Electric Love
voluminous blossom
opens her face to the Sun;
swallows fire,
dares to dazzle,
has no fear.
When the rain comes
melting her pretty petals
fall: worthy remains
feed the garden of her blessed beginning.
Tammy Wynette was one of my mother’s favorites when I was a young child. She played this song many times. It opened my heart to fire of God burning in my belly every time I heard it. So, here’s to you mom.
The next day we waited in the hall outside the intensive care unit until everyone arrived. Once all four of us were there we took turns visiting mother. Each of us saying what we needed to in private. When my turn came all I could say was,”Mom, thank you for giving me life,” which I meant. Sheri spent alot of time talking about mom’s wisdom and love. All the things she’d learned from her. Try as I might, I could think of nothing wise or loving I’d learned from my mother. In fact, one of many things mom frequently complained about to my siblings in regards to how she felt about me, and why, was how upsetting it was to her that I never went to her for advice, help, or direction.
As a small child I felt an innate lack of trust in her. Couldn’t handle being patronized and lied to which she did often. Like Snow White’s evil stepmother she went to great lengths to lure me in but unlike Snow White, I didn’t take the bait. Took to fits of rage when she would try to pull the wool over my eyes. Once tipping over my dresser to make my point. A story she told many times, always leaving her part out, she used what I did as evidence to prove my insanity. Discredit my experience and feelings. Hide her behavior.
Years later, after I’d left home, married and had my first child, I fell in love with a man who wasn’t my husband. I went to my mother for direction. I still wonder how she’d finally put me to sleep, why I thought she would help or comfort me. When I arrived at her house we took a ride in my car. I proceeded to open my heart fully to her. Sparing nothing I poured my feelings into her hollowed out bosom. There was no tenderness, compassion, or wisdom in her response. She started off with, Oh sure, when you were in good standing with your almighty church, [I'd been excommunicated for adultery], you were too good for us, but now that your life is falling apart you come running to us for help. With me, mother always spoke as if she and my siblings were a unit that I was outside of. Her mean-spirited snarling words were the poisonous kiss that awakened me. Reminded me of the truth between her and I.
When I was fourteen years old I met my huntsman. A man who rescued me by marrying me when I was seventeen years old. Instead of the cozy cottage of the seven dwarfs, my refuge, became the Mormon Church. Rather than being proud of me, or at the very least attempting to understand and support my desire to climb out of the godless violence, poverty and alcoholism of our family by seeking God, Love, safety and community through my church, she punished me for it by accusing me of becoming arrogant because I chose not to spend much time around them. Also wouldn’t allow them to drink and smoke in my home. Spend time with my children when they were drinking and drugging which was all the time. My parents and siblings took vacations had parties and dinners without inviting me and my family. Truthfully I would not have gone and they knew that. At that time I didn’t drink or drug. Nor could I stand the fighting that almost always went on. Much of it physical.
The second and last time I went to my mother for help was several years later. I’d succumbed to addiction. Been arrested for writing my own prescriptions for tranquilizers. I called my mother to bail me out, promising to pay her back the next day which I fully intended to do. Even though she’d bailed my brothers and sisters out many times, in many ways including jail, that she’d never bailed me out of anything, she said no.Weeks later when the probation department called her to see if she felt I was a safe candidate for probation or if she felt it best that I be sent to jail for five years, she told them that locking me up was the best option.
When I finally came in front of the judge he took pity on me. I had no prior offenses of any kind, honestly had no idea that what I’d done was such a big deal [a felony]. The officer who’d done my pre-probation investigation and report came to me in private, said he thought I should read it. He’d talked to several different people including friends, lovers, employers and the doctor I stole the script pad from. All of which said probation was enough. I was touched and surprised to read their understanding and compassionate reports about me. When I got to my mothers appraisal the shock was no less of a jolt than a hit from a stun gun. There was nothing good in her report. She basically said I was useless, worthless. Then added that I’d always thought I deserved more than everyone else. And in regards to the aspirations of those in my family, she was telling the truth.
Next came the meeting to determine what should be done with mom. Her breathing and feeding were being supported, she was still in a coma. Three doctors one nurse and the four of us kids filed into a room with a large conference table. Each of them gave us their prognosis. Basically it was the same except that they wanted to put her on full life support. My mom was clear on this matter. Had a DNR order in place.
