Life and Death and Life Again

The death of my mother two days before Christmas has left me with much to say but no real way to say it. I meant what I said when I said I wasn't going to grieve much when she went. It was time for her to go and we knew it was coming.

Still, the circumstances contrived to make it just that much more ... I don't know. Stupid is the wrong word but I can't really think of a different one. It was a Saturday and I was getting ready to blog about how it was exactly four years ago that day that David died. And then my sister called.

And I couldn't write one single word.

Two days later at Christmas dinner, the consensus among my brothers and me was that we were surprised she didn't die on Christmas Day, therefore ruining one last Christmas for us. She used to do that, pull some dramatic trick just to make sure no one was happy on the happiest day of the year. She used to have the Christmas tree down and all the decorations put away by noon, too.

You're shocked, I know. In some ways, it was a great relief to know she was finally gone, finally unable to affect us negatively in person. Unfortunately, her legacy is that she negatively affects us even in death, by the way she raised us and how we had to deal with her nonsense over the years.

Now we have no parents. My dad died 11 years ago January, and frankly, while not a perfect father in any sense, I miss him more than I'll ever miss my mother. 

But dealing with the death of my mother isn't a good thing. In my head, or rather, in other people's heads, I'm supposed to be heart-broken at the loss of a parent and apparently unable to be happy ever again. 

At least, that's what one church lady was telling me. This church lady is sweet and sincere. I didn't have the heart to tell her how relieved I was I never had to deal with my mother again. 

Here's my mother's legacy to me: I was the birth control pill she forgot one morning. I was going to be fat just like her when I got older. She pitied the man I married. When I got pregnant with my oldest, she wanted to know why I did that to her. She wrote a scathing letter before my wedding, telling me how awful I was and that I was only getting married to have a father for my child. And then she showed up at the wedding.

Yeah.

And the ultimate legacy, she passed down her mental illness to me. Not just to me, to all of us. We have all dealt with it as best as we could, hopefully better than she did. 

Here's the thing, though: I have no doubt in my mind that she's with the Lord. Despite her emotional abuse, her attitude of victimhood, her absolute certainty that nothing was ever her fault; she loved God. And He loved her.

Just as He loves me. 

I just wish I could remember some of the good things and describe them here. 

Cellophane Flowers of Yellow and Green

It's been a couple of weeks, but I've been sick. Meanwhile, here's another short and probably meaningless story of my childhood. 

It starts out with me watching a clip of The Graham Norton Show on You Tube the other day. Now, if you don't know who Graham Norton is, it's okay. He's a talk show host in Britain who is absolutely hilarious and has an appalling laugh. In any case, this clip features Ryan Gosling telling a story about his own childhood.

Okay, Ryan Gosling can tell stories absolutely deadpan, which makes them even funnier. This story was about how his parents somehow came to acquire a truckload of cellophane (plastic wrap, in case you didn't know it), and wanted him to sell it to their neighbors and take it to school and sell it - pretty much every kid's dream, help their parents make a million dollars the easy way.

He tells it better, but it made me think back to when I was eight years old and my mother had just left my dad and taken us with her to a small two-bedroom house to live. Okay, she didn't come across a truckload of cellophane, but what she did do was spend money (I don't know where the money came from) and printed her own greeting cards. They weren't ordinary greeting cards, no, they were full of lesser-known sentiments, like "Go Get 'Em, Tiger."

They weren't even printed on card stock, just black ink on colored paper. As an aside, I think with the right packaging and marketing, these would make a million dollars today, for sure. However, in 1971 no one cared. The reason this story comes to mind is that she bundled them together and packaged them in, you guessed it, cellophane. And then expected us to go door-to-door selling them for her.

Here's the thing. I don't do door-to-door. I don't do street evangelism either. I barely do meet-and-greet at church. I'm pretty much the hermit you read about, only without the explosives. Give me a piece of land, a room dedicated to arts and crafts and a great internet connection and what do I need with people? I don't even need cable TV, the internet is that good these days.

Later on she would create a line of 3-D greeting cards on card stock; they were art projects on their own because you had to color them in and cut them out and paste them together yourself. A great idea, if  the drawings weren't too fiddly to use actual scissors on. I think the kids and I used the last of them as art paper; the backs were blank.

So yeah. That's the story. I don't know what happened to those first cards. I think if I asked my oldest brother about it, he might know where the metaphorical bodies are hidden. In any case, that was the year I got glasses, discovered the joys of OCD and got to know the neighbor kid who was also a pyromaniac. No, really, he loved to burn things. The next summer we moved to the SF Bay Area from Sacramento. 

