One afternoon my senior year, I drove home to our little rented town house in my gold Pontiac Sunbird hatchback. My head was buzzing with the drama that had taken place at school – whatever it happened to be that day. I dragged myself inside crying and complaining that I’d had a bad day. Mom was enormously sympathetic and sat on the stairs with her arm around my shoulder while I talked and cried. She didn’t judge or berate me. Suddenly she stood up and told me to wait right there. She came back with - very popular at the time – a wine cooler and half of a little, white pill. She told me to drink and take both, that that’s what made her feel better after a hard day. I obeyed, but I did ask what the white pill was. “That’s Valium. It just makes you relaxed.”
I forget at what point it was that I learned that a doctor had actually told mom that in order to help her relax at night, she should drink a glass of wine. He also prescribed her Valium. We know now that this was a fairly common practice back then, and it reeked havoc indiscriminately.
Truth be told, Mom had a lot she needed to relax over. Based on a combination of things she told me, other facts I know myself, and what I have learned from therapists and doctors, she was a victim of years of incest. This causes Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had an episode of PTSD, but it can make you feel as terrified as if someone were holding a gun to your head. What is happening is that you are essentially feeling the emotions of a past traumatic experience – such as incest – at a time when you are physicllay safe enough to experience it. In the actual moment of the trauma, often times our bodies and psyches shut down and we do not feel. But we do later. This, in turn, can make you feel comepletely crazy because you know you are terrified but you also know there’s not really anything that bad happening at that moment. I should know. I have it, too.
I won’t spend too much time on this subject now, but I do want to say that I am so grateful to be part of the first wave of women who can recover from sexual abuse in a healthy way, because more people have now studied it and found what works to help us heal. There are also better medicines.
But we didn’t at the time. The kind of pain and fear my mom lived with and in every day of her life would level a lesser person. And it has. But not her. She actually did what the doctor ordered. And it cost her.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Peanut Butter
I realize now I have avoided peanut butter all these years. Just recently – eight years later – I have reclaimed it for myself. I love peanut butter! But there was a long time it brought back too much discomfort. Too much guilt.
I hadn’t heard from Mom in a while. It was getting chillier in the Houston area, around November. Mom called to tell me she was styaing in a motel. Her voice was a bit slurred early that morning as it came tinny over the phone. She didn’t have any food. She asked if I could give her some peanut butter.
I was learning a little bit about alcoholics, or so I thought. I knew that if you provided them with things that aided in their addiction, you weren’t helping them. In fact, you wer hurting and even prolonging their pain. At the time, in my ignorance, I felt that if I gave her the peanut butter – all she asked for was peanut butter – that I would be enabling her. I could picture her in that run down place, and I knew she had spent money or gotten someone to pay for her obvious intoxication and for the room. I thought that any expense she had or needed was wrapped up in that whole system of her disease. So, I said no.
Right now, it hurts me to even think of that. The shame I feel for denying my mother this necessity even in this moment causes me to stop typing, cry out, and hold my face in my hands. I complete typing this sentence with blurred vision from tears.
At the time, every new behavior I was learning hurt. I certainly did feel awfully at the time about denying my mom the food, but I felt awful doing any new behavior that was right regarding her. So, I didn’t recognize it as hurting because it should hurt - because it was wrong.
I know Mom forgives me, whether I deserve it or not. I went overboard in what I thought would help, only to realize with hindsight that of course I could give my mom some peanut butter. That is an essential. It didn’t mean I was enabling her disease of alcoholism.
Here is how she was so sweet and humble even in the midst of her diesase: she asked for some peanut butter. She ASKED. For some peanut butter. Not a meal, or groceries. Or money. And she asked. She didn’t, as any mother rightfully could have, direct me to help her. And it was for FOOD. The most basic need we have.
To add insult to injury, her own daughter refused. Me. I am that daughter. I have to own that. I pray that my lack of wisdom and insight did not damage her too badly physically. I hope that someone who was capable of more understanding and generosity at the time gave her some food.
I know that she knows now how sorry I am. She always knew how wrong I was. And she loved me, as I love her still.
To this day, I almost always have at least one jar of peanut butter in my car. I give it to anyone who asks, and to many who simply accept the gift I am extending to them at the red light where they hold a sign, or the corner wher they huddle with their belongings.
I also have to forgive myself. I get to recognize that we all did things that seem cruel and things that were hurtful to each other in our struggle together with this disease. “Forgive my trespasses, as I forgive those who have trespassed against me.”
I hadn’t heard from Mom in a while. It was getting chillier in the Houston area, around November. Mom called to tell me she was styaing in a motel. Her voice was a bit slurred early that morning as it came tinny over the phone. She didn’t have any food. She asked if I could give her some peanut butter.
I was learning a little bit about alcoholics, or so I thought. I knew that if you provided them with things that aided in their addiction, you weren’t helping them. In fact, you wer hurting and even prolonging their pain. At the time, in my ignorance, I felt that if I gave her the peanut butter – all she asked for was peanut butter – that I would be enabling her. I could picture her in that run down place, and I knew she had spent money or gotten someone to pay for her obvious intoxication and for the room. I thought that any expense she had or needed was wrapped up in that whole system of her disease. So, I said no.
Right now, it hurts me to even think of that. The shame I feel for denying my mother this necessity even in this moment causes me to stop typing, cry out, and hold my face in my hands. I complete typing this sentence with blurred vision from tears.
At the time, every new behavior I was learning hurt. I certainly did feel awfully at the time about denying my mom the food, but I felt awful doing any new behavior that was right regarding her. So, I didn’t recognize it as hurting because it should hurt - because it was wrong.
I know Mom forgives me, whether I deserve it or not. I went overboard in what I thought would help, only to realize with hindsight that of course I could give my mom some peanut butter. That is an essential. It didn’t mean I was enabling her disease of alcoholism.
