Obviously, this was written before my mother died...
Mother talks about dying all the time these days. Well, she has for years. She longs for it sometimes, because she’s so f’ing bored and in pain from her arthritic knees. Sometimes I have a passing urge to pick her up, part and parcel, and move her into my home. To give her relief, to take away the worry of her self-supporting existence, so she would have enough money and not have to pay rent or work. A house without stairs to climb. A place for her dog and cat, where she could be pet-sitter for my own animals when I’m at work or on the road.
But the problem with sharing a home with my mother is that she takes over, just like bindweed. She wraps herself around your time, your rooms, your television shows, and twists them into whatever she wants and needs. After a while, there’s no space for you anymore. You can’t breathe. And she always wants more, and she takes everything you do for her as her birthright. Too proud to sustain gratitude, too critical to be polite.
I've talked extensively about Rescuing and the real irony is, my mother was my Rescuer of choice for most of my life, even when I was married. Because I ran to her for everything. We had our moments of separation, of discord, but eventually, we circled back into each other's orbit. When I was done with marriage, I moved back in with her.
I've likened us to two dragons, locked mid-flight in mortal combat, breathing fire on each other.
In hindsight, I realize that I've been my mother's Rescuer, too. Like me, she's gone through marriages and relationships, hoping but not finding. In the end, she's had to build her own business and pay her own rent, stand on her own feet—and through all those times, she ran to me just like I ran to her. We are the Important Relationship in each other's life. We've outlasted the princes and there are probably no more coming at this point.
But even though we've tried, it hasn't been possible to establish a healthy footing.
The last house we shared, I had a huge bedroom downstairs with it's own television and fireplace. Nice, right? A good solution for separate spaces. My mother was always calling down to me, "When are you coming up? What are you doing?" If I was playing guitar and singing, she'd interrupt me with this question (even after I asked her not to). It wasn't enough to be in the same house. She wanted my company there, next to her, watching what she was watching on television.
She also had the habit of talking to my animals while I was downstairs getting ready for work in the morning. "Hasn't she come up to feed you yet? She's a bad mommy, isn't she?" Like that. I knew if I stayed any longer, I was going to stab her in the neck and throw her down the stairs, like a cheap horror film. When the chance came, I packed up and moved—first to the East Coast, then to the MidWest. For almost the first time in my life, I stood on my own two feet. No man. No mother. No family.
This is the last part of the process: to live far away from her, on my own, and discover my spirit's natural shape. My brothers are not always happy about this, especially as her health falters. They are near, I am not. They have to deal with her, I can hang up the phone and go on with my day.
So now, when I feel this deep impulse to gather her in and take care of her again, I resist it.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Thursday, February 13, 2014
The Good Ship Lollipop
Shirley Temple Black died yesterday at age 85. Like most of my generation, I enjoyed her movies as a child, her brightness and dancing, her timely sense of pathos or courage. Her movies were before my time but, like generations after me, we all enjoyed them via reruns or DVDs and have this shared legacy of a cheerful little girl who overcame being an orphan, a scullery maid, a kidnapped companion kept away from her goats...
If you said, "Grandfather! Grandfather" with an accent in our house, we knew just what the joke was. (For those of you who don't, it's a quote from "Heidi.")
But what if there had never been a Shirley Temple? What if, instead, it had been another little girl? What if, in fact, it had been my mother?
Here's how the story goes, according to the way my mother told it, although it's been some years since I heard it...
When she was a little girl, living God knows where (I don't remember but from the photo it looks to be in the Southwest somewhere), her family was approached by "a man from Hollywood." Probably a talent scout or a producer. He was looking for the next child star. Shirley was a no-name at that point.
My mother was tiny for her age, had a wealth of very curly red hair, and was probably pretty cute with her big green eyes. The only photo I have of her is when she's around two and she's frowning, so hard to tell from that. She was different from Shirley, but her mouth could be a similar rosebud and goodness knows it could pout like Shirley's did!
Anyway...this gentleman wanted to take her back to Hollywood with him. He wanted my grandparents to sign a contract. I guess he convinced them because things were set into motion and apparently everyone was ready to go. Only, just like something out of a tragic Shirley Temple movie, the night before they were supposed to clinch the deal, my grandparents' house burned down.
Mom never talked about all the stuff they lost, that wasn't part of the story. I do know that their collie, Laddie, perished in the fire. (I still can't really think about that and I wish she'd never told me, but I understand why that made such an impression on her tender, animal-loving heart.)
My grandparents, staggering under this tragedy, reversed their decision and Mr. Hollywood went to knock on other front doors.
I never understood why they didn't go ahead. I mean, yes, they'd just suffered a great loss. But on the other hand, little Kay might have been their meal ticket for years to come, and help to make up for that loss and then some. Couldn't Grandmom have climbed on the bus with her daughter and left Grandad to work on salvaging things? Maybe not. Maybe in those days it was different, and maybe it was too much.
