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Instant Replay
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Do you suppose there are really families out there where
they gather round roaring fireplaces or linger over
remains of hearty meals at much-used dining room
tables and smile tenderly at each other? Are there
siblings that stroll down autumn-leave-strewn country
roads, arm in arm, reminicsing about how great growing
up together was? Are there Mothers and Daughters that
sit quietly over coffee and share a good laugh or a good
cry over the awkward moments of growing up and leaving
home?
I wonder that sometimes.
What's left of my immediate family gathered over the
rinds of a Pizza-Hut special round an old
second-hand dining room table in a mobile (ah...excuse
me, modular) home in Florida just a few weeks ago. My
sister and I and Mother. I was reminded that my family
does not meet any of the preconceptions about close-knit
families. I am not sure whether I am
jotting this down in lament for or justification of
that fact. But, there it is.
...
For one thing, the only time we seem to gather is when
we are circling the wagons after some family tragedy,
or marshaling ourselves for inter-nicene battle.
Otherwise, we may co-habit, but steer clear of contact.
Actually, we prefer to "habit" separately and as far
away as possible. But, circumstances being what they are,
we spent the better part of five days together and the
only time that we really settled down together was the
night we had the "big rowe".
There we were, Penny and I, toe to toe...face to face,
literally screaming at each other. My God, how
embarrassing. I am 40 and she is 45...and we are
screaming like three year-olds. With about as much
intelligent content. She about my spoiled nine year old
and I about her obnoxious 4 year old. Both points true
and untrue and totally irrelevant. Nine year-olds "will"
be spoiled upon occasion and four year-olds are by
definition "obnoxious". We could just as well have been
arguing that it was unfair for the sun to rise in the
east and set in the west.
The minute the airlines clerk told Nils that our plane never
took off from Newark I should have seen disaster coming.
Rather than spend the night in La Guardia
waiting the 12 hours for the next flight, we opted to
spend an extra night with Mother in Florida.
Bad choice. Much as I hate airline terminals, we should
have flown to-Atlanta-to-Newark-to-New-York...et al.
Everybody's "lets-hold-it-together" quotient
was set for our leaving on that day. There was no room
for error and no patience left on anyones' part when we
returned, baggage in hand.
The vagaries of travel and staying with relatives while
on vacation aside; the real horror of this little
[relatively speaking] tirade was that I have had it a
hundred times before. Regardless of that fact, I had it
again...with as little control as I ever had.
I had it when I was 5 and she was 10. That time she
dropped the old iron-ringed bedspring on top of me
and I screamed myself blue in the face until Daddy
finally heard me and came to lift the metal contraption off me.
I had it when I was 10 and she was 15 and I made a
wisecrack about her date for the movies. That time she
threw a hand mirror at me which I didn't duck fast
enough which resulted in several stitches and no movie
date.
And I had it three weeks ago in Florida. The old "same
time, same channel" routine hurts too much for words. I
watched the hateful verbiage hurtling out of me with as little control
at keeping them back as someone vomiting a badly passe'
noon meal. The output had about the same reek to it;
and left me with the same shakes.
...
As for walking down quaint pathways with my sister
we did take a walk around the "adults only park".
(Funny how a phrase like that at one point in ones' life seems
to indicate an initiation into the hidden mysteries of
sex and how at a later point indicates the absence of
[at least] the result of such activity...children)
It was anything but quaint. I am reminded of a lost piece
of lyric from somewhere when I was about ten that went:
...little boxes on the the hillside
little boxes made of ticky-tacky...
...and we all get put in boxes
and we all come out the same...
It was a place that small children could have spent
their entire childhoods being lost in. (As good a reason
as any I guess to exclude them on a regular basis) The
neatly trimmed roads wound with no reason this way and
that between seven versions of the same modular home in
a variety of five colors. I was there for five
days and drove everyday; and missed Mother's driveway
each of those days because it looked like all the other
driveways until you were by it far enough to see her
Maine license plate.
I still haven't figured out how Mother managed to get
the correct drive every time. Some homing instinct
perhaps? The answer is probably something I don't want to know.
What we did on our "stroll" was discuss how much longer
we thought Mother would be able to take care of herself and how
we were going to handle the situation if the inevitable
did not out-run the irretrievable. Death being so much
cleaner than incapacity.
Even this conversation was riddled with family
cliches. We could hear Daddy saying...
"If she gets bad enough I will put her away...and that
will be that."
This about his Mother. She chose to will herself to
death rather than face that epithet, but Mother...for
all that she is more independent than Margaret has not
a fraction of Margaret's determination.
We heard ourselves saying...
"If she gets to that point we will just have to put her
in a home. At least she has the financial resources to
handle that...for awhile anyway."
When did *she* become *it*? Since when do I do something
*to* someone and not in conjunction *with* except under
extreme duress? Why didn't we sit and talk to
her about her wishes if such a thing should happen? Was
it because (as we, no doubt, told ourselves) we didn't
want to threaten her already seemingly tenuous hold on
reality? Or, was it because (more likely) we didn't have
the strength of purpose to face her as a person with
this changing-of-the-guard subject?
Or was it (terrifying but a real possibility) because we
do not see her as a person? Indeed she is Mother; but I
have never seen her as Faith. Have we spent so many
years being held in comparison to what-a-good-daughter-should-be
that we are returning the favor by seeing her only as
what-we-have-to-do-about-Mother?
