Mom would have turned 90 today

My mom, as regular readers of this space may know, was a problematic part of my life.

By the time I was 12, if not earlier, I had come to the conclusion that she had some sort of mental health issues. In more adult times, I recognized this was neurosis level, not psychosis. But already by 12, I saw it as bad enough that I didn't want to have kids, lest I pass on some genetic bad seed. (I later doubled down on that for various reasons related to my mom and dad.)

Mom also engaged in what an adult group therapist called "covert sexual abuse." This was primarily done through her getting ready for work, when I was in puberty, with her bathroom door propped open and her partially nude.

Years earlier, when my older brothers were in puberty and before my parents divorced, she would have the bathroom door shut, but yet unlocked, while doing the same. And, they opened the door and pushed me in there more than once. (With 1.75 baths in a house of seven people, the bathrooms were in regular demand, and mom knew that, too, aside from my brothers doing this.)

I don't know what all was behind this on mom's part. But, as shown by the reactions of my brothers, it was a form of sexual abuse and it had its fallout.

Some of this may be related to her early adulthood.

My mom was a stewardess for TWA back in the 1950s, when they were called "stewardesses," hired specifically for their looks (and usually fired for the aging of their looks by their mid-30s) and TWA was one of America's top airlines.

So, she "had it," if you will.

My mom was a little more than a year older than my dad when they got married. And, at age 26, she was getting close to "old maid" age for the height of the Baby Boom. And, my dad had tried to break their engagement but, in those days when engagements were considered halfway tantamount to marriage, mom's parents raised holy hell and dad's parents said, tagging along, "man up."

So, had previous men seen something in mom's personality that dad was now catching? Dad had seen her as a "catch," physically in general, and perhaps to prove something about his level of manhood to his dad, and even more to some of his uncles.

So ... he bowed his head and moved forward.

(By marrying each other, their "bad seed" didn't spill off onto others. Instead, it — in both genetic and nurture forms — hit the five kids they had together.)

About the time of that covert sexual abuse, mom divorced dad, claiming he was trying to force all of us kids into religious careers. Given that this was after all my brothers had graduated high school, and that she never fought for primary physical custody of my sister and I, this didn't add up in reality. (As I later found out with a stolen college application, there WAS a fair amount of truth to dad doing this, but, still almost none as far as why mom divorced him.)

And so went the rest of my life's connection to her, really.

Dad's anger was at least something tangible. Mom often being an emotional and psychological vacuum was just that — a vacuum.

I'm reminded of the long-ago animal psychology experiments with monkey babies who could cling to a mother-like piece of cloth for nurture even if that meant undergoing deprivation of other physical needs.

If not outright emotional abuse, it was emotional neglect.

I think she bonded somewhat more to my sis as the only daughter. Sis certainly reached out to her. I'll venture there was, at least in early years, emotional bonding of some degree to my brothers. (That said, per mom's beauty focus, there was competition there, too.)

I never felt that.

One time, I felt actual help from her above the age of 8. One other time, she was in horror at physical abuse on my from dad.

Otherwise, she was a smotherer and an infantilizer of me the few other times she tried to do something that probably seemed like nurturing loving.

No wonder that I wanted to escape both parents, not just dad's anger, in hindsight, the one time I tried to run away as a kid.

Today? If mom had a living spirit, I would mutter "namaste" as a benediction and a call for it to get afterlife help, if needed, rather than an acknowledgment of divinity. I can't even do that.

I need to keep doing it for myself.

Goodbye, mom, and diminish, memories.

The Puppy, Part 2

The reference is to this previous poem about an incident in my life from the middle 1990s.

THE PUPPY, PART 2

I’m more of a man than you, dad.

I killed the puppy

When it returned

From wherever you took it,

Unlike you,

Who couldn’t do it

With the puppies in Flint

You couldn’t immediately get rid of.

I proved it

To my self

In my mind

I’m more of a man

Than you, dad.

I was sad

But controlled it.

No tears.

I was angry

It took too many shots

Before the puppy

Stopped moving

And was truly dead.

But in it all

I was more of a man

Than you, dad.

Even as

Your innuendoes

And your put-downs

About me

Being less of a man

Less sexual of a man

Rang in my brain.

Violence, not power

Is the ultimate aphrodisiac

In too many minds.