All I know is, that was the end of my mother's shot at stardom. Shirley was found and cast, and the rest is history.
And maybe that's what started the whole deal. Maybe they recounted this twist of Fate to little Kay as a child. Maybe it made her think she was Somebody, and that she'd missed her chance to prove it. Maybe it was the foundation for all the ambition and haughtiness and desire for the Best in Life that burned inside my mother, making her a swan among the ducks, an alien changeling that didn't fit the rest of her family. Something sure did.
She hungered for celebrity, and she found it in many smaller ways throughout her life. She hit the big time in her 40s as a psychic and was even courted by the prestigious William Morris Agency. But—and here's another head-scratcher—she turned them down.
The flip side of my mom's drive to be famous was a fierce need to be in control. Of f'ing everything and everyone! It made her family crazed, it ruined her marriages, it spoiled some of her best chances. My mother would rather be a big fish in a small pond than the reverse. She feared that the William Morris Agency would "control" her, manage her, and she couldn't stand the thought.
"They'll take a big cut of everything I earn," she said.
"Yeah, but Mom, ten or twenty percent of a whole lot of money is worth it," I said. "A hundred percent of nothing is...well, nothing."
But that's what she opted for. So Sylvia Brown was all over the place with books and interviews and fame. My mom did lots of good stuff and made some impressive appearances. But her books were small potatoes, and she ground her teeth every time Sylvia came on TV. There but for Fortune...
Maybe we all make our own Fortune. We get these chances, and we turn them down, sometimes for a good reason—sometimes not. Mom could have been singing "The Good Ship Lollipop" and I could've grown up in the Hollywood Hills. We'll never know.
If you said, "Grandfather! Grandfather" with an accent in our house, we knew just what the joke was. (For those of you who don't, it's a quote from "Heidi.")
But what if there had never been a Shirley Temple? What if, instead, it had been another little girl? What if, in fact, it had been my mother?
Here's how the story goes, according to the way my mother told it, although it's been some years since I heard it...
When she was a little girl, living God knows where (I don't remember but from the photo it looks to be in the Southwest somewhere), her family was approached by "a man from Hollywood." Probably a talent scout or a producer. He was looking for the next child star. Shirley was a no-name at that point.
My mother was tiny for her age, had a wealth of very curly red hair, and was probably pretty cute with her big green eyes. The only photo I have of her is when she's around two and she's frowning, so hard to tell from that. She was different from Shirley, but her mouth could be a similar rosebud and goodness knows it could pout like Shirley's did!
This isn't the photo I was thinking of, but I'll have to try and dig up the other one.
Anyway...this gentleman wanted to take her back to Hollywood with him. He wanted my grandparents to sign a contract. I guess he convinced them because things were set into motion and apparently everyone was ready to go. Only, just like something out of a tragic Shirley Temple movie, the night before they were supposed to clinch the deal, my grandparents' house burned down.
Mom never talked about all the stuff they lost, that wasn't part of the story. I do know that their collie, Laddie, perished in the fire. (I still can't really think about that and I wish she'd never told me, but I understand why that made such an impression on her tender, animal-loving heart.)
My grandparents, staggering under this tragedy, reversed their decision and Mr. Hollywood went to knock on other front doors.
I never understood why they didn't go ahead. I mean, yes, they'd just suffered a great loss. But on the other hand, little Kay might have been their meal ticket for years to come, and help to make up for that loss and then some. Couldn't Grandmom have climbed on the bus with her daughter and left Grandad to work on salvaging things? Maybe not. Maybe in those days it was different, and maybe it was too much.
All I know is, that was the end of my mother's shot at stardom. Shirley was found and cast, and the rest is history.
And maybe that's what started the whole deal. Maybe they recounted this twist of Fate to little Kay as a child. Maybe it made her think she was Somebody, and that she'd missed her chance to prove it. Maybe it was the foundation for all the ambition and haughtiness and desire for the Best in Life that burned inside my mother, making her a swan among the ducks, an alien changeling that didn't fit the rest of her family. Something sure did.
She hungered for celebrity, and she found it in many smaller ways throughout her life. She hit the big time in her 40s as a psychic and was even courted by the prestigious William Morris Agency. But—and here's another head-scratcher—she turned them down.
The flip side of my mom's drive to be famous was a fierce need to be in control. Of f'ing everything and everyone! It made her family crazed, it ruined her marriages, it spoiled some of her best chances. My mother would rather be a big fish in a small pond than the reverse. She feared that the William Morris Agency would "control" her, manage her, and she couldn't stand the thought.
"They'll take a big cut of everything I earn," she said.
