I never wanted my mother’s profession, never. What would it be like to relive the last moment’s of a person’s life? I know, for she has told me; recounted moments, hours—of murder, rape, violation, and violence. Poured these channeled memories into my ear like poison into Hamlet’s father until I wanted to wretch and run from the room. Finally, I convinced her not to share her work with me. It took years! Perhaps she was compelled to repeat it as part of a personal exorcism of the day’s experiences. Maybe it was more a mindless, babbling release than true sharing. But I couldn’t get her to restrain herself.
I couldn’t bear to wade through those dark, fetid waters. That she chose to amazes me even now. She prided herself on her clarity, her clinical detachment. She was no empathetic, possessed medium, suffering and screaming as the victim struggled and bled, like some movies portray. She was a hovering presence, a moviegoer, watching, taking notes, gathering both facts and sensory perceptions—but removed. East. Spring. By that tree. Near that cliff. Within the sound of an old waterwheel. The crunch of gravel. The smell of fresh tar. Marks on the neck. The murder weapon.
It took its toll on her. Plunging into those cruel shadows of life and afterlife colored her own existence. She was wary, even blind, to the world’s beauty and kindness. She needed a watch dog. She kept her windows closed. She feared for me, her family, her friends, her cats. She couldn’t believe I slept with my windows cracked in summer. She slept with a gun beneath her pillow and another in her bedside table—a couple, actually, and various sprays. She began to watch the news channels obsessively, almost all day. She also read murder mysteries and watched cop shows—including the animal cops, which were even more distressing to me than the human shows. Always a heavy social drinker, she began routinely numbing her mind with booze and Advil at the end of every day.
It took years for her to see more darkness than light, but it happened. She fell into depression.
I choose not to live there. I prefer optimism and faith in the belief that most people attempt productive, loving lives: raise kids, feed their pets, go to work, garden, watch sunsets. Evil is real and I have personal knowledge of it, with scars to prove it. But I won’t let it color my days, shut my windows, darken the sunlight. I avoid horror and grim violence in movies. I will leave if a film gets too dark and stresses me out. Science fiction or action flicks are a bit more tolerable, because they're fantasy at their core.
My son’s tolerances have changed as well. He says it’s because he’s old enough to know that the world harbors such dark sicknesses for real, and he chooses not to experience it vicariously. There is a certain triumph in enduring horrific movies, I know, and the young—who imagine themselves invulnerable and immortal—can relish that accomplishment, perhaps. But I comprehend my own mortality too well and I don’t care for it.
In that aspect, mother’s more like them than me.
Ironically, for all her paranoia and fear, her sifting of the dark side, she never saw my own personal danger coming—and thus never warned me.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Dream
I've always been a vivid dreamer, and I've journaled many dreams, especially if they felt "significant." I think dream interpretation books are only partially helpful because we all possess a personal vocabulary inside ourselves. So the symbols used and the emotions we experience come from who were are and the meanings we connect to objects/events/people.
I found this dream in a larger document from 2007 and I include it here because I believe that many premonitions come in dreams. I also think we connect with others in ways we can't imagine, even while asleep.
I dreamt that all these beautiful antique pieces of furniture and objects, things that had been handed down through the family—even pieces I remembered from my childhood—were being removed from their long-term storage and put all over the yard and street in front of my house. It was gray and starting to rain. I was upset because they were going to be ruined and there was no place to store them in my house, which was already full.
I wandered through them, touching and remembering. A woman from across the street was picking up lovely throw pillows from a beautiful mahogany king size bed. I told her she could have them. I was sorry there was no room in my guest room, for it was such a beautiful bed. The storage man said some part of the contract had been violated and so the things were being thrown out.
People wandered through them, as if it were a garage sale, but no one violated anything or took anything. They just looked. Then, on a turn, the storage man said that now that all the pieces had been trotted out and put in my yard, he could take them all back again under a new contract. I could negotiate new terms. And my terms were to put them all in the moving van and arrange for them to be sold on consignment. I had no room for them. But at least they would be sheltered from the bad weather until they were sold.
Two years after I had this dream, I was laid off from my job at American Girl. I had to sell my house, store all my furniture—which includes antique pieces and hand-me-downs from family and friends—and move in with family in California. I lived there for a year, looking for work. In the end, I landed a long-term freelance job which allowed me to move back to Wisconsin and take my things back out of storage "under a new contract." They'd been sheltered from the bad weather of being laid off and homeless (eternal gratitude to my family) until I was able to "negotiate new terms" in my life.
Emotionally, I feel the loss of my king size bed, which I haven't been able to sleep in since I sold my house. The new place I rent only has room for the king bed in the basement guest room—which I don't use, myself. I sleep on the former guest bed upstairs.
I found this dream in a larger document from 2007 and I include it here because I believe that many premonitions come in dreams. I also think we connect with others in ways we can't imagine, even while asleep.
I dreamt that all these beautiful antique pieces of furniture and objects, things that had been handed down through the family—even pieces I remembered from my childhood—were being removed from their long-term storage and put all over the yard and street in front of my house. It was gray and starting to rain. I was upset because they were going to be ruined and there was no place to store them in my house, which was already full.
I wandered through them, touching and remembering. A woman from across the street was picking up lovely throw pillows from a beautiful mahogany king size bed. I told her she could have them. I was sorry there was no room in my guest room, for it was such a beautiful bed. The storage man said some part of the contract had been violated and so the things were being thrown out.
