11/05/03

my siblings and i all seem to be in some sort of silent agreement about this photo. it's like we all think of it as capturing some essence that we associate with our mother. i think we'd all probably agree as well that we don't really like the hairdo. normally, her hair was a dark brown, and the styles we were used to were less 'fussy'. i think part of it is that this is the best quality photo of her we have, and we feel some sort of pride. i think most people tend to exaggerate the positives in their parents when they don't hate them, it helps them to feel more special themselves. i think we all think of this photo as showing her potential. if she had dreams of a more elegant life, it's like we can see that with her basic looks and personality, in the right circumstances it might have been possible for her to have it.

i didn't really know her. i can try to piece together the little bits i can recall and make guesses, but i don't think that i will ever know her. whatever our personal differences, there is part of me that finds it tragic that she died unknown and unfulfilled. i wish there was something i could do about that. did anyone know her?

the people in the past i've talked to haven't helped me to have all that much insight. i don't think i was assertive enough, or that i knew the right questions to ask. and sometimes communication is just awkward, and if i had persevered, maybe i would have ended up with more information. i guess my father still had issues, resentments and unresolved feelings years later and remained inarticulate about her. i think my mother's sudden death is part of what shocked me out of the natural passivity and secretiveness that most humans seem to exist in, made me make more of an effort than the average person to say the awkward thing, to put vague feelings into words, to say what i'd say if i thought i or someone else would die tomorrow.

i suppose i could be biased, because she was my mother, but i think she had an unusual quality, something that made her seem different from other people. all of my father's subsequent girlfriends were decent people, interesting in their own particular ways, but i never saw any of them the same way. i think that my mother had a kind of grace, a kind of feminine insight or awareness that none of the others had, a way of seeing the magic in life, the potential, and a more strongly developed sense of fairness and the need for human decency and to strive for the highest within oneself. to me, it always seemed that the way things turned out with my mother made my father scared to ever try for as much in a relationship again, with someone he was truly attracted to, on as many levels as possible. it was like he had tried for too much, and got burnt. but it could also be that he always let women approach him, rather than be the actual pursuer, and so he had no real control over his relationships. it could be that he just wanted to try something different. it could be that my mother was exceptional, and that it just wasn't easy to find someone with a similar combination of personal qualities, that she was irreplaceable.

i suppose that some people could look at the portrait, and say that she was just a common woman having a good day, or that she had a good photographer. i don't think that's all there is to it. when i knew her, she was always thin, and her bone structure was more pronounced than it is in this photo. she didn't wear makeup on a daily basis, only once in a while, for special occasions. the features were so clearcut. i don't think i really saw her, though, in those days. she was just my mother. but when i remember her face now, comparing it with the faces i've known through the years, the structure, and the way she used it to express herself, i think there was something extraordinary about it. i think i could have photographed her in interesting ways and that she would have made a much better model than me, that it would be much easier to work with her features.

anyway, compared to me, a mongrel child, she was very beautiful. when i look at this photo of my mother, i just know there's no way i could have ever been in this category. and maybe the pain related to that is somehow part of why we were at odds.

if she could somehow see how my life has turned out, i don't think she'd feel very happy about all the pain i've gone through, i don't think she'd think i deserve it. i think she'd be proud of the others, but that my situation would hurt her. my life seems interesting to me, in a way, more interesting than it could have been if i'd been able to have a normal life. there's a lot of pain, but i accept that this is who i am.

i wonder, though, if part of why i've found it impossible to get jobs or stay in relationships relates to her own ambitions and frustrations. if i can't accept what comes to me, if no job ever has felt right, no relationship has ever felt right, if this is because in a sense i've been like her and tried not to be, trapped by roles that society sort of dictates, trying to shake it all off and find out who i am underneath all that? and it's only when you're able to do that that you have a chance of finding the things that feel right? or is it about unrealistic expectations? families who have so much pride that they exaggerate too much, and can't see members for who they are and expect too much of them?

why did she go to teacher's college? i find it hard to believe that she really wanted to be a teacher. was it a practical thing to do considering her aptitudes because she wasn't assertive or focused enough to say what she really wanted to do? i think she probably made a better teacher than most, but i somehow doubt that it was what she wanted.

my mother was pregnant, with me, on her wedding day. she was 20. was she scared? was her post partum depression related to the physical proof, a baby, that her path in life was now chosen when she still wanted so much more, when she felt too young to give up on her dreams?

on my parents' wedding day, my mother's 16-year-old sister told my father that he had married the wrong sister. they had an affair at some point, or maybe it was just sex. i'm wondering if it was related to his need to feel important, special, validated. that elusive person who would recognize him for what he was and give him what he deserved at last. whoever gives him the most attention always seems to have a special place for him, for as long as the attention lasts, but some people just can't give enough, or the kind of attention he wants. maybe i'm like that too, maybe we all are. as for her sister, it seems likely to me that she'd have issues about the unfairness of things, about how my mother was the favourite in the family because of her looks. i could be wrong, but that was always my impression, that my mother was the favourite child in her family because she was the prettier one. ah, we're all so fucked up. we're all needing so much, it's all such a confusing mess. i think i probably look more like my mother's sister than like my mother.

