Entry #17: RESTAURANTS

My parents were born without taste buds. OK, maybe not. But their idea of fine foods included orange-and-red port wine cheese, Philadelphia's finest scrapple, canned Old El Paso refried beans, and premium wine at $5 a bottle. When choosing a restaurant, more thought went into the bar than the food.

My mother had several alcoholic tricks. The first, of course, was to get drunk at home before she even got in the car. Drinking began every day at 11:00 AM. If we had to go out to lunch, the early start would fortify her until we reached the closest cheap restaurant, where she would stop at the bar to get a drink on the way in, then carry it with her, rather than waiting to order a drink at the table.

Refills after that were ordered from whichever waiter or waitress was being punished by God that day.

All drinks were straight up, because "ice took up too much room in the glass." Once she gave the waiter instructions for a martini ... with no olive and no Vermouth. He said evenly, "So, what you want is a glass of gin?"

"Right," said my mother.

I had to explain alcohol to my kids early on, so they could understand the dynamics, and why Gamma kept wishing everyone a Happy a Memorial Day when it was Labor Day. My son once asked my mother with a cute little innocent face, "Whatcha drinking, Gamma? Iced tea?"

"Whishkey," she intoned as if it were a serious life lesson. "Whishkey."

My mother always made a big fuss about ordering Canadian whisky (spelled with no "e"), as if the restaurant might not be educated enough to carry it. In fact, Canadian whisky was known for being a piss poor choice - like insisting on Velveeta instead of Vermont aged cheddar.  At a high-end restaurant, she once insisted on "Canadian Red," and the waitress was frantically trying to figure out which expensive brand that was. It's not a brand - it's shorthand for "very bad, cheap, blended Canadian whisky of no particular name." 

My mother favored imitation quaint restaurants - Olde Inns, Taverns, Pubs, and so on. The food was irrelevant. She had no patience whatsoever, so it was important to find a restaurant that was empty. Usually a bad sign in a restaurant.

Going out to eat with my parents was utterly humiliating. My mother would endlessly torture the waitress, and my father did not believe in tips. I once intervened and added a 20% tip, and when my parents realized what I had done they insulted me for being stupid and profligate. I thought the waitress deserved much more.

All her life my mother had been called to meals at certain times, and food prepared by The Cook was immediately served to her by The Maids. The concept of waiting for food to be ready was utterly missing from her brain. She did not have the smallest modicum of patience or politeness. Once at a restaurant, she harassed the wait staff mercilessly from the moment she sat down.

I think the most memorable dinner was a family reunion at a restaurant with a name like Beak 'n' Claw, or Hoof 'n' Feather, or maybe it was Scales 'n' Tails. Unfortunately there was a large party going on in a separate room, so the kitchen and waitstaff were very busy.

Our table comprised my parents; my brother and his three young daughters; and my husband and me with our two young children. My brother and my father were down at one end of the table pontificating with each other and ignoring everyone else. My brother's girls were lined up next to him, littlest first. My mother was at the opposite end, with my family.

We were seated directly across from the shiny swinging doors that led into, and out of, the kitchen. Wait staff would suddenly burst forth with dinners for the party in the other room, narrowly missing waiters and waitresses on their way in.

Our waitress arrived and my mother ordered another drink while still finishing her first one - like chain smoking, except chain drinking. Already her face had gone slack, and her movements had taken on an underwater quality. She would reach for her glass slowly and with great concentration, as if moving any faster might startle it.

The waitress returned with her drink and my mother was already restive. This was going to be a long, difficult meal.

We had to order everything all at once, in a hurry, in order to get our food as quickly as possible. My mother always asked the same rude questions that suggested the restaurant was trying to kill us ("Is it fresh?" "Did you make this a week ago?" "How old are these eggs?"). Ironically the restaurant could have served her frozen mastodon burgers and she would not have noticed the difference.

My mother's salad took too long to arrive. She harassed the waitress, who said she was doing the best she could. The salad finally arrived, but battle lines had already been drawn. Where were our meals?