I have a few million-dollar ideas myself; we all do. Fred Flintstone and 412-Up soft drink, but then Barney Rubble is invisible. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to illustrate a children's book, publish a book of hand-drawn mazes and sell craft items online. Just one or two little ideas. Or maybe I'll just put that PayPal button on the bottom of this blog. Free book of mazes to the first person who helps me make my first million, no cellophane needed.  

Things I remember about The Mansion

As you might recall, The Mansion is what we called a very large Victorian house on O Street in Sacramento, where we lived for three years starting right after my 5th birthday. It was converted into medical/dental offices after we moved out.

The house was partially furnished with antiques and there was an old Victrola in the living room, with some records. Sometimes we'd get to play them. Most of the time, the TV was on, and our antenna had a rotor on it so we could rotate it from inside the house. Cool beans. Please don't ask my oldest brother about E-skip.

We had a full dining room that was separated from the living room by sliding wooden doors. There was a dumb waiter from the kitchen to the second floor, but we never used it. I always thought it would be a blast to try riding in it, but no such luck.

I remember standing at the very old-fashioned sink in the kitchen. I think it was aqua blue, but I could be wrong. There are no photos. That kitchen is where I learned how to make sugar toast.

I think there was a front stairway, all wood and polish, that we hardly ever used. There was a back stairway that we used instead. I remember jumping the last few steps all the time, wishing I could fly.

My grandma came and lived with us for awhile and took up the whole side-front room, which my mother called The Library. I suppose the built-in bookshelves were the reason for that. The full bathroom was between that and what was called The Study, but was really my dad's bedroom. My mother took the very back bedroom on the second floor. I remember being very surprised once when I found my mother and dad in his bed together because it was so rare.

The bathtub in the full bathroom was an antique clawfoot which my mother de-valued by painting it elaborately and gluing fake jewels all over it. She did the same thing to the bathroom walls. It was big and pink and maroon and fairly hideous. She wanted to be a hippie, I think. 

There was a laundry room off the kitchen that led to the back porch. Or maybe it was the back porch and was just closed in. There was a small stairwell that led downstairs to the basement; my dad kept a workroom down there, in the small finished part. We could go out under the rest of the house from it, which was all dirt and cobwebs and musty. One year, my mother decked it all out as a haunted house for a church Halloween party. I didn't go down there for the party, it was for the adults.

Our front porch was huge and I remember sitting on it once in awhile. I also remember my next older brother getting ahold of the movie camera and making several short films of my little brother and me, stop action; and of flowers, bees, butterflies - you name it, he filmed it. Those are in the box in storage too.

I remember sliding around on the hardwood floors in my socks with my little brother.

I remember there was one full bathroom and one water closet on the first floor; and one sink and bathtub upstairs on the second floor. 

I remember my oldest brother built a miniature golf course in the window box of his bedroom.

I remember my sister and me sharing a room for a bit before she left for the Army, and it seems to me we had a walk-in closet. I remember her dressing to go out with friends in all orange, including stockings and shoes. Possibly.

I remember the entrance to the attic was in my next oldest brother's room, which he shared with my little brother. 

I remember for awhile I had a black and white TV in my bedroom - the height of luxury, because then I could watch TV from bed, something I eventually grew out of (in my 40's).

I remember being told to clean up my room, then getting the only spanking in my life from my dad because I had just shoved everything under the bed. No joke, I was a cliche from the beginning.

I remember the back yard was huge, at least to a five-year-old, and we had to go down about 25 steps off the back porch to get to it. My dad grew purple irises and there was honeysuckle and an orange tree. When the house was converted in the mid-1970's, they paved paradise and put in a parking lot.

I remember my dad mowing the front yard by hand. With a push mower. There are home movies of me mugging the camera and imitating him.

I remember swimming in a little 2-foot wading pool in what was laughingly called a bikini. There are movies in The Odd Saga of my older brothers splashing each other and running around. 

I remember chasing bugs in a field on the corner, which is now an office complex. It's where I began a love of ladybugs and pretty much got over my fear of insects. The grass was tall; I think we were lucky there weren't any snakes in there as well.

I remember having my "boyfriend" from school come visit for a playdate. He was the baby boy in a fairly prominent Sacramento family, from what I was told. He only ever came over once.

I remember our last Christmas together as a family. My parents blew out the stores, apparently, and there are photos of me in a brand-new blue satin robe, pretending to iron clothes with a toy iron and board. I remember figuring out there was no Santa that year, too. A few months later, my mother was moving us all to a two-bedroom house in a different part of town, where I had to share a room with her and my little brother, while my two older brothers had the other bedroom.