It’d been just over forty-eight hours since her fall. I wondered if we should give her some time before we pulled the plug. Didn’t speak up because I was unwilling to be responsible for her care. Mother didn’t help those who cared for her to do so, but instead commanded us to do what she wanted. She used guilt and fear to scare us into doing it exactly the way she wanted it done. Just the way she’d done all our lives. Ron spoke up first, “Mom wouldn’t want this.” Vicki turned to Sheri who responded, but my hearing seemed to fade, like someone turned down the volume of the situation, so I don’t recall what she said. Then Vicki, very much the acting matron of our family in many ways, for most of her life, looked at me. I think I shook my head yes. Relieved to not be alone with such a ponderous decision Vicki agreed. The last order of the business of mom’s life was if we wanted them to make her comfortable with morphine, to which there was a resounding Yes.
To be continued very soon…
Nearly two weeks ago my mother fell down the stairs. She was staying with my older sister Vicki while my younger sister Sheri, her primary caretaker was out of town. Mom taking a nose dive down the stairs was Vickis biggest concern. Something she worried about every time mom stayed at her house. The agreement was that if mom woke in the night she’d call out to Vicki so she could help her navigate the dark safely. This was standard middle of the night potty procedure, which left some of us wondering if the dead quiet silence that preceded mom’s plunge was intentional.
Her head smacked the yellow pine stair treads so hard the sound shocked my sister awake, like the crack of a gun fired into the night in a peaceful small town neighborhood. Then came the screams, horrible primal shrieks of terror erupting from my sisters lips, tearing a violent hole in her heart; opening a portal for mom’s departure.
Holding mother’s head in her lap, like a vulnerable newborn, she pleaded with her not to die. Watched in helpless confusion as mom’s life-sustaining blood, liquid garnets, trickled out of her right ear, like the sap of a mahogany tree cut away from its source.
As soon as she arrived at the hospital they rushed her into emergency surgery, drained the flood of blood threatening the circuitry of mom’s brain. Prognosis: Broken shoulder. Coma. We can’t say. Some wake up in a few days, a month; some never wake up. Have to wait and see. Treatment: Intravenous nourishment. Soulless air wheezing through a plug on the hospital wall. Morphine. Wait and wonder.
All her children gathered round her sterile bed. Her beloved, our brother Ron, incapacitated by his drug addiction. Vicki, mom’s right hand. Sheri her left, partially paralyzed years before by a stroke. Me her nemesis. The room, a tiny cell, was separated from the nurses station; raised above each humming, buzzing, beeping, wheezing unit, by a sliding glass door with a broken track. Mom’s head wrapped in bandages like a turban, a dried black blood clot closed off her right ear canal. Eyes closed, her incoherent body overwhelming as a corpse.
We talked awkwardly amongst ourselves, nurses coming and going. In whispers we lightly touched the subject of moms do not resuscitate order, the ventilator supporting her insufficient breathing sibilating in the background. Intravenous fluids dripping slowly into her sodden body. We laughed and cried, none of us knowing what to do. Ron stood up, hobbled to the picture window door. As he was leaving I heard him say, “We need a Chaplain.”
I was surprised and comforted by the fact that the Chaplain was a woman. She offered a prayer, then asked those of us that wanted to to share what we most appreciated about our mother. As I listened to the others offer up their praises I got scared. What the hell am I going to say? racing through my mind. Unable to fake feelings that don’t exist, when my turn came I said, “Thank you mother, for giving me the courage to live ‘To thine own self be true, above all things.’ ” It felt honest and although I didn’t share it, I believe that her rejection, the pain of being left out, unloved and emotionally abused by her helped birth my lion-hearted Self. I also believe that that is what drove the biggest wedge between us. I chose to live bravely as me, and it cost me her. I added “I love you,” but it didn’t feel right when I said it.
Then the Chaplain asked us what denomination mom belonged to. Someone said Protestant. Someone else said Episcopal. “And did she have a favorite prayer?”
My intention was to keep quiet as much as possible. To listen carefully to the hearts and wishes of my siblings. Didn’t feel it was my place to interject much of anything, considering mom and I’s lifetime of contention. But the room fell silent so I interjected what I knew. “Her favorite prayer was the Serenity Prayer.”
“Do you know the words to that prayer,” the Chaplain inquired.
“I have a copy,” I said, digging through my bag to find it. I was disappointed the card I carried didn’t have the prayer in it’s entirety.
We all said the first verse together. My heart unwound a bit because I knew mom’s favorite prayer. I was also surprised that my sisters and brother didn’t know.
