The Name Game continues….
My mother gave me a weird name. I grew up where most girls had names like Julie, Mary, Marla, Janis, Debbie, Susan, Sharon, Randy, Robin, Eileen, and Liz. As a matter of fact, there were so many girls named Marla they were always called by their first and last names no matter where we were whether in the playground or the classroom. It always made me feel like a weirdo to be the only Benita. What made it worse was most people would insist on the following:
Your name means “pretty” in Spanish.
It does not, that is Bonita which is what most people assumed my name was, and at that point they would ask if they could call me Bonnie. For some reason, I did not want to be called Bonnie. I am not sure why but I felt it would give people the impression my name was spelled with an “o” instead of the “e” and the entire reason my mother gave me this strange name was because she wanted to name me after her father, Benjamin. She could have named me Beth, a name that would have fit in perfectly with the above list of popular names amongst my peers, but I guess that would have been too easy. Yet, I felt some mysterious obligation to carry forth the name of this dead relative I never met.
I was the “only” Benita at DeWitt Clinton School, (and probably in the entire Chicago area) until that fateful day in either 5th or 6th grade, I cannot remember which, when a new girl arrived in our classroom. She was big. I remember thinking this kid belongs in 8th Grade. When the teacher asked her to stand up and tell everyone who she was and where she was from remains one of those memories forever burned in my brain visually as well as audibly. I had never heard a thick southern accent before. The twang left all our little mouths hanging open as she spoke:
My name is Benita Grimsley, that is B E N I T A, but it sounded more like she was saying “Bay A N I T AYYY” Years later while watching the movie Nell starring Jodi Foster I was reminded of that strange sounding voice echoing my name in the classroom. The high ceiling and hardwood floor must have added a whole new dimension to the sound I was hearing. I was flabbergasted. My heart was pounding. Would the mean boys tease her about that accent and her “weird” name and then would I become a source of ridicule by name association? Thank goodness Benita G. found friends and quickly absorbed herself into the background of grammar school society.
Okay, so I grow up. I have to spend my life spelling my name for people. People start making assumptions about me before they know me. Most of them think I am going to be Hispanic before they see me. Over the years, so many people have said “oh, I knew a Benita” as if it were a species. Then there are always the damn “fish” jokes since there is a fish with the name Bonita and the awful “Benita Banana” which rhymes so well with Chiquita Banana. And even now, my name causes someone to make a comment. A guy who belongs to the same Temple keeps calling me “Benita Applebaum” whoever the hell that is. So I never liked my name. As a matter of fact I have often hated it. I always managed to blame my mom. After all, she’s the one who named me. I did not even think of it as a “name” at times, just a bad label like a warning on cigarettes, Something like “The Surgeon General has found being called Benita may cause embarrassment, and social discomfort.”
Flash Forward 40 + years. I am taking care of my mother in so many ways. I moved her into a “retirement” community and am constantly going there to do her laundry and get her mail and take her to the doctor. It becomes overwhelming since she insisted on living in the one “retirement” community close to our old neighborhood and I have been forced to move to the far Northwest Suburbs where we can actually afford a home bigger than a breadbox. So back and forth, back and forth, back and forth I drove with babies in car seats, and bags of junk food on the front seat to sustain me during the long trips until one day when my mother tells me she can no longer “help” meaning instruct and boss around, her two special needs nephews, my first cousins. No one else in the family is able to help them. In our family they were always known as “The Boys” even as they crept through their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s never fully developing into MEN. Oh, physically they were bigger than most men, but emotionally, mentally, and in all other ways they would remain children. So now my mom wants me to be like that character in the “Incredibles” where I stretch my long arms from one side of the needy family all the way around to the other. I had to insist my mother hire a “caregiver” to help her if she wanted me to help “The Boys.” And she agreed.
Her building was filled with women from the Philippines who were working as care givers for residents, some came and went, and a few actually lived there. One day I got in the elevator, turned to the first caregiver I saw and said, do you know anyone who needs work? No problem. The network these women have established would put any United States Government Jobs program to shame. Within 24 hours I was waiting in the Lobby of Lincolnwood Place to meet the woman who was going to change my life.
It was too good to be true. When I asked her for her full name, address and phone number so I could know how to write out the checks I almost fell over laughing. She handed me her drivers license and it said “Bonita”. I looked at her and said “we have the same name” the difference of the one letter no longer seemed important. My mother was replacing one Benita with another. What were the chances after spending a lifetime looking for people who had the same name as I did, I found one and she is helping me take care of my mother, the woman who gave me this name. Was it a coincidence or the Celestine Prophecy at work?? “I like to be called Bonnie” she said after I wrote all the information down. “Of course you do” I said and smiled as we strolled to the elevator together so my mom could meet her new “Bonita.”
.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
280 Days Until the Big Five-0
What's in a name?
I know I am lucky right now. I am getting a chance to spend precious time with my mother because I am fully aware of where we are right now even if she is not. I am being given full warning to make the best of every last moment. It may be weeks or months, but it is no longer some vague thought buried under the debris of millions of memories. I am about to become an orphan at the tender age of 49 or 50.