i don't know what went wrong in the marriage, but it seems to me that my mother became very isolated when they built a house together in the country, and that it wasn't really the life she wanted. as for my father, i think he probably just wasn't really ready for kids, and the responsibilities involved. i think i can sort of imagine my mother wanting to save up for her children's educations and whatnot, but my father thinking that sort of thing wasn't important, and that the kids themselves should be responsible for that sort of thing. he never wanted to plan for the future, he wanted to spend money how he wanted to spend it, and i can see that leaving my mother with a feeling of insecurity. but when they divorced, it was like he *needed* to have horses and whatnot for his own sanity, but it was like what she might need for hers was not important. he's a man, he's more important, he makes money, he should be able to spend it. he paid his child support. but we lived in a much less extravagant kind of way than he did. how frightening it must be to be the female in this situation, the one with less earning capacity, the one constantly thinking about the children and aware of their needs.

she sewed clothes, and ornaments for special occasions. she did various arts and crafts projects. sometimes holiday themes. she made costumes for halloween and whatnot. she had trouble with birthday cakes. she'd buy cake mixes, but when she baked them, they'd always crumble. and the icing would look like it was holding them together like coloured glue. i took over baking cakes, and it was like i had a knack for it. we all sort of complained about her cooking, but she was good at some things. her oatmeal raisin cookies were the best ones i've ever remembered having. i liked having her lasagna. she made crepes suzette once, and while it wasn't exactly what kids prefer, i think she did a decent job. i think mainly she cooked fairly bland but healthy and lowfat meals. what i mean is, some of my father's girlfriends and other women we knew were good cooks, but in order to be so, they had to use a lot more fat in their cooking. that's what i recognize now. it was like she wanted her children to grow up healthy and slim. she let us have treats. for instance, we were allowed to have two cookies each when we got home for school, and on friday nights we had treats, and on saturdays mornings we were allowed to eat sweet cereal and watch cartoons. she didn't want us to watch too much television. i don't remember watching all that much.

she made jams and pickles. we went with her to pick the fruits and vegetables, etc. she froze a lot of stuff, too. she wasn't afraid to ask to get us invited places with swimming pools or other places that might be fun for kids. she took us to the beach. she was somewhat social, visiting friends and relatives and dragging us along, and maybe somewhat fearless when it cames to doing things for her kids. she budgeted to take us out to dinner, to movies, on road trips to florida. she took us to hockey, dance, swimming lessons, etc. she took me to the library regularly. she insisted we spend time playing outside.

she wore jeans. she looked young. when i was 10 or 11, i can remember that a tough girl at school, one who often picked on me, made some comment about my mother after she had seen her one day. she didn't say anything derogatory. she referred to her as my teenage sister. i told my mother, and i know it made her feel good. i started putting cream around my eyes when i was 12 or 13, already trying to minimize the signs of aging, get a head start.

there were always things like that happening. people could not believe that someone who looked like her could have 4 children of our ages. when she tried on jeans, the shopgirls seemed somewhat envious, or amazed. maybe i've always felt a lot of pressure as a result.

the couples counsellor she and my father went to ended up asking her out. she and her lover had what i'd call 'heat'. i never witnessed that sort of thing between my father and any of his girlfriends, although i vaguely remember it being present between my parents. what i can't remember clearly about their relationship probably has to do with part of what i look for in a mate, and what i can't find. that heat. although i had it with peter.

while my father could complain about how irrational she was, how sickly thin she was, etc, it still seemed to me that she was more sexually interesting to him, more exciting, than any of his subsequent mates.

i remember that she liked the movie 'breakfast at tiffany's'. maybe she admired audrey hepburn. maybe it was the idea of style, a glamourous life, a life of freedom. here are a few quotes from the movie i pinched from a website, in case it had something to do with underlying themes or issues:

"I don't want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together. I'm not sure where that is, but I know what it's like. It's like Tiffany's." --Holly. "I'm not Holly. I'm not Lulamae either. I don't know who I am. I'm like Cat here. We're a couple of no-name slobs. We belong to nobody and nobody belongs to us. We don't even belong to each other." --Holly. "You know what's wrong with you, Miss whoever-you-are? You're chicken. You've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, 'Okay. Life's a fact. People do fall in love. People do belong to each other.' Because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness. You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing, and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well Baby, you're already in that cage -- you built it yourself. And it's not bounded on the west by Tulip, Texas or on the east by Somaliland. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself." in truman capote's book, the unnamed narrator (paul in the movie version) does not win holly's heart, she leaves, and aside from a few postcards and some things he hears through the grapevine, he never hears from her again.

those are the things i relate to. i think i've always thought that she wanted an exciting life, a more elegant, glamourous life. i think that's part of why i didn't want marriage or children. i wanted to see what else there was in life.

