I'm A Believer...Not.

I didn't question my mother's abilities until she was almost gone. At that point, she'd had some mini strokes and just wasn't up to counseling anyone. She drifted and struggled to convey clear visions, and even had to give the money back or not charge someone, a couple times. I was there, so I heard the end of her career very clearly. It was sad.

I'm nearly 70 now and my religious views have merged with philosophy and experience to the point of—what I consider—healthy skepticism. I don't believe in any religious teachings anymore. Not that I don't see some worthwhile values in them, sometimes. But their mythologies, their justifications for being the "true" religion, are all bunkum. Invented by man, corrupted by man. 

I no longer believe in an afterlife, either. I wish I did. I watch family members cling to this, counting on being together after death or hoping fervently that they will. Any skepticism on their part focuses on the details (streets of gold? mansions? bull!) but leaves open the question of it happening at all.

I've probably said this elsewhere. When I realized that men only gave heaven to themselves, and that none of the biological beings we share life with were allowed to experience an afterlife, I threw up my hands. I've known dogs more worthy than people! I don't want eternity with only human beings. Barf!

I live under the stress of deprivation from my family unit. I saw them twice last year—but with COVID, it will be two years before I see them again. Abby will be on the brink of teenage-hood. I will have missed so much. So I'd love to think we share our afterlife, where I could make up some time. But don't believe that's in the stars.

Speaking of which...I also am very divided on the world of psychics. The only reason I bought into it so wholly was that my mother wasn't faking. I watched her in action. I asked for her counseling and predictions. She sometimes got the info wrong (not me, but someone close to me) but she also got some things right. 

I guess I believe in our innate intuitions. That we can feel how others feel is a trait of empathy. We cry at movies. We laugh at characters in books. Our emotions are stirred so easily. We align with our friends and feel their joy, their pain. We can pick up unsaid feelings. And if we work at it, distance makes no difference. We can "tune in" to how they're doing. We can feel if something is wrong, far away.

I also think, since we are born pattern recognizers, we can blend our intuition with a look down the path and get a sense of what's coming. I use Tarot to reflect back to me what my intuition feels. This process is mostly checking internal signposts, but the intuition can make it predictive.

These are subtle traits, available to all human beings, I believe. My mother worked hard at refining them, and did it for a living for decades. Perhaps she was uniquely gifted at the craft.

But seances, materializations, crystal balls and cards? They're shows and extensions of innate abilities. I don't believe they pierce the veil of death and see into another life. I think, with skill and imagination, they can perceive how someone was in this life. But it is looking back across time. It's not speaking to the current life force. They're dead.

Mother used to say the key to success in her field was the ability to translate what she was seeing, feeling. I think that's true. I think many psychics are vague about what they perceive because they don't bother to impose a translation. So their info is largely emotional and useless. Mother's was practical and concrete, at least as much as a shrink's would be. 

So. I'm extremely skeptical, even dismissive, about religion. And I no longer accept that psychics have special access to the dead. We can all glimpse our futures, darkly, briefly, vaguely—but whether that future will hold or not is still a question. Better to live out our days. Chart our course by what we feel is right for us and looks the brightest. It's the best we can do. Astrologers are vague and mutable. Psychic predictions change over time (Trump will definitely win! Trump will definitely lose!)

My mother was an authentic something. But what, I'm not sure. I cared way too much for her insight, and it was often manipulative. Losing it was leaving behind a dependency. It was growing up.

There is less consolation without religion and an afterlife. I'm often more keenly aware of my finite existence. But I can't go back to bullshit. 

Moving Backward

In the first sixteen years of my life, I lived in 14 different houses, 10 different cities, and went to 8 different schools—thanks to the Navy.

I started out such a good student, they skipped me past 2nd grade straight into 3rd. You wouldn't think that would make too much difference—and maybe it didn't at that particular age—but I'm convinced it made a huge difference over time. It's something they don't do anymore, and for good reason. Because of my November birthday, I was usually two years younger than my classmates most of the time. And two years in physical and social development is a huge gap. I was playing horse while my classmates were wearing stockings and trying on lipstick. I often felt isolated and snubbed.

(I'm also convinced that I started my period at age 11 because I cycled in sync with my 13 year-old-peers.)