The waitress tried to explain they were busy, but that was a waste of time. My mother demanded to talk to The Management.

An older woman came over and tried to calm down my mother, who was beginning to have an all-out meltdown. "We've come ALL THE WAY FROM NARRAGANSETT," she said imperiously, adding, "THE CHILDREN NEED THEIR DINNERS."

The kids looked surprised, since they were all perfectly fine - except the littlest, who was being completely ignored by her father. She was starting to pick fights to get attention.

The hostess looked at my mother in surprise and said, "Narragansett? That's not very far!" And in fact it was not. "Can I get you something else while you wait?"

"NO!" shouted my mother, deciding to turn on the crocodile tears. Her voice escalated. "We've been waiting here for HOURS!" 

It might have been half an hour, tops. My youngest niece, taking her cue from my mother's behavior, turned to her father and socked him in the arm has hard as she could. 

While my niece was getting yelled at, my mother stood up shakily from the table and set her eye on the doors to the kitchen.

My young son sensed immediately what was about to happen and exclaimed, "Somebody poke my eyes out! I don't want to see this!"

Sure enough, my mother set a course straight through the swinging doors into the kitchen. The rest of us sat aghast and immobilized, half expecting her to be thrown out like a drunk cowboy from a saloon.

I think she may have been the first customer to actually show up in the middle of a busy kitchen to complain. I imagine her standing there, confused by the profusion of cooks because she was no doubt seeing double by then. I doubt there was anyone standing around waiting to listen politely to her concerns.

She made it back to her seat and I kept pleading with her to stop picking on the staff. If you deliberately choose a godawful restaurant, you lose your complaining rights.

There was not enough bread for the table because they had to "thaw out some more." Our meals finally arrived, and no one was more relieved than our waitress. I don't remember if I had the beak, the claw, the hoof, the feather, the scales or the tails - it was all awful, and the children were not allowed to order dessert because they did not finish their horrible dinners. Really my mother - the doting grandmother - just didn't want to pay for any ice cream.

In the car home, my mother sat angry, silent, and slightly at an angle. She would take to her bed immediately, annoyed by everyone. Since this whole exercise gave her so little pleasure, I wondered why she bothered. 

Then I remembered. My mother actually existed in a parallel universe, where she boasted to her friends about these occasions to prove that she WAS TOO beloved by her family, and we all had SO MUCH FUN together. After a few glasses of straight gin, the reality was irrelevant. All that remained was a hologram in her brain of a lovely dinner that never actually took place.

Entry #16: PETS

PETS

Once upon a time a friend came to visit my mother, bringing her a beautiful blooming African Violet as a gift.

"Let's take a walk down the street to see Shirley," suggested my mother. "We can bring her this plant." And they did.

Aside from being jaw-droppingly rude, the point of this story is that my mother refused to be responsible for even a single house plant, and got rid of it before it even hit the dining room table. God only knows how she handled a baby, since she found a house plant too much trouble. My mother was an addict, and all she really wanted to think about was getting her next drink.

Occasionally pets had been added to the household when I was young, but they usually lasted about as long as that plant.

My mother often spoke fondly about white rats she'd had as a child. Apparently she was allowed to keep many of them. I'm sure one of the maids had to feed and water the rats and change their cages, because caring for another living thing was not on my mother's list of abilities.

My mother claims that she wore the rats on her head like a crown (could this possibly be true?), and that she brought them to school and hid them in her desk (very likely).

Because of my mother's rats, I was allowed to have hamsters when I was little. They were stinky little things, but I adored them and let them run around my waist inside my shirt. The mother hamster had babies, and I came downstairs one morning and was casually informed that she had eaten her young. I was aghast. I had never heard anything so disturbing in my life. I have since learned that this is a sign of severe maternal stress and bad hamster care. But doesn't it figure I would get the Cannibal Mother Hamster?