what holds us back? often a movie, a song, a book, or something else has some deep impact, or triggers something, and it becomes clear to us who we really are, what direction we want to move in, but somehow we are paralyzed and don't act on this information, we wait passively for signs, or for encouragement, and years go by and suddenly we're old but still feeling stuck at the same age we experienced the revelation, with the same dreams and a life we can't get out of. or maybe we analyze and try to go for what we want, but move in circles, never getting any closer for reasons we just can't quite figure out. we keep expecting it to just happen, because we're special, we have a special destiny, and eventually when it doesn't just happen, we realize we didn't have a special destiny after all.

tiffany's doesn't appeal to me, jewelry, high fashion or that sort of thing, but i understand the wish for beautiful clothes and places and occasions to wear them. my sister and i used to talk about 'busset dresses'. we meant dresses that were bustier dresses, strapless, but it was our code for a kind of wish we both shared for some kind of glamourous occasions, the chance to push feminity to the max, although i think we both experienced this wish differently.

i'm still waiting for special occasions. reasons to make an effort with hair and makeup. places to go, lovely or interesting things to wear. and things would be natural, and conversations would flow freely once it all came together, and i'd be able to access all the knowledge that i've been accumulating..

in family therapy, i told the therapists that i thought my mother wanted to die. no one called me on this. they all seemed to accept it.

i saw her not long before she died. i couldn't handle staying all that long. it had happened the previous summer as well. it may have had something to do with how out of control i felt with my life, and how bad i felt about not being able to control my weight. feeling like a failure, finding it difficult to face her. so depressed, trying so hard to hide it. she wasn't sleeping with her lover. she told me she wanted to leave, but that he said he'd kill her and/or her kids if she left. i can't remember when exactly she told me that. i didn't know what to do with this information. i told my father, i didn't know who else to tell, and he reacted so immaturely, not understanding her predicament, not showing any concern for her as a person, just full of this macho male bullshit related to his kids, not her. didn't he care about her at all any more?

she and her lover seemed to constantly listen to elvis and neil diamond when i lived with them, and i remember feeling frustration about having to listen to 'that crap' again and again. her lover had a guitar, and he sang mostly neil diamond songs, from what i remember. she took dance lessons as a child, and piano lessons. we had a piano that moved around with us from place to place, my mother's piano, and she played somewhat regularly. mostly pop songs. the song i remember most was 'the air that i breathe' by the hollies. it always makes me feel a little sad or nostalgic to hear it. i don't hate elvis or neil diamond now. sometimes they sort of remind me of her.

she died when she was 37, i'm 37 now. maybe i put all this embarrassing crap on my website because i'm desperately trying to avoid what happened to her. my ideas about myself through the years may have been ridiculous, and i'm trying to face that, and face up to what i've wanted and where it all comes from. she was stuck living in isolation, in relationships that weren't right for her, because she was powerless. she had 4 kids to support. she had to think of them, she had to do the best she could. except if she could have help, maybe it wouldn't have all gone in hopeless circles. she had life in her, she had talents. she had things to give. it was like someone was supposed to notice, someone was supposed to understand, and help her, but no one ever did, and i'm trying to help myself, or to express myself as well as possible, to make it clear that nothing can help *me*. even if it's just for myself, to be as sure as i can be.

i remember once she took us to see the movie superman at the cinema. she told me that she had a crush on christopher reeve, who played superman. she was all schoolgirlish. her attraction made me think. what was the attraction about? wanting life to be simple, wanting good and evil to be clearly distinguishable, and a hero to rescue her? when i heard about his accident and paralysis, i thought of her, and i was curious, and when i saw the way he faced those things publicly, i wondered if there was something in his character that she had been drawn to, that she had sensed was the right sort of thing for her. and of course i do understand that he was an actor because he was a type that made a good projection screen, he was chosen for the roles he was chosen for probably because he made a good projection screen for common women's fantasies.

we didn't have much money. i had one pair of jeans that i wore all the time (my mother eventually made an effort to change this so that i had about 4 wearable pairs of pants). i had also a pair of cords, but they were very loose on me, and a boy at school had commented that i should wear tighter pants because i looked better in them, and so i only wore the ones that flattered me. to go to a school dance, we were told we had to wear a dress, a skirt or dress pants. jeans and cords were not allowed. while i was at school one day, my mother sewed up a pair of dress pants for me. she did a very good job, and in fact they probably looked as good as any from the store, and actually probably fit me better. she had also bought a sweater/top combination that i had admired in a store. it was more expensive than i thought we could afford. i guess she wanted to surprise me. i really feel embarrassed about my reaction now. i wasn't used to dress pants, and all i could think about was that they weren't black (they were off-white), they weren't 'cool', that somehow i'd be teased or an object of ridicule. i guess my mind wasn't very open. i did wear them, but i probably didn't act very grateful. it must have hurt her a lot, and i feel very bad about that.