A dead puppy

Is now humus

Across a quarter-century

Of time and space.

And across that stretch

I have let go a little bit

Of the perceived need

To prove myself to you.

Dear Mr. Frederick

For a variety of reasons, including an adaptation of an idea from Bessel van der Kolk's trauma and counseling book, and what a hexagram in the I Ching "said," I decided to write a letter to one of my upper-grade homeroom elementary school teachers, once I found who I believe is the correct version of that person.

The letter follows below. After that comes some thought about the letter.

----

Dear Mr. Frederick
(I still can't call you Roscoe!)

I am not sure you even remember me … but you've been on my mind off and on for the past several months. I finally did enough Googling and found what I was told was your current address.

I was in Jefferson Elementary in the early and middle 1970s. You gave me A+ and even A++ grades on math quizzes, if I got all the extra credit stuff correct.

A short, skinny kid. Bullied a fair amount by others. Maybe you noticed some of those effects, even if  you knew nothing about the bullying itself.

I so fondly remember the post-lunch play and recess time, with you playing quarterback for two teams of kids.

It just felt at times like you were especially looking for me. Even if that's not true, it felt that way.

In hindsight, you were perhaps a small bit of a surrogate father, or at least a surrogate uncle whom, I wish today, could have been more of a surrogate father.

And, that's all part of why I remember it.

Per refreshing your memory, if you don't recall or know, my dad was the pastor at the Lutheran church. Unfortunately, life at home in general was not spiritually nurturing.

However — or maybe "because of" is a better reason — I tried to follow in my dad's footsteps, all the way through his divinity school, when I realized I just couldn't do that.

I eventually landed on my employment feet as a newspaper journalist. Especially in small towns, it's one of the few "professional" job options open without a degree specific to the employment, like you as a teacher.

Of course, I had no idea, 20-plus years ago, that the newspaper world would be where it's at today.

Anyway, those surrogate father thoughts have grown in the last year or two, as I feel more trapped in not just the field, but a particular newspaper job, and in Texas as well. It's America and I'm over 50.

At some point, something like the voice speaking to James Earl Jones in "Field of Dreams" led me to think, Why not find out where you live? And, when I did, then, Why not write?

As far as material benefits, I'm not expecting anything. (Not that I would say no if you had anything!  This is America.) Per "Field of Dreams," I don't know if you're in any sort of pain, anyway. But, I'm writing.

Maybe I'm trying to ease my pain. Or, per Proust, trying to reframe it through a Re-Remembrance of Things Past.

Anyway, even if you have no pain, I hope this helps with your own reflection on things past.

I've also included side-by-side pictures, a then (for your memory) and now. A couple of online and social support friends suggested that.

Anyway, I don't know what else to say at this time. I don't know where you went after Gallup.

My dad eventually wanted to finish a second masters, then a Ph.D. I moved with him to St. Louis after my parents divorced. I eventually landed in the newspaper business after realizing I couldn't be a minister, for reasons noted.

I have bounced around various places in Texas, and was also in Hobbs. I don't know if you were back in Carlsbad in the late 1990s or not.

It's a nice place. I'd been there once as a kid on vacation.

As an adult, I have done the Riverwalk and some of the newer-opened sections of the Caverns. But, I'm afraid I probably wouldn't like the amount of oil-related traffic in the area if I were there today.

Anyway, Mr. Frederick, I am at the address on envelope or on email at XXXXXX.

---

First, the sentiments are real. So is the fact that I cast a hexagram, and an "interior hexagram" off that helped prod me to write.

Second: Is it the right person?

I'm pretty sure. Through half a dozen different search tweaks, I found his wedding announcement in the Gallup paper the summer we moved there. I eventually figured out the "J" that MyLife listed as a middle initial was actually for "Jr." And, Mr. Frederick's dad had been a high school teacher and coach for decades in the town where this Roscoe Frederick is now retired. I thought he was about five years older, based on childhood memories, but he's old enough to fit the bill.

Third, the feelings post-letter?

First, I thought it was maybe a bit selfish. Then, I started having antsyness about him writing back.

Third, assuming this is the right person, right address and that he's not either on vacation or in a nursing home, by a full 10 days later, I found out he doesn't do email. And, apparently, unless he's in a nursing home or on vacation, doesn't want to talk.

