The Golden Age of Denial

There is my dream house..a little cabin in the woods in the mountains. At this moment, thanks to George Dubya's economic blunders, among others, we are selling the lovely piece of mountain property we bought for our dream home in order to be able to live out our old age independently. Wish us luck because we are going to need it.

No, onward to important things, like moi, of course. I have decided that I want an old age similar to my Mother-In-Law's. You see, Mom was not the most empathic of mothers and her idea of a major crisis in any one's life was their car not starting. The real stuff was either downplayed or she just wasn't told about it. It wasn't because she was frail, but because she had a hard time understanding and supporting.

So I am withdrawing all empathy, refusing to understand any one's mistakes and getting all sympathetic about flat tires and other minor, "fixable" things. Maybe then, my stomach will get better and my hip will heal and I can live out my golden years in blessed denial. You know why I say that? Because the "Shit Hits The Fan" gremlins decided that every possible family crisis that comes down the pike should hit right at the time of my surgery, or should I call it "that massive insult to my body?" Yeah, right...like I could do that.
My lovely state of denial about certain things was ripped away like the fragile fabric it really is and the actual state of things was shown to me in graphic detail. Lesson learned? No matter how old you get and how far you advance in wisdom and serenity, personally, you have no guarantees that your loved ones will come along with you. I am going to have to watch them stumble, screw up and deal with misunderstanding and my own old tragedies until my ashes are scattered, so it seems. Maybe I can find the answer to Jenny Westbrook's wall of protection. I think she took it with her.

But, again, that's not my style. My style is to rage in the face of the storm until it finally calms down, then firmly believe I caused it to stop. My style is to say what I think when someone I love is in dire straits, whether I should say it or not (and whether it is appreciated or not). It seems I have passed the art of being selectively blind on to my offspring. I have also, somehow, lost their respect. I would have rather been flogged with a bullwhip than to have dismissed, argued with and disrespected my mother or grandmother in such a way.

I seldom got along with my former mother-in-law, but she had some pretty smart things to say. Many of them were cliche' and I tended to dismiss them until I realized she was using them in the right way and with purpose. One of the things she would say about children was, "When they are little they walk on your feet. When they grow up, they walk on your heart." I wish I could thank Mom Henline for that but she wouldn't even know me. She is in a nursing facility with Alzheimer's.

In this picture, I am 15 years old and I know, but am trying to deny that I am very, very pregnant with my firstborn child. I didn't think I could ever be more frightened and hurt than I was when that picture was made. Boy, did I have a lot to learn. I feel like one of those old radio stations where the DJ would proclaim, "WSUX, WHERE THE HITS KEEP COMING!!" What followed that picture is the stuff of bad soap operas. I needed stable boots because I stepped in more shit than Hercules cleaning out the Aegean stables.

 

But it hasn't been all bad. Even if I was able to only raise two of my children (at which, I suspect at times, I fucked up royally), I was able to hold all four of them in my arms and tell them how much MOMMY loved them. And Mommy still loves them and my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren. We are not a perfect family and the adoption reunion thing is a real treat, going from a trip to the carnival to trying to find your way through the woods in a snowstorm. The loss of my two oldest, unfortunately, affected the way I raised my two youngest and a lot of that fear of life, insecurity, low self-esteem and mistrust found its way into their lives.

So, no, I can't do the hiding from real life thing that Mom Westbrook did, but I can understand that I am powerless to fix things for any of my children. I seem to be so eloquent but unable to explain things to my own flesh and blood to get them to understand that I'm on their side even if I don't agree with the choices they have made or the way they see me in their lives.

 

So for my raised children, I say, I know you have loving hearts and integrity. Daughter, you need to take off the blinders and really see things as they are, but you might find that loving includes accepting the weaknesses and foibles of the loved one and putting your foot down for upward mobility. Son, empathy lesson number one..Fuck You, too! I don't deserve it and I don't accept it. And you are giving yourself an ulcer.

