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Good times. Bad times. You know I've had my share.
--The Who
It's Christmas times. It's lots of times. It's, like, a whole season. I think it's like five weeks. But that's only shopping and the whole Christian American bit. There's a day, December 25, that is somehow representative of the birth of Jesus Christ. Lots of people know about the birth of Christ if they've read the Bible. I'll bet half the population of the world hasn't. I've read it.
I think holidays like Christmas are for little children. We get to tell them lies about Santa Claus and get them all excited. It's probably healthy for kids, except when you break the news that Santa isn't real.
The holidays for me are kind of depressing. (How many times have I heard that phrase from people, "I get depressed around the holidays"?)
Anyway, I like the Christmas lights, but I have to tell you why the holidays are depressing for me. Shhh. Don't tell anyone.
It reminds me of my family.
None of family are, or were, bad people. I love them all. But that kind of shit can make you mental.
Christmas reminds me more of the bad times than the good times because, for me, the bad times of my childhood outweigh the good times. And get this: It's nobody's fault. I feel guilty or whatever, but shit just happened. Most of it can be explained, but lots of times emotions get in the way of logic and reason. It's part of being human.
So there were lots of good times, but good times are not problems. Bad times are problems.
I'll try to tell you about one Christmas. Okay.
It's Christmas Day. My father
My father ... taking care of his wife ... his bride ...
his only true love ... see her ravaged by mental
illness ... years and years ... in and out of institutions ...
so much pain ... more than a decade ... 17
years ...
has driven my mother
So thin ... she looks so thin ... so scared. Tortured.
up from a psychiatric residential center. My younger brother
You saw all the horrors with me. Me and dad, we
tried to keep you sheltered. Lots of things went
wrong. I screwed it all up.
has flown in from New York.
And I have to be there. I think part of me is scared that the past could happen all over again. It happened all over again for a lot of years, over and over. My mother would usually be extremely mentally ill (psychotic, bipolar disorder), if not hospitalized, during the holidays.
But I have to be there or it will break my mother's
heart. I must be there to see her for the first time
in months.
I've been trying to live my own life, trying to recover from the horror of her illness, and now I'm forced to see her, to think about her very consciously, instead of in the background of my very existence.
That's all I'll say about that particular Christmas Day, but I did take a picture that day. As it turned out, it was the last family photo ever taken. I had brought my camera and tripod. Maybe I sensed the end was near. It's an important photo now, I think.
I don't know what I'll be doing this Christmas, but I'll probably be alone. My father is in England, my brother is in New York. Mom's been dead for what seems like 10 years, but is really quite a bit less.
So because it's the holidays I put up the Christmas lights in the window of my flat and I listen to parts of the soundtrack from the movie "Heat." I listen to the main theme and to a song on the soundtrack called "Mystery Man." I put them on repeat and lean back and think about the past. I think back. Way back.
I remember the time S.C. was over and we were hanging out in the kitchen. Mom had been depressed for months in bed so I figured it was okay to have S.C. over. She wouldn't even know, probably. But the corner of my eye caught, through the glass panes at the front of the house, walking down our long driveway in her bed clothes, heading for the sidewalk, my mother, almost down to the apple tree.
I got to her after she already had crossed the road and was heading down the street. I put my arm around her and turned her around, coaching her back to the house. Her eyes were so lit. There's something about a person's eyes when they're psychotic. You can almost see that they are not seeing things normally, whatever normal is. But they get a certain brightness to them, even if the eyes are glazed or whatever. Anyway, it's something you learn to pick up on when you spend a lot of time hanging around psychotics.
I get these flashbulb memories usually when they're connected with things I was ashamed of. I was ashamed of my mother, but not angry at her. I didn't want my friends to know that my family wasn't "normal." I thought I'd lose my friends.
I was 12 at the time of Mom's first hospitalization, but looking at my own notes, especially a diary entry from nearly a year earlier, I realized something was wrong. My father made a business decision in January 1982 to work in Strasbourg, France, for six months. He brought us along for the ride. We arrived in Strasbourg when I was 10 years old (I turned 11 that spring), and we took a trip to Italy just prior to leaving Europe in June. Here is an excerpt of my diary entry for Monday, June 7, 1982, when I was 11 years old.
When we got there (to Florence) we arrived at a big square and then got a hotel (we were pursued by pocket-book snatchers all the time and looked out our hotel window to see them following other people with money). Later on we ate dinner with several people following us all the way to the restaurant and went back to the hotel and looked out the window ...
Now I see clearly. And looking back, part of me knew something was wrong. But part of me had to believe what my mother said.
It was very confusing.
I'm fairly certain my father said, in the hotel, that she was acting "paranoid." But I don't think either of us really understood anything about mental illness.
Before we left Europe, my mother wrote a form letter to everybody back in the U.S. I later saw copies of the letter. A paranoid and grandiose, and more or less psychotic, theme is present throughout. It was extremely embarrassing.
It's hard to remember what it was like before Mom got sick, except that it was safer. It was safer before we went to France. It was safer before I left the fifth grade and flew across the ocean, where everyone spoke a language I didn't understand and I had to start thinking about screams in the night.
It took me a long time to realize why I couldn't remember what it was like in the early years, before Mom got sick.