Well, I made one other southwestern connection this past week. Whether that leads to short-, medium- or long-term benefit remains to be seen.

Me and Bob Conners

Note: Bob Conners was a college English and speech professor of mine. He had the outreach to students of "Just call me Bob," and occasionally dropping in on dorms to visit students there.

But ... he wasn't always perfect. And, beneath the surface, years later, I started wondering about his level of investment in some reach-outs, and also how much they were about the students, and how much they were about him.

BETWEEN ME AND BOB CONNERS

Bob, you told us all,

On that spring break road trip,

That in your family, growing up,

Nobody told anybody to “Shut up,”

Because it was considered an insult.

And then you told me to “Shut up,”

More than once, across hundreds of miles.

Did you have fun?

It may have been teasing,

But, decades later, across mnemonic reframing

I don’t recall you qualifying yourself that way.

Certainly, not regularly, and my emotional memory

Says it didn’t feel that way.

Rather, some part of me,

Inner child, inner teen, inner college student,

Says it felt like bullying, not teasing.

It felt like I was the class clown again,

But as the laughed-at, not the laugh-inducing,

As though I were on a negative pedestal

For everybody in dad’s Suburban.

No, it wasn’t all bad. And I don’t

Want to sound like a complainer.

But, to the degree I felt I was getting attention

It did feel like being a class clown at emotional gunpoint.

Later, when I for the first time was graced

By one of your legendary dorm visits

Yes, I appreciated it.

And, your insight of

“There’s no one here for you, Steve,”

Rang true.

But, per Deena

With hindsight,

It also rings vacuous, even if not hurtful.

Who was the “who” that should be for me?

What was your insight beyond your statement?

Did the same surface of openness,

Followed by depths of shields and distance,

Ultimately lead to your divorce?

Is it why Mike thought you a phony,

To read between his lines on campus?

In the short run, your comment

May have eased a small amount of pain,

And even tempted me to a bit of superiority.

In the long run, because the real truth is that

There was no one there for me at home,

It may have left me with more pain, for more years,

Than I wish I would have.

Namaste

For some reason

Just popped into my stream of consciousness

Even though there is no divinity there in that space between us.

Rather, it felt like

A Hindu “rest in peace,”

As the best I can offer your memory.

Nobody cares

I had a dream, during an afternoon nap, of being at a childhood lunch or dinner table. Pre-divorce, and mom and dad both seemed halfway engaged with me and reasonable attentive. I had emotional "pressure" building up inside myself, until it burst. I said "I want to quit," repeatedly, while crying dry tears at the same time. (I presume what that statement actually means is clear.) I'm not sure what led to that dream. I do have a friend, not too too much older, facing a cancer diagnosis that is serious but not necessarily terminal. That is surely one thing. Feeling isolated, even though I shrug it off at a conscious level, is surely another. Perhaps a "surface-level" Thanksgiving time at Jason's is another. If I remember the flip side of "nobody cares" is a solitude that nobody can take away from me, I should be better. Nonetheless, this was NOT a fun dream.

I didn't kill the puppy

Well, I did, but I didn't.

It was you, dad, inside my mind.

Urging me.

And so, I was stronger than you.

I didn't tell you.

You would have gotten insanely angry at me.

In part, because I had shown myself stronger than you,

And in part, because you knew that you had caused this, over years,

And over decades.

Go look, I say, to your non-existent soul

And what imprint its non-existent self

Still has in my mind.

Find the bones, and any fur, or meat, or bits of blood,

Still left beneath the grass.

You did it.

If funerals are for the living, I shall not attend

If funerals are for the living, what then when the living, or one of the living, doesn't want to do to the funeral of a dead relative?

My Uncle El died a couple of days ago. My dad had the one sister and no brothers, and my mom was an only, so I have just him and my Aunt Marguerite as aunts and uncles. The funeral is Tuesday. I could surely get off work, but I am not interested.

I semi-swore to myself after my mom's death, at her funeral, that I would never need to see my oldest brother again. I put the issues of deaths of siblings out of mind as being decades in the future, barring accidents or early cancer or similar.

But, I forgot about El and Marguerite, and now El is dead.

And I don't want to go, and not just because he's is surely going to be there.

I also semi-swore to myself that, other than for possible courtesy visits to church when visiting my sister and her minister husband, that I never would set foot in a church again except to attend a concert or other artistic event.