"Yeah, but Mom, ten or twenty percent of a whole lot of money is worth it," I said. "A hundred percent of nothing is...well, nothing."
But that's what she opted for. So Sylvia Brown was all over the place with books and interviews and fame. My mom did lots of good stuff and made some impressive appearances. But her books were small potatoes, and she ground her teeth every time Sylvia came on TV. There but for Fortune...
Maybe we all make our own Fortune. We get these chances, and we turn them down, sometimes for a good reason—sometimes not. Mom could have been singing "The Good Ship Lollipop" and I could've grown up in the Hollywood Hills. We'll never know.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Resting Places
In a movie, a woman visits her son’s grave in northern France. He was killed in the War and she comes over from England periodically to talk to him.
I’ve never visited my father’s grave, although I remember very clearly the day we put him in it: the gray flocked casket that seemed too small to hold his tall, big-boned frame; the horrible clot of pain in my throat that seeping tears only slightly relieved. To weep openly, deeply, would have felt like letting go and I was afraid of where it would take me. So I stood in agony while they lowered him into the ground. And I never went back.
As I watched the movie, I wondered about this need to visit loved ones in a cemetery. After all, it’s only their bones, and they are not really there. I have visited my father frequently, but from wherever I was—driving, usually, across country as I fled from West to East Coast and back again, wandering, searching, living my life in geographical phases. I've felt him near me, I've talked to him, wept for him, prayed to him. I've retained a warmth from my early childhood toward him, culled from photos where I sat on his lap and he read to me, this little big-eyed girl with bangs and a ponytail. I remember the smell of his pipe tobacco and the way he cleared his throat before he spoke, especially if he’d been pondering for awhile. He wore Old Spice and I loved the fragrance and the shape and design of the bottles.
While alive, my dad was gone more than he was home, and there are great blank stretches where I don’t remember him at all. For having two parents, I was still a latchkey kid, coming home to emptiness most of the time. Later on, when he remarried, theological differences fenced us off from on another. We never reconciled those, but we overlooked them as he fell ill and death became a reality for both of us.
The preacher of the big church where they held his funeral spun stories of who he was—as if he even knew—mentioning me only among the children and stepchildren that Dad left behind. He talked about a person who had nothing to do with years of being my father. Someone who wasn’t always wrapped up in Jesus, who smoked a pipe and flew planes and sailed in on a carrier to us, with the smells of fuel and tar and salt water, and the cry of gulls above. That person wasn’t present in the church, and lives only in my heart now. So what would be the consolation of going to his grave? Maybe the tangible proof of his former existence, a spot where you can focus your thoughts and send them out to his soul, wherever it is? Perhaps that is the solace of a headstone, the place where you can take time and remember.
I don't have a home, even after all these years. I have places that I live and like, but even a decade living in the same place has not made it Home. For me, the old adage has become Truth: Home is where the heart is, and mine is scattered across the world with my siblings, my son's family, my grandchildren. Through choices and circumstances, I am an exile. I hope to not be one forever.
My mother wanted to be cremated. That meant that when she died, there would be no place to visit and ponder about her or chat. She would be scattered somewhere, and the thought pained me, it gave me grief and even a little terror. Gone is so gone. Whatever may be afterwards, you're still gone from this plane of existence. Feeble and aging as Mother was, at least she was a phone call away.
As it turned out, my mother's cremation—and the scattering of her ashes—is painful for me to contemplate, even now. She died in a nursing home after an eight-month descent into dementia via a series of vascular strokes. In the end, her brain forgot how to swallow. Such a simple function, but without it, she was doomed. She couldn't eat or drink or receive oral medication. Since she didn't wish her life to be artificially prolonged, the only decision was to keep her comfortable and let nature take its course. Dehydration. Not in a desert under a hot sun but in a bed in a cool room. Almost all of her children were there the last night, saying goodbye. I kissed her forehead and her eyes flickered open when I spoke to her, but I'm only hoping when I say she knew I was there. I hope she did. She died in the early morning before we could to her. But I knew when I kissed her goodbye the night before that I would never see her again.
Afterwards, it should have been a straightforward process to deliver her to the crematorium. But that's not what happened. The doctor who signed her death certificate at the nursing home made a mistake when noting down her meds and cause of death; this triggered an inquiry, and my mother's body was taken in a bag to the coroner's for medical exam. Everything was settled and the inquiry went away, but the result was that she went from the coroner's to the crematorium as a naked body in a bag, not as someone washed and dressed in a favorite outfit, as I always imagined.
Because of this hiccup and the time it took, I was already back home by the time Mom's body was released. We'd had a private celebration of her life and death at my brother's home, but no formal funeral—she didn't believe in them and thought they were a waste of time. She'd made no provisions, no will, she had nothing but a few personal possessions that we'd already taken care of before the nursing home. My mother never took care of business if she could avoid it.