 

For my lost, taken children (because losing you both was NEVER, EVER my decision), I wish you could understand that, after decades of guilt and worry and tears and heartache and wondering (and that IS a form of parenting even if I didn't sit by the bedside and bathe your fevered brows which I would have given my right arm to be able to do) I am standing tall and proud as your Mother. No, I do not expect you to deny or disregard your love for your adoptive parents. But I expect to sit right up there with them. I am NOT a second-rate, casual relative to be hidden from the rest of the adoptive family. I will not put loving posts on your timeline (what's the problem with that, anyway??) only to have them deleted. THAT HURTS. I will not be misconstrued, lied to and misinterpreted. I respect myself and I ask that your love for me include respect for my Mother's heart, publicly. With all due respect, if your adoptive parents told you that I should be kept a secret, they were WRONG.

 

My thanks and heart have to go to these beautiful people standing around me in the heat of an August day in San Antonio, Tx. Meet my gift for my old age. My grandson-in-law, the talented and intelligent Chris, me, my BEAUTIFUL and talented granddaughter, Brandy, who sees me simply as "Nanny" and my great-grandchildren (smartest and cutest in the world, by the way) Dejah and Jantzen. That was such a happy day for me. I felt like a grandmother in the best way possible. I watch them climb that ladder in such a determined way, not that they don't slip from time to time, and feel proud for them...not OF them because that would imply that I had something to do with their good work. No, I am proud for them.

 

This is a picture of a family and also, catharsis. I write this with tears streaming down my cheeks and a funny little half smile on my face. I have to also remember that my kids can be funny, intuitive and ingenious in many ways. I know that no family is perfect. But that's what we are...a family. Even the ones who only want a partial membership are SOL because they are in. You cannot share the most intimate moment in a life, passing through your Mother's body to take your first breath, and place that moment as secondary to anything. You are of us and we are of you.

Hey, I took a lot of wrong turns before I learned to stop hurting myself and others on a regular basis. Maybe that epiphany won't be far off for the people I love more than my own life...my children.



Words, Tears and Growing Old

 

Words and I have a love affair. I see pictures in words. I can see poetry in prose and truth in poetry. Searching for just the right way to say something is a challenge...one at which I often fail. But I try to be good at using this lovely language.

Some call me loquacious, some call me glib and some call me melodramatic. The harder I try to explain, using the words and phrases that come to me, the worse I seem to make it, sometimes. There comes a time when I have to sit on the words and be silent. That's hard to do because they are my outlet, my therapy, my art and my friends. They have saved me from myself many times when I see the specter of self-pity, self-involvement and denial creep in. They have lifted me up when I have been able to use them to admit to responsibility, acquire humility and to reinforce the futility of sweating the small shit. Oh, and I love the so-called "bad words" too. My daughter has gone through a hard time and one of the reasons is the machinations of a woman who seems to want to hurt so she called her a "cunt." Hey, daughter! Good, therapeutic use of bad word there!

So, here it is, for me. In the past six weeks I have gone through something that has almost defeated me, physically and emotionally. It has been hard to be sensible and pragmatic with my words when what has been roiling around inside me would best describe Dante's lower levels of Hell. While I am going through this, I just can't be my old, sweet self. I am in a battle and I have to keep fighting. I want to be well.

This brings me to the "tears" part. I am told, by my doctors, that the emotional responses are partially the physical trauma, which was major, and partially the drugs used to control the pain, reduce the chances of an embolism, and help me heal. All I know is that I have cried more, and I mean actual sobbing, in the past few weeks than I have in years. My tear ducts ache from all the crying. I want to cry, right now, just seeing the words I am typing. Again, this seems to be something that is beyond my control. The fewer pain meds I have to take, the better I seem to be, but the pain and the inconvenience still have a bit to do with it, I am thinking. It is so frustrating to be unable to bend over and pick something up you have dropped and those grabber things can be a pain to operate. So, I cry.

That has been harder due to the fact that there have also been personal, family problems going on and I received anonymous hate mail . I don't know if that makes me sad or glad. So, if I come off as dramatic, overwrought or even self-pitying, please excuse and understand. It's not something I did on purpose and it is something I did not, for a moment, expect would happen. I'm doing my best, kids. And the purple prose is just me...always has been. I wish I had done a bit better at teaching you empathy because, if I ever needed it, it need it now.

 

A friend posted a picture of this Physostegia virginiana, this morning, and called it the "Robin Flower" because it bends but doesn't break. Oh boy do I hope I live up to that one! OK..Off to walk and heal this fuken hip!

