The Drafting Compass

I had a friend who wanted to move to Florida except that his parents lived in West Palm. He spread a map, took a drafting compass and drew a circle that rendered 250 miles of comfort zone.

He chose a city on the edge of that zone - far enough to discourage unannounced visits, but close enough to get there quickly in case of emergency. Brilliant.

My situation is not like his. I came to Florida first and my parents – well, they’ll probably never come at all. They’re in Northern Michigan near Lake Superior.

I would need a bigger compass.

I look at my map and there is some satisfaction in being closer to Castro than my mother. I’m about 400 miles north of Havana, 1700 miles south of mom’s.

Both dictators are getting on in years.

Mom is much younger, mid 70s. Castro – well, he has to be ninety by now. I think I’d have a better time with him, but he never calls – he never writes. He doesn’t know I exist.

My mom knows but she doesn’t care much. She had one child - a bastard – that’s me. That was her defining moment. She came home pregnant at 15 and got heat from her mom. Sure, blame the Gram for being upset because she already had her hands full raising three kids while her husband – Grandpa – was suicidal; crazy on his ass with bipolar.

Despite the hardships, Gram welcomed me with open arms. But my mom? According to her current life script, she never forgave her for coming home pregnant. Funny, I don't remember it that way. I grew up with those two and I never saw my Gram dish out anything but food, shelter, love and money.

Some years after mom married – still stalking the ever-elusive happiness - she went into therapy and came out blaming her mother for every disappointment. Her resentments started growing right around the same time Gram started slipping gears.

I told her I thought Gram was getting dementia. Mom disagreed. She said she was playing games.

So - of course - after years of steady decline Gram died of dementia. She has been gone for four years, but my mom continues to claw at her memory like a housebound cat attacks a scratching post.

I have a hard time picking up the phone to make a call. I miss my Gram; she's glad she's gone.  Sometimes I prefer email because written words don't cut as deep as spoken words. There is something powerful in a person's "tone."

I’ll bet Castro doesn’t have this kind of drama. He wouldn't permit it. He'd wave it away in a hairy knuckled cloud of smoke.

I’ll bet he embraces his bastards as living/breathing signs of macho.

He would be full of himself – like her – but he wouldn’t give me creepy, judgmental stares over a steaming mug of herbal tea.

She sits curled on the left corner of the great blanketed Collie Couch, with one or two of the great wooly beasts dozing at her feet. If she has food, they huff and puff with desire.

It annoys her that I am vegetarian; but she says she is too - well, except for the bacon. Oh yeah, and the burgers.

Castro wouldn't take my shit. He'd have his chef slap a big bloody steak on my plate and inform me it's that or nothing; at least I could go on Atkins for the duration.

Not so at mom's. She bakes cakes and pies the whole time we're there. She's an incredible cook. Maybe that's how she shows her love. At the end we waddle back out to the SUV with our bags - emotionally deflated and physically fat.

Castro would have a fully stocked bar of prime rums and brandies.  I imagine him puffing as he leans back comfortably in a heavily tufted leather chair. It might have some ash burns.

He might have a dog – or maybe even a cat. I could see him with a cat. He probably has people standing by with lint-rollers. In fact, he would have an entourage of trusted friends and cohorts.

My mother doesn’t because she is fierce.

My step-dad hides out with the remotes in his ginormous but somewhat drafty family room. The kitchen is the late-night demilitarized zone where they elbow roughly past each other, exchanging muttered “fuck you’s” in the dim light of the open fridge.

The open profanity usually occurs at the dinner table when the stepdad asks her to pass something and she'll respond with something like "fuck you, get it yourself." 

It was unnerving but sort of laughable when he was stronger; now that his health is bad, it's intolerable. We've started taking her aside to tell her to calm the fuck down. Well, not me - I'm afraid. My son does it.

I'm afraid because if I get into it there's a very good chance we will  never speak to each other again. Ever. And if I have cause to get into it, I would probably be ok with that.

The dad sleeps downstairs in his own room. It WAS the prime guest room. Mom takes offense to that, but then she takes offense to most everything he does.

