to janaf on saturdays to get her hair done, i went next door to the library there and read or checked out books. when we moved to richmond, one of the saving graces for me was that my mother found the closest library, which was a little tiny one in bon air. we went a lot and i moved on to adult books. the first author that snagged me was leon uris and his book EXODUS. i read all of the books that he wrote and i became fascinated with the arab israeli conflict. i had to read books in school for english class, but i rapidly found that i only wanted to read what i wanted to read, and that did NOT include TESS OF THE DURBERVILLES or any other sort of british lit. i did read LORD OF THE FLIES in 9th grade and learned about symbolism. THE OUTSIDERS was a major book in my life and it was one of the genre creating books that defined teenage literature. up until that year 1967, there really were no books for girls other than NANCY DREW or THE HARDY BOYS for boys. i got a TRIXIE BELDEN mystery book when i was in the 5th grade, and that lead me to spending my money at King's department store purchasing all of those books as often as i could. i also have kept those books as well and all of these books bring me a lot of comfort and pleasure just holding them and looking over them.
books have transported me to many places and were an oasis for me when i was a kid. i spent most of my middle school years devouring books, especially after we moved to richmond and i had no friends. however, i did have friends in books and when we traveled i always took books with me. when we went to colorado in 1970 i took the whole series of books about elsa the lion, which was the BORN FREE series by joy adamson. ginny tudor, a friend down the street who was several years older than me and had a job at thalhimers bought them for me the night before we left and i was so happy to have gotten them before the dreaded trip. i spent time lying in the back of warnie and uncle harry's station wagon reading about africa and lions while the station wagon lumbered across the heart of america on its way to colorado and a dude ranch.
as time goes on, the books i own become more valuable price wise, but in many ways they are priceless to me. austin is not and never has been a reader himself, so these books were never a part of his life. he loved being read to, especially about dinosaurs and he loved the CAROLINE book. he was read to up through the harry potter books, which bebo read to him. but when bebo left, austin never finished the books. he didn't want to read on his own, and that is when he literally stopped reading. my hope is that maybe i will have grandchildren who want to read and might enjoy these old books. maybe by writing this i will give them some history about myself and who i am and how these printed things shaped my life and created a love of learning for me.
Monday, August 20, 2012
safe in my bed with my stuffed animal friends
i loved stuffed animals and they were my friends. i got them mostly at easter or maybe birthdays. i remember my first big attachment which was a stuffed animal made of terry cloth. i picked all of the little loops off of it, like plucking a chicken. it went away at some point, no doubt disposed of by my mother, who apparently had no attachment to them or any way to understand their importance to me.
my all time favorite one was the calico cat that my grandmother made for me from a pattern. there was the blue gingham dog, which she made for my brother, and the red calico cat that she made for me. these were the animals from the famous poem about the gingham dog and the calico cat ("side by side at the table sat...") the year she gave it to me she typed up the poem on a piece of cloth and my uncle raymond framed it for her to give to me. it hung in most of the rooms i lived in until i was way into my adulthood. i think now it is in the cedar chest, along with the gingham dog and the calico cat stuffed animals, all wrapped in plastic to preserve them from their deterioration.
i took the cat everywhere when i went out overnight, but mostly to her house, as i rarely spent the night with any other relatives. mamama was always sewing the cat back together, as the material was flimsy and the tail curled in such as way that it got ripped in the curve. the cat was two sided, one side perfect, and the other side showing patches from the fight between the gingham dog and the calico cat.
my uncle jack gave me a lovely white cat that had real fur of some type, probably rabbit. it was made of leather and the cat was laying down like a cat would. it wasn't two dimensional like the calico cat. there were assorted easter rabbits and other stuffed things. whenever we had bad thunderstorms, i would gather them in my bed with me for protection. i would prepare for having to leave the house if it caught on fire, and i had all the animals with me. at one point i had five or six. what i remember most, however, is my mother coming in at night to check on me and her ripping them out of the bed and throwing them on the floor, not allowing me to have them. i never understood that. what was the point? she continued that tradition even up to when i was in high school. i wonder now how she could have done that to me, and why she would have done it. what harm was there to have stuffed animals in a bed with a little girl?
