May 2006

Mom, I woke up this morning at 5:20 not knowing why so early. I got up, went to the living room, closed the bedroom door, and immediately booted up the laptop in a reflexive check-my-email kind of way. This of course sent me into eBay, bidding on a dance game that I’m trying to buy for my son, which got me to check for Wiggles concert dates. None scheduled in our area yet, but “keep checking back here.”

I then remembered my commitment to myself to use early-morning hours as a time to read (not easy for me to read). So, I picked up the current issue of the Nation and Progressive, flipped through, browsed the ads (mostly with pictures of George Bush looking like Hitler), and then, it hit me: My mom passed away at 5:20 am exactly 10 years ago.

I am not one to believe in an unequivocal way in the supernatural. I do believe that the mind is an amazing thing, and that it is possible I have held tenaciously to that memory of being called downstairs to my Mom’s bedroom early in the morning by the hospice nurse, quietly in her Jamaican accent, “She is gone. Your mother is gone. She passed peacefully.”

In my body is the memory of that slow-motion walk down the stairs, the viewing of my mom, emaciated, yellow, hairless, with her jaw open, but relaxed. My stroking her barely still warm leather hand saying over and over, “You be happy now, Mommy. You be happy now.” Because my Mom rarely was, and I so wanted that for her.

My sister Maggie is a true believer in the paranormal. She believed that when Mommy died, her father, Charles Blake (who had abandoned her and her sister when Mom was only 5) greeted her and took her into heaven. I love the idea of that, the absolute symmetry of earthly pain and heavenly bliss, but I’m not sure that our reality as humans can be constructed in quite the same way in the afterlife. Adopting a child has taught me that the longing for biological parental connections is largely a construct, fed by our “fertilocracy” and patriarchal attitudes about lineage and geology. True love and the longings it can fulfill are entirely in the heart, transcend biology. So, I would prefer she be greeted, not by someone about whom she held the illusion of “being loved” when the action that is love was absent, begging the question, but rather by a more integrated sense of the universe holding her in its hands without a persona, without a face, with only a heart, for that is all that holds us anyway.

I have tried so hard to put faces on what I love, to define it. Then, once I do, I long for the face to change, to be different, for the nature of the love I crave changes from moment to moment. The dreamy charmer that married me became the fool that wants to go back to college. So, I have needed to decide if the nature of my love for this fool is deep enough to sustain the fact that circumstances change. In the past, I have chosen to leave, as my grandfather did, in pursuit of something that seemed more lasting, more enduring, as the primordial ooze of initial passion always does. But the primordial ooze goes beyond romantic love, and I’m assuming my grandfather just didn’t know that. I’ve also heard he was a bit of a dolt.

So I stay, because I know that damage that can be wreaked when a family splits up. I know the transient nature of romantic love, the shape-shifting of the objects of our love. I know how horribly imperfect a vessel each of us is for love that is more eternal, with me at the top of the list of the imperfect (and my grandfather probably a close second). The truth is, I believe my Mom longed for her father as a stand-in for something greater. We are all stand-ins for something greater. Some of us are just better cast in the part.

My husband is one of those people. I’ve never seen anyone more willing to look at himself, see what’s working and what’s not, and strive, day to day, minute to minute, to become better at the act of love. Sure, he’s the fool that wanted to go back to school. But fools make the world go round, they stay when it would be more glamorous to leave, they love when it would be more expedient to let go. I guess I married my Mom, not my grandfather, which is a good thing.

But, when I die, as I long so deeply to see my Mother, I think that I will be content to see, touch, and finally inhabit that for which she has been the most compelling stand-in in this my earthly life: eternal love. That is what I wish for her, for Charles, for all whom I love.

And, Mom, while I’m at it, just a note: Your grandson, Blake, named for you, is the most delightful boy in the world. You taught me well, Mom. You didn’t leave. You hung in there with a life that was full of pain. You stayed, and did the work that love is. You were always an embrace, always a sure thing, even with the warts and all. After you died, I imagined you and Daddy, floating above my bed, shedding coats, and becoming pure light. I think of that image a lot. Of how you were finally in a state where the defenses and boundaries of human intercourse are no longer needed, where all is one.

