Waiting for it.

People wait for it every day: the punchline...the other shoe to fall.....that which they know is coming. Working in a hospital is different from the type of social work that I am used to in that I meet new clients daily. Sometimes I meet three people a day and sometimes it's ten. As a result of numerous incidents in the past year, I have come to determine that the IT that I am frequently waiting for is the racial slur. Whether it is the 80 year old lady who mutters that she doesn't want to return to the nursing home that she came from because there are too many "blacks" there and "they scare [her] with their spiky hair" or the family member of a patient who thinks nothing of referring to one of my nurses as "chink", "spic", "darkie", or "nigger": somehow I can sense it coming 90% of the time.
So today, while I was was speaking to an 83 year old man, who was sailing last week and this week is unable to walk and was getting a blood transfusion as we spoke.....I waited for it. I waited for it while he spoke of the roommate that he had the night before, who happened to be a young black man. I waited for it when he mentioned his doctor from the ER, who happened to be hispanic. I continued to wait for it while we discussed rehab placements, some of which were in a predominantly black part of town and some of which were from an overwhelmingly white part of town. And IT never came. And the more I spoke to him, the more I thought he was decidedly one of the most jovial and inspiring human beings that I have ever seen hooked up to a blood bag.
He and his daughter told me of his many travels, all the sailing that he had done, several women he had loved--including his most beloved deceased wife in whose name he donated several thousand dollars to a local organization for children to attend wildlife camps. They laughed about the time that he participated in a pirate re-enactment just a few years ago and he boasted of the eye patch that he got to wear for the production. He spoke of the university that he attended and joked that his primary physician attended the same institution and surely made ten times the salary that he has made in his lifetime. His daughter blushed when he chuckled that the pirate ship replica that he sailed was later used in a porno. I only hope that I can makemy kids blush like that and still love me like she does when I am that age!
I have a lot of favorite patients, but right now room number 22 is at the top of the list. Not only because he has a great sense of humor, has all of his wits about him, and has all of the spunk of a teenager. But also because the IT that came was unexpected.

"You never had game, you were just a slut"

I'm perplexed.

Is it not 2008? Women DO still have the right to vote, right? tell me if I'm missing something here. seriously. We have jobs and lives, correct? so why did my co-worker comment that I looked nice today and then proceed to ask me if I had a new boyfriend? I literally did a Scooby impression and turned my head to the side looking at her like she was the creature from the Blue Lagoon. Since when does dressing up (I wasn't really dressed up any more than usual. I was just wearing open toed shoes.) equate to having a new boyfriend? I felt as if I had stepped in a worm hole and landed in 1950. I guess with my open toed shoes I should have been wearing a poodle skirt and tight sweater.

On the topic of dating: I've recently noted that I have not had nearly the number of suitable suitors since I moved to a large city as a did when I lived in a small one. I pondered this.........in a crappy little town in the mid west I was never in need of a date, yet now that I've moved to a bay side city where there are millions of young men-and Ricans at that!- my social life has been, well, lackluster. How could this be?! There certainly must be something wrong with the universe, right? a planet out of alignment? knocked off kilter? No? Really?! so, what gives?

And of course the answer came slower than it should have: networking. in a mid western city people are separated by two or three degrees. Therefor, when you meet someone, chances are, that you probably already know them........sort of. Your best girl friend used to date his cousin's step-brother. And there you have a jump off! But, it's not so in a large city. Every meeting is like starting fresh and I deduced that filling my calendar in this setting would require "game". The skill of picking up someone of the opposite sex. I commented to a friend from my home town about this phenomenon and that I needed to brush up on said skills. He replied, "You never had game! you were just a slut". A slut? really? slut sounds so old. Like someone who's hanging out in a shady bar, GnR t-shirt falling off her shoulder, hitting guys up for drinks. *insert sad face here*

So this is what I get from you people, huh? I'm nothing without a man (per my backward ass co-worker) and I'm an old sleazy bar fly in order to get one. wow.

Well, I say fuck you both. I have a date Saturday night :D

in a manic state he said I have "no social filter"

I find the irony of that to be the height of hilarity. The funniest part? simply that it happened. well, that and who said it.
I once worked with a guy who was bi-polar......... and of course briefly had a crush on him before I found out he got a blow job from my best (male) friend......who said that I had no social filter. He was oh-so-serious, too.