Like other military children, my father was seldom home. Unlike other children, I had a mother who enjoyed interacting with me on a social level (think shopping and movies and eating out) but who spent no time at all helping with homework, helping me navigate change, or providing any kind of stability. She thrived on chaos.

By fifth grade, my scholastic achievements were struggling. I had a terrible teacher, a lay man in a Catholic school with a short temper; followed by a bitter nun who was punitive and made fun of my large feet; followed by a general disillusion with the Catholic religion and a transfer into a public junior high. By then, my inability to deal with math was drowning me. I set a pattern at being good at Art and English, and everything else was mediocre to poor. I pulled my socks up my my senior year and finished with good grades and Most Talented award for my musical abilities. But it was too late to redeem myself to the art college I wanted to attend. I ended up, at age 16, starting university.

I don't recall my grades at that stage, but I had poor art teachers, hung around the Drama dept. (for no credits), and ran on a fast social track that included experiencing marijuana and losing my virginity. I rushed a sorority and then dropped out when I made it. It's not surprising, given the financial costs, that I left university in my sophomore year—and I've lived with the stigma of a life unfinished, scholastically, ever since.

I'm not trying to make excuses for my behavior, but I am trying to look back at that young girl growing up and give her some understanding and maybe even forgiveness.

Think about it. How can any student excel when her world is constantly changing? Not only was I pulled from school to school but also home to home, city to city, even country to country. On top of that, my parents were increasingly at odds with one another and my mother leaned on me for emotional support through her unhappiness and extramarital escapades. I also had an unspoken responsibility for my three younger brothers. When my parents' marriage imploded, I had to adjust to a new, insecure, arrogant stepfather who continued to move us (also Navy) and who fought continually with my mother over control and jealousy.

An article from a John Hopkins study states: “Military families and military children are amongst the most transient of populations. It is not uncommon to see kids who have grown up in military families who have been in 5, 7 or 9 different schools by the end of their high school career. There is very high mobility. With high mobility come issues of engagement, disengagement and reengagement.”

It also says that teenagers were often rebellious and at higher risk of using drugs and engaging in early-age sexual behavior. For me, sexual exploration was both consolation for my unhappy home life and a deep need to feel loved. (I wish I could say that males at that age had similar motivations for sex, but unfortunately, they didn't. It usually made me feel worse in the end.)

On the up side, military brats are usually self-reliant, independent, and flexible. Well, you had to be, didn't you? Or you'd have gone bonkers. But the issue of disengagement, over and over again—and a mother who required obedience and high maintenance from her children—left a permanent scar. I am outwardly friendly and socially at ease—when I make the effort—but inside I am aloof, a loner, and utterly against any kind of community or group or volunteer work. It makes me feel suffocated, controlled. My marriages were a disaster; not completely because of my issues and behaviors, but also because of my inability to make good decisions about potential partners. It took me 50 years to finally shake free of dysfunctional ties and live on my own, emotionally and physically. To leave the thought of romance and marriage behind. To appreciate a circle of women friends. To breathe my own air.

But I digress. I have been so fortunate to have a career studded with creative fulfillment. To use my intelligence and mental adaptability to maneuver through developing technologies. To work for brands and people that encouraged my talents. This, despite the fact that I never graduated from university—and that I still hold onto a kernel of shame, hiding my lack of degree as I interact with peers that possess one (or more). No one told me I was experiencing huge disadvantages, because those always seemed applied to poor people or people of color, or people who suffered medical conditions or tragedies.

I think that child, that girl, that inadequately equipped teenager, deserves some compassion for the obstacles she labored against. I think it's amazing that she did what she did. My degree is not on paper, but imprinted on the mental and emotional surfaces inside me.

From One Wicked Witch To Another?

This one's for you mom, wherever you are...it makes me think of you and cry when I hear it.

I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you...
Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good

It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You'll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend...
Like a ship blown from its mooring
By a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a skybird
In a distant wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good.

And just to clear the air
I ask forgiveness
For the things I've done, you blame me for—

But then, I guess we know
There's blame to share

And none of it seems to matter anymore...

