your mother's days are numbered
I don't remember the time of year, but I do remember the day of the week, that I first had intimations of my mother's own mortality. It was a Friday night, sometime in late 1962 after the October missile crisis or early 1963, months before Kennedy's death in Dallas, when we still lived at 666 Lakeside Drive, just south of Hapeville and Atlanta. It was a Friday night, sometime after 11:30 p.m., perhaps closer to midnight. I was watching "The Wolfman" on Waga-TV's Big Movie Shocker, hosted by my favourite ghoul, Bestoink Dooley.
From the bathroom came the sounds of my mother's cries. She was half-sobbing, half-screaming, having noticed the first signs of what was soon diagnosed as ovarian cancer. Nothing seemed to console her that night, especially, I guess, my frantic pleas to her, "not to die". The horror on the small black and white screen could not match the real life horror that invaded our lives that night.
My mother had surgery at hospital up in Duluth, just north of Norcross, and began her course of treatment. We moved to her hometown of Norcross that summer and my mother's health, slowly, steadily, declined. I started seventh grade that fall, going to the same brick schoolhouse she had attended. Her math teacher and her Latin teacher still taught. She survived the summer, our new house, the old house she had grown up in, now had a regular flow of visitors to her bedside. At the time, and for years after, and despite the obvious comfort they provided her, I was angry at all those visitors, feeling somehow that they took away from her time with me. My mother had very little time for me, very little time for my sister, in fact very little time at all. She died that fall of 1964, only forty-two years old. Forty one years dead this year. And yes, I still miss her.
[8 May 2005] link?
It's been something of a busy weekend. Starting out on by Friday night taking the grandson to "Hitch Hiker's Guide..." at the Shattuck, which he and I thoroughly enjoyed. The science wizard from Chabot was there and did his energetic, if somewhat overly so, shtick. But of course, for an almost ten year old there is almost nothing that is too energetic...so the grandson was revved for the movie from the start.
Saturday morning I met up with bc and we went to a surprise birthday party for the e.d. of another homeless agency, her 50th. We went to Skates, a great venue for a beautifool Saturday morning. The sun was out and the bay was populated by sailboats. I was explaining to bc on the way over that it was way too early in the day for me to drink alcohol...obviously not so, as at first temptation I ordered a bloody mary, feeling slightly hungover the rest of the day.
Anyway the party was a great success. Everyone happily piled out into the early afternoon and I went on to see "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room", playing at the California. I don't know about smart, but they certainly came across as the smarmy, greedy little bastards they undoubtably are. And to fit my sour mood by film's end, I came out of the theatre to find that the skies had turned from blue to gray, the season, from spring to winter. I was going to walk up to Telegraph to seek out a new backpack, but the threat of imminent raindrops made me re-consider.
Being a buddhist of a certain nature...lazy nature...I thought for a while about going to the half-day sit at the Berkeley Zen Center, beginning Sunday morning. Then I thought about it again, and slept in instead. I was okay with that. I needed the sleep.
[1 May 2005] link?