I was much older when I got married. It was not what I wanted but it happened that way. Looking back I can understand why. I simply was not ready to set my mother free from her worries of losing one more person in her life. Even if my moving out was not nearly as final as death, to my mother just the thought of not having me there created an anxiety I hated seeing. Her fear of abandonment was justified and all consuming. It started so young for her. Her life, like a Dickens novel, was full of tragic escapades and remarkable recoveries all revolving around her undeniable resourceful strong personality. The same personality saved her, her children, and in many cases friends and relatives. It is difficult to be the daughter of someone with so much personality and determination. I lost my identity long ago when I realized most people never called me by my own name. Since I was a young child, with the exception of my own friends, to the rest of the world I was “Becky’s daughter.” I often introduced myself that way and still do. Sometimes I forget my own name. When I first become an orphan I will still be Becky’s daughter to many people, but eventually that number will dwindle. I know many people say:
I am “fill in name’s” mother, wife, son, friend etc.
Their own names disappear in the shadows of their roles in life as someone else’s parent, spouse, or child. But my other roles as a wife, mother, cousin or friend all seem to be merely supporting cast slots behind the starring role of being Becky’s daughter.
Lately I have been wondering if being “Becky’s daughter” was not so much about who I was “not” as opposed to who I was. I had long resented being overshadowed by my mother and her needs. Perhaps instead of looking at the name as an act of losing my identity, I should view it as a way of finding it. I had my own name and my own needs. Hell, Becky gave me both the strange name and the need to be heard over her loud life. I wanted to be me, Benita Esther Kirshenbaum. I got so frustrated by most people referring to me as Becky’s daughter that I eventually started signing my full name everywhere, in year books, on cards, on the backs of photos. My friends always knew I was Benita Esther Kirshenbaum. I was staking my claim in this world. I wanted to own my identity. Now I realize being “Becky’s daughter” is my own identity even more so than being Benita Esther Kirshenbaum and I wonder what I will be when I am no longer Becky’s daughter.
I know I am lucky right now. I am getting a chance to spend precious time with my mother because I am fully aware of where we are right now even if she is not. I am being given full warning to make the best of every last moment. It may be weeks or months, but it is no longer some vague thought buried under the debris of millions of memories. I am about to become an orphan at the tender age of 49 or 50.
I was much older when I got married. It was not what I wanted but it happened that way. Looking back I can understand why. I simply was not ready to set my mother free from her worries of losing one more person in her life. Even if my moving out was not nearly as final as death, to my mother just the thought of not having me there created an anxiety I hated seeing. Her fear of abandonment was justified and all consuming. It started so young for her. Her life, like a Dickens novel, was full of tragic escapades and remarkable recoveries all revolving around her undeniable resourceful strong personality. The same personality saved her, her children, and in many cases friends and relatives. It is difficult to be the daughter of someone with so much personality and determination. I lost my identity long ago when I realized most people never called me by my own name. Since I was a young child, with the exception of my own friends, to the rest of the world I was “Becky’s daughter.” I often introduced myself that way and still do. Sometimes I forget my own name. When I first become an orphan I will still be Becky’s daughter to many people, but eventually that number will dwindle. I know many people say:
I am “fill in name’s” mother, wife, son, friend etc.
Their own names disappear in the shadows of their roles in life as someone else’s parent, spouse, or child. But my other roles as a wife, mother, cousin or friend all seem to be merely supporting cast slots behind the starring role of being Becky’s daughter.
Lately I have been wondering if being “Becky’s daughter” was not so much about who I was “not” as opposed to who I was. I had long resented being overshadowed by my mother and her needs. Perhaps instead of looking at the name as an act of losing my identity, I should view it as a way of finding it. I had my own name and my own needs. Hell, Becky gave me both the strange name and the need to be heard over her loud life. I wanted to be me, Benita Esther Kirshenbaum. I got so frustrated by most people referring to me as Becky’s daughter that I eventually started signing my full name everywhere, in year books, on cards, on the backs of photos. My friends always knew I was Benita Esther Kirshenbaum. I was staking my claim in this world. I wanted to own my identity. Now I realize being “Becky’s daughter” is my own identity even more so than being Benita Esther Kirshenbaum and I wonder what I will be when I am no longer Becky’s daughter.
281 Days Until the Big Five-0
"Try to Remember the kind of September when life was slow and oh so mellow..."
My mother could not remember an address yesterday. It was not just any address, it was “ours”, hers and mine. My mother lived in many places over her 90 years but she spent the longest stretch in a building she bought with my father with money they borrowed from their sisters, my Aunt Ruth and my Aunt Lonia. Before we sold the building I emptied every drawer and cabinet. I found paper bags filled with black and white photos. I spent hours putting them in albums and asking my mother questions so I could fill in the facts of her life. I wrote down names and addresses and memories of events and stories. I wrote down how all the people were related to my mother and me. My mother remembered everything. She knew all her addresses from birth on and wrote them down somewhere. She could recall where other people lived and where she bowled with the team from Terry Sportwear, or why her own mother was standing in front of a train station with packages. She remembered weddings, funerals, bad tempers, funny expressions. I did my best to record it all. I did not want to rely on my memory. It was never as good as my mother’s memory. She loved elephants and there tons of ceramic elephants filling her apartment. Aren’t elephants known for having good memories? Was that her connection to this large animal she found so beautiful?
