Mom- Going Dead Inside is Hard to Watch
Dad’s suicide was a month before my Birthday (only two weeks from my brother’s). I can’t even describe how ridiculous it feels to have a birthday right after your dad dies. How could it possibly matter? I don’t have any specific memories of my birthday that year.
We moved back to Colorado and we lay to rest the freedom we found in Indiana. We stepped back into the SCRIPTs we came from, and added some along the way.
Tear it down to build it up
Mom bought a house four houses up the street from Grandma and Grandpa, so we still spent plenty of time there. The house had an unfinished basement, so Mom and Grandpa go to work erecting some walls and running electricity.
They built side-by-side rooms for my brother and I. They put in a toilet, and a tub, and that was as far as the basement ever got. There were plans of course. There were always plans. It’s just that every time somebody moved, they would ask my mom if they could store stuff in the basement, but they’d just leave the stuff. There was a room with a table saw and lumber that was just never touched again. I never used that tub. Not once.
The basement also had the laundry room and a kiln. With me being the person doing the laundry, the basement really stopped existing to anybody but my brother and I.
When we moved in it was apparent that my mom had been holding her breath the entire time we were living under Grandma and Grandpa’s roof.
When we first moved in the back yard was a dense patchwork of old elm trees, shrubs, and flowers. The whole back yard had maybe 5 square inches of sunlight that hit the ground.
Mom ripped it all out. She and Grandpa removed every single tree. We were giving away free firewood for a long time. The squirrels were traumatized, but we fed them through it. We had to. It was a condition to buying the house that we would continue to feed the squirrels, all of which were named Herman, which was later shortened to “Hermie,” by my sister.
The yard birthed new life, and Mom spent most of her time in the yard for the rest of the time I knew her.
She hated winter and despised snow. Actually, she wouldn’t even use the word, so she called it by anything else, while displaying her disgust with scrunched up nose. She loved the sun, and the heat, and being directly in it. Her skin was a dark brown, weathered from years of exposure. Every year it was remarkable, within the first few days of planting, how quickly she would darken.
There was no thought given to sunscreen and I’m still amazed she didn’t get skin cancer. I’m also amazed she didn’t get lung cancer from smoking 2-3 packs of cigarettes per day.
The best part of waking up
She drank coffee and I would make sure the coffee was made and her cup was poured before waking her up. We only drank Folgers.
She hated getting up. I had learned back when we were having sleepovers at Dad’s that it was worth my life to keep quiet in the mornings. That never changed.
There was no version of my mom who was happy in the morning. On her best days she would begrudgingly accept that her eyes had to be open with grunting grogginess. Other mornings she was downright bitchy. I tried to be helpful, or at least stay out of the way.
If you have been reading along, you may recall that Grandpa loved waking people up, and after he would get his breakfast in him, he’d jaunt up the street to come rile up Mom. The more reactive she was, the more he enjoyed it.
My job was to prevent that from happening, so on weekends I’d go to Grandpa’s before he could finish his breakfast, and I could usually either stall him, or get him started on something at his own house. If it was summer, Grandpa and I were usually out fishing when the sun came up, so she got a little reprieve there.
She and Grandpa installed automotive hoists for a living. She was strong. I mean she was like, really really strong.
Mom was generally a little thick. She had muscled hands with short fingers, a blocky torso, and a mean back hand. Her hair was thick enough to break the heavy duty pony elastics and snap brushes. The circumference of her pony tail was larger than the circle I can make with my thumb and forefinger.
Acquisitions
She was butchy. She wore men’s clothes and men’s shoes and she always had. She needed pockets, and the men’s jeans fit her hips better. Mostly, men’s clothes were more durable and suitable for the work that she did.
She hated lesbians and shopping. She had always faced allegations that she might be the sort to eat a mean taco, and she performed very clearly that she would have nothing to do with that. She did her fair share of gay bashing.
Not only did Mom hate shopping, she especially hated shopping for me. I was fat. Nothing fit me right. They didn’t make sizes or styles for me. I remember being ready to wear anything my mom would say yes to, just to get the shopping over. She was mad. She was mean. She reminded me of how fat I was and how difficult that made everything.
She would take me to the dressing rooms and while she’s yanking on my waistline she would mention how maybe I don’t need seconds all the time, or how it wouldn’t kill me to move my body a little. She let me know how embarrassing I was. She let me know how expensive I was. She let me know that I did not deserve the money she was spending on me. She told me how ungrateful I was.