I remind her she has a blessed life and it's all because of him.

I sleep upstairs under a dozen glassy eye deer-heads. I get the pull out sofa with the metal rails that bite because I’m the asterisk in family visits to The Great White North. Don’t get me wrong, I like it that way – below radar, with my son, daughter in law and granddaughters out front like the marines. 

I make it up there about once a year. I drive to my son’s place in lower Michigan, then we drive another 500 miles past that. We go in my son’s great guzzlin’ SUV with sleeping kids, spilled Cheetos, farting dogs and The Little Mermaid on DVD.

My first daughter-in-law misses us. During delivery of Emma, my first granddaughter, she discovered the joy of pain meds and drugged herself right out of a perfectly beautiful family. Today she has a new family but she misses the life she had with us.

We've hooked up on Facebook and it's like old times. She asked if she could list me on as her mother and I said OK. I always loved her. She was young, she fucked up. We all fuck up sometimes.

She's sorry.

This week she sent an email asking me to tell my parents she misses them.

I understand how she feels. I miss my ex-husband's parents, they are awesome. But I knew what was going to happen.

I sent an email and my mom wrote back: "We will NEVER forgive her for what she did.”

I wrote back saying that doesn't change the fact that Becky will always be Emma’s mother. I envision my mother making some unforgiveable comment that will offend Emma for all time.

It seems like my mother has become the mother she manufactured in her head, the mother she THOUGHT she had. I half-think a person who has never met me or us will read this silly overview of our family's maternal dynamic and have more clarity.

Maybe one day I'll have that. I wish I could understand.

I'm pretty sure my Gram would have accepted Becky’s apology. I think she lived 96 years because she knew how to forgive and accept.

So I’ve got my map and I’ve got my drafting compass.

Let’s see … only 400 miles to Castro’s; 1700 miles to the mom’s. It takes a lot of gas, forgiveness and acceptance to go there.

A real life Christmas story; getting past grief.

My granddaughter Emma and her dog Buddy

mesmerized at the beaver dam this past Thanksgiving. 

I was going through clothing racks Christmas shopping for my granddaughters last week when I saw a little purple fleece jacket. Three years ago I would have bought it for my Granddmother. At 96, the tiny woman weighed her age. She had dementia, so there were only two joys left; colors and textures. She would have loved that jacket. The pangs of pain and loss were sudden and fierce.

If I were up north with family today, we would take a beer to the cemetery at the end of Himanka Hill and share it with my Uncle Jerry, who passed a few years back. A few sips for us, a somewhat generous pour for him.

I would have put something on my Great Grandmother's grave as well. A flower or a coin. She is not forgotten.

One of my friends is in mourning; this is his first Christmas without his father. He is inconsolable.

My friend Connie is caring for a dying mother and can't bring herself to imagine life alone. She is in love with a man who also has loss issues. This morning she sent me this email. What a wonderful way to start Christmas day.

(Connie started a goose farm in Missouri three years ago after a physical and financial fall from grace. Her communications always have a way of putting my own worries into perspective. Somehow the universe - or human spirit - pulls us through.)

I have to add that Connie was beaten by her mother as a child. So remember that when you read the words of the woman who now cares for her mother as if it never happened. She is one of the strongest, most honorable people I have ever known.

This is pure Connie with just enough editing to remove personal stuff. Gary is her boyfriend.

"Hope you are doing ok. And hope the Christmas holidays are not fucking with you, like they are with some people. You know what I am so slowly realizing? That people who address their fears and failures and mistakes and disappointments in life are brave. You are brave. We are brave people.

Gary. He is like a Greek tragedy. There is so much sorrow and loss at every turn for him. This Christmas, his daughter wanted him to host the Xmas Eve get together that his mom always had for the grandkids. That sounds so innocent. Until you realize that its his first Xmas without any of his family. So for him, that was like getting punched in the stomach. He cant think about his mom without tearing up. She was the last to leave him. I cant even think about that...how did she feel, dying and knowing she was leaving him alone, without his brothers or dad or best friend. My heart clutches thinking about that family.

