centre of the universe - the dreaming

There are times when, according to some folks, Yours Truly is fairly laid back about many things. In most things, I usually try to not let things stress me out. I've heard a rumour that many people feel stress and panic and fear and anger and misery and all sorts of things at this time of year. I guess that makes sense. There is a certain push to celebrate one of the biggest gift-giving/family seasons of all year, and if you're not celebrating, you're a big poop. That's what they say, you see.

After I turned about 16 (and therefore was a horrible gorgon for the following 5 -7 years), I wasn't much in favour of Christmas, and it was one of the things that stressed me out rather a lot. With the exception of getting to spend time with my young cousins and my uncles and aunts, there wasn't much I liked about it. I wasn't religious...I didn't believe in God, in fact.  I didn't much like not going to school, we were always away from my friends, and my parents usually were only together for a day, and it seemed like they regretted even that time together. And then there's other baggage.

We often travelled at Christmas. When I was 17, we went on the family vacation on which National Lampoon based one of its more famous movies about traveling with your family.

These were no innocent days of tender falling snow and lights merrily twinkling away among hoar-frost dappled trees. At our Christmases, Santa only came to the house after all the liquor was gone. But that was *normal*, you see. That's the way it had always been. It didn't seem bad or wrong until the year when I was 17.

But there was always something decidedly lovely about Christmas, even when I was a gorgon and my mother and I couldn't be in the same room without screaming at each other. And, as these things go, I knew it instinctively when I was Very Young, and then promptly forgot about it until the second and subsequent Christmases after Mum died. There is the sense of being together; we were *always* together on Christmas, with the exception of one year in 32, I spent every Christmas with my family.

I would come home, and the dusty artificial tree that was stored in the rafters above the garage would be decorated and twinkling. Gifts were always placed underneath, and I knew there would be closets filled with other gifts that would not come out until the last person in the house had gone to bed. I get to be romantic about it now because there is distance between being a gorgon and being a mother myself; between now and then. Distance between me and Mum.  There is an insurmountable, vast distance between Mum and I, and it is a distance that is largest at this time of year.

Once, when I was 11, I came home after school absolutely livid. I'd got into a fight at school and beaten the tar out of a kid who laughed at my best friend Sarah and I when we were talking about Santa. The kid had ridiculed us for 'still believing in Santa'. "What are you, BABIES?" he'd cried. And then he burst into tears because I punched him in the throat.

I needed my mother to validate, if not what I'd done, then WHY I'd done it. "He's wrong, isn't he, Mum?" I said, sobbing. "There IS SO TOO a real Santa. Isn't there?"

My mother, who was tiny, gathered me up on to her lap (which was pretty near the same size as my own lap), and she said, "Do you believe in the wind?"

"What?" I snurgled.

"Do you believe in the wind?" she asked again.

"I'm talking about SANTA!" I wailed.

"I know. We'll get there."

"Of COURSE I believe in the wind."

"Why?" She asked.

"That's a stupid question," I answered. Lippy even then, you see.

"Well, can you SEE the wind?" She asked.

"Well, no...but you can see what it does to trees and stuff."

She nodded. "And can you TOUCH the wind?"

"No, but you can feel it," I said.

"Well, she said, Santa's the same way."

I didn't follow. "I don't follow," I said.

"Do you believe in love?" She asked me.

"Of course I do!"

"Can you SEE love?"

"Well," I pondered, "No, but you can see the effect it has on people."

"Can you TOUCH love?" She asked. Even then, sometimes I had to be led to conclusions.

"No, but you can feel it," I said.

"Well, Santa is made from the expressions of love that we give to one another. Santa is real as long as you believe in love."

Which is very tender and sweet and utterly blasphemous if you're relgious, but from that day to this, there has never been any question in my mind at all about whether or not Santa exists. God is a different story, but I've always understood the way *SANTA* works. Mysteriously, there were *always* gifts under our tree, gifts for every person there on Christmas morning, even people who were unexpected guests, from Santa. Strangely, Santa's handwriting used to be an awful lot like my mother's, but that seems to have changed somewhat in the last six years.

I have never felt so alone as I did the time I realised, after Mum died, that there would be no gifts from Santa in my stocking that year. Not an orange, not a lump of coal...nothing. I knew there were gifts from Santa for everyone else, but that my Santa gifts were much more ephemeral. More important. Longer lasting. Requiring no batteries. Much, MUCH more difficult to hold.