In My Cups

Dearest Mother,

I can call you that now. I suppose you always were "dearest" of my mothers, since you were the only one. But what I mean is, you're gone now and memories soften around the edges and fire burns out and anger fades...now I can make you part real and part what I want you to be. As someone with whom I correspond and share secrets—ah, now that was part of our real relationship, too!—I am free to write out whatever I want to you. The difference is that you won't refute or criticize or wave away. You are a vessel and I am the burbling water that pours into it, free of fear.

I'm drinking a glass of sherry and it's an autumn night and I remember that you always snarked at my taste for that brew. You said it was only for "little old ladies." I suspect, by your generational ruler, that when you said it my current age would put me in that category! So, mother, I am a little old lady now and I drink sherry.

But I have very different associations with that apertif, have had for years. Here are some of them:

• making a trifle and soaking lady fingers or pound cake in sherry in any of my various temporary kitchens. Always delicious!!
• laughing, chattering, and numb in the face with a group of my favorite officer's wives in Cornwall, drenched in sherry in the middle of the day. Lord, it was hard to sober up and cook dinner for Rick at night! Tea parties, they called them, but more sherry than tea.
• elegantly dressed and sitting at a long, gleaming table in the Officer's Wardroom on a Ladies Night, sipping sherry—or port or madeira—with a group of uniformed fly boys and their ladies, and my husband.
• wine tasting in the Napa Valley and getting tipsy on various kinds of apertifs, including sherry.
• admiring the luscious nutty color and smooth flavor of it on my tongue—just about any time.
• Reading novels—usually Irish or English—where people of refinement sip sherry. Since I have a taste for period pieces and UK locales, I've drunk a lot of literary sherry.

It's only a small step from sherry to malt whiskey, the taste is different but the color can be similar, and the face numbing qualities even more pronounced. You and I shared an affinity for that liquor; I let mine drop off in favor of wine but you never did. I can't remember the last time I had a whiskey, but I will always think of you when I see Glen Fiddich.

No, I take it back, I do remember: we toasted to you post mortem with your preferred drink. It seemed fitting.

There are pinpricks of light and love that stream through our clouded relationship, mom. These are some of them and they're enough to make me wish you back, stronger and younger than you were at the end. Maybe being an old sherry drinking lady at this point, I could stave off your bullying and demand the good bits prevail. Maybe not. But I wish I could try. You did love me. And I would be a liar if I didn't say that I loved you, too. Perhaps too much. Perhaps that was the trouble. Love and need are as smoothly integrated as wine, and I couldn't tell them apart most of the time.

Here's a sherry to you, mother. Hope there's whiskey where you are. Now that would be a place I wouldn't mind going to.

Mom, Are You There?

I don't believe any of us have the answer to the great question of Death. Lots of theories, beliefs, opinions—but regardless, no concrete facts. Alluring evidence from children in Third World countries who remember former lives and navigate to their old homes and spouses. A Dalai Lama that is reborn over and over for centuries. Believe what you want, I say. As long as you don't harm anyone as a result of that belief. Because we'll all find out in the end. Or not, of course.

I was such a great believer in my mother's philosophy of soul and lives and afterlife, for many years I lived in secure comfort that something substantial would happen after I die. And, despite Houdini's failure to contact anyone, that my mother would make herself felt from The Other Side. I mean, I've experienced some things that make no sense unless you believe in a psychic connectivity.

After mom died, I inherited some of her Japanese wood blocks and prints. I already had some of my own. Since I moved into a smaller, shared, home, they have been hung where I can see them any time, practically at a glance. The experience is more concentrated than it was in a larger place where they were spread out among many rooms.

The antique print, White Rain at Shono, hangs next to the sink in my bathroom, where I can enjoy it several times a day. I never tire of its delicacy and humanity, as straw-coated figures dash up/down a hill through the slanted rain, the lowering sky behind them. It gives me pleasure—and it brings my mother closer to me.

It has a sister print with snow and a Shinto gate, and I trade these out in the cold weather so I can enjoy the winter scene as I do the rainy one in Spring and Summer.

Then there's the pink nightgown, with its tiny polka dots. I bought it and wore it, then—for some reason—my mother needed/liked it, and I gave it to her. She wore it for a few years. Then, when she died, I took it back and I've worn it for some more years. It is shapeless, baggy, and unattractive. But it has always been the most comfortable nightshirt I've worn, not possessing even a hint of trim or a single button to annoy you when turning over in bed.