People wandered through them, as if it were a garage sale, but no one violated anything or took anything. They just looked. Then, on a turn, the storage man said that now that all the pieces had been trotted out and put in my yard, he could take them all back again under a new contract. I could negotiate new terms. And my terms were to put them all in the moving van and arrange for them to be sold on consignment. I had no room for them. But at least they would be sheltered from the bad weather until they were sold.
Two years after I had this dream, I was laid off from my job at American Girl. I had to sell my house, store all my furniture—which includes antique pieces and hand-me-downs from family and friends—and move in with family in California. I lived there for a year, looking for work. In the end, I landed a long-term freelance job which allowed me to move back to Wisconsin and take my things back out of storage "under a new contract." They'd been sheltered from the bad weather of being laid off and homeless (eternal gratitude to my family) until I was able to "negotiate new terms" in my life.
Emotionally, I feel the loss of my king size bed, which I haven't been able to sleep in since I sold my house. The new place I rent only has room for the king bed in the basement guest room—which I don't use, myself. I sleep on the former guest bed upstairs.
Tough Love
Being a psychic—or as my mother preferred to be called, a parapsychologist—involves developing a visual and sensual "vocabulary" to assist you with clients. It isn't easy, because all of us have our own reference points, drawn from our own lives and experiences. Red may represent anger to one person and romance to another; fat may mean 150 lbs. to you and 250 lbs. to me! You can use your own experiences to convey what you're seeing: "It reminds me of the time I lost my grandmother's bracelet—does that make sense?" or "Your relationship with this guy is kind of like eating Chinese food; you feel great for a little while, then you're starving again!"
Try describing a person to someone, and nine times out of ten, you won’t both see the same face; it’s even harder when describing emotions or circumstances, and most difficult of all when you’re trying to envision things for those whom you love best.
Mother would give me detailed information on a boyfriend I was going to meet—mainly because I badgered her constantly on the subject—but when I met him, he didn’t look the way I expected. He’d fit her description, but he wouldn’t appear the way I’d imagined. He’d end up having hazel eyes, blondish hair and a great build—but I’d have envisioned someone Patrick Swayze-ish and she’d have seen someone Robert Redford-ish. (Not that I can recall ever dating someone who looked like either of them!)
It's hard to push aside your personal desires and ambitions for a loved one—especially hard for the type-A control freak my mom was—and reach some kind of Master Shifu "inner peace" clarity that is willing to give you the bad news as well as the good. You want your children and your friends to be happy. So you end up being close but just off a bit. Or getting splinters of info that are correct but not the bigger picture (which nullifies the splinters).
She once described my wedding to me, down to the shape and size of the diamond ring, the pearl necklace I’d receive, and the family heirloom my mother-in-law would give me. She saw all the colors and flowers and people. She told me the time of year. And it came true, every single bit of it. But not for me. It was my best friend Kathy’s wedding, down to the peach-colored roses. She got married just three months before I did, and I was her maid of honor. (She was also mine.)
Of course, sometimes there’s no room for equivocation. . .
One summer, when I was eighteen, a fraternity came into town for the weekend. They ran an ad in the local paper asking for girls to act as blind dates for a formal dinner dance at a swank hotel. Since I was uninvolved at the time, I responded. In those days, I was an incurable movie-soaked romantic and life seemed one long search for the man of my dreams. I was approaching marriageable age, and I was all for it. My friends and I didn’t waffle over careers and professional fulfillment back then. Besides, I had seen my mother raise four kids, move a dozen times, throw hundreds of dinner parties, and run fashion shows for the officers’ wives clubs; I was under no illusion that being married was anything but a full-time job. (She did a lot of other things, too, but she always had more energy than I could ever muster!)
Anyway....The fraternity coordinator paired me up with a guy named Dave for the dinner dance, to take place on the following Saturday. Great. On Wednesday, Dave’s roommate Bob called and asked to go out with me Friday night. Even better! Things were looking up, romance was in the air, I had a new red cocktail dress. . .
I rushed eagerly into my mother’s room and asked her if Bob wasn’t going to be the most handsome, intelligent, sensitive, romantic, wealthy man I would ever go out on a blind date with and eventually marry?
“Uh, well. . .” was her reply.
This was not good.
“He’s sort of stocky, and built like a football player," she said.
Oh. I lusted after tall, willowy, poetic types back then. Musicians. Artists.
"His face is kind of round..."
I imagined Charlie Brown.
"And I don’t think he has a lot of hair on the top of his head. . .”
Well, shit. So no mop of thick dark hair falling over his collar. "You are looking at the right guy, aren't you?" I asked, breathless. "I mean, Mom—a bald college student? Really?"
Seeing my crestfallen face, she added, “He’s very nice, though, honey. And he’ll think you’re wonderful!”
"Okay. Thanks." All of a sudden, I did NOT want to know what Dave was going to be like!
I awaited Friday with all the enthusiasm of a hanging. Although, incurable as I was, I held out hope that Dave would be better than Bob, and that if all else failed, my perfect mate would be among the crowd somewhere, just waiting to meet my eyes across the dance floor—like in West Side Story.
I was upstairs putting on my makeup when the doorbell rang Friday night. Seconds later, my brother Chris (who has always possessed the tongue of an adder) gleefully stuck his head into the bathroom door.