But this last process was unsettling and irregular. At any rate, my brothers received her ashes. My sisters-in-law and I suggested that she be scattered from a boat into the Pacific Ocean, perhaps off the coast of Monterey or Carmel, which she loved.
Now, I love my brothers deeply; they are the best men I know, and I hope we walk this road for a long long time together. But their feelings toward Mom were a lot less explored and resolved than mine. Their anger was still fresh and simmering, breaking through the crust of civility like lava through the earth. Their reactions to her death were conflicted—and they are, all of them, (fiscally) practical men. So instead of paying for a boat that would take them out onto the ocean and scattering Mother's ashes there...they took her to a quiet local beach, said a prayer, waded in and dumped her just offshore. And guess what? Her ashes were caught and tumbled by the waves and slopped back up onto their legs and the beach where people walked and ran their dogs.
To their due, they were shocked. They expected the ashes to sink. I don't know why they didn't wait for a time when I could be there. I am unhappy that they wouldn't fork over some money to have a proper ceremony out to sea. My mother's decline and death were not what I would've predicted, and they stunned me; but her final disposal grieves me still. Not for the mingling of ash and sand and sea, but for the lack of beauty and ritual that we all deserve when our time comes.
I want to be cremated, too. But I've asked that it be in a lovely meadow or forest somewhere, under sun and shadows and birdsong. As much as I love the ocean, it is too deep and watery, too turbulent and volatile, for me to enjoy ending up there. It is, by its very nature, a place that does not rest.
The perfect place for a woman as restless as my mother.
I’ve never visited my father’s grave, although I remember very clearly the day we put him in it: the gray flocked casket that seemed too small to hold his tall, big-boned frame; the horrible clot of pain in my throat that seeping tears only slightly relieved. To weep openly, deeply, would have felt like letting go and I was afraid of where it would take me. So I stood in agony while they lowered him into the ground. And I never went back.
As I watched the movie, I wondered about this need to visit loved ones in a cemetery. After all, it’s only their bones, and they are not really there. I have visited my father frequently, but from wherever I was—driving, usually, across country as I fled from West to East Coast and back again, wandering, searching, living my life in geographical phases. I've felt him near me, I've talked to him, wept for him, prayed to him. I've retained a warmth from my early childhood toward him, culled from photos where I sat on his lap and he read to me, this little big-eyed girl with bangs and a ponytail. I remember the smell of his pipe tobacco and the way he cleared his throat before he spoke, especially if he’d been pondering for awhile. He wore Old Spice and I loved the fragrance and the shape and design of the bottles.
While alive, my dad was gone more than he was home, and there are great blank stretches where I don’t remember him at all. For having two parents, I was still a latchkey kid, coming home to emptiness most of the time. Later on, when he remarried, theological differences fenced us off from on another. We never reconciled those, but we overlooked them as he fell ill and death became a reality for both of us.
The preacher of the big church where they held his funeral spun stories of who he was—as if he even knew—mentioning me only among the children and stepchildren that Dad left behind. He talked about a person who had nothing to do with years of being my father. Someone who wasn’t always wrapped up in Jesus, who smoked a pipe and flew planes and sailed in on a carrier to us, with the smells of fuel and tar and salt water, and the cry of gulls above. That person wasn’t present in the church, and lives only in my heart now. So what would be the consolation of going to his grave? Maybe the tangible proof of his former existence, a spot where you can focus your thoughts and send them out to his soul, wherever it is? Perhaps that is the solace of a headstone, the place where you can take time and remember.
I don't have a home, even after all these years. I have places that I live and like, but even a decade living in the same place has not made it Home. For me, the old adage has become Truth: Home is where the heart is, and mine is scattered across the world with my siblings, my son's family, my grandchildren. Through choices and circumstances, I am an exile. I hope to not be one forever.
My mother wanted to be cremated. That meant that when she died, there would be no place to visit and ponder about her or chat. She would be scattered somewhere, and the thought pained me, it gave me grief and even a little terror. Gone is so gone. Whatever may be afterwards, you're still gone from this plane of existence. Feeble and aging as Mother was, at least she was a phone call away.
As it turned out, my mother's cremation—and the scattering of her ashes—is painful for me to contemplate, even now. She died in a nursing home after an eight-month descent into dementia via a series of vascular strokes. In the end, her brain forgot how to swallow. Such a simple function, but without it, she was doomed. She couldn't eat or drink or receive oral medication. Since she didn't wish her life to be artificially prolonged, the only decision was to keep her comfortable and let nature take its course. Dehydration. Not in a desert under a hot sun but in a bed in a cool room. Almost all of her children were there the last night, saying goodbye. I kissed her forehead and her eyes flickered open when I spoke to her, but I'm only hoping when I say she knew I was there. I hope she did. She died in the early morning before we could to her. But I knew when I kissed her goodbye the night before that I would never see her again.