And when I see myself in it, I think of you, mom. It's a physical garment that we shared and it's acquired value as a result. I will be very sad when I finally pitch it.

There are, of course, many things that she gave me, too. Some still bear the uncomfortable shadow of her gift-giving dysfunctionality; but since she is gone, most of them have mellowed into gifts that mean she thought of me, that she tried to buy things she knew I would like, that she loved me. And like a hundred tiny voices, all these objects cry out to me as I encounter them every day. The anger, the struggle for power, the need for space—these have all sluiced away with Time's passing. I am left with the reminders of love instead, like shining shells left behind by the ocean's tide. Treasures of the heart.

I haven't seen your spirit, Mom, or gotten "a psychic headache" (that tight band around my head), or had the hairs on my neck stand up. I have, I swear, heard you call my name out loud—just as I did when you were alive, sometimes. This last happened in Aunt Vivian's house on a hot Fourth of July weekend. But I couldn't be sure if it was inside or outside of my head, or just a misperception of some random sound in the other room.

What I do know is that I am surrounded by you in many ways, and I catch those glimpses all the time, and I feel them with love instead of anxiety. Because of that, you ARE here.

And I'm glad of it.

Memory Loss

In this age of digital technology and ubiquitous cell phones, the lives of our family and friends are being documented continually through photos and video. I sometimes wonder what will become of all this data, stored on our computers and in the Cloud and on countless DVDs. Are we keeping all that content safe enough? What happens when we run out of space? What if the Cloud crashes and burns?

Fortunately, many brainiacs are working on these problems, with solutions like organic storage systems that are DNA-based, where you can theoretically store the entire history of mankind in something the size of a Rubik's cube. Or so I understand, with my limited understanding. :^)

Forty years ago, the technologies we take for granted lived only in the realm of Science Fiction. Forty years from now, who knows what it will look like?

My grandchildren will have their every step documented and stored. Many of those events will include me, so the last decades of my life will end up being captured as well, to a lesser extent.

But my parents' lives, especially before I was born, are mostly mysteries—kept behind a closed door in the corridor of Time, one that can't be accessed except through a handful of black and white photographs. Only one or two of these are of them as small children; the rest show adults. My dad is mainly on the farm with his family or on a ship in the Navy. My mom has nothing of her adolescence or teen years. There are photos of their wedding and then of their early married days while posted in Rhode Island. Then I begin to show up—but because of the fire that broke out in mom's moving van in 1988, there are only a few images of myself and my brothers as children or my parents moving through their married days. The rest are ash in the wind. It's so sad.

Did my grandparents have photo albums of my mother and her brothers? If so, where did they go? Did my maternal uncles take them instead of my mom? I certainly never saw any.

I used to feel annoyed that Mom didn't take better care of our memories. The photos were almost all on slides, in a silver metal case. Every now and then, we'd drag them and the old projector out and have a memory fest. They spent years on a shelf in the garages of various homes. Slides were considered so much better than photos; but in the end, we lost them. Technology wasn't quite there yet; we couldn't burn them to a DVD or CD.

My mother was never a big one for memorabilia, and tossed out the past (including my past) on a regular basis. I used to put this down to a lack of sentimentality but I wonder if there weren't other issues at play? I think my mom was escaping her past. She had conflicts with her family, bad memories of her youth, and a burning shame about her modest, blue-collar origins. She wanted desperately to reinvent herself. She even tried to bury her first ill-fated marriage and the child it produced, and kept these events hidden from us for years. (I wonder if my dad knew about them before he married her?)

When my son was a toddler, mom and I drove down to visit her mother in Arizona. It was the only time I remember Grandmom telling me stories about my mother's childhood—and they weren't flattering.

One of them went like this:

When Kay was a teenager in Eureka, she wanted a navy blue suit that she'd seen in a shop window. Grandmom went and looked at it but the cost was more than they could afford. Being a seamstress herself, she bought material and made Mom a navy suit, trying to replicate the store's suit as much as she could. Instead of gratitude and understanding, Kay was enraged by this offering. It wasn't a designer label, it wasn't the suit, and she wasn't going to wear it. According to Grandmom, Kay filched money out of their emergency cookie jar and bought that suit after all.