“Oh, that’s cute! Too bad that would never fit you.”
“Well, I guess I’ll have to stay up tonight hemming everything.” She didn’t bitch about hemming my brother’s pants. She acted excited to have done as much for him. My clothes came with sneers.
Of course Mom knew how to sew, but she didn’t spend her time in it the way Grandma and I did.
She didn’t hate shopping for everything though. She loved shopping at fruit stands, and she found a produce market a town or two over that she fell in love with. It was a pretty big deal to go, and even Grandma who didn’t leave the house much at all would want to make the trip.
Turns out Heinie’s Market is still thriving. Yes. That’s Heinie.
She knew her way around the Home Depot and Walmart. She loved nurseries.
Sorting all sorts
Mom bred Cocker Spaniels, but they were always beloved pets. Nevertheless, they were papered and pedigreed, and we watched dog shows and stuff.
Mom despised poodles. As a matter of fact she got us all to say “Ew. It’s a poodle. Shoot it.” every time poodles were even mentioned. Every breed had a ranking to my mom, and the closer you came to agreeing with her ranking the more she would approve of you, much like the way that many groups of guys perform talking about cars.
Grandpa liked Britany Spaniels, and he outranked Mom, so really he gets a free pass anyhow.
Mom also liked Shih Tzus, Pomeranians, Pekinese, and Chihuahuas. Springer spaniels were also acceptable, and she respected the working dog breeds. If you chose one of these as the base of your preference list, you would get her approval.
If you wanted a slobbery breed you were disgusting. If you wanted a Pit Bull, you were an a$$hole. If you wanted a Chow Chow, Doberman, or Rottweiler you were an idiot. If you liked Poodles, you were persecutable.
Every breed had a judgement attached, and a SCRIPT to be performed.
Mom learned German, Russian, and Italian and she was salty that she had never gotten a chance to use them. Nevertheless, people who spoke multiple languages were better than everybody else, unless the second language was Spanish or French, then it didn’t really count.
Everything to be done, had to be done Mom’s way. She would explain why you were an idiot if you stacked the ice trays wrong, or if you tangled the extra long phone cord. She had lots of pet peeves.
She drank hot coffee and cold tea (unless she was sick, in which case a hot toddy was a go-to medicine). Therefore, anyone who didn’t drink coffee could be made fun of as well as hot tea drinkers, and soda drinkers. Mom never really drank juice again after Dad died. If she was consuming alcohol she preferred White Russians. That was not frequent.
Sports
She liked soccer, and my brother and I both played in a recreational soccer league. My brother went on to play in high school. Mom liked it so much she became a coordinator for the league as well as a referee. We would spend entire Saturdays at the fields when I was younger. That was before Dad, but we still went to watch my brother play in high school.
She didn’t like football and if you did you were a moron. Grandpa was allowed to like football, and to the extent that you were interacting with Grandpa it was fine, but discussion beyond that would receive eye rolls and sighs of disdain. She liked to say, “real men don’t wear pads.”
Entertainment
She liked oldies and country, which were all she allowed in the house. People who listened to heavy metal were criminals. People who listened to rap were also criminals, but they were also black. The word “thug” was thrown about. People who listened to disco were idiots. People who listened to Rock were traitors. She expressed her opinions about every type of music and the people who would listen to it.
She had an extensive record collection, which was the only thing my brother an I both fought over wanted when she would die. He felt like he deserved it because she loved him better. I felt like I deserved it because I loved the music so much.
She had soundtracks from Disney movies like “Lady and the Tramp.” George Strait was her favorite. She had several by Tennessee Ernie Ford, Elvis, Crystal Gayle, Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves and so many others. When she was in a particularly good mood she would play Ray Stevens or The Irish Rovers. She even had some that I have never been able to find again. (Specifically, I’m looking for the album by In Cahoots that featured “Parlangua,” “Dark Eyes,” and “The Trucker and the UFO.”
She was a much gentler human being when she was connecting with music, and it all reminded me of times when we would sing, and dance, and smile.
We were not allowed to touch her records so of course I played them every time I was left alone, and I would watch vigilantly for her to return, being surgically careful not to scratch any.