“Your date’s here.”
I stopped brushing on mascara. “Well?”
Chris put two fingers up his nose and lifted, displaying large, round nostrils.
“Mom was right — he looks just like a pig!”
I groaned.
“Anything else?”
“He’s bald on top.”
“Please, stop. Go away.” Cackling, my brother did just that.
As it turned out, Bob was an awfully nice guy. Boring, but nice. I slapped on my best southern belle manner and told myself it was only for a night. Things improved when I met his roommate, Dave—a lean, green-eyed Georgia boy with a chiseled chin. Saturday would be worth the wait, then, I told myself.
Bob and I danced, sort of, and talked, kind of, and time passed as it always does. On the ride home I debated over whether or not to kiss him goodnight on the lips. Generosity was winning over rudeness when he turned to me and said, “I had such a good time with you tonight, I asked Dave if he’d mind swapping for the dinner dance. So we’ll get to go out again tomorrow night, isn’t that great?”
Generosity took a quick trip north and disappeared right out the top of my head, which was lifting off in outrage. (I was raised by a redhead, remember?)
“You did WHAT?”
My face must have changed radically, because he stared at it as if he’d never seen me before. My southern belle facade was replaced by the slit-eyed, hard-lipped expression of a sod-busting Oklahoma farmer’s wife with a bead on the first squirrel she’d seen in months.
“What gave you the right to do that without asking ME first?”
Bob did not get a kiss goodnight. Not then, not even later, when he called from the hospital to say he’d driven his car down the wrong side of a four-lane boulevard and crashed into a pole, as a result of his agitation at my anger. My date for the dinner dance was dressed in a white silk Nehru jacket, a gold chain and medallion, and a black eye. He had stitches on his head (fortunately, they hadn’t had to shave his hair) where he’d hit the windshield. He limped, so we couldn't dance. We spent the evening sitting down, with him looking as sad as a blond, balding pit bull who'd gotten the worst of a dog fight.
I hope—though I don't really remember—that I was at least courteous to that unfortunate young man. It wasn't his fault that he wasn't tall, dark, and poetic. Or that I was a romantic idiot.
As for Dave, if he'd been that keen about our date, he wouldn't have swapped me in the first place.
At least, in this case, Mom had been accurate about my future romantic prospects. It wasn't always so. She once described my wedding to me, down to the shape and size of the diamond ring, the pearl necklace I’d receive, and the family heirloom my mother-in-law would give me. She saw all the colors and flowers and people. She told me the time of year. And it came true, every single bit of it. But not for me. It was my best friend Kathy’s wedding, down to the peach-colored roses. She got married just three months before I did, and I was her maid of honor. (She was also mine.)
When my husband did eventually come along, Mom and I both wanted that romance to work out SO much that, even if she had misgivings (I did, and it didn’t stop me), they were undoubtedly overthrown by the happiness of the present moment and her wish to see me fulfilling my dreams.
Years later, when she had developed her intuition more fully and had tools to work with, Mom would use a chakra chart to illustrate to clients where they and their potential mates did and didn’t match up. Maybe if she'd had that tool when I met my mate, I could have avoided a tumultuous marriage and horribly painful divorce.
On the other hand, maybe not. Mom and I both adhered to the philosophy that life is full of lessons and choices, and we all make ours for a reason; even the relationships that don’t work out give us many vital things. I was given my son and he has been the light in my life. I wouldn't go back and change that marriage for the world, because we brought him into this world. And he, in turn, brought to us a lovely wife and wonderful grandchildren.
So even if my mother had told me the marriage was not going to succeed, I probably would have gone ahead, because it was what I WANTED at the time. We all have to pay the price for our desires. We all have to act out our parts and live a life. So I married R. and moved to England, just as psychic Bartie said I would. And if I remembered the rest of her prophecy—that I would remarry—I refused to let that daunt me. I still think maybe that’s the best way, the only way, to endure such knowledge.
Try describing a person to someone, and nine times out of ten, you won’t both see the same face; it’s even harder when describing emotions or circumstances, and most difficult of all when you’re trying to envision things for those whom you love best.
Mother would give me detailed information on a boyfriend I was going to meet—mainly because I badgered her constantly on the subject—but when I met him, he didn’t look the way I expected. He’d fit her description, but he wouldn’t appear the way I’d imagined. He’d end up having hazel eyes, blondish hair and a great build—but I’d have envisioned someone Patrick Swayze-ish and she’d have seen someone Robert Redford-ish. (Not that I can recall ever dating someone who looked like either of them!)
It's hard to push aside your personal desires and ambitions for a loved one—especially hard for the type-A control freak my mom was—and reach some kind of Master Shifu "inner peace" clarity that is willing to give you the bad news as well as the good. You want your children and your friends to be happy. So you end up being close but just off a bit. Or getting splinters of info that are correct but not the bigger picture (which nullifies the splinters).
She once described my wedding to me, down to the shape and size of the diamond ring, the pearl necklace I’d receive, and the family heirloom my mother-in-law would give me. She saw all the colors and flowers and people. She told me the time of year. And it came true, every single bit of it. But not for me. It was my best friend Kathy’s wedding, down to the peach-colored roses. She got married just three months before I did, and I was her maid of honor. (She was also mine.)
Of course, sometimes there’s no room for equivocation. . .