The hamsters were either Houdini masters with their little paws, or perhaps someone accidentally on purpose left their cage door unlatched, because one by one they disappeared.

After the hamster debacle I was allowed to have two guinea pigs. My mother named them Lester and Lanin, after the society bandleader. (Years later I attended a debutante party where one of Lester Lanin's bands was actually playing. According to the New York Times, "Mothers would book him for coming-out parties as soon as their daughters were born.")

I liked Lester and Lanin because they wiggled their noses and squeaked. I don't think they were well cared for, either. For their food, my mother retrieved old, slimy lettuce that had been thrown out behind the A&P.

Lester and Lanin came with us to Rhode Island for the summer, and apparently my mother decided she was no longer going to deal with their cage. She got some flimsy pieces of cardboard and set them up  on the concrete as an enclosure by the back door, then released Lester and Lanin into their new makeshift home outside.

By morning they had been savaged by the neighbor's dogs, their bloody corpses strewn around the yard. This caused something of an uproar in our small town, and my mother was angry at the neighbor who owned the dogs. But really - who leaves guinea pigs loose outside at night?

We also had a cat when I was little, but it must have been somewhat feral, because I don't remember enjoying or curling up with it. I'm sure it never went to the vet - that would have cost money. I know it pooped in my uncovered sandbox - a lot. My mother fed the cat raw hot dogs, glistening and pink, straight from the refrigerator. The cat also sometimes got canned cat food that smelled absolutely delicious to me. My mother was such a godawful cook that cat food seemed like a better option than anything she prepared - so I tried it. It was execrable. I can assure you it tastes nothing like it smells.

One day a man yelled to us from the street, "Is this your cat?"  I wish someone had kept me from looking.

In high school, I adopted a kitten named Oliver. He was a lovely black-and-grey tiger cat, and I took care of him myself. Ollie, too, came with us to Rhode Island. The day my mother drove back to Philadelphia at the end of the summer, I had to be somewhere else. This turned out to be very unfortunate. My mother stopped by some woods somewhere and threw Oliver out the car door. When I returned home, looking for my cat, she shrugged her shoulders indifferently.

Losing Ollie was such a betrayal, and so brutally unkind to both the cat and to myself, that something broke inside me. Ollie was no mere rodent. I regarded my mother as a murderer, and sensed that this time she had not only played her hand but also revealed it. I saw that she had no empathy - not for me, not for the cat, not for anyone. I realized that she never had. Evil was not characterized by hatred, or rage, but indifference.

I am happy to say that the minute I got away from my parents, Artiste and I adopted a tiger kitten from Maine we named Miso. After that, one cold night Artiste was followed down a snow-covered road by a tiny mewling kitten who appeared out of nowhere. That kitten cleverly found the only people in Michigan who would pay to fix up a stray with fleas, mites, worms, too many toes, and a broken tail that was bent at a 90 degree angle. We named him Plutarch. Miso and Plutie became our substitute children for years, and were still around even after we had real children.

When my son was in high school, we finally relented to his pleas and got him Cosmo the Corgi, the smartest, handsomest, barkiest dog you could ever meet. They bonded as only a boy and his dog can. After that, my daughter asked for a rescue greyhound, and the beautiful Lily entered our lives. Both kids moved on - and the dogs stayed with us, of course.

I had never owned dogs before and was never a "dog person," but today I can't imagine life without them. It's amazing how much a dog adds to your life without being able to say a word.

The rescue organization was going to give us a large male dog named Lance, but then they called and said they had selected a different dog for us because I worked at home. They said she could not be alone, that she should have another dog for company, and she should not be around small children. She was afraid of thunderstorms, unable to use stairs, and oh by the way, she refused to be crated, ever. It also turned out that Lily had recent scars from the racetrack, that she was not housebroken, and she was afraid of men - particularly their feet, from getting kicked. She was afraid of wires, afraid of her leash, and afraid to go to the bathroom anywhere except in an enclosed yard. I once stood outdoors in the rain with her for an hour pleading with her to pee - to no avail, of course. Lily ate like a wolf, had never seen a dog treat, and had no idea there was a concept called "playing."