Here is how she was so sweet and humble even in the midst of her diesase: she asked for some peanut butter. She ASKED. For some peanut butter. Not a meal, or groceries. Or money. And she asked. She didn’t, as any mother rightfully could have, direct me to help her. And it was for FOOD. The most basic need we have.
To add insult to injury, her own daughter refused. Me. I am that daughter. I have to own that. I pray that my lack of wisdom and insight did not damage her too badly physically. I hope that someone who was capable of more understanding and generosity at the time gave her some food.
I know that she knows now how sorry I am. She always knew how wrong I was. And she loved me, as I love her still.
To this day, I almost always have at least one jar of peanut butter in my car. I give it to anyone who asks, and to many who simply accept the gift I am extending to them at the red light where they hold a sign, or the corner wher they huddle with their belongings.
I also have to forgive myself. I get to recognize that we all did things that seem cruel and things that were hurtful to each other in our struggle together with this disease. “Forgive my trespasses, as I forgive those who have trespassed against me.”
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
I am a Child of God
When I wanted to speak to my mother during the years she was on the street, I had to go and find her. I assure you that this was as painful as anything I have been through.
I knew where to look in the streets of Houston. Close to the missions – she didn’t like actually staying in them because of the rules. I tried once during this time, early on, to have her committed to the care of the state. In speaking to officials they explained to me that I would have to prove she was a danger to others or to herself. Mom was excellent at snapping into seeming sanity when the pressure was on! So, it was a losing battle. I was discouraged from trying to go further. She had made her choice. It really was her life.
I don’t remember what happened that made me decide this particualr December that I just had to tell my mother the surely inspirational message that she was loved by God, but there I was. I prepared to comb the ravaged back area of old South Main in Houston. Lots of poverty, drugs, criminal activity.
I knew she was in this area because the few times she would call and describe where she was staying for a few nights, it was somewhere in here. Also, when she was found injured or ailing, it was in this area. Additionally, this was where to find illegal substances and the people who could provide them. It was also, ironically, not far from the home we had shared together when I was growing up.
The day was as crisp and bright as Houston gets. I set off in the late morning, hoping she’d be up but not too far from where she was sleeping. We drove up and down for hours. We walked through areas where it looked like mattresses or clothes were gathered on the street. I stopped and got out to speak to people who I would normally run from. I asked them about my mother. Driving down the main section of Main street, I spotted her.
She was walking down that main drag, wearing an oversized coat. The sun was illuminating her wild reddish hair, and her yellowing, toughening skin. Her eyes, those huge almond shaped, brown eyes were focused. Mom! I called, Mom! I started to run toward her. She turned, dropped her jaw. Frowned a bit.
“What are you doing here?”
“Mom,” I said in my most authoritative, serious tone, “I just really wanted you to know one thing.”
“What is it?”
“Mom, God loves you.”
The expression on her face changed from concerned to bemused.
“Honey, I know that,” she assured me impatiently. “I’ve been a child of God since I was nine years old.”
I would like to be able to truthfully say that I understood at that moment that my mother had her faculties, was an adult, and had just put me in my place. I didn’t get it then, though, and had to speak with others to learn that. I also learned that I was so arrogant as to have decided without realizing it that my mom’s life was without value because she was homeless and addicted. I had to learn that that was inaccurate. I discounted her abilities and knowledge of God. She didn’t. I had to learn not to, either.
I knew where to look in the streets of Houston. Close to the missions – she didn’t like actually staying in them because of the rules. I tried once during this time, early on, to have her committed to the care of the state. In speaking to officials they explained to me that I would have to prove she was a danger to others or to herself. Mom was excellent at snapping into seeming sanity when the pressure was on! So, it was a losing battle. I was discouraged from trying to go further. She had made her choice. It really was her life.
I don’t remember what happened that made me decide this particualr December that I just had to tell my mother the surely inspirational message that she was loved by God, but there I was. I prepared to comb the ravaged back area of old South Main in Houston. Lots of poverty, drugs, criminal activity.
I knew she was in this area because the few times she would call and describe where she was staying for a few nights, it was somewhere in here. Also, when she was found injured or ailing, it was in this area. Additionally, this was where to find illegal substances and the people who could provide them. It was also, ironically, not far from the home we had shared together when I was growing up.
The day was as crisp and bright as Houston gets. I set off in the late morning, hoping she’d be up but not too far from where she was sleeping. We drove up and down for hours. We walked through areas where it looked like mattresses or clothes were gathered on the street. I stopped and got out to speak to people who I would normally run from. I asked them about my mother. Driving down the main section of Main street, I spotted her.
She was walking down that main drag, wearing an oversized coat. The sun was illuminating her wild reddish hair, and her yellowing, toughening skin. Her eyes, those huge almond shaped, brown eyes were focused. Mom! I called, Mom! I started to run toward her. She turned, dropped her jaw. Frowned a bit.
“What are you doing here?”
“Mom,” I said in my most authoritative, serious tone, “I just really wanted you to know one thing.”
“What is it?”
“Mom, God loves you.”
The expression on her face changed from concerned to bemused.
“Honey, I know that,” she assured me impatiently. “I’ve been a child of God since I was nine years old.”
I would like to be able to truthfully say that I understood at that moment that my mother had her faculties, was an adult, and had just put me in my place. I didn’t get it then, though, and had to speak with others to learn that. I also learned that I was so arrogant as to have decided without realizing it that my mom’s life was without value because she was homeless and addicted. I had to learn that that was inaccurate. I discounted her abilities and knowledge of God. She didn’t. I had to learn not to, either.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Call your mentor
Leaving my mother in the ER hospital bed, it feels like I am walking away from her. It feels so selfish, breaking down.
I know this is the point at which I can now get some relief. I have the opportunity, once I am broken again to look outside myself for strength. So, I have hope. I do talk to God at this point, but I am also hoping that I can count on my flesh and blood best friend waiting outside the metal doors.
I am practically running by the time I hit those doors. Told that only immediate family is allowed inside the doors of the ER, I am torn. I know that I need to be there for my mother and that I need to be with her for myself, but I cannot go back in there alone and I tell my best friend so. He replies, “You don’t have to; call your mentor.”