i hated the way they fought. i wish i could remember more specifics about it. maybe i'd understand better now. i hate that my father made it seem ok to criticize her. i knew she was angry with him, and that she wanted us to take her side, but i don't seem to remember her stooping to the levels he did. i feel so disgusted when i remember seeing his lawyer, being asked whether she hit me with an open or closed hand. the lawyer giving a demonstration, because at 11, maybe i wasn't sure. i felt revulsion at the time. my father had no idea what raising kids entailed, and she knew it. it must have been so frustrating. he probably mainly wanted to get back at her, but part of it was probably about needing to have the kids on his side. i think he had the idea that kids just raised themselves. which isn't actually all that strange maybe, since his father died when he was 15 and he probably had to do a lot on his own.

at a certain point, she developed acne rosacea. my father constantly went on about how disgusting it was. i felt sorry for her. she couldn't help it. how could my father be so immature? i guess i just hate that i was exposed to that, to the idea that it was ok to criticize my mother unfairly. i can remember that for a while i was very resentful of her, thought of her as a bad mother, complained of her. i know that sort of thing is somewhat normal in teenage girls or preteens, but i think i would feel less revulsion about it all now if i wasn't aware of his influence, his example. i didn't ever ridicule things like the acne problem, just bitched about my own issues with her. it did hurt me that she said i was a sour one who ruined everything, and when i moved in with my father, it was like i tried especially hard not to be that way, to make him and his girlfriend not regret that i had come to live with them.

she smelled of coffee and cigarettes. i found it difficult to kiss her, i found the smell overpowering. i think the smells of both parents helped discourage me from smoking or drinking coffee. and i also somehow had the idea that i didn't want alcohol or drugs, that i wanted a pure, healthy body, and that i didn't want to be weak, i didn't want these crutches. but maybe these things helped her to control her weight. she and her lover sometimes drank. i think it was mostly red wine. my father also said that at one point she was taking tranquilizers. none of the four of us ever took up smoking, which may be slightly unusual, because i think children of smokers often become smokers themselves.

we had these siberian huskies at one point. they were beautiful dogs, but they were not meant to be pets. my mother's lover wanted them as sled dogs, i think, for races. a couple of them kept escaping from their chains. one day, i learned that they had killed a neighbour's cat. i knew the daughters. they went to the same school as me. i felt so horrible for them that our dogs had killed one of their pets. i made some comment to my mother, asking why since they'd escaped before and had chased cats we hadn't put in a better effort to keeping them chained up. and she was very upset, saying that i was taking the neighbours' side, and then she made me sit on a chair all night when everyone else went to bed. i think i understand now that it was about more than that, that it was probably about me not understanding her efforts and caring, and how helpless she felt to make me see it, how i just didn't see her.

she did hit me a few times. i can remember the helpless rage i saw. i think i can understand it now, that i didn't comprehend her efforts, that i didn't comprehend how hard she tried and how unfair it was for me to choose my father.. i've felt that kind of rage. and when she hit me, it was shocking and it hurt, but i feel like it's not something to focus on, it's not something to point at and say she was abusive. i think that would be completely unfair. and i also suspect that afterward she probably felt that she'd made things worse between her and me, and that i'd think i had more of a reason to not take her side, and i really sympathize with that a lot. her reactions seem human and understandable to me.

she seemed to like to draw pictures of horses. she and my father met at a place where he used to take out trail rides. when he was young, he also used to do rodeo trick riding. when they were married, he tried to keep horses, but i don't remember my mother having much interest. i think some women wanted to please my father, and accepted a country lifestyle when it really wasn't what they wanted. when my parents built their own house together out in the country, i think she was very isolated. she sold avon and amway for a while, and she did supply teaching sometimes, but she was probably depressed. i don't blame her for finding a lover, someone who seemed to find her sexy and beautiful, in spite of the fact that she had four kids, someone who could make her feel special, make her life seem more interesting. make her feel that there were still opportunities for her in life.

the funeral was bizarre, in my opinion. there were so many people there, people we had no contact with usually. it was a huge funeral. there was a religious service in a big church. it seemed to me that the church was full. i don't remember what was said. it felt to me like none of it had much to do with her, with who she was. who of these people could she turn to with her problems?

i suppose that i will always be seen by some as the horrid cold mongrel daughter who could not shed a tear for her mother. i didn't know what i felt. i was the only one old enough to go into intensive care. i was told i could speak to her, that she might hear me in her coma. i couldn't think of anything to say, and i just stood there dumbly. i didn't know what i felt. i was pregnant. i wouldn't have to tell her. i was trying to hold myself together. i wasn't allowed to cry over the mess i'd got myself into. it never occurred to me to go through with the pregnancy. it was never an option.