She loved “Footloose.” She also loved “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” “Planet of the Apes,” “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” and the television series “V.”
She preferred drive in movies, and we would always sneak in as much as possible. She would take a paper grocery bag and fill it up with home popped popcorn. We’d pack a cooler and blankets. It wasn’t often, but it was awesome.
I can remember falling asleep at the drive in watching “Top Gun” when I was little. We went to see Jurassic Park at the drive in when I was in Jr. High, and I was coming back from the bath room during the big T-Rex scene. It was a very good thing I had already relieved myself.
It’s really quite comical writing about it now, but for as much as she controlled the media that we interacted with as children, she despised censorship. She didn’t care if we watched R rated stuff, as long as we weren’t watching liberal stuff.
She was an avid reader, and escaping to the worlds in her novels was a life-saving coping mechanism for many years. She read everything by Steven King, (which again is really funny because there are distinct liberal tones to his work). She loved horror.
The Kitchen
Good gods that woman could cook.
Don’t get me wrong. Grandma was more than an adequate cook and she delivered more than her fair share of edible and even delicious meals to the table. If my mom had never come along, I might be writing that my grandma was a really good cook, (don’t think about the logistics of that for too long). There was something magic about my mom though.
She moved through a kitchen with instinct and purpose. Every motion wired into her nervous system. Automatic movements of knives yielded thoughtless precision. The knowledge of the the ancients embodied in her skill and you could TASTE it.
Her barbecued chicken was incredible, and it was my favorite when I was little. I’ve never met anyone else who made nachos like Mom. She would spread bean dip on each Tostitos brand corn chip, and top each chip with an individual square of cheddar. Then, most of the chips would be topped with jalapeños too.
I couldn’t eat the jalapeños until I was much older. Mom made sure I knew that my brother had been weaned on jalapeños and I was a sissy.
Everything she touched in the kitchen came out perfectly.
She found ketchup and steak sauce to be insulting. She herself liked A-1 steak sauce, but she’d flip her lid if someone didn’t taste it first. She taught us to always taste our food before adding anything. She taught me that a good chunk of my self worth would someday come from whether I measured up.
She delighted in making fun of my cooking attempts. There was a running SCRIPT that expected me to burn everything, so in response I would under cook it all to avoid being told I fulfilled their prophecy. I was also the one who did all of the dishes so I was afraid of burning things to the pans.
I come from hoarders, and I’m still fighting these tendencies to this day. Mom’s kitchen was cluttered. Every counter was stacked high. Drawers were stuffed too full to open. The kitchen table had a little spot that was mostly cleared off for Mom. There she kept her ashtray, and a few care items like nail clippers.
There was a small TV in the kitchen and mom would sit out there by herself to watch TV late at night. She loved “The X Files.”
We were not allowed to watch “The Simpsons,” “Ren and Stimpy,” “Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” or “Beavis and Butthead.” We did not have cable.
Cooking in this kitchen required using space that didn’t exist. By the time I was in high school, I was cooking most of the meals we ate at home. Mom would still cook if we went down the street, or if she wanted something special. Mostly, it was me feeding the girls while she worked in the yard.
She hated shoes. She told stories about refusing to wear shoes to school and not wearing them while driving. Now that I understand that my mom had Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, her dislike of shoes makes perfect sense. At the time it was quirky.
My mom was in pain.
She was in pain every single minute that I ever knew her. EDS is incredibly painful. It inflames your nerves, muscles, and connective tissues. Your joints are weak and prone to injury. Over use affects us faster. She had carpel tunnel and had so many days that she couldn’t sense her hands but still had to go work, lifting heavy stuff.
She fought her body a lot, and ate Aleve like M&Ms. She tried pain creams with emus, bees, and tigers. She read up on reflexology and acupressure. She tried teas and supplements.
We didn’t have insurance, and my family is relatively distrustful of Drs and government. Seeking answers takes money, and I can’t imagine her having good results back then, even though she was easily a 7-9 on the Beighton Scale. She would have just spent money and be told to take ibuprofen and Tylenol.
So mostly, she just had to suck it up and go to work every day, while grieving her husband and her autonomy. Everyone expected strength.
She gave us that.
With the passage of time she became increasingly bitter and distant. The day my dad died, she started a slow retreat into death that travelled through madness first. I didn’t know then, that I had lost them both.
Survivor Literacy 
What do you think?