One summer, when I was eighteen, a fraternity came into town for the weekend. They ran an ad in the local paper asking for girls to act as blind dates for a formal dinner dance at a swank hotel. Since I was uninvolved at the time, I responded. In those days, I was an incurable movie-soaked romantic and life seemed one long search for the man of my dreams. I was approaching marriageable age, and I was all for it. My friends and I didn’t waffle over careers and professional fulfillment back then. Besides, I had seen my mother raise four kids, move a dozen times, throw hundreds of dinner parties, and run fashion shows for the officers’ wives clubs; I was under no illusion that being married was anything but a full-time job. (She did a lot of other things, too, but she always had more energy than I could ever muster!)
Anyway....The fraternity coordinator paired me up with a guy named Dave for the dinner dance, to take place on the following Saturday. Great. On Wednesday, Dave’s roommate Bob called and asked to go out with me Friday night. Even better! Things were looking up, romance was in the air, I had a new red cocktail dress. . .
I rushed eagerly into my mother’s room and asked her if Bob wasn’t going to be the most handsome, intelligent, sensitive, romantic, wealthy man I would ever go out on a blind date with and eventually marry?
“Uh, well. . .” was her reply.
This was not good.
“He’s sort of stocky, and built like a football player," she said.
Oh. I lusted after tall, willowy, poetic types back then. Musicians. Artists.
"His face is kind of round..."
I imagined Charlie Brown.
"And I don’t think he has a lot of hair on the top of his head. . .”
Well, shit. So no mop of thick dark hair falling over his collar. "You are looking at the right guy, aren't you?" I asked, breathless. "I mean, Mom—a bald college student? Really?"
Seeing my crestfallen face, she added, “He’s very nice, though, honey. And he’ll think you’re wonderful!”
"Okay. Thanks." All of a sudden, I did NOT want to know what Dave was going to be like!
I awaited Friday with all the enthusiasm of a hanging. Although, incurable as I was, I held out hope that Dave would be better than Bob, and that if all else failed, my perfect mate would be among the crowd somewhere, just waiting to meet my eyes across the dance floor—like in West Side Story.
I was upstairs putting on my makeup when the doorbell rang Friday night. Seconds later, my brother Chris (who has always possessed the tongue of an adder) gleefully stuck his head into the bathroom door.
“Your date’s here.”
I stopped brushing on mascara. “Well?”
Chris put two fingers up his nose and lifted, displaying large, round nostrils.
“Mom was right — he looks just like a pig!”
I groaned.
“Anything else?”
“He’s bald on top.”
“Please, stop. Go away.” Cackling, my brother did just that.
As it turned out, Bob was an awfully nice guy. Boring, but nice. I slapped on my best southern belle manner and told myself it was only for a night. Things improved when I met his roommate, Dave—a lean, green-eyed Georgia boy with a chiseled chin. Saturday would be worth the wait, then, I told myself.
Bob and I danced, sort of, and talked, kind of, and time passed as it always does. On the ride home I debated over whether or not to kiss him goodnight on the lips. Generosity was winning over rudeness when he turned to me and said, “I had such a good time with you tonight, I asked Dave if he’d mind swapping for the dinner dance. So we’ll get to go out again tomorrow night, isn’t that great?”
Generosity took a quick trip north and disappeared right out the top of my head, which was lifting off in outrage. (I was raised by a redhead, remember?)
“You did WHAT?”
My face must have changed radically, because he stared at it as if he’d never seen me before. My southern belle facade was replaced by the slit-eyed, hard-lipped expression of a sod-busting Oklahoma farmer’s wife with a bead on the first squirrel she’d seen in months.
“What gave you the right to do that without asking ME first?”
Bob did not get a kiss goodnight. Not then, not even later, when he called from the hospital to say he’d driven his car down the wrong side of a four-lane boulevard and crashed into a pole, as a result of his agitation at my anger. My date for the dinner dance was dressed in a white silk Nehru jacket, a gold chain and medallion, and a black eye. He had stitches on his head (fortunately, they hadn’t had to shave his hair) where he’d hit the windshield. He limped, so we couldn't dance. We spent the evening sitting down, with him looking as sad as a blond, balding pit bull who'd gotten the worst of a dog fight.
I hope—though I don't really remember—that I was at least courteous to that unfortunate young man. It wasn't his fault that he wasn't tall, dark, and poetic. Or that I was a romantic idiot.
As for Dave, if he'd been that keen about our date, he wouldn't have swapped me in the first place.
At least, in this case, Mom had been accurate about my future romantic prospects. It wasn't always so. She once described my wedding to me, down to the shape and size of the diamond ring, the pearl necklace I’d receive, and the family heirloom my mother-in-law would give me. She saw all the colors and flowers and people. She told me the time of year. And it came true, every single bit of it. But not for me. It was my best friend Kathy’s wedding, down to the peach-colored roses. She got married just three months before I did, and I was her maid of honor. (She was also mine.)
When my husband did eventually come along, Mom and I both wanted that romance to work out SO much that, even if she had misgivings (I did, and it didn’t stop me), they were undoubtedly overthrown by the happiness of the present moment and her wish to see me fulfilling my dreams.
Years later, when she had developed her intuition more fully and had tools to work with, Mom would use a chakra chart to illustrate to clients where they and their potential mates did and didn’t match up. Maybe if she'd had that tool when I met my mate, I could have avoided a tumultuous marriage and horribly painful divorce.