From Cosmo she learned how to chase toys, how to whine for treats, how to bark rudely at other dogs, and how to pee like a boy. She took over every sitting surface in the house, and rotates from filling up the entire sofa to occupying one or the other armchair. Greyhounds get cold easily, so she has her own wardrobe, and in the winter she sleeps on down quilts on our bed. In summer she sleeps in air conditioning in her own bed. Cosmo lies in the doorway, protecting us.

The amount if money we have spent on dog food and vet bills is staggering. Cosmo got pancreatitis and diabetes and almost died. Lily had to have oral surgery and lost several teeth. Cosmo developed ileus and almost died again. Each time we do whatever we have to do because PETS ARE FAMILY.  You do not toss them out of car doors. You thank them for warning you that the dangerous brown UPS truck is nearby, or reminding you that your cell phone is ringing, or waiting for hours inside the front door for you to return home. 

There's a prayer that goes: "God, please help me to become the person my dog already thinks I am." Dogs love us unconditionally and give us the opportunity to be our best selves. Pets - whether dogs, cats, gerbils, chinchillas, ferrets, fish, llamas, or horses - allow us to open our hearts and experience the opposite of evil indifference, and that is love.

Entry #15: CLOTHES

I hope clothing was not a big deal for you when you were growing up. I hope you had enough of it, that it kept you warm in the winter, and that it was decent-looking.

As you might expect by now (if you have read any of my previous posts), clothing was not handled by my mother in a normal manner. There were a number of factors that converged to make a Perfect Storm that produced a Clothing Catastrophe.

First of all, my mother disliked wearing any clothes at all. She was an exhibitionist and nudist at heart. She slept naked, swam in their pool naked, and walked around the house naked. When she accidentally walked in on my brother in the kitchen stark naked, he was so horrified I thought his head was going to explode.

This is her favorite joke, which she repeated 24,000 times:

What is honeymoon salad?

Lettuce alone without dressing.

You're welcome.

My mother preferred to wear a minimum of clothes - for example, her bathrobe with no belt. She also had an ongoing war with under-garments. The under-garments always lost, except on very special occasions. She was well-endowed and needed to wear a bra, but she disliked feeling constricted. Her compromise was to put on a bra, but not fasten it in the back. It looked exactly as you would expect. She also disliked zipping up her pants. The overall effect was that her flesh went swaying in different directions and seemed to be trying to burst out at the seams. Nakedness threatened.

When my mother was very old, my daughter paid her a visit to introduce her wonderful boyfriend. Leaving the boyfriend safely in the kitchen - she was no fool! - my daughter found my mother on the porch wearing a short, ill-fitting, unfastened shirt and an adult diaper. My daughter suggested that she and her boyfriend wait in the kitchen while my mother got dressed.

"Oh, nobody cares about those things any more," my mother scoffed, shuffling into the kitchen.

My daughter was horrified - but not as horrified as her boyfriend, who had to be polite to a saggy, wrinkly, half-dressed, cuckoo old woman wearing a loose diaper. Poor thing - he saw too much. He was so traumatized he never went back.

I think it's pretty clear that my mother had absolutely no interest in her daily appearance. She generally looked like a bag lady, and did not care AT ALL unless there was an occasion that included men to whom she was not married. One of her friends once told her, "It's obvious you are rich, because only a wealthy person could afford to look as awful as you do!" She was quite proud of that. When I was young I attributed all her peculiarities to being drunk, but I later read that disregard for personal appearance can be a symptom of a personality disorder.

My mother generally wore misshapen old clothing that often was stained. She loved to wear a cheap white tennis hat that was covered with obvious black mold spots. She went out to lunch in a pair of matching flannel pajamas I had given her as if they were suitable attire. Adding a brooch did not make them appropriate. She looked insane.