Inasmuch as one's attitude toward secular Christmas changes when one has children (you could hate Christmas all you like, but once you've seen how excited your kids get when there's a tree, and lights, and candy canes, and wrapped presents (even if they're just presents you plucked out of the toy box from last year because they've forgotten about them), it's really tough to hate the season when you're part of the joy it brings), I think it's really been in the last six years I've truly understood why Mum's favourite season was this one.

You can't replace people, and you shouldn't try. So there are things I don't do (the stupid Crackers and hats, for one), and there are things I do that Mum never did (church). But, and forgive me for the way in which this is phrased...

Jesus Christ, I miss you, Mum.

Labels: Christmas, Mum

Dear Mum,

You probably know this already, things being what they are. Okay, this is pretty funny, actually. So I was talking to a psychic last night (no, that's not the funny part. Some people go to the bar; some people play MMORPGs (I'll explain that one later); I talk to psychics. It's like sports entertainment Pay-Per-Views), and guess who showed up?

Well, I was kind of expecting you, to be honest, but you're probably in some bonspiel somewhen so you weren't around. ANYWAY, yeah. You'll never guess. No, seriously, you'll never guess. Okay, fine, technically, you *will* probably guess, things being what they are, so I'm just going to tell you.

Great Gram McG!

No, seriously!

I **KNOW**!!

So, when I told my psychic that that was really funny because I was the only person in the family she actually *liked* other than her own pre-marriage-to-Great-Granddad-John A., the psychic said, "oh, she just said 'I *tolerated* her'". And that made me laugh really, really hard, because I remember one time when we were camping with Auntie Isa at Cypress Hills, and Auntie M (yes, I know. It's ironic that I have an Auntie M) was there, and Nama, and you...remember the time y'all got me to plant a pinecone in the dry, dry dust outside the trailer and then pour some whiskey over it and then in the morning, there was a *little wee tree* growing there...(and yes, I'm aware that you all had me utterly convinced that whiskey and my own magic grows trees overnight until I was fifteen)...remember that time? I was pretending to be asleep in the bunk in the trailer and you and the Aunties and Nama were growing trees in your belly with whiskey?

You thought I was asleep. And, as it was wont to do at those times, the conversation in the dark, dry, hot night turned to Gram McG. "Isn't it odd," Nama said, "how that horrible old woman was so keen with cenobyte?"
"Isn't it?" laughed Auntie M. "She hated every other Goddamned person in John A.'s family."
Then the lights in the trailer flickered. Auntie M trotted out to check out the power connection. Ours was the only trailer with flickering lights. She hollered this news in from the place where my tree would grow.
"Jesus Christ, Carrie," Auntie Isa hissed. "We can talk about you all we like now. You're dead, though not long enough."
The lights kept flickering until Auntie M got back in to the trailer. "Always was a vicious old bitch," she laughed. "And you know I'm talking to you!" She said to the air.
The lights stopped flickering.
And you said, "I wonder why she took such a liking to cenobyte?"
And Auntie Isa, the eldest, smiled her powdery, luscious smile and her blue, blue eyes that looked so much like John A's twinkled and sparkled and she leaned forward over the table conspiratorially. She winked over her whiskey and in a stage whisper she announced: "That nasty woman didn't like a goddamned thing. She only tolerated cenobyte because cenobyte was the only one still young enough to believe in witches."

Anyway, I thought it was funny. And I thought you'd enjoy it.

Miss you lots,
love
cenobyte

Labels: ghosts, letters, Mum

A while after my mother died, I had this dream. It was unlike all of the other dreams I had about my mother, with the exception of one I had before she died. Before she even knew she was sick and dying. Before the *doctors* knew, rather. I've told you about that dream before.

Anyway, this other dream. It was several months after Mum died. I dreamt in real time, which is odd. We were all together, possibly at Christmas or thereabouts, and who should be waiting for us as we all arrived but Mum. Imagine our surprise. Particularly because I was with her when she "deceased" (my Da insists on verbing the noun, which weirds language*, **). I snipped some hair from her cold, waxy body as she lay in the cheap purple coffin at the funeral home (it's pretty stupid to pay five thousand dollars for a coffin that's only going to get torched, and apparently, they don't *do* coffin rentals. I asked.)