On the other hand, maybe not. Mom and I both adhered to the philosophy that life is full of lessons and choices, and we all make ours for a reason; even the relationships that don’t work out give us many vital things. I was given my son and he has been the light in my life. I wouldn't go back and change that marriage for the world, because we brought him into this world. And he, in turn, brought to us a lovely wife and wonderful grandchildren.
So even if my mother had told me the marriage was not going to succeed, I probably would have gone ahead, because it was what I WANTED at the time. We all have to pay the price for our desires. We all have to act out our parts and live a life. So I married R. and moved to England, just as psychic Bartie said I would. And if I remembered the rest of her prophecy—that I would remarry—I refused to let that daunt me. I still think maybe that’s the best way, the only way, to endure such knowledge.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Bedside Manner
By the time I was eighteen, my mother was charging people fifteen dollars to come and see her. The Navy had moved us to Virginia Beach, and Mom worked out of her upstairs bedroom. After a very brief attempt at trance mediumship—mother was always one for being in control, and she didn’t like snoozing off while others spoke through her—she developed her own ritual of holding people’s jewelry or looking at photographs of their family and friends, while illuminated by a single candle. The phone rang at all hours of the day and night with needy people looking for answers. I became a sort of quasi-secretary and started protecting Mom from her desperate clients; no one had answering machines in those days.
Virginia Beach was a fortunate place to live because it had an established subculture of believers in the occult. The Edgar Cayce Foundation had made a metaphysical mecca out of the area, as popular in its own way as San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. People burned incense and smoked marijuana, ate health food and searched for past lives, gave up the material for the spiritual. The smell of patchouli still reminds me of the second-hand clothes my friends wore. My particular concession to the trend was to wear Mom’s twenty-year-old fringed suede jacket and moccasins. I alternated this with very short skirts and a vinyl raincoat.
The advantage of the Beach was that we could share our psychic experiences without being considered insane. You still couldn’t tell everyone—this was the South, not Southern California—but there were plenty who understood. Mom, with her bloodline of Texas cowboys and tenacious Celts, and her background of Navy pilots, public relations, and modeling schools, brought a unique earthiness to the task. This would evolve into a clinical detachment later on, one that served her well when working murder and missing persons cases with the police.
Like Tonto, I was her faithful companion on this part of the paranormal journey. I attended lectures at the Cayce foundation, discussed reincarnation over seafood dinners and sat in on Mom’s sessions with friends and clients. I believed in her ability because I knew the person it stemmed from, and I had watched it grow over the years. But I also knew that I never wanted to be inundated with all these people coming to me for help. I was not going to follow in her footsteps, even though she often urged me to try. The responsibility of steering someone else's life through my own intuition felt like a heavy stone crushing my chest. What if I was wrong? What if they made bad choices—or worse, wasted their lives in futile dreaming—because of what I predicted?
One of the many who wandered into our path was Nick, a lantern-jawed young navy lieutenant who favored cowboy boots with almost any attire and drove a Volkswagen bug named Lambchop (after the Shari Lewis hand puppet of the time). I liked Nick, he was cheerful, funny, and a gentleman. We went out a few times, and while my heart wasn’t deeply committed, I enjoyed his company, especially on the weekends. So I was rather wistful when I told Mom that Nick wouldn’t be around one weekend because he was spending it in Washington, D.C.
Mother looked up from washing dishes in the sink (water is a great conductor of intuitive insights) and said, “Yeah, and I know who he’s spending it with! She likes to sleep on the left side of the bed.” I goggled at this intimate information (sex was always a subject of frankness and humor in our house) but it didn't cause me any significant pain. I was amused—and apprehensive; my mother was way too delighted with her insight and that probably meant she was going to needle Nick with it the next time we saw him.
Sure enough, when Nick came around for dinner two weeks later, she plopped that little clairvoyant tidbit right on the table. He went white to the eyebrows and choked on his spoonbread; when he finally cleared his windpipe, he admitted she was right. We went out a couple times after that, but Nick was never the same. One evening, we were sitting on the living room couch, snogging just below a portrait of my mother done by a local artist. It was an ephemeral rather than realistic representation, but the thoughtful expression in her green eyes followed you wherever you went. Between kisses, Nick would glance up at the portrait—and every time he did, he became more distracted. Finally he just stopped.
“I can’t,” he said, “I’m sorry, I’ve really tried, but I just can’t do this anymore. When I sit here, I feel like your mom knows what we’re doing. And her room is right above above us. For all I know, she’s watching us right now.”
I tried to explain that it didn’t work that way—although, in all honesty, it nearly did; I can’t tell you the number of times I tried to creep into the house after curfew, only to have Mom shoot out of her room and confront me from the top of the stairs. Her eyes were so piercing and angry, it felt like a rifle trained on my forehead. I could never argue any sort of innocence with her, either, because she always had a sense of what I’d really been up to. My brothers and I were probably saved from a lot of dangerous experimentation that way. Why bother, we’d say, when you know she’s going to catch you?
As for Nick, he pulled on his boots, saddled up Lambchop and putt-putted off into the sunset. He came by once or twice after that, before he was transferred, but he never kissed me like anything but a brother.