My mentor is a woman who has lovingly and selflessly agreed to help me with the effects of alcoholism. In one way my best friend is right. My mentor is the perfect person for me to lean on. In another respect, he has just taught me that I cannot count on him. Some part of me knows this, even then, but all of this is too much to fully process in that moment.
I dial my mentor’s number, and cry to her about the difficulty of this time. She gently offers that I do not have to do this and can choose to leave. When we both decide this is not an option for me because it is simply too important to me to stay with her – even more important than how hard it is to stay - she prays with me and reminds me where all Strength and Love comes from.
I am able to push through the doors once more to stand by Mom’s sleeping side. Now there isn’t much to do but be there. The severity of her situation begins to dawn on me. They will need to examine her. Even without the assault, she is near death. God knows what they will find.
The need for nicotine is suddenly more than I can stand. I whirl around and throw back the white curtain. I spy a nurse – looks like a nice guy – and ask him if there is a smoking area.
“Ha!” His wry smile perplexes me. “Honey, everybody in this place is here because someone was driking, drugging, or smoking. So, no, there is no smoking area.”
Incredulous, I dare him, “Everyone? What about the families and children?” He pops back, “Why do you think they’re here? Either their Daddy was doing those things or someone who was doing them hurt him. And that’s why they’re here, too.”
His words wash that indelible truth over me and just like that, the desire for a cigarrette leaves me like so much smoke drifitng away. I know it sounds like a Hollywood moment, but it is nothing but the truth.
I decide I still need a break and walk outside, tossing what’s left of my pack of cigs in a trash can. My friend joins me here. It’s weird. I don’t turn to him or to the cigarrettes. I truly am being granted with more strength than I alone have. Thank God.
Although I cannot fully handle it at the moment, I will get it in the coming months that if you can’t count on someone in your darkest hour, you don’t need them. No matter how much you think you do, you don’t. It was a gift, what my friend did, letting me down. I could make more room for the people who could support me with him out of my life. I could also be a better friend to others. I somehow had more to give, wanting to be the kind of friend that would be there in someone’s darkest hour.
I know this is the point at which I can now get some relief. I have the opportunity, once I am broken again to look outside myself for strength. So, I have hope. I do talk to God at this point, but I am also hoping that I can count on my flesh and blood best friend waiting outside the metal doors.
I am practically running by the time I hit those doors. Told that only immediate family is allowed inside the doors of the ER, I am torn. I know that I need to be there for my mother and that I need to be with her for myself, but I cannot go back in there alone and I tell my best friend so. He replies, “You don’t have to; call your mentor.”
My mentor is a woman who has lovingly and selflessly agreed to help me with the effects of alcoholism. In one way my best friend is right. My mentor is the perfect person for me to lean on. In another respect, he has just taught me that I cannot count on him. Some part of me knows this, even then, but all of this is too much to fully process in that moment.
I dial my mentor’s number, and cry to her about the difficulty of this time. She gently offers that I do not have to do this and can choose to leave. When we both decide this is not an option for me because it is simply too important to me to stay with her – even more important than how hard it is to stay - she prays with me and reminds me where all Strength and Love comes from.
I am able to push through the doors once more to stand by Mom’s sleeping side. Now there isn’t much to do but be there. The severity of her situation begins to dawn on me. They will need to examine her. Even without the assault, she is near death. God knows what they will find.
The need for nicotine is suddenly more than I can stand. I whirl around and throw back the white curtain. I spy a nurse – looks like a nice guy – and ask him if there is a smoking area.
“Ha!” His wry smile perplexes me. “Honey, everybody in this place is here because someone was driking, drugging, or smoking. So, no, there is no smoking area.”
Incredulous, I dare him, “Everyone? What about the families and children?” He pops back, “Why do you think they’re here? Either their Daddy was doing those things or someone who was doing them hurt him. And that’s why they’re here, too.”
His words wash that indelible truth over me and just like that, the desire for a cigarrette leaves me like so much smoke drifitng away. I know it sounds like a Hollywood moment, but it is nothing but the truth.
I decide I still need a break and walk outside, tossing what’s left of my pack of cigs in a trash can. My friend joins me here. It’s weird. I don’t turn to him or to the cigarrettes. I truly am being granted with more strength than I alone have. Thank God.
Although I cannot fully handle it at the moment, I will get it in the coming months that if you can’t count on someone in your darkest hour, you don’t need them. No matter how much you think you do, you don’t. It was a gift, what my friend did, letting me down. I could make more room for the people who could support me with him out of my life. I could also be a better friend to others. I somehow had more to give, wanting to be the kind of friend that would be there in someone’s darkest hour.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Ben Taub County Hospital, Sat., 2 am, continued
(note: this is a continuation of an earlier post with the same title)
This is my mother. My mother whose once slender hands used to play “Moonlight Sonata” on our upright piano. My mother who had gorgeous reddish, brown hair, a slender waistline even after two kids, smooth, freckled, fair skin. My mother who sang at weddings, was the church secretary, and taught preschoolers to finger paint with pudding.
She turns her weathered and weary face toward me. For a moment there is no recognition in her eyes. I step toward her, “Mom?”
I want her to smile. I want her to express relief and joy at seeing me. What she expresses is non-chalance, almost an expectation that I’d be there.
“Hey, Baby. Can you get me some ice?” Her voice is raspy through her swollen mouth. I look around her bed area toward the curtain that creates her make shift room. No sign of ice or a table.
“Sure.” I recover myself from my own expectations and go along with her reaction. As if I’ve been there all along, as if we see each other everyday. And maybe she’s right. Maybe that’s how it should be.
Turning outside the curtain to make this request of an attendant, I see that everyone is busy. Reality: there is no attendant. We are in the ER of a county hospital, not the Mayo Clinic.