I have no desire to go there, and, at a minimum, to be a hypocrite, and, at a maximum, be proselytized by Marguerite, or her daughter (both former parochial school teachers), or my oldest or second-oldest brothers, with the likelihood from greatest to least being in that order. Years ago, Marguerite sent me an Easter card that, in not so few of words, said "You know it's true," about fundamentalist Easter beliefs. A religious funeral among conservative Lutheran Christians is only likely to bring that all to the surface, not to mention that, pre-deconversion, I had been to her church umpteen times and some oldsters there may still know me.

No desire.

If funerals are for the living, I'm not going.

I then, with this adapted from handwritten journaling, thought about a poem. I had been thinking about writing one this afternoon. Hadn't sat down to do that.

Then, just after finishing up these notes, this extended haiku started to work its way out.

Death is for the dead
And life is for the living.
So don't fence me in.

Better yet, I won't
Fence myself by attending;
We're all better off.

Namaste for all —
A word that might well offend
Some others itself.

I touched dad's cold skin,
Satisfied that dead is dead
And shall remain so.

Schnittke's Requiem
Challenges old conventions;
Death is chaotic.

Emotional wounds
I shall not give, nor receive.
They will still result.

We will drift further.
I accept that is the price
Of preservation.

Frustration freedom, maybe?

I just did something I've not done for many years.

I left my online sobriety support group's meeting and chat room without saying good-nights to those there. I just clicked the X and shut the tab.

I had had enough, for tonight at least, of another person there.

He knows a lot about his subject field, which has everyday applications to just about everybody, but can be overbearing in saying do this, don't do that. Buy this, not that. Etc.

He can also at times go too far on light-hearted bantering type insults to sticking the needle. The latter, he seems to like to do to me.

Regular readers here know I'm a non-confrontational person. So, and figuring anyway that, he being my age, somebody in life has surely? maybe not? he's a boss, so could be hard to do at work? called him out on this, I just left.

I am not going to change him. The only thing to do is change myself, and without confrontation, simply state why I left if he asks me.

This had kind of been building on my side. On music, which kind of relates to his expertise, he's one of these people that claim vintage vinyl is oh so much better than CDs when blind tests prove otherwise. I dropped some brief comments on that once, quickly went nowhere. That was, I think, after I found out this person is a conspiracy theorist on a few issues, so I didn't push the scientific research too far in front of him in part for that reason.

Not in every way, but in some ways, perhaps I'm being reminded of family of origin stuff, too.

Between that and my recent post about resentment, maybe I need to dip into another non-AA sobriety forum more for a while. Kind of detox.

Update, July 25, 2020: Out in my apartment swimming pool, I realized that he reminded me of Mel Birge from Clayton High.

Glad I'm single

Yeah, I may die alone, but so have many people with partners and even marriages.

I may enter the realm of dying without them or without kids to look out for me, but, I'm not alone there, again.

I have no attachments. No hostages to fortune.

No wading through relationships only to hit booby-traps years, even decades, later.

The sexual, emotional and physical abuse made me learn aloneness, and an acceptance, even a sometime embrace of it.

Looking back over decades, at women in whom I had some interest at times, and it didn't work out?

I'm OK with that.

Once again, the phone call isn't about me

My sister bears her own burdens in life.

And, whenever she calls, I'll usually hear plenty about them. I will even if I'm the one who calls.

I have journaled about this before, but decided to write something brief here, knowing that it's public.

I'm not talking about the details, just the fact that ... although she will get back to my issues at some point, especially if I'm the one who called, the "feeling" is that ... it will be at least 75 percent about her, if not more.

And, I can listen to the emotions, but I can't fix the issue.

And, it's issue, singular. She has two options for change, or else more fully accepting things as they are ... or else keeping herself in this current, years-long limbo.

As I have new rounds of anxiety attacks, I have fewer emotional resources of mine to offer back, anyway. That's just my reality on my end. And she knows that, somewhere, or at least partially knows that.

Basically, aside from the above, neither of us is highly emotionally available for the other right now. And, this is an area where, from others, I work on continuing to lower my expectations. And, my sister doesn't always turn a phone call to her end. And, she's helped me before when my PTSD-related anxiety has ramped higher than now.