While this entry is not specifically about my mother, somehow things always lead back to her whether the issue is good, bad, or indifferent. And in this case, it goes back even further. My mother's mother is an odd bird to say the least. She's secretive and suspicious, often for no apparent reason......and somehow still remains energetic and endearing. everyone says so. Anyway, between my grandmother's secretive nature and my grandfather's alcoholism, their home was a house full of lies. My mother didn't want that for us and so as a child she always maintained that there was nothing that went on in our house that we weren't allowed to speak of to others. Sometimes following through with this appeared to cause her physical pain that was apparent in her expression.......but she was insistent that she would not do to us what was done to her.

The world according to Ms. Beth dictated that as long as you were not saying something for the express purpose of hurting someone (even if your opinion did hurt them. as long as it wasn't intended to), you had every right and even the responsibility to express it. I was honestly naive to the fact that the rest of the world did not abide by my mother's rules in regard to freedom of expression until I was in college. Throughout school, my teachers were most often enthralled with my intellect (which I'm certain has since been killed off by random drug use in my teens and twenties. lol) even when I disagreed with them. So much so that when I pushed Melissa L. down the stairs and skipped school in middle school, the vice principal gave me a coveted student assistant position instead of making me serve detention (the standard punishment for such behavior). Later, in high school my science teacher somehow averaged my grade out to a C when I had indeed earned myself a solid F.......since I had not turned in a single assignment the entire semester. He deduced from class discussions that I certainly deserved to at least pass since I was the only kid in the class who participated in discussion ("When is the test?" does not qualify as discussion.). Overall, they were more than tolerant of my opinions and often disrespectful behavior. With the exception of Ms. Schmaltz, who was not enthralled with me for the three years that I goofed off spent in choir. She loathed my penchant for cursing and often sent me to the office for it (where I would chat with the secretary for the rest of the hour).

So, the result of all of this: I have no social filter. My senior year I began referring to myself as Phineas Gage after hearing about his inability to refrain from blurting out whatever he was thinking after a freak accident that severed his frontal lobe from the rest of his brain. I felt like that. Like I was lacking a frontal lobe. I think that specific instance that Manic Mike was referring to in his annoyingly accurate assessment of me was when I commented that our friend Angie had a "cute bubble butt". Something that I had not even paused to ponder how she would receive...........she did not receive it well. The result of that conversation with a girl who had been raised in the very white, very rich suburbs of Indiana: an emotional week of starvation and rails of coke (her, not me!) as she took this to mean that she was "fat". I hope she's gotten over that. But I doubt it.

My valliant effort

She asked the question that I had not dared to ask myself. I already knew the answer and I didn't like it.

Why hadn't I written another blog?

The answer came to my fingers faster than it would have ever come to my lips and I typed honestly: I felt my initial attempt at blogging was quite successful. Even if no one but me ever read it. It was a piece of writing that I liked. and I was petrified that any further attempt would fall shorter than an inch worm in comparison.
I made no attempt to sensor my answer. not that I often do, but in this instance I made even less attempt to do so.

So now that I've copped to that, let's move on shall we?

Back to Ms. Beth and I........

I started writing the following a couple of weeks ago.

My mother and I today:

On Easter this year, my mother called and I passed the phone to my sister without answering it. My niece noticed and giggled. "Is that Nana?" she asked.
I gave my sister a "busted" glance and said no. My niece didn't believe me and said so aloud.

I avoid her. I love her. I admire her. I can't deal with her. My struggle with her is which came first? Was it her alienation or mine? I don't know. I've been asking myself for the better part of my life how this came to be and the best that I can come up with is that it's a little of both. I look like my mother, I talk like her, and I often think like her. I have come to realize that it is herself that she has such difficulty loving. And that makes it hard for her to love me.

I'm going to see her next week. For reasons that seem as complex and convoluted as an Escher piece, despite all that I've previously stated about the relationship between my mother and I, one thing has remained constant and contrary to all else: she and I are so much better when it's just the two of us (odd, I know). It seems that the the thin web that binds us is stressed so tenuously when any other variable is introduced to the situation. It seems that all it takes is one child, one sibling, one bystander.......and every action is an insult, a jab.