Virginia Beach was a fortunate place to live because it had an established subculture of believers in the occult. The Edgar Cayce Foundation had made a metaphysical mecca out of the area, as popular in its own way as San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. People burned incense and smoked marijuana, ate health food and searched for past lives, gave up the material for the spiritual. The smell of patchouli still reminds me of the second-hand clothes my friends wore. My particular concession to the trend was to wear Mom’s twenty-year-old fringed suede jacket and moccasins. I alternated this with very short skirts and a vinyl raincoat.
The advantage of the Beach was that we could share our psychic experiences without being considered insane. You still couldn’t tell everyone—this was the South, not Southern California—but there were plenty who understood. Mom, with her bloodline of Texas cowboys and tenacious Celts, and her background of Navy pilots, public relations, and modeling schools, brought a unique earthiness to the task. This would evolve into a clinical detachment later on, one that served her well when working murder and missing persons cases with the police.
Like Tonto, I was her faithful companion on this part of the paranormal journey. I attended lectures at the Cayce foundation, discussed reincarnation over seafood dinners and sat in on Mom’s sessions with friends and clients. I believed in her ability because I knew the person it stemmed from, and I had watched it grow over the years. But I also knew that I never wanted to be inundated with all these people coming to me for help. I was not going to follow in her footsteps, even though she often urged me to try. The responsibility of steering someone else's life through my own intuition felt like a heavy stone crushing my chest. What if I was wrong? What if they made bad choices—or worse, wasted their lives in futile dreaming—because of what I predicted?
One of the many who wandered into our path was Nick, a lantern-jawed young navy lieutenant who favored cowboy boots with almost any attire and drove a Volkswagen bug named Lambchop (after the Shari Lewis hand puppet of the time). I liked Nick, he was cheerful, funny, and a gentleman. We went out a few times, and while my heart wasn’t deeply committed, I enjoyed his company, especially on the weekends. So I was rather wistful when I told Mom that Nick wouldn’t be around one weekend because he was spending it in Washington, D.C.
Mother looked up from washing dishes in the sink (water is a great conductor of intuitive insights) and said, “Yeah, and I know who he’s spending it with! She likes to sleep on the left side of the bed.” I goggled at this intimate information (sex was always a subject of frankness and humor in our house) but it didn't cause me any significant pain. I was amused—and apprehensive; my mother was way too delighted with her insight and that probably meant she was going to needle Nick with it the next time we saw him.
Sure enough, when Nick came around for dinner two weeks later, she plopped that little clairvoyant tidbit right on the table. He went white to the eyebrows and choked on his spoonbread; when he finally cleared his windpipe, he admitted she was right. We went out a couple times after that, but Nick was never the same. One evening, we were sitting on the living room couch, snogging just below a portrait of my mother done by a local artist. It was an ephemeral rather than realistic representation, but the thoughtful expression in her green eyes followed you wherever you went. Between kisses, Nick would glance up at the portrait—and every time he did, he became more distracted. Finally he just stopped.
“I can’t,” he said, “I’m sorry, I’ve really tried, but I just can’t do this anymore. When I sit here, I feel like your mom knows what we’re doing. And her room is right above above us. For all I know, she’s watching us right now.”
I tried to explain that it didn’t work that way—although, in all honesty, it nearly did; I can’t tell you the number of times I tried to creep into the house after curfew, only to have Mom shoot out of her room and confront me from the top of the stairs. Her eyes were so piercing and angry, it felt like a rifle trained on my forehead. I could never argue any sort of innocence with her, either, because she always had a sense of what I’d really been up to. My brothers and I were probably saved from a lot of dangerous experimentation that way. Why bother, we’d say, when you know she’s going to catch you?
As for Nick, he pulled on his boots, saddled up Lambchop and putt-putted off into the sunset. He came by once or twice after that, before he was transferred, but he never kissed me like anything but a brother.
Premonition of Snow
Being a psychic's daughter means I have to contend with my own abilities, too. It's like hanging out with an artist or someone who knits. You explore your own talent for the activity because it's in your environment, your relationship. Mother always said everyone is psychic, just like everyone can play something on a piano. But not everyone is Mozart. Certainly not me.
I wrote this a couple years before I moved to North Carolina (for 18 months) and then Wisconsin (for many years). In both places, I had a full change of seasons and cold winters with snow (because I drove up to friends in the Blue Ridge many times while in NC). I knew this change was coming, I saw and felt it before it happened.
Changes are coming, in more ways than one. Moving is in the air—this time alone—as I feel a drive for new beginnings, on my own.
I have long given up on thinking there is someone for me; but I know if I stay here with Mom, there never will be. There is no energy left for anything besides my work and her. I am frightened of where I will land. I need my pets around me, an understanding place that will let me have them all. I need some room, a little garden, some greenery, close to work, with safety and peace. I need light and harmony.
Give it to me! I so richly deserve it.
But beyond this need...I feel a hint of snow in the air, that cold smell beneath grey skies. There are bare trees and snowflakes. Most of all, there are achingly beautiful Falls, with crispness in the air, and the vivid colors; the sharp pain of change, death in its cycle, the stirrings of flight and migration. Although the year is dying then, I always feel myself reborn. It is my birth time, and my time of poetry and song. It is the time of contrasting cold outside with snug warm houses and yellow lights. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Football. The joy of wine-rich air in your lungs.
This is not California, no no....this feeling has followed me for years now, urging me to go to Boston, to Vermont, to New Hampshire, to insane places where I would surely tire of the cold and slush and grey. But where and how and when?