I hope you are there, Mommy. I miss you so. I just miss you so much. I love you.

This was a tough mother’s day. I’m facing a 10-year anniversary of my Mom’s death on May 25, 1996. Her death was mysterious. She had slowly disintegrated over a 2-year period, losing her hair, getting what she thought was psoriasis inside her eyes, mouth, ears, and eventually all over her body. Her liver failed, filling her body with fluids and turning her yellow. The night before she died, she was gasping for breath in panic as the fluid in her liver pressed so hard on her diaphragm that she could not breathe. Her hands were like yellow water balloons, with the skin stretched thin and translucent over a sphere of yellow fluid.

The doctor she had was an ass, plain and simple. He saw a 78-year old widow that wasn’t worth the effort. He did no investigations. He simply tried to keep her comfortable with ointments, and occasional blood tests and checkups. He was, to her, charming, so he had her total confidence. So, there was no way we could intervene, although we tried to one time, much to her consternation.

The “little old lady” that he mistreated was my Mom. And, I found out this weekend, that my Mom had something very specific. Something treatable. Something that many, many folks live with every day, and for which there are nationwide support groups. Something that was first discovered in 1933. It’s an autoimmune disorder called Sjogren’s syndrome. It hits mostly women (90% of patients are women). And, although the treatment is largely symptomatic, the overall diagnosis would have helped because one simple immunosuppressant medication –Hydroxychloroquine — could have stemmed the disintegration of her bile ducts which led to her death. There could have been diet changes, lifestyle changes, all kinds of things. People LIVE with this thing.
My mom never met her namesake, my son (I named him with her last name). She didn’t see me get married. She isn’t here to call when I have questions about being a Mom. She isn’t here to drive me crazy, or to feel guilty about, or to love, or to laugh with, or to shop with. She isn’t here because she wasn’t worth this doctor’s time. Her mother, and her grandmother, each lived to be 99. She could have been here with us much longer for want of a doctor that cared.

I miss you, Mom, and I’m sorry we all failed you. Blake would have loved to have known you. I love you.

It was 1976, and our high school English teacher, Sr. Nora Doody (I kid you not — her real name) was handing out test results to our Junior class. Not SAT tests, or English tests, but a standardized test known as the Kuder Preference Test. This career-aptitude test comprised a series of multiple choice questions inquiring as to preference among three possible activities or choices. They were rather transparent and repetitive:

Would you rather spend a rainy afternoon:

1. Playing chess
2. Writing poetry
3. Adding up long columns of numbers

Apparently adding up columns of numbers is seen by some as recreational.

I completed the test, and Sr. Nora was handing me my results. But, she did so with a very concerned look on her face. She half-whispered to me, in her thick Bronx accent, “Cathy, I’m very concerned. You came up with no results because your answers were so inconcistent. I really think you should think about this.”

That was way helpful, for sure.

At the time, I thought it to be a joke. My consistency rating was a 44, apparently too low for the program to generate a profile of careers in which they could predict success and happiness. I do believe that if I were a “C” student, Sr. Nora would have said nothing. But, I was ranked number 1 in the class, so she seemed to take the whole thing a little personally, like it would reflect on the teachers or the school itself.

But, then life happened, and the suggestion “that I think about that” was never followed up with a parent/teacher conference, or a visit to the guidance counselor, or any of the other superficial gestures that passed for intervention in the 1970s. I still don’t know why, but I think it was that I became the valedictorian, so everyone thought it was okay.

What ensued, however, has been a life that can be characterized as one of a “jack-of-all-trades.” I bristle at that title. Not only because of the obvious mediocrity it evokes, but the male-ness of it. The choices are “Jack” or “Master.” Oh, and if you’re Master at a number of things, and this mastery is witnessed by the appropriate agents of power, you are a “Renaissance Man.”