My mother loved to think she was fooling people by not spending money on the correct clothing. It was her own little way of feeling smarter than everyone else. She felt superior to the other women, who were fools for wasting their money on expensive clothes while she cleverly wore pajamas instead of pants, or a long nightgown instead of a formal dress - just the way she hung cheap polyester quilts in the windows instead of buying real curtains. She fooled no one. I was mortified when the other women wore lovely floral, fitted Middle Aged Mom bathing suits from Lily Pulitzer, and my mother would come out of the ocean in some cheap, unlined jumper made of the wrong material, her boobs swinging, everything under-supported and over-exposed. There is a reason why bathing suits were invented.

It follows that my mother certainly wasn't going to waste money on clothes for her three children. I remember going with my brothers to a discount clothing store the size of an airplane hangar and searching through heaps and heaps of dark pants. She also took us to a tacky shoe store named Flocco's, where she bought boys' shoes for all three of us.

I was cursed with wide feet. (A doctor once looked at an x-ray of my foot and said, "Hmm... dainty.") There must have been shoes somewhere for girls with wide feet, but my mother simply bought me boys' shoes. I remember a pair of particularly hideous black penny loafers in fifth grade. I was thrilled to get actual penny loafers like the other girls, and I even put shiny pennies in the slots on top - but nothing could disguise their grotesque dark color and their boy-like clunkiness next to the cute slippers of the other girls. It was the dawning of my awareness that my clothes were... different.

If you grow up eating purple cabbage for breakfast, then purple cabbage seems normal to you because that's all you've ever known. Eventually, however, you're going to find out that other kids are eating pancakes or cereal or eggs and bacon, and you will begin to harbor secret doubts about purple cabbage. But the subject is never up for discussion, and you are told to be GRATEFUL for your purple cabbage. Nothing else is on the menu. You're not old enough to buy your own breakfast. So you keep eating purple cabbage until it becomes pretty clear one day - based on the reactions of other people - that purple cabbage really is not normal. And then you realize... you're a weirdo.

I wore hand-me-down clothes from my brothers for years. Occasionally my mother would buy matching mother-and-daughter dresses, just to emphasize further that I was supposed to be her mini-me. (She had already given me her exact same name at birth, which would later confuse the Federal Income Tax greatly.) At best I looked like a tomboy, and at worst like something out of Deliverance.

Public school was academically a breeze, but in third grade we were given an exercise in which we were supposed to circle all the bad things that little Billy did. For example, he woke up in the morning and put on the same clothes he had worn the day before. Nothing wrong with that - I did it every day. Billy also neglected to brush his teeth or change his underwear, and went to school without eating breakfast. All standard for me. I didn't even understand the point of the exercise.

I remember very clearly going over this exercise as a class. I had not circled any of Billy's bad behavior because I simply had not recognized it. All the other students clearly knew things I did not. For the first time I was introduced to concepts like clean underwear and fresh clothes every day. They were a revelation. I often wonder if the teacher handed out that exercise just for my benefit.

I remember in sixth grade wearing my black boys' loafers with one of my brothers' old plaid shirts and contrasting boys' plaid pants. The other girls had pretty dresses with matching bows in their hair, pastel-colored sweaters, sweet white blouses with tidy skirts, and so on. I had a vague feeling something was not right, but the person in charge of my well-being - my mother - was completely unperturbed and was not making any changes.

I was like a weed that had grown up wild. No one bought me pretty clothes, or taught me how to wash my hair, or gave me breakfast in the morning. I gave myself a bath occasionally, while my mother would be downstairs drinking. Other than telling me to say "thank you" and to sit up straight - threatening to stick me with a fork - my mother had taught me no manners or social niceties. I had no idea that society had conventions to use for any occasion. I had just been winging it for 11 years, completely unaware of normal standards for eating, clothing, and behavior. I seldom went to anyone else's house, so I was not aware that other girls did not draw on their bedroom walls, and that they had four-poster beds with pretty coverlets and matching curtains instead of a mattress in a metal frame with six extremely heavy wool blankets and bare windows.
My Aunt Alice decided I had better go to private school. I was given an admissions test at the Misses Shipley School, which I thought went rather well. Later, my mother informed me I had been accepted.

