And The Painted Ponies Go Up And Down

Captured on the Carousel of Time

It's Saturday morning. I'm writing on my phone with my thumbs, so expect lots of spelling errors. My thumbs rarely consistently find the right keys. 

Abby couldn't find her license, so here I sit on Mercer Island in the YTN parking lot, lusting for the coffee sitting in front of me, too hot to drink. Which, sounds like garden variety lust, actually, yearning for something just out of reach, just a tad too hot to handle.

On to more meaty subjects.  Jenny asked me to draft her Caringbridge post-chemo update last night, which hasn't happened--I mean I haven't done it--in months.  I started it, and then fell asleep around 8, never finishing.  I woke up this morning to find she did it herself in the dark of night, for which I am eminently grateful.  Reading it, I noticed again something completely fascinating.  Generally, I am omitted from her posts, and where I do show up it's as a descriptor at best, a noun modifier maybe.  The kids and sisters and friends are subjects, or at least direct objects. If you are a reader of Caringbridge, and have a modicum of time and interest, go back and look.  It goes so far as to praise her sisters--the same ones who rarely show up for her--for going away on a ski vacation and describing it as a much needed respite from caring for Jenny.  Wait.    .    . What?

Central Park Carousel

All of this to say that I continue to contemplate the dichotomy between her public statements, her actions, and her expectation that I care for her, while not acknowledging anything I do.  Not praising, not thanking.  I am invisible.  On balance, I think the audience here is her lover.  Her messages are tailored in a manner to make me a fixture, a lamp post, essentially.  I am there, but I was always there, and of a certain utilitarian convenience, but of no more import. 

This dovetails nicely with yesterday's 1:1 therapy session.  I was agitated. I know this because doing these calls on the phone, I can pace.  If calm or relaxed, I sit in a chair.  Yesterday, I got several thousand steps.  

I wasn't angry, just pensive.  I regaled my therapist in the events at the last  couples therapy session with Jenny, and expressed my belief that the young therapist must have received some coaching prior to this last meeting, given how on point she was.  

The conversation continued. I began describing all of the things I have been doing to make Jenny happy, refuting the claim Jenny had made earlier in the week that I didn't want her to be happy.  The list of counter-evidence is long.  I acknowledged that a lot of these things I am doing for myself, for instance, going to chemo this last week, when she was prepared to go it alone.  It isn't simply that I generally feel obligated, although I do, but that I want to be there to ease her pain, help her with her discussions with her doctor, hold her hand if she is suffering.  However, I do many, many things because I want her to be happy.  I do things, like buy her a new car, make her a nice meal, or fix the backyard up so she can enjoy it in convalescence, buy food she loves, make her bed up on the sectional nice and cozy for when she returns from chemo, etc.    My therapist said, it sounds like the way you behaved with your mom.  Are you doing this because you think, if I just do this she will love me, if I just get her that, she will love me?'

It took me back to 4th grade, the Friday before Easter.  That night my mom and her boyfriend Randy had a tremendous drunken row.  He was a big drunk, Swede, a farm boy reared in North Dakota, a bar room brawler, gentle as the fuzz on a petunia when sober. He was rarely sober.  And, I hated him and loved him.  My mom was also a belligerent drunk, and loved to get him riled up when they were three sheets to the wind. Anyway, my mom was in the kitchen trashing Randy when he lost his shit.  I was upstairs in my bedroom, hiding out as I did when they were drinking.  

They were sitting at a small Formica kitchen table, my mom's back to the wall and adjacent doorway, when Randy threw a Spice Island spice jar at her.  It hit the old lathe and plaster wall, leaving a perfect imprint of the base of the bottle.  Mind you, I was upstairs and didn't see it happen, but I heard it.  My mom just cranked up her belligerency.  He was raging even  harder. He grabbed my mom's antique typewriter and threw it, whether at her or not is unclear.  This was one of those very heavy steel manual Underwood typewriters.  It made a tremendous noise, and at that point, my mom gathered up the girls and told them to get out, and all three fled the home.  

I was still upstairs and scared to death.  Randy, as far as I knew, was still in the house.  I snuck down my stairs, and went to the back door to make my escape. I was wearing my Sears Pajamas, made of the same cloth as bedsheets.  I ran to the back gate, which was six feet tall and was made out of old trees, like you'd see on a ranch.  I couldn't open it in my panic.

Never much of a climber, I scrambled up and almost over, but when I got to the top, the cuff of my pajama bottoms got stuck on the fence.  I was sure he was after me, although he wasn't, and panicked and screamed for my mom, who I could see ahead of me in the sideyard standing with my sisters in the dark, maybe six feet away.  I screamed for help. 

My mom, as pleasant as she had been inside with Randy, began upbraiding me, yelling at me at the top of her lungs, "Why the fuck did you leave your bedroom? What the fuck is wrong with you.  Jesus Christ."  

Meanwhile, Randy had come outside, climbed into his orange 1973 Gran Torino station wagon, and began to pull out.  My mom got me down and then went out to the sidewalk, kids in tow, and began swearing at this, man driving an orange fucking tank, at the top of her lungs.  He turned the car around, and in one last hurrah, tried to run my mom over, before leaving for the night.  

The next day, as an act of contrition, reconciliation, or desperation, I found 4 mason jars, some old orange tissue paper, and a permanent marker, and after puncturing the lids with a screwdriver, crafted ersatz Easter bunnies for my mom, my sisters, and Randy.  I was just trying to make them happy.  The circle of life people, its beautiful.