Days of the week are one of the metrics the gerontologists use to track dementia - i am certainly demented · but we all knew that. I can’t even spell the word, so i don’t know what valid criticism i can make about the field of study, except to say i’m old as dirt and that should at least give me a high-chair at the table if not a corner seat. The nation i was raised in and where the storage space containing my life’s work is located is one calendar day behind where i live. This is only crucial at such times payments are not met and arrangements must be made with people who are sleeping while i panic - fuck panic · Let’s talk about love; all the best things in my life have occurred as a result of love, and the worst things - but that’s a different story. I have referred to L_____ in other vignettes; she was a petite dark haired beauty with an iron disposition, but i would only come to see that aspect of her character once the vault door of romance had closed. Unrequited love is how one sided romance is described; she and i managed to toss that reality back and forth across the net for a number of decades culminating in her current marriage to a class mate from a meeting at our 40 year high school reunion.
I will not be making it to our 50 year reunion, but wish her and hime continued happiness. Somewhere along the line, i lost the torch i carried for each of the loves i irrationally locked onto, almost without foundation - nothing more than the chemical reaction C.G. Jung described when two people meet · In discussions with ma, aside from her tangible disappointment about my solitary state, she would opine, “so you’re a romantic” when i would try and describe the feelings i have about someone i care deeply about. I can’t honestly say i know what motivates my mother toward love. I know she waited a good decade before remarrying the brother of an old friend. The two of them, she and the brother, were very happy - i believe, though there was much emotional violence, and some good measure of distrust woven into their complicated relationship. I know this because i met my last wife at their house one holiday meal and later discovered romantic intrigue was part of the equation.
As it is with all love - but this was a little too close to home · Many years after my wife and i were divorced, i was driving ma on errands from her retirement compound and while turning left toward the gate ma turned toward me in the seat of a car she promised me but gave to another and remarked, “you know M______ only married you because of my money.” I have to chuckle at the fragile ego of a parent who would undermine her own child in such a way, yet that is a feature of my upbringing that i either deny and by that denial thereby mute my own clarity and self awareness, or fully embrace that aspect of my family heritage, and then find ways to reconcile with the much different person than “he” who she was referring to; i opted for the latter though i really had no choice, for the disparity of her thinking with my own unusual personal experience allowed for very little middle ground. It seems that space is entirely occupied by my sycophantic siblings who really are in it for her money - as i see it from my limited perspective as “pariah” from a family of pretty people ·
It is not bitterness that you read, for i have had to live with my compromised reality from the age of 5 when it was commonly discussed whether an eye patch would cure my “duane’s retraction syndrome, or palsy of the 6th cranial nerve” depending on one’s reading, or whether the special insert in the sole of my shoe would correct my short-leg step. I am a two-eyed cyclops with a gimp leg and a mother who is so conceited that she thinks it is her fault, but blames me to anyone within listening distance. My only responsibility is to propagate out into the universe my gratitude for life, my love of family whether or not i allow them into my sphere and to be very mindful of how, and who i accept into close acquaintance. I love my mother for her unique contribution to a population that is facing extinction. I look past her unwillingness to love me openly and forgive me for not having been born as beautiful as her other offsprings - but i do not accept her judgment of my behavior behavior as being "bad" because i did my best with the circumstances with which i have been faced.
That is between me and my g_d - she, i believe will forgive me, with reservations perhaps, but ultimately loving forgiveness. I would like to attribute my personal decision to a better appreciation of my mother’s more obscure attributes, those qualities of character not hidden behind fear, and pain and vanity, but the qualities of character which allowed her to teach a semi-blind child to see, or a cripple to admit no impediment and demand that he shovel gravel with the best of them, and in her own way to try and see the best in siblings who would never understand his suffering much less hers. Ma is a crafty old woman, and for those who are changing her diaper and listening to her later day peremptory demands, listen carefully; please. There is much wisdom in the voice of my mother. She has taught me to seek love in the most difficult of places, to see nobility in the lowest of characters and to recognize that behind the cruelty and destruction of many amongst us, lies a simple yearning heart that wants no more than to be cared for - kindly · how kewl is that ¿?
jts 03/09/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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