After a long day of waiting for mom’s destiny to be made clear to us, [Wake up or die mom; which will it be?], drinking too much coffee, eating only boiled eggs, a brownie and some almonds, I decided to go home. As my car whizzed along the rural route to safety, questions whirred through my mind like a ticker tape parade.
All I wanted was to hear my son’s voices. To have them tell me that what I wasn’t feeling was ok. I called all three of them. Left rambling update messages on their voice mail; feeling awkward because none of us had an authentic relationship with her. Because I was not in love with her.
To be continued very soon…
When I was nine, my parents moved from Orange County California to Peoa Utah. Population maybe three hundred. It was 1969 and dad wanted to get us out of the city. Thought peopled gone nuts, that the world was headed to hell in a hand bag. He’d grown up in the Utah Mountain’s, his dream was to bring us up close to nature. My mom was a city girl, the move didn’t suit her at all.
My parents started spending their recreation time with my dad’s uncles and cousins on his mother’s side. Grandma was one of ten children. Her brother’s were rugged hard-drinking men who worked in the copper mines. Most of our time was spent with one of my dad’s distant cousin’s families. My mom got along well with his wife Donna. Even though we referred to them as our aunt and uncle, I personally never had any love or real concern for them.
When my mom had a car we went to their house in the city. It was where the family hung out and drank. Even though aunt Donna was easy-going as an overweight house cat, she ruled her roost. Anybody caused any trouble, including one of her five kids, she kicked them out. She also never cooked. Even though she worked, there was rarely anything to eat. The first thing her and mom would do on the weekends they got together, was go to the store for food so us kids and my dad could eat. Then the party’d begin.
I blacked out the first time I drank. I was around ten years old. On this particular weekend Donna, her husband Carl and their kids were staying at our house. Friday night Mom and Donna cooked up a big Chinese meal. The adults hung out drinking, smoking cigarettes and listening to country music. Mom always danced. It made me mad when I watched her sashaying around the house all sexy like. Saturday night the adults all went out to the local bar, something mom rarely did. Donna barely combed her hair, but mom fixed herself up pretty. Lips painted Oslo Orange, she left the house excited as a teenager headed to a prom.
When they came home dad dragged mom into the house by her hair. She had a tendency to be french kiss friendly with guys at the bar, which dad didn’t like. Trying to calm him down only made him worse. He tried to beat an apology out of mom, while Donna tried to distract him from his jealous anger, by reasoning and joking with him. Uncle Carl, an impotent sickly thin wino, hid out in the bedroom with us kids.
At first I hated hanging out with them. Everything felt out of control, unpredictable, but when they hung out Mom was happier than usual. She flounced around, joking and flirting with my aunt’s oldest son, and my dad’s uncle Freddy. I once caught her in a lip lock with him. When I walked in the kitchen she got real mad at me. She was sitting on the kitchen counter, legs spread, he was standing between them. They were kissing with their mouths open.
Donna had hair the color of a Robin’s breast, didn’t get dressed before noon, and was seriously overweight. For breakfast she cracked a beer. Her kids, although not much older than I was, were what I considered to be degenerates’. They all drank, smoked cigarettes, and weed.
Until I started drinking and smoking with them, I was bored when we were together. And no matter what I did, I couldn’t shake the constant uneasiness I felt, knowing the weekend would end in violence. Which eventually ended the visits. Since these wild weekends were our families only social connection to the outside world though, when they ended I missed them. Was angry at my aunt Donna for refusing to deal with my father’s violence. Felt abandoned.
Us kids, except for my aunt’s oldest son who hung out with the adults, found things to entertain ourselves. Early one spring we decided to go tubing in the Provo River. The icy water raged, rapids peaked at six or eight feet high. The day was terrifying, several of us nearly drowned. My brothers blue eyes, sky wide with terror, laughed hysterically through choking gasps. Purple lips. My tube got stuck under a boulder, slamming my head hard, it knocked me silly.
Walking back to my parent’s trailer frozen stiff and blue as bruises, one of Donna’s daughters pulled out a bottle of vodka. Another lit a joint. They next morning the pile of us came to and I panicked. There were red streaks running down both my legs, scraped raw from my scuffle with the river, I thought I had blood poisoning.
“I’ve got blood poisoning!” I shrieked frantically.
This made the rest of them howl like a pack of hyenas. “You got the munchies last night, ate everything in sight. “That’s Kool-Aid,” they bellowed.