Afterwards, it should have been a straightforward process to deliver her to the crematorium. But that's not what happened. The doctor who signed her death certificate at the nursing home made a mistake when noting down her meds and cause of death; this triggered an inquiry, and my mother's body was taken in a bag to the coroner's for medical exam. Everything was settled and the inquiry went away, but the result was that she went from the coroner's to the crematorium as a naked body in a bag, not as someone washed and dressed in a favorite outfit, as I always imagined.
Because of this hiccup and the time it took, I was already back home by the time Mom's body was released. We'd had a private celebration of her life and death at my brother's home, but no formal funeral—she didn't believe in them and thought they were a waste of time. She'd made no provisions, no will, she had nothing but a few personal possessions that we'd already taken care of before the nursing home. My mother never took care of business if she could avoid it.
But this last process was unsettling and irregular. At any rate, my brothers received her ashes. My sisters-in-law and I suggested that she be scattered from a boat into the Pacific Ocean, perhaps off the coast of Monterey or Carmel, which she loved.
Now, I love my brothers deeply; they are the best men I know, and I hope we walk this road for a long long time together. But their feelings toward Mom were a lot less explored and resolved than mine. Their anger was still fresh and simmering, breaking through the crust of civility like lava through the earth. Their reactions to her death were conflicted—and they are, all of them, (fiscally) practical men. So instead of paying for a boat that would take them out onto the ocean and scattering Mother's ashes there...they took her to a quiet local beach, said a prayer, waded in and dumped her just offshore. And guess what? Her ashes were caught and tumbled by the waves and slopped back up onto their legs and the beach where people walked and ran their dogs.
To their due, they were shocked. They expected the ashes to sink. I don't know why they didn't wait for a time when I could be there. I am unhappy that they wouldn't fork over some money to have a proper ceremony out to sea. My mother's decline and death were not what I would've predicted, and they stunned me; but her final disposal grieves me still. Not for the mingling of ash and sand and sea, but for the lack of beauty and ritual that we all deserve when our time comes.
I want to be cremated, too. But I've asked that it be in a lovely meadow or forest somewhere, under sun and shadows and birdsong. As much as I love the ocean, it is too deep and watery, too turbulent and volatile, for me to enjoy ending up there. It is, by its very nature, a place that does not rest.
The perfect place for a woman as restless as my mother.
Wrong Number
When I was 19 and looking for the Great Love of my Life to marry, my mother was still in the early days of her psychic powers. I consulted her like an oracle, often and eagerly. I pestered her for reviews of current crushes to see if they were worthy candidates. I had her look into the future to describe the man I’d finally choose to fall in love with. So she did. She described in great detail the big house I’d live in, the kind laughter of my husband, and the large, jeweled, heirloom ring he’d give me as an engagement present. It all came true—for my best friend Kathy. She married her boyfriend just a few months before I married mine, I was her maid of honor, and the details fit down to the sparkle in her (heirloom) ring.
Mom had seen correctly—but she’d misinterpreted. Both events happened around the same time, Kathy and I were close, and I'd even dated her husband before she fell in love with him. I was a member of the wedding party and I got to walk around in the big house of Mom's vision. So it's not surprising her wires got crossed. It was something she would hone over the years and get better at when dealing with clients. Perhaps less so with me, her daughter, for whom she had hopes and dreams; it was harder for her to "see" for her family with the same detachment and accuracy.
Romance is always a popular topic for prediction. It's probably what most women want to know about, whether they’re looking, suffering, escaping or embarking on. I've said before that, during the early years of my marriage, a dependency on my mother's visions put me in harm’s way. And it did.
My family lived in California at this point. So my husband and I, and our new baby, joined them there after he resigned from military life in the UK. The differences that existed between my husband and I in terms of values, cultures, and upbringing had already created cracks in our marriage. He didn't want to go to counseling and he was uncomfortable talking about it; I, patterning myself after my maternal role model, already had one foot out the door. Frankly, I'd had it there for a long time, only I was terrified to take the next step.
As my marriage crumbled, I sought desperately for my next Rescuer. So I consulted my longtime Oracle, and Mother described him in detail: tall, articulate, passionate, intelligent. With a very fast green car. Someone I had known in other lives. Someone with whom I would experience passion and romance. This eroded my marital commitment even further and gave me a fierce hope.