The best I can do after searching is a moist swab. I dab it onto her cracked lips. I want to comfort her, want her to feel better. And the logic inside me is screaming What is the point?!? This is not a band aid on a 2 inch wound. This is the little Dutch boy’s thumb in the Hoover Dam!
And there is that truth. That recognition that feels so much like helplessness. But the truth is that I am powerless. I am powerless over the devastation of this disease over her body, over her life, over mine.
Her directionless, electrocuted-like hair atop her yellow leather skin is enough to confirm it. The added truth that she is here because she was living in her car – now impounded – and was asaulted in it becomes more weight than I can stand under. I tell her I’ll be back and break away, my face starting to crumple as my hand hides my trembling mouth.
This is my mother. My mother whose once slender hands used to play “Moonlight Sonata” on our upright piano. My mother who had gorgeous reddish, brown hair, a slender waistline even after two kids, smooth, freckled, fair skin. My mother who sang at weddings, was the church secretary, and taught preschoolers to finger paint with pudding.
She turns her weathered and weary face toward me. For a moment there is no recognition in her eyes. I step toward her, “Mom?”
I want her to smile. I want her to express relief and joy at seeing me. What she expresses is non-chalance, almost an expectation that I’d be there.
“Hey, Baby. Can you get me some ice?” Her voice is raspy through her swollen mouth. I look around her bed area toward the curtain that creates her make shift room. No sign of ice or a table.
“Sure.” I recover myself from my own expectations and go along with her reaction. As if I’ve been there all along, as if we see each other everyday. And maybe she’s right. Maybe that’s how it should be.
Turning outside the curtain to make this request of an attendant, I see that everyone is busy. Reality: there is no attendant. We are in the ER of a county hospital, not the Mayo Clinic.
The best I can do after searching is a moist swab. I dab it onto her cracked lips. I want to comfort her, want her to feel better. And the logic inside me is screaming What is the point?!? This is not a band aid on a 2 inch wound. This is the little Dutch boy’s thumb in the Hoover Dam!
And there is that truth. That recognition that feels so much like helplessness. But the truth is that I am powerless. I am powerless over the devastation of this disease over her body, over her life, over mine.
Her directionless, electrocuted-like hair atop her yellow leather skin is enough to confirm it. The added truth that she is here because she was living in her car – now impounded – and was asaulted in it becomes more weight than I can stand under. I tell her I’ll be back and break away, my face starting to crumple as my hand hides my trembling mouth.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Support and Groups
Support and Groups
It was after the Ben Taub hospital night that I really needed even more support than ever before. Sober for years, I started to crumble. I started talking myself into drinking. I had been so young when I got sober. Couldn’t my drinking have been just a phase?
Yet at the same time I reached out and asked for help; told people what I was thinking. Thank God I never did drink, but I believe it was mostly because my best mentor did two key things: she told me that only an alcoholic believes that having a drink is the right response to deciding he/she is not an alcoholic, and she recommended I attend yet another support group.
It’s hard to explain the resistance I had to doing that, just as it is hard to explain how, once I allowed myself, my whole psyche changed.
Here was my state: underweight, not eating, not sleeping, smoking two packs a day, having constant PTSD/anxiety attacks, and wanting to drink. But I did not, for the life of me, want to go to another support group! I knew that the people just had to be full of self pity and they had to be real losers in life to have to accept that kind of help. Otherwise, they wouldn’t even need to be there, right?
Yet I did know that my way of doing things wasn’t working so hot at the moment, and I truly admired my mentor – who, by the way, was perfectly able to eat lunch like a regular woman whose stomach was not wrenched with worry and also to fall asleep without the use of narcotics. Oh, and she had been through some shit, too.
So, off I went. At least I could cross that deed off my list in case it didn’t work and go on to the next thing that would.
I listened to these people. Right away I did notice that they accepted the pain I was in. They dind’t reject it or me, or wish I would move on, or shut up, or snap out of it. They just accepted me. I decided that I could try some of their ways.
I think the psyche change really started with commiting to follow a simple suggestion. Here’s an exmple: let your mother live her life and you live yours. Realize that you did not cause alcoholism, you can’t control it, and you can’t cure it.
Then I went along thinking how simple and easy that was, until I had to put it into practice. For instance, the urge to obsess in fear about my mother could overhwhelm me to the point that I would want to call people to track her down instead of going to the grocery store. I knew that my family needed groceries and that it was my agreed-upon role to get them. But to actually walk out that door to go shopping meant confronting the things I believed, which is why I was obsessing (to avoid them). Once I stopped spinning in my head about mom, I realized that I believed I didn’t deserve to go shop for groceries. How could I when Mom was out there like that? I believed I was selfish to go on with my life.
It would have been easy enough to stop there and decide that was correct, and to go back to obsessing and avoiding. Instead, by some miracle, I was able to follow even more suggestions such as calling someone who had already worked through issues like these and ask them to help me. I had to tell them what I was thinking, and then get to the truth. In this case, the truth would sound something like, “It is not selfish to be of service to one’s family by buying groceries. Your mother can choose help, or she can continue in her path. That is her right. But you will not be helping her, yourself, or your family, by worrying and not buying groceries.”
So, a simple task like buying the groceries took hours of talking and prayer, and then I would go to the store not at all feeling like I should go to the store, but I would go anyway. And I would cry. I would just have my kleenex with me at the store and cry the whole time. But I did it.
This was not a time of building a large ego. This was a hugely humbling time.
To be continued…
It was after the Ben Taub hospital night that I really needed even more support than ever before. Sober for years, I started to crumble. I started talking myself into drinking. I had been so young when I got sober. Couldn’t my drinking have been just a phase?
Yet at the same time I reached out and asked for help; told people what I was thinking. Thank God I never did drink, but I believe it was mostly because my best mentor did two key things: she told me that only an alcoholic believes that having a drink is the right response to deciding he/she is not an alcoholic, and she recommended I attend yet another support group.
It’s hard to explain the resistance I had to doing that, just as it is hard to explain how, once I allowed myself, my whole psyche changed.