Once all the pictures were placed, I carefully took the albums back to my own home for safe keeping. Now I bring them to her in the nursing home hoping to jar her once iron clad memory. She reads the stories I wrote next to the pictures and I can see a faint smile and I say a silent prayer, remember Becky, remember your cousin who called you silly names. Remember Becky, remember the little boy you took care of whose mother owned the bakery where you had to go to work when you were only 10 years old. Remember Becky, the address of the building where this woman is gazing out of the first floor window, she was your best friend at the time. Her name is May. She is still alive Becky. You two still talk. And I think, May has no idea where Becky is now or what is happening. Now it is February, but soon spring will come and mother’s day is in May. My mind leaps from the picture of the woman named May leaning out of the window and into the green grass of spring and I don’t know if I will be with my mother on mother’s day this year. I want to gently kiss her wrinkled face, as wrinkled as an elephants skin and say Happy Mother’s day, just in case we are not together then, but I don’t want to jink myself so I fight back the tears and I find the strength to put a smile on my face for Becky so that is what she will remember and think about someday is me smiling. I got that strength from her. It is part of being Becky’s daughter.
My mother could not remember an address yesterday. It was not just any address, it was “ours”, hers and mine. My mother lived in many places over her 90 years but she spent the longest stretch in a building she bought with my father with money they borrowed from their sisters, my Aunt Ruth and my Aunt Lonia. Before we sold the building I emptied every drawer and cabinet. I found paper bags filled with black and white photos. I spent hours putting them in albums and asking my mother questions so I could fill in the facts of her life. I wrote down names and addresses and memories of events and stories. I wrote down how all the people were related to my mother and me. My mother remembered everything. She knew all her addresses from birth on and wrote them down somewhere. She could recall where other people lived and where she bowled with the team from Terry Sportwear, or why her own mother was standing in front of a train station with packages. She remembered weddings, funerals, bad tempers, funny expressions. I did my best to record it all. I did not want to rely on my memory. It was never as good as my mother’s memory. She loved elephants and there tons of ceramic elephants filling her apartment. Aren’t elephants known for having good memories? Was that her connection to this large animal she found so beautiful?
Once all the pictures were placed, I carefully took the albums back to my own home for safe keeping. Now I bring them to her in the nursing home hoping to jar her once iron clad memory. She reads the stories I wrote next to the pictures and I can see a faint smile and I say a silent prayer, remember Becky, remember your cousin who called you silly names. Remember Becky, remember the little boy you took care of whose mother owned the bakery where you had to go to work when you were only 10 years old. Remember Becky, the address of the building where this woman is gazing out of the first floor window, she was your best friend at the time. Her name is May. She is still alive Becky. You two still talk. And I think, May has no idea where Becky is now or what is happening. Now it is February, but soon spring will come and mother’s day is in May. My mind leaps from the picture of the woman named May leaning out of the window and into the green grass of spring and I don’t know if I will be with my mother on mother’s day this year. I want to gently kiss her wrinkled face, as wrinkled as an elephants skin and say Happy Mother’s day, just in case we are not together then, but I don’t want to jink myself so I fight back the tears and I find the strength to put a smile on my face for Becky so that is what she will remember and think about someday is me smiling. I got that strength from her. It is part of being Becky’s daughter.
Monday, February 22, 2010
282 Days Until the Big Five-0
Geometry, What’s In a Name
If A = B and B = C than A = C. I hated math and loved Geometry. I never thought of Geometry as Math and maybe that is why. We get so caught up in Labels. We give things names, whether it is a subject in school, “History” “Social Studies”, a place, our neighborhoods, West Rogers Park, Humboldt Park. We cannot find a book in the store or in the Library if it does not have a title. We have to give everything a “name” and the name becomes a label and the label eventually becomes more than just a representative, or a way to find something. A name in a phone book leads us to a person but it also leads us to a feeling, an impression and can determine the direction in which we may approach something or someone. If I had really thought of Geometry as Math, I would have given up before even trying. I knew I was bad at “math”. It started in Fifth Grade. For anyone who has read this Blog you may recall at one point I was writing about my travels through school chronologically. I began in kindergarten and got all the way through 4th grade where I stopped but promised to pick up again one day. I am not ready to cover that heavy topic, but a portion of it had to do with my coming face to face with a full blown math phobia. My dysfunctional relationship to the subject of Math all began in Fifth Grade but it did not end there.
When I was a freshman in High School I managed to escape Algebra without failing because the teacher knew less than most of the students. Then, in my second year of High School I had to take Geometry. The teacher had a reputation for being tough, but good and she was. But, the topic did not fit neatly into the “math” label I was use to applying. And I started loving Geometry. I simply decided for myself that Geometry was more philosophy than math. It was about relationships and the numbers were simply little annoyances one had to deal with when figuring out theories. I believe it is called Cognitive Dissonance (a term I learned in a Psychology 101 class in college). I found my way around the Math label and the rigid mindset within which it had imprisoned me and I kicked ass in Geometry.