we had no real guidance. our father gave us money to buy clothes, and i bought a navy blue dress, a very simple one, but it was cut much better than anything else i had ever owned. i didn't know how funerals worked. no one was talking to us much, my father didn't say much. and i wore that dress the first night, not realizing that we were just going to the funeral parlour to view the body and meet with everybody. i wore the dress with a simple strand of pearls. it's what i should have worn to the funeral, but i didn't know how it worked, and to the funeral i ended up wearing a burgundy dress, wondering if in gossip it would end up 'red'. the second night, we went back to the funeral parlour, and i wore my pink prom dress, which was completely inappropriate. it was very lowcut, to the extent that it was pretty much just joined at the waist, and the fabric just folded over to cover my body. so it um gaped. and when i was there, an old friend of my mother's went on and on guessing about how i must feel, and telling me things about her, and there was this feeling of panic, no i don't feel that way at all, no she wasn't like that, i don't see her that way, and i broke down, i ran from the room in a panic, and finally started to cry. a girl i'd known since i was 3 ran after me, down the street, and as i walked with her i calmed down. i realized that i didn't know how to explain to anyone what i was feeling. there was just no way to do it. i felt so alone.

since the day of the funeral, i have never visited her grave. i don't even know where it is.

it must have been terrible to watch me choose my father. to do your best, and know you care and that the other parent does not care in the way you do, and yet you have no control over who your child prefers. and i did find my father funny, and life felt freer with him, and i'd still choose to live with him, but if i could really choose, i'd choose different parents, a different body and face, or i'd just not want it at all. i just don't see how things could have worked out in any circumstances. i don't belong in the video age. i'm not photogenic enough. i think a large part of what has always scared me about having children is that powerlessness. knowing that my children would probably hate me or not like me, and that there would be nothing i could do. i think i understood or absorbed how she felt. it seems unfair to me, and yet even knowing this, i still don't feel close to her. i still don't think we were the same kind. but i feel bad for her, and maybe if she had lived there would have been some way to work things out.

she didn't seem to have many books that i related to. the ones i think i was most curious about were things like the three faces of eve, sybil and jonathan livingston seagull. i think my brother, my mother's favourite child, was named after that last book. [note: i've just checked this, and found the book was published a few years after he was born.] as for the other books i remember, she had those popular historical romance type novels. her lover recommended that i read dale carnegie's 'how to win friends and influence people', but i didn't read it. as an intellectual curiosity, i probably should have read it, but i think i resented the tone. as if he was saying i was such a rotten person only didn't realize how i was coming across, whereas he'd read the book and people generally considered him well. looking back, there's this feeling of unfairness. i didn't like him, it's true, and i had problems making friends, and i do understand that part of what the book is probably about is overcoming natural passivity and shyness by understanding what makes people feel good, but i think he was taking a dig at me that was unfair and possibly even hypocritical. i think i had a right not to trust him. i didn't like his violence. i didn't like him beating his dog with a 2 x 4 (no, not for killing a cat, just for making noise), i didn't like him drop- kicking my cat down the cellar stairs. at night, i remember my mother saying 'no', and sounding afraid, and like he was hurting her, and i lay there feeling impotent, not knowing what to do. i think my initial feeling may have been biased, because when i first saw him he was kissing my mother in my grandparents' house at a time when i don't know if she was officially separated, and the passionateness of it probably frightened me. at the time, i remember thinking that maybe i was being unfair, but i couldn't seem to help it. i just didn't like him. looking back now, i don't know. i think he really cared about her. at least more than anyone else. and that maybe that was good for her in a way. to be desired, wanted, needed. at the funeral, for the first time, i was nicer to him than i'd ever been. i tried very hard to show him compassion. i had the feeling that not too many people there were all that considerate of him, and maybe it was a sort of underdog type of consolation that i wanted to give. but at that time, i remember thinking that maybe i had been too judgmental all along, that maybe there was more to things, and maybe he understood her and cared for her, at least more than the others at her funeral.

i've never seen him since then. a few years later he got caught smuggling drugs into the united states (my uncle got caught at the same time for dealing, and went to a different prison. they had been friends for a long time, and it was all part of the same thing), i think, and went to jail for a while. i heard that he had some kind of major heart attack as well. i don't think any of the other kids have ever seen him either. what is that? my mother only had one other relationship besides the one with my father, my father had many, but of all of them, it seems we've never really maintained relationships with any of these other families. i don't like that sort of thing. it's like if you're going to try to put families together, it shouldn't be fake. there can't ever have been much to it if the other members of the families don't bond.

i wonder sometimes if the problems i've had breaking up with certain people has been about leftover guilt about hurting my mother. when someone cries, and seems to feel a lot of pain, and/or seems to really need my presence, i find it hard to leave. i become confused as to what i really want, and i often can't go through with it. is it because i figured out years later that she really did love me, and carried on the way she did, was so upset, because she really cared about me. i just wonder about it. but i think it was right for me to leave, even if my father cared less. there was something in me that i couldn't control, maybe self-destructiveness, and i needed space. maybe that's why i was attracted to living with my father. and even now, i can see that jamie really cared, and gk, but that it seems natural that people will only be able to take so much. they are human, and can't handle living with such self-destructiveness. it eventually outweighs what is good. maybe my mother just didn't know how to get through. i think i made communication difficult. maybe that's why now it's so important to me not to gloss over certain things in important relationships. maybe it's part of why honesty is so important.