The narcissistic passion and steely resolve displayed by my mother in this tale was nothing new to me; I'd seen it many times over the years. What surprised me was how far back it started and what it implied for her family dynamics. Mother always told me that Grandmom was a stingy, mean, jealous harridan who adored her sons and hated her daughter. Conversely, Grandad was a kind, intelligent, strong, generous person who loved his daughter as well as his sons—but just kow-towed to whatever his wife wanted. Sort of Gary Cooper married to the Wicked Witch of the West.

When Grandmom told me this story, it was in a tone of bewilderment. She said she never understood my mother, never knew what drove her. That she came into life that way: hard-headed, temperamental, passionate, envious, competitive.

My mother always blamed Grandmom and praised Grandad—but upon probing, I learned that neither of them gave her the attention she needed. Neither attended her school play or music recital. Maybe they were too busy, holding down a variety of jobs—like sewing and hairdressing and house construction and phone line repair—to make ends meet for their family. Maybe they were too exhausted at the end of the day, after supper was cleared and night fell. Or maybe they did have something to answer for in missing their child's creative performances and causing her to feel unloved. Child-rearing was different back then in so many ways. (And BTW, my mother never came to our recitals and performances, either! What irony!)

Regardless, there still exist huge chunks of undocumented time in my mother's life that I will never know about or see. She told very few stories about her past, either. I know that she concurrently dated twins in high school. I know that she was popular. I've driven through Eureka with her, the town where she spent her adolescence, and seen the public buildings that remain. (But not her home.) I know she was an usherette in a fancy theater in San Francisco, with a uniform and a flashlight. I know she roomed with a group of girls in a big old house, and they had a nickname: the Glamour Girls. I imagine it kind of like the movie Backstage with Ginger Rogers: ambitious, highly social, full of themselves and their joys or woes. I know she went to UC Berkeley and majored in Art. I know she skipped a grade (as did I) and was young for her class.

But her timeline is a bit jumbled, because I also know she married at eighteen and moved to Wisconsin. So when did she graduate or did she? The Glamour Girls must have been afterwards, after she'd escaped marriage and motherhood, been denied the solace of her family, and fled to San Francisco. And that's where she met my dad. I wish I had photos of those days!

I also know, because she mentioned this about a million times, that she did some modeling.

That's not how she phrased it, of course. Whenever she said "I used to be a model," she implied that she was the Cindy Crawford of her day. The truth was that she modeled for a department store for a short while, along with some of her friends. Very 40's. She learned how to walk a runway, and she parlayed that experience into a secondary career later on, teaching "charm and modeling" to awkward girls and putting on local or military fashion shows. She even worked behind the scenes in a Miss America and a Miss Jacksonville pageant. I still remember my brothers and I being roped into a fashion show when I was about nine. We were on stage in our nightclothes and had to kneel by a prop bed and say our prayers as part of the tableau. I "used to be a model" too, briefly; I walked the runways that she was in charge of, using the gliding steps she taught me. (A very different technique from today's models, by the way, who stomp down on staggering platform heels like knock-kneed horses.)

Back then, I used to roll my eyes at Mom preening about her modeling career. But now, I recognize the enormous determination and smarts she possessed to achieve her reputation as a trainer of models and runner of fashion shows. Even if it was only for local causes or the Navy wives' benefit event.

How much will my child understand about my life? With such fragmentary evidence left, my childhood and adolescence are behind their own door, just like my mother's. I have journals, but if you've ever read someone's diary, you know what a load of rubbish they can be. I have stories and songs and poems. I guess, instead of photos, he will have to explore my words. Or maybe no one can ever really understand another person's life, the parts not lived together. We're just too busy taking care of the Now.

Death Poem

I wrote this for my mom and read it aloud as the family gathered to remember her.

Connection

I look out on the landscape of the world.

I search it with my heart, my spirit.

I strain to feel the invisible chain that bound us together,

even unwilling, even across the miles.

But it is gone.

Your end is empty.

I trail its links behind me like Marley’s ghost

and I grieve to feel the lightness left behind.

But perhaps, after all, it was not a chain.

Perhaps it was a tether.

And your spirit, like an impatient bright balloon,

has broken free and rushed into the sky.

I will search the sky for you sometimes and hope

to catch a glimpse of your color, dancing in the sun.