I stopped there. I honestly don't understand the rest. How do you explain something that makes no sense to you? Sometimes I get sick of trying to figure her out. I tire of rehashing her actions and reactions looking for some reason, a concrete nugget that I can point to and kick about and identify as the source of all the world's ills. Or just hers.

Rationally, I know that that won't happen. (But ahhhh! wouldn't it be nice!) I know that, just like me and like you, she is complicated and there never was just one thing that mucked up the works for her. Who she is today is a constantly affected by her experiences past and present. So this is my present. And I told you how it all began.
Someday we'll get to all the stuff that happened in between.

matriarchy

If I'm going to start a new blog, I suppose that I should start at the beginning: my mother. As people often do, I have issues with my mother. At this point in my life they are not nearly so consuming as they have been in the past. However, I made the following comment about her recently in response to someone's blog and have been thinking about her a great deal since........

I'm the fifth of six and wouldn't have it any other way. my mother was not good at "parenting skills"......but she's a fucking awesome person. Her mothering was often laden with her Irish guilt (despite the fact that she has never been catholic. go figure).

she was inconsistent.
she was a workaholic.
she was insecure and codependent.

but she taught me all of the most important lessons that I've ever learned.


I could write chapters, books, and volumes on my mother and could still never explain the beauty, the wonder, and the dysfunction that is uniquely hers. But it has taken some time to come to this place. I recall distinct moments in my life that changed and shaped how I saw my mother. For the sake of maintaining this entry a blog and not a novel, I shall restrict the retelling of those moments to a few. When I was about five years old and she decided that she needed to inform me that my dad was not my father. (I know, that's confusing. Imagine grasping that at five.).

Lee Artho was a jolly alcoholic, to hear my recollections of him. However, I have been aware since the first family counseling session that my mother took me and all of my siblings to, that he was also abusive. I'm sure that the abusive side of him was what she was concerned about the day that she turned to me in the car and said "You understand that Lee is not your real dad, right?". I remember being quite confused, but nodding my head anyway. And resenting her immensely for saying so. In my five year old mind, I thought that she was being mean. As I grew older, I came to understand that she felt that she was sparing me something that she did not have the luxury of sparing my sister. My sister is somehow the only one who understands why it is that I continue to refer to him as my dad.

My resentment toward my mother grew as I got older. She favored my sister blatantly (which she will deny to her dying breath). At every crossroad in my life, my mother inconsistently enforced (I know. that's an oxymoron) guidelines that she felt were necessary for me not to be a hooker like her: I couldn't get my ears pierced until I was 13. No make up until 16 (mind you, she was the one who purposely put me in school a year early meaning that I was in high school at 13). No boys until 16. And no one on one dates whatsoever until I graduated high school. .........somehow these rules never applied to my sister who was smoking pot with my mother at age 14. I resented her so much by the time that I left home that I didn't speak to her for a year.

As a teen, I thought her to be a hypocrite. period.
As an adult, I have a more objective view of her and see that she is beautifully flawed. That she was like so many who perpetuate the dysfunction they are trying so hard to escape. At the height of my disdain for her. Shortly before I moved out, I found myself being pursued by the epitome of white trash. He rode a motorcycle, sported tattoos (two of which were "Shedtown dots". marks intended to signify the wearer is a proud racist.), was a high school dropout, was three years older than me, and didn't have a job. I thought for sure that dating him would give my mother a coronary. Cause her to stroke out right in the middle of the kitchen. I couldn't wait! So when he stated that he was coming by my house (something that I typically would have vetoed for two reasons: I didn't allow my mother to meet boys that I was interested in and I didn't take well to being "told" anything by boys. The second part hasn't changed :)......I said "What time?".

To my dismay, my mother didn't flinch. She was gracious and even showed interest in his tattoos. WHA?!! What kind of mother are you?! I thought. Of course, I immediately lost interest in the pawn (which was her precise intent). At 15 this angered me. At 25 I admired her for it.

I think this is the extent of the Mother Memories that I have the patience and time for today.......part two will be slightly more uplifting. maybe.