Then Junior Year, I nearly failed out of Trigonometry. You see, I got cocky and thought since “ometry” was part of the name that Trig would be like Geometry and I could continue to excel in this area. I guess this is why I am not an etymologist. I cannot trust my linguistic analysis to lead me in the correct direction. After realizing Geometry and Trigonometry had little in common, I lost faith in my language skills as well. No more spelling bees for me. Not to mention, I had nearly failed Honors English my freshman year. Another day, another label, another blog entry…
If A = B and B = C than A = C. I hated math and loved Geometry. I never thought of Geometry as Math and maybe that is why. We get so caught up in Labels. We give things names, whether it is a subject in school, “History” “Social Studies”, a place, our neighborhoods, West Rogers Park, Humboldt Park. We cannot find a book in the store or in the Library if it does not have a title. We have to give everything a “name” and the name becomes a label and the label eventually becomes more than just a representative, or a way to find something. A name in a phone book leads us to a person but it also leads us to a feeling, an impression and can determine the direction in which we may approach something or someone. If I had really thought of Geometry as Math, I would have given up before even trying. I knew I was bad at “math”. It started in Fifth Grade. For anyone who has read this Blog you may recall at one point I was writing about my travels through school chronologically. I began in kindergarten and got all the way through 4th grade where I stopped but promised to pick up again one day. I am not ready to cover that heavy topic, but a portion of it had to do with my coming face to face with a full blown math phobia. My dysfunctional relationship to the subject of Math all began in Fifth Grade but it did not end there.
When I was a freshman in High School I managed to escape Algebra without failing because the teacher knew less than most of the students. Then, in my second year of High School I had to take Geometry. The teacher had a reputation for being tough, but good and she was. But, the topic did not fit neatly into the “math” label I was use to applying. And I started loving Geometry. I simply decided for myself that Geometry was more philosophy than math. It was about relationships and the numbers were simply little annoyances one had to deal with when figuring out theories. I believe it is called Cognitive Dissonance (a term I learned in a Psychology 101 class in college). I found my way around the Math label and the rigid mindset within which it had imprisoned me and I kicked ass in Geometry.
Then Junior Year, I nearly failed out of Trigonometry. You see, I got cocky and thought since “ometry” was part of the name that Trig would be like Geometry and I could continue to excel in this area. I guess this is why I am not an etymologist. I cannot trust my linguistic analysis to lead me in the correct direction. After realizing Geometry and Trigonometry had little in common, I lost faith in my language skills as well. No more spelling bees for me. Not to mention, I had nearly failed Honors English my freshman year. Another day, another label, another blog entry…
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
283 Days Until the Big Five-0
On or about July 12, 2009 I started a countdown to my 50th Birthday thinking perhaps becoming a half a century old would provide me with material, motivation and a clear finish line I could cross instead of the imaginary ones I easily create and destroy when I fail to cross over them. I will fulfill. I just never knew what dream I was supposed to be fulfilling. Should I become a teacher, a writer, a mother, a comedienne? Hell, I do all those things in my daily life. I simply don’t do them for money or recognition. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a sound? One of the world’s greatest puzzles from my youth and I still have not figured it out. Is the silence killing my soul? Do I need applause, an audience, a pay check validating that what I am doing has some monetary value? Is “monetary” the only thing of which I consider a true measure reflecting the value of an act, an idea, a product? I want to write a book of questions because that is all I seem to have these days. No one has the answers and if they do they are hiding them in the trees in a forest far away where the trees fall over and no one is listening to them.
How many more days will I have with my mother? How many more days will my mother have here on this earth? How many more memories will fade from the light in her eyes? How many small smiles are left as she grabs for those memories disintegrating in the depths of her mind. "I don't want to lose my mind." She repeated this over and over again during the last several decades as the arthritis ate her bones and the diabetes choked her arteries. She sleeps in a wheel chair and she use to look at old people sleeping in wheel chairs and say, "oy, that is so sad, at least I still have my mind." Now I watch her sleeping, her head falling back and the small oxygen lines wrapped around her face and tucked behind her ears and I want to pour my soul into her to wake her up and say, "you are still here Becky, with me, wake up, call me a name, boss me around some more." I am not use to her being so frail. This mountain of woman who made me. I am but a cave at the bottom, empty and dark.
I lean my head over and wait for her to gently stroke my hair. I have never been affectionate with her even though she wanted me to be. I needed space, physical space of my own because she had always taken up so much of my emotional space. Now,she is content to simply sleep in her wheel chair. My emotions are all for me. The air is escaping and I am trying to compensate by eliminating the physical space between us. I hold her crooked, black blue hand. She is so bruised all over. It is as if all the pain she always talked about from her wretched childhood and horrible marriage is surfacing. She can no longer hide it behind the sparkling personality that once commanded everyone's attention at Bingo or while playing Kaluki. Her personality is slowly sinking deep into the darkness with the memories. How much longer? What am I counting down to now?