I can't call you anymore. I can't call you and cry,
and tell you I'm sorry, and tell you I love you. But
I do. I can't remember what you were like when I
was very young, and now I know why:
It's because we were one.
We were a team. We were on the same wavelength. My father and brother were on the other side: Earth people. Our whole lives, Mom and I were different than them. There was just something different. I think we knew more about the truth about life. The problem with Mom was the degree to which it terrified her, and when she got sick with bipolar disorder, the fear grew and grew. She became the most frightened person I've ever known.
She was a poetess. She started writing and publishing around the same time of her mental collapse. This is pretty common for writers. Anyway, I took no interest in her work until after she died. I think this was because of my need to distance myself from her.
Until I started looking, I had no idea how much she'd written.
Mommy, you left it behind for me to see. It's 6 a.m.
and I still can't sleep. I took it from dad's house in
the middle of the night. Folders and folders, stacks
of folders. Five Hundred Poems. You wrote about
me. Your life, spilled out on paper, typed on the old
typewriter Daddy got in Boston. I remember,
before you got sick, how I'd listen to you type
Daddy's papers. So fast. So fast. Then you started
poetry. There's so much ... years and years, and
now I'm putting it all together. It's so hard. I wish I
could have known you better, but I had to keep safe.
You wrote most of them in triplicate, with carbon
paper between the sheets. I sent copies to your sister.
I republished your book already. They called
me on your birthday and said they were running
the presses. I'm sorry, mommy. I'm sorry I didn't
visit you much after you left home. But I went to
college and I learned about life. Then I went to
work and I wrote, like you. It's hard with you gone.
I'm glad I called you, I'm glad I cried on the
phone, on the Mother's Day before you died, and
said I was sorry, and said I loved you. You used to
tell me to have a good cry, when I came to your
room at night. It's so hard to read your poetry, but
when I'm done I'll know. I'll know I've done something good.
I gave copies of your book to Talking
Leaves in Buffalo, and the owner said he'd try to
sell them. He remembered you from long ago,
when you first published it and from when you used
to go in there to browse around. I'm sorry I didn't
come to your poetry readings. Last year, I got in a
fight with Daddy and I told him your poetry was all
you left behind. He said no.
You left me, too.
He was right. I'm your son. You're my love. You're my life.
Uncovering and organizing my mother's writings for publication was one of the most painful chores of my life. At first, I couldn't look at any of it, and then suddenly I began, and I was driven. I'd work through the night. I wasn't sure if I was doing the right thing--contacting her old friends, hunting down people with whom she'd had correspondence.
I had a girlfriend once, and she told me I was smiling while I was asleep. I found that very odd until one particularly difficult day. I had been working on it around the clock and I hadn't really slept in days. I fell asleep in the evening and woke up just after midnight, and I couldn't get the smile off my face.
I had been dreaming about one of my part-time jobs, about my friends there, about cracking jokes with one of my best friends, Peter. I had been dreaming about the people who knew me and loved me. I walked into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I started crying, but for once I didn't turn away. I watched myself cry, and I said one phrase, and I meant it.
"Live your life."
It was on that day that I became friends with myself again. I knew I was doing the right thing. I can't lie to myself in my dreams.
But getting my mother's poetry together, and republishing "Descended From Whales," was a priority after her death. There's a certain sense of immortality connected with literature. Maybe I wanted to make sure she was not forgotten. But it is painful. I see things.
It was hard to let me go, mom. I know. I know
because you wrote it all down. You wrote it in
one of your first poems, when I was 11 years
old. It's not one that will make your name
famous. You were just starting out. But it's an
important one to me.
A COVENANT
(For Ronnie -- 1982)
On your changing table
I thought you a snow-white god
And I was glad you were a boy.
One whimper and I'd offer a breast-
Full of miraculous milk.
(Oh God, don't let this be another
Madonna and Child painting!)
I wonder why the highlight
Of my life is a function
That any mammal can perform?
It was the eyes--yours gazing into mine
With no desire to turn away;
A magnetic pull into the souls,
Perhaps? (You don't get that feeling
With the bottle!)
Folding laundry, tucking you in
Over the years; undoubtedly,
I watched too much Sesame Street.
(By the way, I'm sorry for
The few scoldings and spankings,
But even God had days
When he regretted his kids!)
I cross the kitchen
Put my arms about your neck;
You pull away. Is it these lines
Come on me suddenly?
I know you won't leave me
For a younger mother, though you'll
Leave me. One more bodiless love
For my contemplation!
These days you make your own
Tunafish sandwiches--
Even better than mine!
You used to play the cello
But now, hard rock blares
From your room, night and day.
I've set the bow across your cello
In the attic, where it collects dust,
And when I look at it up there
I'm disappointed, but recalling
Our past battles over practicing
Remember, I'm on your side now.
Dad schooled you in science;
Now you want to be a writer.
In these days of so many
Suffering under the delusion
That they have talent, it will be hard,
But I'll help you all I can.
And I'll try not to live
Any longer
Through your boy's body!
She saw it. I became a writer, just like her. I remember how excited she was when she got her first check for a poem in The Buffalo News. It was only $20 and I didn't care at the time, but now I understand. When I got my first check as a freelance writer for the News, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that someone cared about what I had to say. I'm glad she saw me become a writer, even if I was just a newspaper reporter.
Merry Christmas.