Mother talks about moving to the mountains of Virginia. (Note: She never did.) But I will not move with her. I need distance, the more the better. I need my life back. She is careless, playing with and breaking us like toys in the hands of a willful child. I want my Christmas to be what it should me. I want to hear my own carols in my own heart, and feel the peace and beauty of that moment on my own, in my own way. My Tarot cards leave me trailing in a wilderness of mystery: currents and eddies, false breezes, uneasy dreams. I try to see but I cannot always see clearly. My scale is off; what I perceive as big changes are small ones, seen through a veil of intuition. There are shapes and skylines, money and men and friends...but I cannot gauge the horizon, guess their size. Is it a city in miniature, a small pile of dollars, a few good friends? Or is it wealth enough to make choices, the love of my heart, a tidal wave of major change? Where does the crisp golden sap of Autumn and the cold smell of snow come into my life? Where are the wool-coated arms with the outdoors and cologne and man smell on them, crushing me to his chest in playful passion?
Do we always realize our dreams or can we be snuffed out in the midst of them? Do those who stand on the brink of death still dream their dreams and have their hopes? Or do they waver, sensing some severance from their linear lives? I try to believe it all has pattern and purpose, but I do not know if that is simply the comfort one gives oneself or a universal truth.
I wrote this a couple years before I moved to North Carolina (for 18 months) and then Wisconsin (for many years). In both places, I had a full change of seasons and cold winters with snow (because I drove up to friends in the Blue Ridge many times while in NC). I knew this change was coming, I saw and felt it before it happened.
Changes are coming, in more ways than one. Moving is in the air—this time alone—as I feel a drive for new beginnings, on my own.
I have long given up on thinking there is someone for me; but I know if I stay here with Mom, there never will be. There is no energy left for anything besides my work and her. I am frightened of where I will land. I need my pets around me, an understanding place that will let me have them all. I need some room, a little garden, some greenery, close to work, with safety and peace. I need light and harmony.
Give it to me! I so richly deserve it.
But beyond this need...I feel a hint of snow in the air, that cold smell beneath grey skies. There are bare trees and snowflakes. Most of all, there are achingly beautiful Falls, with crispness in the air, and the vivid colors; the sharp pain of change, death in its cycle, the stirrings of flight and migration. Although the year is dying then, I always feel myself reborn. It is my birth time, and my time of poetry and song. It is the time of contrasting cold outside with snug warm houses and yellow lights. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Football. The joy of wine-rich air in your lungs.
This is not California, no no....this feeling has followed me for years now, urging me to go to Boston, to Vermont, to New Hampshire, to insane places where I would surely tire of the cold and slush and grey. But where and how and when?
Mother talks about moving to the mountains of Virginia. (Note: She never did.) But I will not move with her. I need distance, the more the better. I need my life back. She is careless, playing with and breaking us like toys in the hands of a willful child. I want my Christmas to be what it should me. I want to hear my own carols in my own heart, and feel the peace and beauty of that moment on my own, in my own way. My Tarot cards leave me trailing in a wilderness of mystery: currents and eddies, false breezes, uneasy dreams. I try to see but I cannot always see clearly. My scale is off; what I perceive as big changes are small ones, seen through a veil of intuition. There are shapes and skylines, money and men and friends...but I cannot gauge the horizon, guess their size. Is it a city in miniature, a small pile of dollars, a few good friends? Or is it wealth enough to make choices, the love of my heart, a tidal wave of major change? Where does the crisp golden sap of Autumn and the cold smell of snow come into my life? Where are the wool-coated arms with the outdoors and cologne and man smell on them, crushing me to his chest in playful passion?
Do we always realize our dreams or can we be snuffed out in the midst of them? Do those who stand on the brink of death still dream their dreams and have their hopes? Or do they waver, sensing some severance from their linear lives? I try to believe it all has pattern and purpose, but I do not know if that is simply the comfort one gives oneself or a universal truth.
Power Praying
I wrote this in 1993, when I was living with my mother in Northern California. My perspective is one of cynical bemusement...
My mother sits beneath the hairdryer in her bedroom and reads the bible. Sometimes when I pass the doorway, I see her beating mea culpa on her breast. It's an old signal, evoking early memories of Catholic ritual. It makes me uncomfortable because it dredges up my past, and because watching my mother do it seems faintly blasphemous.
I've thought about this a lot. My mother is not a devout woman. She doesn't go to church. In fact, her cynical attitude—coupled with some very unpleasant experiences of my own in Catholic school—stopped me from attending Mass years ago. So why is she doing this?
She's doing it because the house won't sell. She's in a real pickle, falling behind on her bills and the mortgage, and she will try anything. (This includes burying a statue of St. Joseph in the front garden, based on nebulous reports that several other people did it and “their houses sold right away.”) She's hoping God will have pity on her and save the day. If that means reading the bible, saying prayers and beating your breast, then so be it. It's a system, one that millions of Catholics have used for hundreds of years. When I realized that, my view of the woman under the hairdryer came back into focus.
My mother is a master at manipulation. She uses guilt like other people use power tools. I took me years to see her games coming down the road. Even when I was married for the second time, with a 9 year-old son, she could still push and twist and rotate my emotions into an explosion of rage and helpless self-condemnation.