But there she was, sitting in her chair at her house, smoking a cigarette and doing a crossword. Her legs were tucked up under her at an angle, the way she always sat. I approached her slowly. I thought I was perhaps seeing...well...experiencing a Visitation.
"Mum?" I asked. I watched smoke curl up from her cigarette and around her head. She scratched something down on her puzzle.
"Hi, kidlet," she said, not glancing up.
"Um. Really?"
She looked at me this time, took a drag and blew smoke toward the side of the room.
"What?"
"Uh. I ...um... are you aware... I mean... did you know that... well...uh...you're supposed to be dead."
She started to laugh. "Oh, that. Well, I got better."
"Right. I've seen that Monty Python scene."
Dad walked in through the back door. I could see him, and I could see Mum, but they couldn't see each other. "Who are you talking to?" he asked.
"Mum," I replied simply.
He looked quizzically at me, then grunted and closed the door behind him.
"No, really, Dad. Turns out she got better."
"That's not funny."
"I'm not trying to be funny."
"Your Dad's here?" Mum asked.
Dad turned white. He stared at me. I nodded. Mum rose from her chair. She walked toward me. I stood where I was. I could hear her footsteps on the wood floor. "What the hell is the matter with you two?" she asked.
Dad turned wobbly.
"Mum?" I asked, my voice shaky, my eyes blurred with tears. She closed the distance between us. I reached out for her. She smiled and hugged me. I could smell the smoke in her hair, and the kind of shampoo she used. I felt her rub a circle on my back.
"I'm not going anywhere."
"But you DID. I SAW YOU," I sobbed.
"They just thought that. Goddamned doctors. By the way, thanks for the haircut. It was TERRIBLE." She laughed. I heard her laugh. I felt her laughing in my arms.
My father stood there, his jaw hanging open, tears running down his face. I heard my aunt in the guest room. "Mum's home!" I hollered.
The door to the guest room opened. My aunt shuffled out, looking like a non-morning person waking up in the morning. She stopped abruptly in the hall.
"Jesus Christ!" she whispered.
"No," I smiled. "That's Easter. This is just Mum."
Eventually, the story came out - sometime between the time she 'died' in the hospital and the time Dad cremated her, she'd been whisked away by some Brilliant Doctor, who managed to cure her, somehow. It involved massive surgery and some rather unorthodox treatment. The 'body' in the coffin had actually been a wax dummy; the doctor didn't want the family to have false hope, so he'd arranged it all. Mum was back. We asked her if maybe this wouldn't be a good time to quit smoking, since she'd got a second chance at living.

She glowered at us, and mumbled something about how she'd already thought of that.

I woke from that dream Very Confused. Extremely Confused. In fact, I called my mother that day. She ...wasn't home.

Now and then, I have these kinds of dreams about Mum. They are different from the dreams where she is with me, but clearly history has not been rewritten. They are different from the dreams where I get to talk to my Nama and my Gramps again. Strangely, my other grandfather hasn't come to see me yet. I suspect he just doesn't have much more to say...In these kinds of dreams, she holds my children and they know her and laugh with her; she visits me and tells me what a terrible housekeeper I am. We fight.

Anyway, last night, I had that kind of dream. But it was subtly different - Mum was there, and alive, but at a distance. She didn't come in to the same room we were in. She didn't talk to us. She didn't laugh. But she was watching. Intently.

I didn't much like that.

*With thanks to Calvin.
** I mean, really. It would be much more accurate to say "my wife *ceased* two years ago", or "ever since my wife ceased", or, simply, "my wife ceased."

Labels: dreams, Mum

In 1993, my family got together and attempted an Intervention with my mother. Her sister and brother were there, my father and my mother's two best friends. I was 21, and it was my job to oragnise the thing. I had to call my uncle and admit to him that my mother was an alcoholic, and I had to sit there while he told me it was my father's fault. I had to call my aunt and admit to her that my mother was an alcoholic, and she didn't say anything. I called my mother's best friends, and told them my mother was an alcoholic, and they said, "thank God you're doing this". I don't remember who contacted the Interventionist. I think it was one of Mum's friends.

She sat on the step and hardened her heart against all of the raw and beautiful stories we told her about how important she was in our lives. She stared at us unflinchingly, her face a stony grimace. She glared at each of us in turn and said nothing. She made not a sound. The Interventionist said, at some point, "you may choose to hate me," and my mother said, "oh, I do." He said "but these people love you and they want you to get help." My mother said, "I'm not talking to you anymore."

