Entry #14: AUGUST: WASHINGTON COUNTY

My blog entry about wildlife in the big Victorian seems to have hit a nerve, because several people have asked: what happened to the house?

OK, here we go.

The original old Victorian was a house of great beauty. It was built atop a hill with stunning views of Narragansett Bay. A wrap-around porch was accessible from any point, so you could easily sieze your mallet and play a round of croquet on the perfect expanse of flat lawn. Below that there was a dip downhill, and a large, flat, natural field full of fragrant hay and wildflowers and baby rabbits. At the bottom of the field - and surrounding the whole property - was the original stone wall, partly hidden by striking tiger lilies and sweet-smelling rose bushes. Wooden steps had been built so we could walk down the hill, hop over the wall, then casually cross the neighbor's yard to reach the ocean - and the neighbors down the hill could climb over the wall, then walk up past our house on their way to Church on Sundays. When my Aunt Georgina was alive, she kept a big glass jar of hard candies on her desk, and on Sundays she would give one piece to every child in the neighborhood who knocked on her door.

The next phase of the house's life is depressing. When my parents decided to move in permanently, they made a number of changes that stunned the neighborhood. They chopped off the cupola; added flat decks on the second floor, with cheap plywood sides painted white; tore the porch off the side of the house and stuck on a modern kitchen; added hideous, cheap sliding glass doors to the front porch; and covered the whole house with vinyl siding so they would no longer have to pay to periodically paint the original seasoned white clapboard. Where formerly we could run from the street clear down to the field, they built a raised covered portico that attached the house to the garage. It was partly enclosed, completely hid the front door from view, and smelled terribly of mold.

Before long my parents decided to do what all their friends were doing. Without thinking ahead, they moved into a fancy retirement place in Connecticut for rich WASPs, an establishment for old people that did not offer advanced care. They paid a small fortune for an entrance fee, secured a condo, and moved in with far too much of their old junk. My mother immediately arranged for boxes of booze to be delivered. She kept bottles of liquor in every room, including the bathroom.

After years of dealing with my mother's eccentricities, I found the other residents remarkably cheerful, polite, and sane. I was shocked at how nicely-dressed and sprightly they were. My mother simply referred to them as "the inmates." There were yoga classes, computer classes, a pool, a library with all the latest reading material, and lots of daily activities scheduled, but my mother considered herself better than everyone else and made few attempts to mingle.

Like Goldilocks, my mother changed condos three times. The first was too close to the highway, the second was too close to a streetlight, but the last (and by far most expensive) was bright, new, and as big as the Taj Mahal. Still, she had nothing nice to say about it, and complained daily that her private deck had no direct sunlight. First world problem.

While my parents were living in posh splendor, the old Victorian went to ruin. Although I had no home, I was not allowed to live there, and it remained empty. The animals  multiplied and took over, dancing in conga lines across the kitchen counters.

My parents deteriorated. In order to save money, my mother refused to let my father eat. In the morning before he woke up, she would call the local grocery store and order everything she wanted, but nothing for him. At night, she made my father save half of his small dinner for lunch the next day.

My father lost 90 pounds, became frail, and started falling down. I tore out my hair trying to get medical attention for him, but my mother would not let anyone in the apartment, and she would not let him out. Occasionally they would be invited to cocktail parties, but she would refuse. They stopped going to the dining room and had their meals delivered to their door. Their refrigerator was full of half-rotted leftovers, and my father got food poisoning not once but three times, even landing him in the hospital - and still my mother would not let anyone throw any food away.

I would bring groceries, but my father was too old to prepare food for himself. I had a bright idea and brought frozen waffles and a toaster oven for him, but my mother was so furious with me she cried. She said she was trying to "simplify." Starving my father made life simpler.

I should mention that US laws favor the elderly, and "competence" is based on their ability to think "in the moment." So they can be babbling nonsense 80% of the time, but if they get the name of the president correct "in the moment," they are considered competent. This is why old men can leave their fortunes to 20-year-old gold diggers instead of their kids. Good luck trying to become a guardian for your parents for their own good - especially when they have devoted their lives to keeping everything secret from you.

My parents ran a dictatorship, not a democracy. They were secretive to the point of extreme paranoia. Every tiny bit of information was guarded by lawyers and bankers who were forbidden to speak my brother or myself. We were 100% closed out of every decision, because everyone knows children are thieving idiots who are only after your money. The idea that children might care about the well-being of their parents is just a sentimental notion for credulous morons. The less your children know about your finances, your health, your doctors, your prescriptions, and so on, the better. That way they can't meddle in your affairs.