I kept asking him about it as the time grew nearer. God, I hated bringing it up! To not host it was to ignore the grandchildren's loss of their grandmother and their tradition. Even if they are all teens now, they need traditions to look back upon that continue beyond deaths. What a loss for them if he decided to not do it. Not hosting it would deepen their losses of their dads (Garys brothers) and their grandparents as well. They expect him to be an adult, a parent and do what's right for them and protect them from the sadness of the holiday without their family.

But what about Gary and his extreme grief that is so horrible that he cant face it? What is fair or right about forcing him to face these things before he is able to? He couldnt even think about it. As soon as Id ask about it you could see the iron walls slamming down. All I would be able to get out were tiny sentences at him like, "Buddy, they think you are superman.... they rely upon you to be superhuman" "Remember it is their traditions you are involved with also" "Try to understand they cant know your pain. I cant either. But you cant know their's." "Don't make decisions now that you will regret later on"

After 2 weeks of this type of tiptoeing, whispering and touching on his pain and wondering if he was angry or relieved that I kept it alive, he hosted the kids at his place tonight. He had his daughter put the tree up, he built a fire in the fireplace, he put presents under the tree for them and made lasagne and home made bread for their dinner. My heart almost broke when he told me that. I called him later, just after Lauren (his daughter) went home. He was so OK Micki. His nephew came. He got to spend time with Lauren, his bad boy son was home spending the night and he got to feed them. And they got to walk into their grandparents house, smelling of a fire in the fireplace, lasange cooking and fresh bread. That had to be healing for all of them.

We all have these choices to make and...... I dont know. We all have demons we have kept fat and fed in our heads because they were too painful to face. They remind me of the "unknown".. you know? The anticipation and fear that is associated with the unknown is what can paralyze us. Like my deciding to hug and tell Mom every night that I love her and will see her in the morning, after we got the cancer diagnosis. This is a woman I never hugged in my adult life! She scared the hell out of us. Like my sister - who bit me when I hugged her- why take the chance showing my family any love? But, it's that slight chance that it might make things better. And knowing that I would regret not trying it. What could it heal? What could it hurt? What's the worst thing that could happen?

I wonder, how having done this brave thing Gary did, how it will affect him. And what it did to those kids. I swear it "made" my Christmas hearing his happiness afterwards..I didnt know how much it was weighing on me.

I dont think men are very brave in the heart area. Especially men who have been thought of as brave physically- policmen, firefighter, EMTs... prison guards...So their sadness doesnt surprise me at all. They have made decisions worthy of regret. Probably many that they can never change or go back to and re-examine.

I have been looking and looking for this fossil I own. It is a fossilized horse or camel tooth. It's just cool. I found it in a bag of petrified wood pieces Id bought from a local guy who digs them out of the fields by the rivers. I like the petrified wood pieces because they look just like wood chunk mulch- except they are stone. Kind of a stupid visual joke for a landscaper like me, to have a bowl of mulch on the table. Anyway, I really wanted to give it to Gary for Christmas.

I finally found it today when I was cleaning my mom's place.... so he is getting a feather bed and fossilized camel tooth. I think he will like that tooth a lot for some reason."

(End of Connie's email.)

Gary gave Connie a clumsily wrapped gift for Christmas. She IMd, laughing that "a screwdriver" is sticking out of the wrapper." She said "he bought me tools". Most women would be furious.

I wrote back "what other man would give such a gift and what other woman would love that he did!"

Connie's mom will not be here very long and Connie will be alone on that farm. I am so glad Gary found her, I know he will be there for her when the time comes. And I hope he enjoys his tooth:-)

Merry Christmas; love the ones you love and try to tolerate the ones you don't.

Reunion

That’s my cousin Tommy on the right. (Kerry, his son, is on the left.)

Up til today, I hadn’t seen Tommy in four years.

Tommy’s mom and my mom are sisters in a matriarchy that comes in two flavors - alcoholics and wussies.

I am one of the wussies. Our numbers are small and we are the outcasts. “We” are me, my late Gram, my mom and my son.