As a woman with a decidedly non-linear worldview, I simply became fascinated at different times with different things, and frequently have excelled at all of them. The world as we know it, in terms of Western power, success, and prosperity, rewards the specialist. That goes for any industry, the arts or finance. The ones who do one thing either really, really well, or really, really consistently, make the most money, and get the most recognition.

This paradigm went unchallenged by second wave feminists, who got their PhDs and became specialists like the boys. Meanwhile, the ultimate “renaissance” (oh, I’m sorry, “generalist”) profession, being a full-time mother, was recently valued at over $134,000 per year in equivalent salary, but the check’s in the mail. We abandoned the paupered existence of generalism for a seat at the manly table of narrow disciplines their associated coveted titles.

We have a retreat to the home these days, and the reasons given in popular culture are simplistic at best, with the retro biology is destiny nonsense. And the numbers aren’t yet in on these same women, a decade from now, financially less powerful in their maybe no-longer-intact nuclear family AND in society, and therefore less in control of their destinies, than before they became enraptured with the love for their kids, and forced to make a lousy choice that is artificial to begin with.

I do feel a starvation for some male-dominated recognition of the quality of work that I do within the fields I’ve chosen to pursue, unlettered, in what seem like 10-year cycles. But, because of the way I’ve pursued them, putting the joy of work over the rigors of ambition and title, I have, for the most part, barring a semi-annual pat on the head and occasionally semi-public success, succeeded under the radar. I’ve made a choice, like those women that went back home, because the suite of choices was constructed from a different world experience than the one I have which is one of utter fascination with and desire to master the “new.”

Call it intellectual ADHD, but I’ve got it, and I don’t think they offer a PhD for it. I would wonder if women left the workforce, not because of that purported rapture, but because there is still a window for women to escape to, within narrow socio-economic confines, when we discover that this world of ladder-climbing specialist experts is really, ultimately, quite boring, with only stress to offer what passes for excitement. They have that narrow window, and they climb through because they can, and because it’s really the only two choices you get. I mean, barring having kids, who doesn’t work after marriage these days? Kids get you out of the rat race, and everyone applauds that choice. Dr. Laura Schlesinger outright condemns those that don’t make that choice, as if minimum wage single mothers at Wal Mart have “options” besides being “selfish” and working for a living. Bitches.

But has anyone entertained the notion that neither choice is particularly fulfilling? Life is hard, and, just like the thrill of landing your first job after college graduation, a life of changing diapers, 2 am feedings, and picking up socks with two-day old dog vomit on them loses its luster after a while.

So, the motto is: “What do you want? Approval or happiness?” It sucks when some folks are positioned for both, but I’m not. I’m built for the happiness part. I guess, I’ll have to settle for that, and keep under the radar for the time being. But I ain’t nobody’s jack.

Western minds could argue this one to death: the utility of desire. I do believe that it’s largely semantic, but I also believe that in our hearts, we know when desire is a driving force for the furtherance of life, and when it is a rationalization to fulfill a lower appetite. Even in that sentence, some English professor somewhere could pick apart the words “rationalization” and “appetite” and try to convince me that all desire is good, when we know it’s not. Desire for revenge, desire for inflicting pain just for the power of it, I’m not so sure these are good desires. It’s kind of like the argument about whether it was Hitler or the cheering Nazi culture that were the original “evil” — there’s no winning something like that, and why would you want to? The whole thing was was a frickin’ mess.

So, I’m going to express my difficulties with desire taking as a point of departure that I’m talking about desires that are not a force towards life, but a force towards death. In early sobriety, a good rule of thumb for someone who wants to stop drinking, is to make personal decisions based on thinking the action through, and deciding if taking a particular action would move you closer to or further away from a drink. That simple rule of thumb keeps folks from midnight phone dramas with old girlfriends, and kept me from jumping into relationships before I was ready.