My father believed he knew better than anyone how to run a facility, an organization, a college, a medical office, a town, a state, a corporation, the country, and the world economy as well. Although he was an engineer, he felt qualified to run the family finances, make medical decisions, and tell everybody else in the world how to do their jobs. He told me after I recovered from cancer that I'd never had it at all. I guess he thought it was a plot I'd cooked up to trick him.

Both parents developed early dementia and heart problems. My father fell down and bled all over the floor; my mother refused to let anyone call an ambulance because it would "cost money." My father had heart surgery and went downhill. Aides were brought in, and more aides, until they were paying for 6 outside aides a day, two at a time around the clock. My mother complained bitterly that the aides ate lunch, and that they talked to each other. Had I ever heard of a job that included lunch?

The next thing my brother and I knew, my mother decided to move back into the old Victorian to die. She was nowhere near dying, but she was very fond of thinking about it, and decided she wanted to draw her last breath in the house she had allowed to fall into wrack and ruin. The idea was insane. but she ALWAYS got what she wanted, no matter the cost or consequences.

The house was right at the brink of being gutted or torn down. First a professional cleaning service was hired to eliminate the stench, the thick layer of dust and mold everywhere, and the black soot from decades of two improperly ventilated wood-burning stoves. Exterminators got rid of the bats, squirrels, mice, voles, ants, and spiders. Dozens of builders tore down the rotting sides of the house, added a new roof, installed new windows, patched the holes, put up new sheetrock, and painted the walls and ceilings. Fresh curtains were hung and hospital beds were brought in. New appliances were purchased and all the mouse poop was cleaned out of the kitchen. My mother refused to share a bathroom with my father, so a giant extra bathroom was added for an additional few hundred thousand dollars. By then senile, incontinent, and unable to walk, he never used it.

Steps were replaced by ramps with large golden handrails. A bridge for wheelchairs was constructed from the road to the house. Although I am in a wheelchair, I will never get to use these ramps, because my mother has decreed that I am not to inherit the house. She said I'm not bright enough to manage it by myself.

Round-the-clock live-in caregivers were hired, visiting nurses were found, a "boutique" doctor was secured, and the new nursing care facility opened in March, 2012, for its two residents.

My mother got everything she wanted, from her separate bathroom, to painting the porch furniture a special color, to eating  fresh vegetables at every meal with local fish or Cornish game hens or filet mignon. There was a new flat-screen TV she refused to watch, a new sun room she refused to sit in, and a new CD player from me she refused to listen to.

Was she happy? Of course not! If you asked how she was, she would reply - like Violet in "August: Osage County" - "there are Africans in my house." She was irate that the caregivers would TALK to each other. She was furious that they used up hot water for showers. She was outraged that they ate meals. She refused to pay 69 cents for a bag of pretzels for the women who cleaned, fed, toileted, and dressed her day and night. She routinely drove them to tears by fighting with them over trivial matters, and accusing them of ridiculous imaginary crimes they did not commit.

My mother took to sitting by the phone and calling up anyone who would listen to complain that she was starving, that she had no bed, that the caregivers were abusing her, that no one took her to the doctor, etc. She always was a liar, but she fooled people well. A couple of old friends took her seriously and dropped by with cans of stew. They tried to find different nurses, and made unnecessary medical appointments for her. She could no longer remember when she went anywhere, so she had her teeth cleaned twice in three weeks on the sly.

She was disdainful of my father for being senile and called him "a burden." She never liked her children or grandchildren, but periodically she would imperiously command us to visit because we "owed her." She treated everyone, including us, like her servants. And she lacked even the most basic empathy.

Then ... she complained of loneliness.

As my father drifted off into his own world, my mother, like Violet, ended up alone, except for the paid help. It was the only possible conclusion to all her life choices.

As for me - well, moving from rental to rental, disabled, and dependent on disability payments and Medicare, I spent many years resenting my mother's health, wealth, and amazing good fortune. The disparity between our lives was so enormous that it fed my sense of injustice and created a cancer in my life - literally. It took me almost six decades to realize that getting exactly what you want - every. single. time. - does not guarantee happiness. Having no responsibilities, a life of idleness, and millions of dollars with which to pursue any dream does not add up to anything if you have no dreams.

