Today i learned from the youngest brother that Ma has contracted the virus - she is 92; she’d have to live twice that long for me to fathom what’s she’s on about. Not because she is particularly inarticulate - anything but, she is an inveterate literati. Likely reaction-formation to being married to my father the High School English Teacher for twenty years left compensation scars that were not entirely his fault - professional pedagogue that he was. She, my mother is one of the most competitive individuals i’ve ever known. “Competitive” might not be the right word - indomitable would be a more apt description. If there is a 92 year-old female on the planet that could kick Covid’s ass - it’ll be ma, or forgive the pun · she’ll die trying. This is the same woman who turned in her seat to remark on the 405 south just past Sunset Blvd, transitioning into the carpool lane while traffic was backing up into the South Bay and an angry laborer in a 3/4 ton pickup tailgating me as i was braking from 70 mph on a day i will have traveled 300+ miles to squire her to a Vermeer exhibit - her remark · “You don’t respect me.”
And oddly, she’d be right; as the 2nd middle child in a family of four with the sole sister above me - a ravishing beauty as well, my efforts to distinguish myself as a normal crosseyed cyclops in a family of movie star good looks did not play well · that i was her father, the “rough cob” itinerant miner’s namesake in an Alabama blue blood matrilineal line was just icing on the cake, and that i love her in a way she cannot deny can only have been frustrating to a woman who raised “denial” to a high art. Hopefully, were she ever given occasion to read this narrative, she would appreciate the humor that she beat into me over countless exchanges that never seemed to contain the warmth i felt toward her, but not from her. I needed love more than anything in the family i was born to, but they are a cold lot which i have come to understand is not anybody’s fault, just as Pop might have opined “the way the mop flopped.”
I am racing the rain just now, but welcome the incongruous opportunity to have mined just the right location to commence this parting exploration of one of my life’s challenges. The young woman at the bistro where i am now plumbing the most complex emotions in my existential palette has not entirely rebuffed my aged interest. I have to reconcile the rejection of a parent in order to find a loving end to my own existence. Ma - i love you and wish you had been kinder to me, but it is my responsibility to create relationships that reflect a love toward myself you seemed unable to express and i forgive you for that, because it is a challenge for me as well to make known my affection for people i love. May your journey be rich in wonder and lacking all the terror about death that created the inconsolable fear you expressed to me so openly - an honesty of spirit i will continue to emulate.
You are surrounded now by what you conceived as your “best security” and still this monster virus found its way to your bedside. I can only hope that the fear of those tasked with protecting you from what is your own journey does not exacerbate what could be a lot of fun on your ride out of this reality into your next. What i don’t think you ever understood from me is how much regard i have for your simple force of thought. In my journey i’ve encountered many who affected the mantle of reason, but did so by using totems and allusions to well-trodden paths of conventional thought. What has always calmed me in my confusion about your seeming antagonism toward the person i have become has been a constant surprise from you about those things i have achieved not born of your ambition to “improve me” and what i experienced as a near hysterical ambition to save me from my “self.”
I can only hope the from our long isolation from each other, you have encountered a pattern of affection and regard from my actions toward you that give you relief from any fear of having failed your one “marred, but spectacularly unusual and loving offspring,” not to take anything away from the other remarkable creatures born of your womb and raised in the loving sparse bosom of your _______fill in the blank:
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Ode to Mama on the occasion of her 92nd birtday - 19 july 2020 ·
My first iambic pentameter in
A very long time; i am not sure why,
It’s not a complaint, i am just sharin’
Could be ‘cause Ma’s ninety-two years high.
From where i stand, that’s a lot to command
She did me well and doing me well still.
From where i stand, that’s a lot to stand;
To hear it from her, she’s had her fill.
At her age her stand’s not so solid
I would represent, but neither is mine.
I do my best by showing what i did.
Even so, it seems not enough in time.
Where she goes, or how, is not up to me;
She’ll embrace whatever’s her destiny.
jts 05/10/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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