Here was my state: underweight, not eating, not sleeping, smoking two packs a day, having constant PTSD/anxiety attacks, and wanting to drink. But I did not, for the life of me, want to go to another support group! I knew that the people just had to be full of self pity and they had to be real losers in life to have to accept that kind of help. Otherwise, they wouldn’t even need to be there, right?
Yet I did know that my way of doing things wasn’t working so hot at the moment, and I truly admired my mentor – who, by the way, was perfectly able to eat lunch like a regular woman whose stomach was not wrenched with worry and also to fall asleep without the use of narcotics. Oh, and she had been through some shit, too.
So, off I went. At least I could cross that deed off my list in case it didn’t work and go on to the next thing that would.
I listened to these people. Right away I did notice that they accepted the pain I was in. They dind’t reject it or me, or wish I would move on, or shut up, or snap out of it. They just accepted me. I decided that I could try some of their ways.
I think the psyche change really started with commiting to follow a simple suggestion. Here’s an exmple: let your mother live her life and you live yours. Realize that you did not cause alcoholism, you can’t control it, and you can’t cure it.
Then I went along thinking how simple and easy that was, until I had to put it into practice. For instance, the urge to obsess in fear about my mother could overhwhelm me to the point that I would want to call people to track her down instead of going to the grocery store. I knew that my family needed groceries and that it was my agreed-upon role to get them. But to actually walk out that door to go shopping meant confronting the things I believed, which is why I was obsessing (to avoid them). Once I stopped spinning in my head about mom, I realized that I believed I didn’t deserve to go shop for groceries. How could I when Mom was out there like that? I believed I was selfish to go on with my life.
It would have been easy enough to stop there and decide that was correct, and to go back to obsessing and avoiding. Instead, by some miracle, I was able to follow even more suggestions such as calling someone who had already worked through issues like these and ask them to help me. I had to tell them what I was thinking, and then get to the truth. In this case, the truth would sound something like, “It is not selfish to be of service to one’s family by buying groceries. Your mother can choose help, or she can continue in her path. That is her right. But you will not be helping her, yourself, or your family, by worrying and not buying groceries.”
So, a simple task like buying the groceries took hours of talking and prayer, and then I would go to the store not at all feeling like I should go to the store, but I would go anyway. And I would cry. I would just have my kleenex with me at the store and cry the whole time. But I did it.
This was not a time of building a large ego. This was a hugely humbling time.
To be continued…
Thursday, January 19, 2012
VFW Pool Cue Ride
VFW Pool Cue Ride
“The only thing I ever really wanted to say was wrong.” – The Sundays
Christmas Eve. Podunk, East Texas, my senior year. Mom took us to visit my uncle and my cousins to whom I had once been very close.
It’s cold. The trees are bare. The dirty, old mobile home really doesn’t contain all of us and has evidences of varying addictions. Evening comes. The kids, including me, decide it will be fun to go play pool. The parents (my mom and uncle) decide they will go to the VFW while we do that. The kids drop the adults off and all agree that midnight will be pick up time; time to go home.
At the pool hall, we shoot a few, laugh, make fun of our parents, acknowledge how weird it is that we are at a pool hall on Christmas Eve. Joke about how silly it is that we are going to pick up our parents. Midnight rolls around. I am the eldest of the kids, and we have my mom’s car, so I am the designated driver.
The Veterans of Foreign War Hall is a lonely, sad, quite literally backwoods wooden building. We steer up a winding, gravel driveway to get to the practically hidden location. Opening the doors to the modest place, there is a long bar to the left. The bartender who looks about 65ish with a baseball style cap on has a withering chin under a huge mustache. The floor is worn and faded wood. The room opens into other rooms dimly lit with smokey, yellowish light. We look around and, not seeing our parents, ask the bartender whosays they are in the next room. My uncle is walking around the pool table with a cue in his hand, looking for a shot. My mother is sitting in some man’s lap that I have never seen before, and I doubt she has either.
I am shocked, embarrassed, and then incensed. I tell my mom, probably in a decently bossy and sassy tone, that it’s time to go. Beer in hand, she argues with me that she wants to stay. I know how she feels. At this point in my life, I very much like drinking, hanging out with my friends, flirting with boys, and not so much spending time with the family. There is one major difference: I am 17. She 37. Not to mention “the mom,” while I am “the child.” I raise my voice. I insist that we leave, that it’s 12:00, it’s Christmas Eve. My uncle tells me that my mom already said she didn’t want to go. I am incredulous. I think it must have been at this time that my cousins – clearly more skilled at this than I was – leave in their father’s truck parked outside. In any case, I don’t recall their presence after this point.
Through the yellow haze I take a tentative step toward my mom, reach out my hand, and insist that she come with me. My uncle reacts immediately. He raises the pool cue like it’s a bat and moves toward me quickly. A nearby man steps in between my uncle and me, holding my uncle back. My mom yells. I back up slowly, then quickly turn, and run.
This crisp air breaks across my face and jolts me. I’ll have to leave Mom there. In the dark, between the pine trees, I locate the car. Digging through my purse for the keys, I am surprised to hear Mom’s voice behind me.
“I’m coming!” She is annoyed, exasperated, as if I’d childishly interrupted a phone call to demand a Popsicle. Fine, I think. But no way is she getting behind that wheel!
“Well, I’m driving!” Though I had my obvious reasons for this, some good ole teenaged defiance and rebellion was mixed in, as well.
I don’t even remember what she said. She could be scary when she was angry, clenching her teeth and sneering. In any case, she is the one who ended up driving.
I did know enough not to get in myself, though. This, of course, angered her. And so we both set off down the sloping, winding, dirt driveway – me, on foot and mom behind the wheel.
I jogged a bit before she really took off, so I was ahead of her when I saw the headlights careening close – too close! I darted into the trees along the drive and she missed me. I am certain it was a case of drunk driving and not mal-intent, but it was terrifying.