I still carry a great deal of resentment  - is anyone out there happy about being molested and abused? - but I see my mother now like a moldy shell of fruit rotting from within. Sure, I'd love to have her riches. But at least I can say I earned an honest living. Yes, I wish I'd had her life of idleness. But I have something better: a "to do" list of goals long enough to last several lifetimes. And most importantly, my husband and children mean more to me than any amount of money. I'd rather have pizza in my rental home with my kids than filet mignon in a mansion, alone.

Entry #13: BABIES ARE PEOPLE

BABIES ARE PEOPLE

Most of us took Psychology 101 - or maybe Parenting 101: Learned On the Job - and figured out that little babies are hella confused. They don't realize those fingery things attacking them are their own hands. They don't know that they have ears or feet. They don't realize yet that there is Self and Other. Eventually they figure out that Other will feed them when they are hungry (hopefully), but it takes a long time to learn that sometimes Other goes out of sight and does different things all by itself. That gets lonely, but if you cry, Other will come back again and pick you up (hopefully).

When I had my first child, we were inseparable. Poor Baby had colic for three months and could not eat without crying. Or do anything else without crying. No one told me she was probably allergic to all that milk I was drinking. She cried and wailed and kicked my caesarean scar, and I cried right along with her.

It's tough being a baby - with colic! The world is loud and incomprehensible, you have gas pains all the time, and you're often hungry, too. Your body keeps surprising you by doing things like randomly sneezing or hiccoughing you. Soon you get your first cold, and you don't know yet that you're supposed to breathe through your mouth when your nose is stuffed up, so you sniffle and snuffle for days.

People want to meet you, and they pinch your cheeks, or peer into your baby carriage, or try to pick you up. Poor Baby had a solution for this: she shrieked and turned purple from crying. Sometimes she would expel all the air out of her lungs with such force that there would be silence at the end, long enough for me to wonder if she would ever inhale again. It was terrifying,

Poor Baby was extremely sensitive. She and I were bonded 24 hours a day while I tried to ease her pains and calm her nerves. If people came to the house, we would go upstairs where it was quiet and free of intruders. Poor Baby heard every sound in the  house, and would wake up screaming if someone ripped off a length of tin foil in the kitchen. She noticed every detail - which some people still believe babies cannot do - and cried in horror when her father washed his hair and it stood up on his head instead of lying down the usual way.

Poor Baby never slept longer than four hours at a stretch. Somehow I knew instinctively the moment before she was about to awaken in the middle of the night, and would stumble into her room and be standing by her crib just as she woke up. She did not need to cry from hunger. I was already there.

With a crying infant in the house, no prior experience with babies, a caesarean to recover from, and no outside help, I no longer had time to spend on the made-up needs of my own mother. Just a few days after the birth of Poor Baby I received from her a tan mailing envelope. What kind of baby present fits in a large, flat envelope?

There was no baby present. The envelope was filled with grainy photocopies of photographs of my mother as a baby. LOOK AT ME, The photographs seemed to shout. FORGET THAT OTHER BABY! YOU WANT A BABY?  I CAN BE A BABY, TOO!

My mother had been deeply resentful of her own children, and now she was deeply resentful of the arrival of my daughter. From Day One it was a competition for my attention, which SHE ALONE deserved.

Obviously my mother was not babysitting material, but she would call occasionally. Once I explained that I had to hang up because something was getting on Poor Baby's nerves. My mother said, "Babies don't have NERVES," as if I was an idiot.

The next time she called, Poor Baby started to cry, and I said I had to go. "Why?" my mother asked. "When babies cry, it means they want to be alone."

I may have been an inexperienced mother, but I knew that was insane. Apparently when I had cried as an infant, she had decided that I "wanted to be alone."

I realized my mother was such a travesty about childrearing that I became filled with incandescent rage. Now that I had a precious, perfect child of my own, I realized on a profound level what a heinously bad parent she really had been.

My mother refused to use Poor Baby's real name. She said she wanted to call her "E.T." after the movie alien. Containing my rage, I explained that this baby was not "E.T." - or any of the other bizarre, arbitrary names my mother tried to use. She had a lovely name, and we were going to use it.

When my mother phoned, she would ask in a creepy tone, "How is it?", as if we had an amoeba or an armadillo. Not "she," but "it." What the hell kind of grandmother refers to her grand-daughter as an "it"?