Though I could not imagine how I would meet such a man. Every day, my husband went to work and I stayed home with an infant—but with no car, very little money, and no social peers. We'd bought a modest house in a blue-collar neighborhood; to me, it may as well have been on the moon. (FYI, I had a strong intuition NOT to buy the house but it came too late and we were committed.) For friends I had the choice of a woman with a tribe of children and a smelly house full of sticky furniture or a shy, quiet Asian mother with a toddler girl, who was new to our culture. They were both lovely women in their own ways; it was me that was the fish out of water. I spent my time pushing my son's stroller to McDonald’s or bumping over parched, drought-stricken fields, soon to be developed. I felt like I was in hell. Where was I going to meet this prince? At the local golden arches? The cut-price supermarket? The dry, thorny meadows? You had to know where the princess lived before you could climb her tower and set her free. And I wasn’t likely to run into anyone.
My mother’s psychic ability seemed a lifeline to me in these unhappy times. She disliked my husband anyway, and was glad to predict a new love in my future. (He, in his turn, recognized the enemy when he saw her, so the feeling was mutual.) When I could escape to my family, she and I spent hours shopping, lunching, and spinning dreams about my life to come. She was totally sympathetic and indignant about my situation and my husband. And, miserable subordinate that I was, I told her everything. Even when I knew I shouldn’t, when shame flooded me, I confided in her—knowing she would never forget or forgive, even if I did. A hard word exchanged, the nasty mood of an hour or two, might pass and be resolved between me and my husband; we did have our happy moments, when we were kind to one another and tried to be committed to our child. But Mom would not move through that transition with us. She would keep a detailed emotional ledger on every complaint I made and she would hold a grudge forever.
I knew this. She had grudges against people who had been in their graves for decades. A comment from her mother-in-law, who thought Mom should get up and serve her husband regardless of Mom's pregnancy, was still brought up with indignant fury as fresh as the day it happened—despite the fact that this woman died when I was a child. Mother had a fierce tenacity toward any slight. So it was symptomatic of my toxic co-dependency on her, my immaturity, my desperate need for approval and for "being on her side" that I so inappropriately shared my unhappiness with her. Even when I knew both my husband and I would suffer for it.
The wisest thing my mother could have done would have been to tell me nothing about the future; to urge us both to counseling; to tell me that marriage is always hard work and that swapping one Rescuing Prince for another is just trading one set of problems for another. But how could she say any of that when she didn't know it herself? How surprising is it that I emulated my only role model, one who spent most of her life going from man to man, looking for just the right Rescuer to get her through life without fear or harm or want?
It's not healthy to be dreaming of a stranger while you're married to someone else. It's cowardly to wait for a rescuer instead of declaring your own freedom or, even better, working on the relationship you hold in your hands. I considered myself a smart person but that didn't mean I couldn't also be a foolish one.
One day the phone rang. When I answered it, there was a mix-up between the man who was calling and myself. He asked for me by my first name, then started trying to help me remember him. And I’ve lived so many lives, in so many places—well, I just suck at remembering names, faces, events, people, details. My head spins sometimes when two threads of the past come into juxtaposition. 'Don’t you remember?' my brother will say about a childhood event. 'We did such and such with so and so. It was important. You were there. You felt this way.' And I won’t remember any of it. So when I couldn't recall this guy on the phone, I didn't immediately conclude that he was a stranger. Eventually, we figured out that it was all a misunderstanding. He'd misdialed. We didn’t know each other at all. It was another girl of the same name. I hadn’t erased him from my overfilled memory banks, I’d just never known him.
And that's when the harm occurred. That's when the potent New Age brew of clairvoyance, reincarnation, karma and destiny led to a conclusion as flawed as Mother's prediction about my wedding. Maybe I’d known this man before, in another life. Maybe this was the universe delivering to my doorstep. Maybe this accident was really Fate stepping in, and I was talking to my Rescuer on the phone!
I'm going to digress for just a moment. Years earlier, when we moved to Virginia Beach, Mom had a client who was in love with a bus driver. During her reading, Mom gently probed the details of this relationship. The woman confided to her that she based it on the local paper's daily horoscope. Every day, she read her horoscope and applied an interpretation of it to her (quite imaginary) love relationship with the bus driver. Every day, he drove by her house. Well, yes...because that was his route! He'd never said anything to her, aside from the normal pleasantries as she entered the bus. The rest was all in her mind, distorted and made to fit, because of her belief in a newspaper horoscope. Mom and I shook our heads in amazement; how could a woman be so delusional?
I can tell you how because I did it myself.
I talked with this stranger on the phone. More than once. For hours. Laughing. Sharing. While my husband was at work. It wasn't long before he wanted to meet me. Wrapped in my dreams of longing, colored by my mother’s predictions, I agreed.
We discussed arrangements. But my stranger-prince wanted me to come to his apartment. We could swim, he said. Bring my suit. I wanted to meet at my mother’s home, around people I knew. Meet my family, I said. He didn’t like that. He demurred, urged, demanded. I started to tremble. I started to feel fear and to hear deception in his voice. He wanted me alone. He wanted sex. He wanted me away in his world, where no one could see. I argued with him and said no. I told him never to call again. I hung up, shaking.