Out of breath from running and from fear, I gaped after her as I walked along the drive. She slowed, and then stopped.
As I neared the bottom of the hill I realized I was miles from my aunt’s house where we were staying and that I knew no one else in this town. I felt I had no choice but to get in the car.
That moment defines the way I felt during this time as a whole. I tried to fight and stand up against my mother’s disease, but it was no use. I had no choice but to either be run over, left out in the cold, or to get into the car with her driving drunk.
We eventually made it to my aunt’s house, where I tried to call my father on the phone – no cell phones at this time – only wall phones. When I was dialing, my mother yanked the phone cord out of the wall. So, I could not reach my dad. I was at the mercy of her disease. So was she.
“The only thing I ever really wanted to say was wrong.” – The Sundays
Christmas Eve. Podunk, East Texas, my senior year. Mom took us to visit my uncle and my cousins to whom I had once been very close.
It’s cold. The trees are bare. The dirty, old mobile home really doesn’t contain all of us and has evidences of varying addictions. Evening comes. The kids, including me, decide it will be fun to go play pool. The parents (my mom and uncle) decide they will go to the VFW while we do that. The kids drop the adults off and all agree that midnight will be pick up time; time to go home.
At the pool hall, we shoot a few, laugh, make fun of our parents, acknowledge how weird it is that we are at a pool hall on Christmas Eve. Joke about how silly it is that we are going to pick up our parents. Midnight rolls around. I am the eldest of the kids, and we have my mom’s car, so I am the designated driver.
The Veterans of Foreign War Hall is a lonely, sad, quite literally backwoods wooden building. We steer up a winding, gravel driveway to get to the practically hidden location. Opening the doors to the modest place, there is a long bar to the left. The bartender who looks about 65ish with a baseball style cap on has a withering chin under a huge mustache. The floor is worn and faded wood. The room opens into other rooms dimly lit with smokey, yellowish light. We look around and, not seeing our parents, ask the bartender whosays they are in the next room. My uncle is walking around the pool table with a cue in his hand, looking for a shot. My mother is sitting in some man’s lap that I have never seen before, and I doubt she has either.
I am shocked, embarrassed, and then incensed. I tell my mom, probably in a decently bossy and sassy tone, that it’s time to go. Beer in hand, she argues with me that she wants to stay. I know how she feels. At this point in my life, I very much like drinking, hanging out with my friends, flirting with boys, and not so much spending time with the family. There is one major difference: I am 17. She 37. Not to mention “the mom,” while I am “the child.” I raise my voice. I insist that we leave, that it’s 12:00, it’s Christmas Eve. My uncle tells me that my mom already said she didn’t want to go. I am incredulous. I think it must have been at this time that my cousins – clearly more skilled at this than I was – leave in their father’s truck parked outside. In any case, I don’t recall their presence after this point.
Through the yellow haze I take a tentative step toward my mom, reach out my hand, and insist that she come with me. My uncle reacts immediately. He raises the pool cue like it’s a bat and moves toward me quickly. A nearby man steps in between my uncle and me, holding my uncle back. My mom yells. I back up slowly, then quickly turn, and run.
This crisp air breaks across my face and jolts me. I’ll have to leave Mom there. In the dark, between the pine trees, I locate the car. Digging through my purse for the keys, I am surprised to hear Mom’s voice behind me.
“I’m coming!” She is annoyed, exasperated, as if I’d childishly interrupted a phone call to demand a Popsicle. Fine, I think. But no way is she getting behind that wheel!
“Well, I’m driving!” Though I had my obvious reasons for this, some good ole teenaged defiance and rebellion was mixed in, as well.
I don’t even remember what she said. She could be scary when she was angry, clenching her teeth and sneering. In any case, she is the one who ended up driving.
I did know enough not to get in myself, though. This, of course, angered her. And so we both set off down the sloping, winding, dirt driveway – me, on foot and mom behind the wheel.
I jogged a bit before she really took off, so I was ahead of her when I saw the headlights careening close – too close! I darted into the trees along the drive and she missed me. I am certain it was a case of drunk driving and not mal-intent, but it was terrifying.
Out of breath from running and from fear, I gaped after her as I walked along the drive. She slowed, and then stopped.
As I neared the bottom of the hill I realized I was miles from my aunt’s house where we were staying and that I knew no one else in this town. I felt I had no choice but to get in the car.
That moment defines the way I felt during this time as a whole. I tried to fight and stand up against my mother’s disease, but it was no use. I had no choice but to either be run over, left out in the cold, or to get into the car with her driving drunk.
We eventually made it to my aunt’s house, where I tried to call my father on the phone – no cell phones at this time – only wall phones. When I was dialing, my mother yanked the phone cord out of the wall. So, I could not reach my dad. I was at the mercy of her disease. So was she.
Lice
Lice
Mom had been on the streets by now for about 5 years. I had learned to let her be. I had learned how to go on with my life. She had made a number of choices that I had tried and failed to stand up against over and over again. I had a young son, no husband, and a demanding teaching job with at-risk youth. To keep food on the table for him, I had to keep all these things juggled and could not support my mother financially or emotionally. I could not have her blacking out and becoming violent and trying to have bedtime at 8 for my son and me.
I don’t even remember which hospitalization this particular occurrence belonged to.
I just remember that she was there, in that bed, with the sun shining on her face and hair, and the lice were crawling. They were so large and so numerous that I could see them. I could see them past her scalp line in hoards. One crawled across her forehead, then another.
I said, “Mom, I think you have lice.” Her expression was startled and disbelieving. “No!” she half asked, half declared.
It was terrifying to know that she was so completely out of touch with reality, with her own state, with her own skin and hair. This is my mother who used to tediously comb my hair when wet, use a certain brush when blow –drying it, be upset that my bangs wouldn’t “lay right” due to the wave in them, give strict limits to the sitter not to put my hair in “wings.” I never once had lice growing up. Her own hair was always gorgeous.