Now I know, after years of therapy, that there is a phenomenon called "objectification." During war, soldiers will mentally turn the enemy into objects to psychologically enable them to shoot other human beings. Objectification makes it possible to harm, maim, or kill someone, but still see yourself as a good person. The "object" is bad and deserves your mistreatment.

When you pretend a baby has no nerves and cries to be alone, you turn the child into an object. When you call an infant an "it," she ceases to be a beautiful baby girl and becomes just a thing you can pick up or put down like a glass of gin.

It takes a special kind of person to objectify children. The pattern is established early and, without intervention, lasts throughout life. 

We call this kind of person a child molester.

Entry #12: WILDLIFE IN THE HOUSE

My mother always needed to tell people how smart she was. Within five minutes, everyone from a sales clerk to a new neighbor would learn that she had gone to Vassar, whether they asked or not. I don't know how she made it through, because she was not a bright woman, but she certainly perfected the snobbery of acting smart without actually being smart.

When I published a medical book in 1997, my mother decided she, too, was going to publish a book. At considerable expense, she self-published "Alphabestiary," a paperback of her doodles and limericks about animals from A to Z. But these were not just any animals. They had to be relatively unknown - the "aye-aye," the "nene," the "okapi" - to show how smart she was. Her knowledge of these animals was sketchy at best, but she could throw around words like "tarsier" and "loris" and impress her friends, who were all forced to spend cash for copies of her book. I imagine a lot of puzzled grandchildren were given this exercise in vanity publishing.

If you asked my mother about an animal that was not on her list - say, the "gerenuk" or the "pangolin" - she would ignore the question. If you asked her anything substantive about any animal, she would ignore the question. Her knowledge of animals was utterly superficial, but she kept up the pretense of being interested in Nature.

In my mother's mind, Natural was Good, while Chemical was Bad. The concept that both baby bunnies and the Ebola virus are Natural - and also made up of Chemicals - was too complex for her. This one-sided view of Nature may help to explain why she welcomed stray cats with fleas and various other types of wildlife into her home. When my daughter found cat poop hidden under a pillow in the living room, we adjusted our attitudes about sitting down.

Mice were constantly dying in the walls of the big old Victorian house, but my mother refused to hire an exterminator. Her sense of smell had long been dulled by alcohol, but for the rest of us the scent of Death was a good appetite suppressant.

The mice were so numerous that they ate through the wires in the back of the stove. The repairman pulled out the old stove, and there was a giant mound of mouse poop behind it. The poop was swept up, a new stove was brought in, and the mice ate through the wires again. This happened repeatedly.

The mice were especially fond of pooping in the silverware drawers in the kitchen. My mother would toss the poop out of a spoon and hand it to me as if that was perfectly normal. Well aware of hantavirus, I stopped using any utensils, pots, or pans I had not personally washed first.

The attic was inhabited by both bats and squirrels. The bats largely kept to themselves and politely let themselves out at night. The squirrels would run around above our heads, sounding as large as raccoons. There was a chance that the bats were rabid and had bitten the squirrels, but that did not concern my mother at all.

One day we arrived at the house to find my three nieces in an uproar. Somehow a baby squirrel had fallen down two stories and landed in bed with my oldest niece. Since then it had gone missing, so my nieces had moved on to playing whack-a-vole. Actually they were not whacking anything, but in the closet they had discovered an old bag of Cheetos that had expired eight years earlier, and they found they could lure little dark voles out into the middle of the kitchen with a trail of cheese snacks. The creatures definitely were not mice because they had no long tails. If we made a sudden noise, they would rapidly run backwards underneath the radiator, as if pulled by invisible strings.

Just as the voles disappeared down a hole in the floor, we heard a shriek from my youngest niece. She had been sitting quietly on the couch reading when a lump under the slipcover had come alive and started chasing her around the couch. Somehow the baby squirrel had crawled up onto the couch under the fabric, and was scratching its way around in a blind panic.

The baby squirrel fell out of the couch and ran under a china cabinet, so my father went and got an umbrella and started randomly stabbing at it. The baby squirrel started screaming, and we were started screaming at my father to stop, until someone had the presence of mind to open the front door. In time the baby squirrel made a run for it - outside where it had never been.

The big old Victorian house started to fall to pieces. My mother had vowed "not to put a nickel into it," so it was never cleaned, repaired, or heated after my parents moved to a fancy retirement place. The wildlife took over. I imagined them holding parties together in the kitchen, happily pooping all over the counters. Perhaps they invited the stray cat to use the living room as its litterbox.