I realized that I had almost allowed my illusions, my need for rescue, my dependence on prophecy, to potentially put me in the gravest harm. It’s ironic that my mother didn’t foresee this danger. But this was a situation I had NOT shared with her, and she was not always good at foreseeing danger in my life. Not even the greatest of them, which came later and which I've blogged about (read Didn't See It Coming).
Fortunately, I had never given the guy my address and this was years before Caller ID. He knew only my first name. He never called again and after a while, I started to feel safe. But I also felt sick because I'd been stupid, and only my common sense reasserting itself had helped me dodge a bullet.
Years later, Mom's prediction about the man in my future was proved right. I did meet a passionate man in a fast green car. Right in the hallway of her own home. Face to face, green eyes looking into my brown—and it was like lightning striking. Metaphorically, I jumped into his arms and demanded succor. My Prince at last! My rescuer!
In a way he was, but not as I imagined. This is life, not the Hallmark channel.
I divorced and married my new guy. In retrospect, I value the spiritual gifts he gave me, the journey we made together, for it was part of the learning and healing that led me to self-worth and independence. But I would pay the highest price for this "rescue." My first husband became an implacable enemy. As a result, I would lose most of my son’s childhood, the sweetest part of my motherhood. I would experience the greatest loss I have known in this life.
I would also learn that the only person who was going to rescue me was myself, and that was as hard and stoney a road as any storybook quest.
Mom had seen correctly—but she’d misinterpreted. Both events happened around the same time, Kathy and I were close, and I'd even dated her husband before she fell in love with him. I was a member of the wedding party and I got to walk around in the big house of Mom's vision. So it's not surprising her wires got crossed. It was something she would hone over the years and get better at when dealing with clients. Perhaps less so with me, her daughter, for whom she had hopes and dreams; it was harder for her to "see" for her family with the same detachment and accuracy.
Romance is always a popular topic for prediction. It's probably what most women want to know about, whether they’re looking, suffering, escaping or embarking on. I've said before that, during the early years of my marriage, a dependency on my mother's visions put me in harm’s way. And it did.
My family lived in California at this point. So my husband and I, and our new baby, joined them there after he resigned from military life in the UK. The differences that existed between my husband and I in terms of values, cultures, and upbringing had already created cracks in our marriage. He didn't want to go to counseling and he was uncomfortable talking about it; I, patterning myself after my maternal role model, already had one foot out the door. Frankly, I'd had it there for a long time, only I was terrified to take the next step.
As my marriage crumbled, I sought desperately for my next Rescuer. So I consulted my longtime Oracle, and Mother described him in detail: tall, articulate, passionate, intelligent. With a very fast green car. Someone I had known in other lives. Someone with whom I would experience passion and romance. This eroded my marital commitment even further and gave me a fierce hope.
Though I could not imagine how I would meet such a man. Every day, my husband went to work and I stayed home with an infant—but with no car, very little money, and no social peers. We'd bought a modest house in a blue-collar neighborhood; to me, it may as well have been on the moon. (FYI, I had a strong intuition NOT to buy the house but it came too late and we were committed.) For friends I had the choice of a woman with a tribe of children and a smelly house full of sticky furniture or a shy, quiet Asian mother with a toddler girl, who was new to our culture. They were both lovely women in their own ways; it was me that was the fish out of water. I spent my time pushing my son's stroller to McDonald’s or bumping over parched, drought-stricken fields, soon to be developed. I felt like I was in hell. Where was I going to meet this prince? At the local golden arches? The cut-price supermarket? The dry, thorny meadows? You had to know where the princess lived before you could climb her tower and set her free. And I wasn’t likely to run into anyone.
My mother’s psychic ability seemed a lifeline to me in these unhappy times. She disliked my husband anyway, and was glad to predict a new love in my future. (He, in his turn, recognized the enemy when he saw her, so the feeling was mutual.) When I could escape to my family, she and I spent hours shopping, lunching, and spinning dreams about my life to come. She was totally sympathetic and indignant about my situation and my husband. And, miserable subordinate that I was, I told her everything. Even when I knew I shouldn’t, when shame flooded me, I confided in her—knowing she would never forget or forgive, even if I did. A hard word exchanged, the nasty mood of an hour or two, might pass and be resolved between me and my husband; we did have our happy moments, when we were kind to one another and tried to be committed to our child. But Mom would not move through that transition with us. She would keep a detailed emotional ledger on every complaint I made and she would hold a grudge forever.