From the moment she walked in the door, she controlled what went on in that room. And that was how she wanted it. Afterwards, for a while, she tried not to drink, but she really had no support; I was living in a different city, my father had mostly given up trying, and her friends had lives of their own. Her brother and sister lived a minimum of six hours away, and thought the Intervention was the end, rather than the beginning.

I remember sitting in that room, in that living room. It was a grey day. At least, I remember it being grey. I'm sure the sun could have been shining brilliantly on the leafless trees of early June. I think I was on the same couch as my father and my uncle, the two men I admired most. And what you have to remember is that in my family, we show two emotions: happiness/laughter and anger. Never tears. Never, never ever tears.

We all said what we'd planned to my mother, as she sat solidly at the other end of the room. She would not let us come to her, nor would she come to be with us. She was, sadly and irrevocably, apart. My uncle said his piece, and fought back the tears. My father read his letter, shed some tears, and told her the ways in which her behaviour had affected him. I had to hear how hurt and worried all of these people were, and then the Interventionist asked me to read my letter.

"Mum," I began, and the room was suddenly silent. "I could tell you all the ways in which your drinking has affected me." I couldn't look up from the page. I'd written the letter on a sheet of pink graph paper. "I could tell you about all the times your drinking has let me down. I could tell you many things, but I won't. This isn't the letter I wrote at first. I only have a few things to say. You prize your family above all other things. From as long as I can remember, you told me stories of your own childhood, of your youth. You told me about your family and you wear their name as a badge, proudly. Mum, I cannot wear your name as a badge, proudly. We are not a family. I do not have those stories to tell my children someday. Your drinking has taken from me my mother, and your drinking has taken from me my father. I am an island, alone. You taught me to be strong, to be honest, to be a leader, even when you could not be. I love you, although I do not know how to be your daughter. Please, Mum, can we finally be a family?"

I was not able to read this letter without tears. But she listened without them. She tried to stop drinking. She refused any help.

She missed so much, but worse yet, the rest of the world missed so much of her. I still ask myself how she could choose the life she did, and I know I will never know. I understand many of the reasons she was powerless before her addiction, and I will always hate each and every one of them.

Always I will remember how she sat there, glaring at each and every one of us as we told her how much we loved her. As terrible as that day was, I would give anything to live it over again now.

Labels: Intervention, Mum

I think it was first her scent - a mixture of Mikado perfume oil and stale cigarettes. The combination fo floral overtones and smoke brought her to the front of my vision; my memory snapped to attention like a taut rubber band. The woman wore her hair short and she had laughter in her eyes. Blue eyes that sparkled as she smiled, and the corners of her mouth turned down. An upside-down smile, just like Mum.

She stood in front of me and all I could do was stare. How old would she be now?

Sixty-two.

She would be enjoying her retirement, reading...maybe she'd join a book club. Maybe she'd still teach sometimes, or maybe she would have moved out to the farm. She would gather my boys up on her knee and tell them horrible lies about my childhood. Horrible lies that are all irrevocably true.

So I stared at this woman, someone I did not know, I stared at her hands, the shape of them, the way her fingers tapered so beautifully. I stared at her ears, and the earrings that perfectly matched what she wore. I stared at her neck, her profile, so delicate and firm. This was a woman who had the Strength of Conviction, as Joyce would say.

I stared and stared, willing her to transform, praying that she would turn toward me, with that smile in her eyes, and tell me a story. It would be a story I'd heard before, not once or twice but dozens of times. I wanted that woman to tell me a story I knew the end to, a story with few surprises and many laughs.

But she didn't, of course. She glanced at me, smiled briefly, and said "hello" as she walked away.

For the briefest of moments, I lost my mother again. She'd been there, so close I could smell her perfume; I could have touched her. For a moment, I could see her. But with a flicker of a smile, she was gone.

Those stories at Christmas and on the phone late at night, they suddenly got much harder to hear. Those hugs for my children became ethereal ghost whispers. As the woman walked away from me, I reached out to her. "Please stay, " I whispered.

She didn't hear me. I'd spoken in the secret language of mothers and daughters, the language unspoken but felt or longed for in every daughter's heart. It is the song that blooms in every spring crocus.

She walked away, the woman I didn't know, and with her my settled heart. How many more years will I live in relative numbness, only to be caught off-guard by the scent an unknown lady wears?

Labels: Mum