What I feel guilty about is what I did next. I told the nurse about her lice. Mom felt beyond awful. She could barely get to the restroom, even with help. She should have died. And yet I was concerned about the lice. I pretended to myself that it was for her – and there is some slight merit to that. But there is a great amount of truth to the fact that I couldn’t stand for my mother to have lice in her hair.
And so, in her pained state, and as she complained about later, the nurse washed her hair not once but two times. And the lice were gone.
At least in reality, they are gone. I now have an obsession. I think I see them in my hair from time to time. I live in fear that I will be unaware and out of touch. So, I am hyper vigilant.
Mom had been on the streets by now for about 5 years. I had learned to let her be. I had learned how to go on with my life. She had made a number of choices that I had tried and failed to stand up against over and over again. I had a young son, no husband, and a demanding teaching job with at-risk youth. To keep food on the table for him, I had to keep all these things juggled and could not support my mother financially or emotionally. I could not have her blacking out and becoming violent and trying to have bedtime at 8 for my son and me.
I don’t even remember which hospitalization this particular occurrence belonged to.
I just remember that she was there, in that bed, with the sun shining on her face and hair, and the lice were crawling. They were so large and so numerous that I could see them. I could see them past her scalp line in hoards. One crawled across her forehead, then another.
I said, “Mom, I think you have lice.” Her expression was startled and disbelieving. “No!” she half asked, half declared.
It was terrifying to know that she was so completely out of touch with reality, with her own state, with her own skin and hair. This is my mother who used to tediously comb my hair when wet, use a certain brush when blow –drying it, be upset that my bangs wouldn’t “lay right” due to the wave in them, give strict limits to the sitter not to put my hair in “wings.” I never once had lice growing up. Her own hair was always gorgeous.
What I feel guilty about is what I did next. I told the nurse about her lice. Mom felt beyond awful. She could barely get to the restroom, even with help. She should have died. And yet I was concerned about the lice. I pretended to myself that it was for her – and there is some slight merit to that. But there is a great amount of truth to the fact that I couldn’t stand for my mother to have lice in her hair.
And so, in her pained state, and as she complained about later, the nurse washed her hair not once but two times. And the lice were gone.
At least in reality, they are gone. I now have an obsession. I think I see them in my hair from time to time. I live in fear that I will be unaware and out of touch. So, I am hyper vigilant.
Bring Me a Brewsky, Amazing Grace
Bring Me a Brewsky, Amazing Grace
Bring Me a Brewsky
Tie her down with the straps. Please. She is weak. She shouldn’t move. But she is detoxing so violently that she is out of touch with reality. Hallucinating. Just strong enough to move and fall out of the bed in her flailing attempts to get me to “bring [her] a brewsky!”
She reaches and claws. The worst mixture of love, sympathy, empathy, disgust, sorrow, nausea.
That’s what I feel. It actually swallows me. I am bound by it as sure as the canvas straps of her hospital bed bind my mother.
Her skin looks like some kind of leather dyed yellow; she is dying of alcohol-related cirrhosis. Her stomach is actually eating itself and she was found unconscious, hemorrhaging from mouth and anus in an abandoned gas station parking lot. The male voice that called the ambulance called to let me know, and remained anonymous.
Amazing Grace
Nothing soothes her. Not the Adderall, nor the pain killers. She is wild and virtually psychotic. I am completely helpless; I cannot help her. To watch her is torture. So, I do the only thing that I can imagine. I begin to sing a prayer that she used to sing to me. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. Immediately she looks up at me, mouth agape. Her eyes attempt to focus. I keep singing: that saved a wretch like me. She begins to sing with me, “I once was lost…” I smile at her, and she at me, “but now am found, was blind but now I see.”
Bring Me a Brewsky
Tie her down with the straps. Please. She is weak. She shouldn’t move. But she is detoxing so violently that she is out of touch with reality. Hallucinating. Just strong enough to move and fall out of the bed in her flailing attempts to get me to “bring [her] a brewsky!”
She reaches and claws. The worst mixture of love, sympathy, empathy, disgust, sorrow, nausea.
That’s what I feel. It actually swallows me. I am bound by it as sure as the canvas straps of her hospital bed bind my mother.
Her skin looks like some kind of leather dyed yellow; she is dying of alcohol-related cirrhosis. Her stomach is actually eating itself and she was found unconscious, hemorrhaging from mouth and anus in an abandoned gas station parking lot. The male voice that called the ambulance called to let me know, and remained anonymous.
Amazing Grace
Nothing soothes her. Not the Adderall, nor the pain killers. She is wild and virtually psychotic. I am completely helpless; I cannot help her. To watch her is torture. So, I do the only thing that I can imagine. I begin to sing a prayer that she used to sing to me. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. Immediately she looks up at me, mouth agape. Her eyes attempt to focus. I keep singing: that saved a wretch like me. She begins to sing with me, “I once was lost…” I smile at her, and she at me, “but now am found, was blind but now I see.”
Ben Taub County Hospital, Saturday, 2 a.m.
Ben Taub County Hospital, Saturday, 2 a.m.
Ben Taub County Hospital, Saturday, 2 a.m.
The flourescent lights are blinding. I am alone in this never ending hallway of stark white walls and beige tile. Approaching the huge double doors that separatethe barren hall from the horrible world of hurt where my mother and others exist, I lift one foot and somehow it steps and I move forward. My body leans against the cool, dark, black steel. It holds my shoulder, I drop my head, close my eyes, press harder still into its comfort, until the door finally gives and swings open against my weight.
A barrage of white overhead lights and yelling, bustling people crashes into my senses. Worried families in cheap sweats gather in too few chairs, most with dark skin. Nurses scurry across the way with arms outstretched, directing, pulling IV’s, pushing gurnies, barking orders. Nearing them, I am consumed by and become them. I know that as I search for my mother I will see someone else’s mother before I find mine, someone else’s daughter, someone else’s sister, someone else’s ex –wife, friend, co-worker.