I knew this. She had grudges against people who had been in their graves for decades. A comment from her mother-in-law, who thought Mom should get up and serve her husband regardless of Mom's pregnancy, was still brought up with indignant fury as fresh as the day it happened—despite the fact that this woman died when I was a child. Mother had a fierce tenacity toward any slight. So it was symptomatic of my toxic co-dependency on her, my immaturity, my desperate need for approval and for "being on her side" that I so inappropriately shared my unhappiness with her. Even when I knew both my husband and I would suffer for it.
The wisest thing my mother could have done would have been to tell me nothing about the future; to urge us both to counseling; to tell me that marriage is always hard work and that swapping one Rescuing Prince for another is just trading one set of problems for another. But how could she say any of that when she didn't know it herself? How surprising is it that I emulated my only role model, one who spent most of her life going from man to man, looking for just the right Rescuer to get her through life without fear or harm or want?
It's not healthy to be dreaming of a stranger while you're married to someone else. It's cowardly to wait for a rescuer instead of declaring your own freedom or, even better, working on the relationship you hold in your hands. I considered myself a smart person but that didn't mean I couldn't also be a foolish one.
One day the phone rang. When I answered it, there was a mix-up between the man who was calling and myself. He asked for me by my first name, then started trying to help me remember him. And I’ve lived so many lives, in so many places—well, I just suck at remembering names, faces, events, people, details. My head spins sometimes when two threads of the past come into juxtaposition. 'Don’t you remember?' my brother will say about a childhood event. 'We did such and such with so and so. It was important. You were there. You felt this way.' And I won’t remember any of it. So when I couldn't recall this guy on the phone, I didn't immediately conclude that he was a stranger. Eventually, we figured out that it was all a misunderstanding. He'd misdialed. We didn’t know each other at all. It was another girl of the same name. I hadn’t erased him from my overfilled memory banks, I’d just never known him.
And that's when the harm occurred. That's when the potent New Age brew of clairvoyance, reincarnation, karma and destiny led to a conclusion as flawed as Mother's prediction about my wedding. Maybe I’d known this man before, in another life. Maybe this was the universe delivering to my doorstep. Maybe this accident was really Fate stepping in, and I was talking to my Rescuer on the phone!
I'm going to digress for just a moment. Years earlier, when we moved to Virginia Beach, Mom had a client who was in love with a bus driver. During her reading, Mom gently probed the details of this relationship. The woman confided to her that she based it on the local paper's daily horoscope. Every day, she read her horoscope and applied an interpretation of it to her (quite imaginary) love relationship with the bus driver. Every day, he drove by her house. Well, yes...because that was his route! He'd never said anything to her, aside from the normal pleasantries as she entered the bus. The rest was all in her mind, distorted and made to fit, because of her belief in a newspaper horoscope. Mom and I shook our heads in amazement; how could a woman be so delusional?
I can tell you how because I did it myself.
I talked with this stranger on the phone. More than once. For hours. Laughing. Sharing. While my husband was at work. It wasn't long before he wanted to meet me. Wrapped in my dreams of longing, colored by my mother’s predictions, I agreed.
We discussed arrangements. But my stranger-prince wanted me to come to his apartment. We could swim, he said. Bring my suit. I wanted to meet at my mother’s home, around people I knew. Meet my family, I said. He didn’t like that. He demurred, urged, demanded. I started to tremble. I started to feel fear and to hear deception in his voice. He wanted me alone. He wanted sex. He wanted me away in his world, where no one could see. I argued with him and said no. I told him never to call again. I hung up, shaking.
I realized that I had almost allowed my illusions, my need for rescue, my dependence on prophecy, to potentially put me in the gravest harm. It’s ironic that my mother didn’t foresee this danger. But this was a situation I had NOT shared with her, and she was not always good at foreseeing danger in my life. Not even the greatest of them, which came later and which I've blogged about (read Didn't See It Coming).
Fortunately, I had never given the guy my address and this was years before Caller ID. He knew only my first name. He never called again and after a while, I started to feel safe. But I also felt sick because I'd been stupid, and only my common sense reasserting itself had helped me dodge a bullet.
Years later, Mom's prediction about the man in my future was proved right. I did meet a passionate man in a fast green car. Right in the hallway of her own home. Face to face, green eyes looking into my brown—and it was like lightning striking. Metaphorically, I jumped into his arms and demanded succor. My Prince at last! My rescuer!
In a way he was, but not as I imagined. This is life, not the Hallmark channel.
I divorced and married my new guy. In retrospect, I value the spiritual gifts he gave me, the journey we made together, for it was part of the learning and healing that led me to self-worth and independence. But I would pay the highest price for this "rescue." My first husband became an implacable enemy. As a result, I would lose most of my son’s childhood, the sweetest part of my motherhood. I would experience the greatest loss I have known in this life.
I would also learn that the only person who was going to rescue me was myself, and that was as hard and stoney a road as any storybook quest.
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