We have stood at the fringe of graduation and birthday parties, alternately checking our watches and staring at the tops of our shoes.

Is it impolite to leave early if nobody will notice you’ve left?

My aunt cooks amazing meals and the guests eat and drink til the kegs run dry; at which point, the least hammered grabs the car keys and weaves his way down back roads to the nearest party store. (Alcoholic theory has it that there are fewer cops on back roads.)

The wussies are long gone by then.

There wasn’t always a noticeable chasm in the family. Tommy was born when I was 7, as close to a sibling as I’ll ever get. We were the first grandchildren and Gram’s constant favorites for the whole of her life.

Growing up, we lived distant lives, drawn together by a shared love of Grandma and the fact that we were the two strangest people in a weird family.

I was a starry eyed optimist who married (and divorced) three times. Tommy got his heart broken early, so it took a long time before he had the courage to fall in love again.

His mother - my aunt - is an elegant control freak who lives to sit in judgment.

The day Tommy brought April - his fiancée - home to meet mom, April plunked down on the sofa, pulled a beer out of her purse and sucked suds like she was shooting the shit with a diesel mechanic.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. April looked bitchy, but she was a nice person. She was REAL. I always liked her.

Naturally, the marriage didn’t last. Well, what am I saying - it DID last. It HAS lasted, in its own strange way.

Inhaling deeply to get this out in one breath ... they married, had three kids, she met someone with more money, she and Tom divorced, she married the other guy and had another kid. Then her husband met some oriental hoochie mama, they divorced and April was on the prowl again.

It was only a matter of time before she and Tom would run into each at the pubs. One weekend they woke up together in my aunt’s guesthouse. (April would fondly remember me as the only one who literally welcomed her back to the family with open arms.)

While it was a scandal for about 48 hours, grudges do NOT run in the family; except when it comes to me.

Over time April’s fourth child was accepted as a natural member of the family. I saw him today. He’s growing up. April still looks good. Tommy looks … well … older and sad.

There’s a new grandbaby, I saw her too. She's in the photo above. I saw her looking up at the camera while seated on her Great Grandfather’s headstone; Tommy's dad's dad.

We called him Pappy. When we were kids, the families converged upon his cottage at Clear Lake in mid-Michigan.

Pappy's cabin smelled like buckwheat pancakes and pine needles. He was a sweet old guy and those were precious times - swimming and fishing until dark, going to sleep on lumpy old mattresses with sunburned backs and the Everly Brothers singing softly on the radio.

Pappy’s headstone says “gone fishin’”.

I gasped when I saw it for the first time today.

And there’s Tommy’s little granddaughter sitting on the cold flat marble. A lot of time has passed. Too much time.

Tommy and I got out of touch about four years ago. We haven’t talked since I had to ask him to leave my commercial building. Over the years he had rented from (and turned the screws to) most anyone who took him in. The family knew this, still, they asked if I’d rent to him.

Up til that time I'd always been financially solid.

So I rented to him. I was hoping it wouldn’t come back to bite me - but of course it did.

He wasn’t paying his rent, my life was falling apart and I needed a place to stay. I initially asked if I could move in with him, but he’d filled the place with assorted layabouts. It had become party central - an opium den without the opium - a beer and whiskey den in need of gasoline and a match.

I told him I couldn’t live in a place where I had to lock my bedroom door; then, when he didn’t show up to pack, I packed for him. I was desperate.

His life was falling apart due to his “illness” and bad choices - so was mine.

My Lyme Disease started resolving itself months after a move to a warmer climate and fresh air. Tommy? It looks like nothing has changed. How do I know this from 1,500 miles away?

His son Kerry is on Facebook.

Today I noticed he has two “summer ‘09” albums.

Tattoo a giant "L" for "loser" on my forehead, I snuck a peek to see what the family is up to; a pretty emotional journey for someone who never left her chair.

Not much has changed in four years.

Pappy’s cottage looks the same as it looked 50 years ago. There are adult beverages in every picture … the same favorite places, with aging faces of people I love and miss and young ones coming up that I’ll probably never meet.

This is bittersweet.

The emotional and physical distances are profound.