I remember running downstairs to my daddy in the basement, because I had asked where he was going to sleep in the new house and my mother told me he wasn't coming with us. 

I remember for years after we moved out, whenever I dreamed at night of home, it was The Mansion that filled my head.

I don't remember everything about living there, but what I mostly remember is I was happy, when the family was still a family and I was young enough to believe it would be that way forever. The home movie that was my life, and which, childlike, I believed God was watching while eating a bag of popcorn, was mostly perfect.

I'm not sure I wasn't right.

Stories of Childhood, Part 2

My first memory is of being dressed in plaid, standing next to my little brother and in front of my older sister having my photo taken. I think I remember it because I've seen the photos. I was about three or four.

My next memory is of sitting at the kitchen table drawing while my mother washed dishes or something, and it seems to me the song "Happy Together" was playing on the radio in the background. That's not necessarily true, but it sounds about right. I drew what I thought was an elephant and also a scribble I called Dennis the Menace. I remember it because both pictures are glued into my baby book. I was still about three or four.

There are home movies of us watching The Lawrence Welk Show, and I think I remember trying to hog the camera. "No," you say, "You're not the dramatic type." Notice the sarcasm coming from your mouth. My mother put the date on a piece of paper with some M&M's and took movies of that. My oldest brother hid beneath a blanket so only his toes were showing. This was before we moved into The Mansion, so I was almost five, I think. 

About the same time, there are movies of us standing in full sunlight in our best Easter clothes. All I remember, aside from what I've seen in the video, is that my eyes were (and still are) extremely light-sensitive. Today, and also because I'm getting to the end of middle age, I tend to wear sunglasses on rainy days and I definitely don't drive at night if I can help it.

My oldest brother edited all our home movies in the late 1960's, early 1970's, and called it "The Odd Saga." Hmm, he was right about that. In any case, I haven't looked at them for years. He edited our trip to Texas in 1969 as "Voyage to See What's At The Bottom of Texas." I'll talk about that maybe another time. They're all sitting in my storage unit, waiting to be converted. I'm not sure it will ever happen, but perhaps if I write about it I'll remember more details. Or maybe I should do a Kickstarter campaign to "preserve the heritage of the white middle class family in America."

Insert major sarcasm here.

I Miss Homeschooling

Some of you may know that I had to empty out my storage unit a couple of months ago. It wasn't easy - I ended up losing my furniture and throwing away or giving away a lot of things.

But there were boxes of papers leftover from homeschooling my kids back in the 90's-early Naughties. Boxes and boxes and boxes. And boxes. I kept every paper they ever did from every school year from 1994-2002. It's daunting.

I thought to myself, "I'll have all these memories of my kids when they were little." Boxes and boxes. I threw away a whole bunch (recycled, so don't go all Mother Earth on me), but there were still some boxes left that I didn't want to get rid of quite yet, mostly because I hadn't gone through them.

So there those boxes sat outside, with the word, "SHRED" on them so I would know what to do with them. Today, it being a kind of quiet day here (unemployed, doing transcribing on the side, sitting in my pajamas), I decided I'd get started shredding. I brought one box in, set up the shredder and started.

Two hours later, I'm sitting here with a large outdoor garbage bag (you know, the green/black ones) full of shredding and the box is only half-empty. Remember, this is only the first box. There are six other boxes out on the patio waiting to be dealt with. But back to this box.

I've often wondered if anything I've kept over the years is really worth keeping. Actually, I've been wondering about that a lot since I emptied storage. I want to have good memories, I want to look at something and say, "Wasn't that adorable," or "I was so happy then." When it comes to these homeschool papers, though, I wonder, "Why in the world did I keep every damn single solitary piece of paper?"

I've kept out a few. Some drawings, some journal and story papers, one or two crafts. I'll probably have more as I move through the boxes.

Meanwhile . . . I remember organizing and finding curriculum and grading and teaching and using "The Price is Right" for math lessons and on and on. And I miss it. I don't know if I have the wherewithal to do it again, but I still look back and think maybe I didn't do so bad a job of it.

I've taught every grade from kindergarten through 12, learned along with my kids (ASL at the local community college with my high schoolers who needed a second language), and generally had fun exploring God's world with my children.

It's amazing to me that no matter what else, God keeps His hands on all of them. Oh, they might not think so, they're so grown-up and skeptical. Still, I believe that at least they are better people than I am. That's what parenting is about - make little people who are good people when they are big people. Four kids who are self-sufficient. Four kids who have goals and plans and friends and family and jobs and even faith.

