How Strange It Is To Be Anything At All

Strange synchronicity. I wanted more flexibility in posting so I decided to try MS Word to type this post and it asked me if I wanted to open the last thing I typed: Gram’s obituary.

It was strange because the night before at dinner YHWH asked me whether I still ‘feel weird’ about my mom being gone (6 years now). Or whether I still grieved and whether I think about her all the time. Good spouse that I am, instead of answering how I felt, I asked, “Are you feeling bad because after six months, you aren’t grieving or really even that upset by your mom’s demise?” I told her how I had thought a lot about the issue because of what I call the ‘tyranny of grief’ – internal and external pressure to grieve. At first I was demonstrably sad and after it wore off a little and I felt better, then I would think I had to act a certain way or others would think I didn’t love my mother enough; you know, how can I be happy when my mother is dead? She admitted that was pretty much where she was and I gave her ‘permission’ to take off the sackcloth and clean the ashes from her forehead.

Besides, I told her, I encounter my mom almost everyday, several times a day. Mainly in dealing with the kids. My mom was very…uhh…somewhere between firm and mean. She was very open and loving and affectionate. But you often got no quarter and no second chance if you crossed a line. On the mercy/justice continuum her slider was way over to the justice side – swift, furious, permanent. No pardon. No parole. Stuff like missing a week long Webelo camping trip for ‘backtalking’. I left my model airplane kit on the car one summer and some leaky glue left a small spot on the hood - I was banned from models for a year. I never made another one after that. So yeah, every time the Killer acts up I get as far as, “OK for that attitude you’re going to get…” And then I stop myself and think, oh, man, I’m just like my mom. That’s not uncommon – who else would I be like? Especially since my dad was never around.

In fact, the next Sairdy I found myself in that situation. We let each girl have a friend overnight Friday and SGK was really in high spirits. The next day, mainly because she didn’t get enough sleep, she was a poophead. She gets that way. Usually it manifests itself by her being ruthlessly scathing to her friends. She and her friend were going to go to a tea party and I warned her a couple times to chill and finally I heard her tell her best friend, “I don’t want you to go with me to the party!” in this horrid tone. So I called her away and I told her for that action she wasn’t allowed to go. I wish I had videotaped the reaction. Finally, after the Killer’s hyperventilation subsides, YHWH begs me to give her another chance. I really didn’t want to, but I had a mother on my back so I relented. But – I made Killer a deal and we shook on it – if it happens again in the next couple weeks she gets no birthday party. What do you think – too much or not enough?

To be fair to my mother, because it was mostly good growing up, I will give a positive example as well. I really love doing hard crosswords. I’m not tournament level, but I can do the NY Times Sunday puzzle in about an hour in ink. And it was my mom who taught me how to do crosswords and we would work on them together. She always filled out the grid and she had a special penmanship she used only in crosswords. Not really her own script, but just a way she wrote that helped her read them better. To this day I use that same script and just recently I started teaching the Killer how to do them and I caught myself teaching her the script. So, yeah, they never really go away