How many more days will I have with my mother? How many more days will my mother have here on this earth? How many more memories will fade from the light in her eyes? How many small smiles are left as she grabs for those memories disintegrating in the depths of her mind. "I don't want to lose my mind." She repeated this over and over again during the last several decades as the arthritis ate her bones and the diabetes choked her arteries. She sleeps in a wheel chair and she use to look at old people sleeping in wheel chairs and say, "oy, that is so sad, at least I still have my mind." Now I watch her sleeping, her head falling back and the small oxygen lines wrapped around her face and tucked behind her ears and I want to pour my soul into her to wake her up and say, "you are still here Becky, with me, wake up, call me a name, boss me around some more." I am not use to her being so frail. This mountain of woman who made me. I am but a cave at the bottom, empty and dark.
I lean my head over and wait for her to gently stroke my hair. I have never been affectionate with her even though she wanted me to be. I needed space, physical space of my own because she had always taken up so much of my emotional space. Now,she is content to simply sleep in her wheel chair. My emotions are all for me. The air is escaping and I am trying to compensate by eliminating the physical space between us. I hold her crooked, black blue hand. She is so bruised all over. It is as if all the pain she always talked about from her wretched childhood and horrible marriage is surfacing. She can no longer hide it behind the sparkling personality that once commanded everyone's attention at Bingo or while playing Kaluki. Her personality is slowly sinking deep into the darkness with the memories. How much longer? What am I counting down to now?
Monday, February 8, 2010
284 Days Until the Big Five-0
Why is it more fun to read about writers than it is to write? Is it like watching porn? Do you see something you simply know you would never engage in, yet it seems both fascinating and titillating. I guess that is what fantasies are for and perhaps the fantasy of writing something, a book, a play, a poem a memoir, seems so much more rewarding than the actual process. So should I fantasize my life away? I think I should. And furthermore, while the actual writing is slow and painful, trying to get anyone else to read it is ever more painful. Trying to get something published has got to be really hard, and I am adverse to hard work.
So, let’s say I write a story, and when I am done I like it enough to share it for some reason. Perhaps I want to share it so I can have other people tell me they like it. Okay, now I have it written, I read it, I convince one other person to read it, and they encourage me to “do” something with it. This is the scene in the porn flick where the sexy utility man shows up to fix my phone, computer, refrigerator, libido, whatever. Something is going to get connected. But suddenly the projector breaks down (is my age showing, do they still use projectors?). You see, to get anything published you have to do the paper work, the research, the fine tuning, revise first draft, second draft, revisie second draft, third draft, typing and re-typing and formatting and spell checking and grammar checking. No wonder sex seems so over rated. Because it cannot be like that porn film with a good looking utility guy and a bored housewife whose body looks even better AFTER giving birth to two or three kids. No, the hard work of publishing, is like the hard work of marriage, hell it takes all the joy and passion out of the words if I have to make them go to work for me and bring home the bacon. I just want that fleeting fantasy with no risk, no consequences, and plenty of multiple orgasms. So I guess my writing becomes more like masturbating. It is not a lot of fun, relieves a little tension, can be done alone, and in my case in less than 2 or 3 minutes. I am sure it is different for guys, but they have their own porn fantasies and I would look shitty in a white nurse’ uniform so I think I will just stick to my own little world of words. This way I get to be the director as well as the writer. Thank the lord none of my appliances have broken down lately, because I know only to well what the repairman really looks like.
So, let’s say I write a story, and when I am done I like it enough to share it for some reason. Perhaps I want to share it so I can have other people tell me they like it. Okay, now I have it written, I read it, I convince one other person to read it, and they encourage me to “do” something with it. This is the scene in the porn flick where the sexy utility man shows up to fix my phone, computer, refrigerator, libido, whatever. Something is going to get connected. But suddenly the projector breaks down (is my age showing, do they still use projectors?). You see, to get anything published you have to do the paper work, the research, the fine tuning, revise first draft, second draft, revisie second draft, third draft, typing and re-typing and formatting and spell checking and grammar checking. No wonder sex seems so over rated. Because it cannot be like that porn film with a good looking utility guy and a bored housewife whose body looks even better AFTER giving birth to two or three kids. No, the hard work of publishing, is like the hard work of marriage, hell it takes all the joy and passion out of the words if I have to make them go to work for me and bring home the bacon. I just want that fleeting fantasy with no risk, no consequences, and plenty of multiple orgasms. So I guess my writing becomes more like masturbating. It is not a lot of fun, relieves a little tension, can be done alone, and in my case in less than 2 or 3 minutes. I am sure it is different for guys, but they have their own porn fantasies and I would look shitty in a white nurse’ uniform so I think I will just stick to my own little world of words. This way I get to be the director as well as the writer. Thank the lord none of my appliances have broken down lately, because I know only to well what the repairman really looks like.
28Five Days until the Big Five-0
Why bother...? really I have only placed 100 posts on this sad little lonely site. I have fewer visitors than the Island on that television show "Lost". I am reminded of one of my favorite Simon and Garfunkle songs, "I am an Island, I am a Rock". Oh, I know the Blog is not a living thing like a chunk of land with trees and bugs and animals. Writing is dead. The words cannot really come alive. The paper is just part of a dead tree, and that is only if I have chosen to actually print it out. Otherwise, the words I am watching unfold on my computer screen will simply disappear from my eyes when I hit "publish" or "save". I am self publishing a electronic diary for the world to see and no one in the world really gives a shit. Oh, maybe my husband will look at this and get worried thinking these are the words of a depressed woman or my sister-in-law will continue her quest to encourage me, but who else will ever really see this. Hell, I could be writing porn for that matter. Maybe then I could get an audience.
