She called from Arizona because I’d sent her a video.
My mother lives 600 miles away, and I hadn’t telephoned since late October. Last week, though, I made a one-minute video of myself and emailed it to her. (A very nice video, too, I’ll have you know.) The sight of me had emboldened her, and her voice was strong. She was holding up really well for being almost 85 and never doing anything the least bit healthy, I thought. She exercises on the inside, though, from working out things like how my wife and I should come live in her doublewide:
“… and Kathy would have a home!”
Oh woe be unto me, foul strangler of wifely ambition! It’s a husband thing, of course. Either that, or the notion of having our own place (again) is foreign to me and I’m stupid.
“We’re doing fine here, but thank you.”
“I tried to get you a home,” she said, referring to the check that helped us close on the Still Pond place back in ’88, well before mildewed old dumps in the Maryland countryside cost more than mansions in Spain.
“I know, and you did. We’re very grateful. We had a home.”
“Yes, but you LEFT IT! You didn’t STAY!”
“It’s a big, wide, wonderful world out there, Mom…”
But of course I’ve never had the slightest little regret. Not even when my honey was living 1,200 miles away, I’d just had the most alienating “holiday” conceivable, there was nothing left in the bank, and I wanted to drive my truck straight into the gorge. Not even then had I wished, even for a moment, to be living back on our 2.57 acres by the Chesapeake Bay, with my sweetie’s academic cancer factory checks paying for it all, while I pretended to make art in my studio, mowed the grass, and watched teevee all night. Who would, right, much less admit it, except under waterboarding or motherly love? She knows, of course, and puts the energy to other uses.
When I was growing up as an Air Force brat, we moved over 40 times before I graduated from high school. Some of those were moves within the same community, but whole sledgehammer changes of household, every one. One such move was from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia to the rail of the loathsome Rhine: occupied Germany under perpetual overcast, no TV, dark bread and funny cars. I built model planes, avoided baseball, and bought Jerry Lee Lewis 45s with my saved up 25 cents per week allowance like any red-blooded 11-year-old would do. An intense but limited existence: while no one was actually hurting, my memory is one of absolutely grinding artificial poverty, pre-emptively imposed to stifle wild outbursts of joy and pleasure.
And then one day an opportunity arose. My mother and father announced that as an incentive toward earning good grades, they would award each of us school-age siblings a whole quarter for every “A” on our report cards. I thought I had it made, since A’s were all I ever got. This would be like six weeks of allowance all at once! When the wonderful day came around, I ran home and proudly presented my report card to my father, who was already handing out big shiny quarters to my younger brother and sister:
“Sorry Johnny, none for you,” he told me.
“B-but I have all A’s!” I wailed, clueless and stunned.
“We expect you to get A’s,” said my mother, stepping in from the kitchen. “These are for your sister and brother.”
“But-but…” etc.
The call is short this Saturday. We wish each other well, I tell her I love her. But mainly I keep going, faster all the time.
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Oh, hell ya, I understand!
My mo used to give me what I call the “4 As and a B” tape” if I ever brought home less than As – “So WHY did you get a B?!” as if it were the worst thing in the world.
It’s not easy being the “perfect” child, is it?
I dunno. This post is much too subtle. It’s supposed to be about the effect of withheld affection and the crazy-making double binds. (No support or affirmation, ever.) Remembering these things is almost more than I can take, frankly.
Has to be done, though.
I doubt anyone but me will understand.
?
I understand. I think pretty much anyone who has been betrayed by a parental promise will.