she did make comments about my weight, and from the time i was a child i think she did try to control my portions, but i was always just not delicate enough. my body measurements would be smaller than most people would expect. i just had that look of not being small. when i was about 7 - 10, she gave me a little booklet containing caloric values of foods, and ideal weights for heights. i went on my first diet after that. about 700 calories per day. the weights were lower than what is currently accepted as healthy by the medical profession. the thing is, what i've discovered is that when it comes to people's reactions to me, i think i come across as more attractive when my weight is lower than what is currently accepted as healthy. i look better to myself when i'm technically underweight. i guess it's partly my body type, and it's partly societal conditioning, but if what people find attractive is not considered medically healthy or is not easily achievable for you, what do you do? i think that if you can't find anything within yourself to fall back on, or anything to do that feels fulfilling to you, that you find interesting, then you are shit out of luck. you'll be tossed around by what people think, you'll lurch from place to place, never feeling secure, never feeling you have any worth, never feeling desirable or wanted.

i think that if i could have been exceptionally beautiful that she may have felt happier in life. instead, i was a reminder of a mistake. she should have stayed free. she did occasionally comment that we'd all drive her to the crazy farm one day, but she didn't really complain. she did so much, she attended to so much.

my mother did yoga, maybe off and on, that seemed to be her preferred type of exercise. i tried it, too, and picked it up easily.

she made us go to church. she considered herself catholic. i felt guilty about it, but i hated going to church. in those days, i didn't question things much, though.

i don't mind at all that she wanted us to have some sort of sense of mystery and magic about life. being realistic is all well and good, but it can get a bit monotonous. and there *is* some kind of mystery and magic in life. why is there *anything*? and the complex organization of things, which we just shrug off and take for granted.. i don't know, maybe it can all be explained, but that doesn't make it not awesome. even if it seems impersonal or cruel.

i think a lot of females have sort of thought of me as not having any maternal instincts, and they have a kind of feeling of superiority. i think they misunderstand to some extent, though. i have this fear of becoming involved in the lives of new, unjaded beings. i have this fear of making things worse for them somehow, of making the world seem unsafe. i think if i was forced to look after a baby or small child, there would be no way i could ignore the child, and i'd feel a need to be so extremely sensitive and gentle. i would try to comfort it, and keep it as comfortable as possible, and that i might be more empathetic than most of those with more pronounced maternal instincts. i'd feel a need to try to 'help' in whatever ways i could, to the extent that i think i'd be overly concerned about way too much. but i have these issues. i can't seem to help picturing myself in the baby's position, and imagining that i just can't get away from something/someone i don't like, but having no real way of communicating it. i also have other fears. for as long as i can remember i've had issues with nonsexual touching. i hid it for years and years, and gave the impression of being normal about it, but i can't seem to help seeing all touching as sexual, and feeling revulsion with some people touching me. i'd just be afraid that somehow these issues would surface with a baby. i have never had any desire to hold a baby, and in the few instances where it's sort of been forced upon me, i've always felt extremely uncomfortable. i also have this issue i think about teenage boys. i think if i had a child that grew to be a teenager, i might be unable to control having sexual feelings. i wonder if this somehow relates to my father's behaviour with me, and with his mother's behaviour with him. she never remarried or even dated after his father's death, and the way she seemed to worship my father might show that she shifted certain feelings onto him to some extent, and that somehow this kind of thing gets transferred from generation to generation if there isn't something to break the cycle. of course, i could be completely out of line. anyway, i won't be transferring it.

i think my mother was a fairly good example for many aspects of mothering. i think she was really good at paying attention to detail, and to trying to round out our experiences and learning.

i started having problems with food when i moved in with my father. that's when the compulsive eating started, and that's when i started to become 'obsessed'. and i wonder if the obsession started in part because my mother was no longer providing the things i took for granted, the caring, the structure and guidance i needed, because she was angry with me, and in addition my father's life was so busy he couldn't pay much attention to me and i projected my feelings of loss, my loneliness and need for attention, in an extreme sort of way. i tried to be calm and rational when speaking to my mother, but i know that can seem patronizing or condescending when a person is upset. i even understood that to some extent. but *she* chose my father at one point, didn't she? maybe she was older and wiser now, but couldn't she see that a child may not know all that much about life, and that if *she* herself could be so attracted to my father as to marry him and have four kids with him, then maybe there was something in his personality that drew people to him? is it reasonable to expect that even a child who has heard the fighting will really understand what side to take? maybe kids are more worldly-wise these days, but back then, i know i felt a restraint and pressure living in her house, and maybe it was related to being afraid of her boyfriend, and maybe it was related to feeling that i wasn't anything special amongst my siblings and that i couldn't live out her dreams.