I’m so excited about this Time magazine cover! Bravo to them, [and to the young woman], for having the guts to print it. It definitely got my attention. This young mother is sexy as can be. Not the way we most often think about the nursing mom. Mom is to be appropriately covered and, well, how should I put this, motherly. The child should be an infant; if they are to meet the standard of purity expected, required even, for a woman to get away with nursing her child. And God forbid she nurses said child in public. Like menstruation, menopause, and the bloody details of giving birth, these are all things women keep to themselves. Many times even from each other.
So here we have this vibrant young mother with her toddler son holding her nipple in his mouth. Very provocative indeed. I wonder would the reaction be different if the child was a female?
The Doc that’s behind the thinking being promoted in the article is pushing attachment parenting. He talks about babies and toddlers being plugged into mommy as much as possible in order to be emotionally healthy. I’m not sure how I feel about this as I don’t think we have enough truly connected men to support that process. What I mean is men who come home and [happily, willingly] do housework, laundry, cook and babysit so she can work, play, or whatever she needs to do to remain vital as a being separate from her child. A man who will, as the commercial once said about women: Bring home the bacon, fry if up in the pan, and, in this case, never-never let her forget she’s a woman. Many times a married woman with children ends up being no more important to her man than the couch he falls into at night.
That’s in part why it’s hard to ignore this photograph. This woman is hot. Not an easy one to ignore or put into a clean little mommy box where she becomes completely non-threatening. What do we do with that? Looking at the image made me get a tiny tingle in my groin and I’m a heterosexual mom who nursed her children.
In thinking about the concept of attachment parenting, the picture gets much bigger for me. I think of male children who at a certain age are encouraged, almost threatened, by other males, and some females, into rejecting their connection, attraction, and emotional need for their mother. Which in turn ends up being a deeper rejection of all females for anything other than sex. Which in truth requires that they reject a large part of who they are innately. Females who observe their mothers in these “less than” roles, where many times they become invisible, then end up rejecting mom, and therefore themselves, too.
In thinking about it from that perspective, assuming that the woman is fully supported by a male [or female] partner if she chooses to have one, this movement could be a real opportunity for WOMAN to reclaim her real and innate power as a FEMALE.
I think enough years have passed now to prove that we as women can in fact do almost anything a man can do. Many times better in fact. Deep down though I am wondering how many women still want to? How many are really satisfied by it? I myself am more interested in what a truly empowered FEMALE looks and feels like. It’s pretty obvious that we aren’t there yet as the women in this country are more divided than we’ve ever been. I myself am getting tired of the ’it’s all the man’s fault’ excuse. Come on. Really?
It seems to me that the liberation process for women, [as we have known it thus far], has cut far to many women off from who and what they truly are. I know I’m making a loaded statement here as women like to believe, and tend to back each other up in, we got it all covered. But I don’t see that as true. I see many highly masculinized women. Women who look the part, with or without silicone boobs popping out of their Victoria’s secret bras, like a fruit from a cornucopia, yet, they think, and lack connection to what they feel, very much like men. In fact to be anything other than that, is to risk being thought of as a wishy-washy emotional weakling, who insults her warrior sisters. The women who believe themselves to be the trailblazers of our freedom.
I wonder if this budding new movement might not be the beginning of something new for women, and men. The end of images that do not serve the whole of humanity. Something deeper, richer, than the women and men from The Stepford Wives, Desperate Housewives, and even Sex In The City. Women and men, who have the courage to surrender what doesn’t truly serve them, and the whole. The tenacity to not back down and fall into old roles that no longer work.
Not long after my husband and I married something strange happened. Because we didn’t know each other very well, had only been seeing each other for a couple of months when we decided, quite casually, to get married, we knew nothing of each other’s families. Had never spoken about our histories.
I was busy in the kitchen when he came to ask me if I’d folded his shop rags after I washed them. The question was odd considering that most times I never got around to folding the clothes. The dryer was our dresser.
“No? Why?”
“Come check this out!”
I followed him to the back room where he kept his tools and there in the corner were his raggedy rags; parts and pieces of old sheets and towels torn into manageable sizes folded neatly. Placed evenly to one side of the shelf they were on.