I've had a difficult few months. More than a few, actually. But, I still believe that I was the best mom I could be, that I still am. (Those of you who disagree, please stand in THAT line over there.) If nothing else, I am so proud of all of my kids that I burst to tell people all about them. Not about how good a mom I was, but how proud I am of them.

How can I not believe that God is with them?

Asperger's and Self-Diagnosis

From the Blog "Asperger's and the Alien"

Prepare to enter the wild and woolly world of an adult with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism characterized by intelligence, quirks, social difficulties and downright strange and oddish behaviors. 

People with Asperger's generally are high functioning in everyday life but have great difficulty connecting with others due to the inability to read faces, body language and subtle verbal clues. They also tend to take words literally and have a hard time multitasking. 

Oversensitivity to touch (clothing has to be soft and often the tags removed), light (do not leave home without the sunglasses), sound (loud noises and noisy places are avoided), taste (many Aspies have quite a limited diet and are frequently very picky eaters) and smells makes the everyday existence more of a challenge. 


Fasten your seatbelts and come on in... 

From the Blog "Life On The Spectrum.net"

Symptoms of Asperger’s Syndrome

These are a collection of symptoms from an Aspie’s perspective. For a a list of more medical definitions, see The Triad of Impairments and there’s a page of tips if you Think You Might Have Asperger’s Syndrome.

• People greet you by saying “here comes trouble” and you don’t know whether or not they’re joking.
• You scare off new friends by becoming obsessed with them.
• People call you “sad” for being interested in interesting stuff.
• You try to help someone, only to find your help wasn't wanted.
• You hear a lot about how “you’re only making things worse for yourself”.
• You don’t understand what’s so funny about teasing. You feel you’re being mocked.
• You are exhausted by always pretending to be normal, but fearful the Real You will be rejected.
• You hope, with each new group of people you meet, that this time you’ll get it right.
• You laugh later, and more loudly, than everyone else.
• People say you speak too quickly, but you know you have to get the words out before you forget them.
• You notice that after people have known you a while, they stop asking how you are.
• You’re the only person wanting the music turned down.
• You forget to eat.
• Others get annoyed b/c you write down/read back details of appointments to be sure you got it right.
• You find yourself unable to explain something without giving the whole back story too.
• You can cope with a party, but have to hide in the loo to recover every now and then.
• You see other people exchange “a look” but don’t know what it means.
• You like to hide away on your own, especially after spending time with other people.
• You find it hard to work out what will happen next, particularly if people are involved.
• You don’t instinctively know when you’re being teased.
• You organize things: from smarties to your DVD collection… everything’s in order. Or not!
• You load the dishwasher the same way every time… and redo it if someone does it differently.
• People think you have no sense of humor. (They’re wrong, but that’s what they think!)
• Your senses seem to be more sensitive than other people’s.
• It’s “always you”.
• Other people think you’re being intolerant, and you can’t understand how they cope.
• You feel “different” from most people, and feel that you don’t “fit in”.
• You are so passionate about your hobby/sport/interest that you lose track of time.
• You’re always the last to get the joke!
• You were bullied at school, or college, or work.. and/or are still being bullied.
• People think you’re being rude and/or critical when you’re not meaning to be.

From the Blog "My Noisy Life"

Oh, this is me.

I know some people think I'm hopping on the bandwagon because my granddaughter was diagnosed last year - this is not the case.  It is because she was diagnosed that I started researching Asperger's in order to be the best grandma I can be.

And then I recognized myself.

I lost my job yesterday.  It was coming - I have been trying to find alternatives to working in a group setting for a long time, but this was rather abrupt and, while not devastating, still somewhat frightening as to my future.

However, I believe in the end I can't use Asperger's as an excuse.  I can only site it as a large part of the reason I'm not good with being in an office full of "normal" people.

I also think my relationship with the Lord has a lot to do with me being as "normal" as I appear to be.  Once you get to know me, you see the real me, but usually I can fake it in front of strangers and people who only know me as The Choir Director or Ainsley's Grandma or sometimes even The Job Interviewee.

I have decided that I will speak with my doctor and therapist about an actual diagnosis - but that doesn't mean my life begins and ends with that.  I have gone 52 years trying to figure out why I'm different, and compensating as much as possible with routines, notebooks, schedules and relying on God, and I will continue to do so.  But because it's been such a long time, an actual diagnosis will go quite a long way with helping me just feel better about myself.

You can agree or disagree - I'm trying hard to just be me.

(the quotes from the above blogs have been edited to correct spelling - because I am rather OCD as well!)