after all the fighting between my parents and then the stuff between my mother and me, i think i learned a kind of pacifism and acceptance. that you just can't help how other people feel, and it doesn't help to scream and yell and criticize, and in fact those things just make everything worse.

did my mother eat when everyone left the house? did i witness this sort of behaviour when i was young? as i got older, the few times i was left alone in the house, i would guiltily start checking out what food i could nibble. it was my *first* instinct. but since i was very rarely alone, it didn't occur often. i also remember sneaking cookies at my grandparents' place. but when i moved in with my father, there was no one else around. i could eat an entire packet of cookies at once, and no one would complain. so maybe my behaviour occurred in part because i was alone, and there was no one taking care of me in the ways i'd always taken for granted, but it seems to me that maybe i was always something of a time bomb, and that as soon as i had independence, i might self-destruct.

just before i left canada for good, i was waiting for the men to come and pick up the furniture i sold them. i wanted to know what the last song i'd hear at random would be on the radio/cd player before they took it away. i turned it on, spun the dial and heard:

(KATE BUSH
THIS WOMAN'S WORK)

Oh, darling, make it go away.
Just make it go away now.

i turned the radio off, and the men came and took all the stuff away, and i left for australia with one suitcase and a backpack. i don't think i believe in sentimentalizing things, or having these kinds of regrets, but when i've heard this song through the years, the part that seems to make me feel emotional is:

give me these moments back
give them back to me

and i know that i may experience it in a way not intended by the song, but i think whatever a person gets out of a song is valid to that person. those words make me think of the time just after my mother died, when i felt so much for my siblings, when i was so acutely aware of how special they were, how i was awakened or just so aware compared with before. and then that helped me to interpret future experiences in my life, to really see them, appreciate them, to hold on to those moments, and when i hear those lyrics, it all runs together, a river of images of my life, the important moments, and sometimes the sadness is just so immense, and i feel i cannot support it, it will pull me under, and i want the moments back, i want another chance to *really* appreciate them, or do more with them, but i know there's no going back, and i have to let things go, and know those moments are still there, in memory, part of me, and all my new experiences are filtered through those moments and sometimes i can connect it all in simulflow, for a moment, or sometimes i can focus on individual moments.

as i grew older, and understood more about what went into keeping order in a home without anyone noticing the efforts, i would sometimes have fantasies that i could have helped her in some way if she had lived. i think the old hurts were maybe mending a little, slowly. things would never be innocent or perfect, but i couldn't help thinking that maybe there could have been some way to help her. i guess now all that can be done is for me to try to figure out how to help myself. i lost her at age 13, not when she died 3 years later, and there was a hole, not having her made a difference.

attention to detail. i think that i absorbed a lot. i took it for granted at the time, but now i understand all the effort. i understand what housecleaning and planning had to be done to keep the sort of order she kept. i understand all the planning that went into meals, special occasions, etc. she was always thinking of us. i understand the thought, the caring that went into everything. always. if she had any indulgences, i can't really think they were so much.

how horrifying it is to see the walls between you and another, and to feel awkward, to know that your intent doesn't count and that everything you try to say, your every gesture will somehow be wrong. to see no way of overcoming the walls, to feel powerless, helpless. i know what that is now, and i hate that she had to go through it. at the same time, i wonder how it could have been prevented. there may have been ways to keep it all quiet, considerate, but there may have been no way of disguising that we were very different people, and there may have been no way of reconciling those differences. but is that part of why it all seems hopeless to me now when it comes to other people? is it because she died, and i could never work things out with her? and so i make it just as final with all others i know? but sometimes i think what i'm doing is demonstrating sympathy for her, or empathy. she could die without her children saying more, knowing more, doing more, she could disappear, and no one cried out that it was tragic, no one threw themselves screaming on her coffin, they all meekly accepted. of course, that is the reasonable, rational thing to do, but why must social manners and considerations be so fucking powerful? and so i know what it is to be forgotten, while i'm still alive. was that her life? she seemed to have a lot more contacts than me.

maybe i represent some aspect of her, in a way, in addition to all i am in myself, some aspect of her that wanted to walk away from it all, the family chosen too young, when she didn't know herself enough yet, when she wasn't assertive enough. and maybe i'm not living in the way she would have wanted, maybe my life, my existence is not exactly what she would have wanted, but there is romance to it, and adventure, and i have been able to travel a bit, and i will be able to travel still more. if i want to. and maybe the others, those with more formed personalities, more distinct personalities, maybe either they or their sprogs will live other dreams of hers, or live them in more detail and depth, because she's left a deep imprint, something that will extend far into the future, something that's hard to pinpoint consciously, and i wish i could do a better job. but maybe for now i'm the one most like holly golightly, at least closer, i've had more romances, in my own way, maybe i haven't lived in a sophisticated or an elegant way, but i've gone for the unusual, i've risked so much that no one will ever know. i've been fearless in ways maybe no one will ever understand, because they don't understand me. i've said the shocking thing, so many times, or the scary thing, the awkward thing, the thing that people normally want to hide. and because things don't last, because of the way i walk away, the way i hurt the precious ones because i need to remain distinct, i need to know more, i can't succumb to the pressures that seem to want me to betray myself into not risking more. i think people assume that my feelings don't go very deep, but i think they're wrong. it's just so difficult to know how to contain it all within such a weak, limited framework, it's so difficult to know how to express it all.