If I don't print it out than what happens after I have moved on to write something else or simply read, a far better option if it is quality I am interested in. Oh, I am just feeling sorry for myself today. I am doing laundry. I would rather be doing something else. I am not really "doing" laundry anyways, the washer and dryer are. I am just loading and taking things out of machines much like I am with this blog. But instead of putting in dirty clothes and taking out clean ones I am putting in boring words and taking out air. See, if I don't print this on paper, then really I am just using up air. Using vital oxygen for these empty words to travel aimlessly through space and time. These words are simply partilces too small to be seen by the human eye.
I think my mother is dying and it is scariest, lonliest, saddest place I have ever been, out here in space with these words, invisible to the world. I wish someone could see us, me, my words, my mother, our dreams disappearing. I hate myself for leaving her side today but I told myself I needed a break to attend to my laundry, and my kids. I spent the morning procrastinating, reading in between loads of light and dark clothes and thoughts.
If I don't print it out than what happens after I have moved on to write something else or simply read, a far better option if it is quality I am interested in. Oh, I am just feeling sorry for myself today. I am doing laundry. I would rather be doing something else. I am not really "doing" laundry anyways, the washer and dryer are. I am just loading and taking things out of machines much like I am with this blog. But instead of putting in dirty clothes and taking out clean ones I am putting in boring words and taking out air. See, if I don't print this on paper, then really I am just using up air. Using vital oxygen for these empty words to travel aimlessly through space and time. These words are simply partilces too small to be seen by the human eye.
I think my mother is dying and it is scariest, lonliest, saddest place I have ever been, out here in space with these words, invisible to the world. I wish someone could see us, me, my words, my mother, our dreams disappearing. I hate myself for leaving her side today but I told myself I needed a break to attend to my laundry, and my kids. I spent the morning procrastinating, reading in between loads of light and dark clothes and thoughts.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
286 Days Until the Big Five-0
In order to become current with this blog so I am truly only 286 days away from turning FIFTY tomorrow, I will need to enter over 100 separate blog postings between now and midnight. I wonder if I can do that. I guess if I made a bunch of short entries and worked diligently throughout the day, I might actually succeed. But would it be any fun to read or would it be a load of rushed crap thrown in so I could feel I am accomplishing the task I set out to when I first began. Not to mention, I would then need to type something every day from tomorrow until July 11th to stay current. But would those entries be fun or poignant, captivating, exhilarating, or some other positive adjective I can dig up from the bowels of my brain? Should I go for quantity over quality, or neither one? Maybe I should just keep pace with the slowskies, those adorable Turtle Spokes ”persons” for that company whose name I cannot recall (so much for their effective advertising, I remember the gimmick but not the company name). I can simply stroll through time and internet space without thought to achieving my original goal which would closely resemble the rest of the way I have managed my life, aimlessly, ditching goals when they go from being motivators to nasty reminders of my lack of discipline. I remember wearing a T Shirt in the early 1970’s that said “keep on Treckin or was it or was it truckin. I guess I could go look it up on google as a way to procrastinate.
Sometimes even being a slow poke takes a lot of time.
Sometimes even being a slow poke takes a lot of time.
287 Days Until the Big Five-0
I stopped writing. I had to. Every time I started to write something I started crying and I don’t like crying. I began this countdown to my 50th Birthday as a joyous adventure and a challenge to myself. I wanted to prove I could sustain a “writing life” worthy of sharing with others. Now, I find myself in the middle of quite a different countdown, the one I have spent 40 years fearing more than Dorian Grey may have feared viewing the painting of his soul dripping over the canvas in all its wretchedness. I find myself counting down the days I have left on this planet with my mother. I soothe myself with silent meditations reaffirming my own emotional strength and the knowledge that she and I are of one soul so we can never really be far apart in a metaphysical sense, only in this solid earth-binding form we have found ourselves in. Mind over matter I tell myself. I can handle this.
I got more time with my mother than most people do. She is ninety. Over the last month, I have had at least 3 doctors tell me “no one lives forever”, and while they are saying it I smile at them to reassure them I have not gone over the deep end. I am a practical realistic woman. I don’t need the miracles they can’t provide. I know no one lives forever. I knew that when I was 8, and again when I was 9 and again when I was 11 and again and again and again over the last 4 decades. The epiphanies are popping up almost daily now. I find them like nuggets of gold in a California river waiting to be sifted through and saved in a pouch on my hip.
It seems impossible, but my best friend, yes, the one I met on the way to kindergarten finds her father in the same Rehabilitation/Nursing facility as my mother. We think perhaps it was divine intervention. Our dark humor comforts us and gives us respite in between our on-going analysis of the situation, our lives, our parents lives. We are like a little epiphany manufacturing plant churning out insights to help us manage the treacherous terrain we are trekking through on our way to our own meeting with mortality.