The sides of the house started to rot, and the kitchen floor gave way. Holes opened up in the walls and let in the snow. Priceless fabric panels from China rotted and fell to the floor. The smell of must and mold became overpowering.

And then my mother decided she wanted to move back.

Entry #11: TWO WEDDINGS AND A CAKE TOPPER

I love weddings. Two people find each other and decide to stand up before all their friends and family, and vow to each other and to God that they will cherish each other forever. They are so joyful. They have no idea that in a few years the very things they adore about each other will turn into each other's most annoying characteristics. 

My parents had a photo album of black-and-white wedding pictures in plastic sleeves from 1947. In the photographs they are young and smiling. My father, looking very handsome with his hint of Inca blood, had survived WWII and unknowingly was about to embark on his own personal WWIII. My mother, delighted to be the center of attention, looks excited and pretty.

There is a photo of their wedding cake, with the bride-and-groom figurines on top. The waxy figures are standing on a round base to elevate them.The groom is wearing a black tuxedo, the bride has a white wedding dress to symbolize her youthful purity, and the little couple is standing on top of the world.

Oddly, this cake topper kicked around the house for years. My mother never bothered to put it away properly, so it became dirty and dusty. It started to turn brown from the bottom up, so its base became dark and horrifying. A metaphor for their marriage.

In the meantime, I was very happy to meet Artiste at college. He was smart and handsome and kind and did not abuse me. 

Unfortunately, my parents did not share my enthusiasm. My father sent me a typed hate letter on a triplicate form (white and yellow copies for me; pink for him) saying the only reason Artiste could possibly be interested in me was for my "inheritance." 

OK, that was insulting. Moreover, WHAT inheritance? My parents never willingly gave their kids a dime. Today I'm 59 and I have yet to find out about any "inheritance." Not even a toaster oven.

My mother pitched a fit about Artiste. I was supposed to marry a lawyer from Philadelphia - not that I'd never even met one - instead of a mongrel from Michigan, and a painter to boot.

The passage of time did not help the situation. After a visit in which Artiste lay awake all night fearing my mother would plunge a steak knife into his chest (seriously!), we left the following morning for Michigan. My mother got drunk, called the police, and tried to have Artiste arrested for "transporting her daughter across state lines." 

The police were interested. "How old is your daughter, m'am?"

"Twenty-one."

I can only imagine what they did after they hung up.

One day she got drunk and called Artiste's mother. She had called to ask her if he was retarded. 

Artiste's mother asked what signs her son had exhibited that indicated he was retarded.

"He doesn't do the dishes," my mother said.

When Artiste and I decided to get married, my father was polite. He had been taught very good manners to use in dire situations. 

My mother had no use for good behavior and said many things, including: "You're only 18!" (I was 22), "What will I tell my friends?," and, "You've broken my dreams!" She got terribly drunk and took to her bed in a paroxysm of rage and self-pity. Why, oh why, had God cursed her with such an irredeemable failure for a daughter?

I had wanted to get married outside, but Jack, the wise minister at the little church of St. John the Divine, talked me out of it. Good thing. The day before our wedding there was a massive nor'easter that shredded the June leaves all over the streets, darkened by the torrential rains. 

Fortunately we had a cheery yellow-and-white tent set up in the back yard for the reception. Since I had been furiously finishing up my last year of college - and it was a doozy - I did not interfere when my mother said she had arranged booze, food, and a cake. 

The ratio seemed off, as everyone was drunk and I personally never saw one bite of food. I heard there was some. The cake was not at all what I expected. There was a modest little wedding cake with a couple of tiers, accompanied by a large, flat Costco-looking cake. Definitely not the cake of wedding dreams.

When it came time to cut our mini-wedding cake, my mother suddenly rushed into the house and came out with the old, moldy cake topper. Triumphantly she mashed its blackened bottom onto the top of my little wedding cake. Apparently she'd had this intention since 1947, and had never said a word to me about it. Of course.

I could not very well take it off and throw it at her in the middle of my own wedding reception. I quickly sliced up the mini-cake and threw out the grotesque cake topper. The guests moved on to the sheet cake.

My aunt, who also had eaten too little and drunk too much, wielded a huge carving knife, stabbing the sheet cake ineffectually at odd angles. "Shorry about what I'm doing to your cake," she slurred. 

I cut a piece and handed it to her. 

At least she was shorry.