"I thought I would get in," I confessed happily to my mother.

"I didn't," she answered cruelly, without explanation.

Why did she think there was something wrong with me? I was going into seventh grade. My anxiety and self-doubt deepened, and my isolation increased. It was impossible to be comfortable around other people. I was too busy observing their behavior and trying to find out what was "normal." I came across as creepy and detached.

It's a good thing I attended Shipley, but it was like being thrown to the wolves. My mother refused to buy me new uniforms: green tunics for different seasons, white button-down shirts (preferably starched at the dry cleaner's), green knee socks, and puffy green bloomers. Instead she took me to the Shipley Thrift Shop, where she bought the old, discarded uniforms of other students.

The uniform included brown lace-up shoes, obviously referring to a type of expensive ruddy oxfords made for girls. Somehow my mother located lace-up shoes the color of baby poop in the far corner of Sears. Within the first ten minutes of my new school, another girl looked at my feet and laughed. "You're wearing Girl Scout shoes!" My fate was sealed.

The other girls had already attended Shipley from kindergarten. They all knew each other well, and had honed and refined a distinct preppy look that was so much more than simply clothing. It suggested the right address, an easy athleticism, summers on Nantucket, and special blessings from God that included shining hair, perfect skin, and a bred-in-the-bone unshakeable self-confidence. These girls were the future debutantes of the Main Line, and they were being groomed for life in High Society. They could spot imitation Top-Siders from fifty paces, and within the restrictions of wearing a uniform they had their own set of greater restrictions, such as removing the "fairy loop" from the back of each white oxford shirt, or wearing only a particular brand of raincoat, or sweater, or shoes.

On Fridays we were allowed to wear normal clothes - but I didn't have any. The other girls wore Pappagallo flats in a rainbow of colors, blouses from Talbots, skirts from The Villager, beautiful Fair Isle sweaters, luxurious heavy-wale corduroy pants, even wool pants suits suitable for taking the Concorde to Europe. I wore my old green tunic and looked like an idiot.

I started fighting in earnest with my mother about clothing. This was a matter of survival. VERY grudgingly, she took me back to the Shipley Thrift Shop and bought me a skirt of large black-and-white houndstooth. and a lime green blouse. I knew perfectly well that these clothes were the hand-me-downs of another student. They did not even match. But they were something.

Standing in line one day, I was passed an anonymous note that read, "Why do you always wear the same clothes?" I was mortified. But I was also trapped. I had no money. I couldn't drive. My mother refused to buy me anything. Where was I supposed to get clothes?

Just then, an enterprising classmate started her own business sewing bathing suits. I don't remember why she was raising money, but orders were brisk. She brought in different Butterick patterns and fabrics and let students design their own bathing suits.

She saved my life. I started sewing my own clothes. My mother even bought me the smallest, cheapest Singer sewing machine available. I detested sewing, but finally I had skirts and pants to wear. Later I moved on to beautiful hippie dresses made out of bedspreads from India.

Eventually, when I learned how to drive, I negotiated a tiny clothing allowance each month. It wasn't much, but it meant freedom.

When it came time to dress my own children, you can be damn sure they did not look like weeds. I got out the old sewing machine and made them little outfits and sewed Halloween costumes. I knitted them hand-made sweaters. And yes, I bought them actual clothes. They did not get anything fancy, but they were allowed to be reasonably stylin'. My mother was outraged by my extravagance.

A multimillionaire neighbor whose son was friends with mine, and who knew we were poor, also took me to task. "Honestly," she said with the denseness of the very rich, "I just don't know HOW you dress your children in L. L. Bean!"

I said nothing. But I wish I could have said everything you just read.

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.