Epiphany #1: My best friend and I have parents who are part of the Generation that survived the Great Depression, World War II, the suppressed 1950’s and the outrageous 1960’s. Now, they are the first to benefit from Modern Medicines ability to keep them alive well into their 80’s and 90’s. Our parents saw their parents die in quite a different way, usually in the blink of an eye. I guess I think about Life Expectancy rates a lot more than most people. But how long each individual lives has nothing to do with that great graph charting how long most people born in the year 1919 or 1923 or 1928 are expected/going to live. After all accidents happen, my dad died before he ever hit 60 and so did my mother’s sister. Yet, so many of the Great Generation are now taking the life expectancy line higher and higher. And as they climb through the years in greater numbers they show us how difficult it is to grow old, really old. They endure so much, physical pain, the diminished capacity of their senses, the ever increasing desires to travel back in time, or the wading through the reservoir of regrets they are leaving in their wakes as they slowly inch forward in time.
I hate seeing my mother in pain. I hate hearing her lament how she never finished high school or went to college. I hate listening to the constant calling out for her long lost family and friends, “Rutka, momma miner, Ruthie, Bernice, Pa.” That is her moaning mantra while she tries in vain to connect with those dearly departed who she expects to be seeing when she leaves me. I can’t let her go just yet, and she can’t let go either. We are both clinging to that imaginary life preserver as the ocean turbulently turns and twists us trying desperately to separate us both from each other and the white circular ring tucked under our arms and chins with our heads tilting toward the sky and our mouths hanging open sucking in each breath we can find without any letting any water down our throats. The ocean is threatening to drown us. Funny, I was born two days before her 41st birthday. We shared everything including our astrological sign of Cancer, a water sign. Yet, my mother never put on a bathing suit in her entire life and never learned how to swim. I am afraid of water after a bad experience as a young child at the pool inside the JCC on Touhy Avenue. I guess it is just another one of those ironic plot twists I am suppose to remember and incorporate into one of the many books I will never write.
I have always been writing, if not on paper, or a computer, inside my own head in invisible ink along the pathways between my brain and my heart where my soul rides endlessly back and forth, back and forth. I remember writing about how angry I was at my mother because she was always just “treading” water, “keeping her head above water” was how she always phrased it. I wanted her to move, to swim across the vast ocean and get to the land, the promised land where our dreams were waiting to come true. Didn’t she know how special we were? Wasn’t life meant to be more than just surviving? Weren’t we supposed to be thriving and succeeding and beating the odds?. I never gave her credit for what she had accomplished. I remained unsatisfied and often angry about what we did not have or do. Thus the water metaphor kept popping up in my journal. My mother was someone who was “simply” treading water and not actively swimming through life. And it made me mad, at her and at myself I guess as I mimicked her existence in almost every way.
Now I can see how I got that attitude from her. She was always confused about who she was and sending out mixed messages: “Don’t you mess with me, I am no fool” and then “I am stupid idiot”. Or. “I hate myself” and then “she is no better than I am, I am just as good as the next person”. The “she” could have been any number of wealthier, better educated women. I could never figure it all out, which was it. I guess she never really knew her self. So over the years, while she was saying to herself, “why didn’t I graduate from High School?” I was saying to her, “why didn’t you go out and get a job after daddy died or learn how to drive, or lose weight and find another husband?” But we were both wrong. My mother is a monument to wisdom and strength she just never got to believe in herself. Funny, I seem to be suffering from the same affliction. If we believe in ourselves, really believe, than we are only a moment away from realizing our dreams. After all, Bob Dylan had a horrible voice, but he did not let that stop him. He believed in himself. Abraham Lincoln lost election after election, but he did not let that stop him. He believed in himself. The world is filled with examples of people beating the odds, their own limitations, their bad circumstances and still finding a way to their dream. They owned their own destinies by creating their own dreams and then pursuing them with vim and vigor.
My mother wanted to put three kids through college. That was always what she said her goal was. That was her dream, but she said she wanted to do it to prove something to my dead father and perhaps the rest of the world, finding redemption for her own insecurities by seeing each of her progeny with a Diploma. Oh good lord, my mother is the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. But I still wonder, didn’t she have any dreams just for herself? Did it ever dawn on her to go back to school, and get a Diploma? How could she with three kids to steer. She had responsibilities to her children and she was going to live up to them even if it meant never finding her own dreams. What did my mother want for herself all those years while I was growing up? I know, a good game of cards, a night out with friends, traveling, bingo, going out to eat. No yearning for stardom or unbridled success nagged at her heart. She was a member of the Great Generation that knew it was simply all about surviving. I hope it will not be too late for me to learn that lesson. I guess that means I need to keep writing, treading water so to speak.
I got more time with my mother than most people do. She is ninety. Over the last month, I have had at least 3 doctors tell me “no one lives forever”, and while they are saying it I smile at them to reassure them I have not gone over the deep end. I am a practical realistic woman. I don’t need the miracles they can’t provide. I know no one lives forever. I knew that when I was 8, and again when I was 9 and again when I was 11 and again and again and again over the last 4 decades. The epiphanies are popping up almost daily now. I find them like nuggets of gold in a California river waiting to be sifted through and saved in a pouch on my hip.