The rest of the room was a tangle of wrenches, hammers, screw-drivers, tool boxes, nails, wire, bolts, and various small power tools. Also several boxes of outdated ‘Fine Home Building’ and various other ‘How To’ periodicals, formed a leaning tower of accumulated knowledge, tucked off to one side. Nothing had its place. The neat little pile of carefully folded rags was an island in the storm of my ‘Mr. Fix Its’ make shift shop.
“What’s up with that?” It’d be nice if you cleaned the whole room,” I sneered.
“It’s wasn’t me,” he insisted. His tone, more serious than his usual half-joking manner, threw me.
“What da ya mean?” I asked sharply. I was beginning to feel a little scared. Not knowing him real well, I wondered if he was messing with my mind.
“I mean; I didn’t fold the rags!” he snapped.
We were the only two around. My son was visiting his father in Utah so I knew he couldn’t have done it.
The feeling in the tiny room had shifted from my usual irritation at him, for bothering me with something I deemed stupid, to, What the hell is going on right now?
We both stood staring at the pile when he asked, “Who’s Olga?”
“Huh?”
“Who’s Olga? That name just popped into my mind.”
Stunned, I whispered, “My dad’s mother. She’s been dead for years.”
Olga was my grandmother’s name but no one called her that. I knew her as grandma Jerry. Although she was considered crazy by my dad, mom, and grandfather, I never experienced her as such. Her home was always immaculate. Everything had its place. It was the same with her appearance. Her hair was almost always wrapped up in a colorful scarf, like a woman from an exotic island. Her manner was purposeful yet sensuous. She loved Jazz music, ethnic art, and cooking. A fabulous hostess her home was the place the family gathered on holidays. She packed everything in moth balls. The memory of her lingers, like that odd smell, I think of as her perfume.
I took after her with my dark hair and eyes. Our features sharp, foreign. Long legs. Clear olive skin. We spent afternoons floating in her and my grandfather’s pool. In her fifties she still looked sexy in her Rousseau print two piece suit. A private woman she didn’t like living in a tract of homes, so grandpa put up an eight foot cinderblock fence around the backyard where the pool was. When we out there she encouraged me to keep my voice down. Talked so quietly herself I thought of it as a whisper. When the woman in the house next door was in her backyard grandma hushed me. We floated, quiet as lilies on a pond, listening to her whisper and giggle with a man my grandma referred to as the ‘son-of-a-bitching cheat.’
My grandfather built His and Her’s cedar changing rooms next to the pool. Grandma made sure there we always plenty a fresh colorful beach towels, ready and waiting on the wooded dowels that jutted out of the aromatic wall. Hanging next to the door there was a sign that read: I DON’T SWIM IN YOUR TOILET, SO PLEASE, DON’T PEE IN MY POOL. I always did. Scampered and splashed quickly away from the sunflower of urine blossoming from between my thighs.
Always more than enough at my grandparents home, they had several rafts, balls, and blow-up toys. Orange life vests, sized from small to large, tucked neatly into their cubbies. Two styrofoam doughnuts with blue nylon rope hung where you could get to them easily, in case someone was drowning, which always made me feel safe.
Me and grandma didn’t know how to swim. One afternoon while we were sunning ourselves on rafts, I reached for a ball floating next to me, leaned too far and fell into the deep end. My memory gets all watery there but I was told that grandma nearly died trying to save me. After that happened dad decided I needed to learn how to swim. I remember standing on the diving board crying. Dad was sitting in a lawn chair under the awning next to the back door. He ordered me to jump.
“No! I can’t! I’m scared dad. I’ll drown!”
“I’m not gunna let ya drown. It’s not that hard. Now jump god dammit!”
We went back and forth like this for a few minutes when finally he charged toward me. There was nowhere to run but off the end of the diving board so I held my ground. Pinched my toes tight and bent my legs. He tried to bounce me into the water by jumping up and down. I got down on my hands and knees which pissed him off. Next thing I knew he flung me into the water. I sunk for what felt like forever, my mouth taking in more water than a canoe with a gaping hole. Hands and feet flailing for my life. I don’t remember how I got out of the pool that day. I know how to swim though, so I suppose I learned my lesson.
Grandma stopped having me over to sun with her. Believing I’d almost killed her I understood why she didn’t want me in the pool with her anymore, but I was confused about why she was never home when we went to their house. I asked my mother but she never gave me an answer that felt true. Like my grandmother, I had the habit of listening in when I heard whispering. That’s how I learned that grandma had accused grandpa of messing around with the giggling neighbor lady. So he had her committed for shock treatments.