Shame on My Home Town

This young man was visiting relatives, here in the town in which I have lived since October of 1996. The ironic thing is that we moved down here because of our own tragedy. My husband's only child, my 17-year-old stepson, had taken his own life, we believe because of confusion and worries about his sexuality. Funny how racism, homophobic attitudes, sexism and a number of related "isms" seem to rob us of our humanity.

I have no doubt in my mind that the verdict in the Zimmerman case was wrong, coerced, bought, whatever and I have no doubt that the police and other officials here in Sanford are about as corrupt as they can get. If anyone disagrees, write your own blog essay about it. I don't have time to hear your justifications of the unjustifiable. Zimmerman was told to back off. He was armed. Trayvon Martin was just walking home. He was unarmed unless you want to infer that a can of iced tea and a bag of skittles are deadly weapons. Of course he fought back against that stalking moron. Anyone would. And now, Zimmerman is alive and Trayvon is dead and his parents, friends and family are still mourning.

One juror, the only juror of color, did speak out and I have to wonder what was said to her to make her go along with the verdict when she so obviously believed that Zimmerman was guilty? Racism rears its ugly head again. The trial was a farce which ended up trying a dead boy for his own death.

I have a nephew-in-law, a fine man retired from the navy. He is the love of my niece's life, they have a sound marriage and have raised a beautiful daughter who has had to deal with racism. Trent, my nephew-in-law, was profiled in a stupid parking lot, a couple of weeks ago. This breaks my heart.

 

I have a wonderful grandson-in-law. Chris has graduated Full Sail University and is working hard to make it in the music industry. He is a wonderful husband, a terrific step-father and I could choose no better husband for my granddaughter. He has been profiled more times than he can count..he has dealt with the people being afraid of him for NO GOOD REASON other than the color of his skin.

 

 

My great-granddaughter, who lives with the lovely couple above in San Antonio, is very brown. Her Dad is Mexican and her coloring definitely shows her Hispanic heritage. We all know how white Texans tend to feel about people of Hispanic origin. I worry about her. I worry about my great-niece, ready to follow in her father's footsteps and has enlisted in the Navy. I worry about my two great nieces on my husband's side. Both have African-American fathers. And the thing is, I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THIS CRAP!

 

Earlier, this summer, our dysfunctional, lopsided Supreme Court eviscerated the most important piece of legislation to be signed in my lifetime, The Voting Rights Act. Somehow, we have to fix this mess they made. Antony Scalia should retire..yesterday. Clarence Thomas should have long since left the court. He is a disgrace to the robe. Hopefully, as in this article; http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/07/doj-has-plan-work-around-supreme-courts-voting-rights-act-decision/67627/ we can manage to work around and, eventually, repair what they tried to break. The death of Trayvon Martin, the profiling of young, black men, the inequality in the justice system where young, black men are concerned are all good reasons why we still need the Voting Rights Act.

 

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg penned the dissenting opinion on this idiotic action taken by the freaky five and wrote an indictment; " ..... accusing the conservative justices of displaying “hubris” and a lack of sound reasoning.“[T]he Court’s opinion can hardly be described as an exemplar of restrained and moderate decision making,” wrote the leader of the court’s liberal wing. “Quite the opposite. Hubris is a fit word for today’s demolition of the VRA.”

Joined by the three other liberal-leaning justices, Ginsburg scolded the conservative majority and its rationale for throwing out Section 4 of the law — which contains the formula Congress has used to determine which states and local governments must receive federal pre-approval before changing their voting laws.

The current political climate is nasty. The war against women, the fight against the Dream Act and the racist idiocy displayed in broad daylight by men and women who should know better is execrable. There are only a couple of weapons we can wield in this battle. We can write letters to the editors, to our Senators and congressional representatives telling them what we think of what is being done. We can exercise our right to vote and not leave it up to anyone else. We should be encouraging everyone to get ID's (for those backwards states that are trying to censor the vote), register and VOTE. VOTE THEM OUT. Attack the members of the SCOTUS repeatedly in print. Editors love well-written letters like that. Talk to your neighbors. If you have children just reaching voting age, talk to them. If there is any way you can involve yourself in activism, do so. But don't just sit there and let another young man die because a miserable excuse of a wannabe cowboy was legally armed and used an ugly, poorly thought-out law to vindicate his act of MURDER.