It seems impossible, but my best friend, yes, the one I met on the way to kindergarten finds her father in the same Rehabilitation/Nursing facility as my mother. We think perhaps it was divine intervention. Our dark humor comforts us and gives us respite in between our on-going analysis of the situation, our lives, our parents lives. We are like a little epiphany manufacturing plant churning out insights to help us manage the treacherous terrain we are trekking through on our way to our own meeting with mortality.
Epiphany #1: My best friend and I have parents who are part of the Generation that survived the Great Depression, World War II, the suppressed 1950’s and the outrageous 1960’s. Now, they are the first to benefit from Modern Medicines ability to keep them alive well into their 80’s and 90’s. Our parents saw their parents die in quite a different way, usually in the blink of an eye. I guess I think about Life Expectancy rates a lot more than most people. But how long each individual lives has nothing to do with that great graph charting how long most people born in the year 1919 or 1923 or 1928 are expected/going to live. After all accidents happen, my dad died before he ever hit 60 and so did my mother’s sister. Yet, so many of the Great Generation are now taking the life expectancy line higher and higher. And as they climb through the years in greater numbers they show us how difficult it is to grow old, really old. They endure so much, physical pain, the diminished capacity of their senses, the ever increasing desires to travel back in time, or the wading through the reservoir of regrets they are leaving in their wakes as they slowly inch forward in time.
I hate seeing my mother in pain. I hate hearing her lament how she never finished high school or went to college. I hate listening to the constant calling out for her long lost family and friends, “Rutka, momma miner, Ruthie, Bernice, Pa.” That is her moaning mantra while she tries in vain to connect with those dearly departed who she expects to be seeing when she leaves me. I can’t let her go just yet, and she can’t let go either. We are both clinging to that imaginary life preserver as the ocean turbulently turns and twists us trying desperately to separate us both from each other and the white circular ring tucked under our arms and chins with our heads tilting toward the sky and our mouths hanging open sucking in each breath we can find without any letting any water down our throats. The ocean is threatening to drown us. Funny, I was born two days before her 41st birthday. We shared everything including our astrological sign of Cancer, a water sign. Yet, my mother never put on a bathing suit in her entire life and never learned how to swim. I am afraid of water after a bad experience as a young child at the pool inside the JCC on Touhy Avenue. I guess it is just another one of those ironic plot twists I am suppose to remember and incorporate into one of the many books I will never write.
I have always been writing, if not on paper, or a computer, inside my own head in invisible ink along the pathways between my brain and my heart where my soul rides endlessly back and forth, back and forth. I remember writing about how angry I was at my mother because she was always just “treading” water, “keeping her head above water” was how she always phrased it. I wanted her to move, to swim across the vast ocean and get to the land, the promised land where our dreams were waiting to come true. Didn’t she know how special we were? Wasn’t life meant to be more than just surviving? Weren’t we supposed to be thriving and succeeding and beating the odds?. I never gave her credit for what she had accomplished. I remained unsatisfied and often angry about what we did not have or do. Thus the water metaphor kept popping up in my journal. My mother was someone who was “simply” treading water and not actively swimming through life. And it made me mad, at her and at myself I guess as I mimicked her existence in almost every way.
Now I can see how I got that attitude from her. She was always confused about who she was and sending out mixed messages: “Don’t you mess with me, I am no fool” and then “I am stupid idiot”. Or. “I hate myself” and then “she is no better than I am, I am just as good as the next person”. The “she” could have been any number of wealthier, better educated women. I could never figure it all out, which was it. I guess she never really knew her self. So over the years, while she was saying to herself, “why didn’t I graduate from High School?” I was saying to her, “why didn’t you go out and get a job after daddy died or learn how to drive, or lose weight and find another husband?” But we were both wrong. My mother is a monument to wisdom and strength she just never got to believe in herself. Funny, I seem to be suffering from the same affliction. If we believe in ourselves, really believe, than we are only a moment away from realizing our dreams. After all, Bob Dylan had a horrible voice, but he did not let that stop him. He believed in himself. Abraham Lincoln lost election after election, but he did not let that stop him. He believed in himself. The world is filled with examples of people beating the odds, their own limitations, their bad circumstances and still finding a way to their dream. They owned their own destinies by creating their own dreams and then pursuing them with vim and vigor.
My mother wanted to put three kids through college. That was always what she said her goal was. That was her dream, but she said she wanted to do it to prove something to my dead father and perhaps the rest of the world, finding redemption for her own insecurities by seeing each of her progeny with a Diploma. Oh good lord, my mother is the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. But I still wonder, didn’t she have any dreams just for herself? Did it ever dawn on her to go back to school, and get a Diploma? How could she with three kids to steer. She had responsibilities to her children and she was going to live up to them even if it meant never finding her own dreams. What did my mother want for herself all those years while I was growing up? I know, a good game of cards, a night out with friends, traveling, bingo, going out to eat. No yearning for stardom or unbridled success nagged at her heart. She was a member of the Great Generation that knew it was simply all about surviving. I hope it will not be too late for me to learn that lesson. I guess that means I need to keep writing, treading water so to speak.
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