And as for discussing the "wonder years of growing up"
the less said the better. We stood in mutual distrust
and dislike of each other until the day when I was 13
and she was 18 and she left for college. We stood in
guarded neutrality when I was 14 and she 19; when she
left for California to marry Jack. I did not see her
again for ten years and (I feel terribly callus saying
this) did not miss her or having a "sister" until I met
her again as an adult. I harbored not even the slightest
empathy for her until she forged her way though a messy
divorce.
Even today, she is a person that I love but not one that
I like. We are vastly different people; our values are
different, our lives are different, our dreams are
different. The things that make me smile bring no
answering grin from her; the things that make her cry
are unfathomable to me. We are strangers who happen to
have the same parents. We understand and respect the
biological link that binds us and we attempt to give it
its due. But we lack any other attracting force. We
admit without guilt that if we met as strangers the best
possible reaction we would draw from each other would
be dismissal. More than likely, we would experience
immediate distaste.
...
The thought of sitting down with Mother for a cup of
coffee...for the fun of it seems a bit masochistic
to me. Like an infinite loop, Mother still spends her
time annotating the bits and pieces of her daughters that
need work. She spent our days together complaining that Penny's
bottoms were too short and my tops were too low. There was a brief
whimsical moment when we two suggested melding the
non-offending parts to produce the "suitable_daughter".
It ceased being whimsical when we realized that Mother might have
actually wanted that. It wandered over into hysteria
when we decided we could go the other way....the totally
"unsuitable_daughter".
And I truly do not understand the pain of leaving home. It was
freedom to me...long sought after and much cherished.
Until I made my own, home was where my parents fought;
my Father drank; my mother ineffectually "martyred". It was
never a place of refuge, only a place of residence.
...
The single unrehearsed event of the entire week took
place in the wee hours of Thursday. After Penny and I
had slept fitfully over the last heard epithets of our
Wednesday night brawl, we emerged from bedrooms to be
cornered by Mother.
"We have to talk." She says.
"About?" Penny is lighting a cigarette.
"My God! About what! You two said some awful things last
night. I can't have you leaving like that."
"Mel, are you still angry with me? Do you think I meant
any of what I said?"
"Nope."
I "was" angry about the fact the fight happened at all,
but I knew what she meant. I fully understood that the
content of the fight was irrelevant and devoid of
meaning.
"You are just like your Father! How can you do that?"
"Mother," We gave up and sat down. I tried for
understanding. "We were raised to do what we did last
night. We have been having the same fight for 40 years.
The content doesn't matter and never did."
"What...?"
Well, we spent two hours trying to make her see how we
"see" our world. We tried make her see that Daddy was an
addict even when he wasn't drinking; that his
personality was an addict's; that we had that
personality; that we warn our kids to watch out because
they carry the same genes; that start me on anything and
I may be hooked. Sure, it may not be alcohol or drugs
but it could be work or chocolate or science fiction
books. There is some major ingredient that directly
relates to "moderation in all things" that we obviously
lack. At least hope that the things we succumb to are
not overtly dangerous.
I doubt she really heard. In out past, when not documenting
faults that needed fixing, she spent time protecting her
privacy by re-writing current events. Daddy was not home
laying on the couch dead drunk; her was suffering from
the flu...and so on. I am not sure if she wants or
(honestly) even needs to admit any of this to herself or
to us. But we needed it. And at least we have once done
it in front of her if not "with" her. A start or sorts.
...
By Thursday night, going home was well past due. Home to where
instant replay means we get to see Bobby Allison crash
yet another time into the wall at Daytona in s-l-o-w
m-o-t-i-o-n this time, and tapes refer the closely guarded
copies of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" and "Batman"...
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At the risk of wandering from the topic...[but then it was MY topic so
perhaps Steve will forgive me...]
I just had to reply to the last reply...[talk about recursive..]
Anyway...
I once upon a time, many years ago, learned to write from one of the
greatest journalists of my era. A Pulitzer winner, no less.
I am not made of the stuff that he was; nor am I sure that I would wish
to be.
However, one thing he taught me that serves me well in all things I
do...not just writing...is that *magic* only happens when the
practitioner has done something enough times to make it *seem* to be
done without thought.
The observer then perceives *magic*. The practitioner then perceives a
job well done.
Too many who write [and even those of us who know better when we are in
a rush or just lazy] do not take the time to *build* what we write.
That is why I used the term "craft"...because building a good piece of
writing is much like building a piece of furniture. If you build it
with care and attention to detail and *love*...it will last a long time
and provide comfort; if you build it hastily and without thought and
little emotion...it will soon fall into dis-repair and may even give
splinters. [grin]
Anyway...I am preaching, forgive me. But I love to write.
Melinda
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| It's okay Melinda... seems I'm learning something new everyday...
But then I already suspected this part of it. That's why I keep
trying to get feedback on my writing... to learn HOW to build it.
I can see some of the shoddy materials in it but sometimes... it
seems you get lost in the writing and can't find the right parts.
Guess that is what was meant by one of my mentors when he said
"How do yo become a good writer?... simple... rewrite, rewrite,
rewrite, edit, store away, pull out and start all over again...
somewhere around the 2nd or 3rd time through if it's still shoddy
file it away for a longer period of time or through it away and
start from scratch."
I degress from the topic... "PAIN"
Standing by a roll up steel door and having the guy who now has
your job pull the chain while you are busy tying your shoe... having
said door slam down and bounce off the top of the same foot... I
now have a minor bruise on the top of my left foot... thank goodness
I was wearing steel toed boots... I'd hate to think about what would
have happened if I hadn't.... yuck!
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