after she died, and i ran away from home for awhile and then came back after that horrendous night, and i needed something, anything to grip in life, something to keep me from being consumed by the horror of the previous months/year, i started to cook, and clean and pay attention. and all i had taken for granted, i could finally see. i fumbled, and i was broken enough already that i didn't have the energy to absorb it all quickly enough, and maybe more of how i felt was in my mind than found expression in physical reality, than in my actions and expressions, but i saw in all of them what she had seen in us. i understood, in a way, without words. and it was powerful, and it was real and i knew she loved us, because i loved all of them. and i knew she loved me. she was human, and maybe there was some disappointment that i couldn't live her dreams, but i think she did her best not to let me see it and it wasn't her fault that i absorbed it anyway, and she tried to help me remain open. to possibilities. to magic. that maybe there would be some place for me, unusual opportunities for me, something special, something that maybe neither of us could figure out yet. and in a way i like that, and don't care if it seems unrealistic or irrational. i don't care if all my hopes have been blown away by the realities of life. maybe because of her, and because of my father's irrationalities and dreams as well, i've sometimes been able to interpret life as being full of wonder and awe for me, equal to the fucking pain, at least at times. and i don't regret my life. sometimes i do, and want to just be erased, but i don't always feel that way, and life still sometimes overwhelms me and moves through me in strange ways and i want someone to know, and i want to pass it on.

i'm not sure why she and her lover bought the summer resort up in northern ontario. there was a trailer park, a marina with boats to rent, a gift shop, 5 cabins. my brothers were fishing guides. they had to collect worms and minnows for bait, and cut grass and things like that. i worked in the gift/snack shop and helped my mother clean the cabins. was it a dream of hers? i somehow doubt it. maybe it was his idea, and she thought that maybe this was an opportunity, maybe with her skill with money, her practicality, she could make it work, and make more of a future for herself and her kids than she could working as a teacher. and i remember she took an accounting course, and i think she was good at business, and i think they were doing well. but she was stuck out in the middle of nowhere. i admire that she took this risk, and at the same time, i feel for her that she was stuck out in the middle of nowhere, because i don't think it was really the right place for her. although i think she was very adaptable, and took on the challenge of trying to make it work in an admirable way.

my guess is that she wanted more in life. she was not really unhappy with us, but that she wanted something more for herself. and that her unhappiness relating to herself sometimes burst forth in ways she could not control. and when i think of the sacrifice and planning and effort, the way life thrusts things on us before we're ready, how it happens to everyone, before we know who we are, before we know what to think and sometimes our conditioning seems to force us into certain positions, and when our conditioning doesn't our circumstances do, or maybe it's a combination, i think the little grievances are minor in comparison to what she gave. i'm sorry that i've been so broken that i haven't seemed to be able to focus on that more.

i can remember her awkwardness. wanting me to make my own choices (in areas not related to my father), not sure about when i needed guidance or not, probably afraid of my rigidity.

if i have any positive qualities, i have to think that at least some of them come from her, and my father. i suppose i've focused mainly on her here and the issue of my father has to be addressed, and that in spite of all the other things i've written about him, that it's a similar case with him, that there are positive things to say, but i will just have to wait until it all forces its way out. until then, it's probably safe to assume that i have complicated feelings related to him as well, and it's not all resentment and bad associations.

maybe no one feels 'right' to me as a mate because no one has ever seen in me what she did, no one has ever loved me as much as she did. maybe i think on some level that i deserve that kind of love.

when i was about 10, i had a dream that my mother had died, and that i was reading out a very long poem about her to a large gathering of people in a large room of many levels. everyone was listening very carefully to me, and some people were crying. she died 6 years later, but i never wrote anything about her, and i doubt i will ever write anything remotely adequate. maybe one of the others will manage it some day. she deserves better than this. a lot better.

______________________________________

it could go on and on. i'm remembering so many things. if i've hurt you, i'm sorry. and i wonder if i just seem like someone who wants to make excuses for herself, find excuses for her behaviour so that it seems i'm not really sorry and that i don't want to take responsiblity for any of it. and i don't know if i can really see myself, i don't know how objective i am. but i think if i've hurt anyone and they wanted an acknowledgement that i would give it, that i'd try to help if i could. and that if it seemed like i was trying to evade responsibility, that maybe it could be pointed out to me and maybe then i'd see it.

i think that what i'm trying to say is that i understand communication is complex and that i have probably been hurt by those who never intended to hurt me, and that i have also hurt others that i wouldn't have wanted to hurt. and if i try to understand and forgive others, would they try to understand and forgive me?

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