on the top shelf of my closet is a collection of some stuffed animals from my adulthood and austin's childhood, including pastel, the bunny given to him by aunt grace. i have elephants that my grandmother knitted over old plastic legg's eggs and a sock monkey that warnie gave me when i was in college. the beautiful white cat is also on that shelf along with a moose that bebo's mother gave him and i inheirited and some camels. i like looking at them holding down the shelf while i grab clothes on hangers below their shelf. one thing is for sure: they don't move unless a cat takes them out. and one other thing is for sure: there will be no mom throwing them out.
my all time favorite one was the calico cat that my grandmother made for me from a pattern. there was the blue gingham dog, which she made for my brother, and the red calico cat that she made for me. these were the animals from the famous poem about the gingham dog and the calico cat ("side by side at the table sat...") the year she gave it to me she typed up the poem on a piece of cloth and my uncle raymond framed it for her to give to me. it hung in most of the rooms i lived in until i was way into my adulthood. i think now it is in the cedar chest, along with the gingham dog and the calico cat stuffed animals, all wrapped in plastic to preserve them from their deterioration.
i took the cat everywhere when i went out overnight, but mostly to her house, as i rarely spent the night with any other relatives. mamama was always sewing the cat back together, as the material was flimsy and the tail curled in such as way that it got ripped in the curve. the cat was two sided, one side perfect, and the other side showing patches from the fight between the gingham dog and the calico cat.
my uncle jack gave me a lovely white cat that had real fur of some type, probably rabbit. it was made of leather and the cat was laying down like a cat would. it wasn't two dimensional like the calico cat. there were assorted easter rabbits and other stuffed things. whenever we had bad thunderstorms, i would gather them in my bed with me for protection. i would prepare for having to leave the house if it caught on fire, and i had all the animals with me. at one point i had five or six. what i remember most, however, is my mother coming in at night to check on me and her ripping them out of the bed and throwing them on the floor, not allowing me to have them. i never understood that. what was the point? she continued that tradition even up to when i was in high school. i wonder now how she could have done that to me, and why she would have done it. what harm was there to have stuffed animals in a bed with a little girl?
on the top shelf of my closet is a collection of some stuffed animals from my adulthood and austin's childhood, including pastel, the bunny given to him by aunt grace. i have elephants that my grandmother knitted over old plastic legg's eggs and a sock monkey that warnie gave me when i was in college. the beautiful white cat is also on that shelf along with a moose that bebo's mother gave him and i inheirited and some camels. i like looking at them holding down the shelf while i grab clothes on hangers below their shelf. one thing is for sure: they don't move unless a cat takes them out. and one other thing is for sure: there will be no mom throwing them out.
now i lay me down to sleep...
When I was around 10 years old, i remember having to sleep in my brother's room in one of his twin beds. i believe that my grandmother was home from the hospital and using my room. the bed was next to the window, facing towards norfolk. at the time, a lot of the housing development had not been developed, and i could lie in the bed and see in the distance a radio tower blinking red. i remember watching it blink, thinking about how far away it was, or how close. it was relaxing, and comforting and the world was quiet out there and there was this sense of a whole world out there that was stable and calm and consistent, just like that light. sometimes when i try to go to sleep at night and can't, i think about that vision, that little light, and it is a good memory. i didn't think i had a lot of them from my childhood, but now that i am trying to think of those things, they are coming back.
i had my own room and it was my refuge. another calming remembrance was the radio. for christmas one year i received one of those white plastic box radios. i thought this was a great thing! in those days it was only AM radio, and in norfolk there were two rock n' roll stations, WNOR and WGH. but there was a greater world out there, and i often waited until after i was sent to bed to surf the airwaves and discovered so many different radio stations from far away places. these were all 50,000 watt stations, and because they were at the top of the broadcast span for AM radio, their strong signals reached all across north america. one of my favorites was WKBW in buffalo, ny. at night they ran a serial called CHICKEN MAN ("he's everywhere! he's everywhere!) and i liked tuning in. it wasn't that the serial was so great, but that it was something different. i also remember hearing the song "They're Coming to Take Me Away (HAHA)" which was certainly not on the top 40 in norfolk! listening to the radio was another escape for me at night.