She barters treatment, advice and prescriptions from a network of doctor friends. She gets first-class service at discount prices from the appliance repair man. She borrows money from a variety of well-heeled associates. This is more than guilt; most of these people are men, and there isn't any doubt that a chemistry's at work. Never mind that she's 65 or so, her beauty fading, her figure succumbing to gravity, alcohol and too much Hagen Daas. It isn't a physical thing. She exudes pheromones like a queen bee, and the drones buzz to the rescue.
This isn't her first return to the flock, either. Her last marriage was to a Catholic, but in order to get it sanctified and marry within the church, she had to confess that all her other marriages were bogus, because the Catholic church still doesn't recognize divorce. It meant denying a couple of husbands and most of her adult life. If I hadn't been so amused by the charade, I would have worried about my father's status. After all, he was her second husband, and if she was denying them all, then my brothers and I were illegitimate in the eyes of the church! But Mom has a deep-seated reluctance to acknowledge her first marriage—she was eighteen, it only lasted a couple of years—so she made the confession retroactive only as far back as her divorce from my father. The lie never bothered her, and she hung the hand-lettered certificate of absolution from the Pope on her bedroom wall.
All for nothing because the Catholic marriage failed, too.
Mother has a quick mind, and she's always worked the angle. If the ride resembled a roller coaster more than a limo, it was because she was impatient. She wanted things to happen right away, and screw the details. You grabbed some fame, you hit it big and you spent it all. Savings accounts were for wimps and tightwads.
As she's gotten older, this impatience with detail has transformed into a stubborn passivity. She's in dire straits, but won't call Social Security and start drawing on the money she deserves. She hobbles on a hurt foot, but won't take up her orthopedist friend's free offer of surgery. There's a complicated pattern of martyrdom going on here. I don't understand it, but it's another thing she's a master at. It serves her sense of perspective.
That brings me back to the hairdryer. Martyrdom is a subject Catholics are very big on. That, and giving over all your troubles to the arms of a large, bearded paternal figure. After four marriages, that's a concept she can understand.
Mom isn't really turning religious. She's just manipulating God. And if man was created in God's image, I'd say she's got a better than even chance of having him come through for her.
My mother sits beneath the hairdryer in her bedroom and reads the bible. Sometimes when I pass the doorway, I see her beating mea culpa on her breast. It's an old signal, evoking early memories of Catholic ritual. It makes me uncomfortable because it dredges up my past, and because watching my mother do it seems faintly blasphemous.
I've thought about this a lot. My mother is not a devout woman. She doesn't go to church. In fact, her cynical attitude—coupled with some very unpleasant experiences of my own in Catholic school—stopped me from attending Mass years ago. So why is she doing this?
She's doing it because the house won't sell. She's in a real pickle, falling behind on her bills and the mortgage, and she will try anything. (This includes burying a statue of St. Joseph in the front garden, based on nebulous reports that several other people did it and “their houses sold right away.”) She's hoping God will have pity on her and save the day. If that means reading the bible, saying prayers and beating your breast, then so be it. It's a system, one that millions of Catholics have used for hundreds of years. When I realized that, my view of the woman under the hairdryer came back into focus.
My mother is a master at manipulation. She uses guilt like other people use power tools. I took me years to see her games coming down the road. Even when I was married for the second time, with a 9 year-old son, she could still push and twist and rotate my emotions into an explosion of rage and helpless self-condemnation.
She barters treatment, advice and prescriptions from a network of doctor friends. She gets first-class service at discount prices from the appliance repair man. She borrows money from a variety of well-heeled associates. This is more than guilt; most of these people are men, and there isn't any doubt that a chemistry's at work. Never mind that she's 65 or so, her beauty fading, her figure succumbing to gravity, alcohol and too much Hagen Daas. It isn't a physical thing. She exudes pheromones like a queen bee, and the drones buzz to the rescue.
This isn't her first return to the flock, either. Her last marriage was to a Catholic, but in order to get it sanctified and marry within the church, she had to confess that all her other marriages were bogus, because the Catholic church still doesn't recognize divorce. It meant denying a couple of husbands and most of her adult life. If I hadn't been so amused by the charade, I would have worried about my father's status. After all, he was her second husband, and if she was denying them all, then my brothers and I were illegitimate in the eyes of the church! But Mom has a deep-seated reluctance to acknowledge her first marriage—she was eighteen, it only lasted a couple of years—so she made the confession retroactive only as far back as her divorce from my father. The lie never bothered her, and she hung the hand-lettered certificate of absolution from the Pope on her bedroom wall.
All for nothing because the Catholic marriage failed, too.
Mother has a quick mind, and she's always worked the angle. If the ride resembled a roller coaster more than a limo, it was because she was impatient. She wanted things to happen right away, and screw the details. You grabbed some fame, you hit it big and you spent it all. Savings accounts were for wimps and tightwads.
As she's gotten older, this impatience with detail has transformed into a stubborn passivity. She's in dire straits, but won't call Social Security and start drawing on the money she deserves. She hobbles on a hurt foot, but won't take up her orthopedist friend's free offer of surgery. There's a complicated pattern of martyrdom going on here. I don't understand it, but it's another thing she's a master at. It serves her sense of perspective.
That brings me back to the hairdryer. Martyrdom is a subject Catholics are very big on. That, and giving over all your troubles to the arms of a large, bearded paternal figure. After four marriages, that's a concept she can understand.
Mom isn't really turning religious. She's just manipulating God. And if man was created in God's image, I'd say she's got a better than even chance of having him come through for her.
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