I am walking through the maze of halls, beds, moans, searching. I peer through a set of curtains as discreetly as I can. A tiny, black man with white hair tries to lift his withered face from his bed. Guiltily, I snap my head away from him.
Is she in the next set of curtains? I don’t look into the ones where someone is calling loudly for the nurse, where a woman is crying outside of them, where there is a scream. I can’t. And then I see her. Wait, is that her? Yes. I see the round curve of her hip. I see her roll onto her back. I slowly push back the curtain. She doesn’t see me.
I step further inside. I see her cracked and purple lip caked with blood against her yellow, leathery face. I observe her distended middle, her legs so small in comparison. I see her bloodied knuckles, split and thick, dirty fingernails. Hair that is dry, unwashed, tangled, graying.
This is my mother. My mother whose once slender hands used to play “Moonlight Sonata” on our upright piano. My mother who had gorgeous reddish, brown hair, a slender waistline even after two kids, smooth, freckled, fair skin. My mother who sang at weddings, was the church secretary, and taught preschoolers to finger paint with pudding.
Ben Taub County Hospital, Saturday, 2 a.m.
The flourescent lights are blinding. I am alone in this never ending hallway of stark white walls and beige tile. Approaching the huge double doors that separatethe barren hall from the horrible world of hurt where my mother and others exist, I lift one foot and somehow it steps and I move forward. My body leans against the cool, dark, black steel. It holds my shoulder, I drop my head, close my eyes, press harder still into its comfort, until the door finally gives and swings open against my weight.
A barrage of white overhead lights and yelling, bustling people crashes into my senses. Worried families in cheap sweats gather in too few chairs, most with dark skin. Nurses scurry across the way with arms outstretched, directing, pulling IV’s, pushing gurnies, barking orders. Nearing them, I am consumed by and become them. I know that as I search for my mother I will see someone else’s mother before I find mine, someone else’s daughter, someone else’s sister, someone else’s ex –wife, friend, co-worker.
I am walking through the maze of halls, beds, moans, searching. I peer through a set of curtains as discreetly as I can. A tiny, black man with white hair tries to lift his withered face from his bed. Guiltily, I snap my head away from him.
Is she in the next set of curtains? I don’t look into the ones where someone is calling loudly for the nurse, where a woman is crying outside of them, where there is a scream. I can’t. And then I see her. Wait, is that her? Yes. I see the round curve of her hip. I see her roll onto her back. I slowly push back the curtain. She doesn’t see me.
I step further inside. I see her cracked and purple lip caked with blood against her yellow, leathery face. I observe her distended middle, her legs so small in comparison. I see her bloodied knuckles, split and thick, dirty fingernails. Hair that is dry, unwashed, tangled, graying.
This is my mother. My mother whose once slender hands used to play “Moonlight Sonata” on our upright piano. My mother who had gorgeous reddish, brown hair, a slender waistline even after two kids, smooth, freckled, fair skin. My mother who sang at weddings, was the church secretary, and taught preschoolers to finger paint with pudding.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
How could you?
I know you don’t understand. Maybe you think I’m heartless. Of course you have the question, but she’s your mother; how could you allow her to be homeless? I know people see others on the streets and ask themselves: don’t these people have families?
At the risk of sounding like I am groveling, I have a two-fold explanation. First is simply this: even people who are loved can be harmful to live with. Having a self- and other – destructive person in your household – even though they are deeply loved – is not wise or loving for them or yourself, or your children.
Additionally, a huge part of what I had to learn was to stop taking care of my mother as though she were the child and I the parent. If she were to ever assume responsibility for herself, I would have to get out of her way of doing it.
I also had to learn to stop sabotaging my own life to take care of her, or for any reason. So, pouring out money, time, and energy on someone who did not want help was only damaging me and actually furthering her own destruction.
I also, at the time, could only partially accept these truths. In order to defend my own position in my head and heart, I assumed a partially judgmental stance. While most of me believed all of the above to be true and right, during the times when self doubt and judgment from myself and others flooded me, my only defense against hating myself was to decide that my mother had worked her way into this and could work her way out. While there is some truth even in this, it is far too harsh for the reality of the situation – too hard on both of us. My mother needed help, and I was not the only person in the world who could give it to her.
This brings me to another thought. I do not believe that illness or homelessness should be the problem of the family alone. I believe that we are all responsible for members of our society, and that, in fact, people who are not members of the family can actually be in a much better position to help than the family themselves. So, when you see a homeless person, ask yourself what we can all do to help.
John Donne, Meditation 17:
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath afflicion enough, that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction, digs out, and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger, I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security."
At the risk of sounding like I am groveling, I have a two-fold explanation. First is simply this: even people who are loved can be harmful to live with. Having a self- and other – destructive person in your household – even though they are deeply loved – is not wise or loving for them or yourself, or your children.
Additionally, a huge part of what I had to learn was to stop taking care of my mother as though she were the child and I the parent. If she were to ever assume responsibility for herself, I would have to get out of her way of doing it.
I also had to learn to stop sabotaging my own life to take care of her, or for any reason. So, pouring out money, time, and energy on someone who did not want help was only damaging me and actually furthering her own destruction.
I also, at the time, could only partially accept these truths. In order to defend my own position in my head and heart, I assumed a partially judgmental stance. While most of me believed all of the above to be true and right, during the times when self doubt and judgment from myself and others flooded me, my only defense against hating myself was to decide that my mother had worked her way into this and could work her way out. While there is some truth even in this, it is far too harsh for the reality of the situation – too hard on both of us. My mother needed help, and I was not the only person in the world who could give it to her.
This brings me to another thought. I do not believe that illness or homelessness should be the problem of the family alone. I believe that we are all responsible for members of our society, and that, in fact, people who are not members of the family can actually be in a much better position to help than the family themselves. So, when you see a homeless person, ask yourself what we can all do to help.
John Donne, Meditation 17:
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath afflicion enough, that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction, digs out, and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger, I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security."
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