So, that simple axiom works when you are recovering, and just learning to rationally analyze the merits of your desires, which, up until the point of getting sober, you just indulge. My sponsor at the time spoke of “blocking the light of the spirit.” She was a little wide-eyed and new agey, but, I got the point. There are desires I have now, as a woman with 13 years sober, that I still need to stand back and analyze to determine if it’s moving me away from the light of my spirit.

So, I need to reflect on just what my spirit is, and what is its center, and from where does the light emanate. It seems to be a point of convergence among all the love that has been directed towards me throughout my life and, as I intuit, even before my life as a human began. The light comes from the place where the love from God, my Mom, my brothers and sisters, my husband, my friends, even my flawed Father, and now, my son, all come together. When I make a decision that feels like their light is shining inside of me brightly, I know I’m doing the right thing. When I feel myself smothering that light, I know it’s not a good thing that I do.

Desire is indeed part of the human condition. But, I have to say, it takes me out of the moment. I’m sure that the things that have been characteristically considered to be great in human history have been endeavors that grew out of desire, a pushing forward, progress, and the like. The whole thing is rather phallic. So much so that when I read Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia, I agreed that, if women had been in charge of the world, we’d still be living in huts.

Where Camille and I part ways is that I don’t think that would be so bad.

At least, I don’t think I think that. But, I sure do love antibiotics, and indoor plumbing, and central air conditioning. Each of these came along because someone wanted to find a way to transcend a momentary discomfort.

But here’s something that always fascinates me. I work alone a lot, and when I work alone, I eat alone. When I eat alone, I eat too much. I’ll grab something in the car to eat that I’d never eat at home. And I’m insatiable. But, if I’m at a dinner with grownups and good conversation, my desire for food diminishes considerably. I can get full on a small dinner salad.

My perceived “hunger,” the momentary discomfort, gives rise to my eating more than I need. My solution to discomfort is to solve it immediately. Inventing A/C, antibiotics, and indoor plumbing also solved a social discomfort at the time. But they come with a price. Like the extra cellulite on my butt (well, maybe not so bad as that :), all three of those conveniences have environmental impact that may need to be reversed by more holistic approaches to addressing discomfort. In other words, desire without compassion for all living things will give rise to only temporary satisfaction. It may be a hundred-years temporary, but temporary nonetheless.

And perhaps, in this culture we have of “western progress,” that is an expected norm. But, I see it as an unfortunate outgrowth of specialization, outlined so long ago in Plato’s “Republic.” We have shock treatment for depression! No, WAIT! We have psychotherapy for depression! No, WAIT! We have new superduper drugs for depression!

Which gets to the whole partnership society model, and all that feminist stuff that’s hard to swallow when it’s dished out by women who are thin and wan, wearing batique skirts, and smelling like Patcoulli oil. There’s something else that does not deny the phallic nature of progress, but somehow integrates it into a respect for life.

The free market assumes that humans run on fear and greed. The socialist model assumes that humans have a drive to support the collective to protect the individual. I’d posit that we all have a desire for a better life, and that desire needs to be driven on the full reality of humanity — not just personal fear or greed, not just selfless sacrifice to the collective. But it all seems to come back to love and compassion.

So, do I buy that skirt at Target? It’s on sale!? Of course I don’t buy it, because I love my son and I’d rather buy him a toy basketball game and watch him play with it. That is a desire that is selfish on my part: I love to see him happy. It just makes me delirious! But my desire to see him happy is different from the desire for that new skirt when I have a closet full of clothing that I can’t wear anymore because I work alone and, did I mention, I eat too much. But I still want the skirt. But, if I buy it, I wouldn’t see him smile.

Looking good (when I feel awful) is a real desire for me in these chubby days. But, the desire for my son to laugh and play with something new is deeper. If as a society, we can learn honestly where the line is drawn between the desire of the moment, and the deeper desires of our humanity, we may stop commoditizing every solution to happiness, and work together on solutions that benefit the individual and the society.

I sincerely don’t know how to wrap this up. Maybe some other day.