When I asked my mother about the month I spent with my uncle she flatly denied it ever happened. “I would’ve never let my ten year old daughter do something like that,” was her defensive reaction to my inquiry. She still denies it ever happened.
I flew from Utah to California. The flight took just over an hour and I remember it well. When the plane began to make its decent, the change in pressure caused excruciating pain in my ears. I’d never flown before, had no idea what was wrong, which frightened me. Clutching both ears in the palms of my hands, I gritted my teeth, hunkered down in my seat and tried not to cry out. A stewardess noticed I was weeping and gave me a piece gum to chew. It helped a little. Her unexpected kindness though, touched me so deeply; the pain was like a gift.
My uncle picked me up in his convertible. Took me to get ice cream. Although my memories are fragmented I remember certain things well. He liked to barbecue steak. Bought them fresh from a local butcher shop. Teased me in a way that didn’t always feel like teasing, about my wanting him to burn my meat before I could eat it. Said I ruined it.
He was married to my dad’s sister. They have two sons not much older than me, but I don’t remember them being around. Other than one shadowy image of my aunt, who was a teacher, teaching me words from a dictionary, I don’t remember her there either.
My uncle was a cop. I can’t remember who looked after me while he was working. Maybe my aunt being that she would have been out of school but I have not one clear memory of her. I remember the excited feeling I got when I thought of him coming home at the end of the day so we could get ice cream.
I slept in the bedroom across the hall from his room, which I remember as being dark like a cave. He had a king size bed. The room I slept in had two twin beds. I slept in the one closest to the door.
His house was light caramel colored stucco. A Spanish style tract home typical for the area. The windows and doors had fancy black wrought iron bars on the outside. I thought of him as rich. Compared to the extreme poverty I came from, he was. Looking back I consider him to have been solid middle class. He had a pool but I don’t remember swimming.
I was a bed wetter. Concerned I would ruin the mattress, he covered it with plastic which made the sheets slick as a slip and slid. Set a Big Ben alarm clock in a stainless steel sauce pan next to my bed. It was set for 1:00 am. The plan was it would wake me so I could go to the bathroom to pee. I imagine it must have been pretty loud but it didn’t wake me up, he did. Guided my sleepy body to the bathroom at the end of the hall. I remember feeling self conscious when he lifted my nighty, pulled down my panties.
The reason I asked my mother about the trip is because I kept having a recurring dream. My uncle was Mexican. His people were the only Mexican people I’d ever been around. A big wonderful family that liked gathering at their family farm. In the dream I’m watching a dark eyed little girl lying in a bed of straw. She’s inside a barn. In the loft. Her head is turned to the right. She’s looking directly at me. A blank faced stare. There’s an older Mexican man on top of her. His pants are around his ankles. He’s raping her but he’s tender. Kissing her softly, between groans, he tells her how much he loves her in Spanish. I wake from the dream screaming. In excruciating pain from the waist down; terror pumping through my body.
I hadn’t spoken to my uncle for years when I decided to try to reach him. Called my mother to get his number but she wouldn’t give it to me. I eventually contacted the woman I knew he was married to and she gave me his number. They’d always maintained separate households. She and I’d been friends so the call was light and comfortable. I didn’t tell her why I wanted to talk to him. I wanted it to come as a surprise. To catch him off guard. I left her my number. Said she’d let him know I was looking for him that night when they had dinner.
He and I’d been fairly close well into my adult life. I’d been to see him many times. Always felt more like a date than a niece when I was visiting. He wined and dined me. Introduced me to his friends. It always felt a bit strange but I enjoyed the feeling of being special. He’d also stayed in mine and my husband’s home. Came to Utah every year to hunt deer. After our divorce he stayed in touch with my ex-husband, but I hadn’t heard from him since then.
Over the next week or so I left several messages on his answering machine but never got a call back. I found out later that he did however, out of the blue, call my older sister and my mother, just to say hi; see how everyone was doing. If he told them I was looking for him, they never told me. I never heard from him. A month or so later I got a call from my mother. He died of a sudden an unexpected heart attack.
He told me I stunk
like my mother, who smoked
Winston Red, always burning
Oslo Orange lipstick rimmed
filter, puckered, sucking pomp.
I wore a shower cap over my damp hair
pleading with her not to smoke
on the short drive to school;
failed class after class
worrying about how I smelt.
He told me to wash
before, or was it after
he touched me
so hot, it left scars like cigarette burns.