when i was in college, i did a radio project for one of my communications classes, and for that project i started at the low end of the spectrum of AM radio and mapped out where each signal came from on a united states map. i learned a lot about how radio waves travel, how they fade in and fade out. i would hang on, listening to commercials to identify the stations. what was really amazing to me was that i was able to pick up stations west of the mississippi river, and their call signals started with a K. this seemed amazingly far away from richmond, a whole world away. i was able to tune into hockey games from quebec and toronto, some of them being broadcast in french. at the low end of the am band was the booming radio cuba which you could pick up, day or night. it was the communist answer to radio free europe and it was all in spanish. i was able to pick up the usual strong signals: WOWO in ft. wayne, indiana; WLS in chicaago; WBZ in boston, WABC in new york city. when i first went to college in 1974 there was no FM radio. the first local station for that was in roanoke and it didn't happen until the end of that freshman year and you had to have a radio with both am and fm bands on it. my car radio did not have fm. often i would be out at night and pick up the stations mentioned above. they were the only choices, as all the am stations in that part of the state were low wattage and went off the air at sundown! having something end at sundown seems absurd today, considering everything is instantaneous. the two chicago stations were very clear, as was WOWO, and i used to enjoy tuning into them in the car late at night, and i especially enjoyed turning my friends on to the fact that they could find music after dark if they looked for it!
in 1970 my family went cross country to colorado to a dude ranch and on the return trip we stopped in chicago to visit my cousin who was in the navy there. i spent the visit in their kitchen with a portable radio scanning the waves and i was blown away to hear WRVA in chicago. i had not realized that it was a 50,000 watt station, and because i was in the center of the nation, i was able to pick up stations in kansas city and st. louis. all this was fascinating to me, and i asked my uncle teddy about the radio because he was a ham radio operator. he explained to me about skip, which is radio waves bouncing off the cloud cover. he told me that they were traveling better at night because there was no sun interference and that if it was cloudy, the signals would travel even further. with each bounce, a signal got weaker, so sometimes you would just get a brief piece of broadcasting, but enough to know that there was a whole different world and culture out there.
i am grateful for the am radios i had as a child. that white box radio was my step up from the tiny transistor radio that i first had, the one with the screw in antenna and single white earphone. the first time i ever heard the beatles was walking around our block to visit my friends and then suddenly there was "I Saw Her Standing There." i listened to it in the car on christmas day, a rare christmas when it was snowing heavily in norfolk and we were headed for my aunt and uncle's house for christmas breakfast. going over the lakewood bridge, i was listening to the local radio station talking about the snow, and this was exciting and scary as we headed over a very narrow two lane bridge.
my nighttime radio memories were not always rooted in faraway stations and rock and roll. i often spent the weekends with my grandmother, and she had a beat up old green portable battery radio and i sometimes listened to it at night after we went to bed. she always dropped off quickly and snored horribly. i would lay in the bed, wide awake, watching the street light change colors and then the oncoming traffic coming towards me, headlights making streaks through the blinds and across the far wall. over and over, people traveling in the dark, but the lines going nowhere. but then she got the radio, and it wasn't new. i think one of the boys at the naval base in her office gave it to her, maybe because he was shipping out and had no need of it. one saturday when she first got it we went downtown shopping, but returned late in the afternoon. she gave me a blanket to sit on, and i went out on the front lawn with the radio, almost like a picnic by myself, and watched the traffic and listened to the radio. i remember little green insects hopping on and off of it, and that the radio had some battery acid places on it where old batteries had leaked. but that night i went to bed ahead of my grandmother, and tuned in a easy listening hampton station, one with music that was jazz or 60's cheesy elevator music and for some strange reason that, too, was comforting. maybe because it was so different from rock and roll, maybe because it was all classical instrumental and quiet. i don't remember turning off the radio, but i know that i listened to that easy listening station more than a few times at her house, and it was part of my being safe and relaxed there.
a few times i went to sleep in my parents room and they had a radio in the headboard of the bed that was always tuned to WTAR am radio, which had a program called NIGHTRAIN and they played smooth 50's instrumental music, things like mantovani or orchestra music. no worda again. i didn't listen to that much, but i eventually appreciated it, as i was not allowed to change the station and i wasn't in there very often to go to sleep, only temporarily and on special occasions.
i suspect my attachment to all things musical comes from find it comforting in all ways. just looking at the blinking red light on that not so distant radio tower in norfolk was transporting to me. it led me to the airwaves and escape to faraway places that i wanted to go to, but was too afraid of going to. i didn't have to leave the comfort of my room or the places i felt safe. i just had to have a radio.
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