The tip, a cherry,
pumped smoke, bitter as sperm
down my mother’s constricted throat.
I asked her not to smoke
in my home; after I fled hers.
She shrieked, “I smoked all your life
and it didn’t hurt you!”
She didn’t come back
for years, made me pay
for sin I can still smell.
Memories every mirror revives.
In a black out
I reach for my son
soldier, in my war
on drugs.
I fumble
with the tiny keypad
on my phone.
I try
to type a note
to say something;
I don’t remember?
Grasping for him
has become
the only
predictable thing
I do.
Like calling an old lover
after too much wine
lonely; I hunger
for someone
who knows me
someone to keep me
from reaching
the point I reach
while I talk merrily
sipping poison
that erases memories.
I had been forewarned, by whom I still do not know, but they were kind enough to give me the chance to do things differently. My youngest brother Cody, aka, The Codeman, spent the better part of his life struggling to overcome drug addiction. He and I were always close. More so than I actually realized, after he died.
There was distance between us. I would like to say that it was because his repeated jackpots in the way of car crashes, overdoses, institutions and the like, had tired me to such a point I cut him loose; but that would be a lie. You see I too was struggling with addiction and had cut myself loose from any and all things that got in the way of my using. My brother was one of those things.
Until he was five years old he called me mommy. I’m not sure why, perhaps I had encouraged him to do so. I was always playing house and many times he was there too; playing at being one of my children. I can still see his wide, sky blue eyes, thickest curliest eyelashes I have ever seen. He even endured my putting mascara on him. Oh how I loved those beautiful bewildered eyes. Born three months early it took him years to grow into his age. He was tiny and somewhat frail. Even when I wasn’t playing house, in many of the photographs from that time, he is on my lap. My arm wrapped around him protectively.
I was riding my bike when I heard the voice whisper into my minds ear. Clear as someone standing right next to me I heard, Cody is going to die soon. Stunned, by the messenger, the message, the mystery of what was happening, I burst into tears. In my heart, it was if I had just been told he was already dead. I knew what I’d heard was truth.
At that time in my life, real and intense feeling broke through the everyday gray haze, like a sudden and unexpected lightning storm. Always acute and moving through very quickly. After the storm of emotional electricity passed, I rode my bike back to my car to head home. When I started up the engine the radio was blaring and the first song that played was Sara McLaughlin, Angel. Again came the voice, whispering into the ear of my heart, Play this song at Cody’s funeral.
Sadly I did not call my brother to say I love you. To plead with him not to die. I made no effort what so ever to spend precious time with him. Almost unbelievably, what happened that day vanished from my memory.
When the phone rang that News Years morning though, it all came back. Before I picked up the receiver I knew that my brother was dead. A bolt of grief melted me on the spot.
The next year was heavy with regret. Our [mine and Cody's], life came back like flash floods. Our broken childhood, the pain, the loneliness of it all. I couldn’t remember what his face looked like. Could not recall the sound of his voice. Secretly I begged for his forgiveness everyday. Still I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was responsible for his death. That I could have prevented it.
The following New Years Eve when I went to bed I said, out-loud, “Cody, where are you? Where did you go when you died?” I fell asleep crying.
The next morning when I got up to take my dogs for their walk I couldn’t take our usual route. We were having a January thaw and there was no way to cross the brook behind my house. We’d gotten a skiff of snow in the night. As I plodded through the neighborhood to get to the next cutoff into the woods where we normally walked, I noticed that someone had stomped out a picture of a spaceship on the road. It looked like something drawn on an etch-a-sketch. The feet were small like a child’s. Not wanting to mess up their art I steered my dogs around the six-foot skyship. Something prompted me to look back after I’d already passed and suddenly I saw it! His name, C-O-D-Y written with the same small feet, like a signature on a piece of fine art.
I was so shocked, scared even, that I gasped. Fearing no one would believe me, I abandoned the idea of a walk and dragged my anxious dogs back to the house; hollering for my husband. ” Come quick! You’re not gunna believe this. Hurry!
I don’t know if there was a boy named Cody living in our neighborhood. And if there was, I have no idea what or who inspired him to create that starship, on that corner, on that day. What I do know is that my brother loves me. That he knows and understands all the things I do not, about why it had to be the way it was between us in the end.
The question of whether there is Life beyond death has always haunted me. Like something I remember, even though I have forgotten it. Because of my beloved brothers death, I now know, in the deepest fibers of my being, that Life does go on.
