all about my mother–the hope chest

[Author's note:  I'm compiling memories about my mother's life.  There may be a larger work in progress here, but its details are unclear to me and yet to be determined.   The reader would be well advised that not everything written here is true.  There are two poems inside this blog about my mother:  Talking to Strangers and Rubble Children (read them by clicking on the titles.)   rp]

Evelyn Hope Burleson Miller Russell Patrick <Boyle> Whitworth (1916–1982)

how fate works

[a blog, mesothelioma support groups, has linked to my long-form blog under the heading ‘you may also like—interesting blogs’.  i just wanted to say how flattered i am by this link.  in related/unrelated news, i read/stumbled upon this entry in my journal last night & it wasn’t until this morning that the coincidence actually sunk in; so i thought i’d share what i wrote when i found out my mother had cancer.]

10/21/81—

Intermittent response

How do I look

To myself

What are their

Perceptions

Will the truth ever be

Known?

Significant glance

Constant gaze

It can only lead

to one end.

The constancy of it all.

Stop these questions

Without answers

Where is that analogy?

My mother is dying of cancer—She probably won’t live through this year.  She’s been so neat & tidy about it all.  When she’s gone I really will be all alone.  We are such good friends, even though she surprises me so very often—opinionated, stubborn, but isn’t that what she deserves? As these last few weeks go by; doesn’t she need to release all those feelings—all those emotions, sentiments have to come out only because she knows she’s going to die.  People who are taken from this life unexpectedly have no chance to relieve that excess spleen (where is Charles Beaudelaire when we really need him?  —[that’s my question?]  I am going back to Rapid City when the time comes, when they know the end is near.  I only hope I can deal with this trauma in the most reasonable manner— Hopefully mother’s attitude of strength & determination will carry over to me.  I’m sure we’ll have our maudlin moments, but who wouldn’t in a situation such as this.

[my mother hung on until the following may (1982) & after she & my step-father decided to move back to the missouri ozarks where they had retired (they had moved there in the late ’70s,) but when my grandmother started failing they had gone back to rapid city to be with her until she died in january of 1982.]

it was gay pride weekend in l.a. & we missed it once again!  what kind of gays are we that we weren’t even aware that it was going to happen until we saw it on pg. 2 of the second section of the l.a. times this morning?  here’s a nugget for you: i have never ever, not even once, been to a gay pride parade.  it is sort of a busman’s holiday, don’t you think?  really, do we need a reason to party?  i think not.  we are, after all, everywhere (at least that’s what you’d think if you watched the tonys last night.  speaking of which, could they have been anymore boring?  where are the stars?)

but i digress.  sometime in the early 1960s my mother met a woman, mary (on the right in the photo,) at work & sooner than you can say ‘lesbian’ they were co-habitating (i was 8.)  i don’t recall a courtship (like i do with the process my mother & my stepfather went through a few years later,) i don’t believe i ever saw them kiss each other, although they touched each other (arms around each other, perhaps hand-holding in that ‘it’s okay, they’re women holding hands kind-of-way.’)

mary was a butch.  hunting, fishing, camping, motorcycle-riding, crack-the-whip, whistle with her fingers butch.  she loved me (cue lump in throat.) she pushed me to excel academically (a way out of dodge city, as foreseen by her…she knew.)  she was loud, brash, roll-up-your-sleeves, men’s-clothes-wearing butch, with a honking laugh & although i never saw it, she might have farted & re-arranged her privates in public butch.  men quaked when she entered the room (bar doors swinging behind her, spurs clanking.)  she brooked no nonsense, got it?

you could tell she loved my mother a lot.  she would watch my mother put on make-up & do her hair, ponds cold cream her face at night & put on a nightgown (mary wore pajamas) all this with some kind of envy & love emanating from her.  they would sit at the kitchen table & murmur at each other or stand at the kitchen sink, mom washing dishes, mary drying, just like they had always been meant to do so.

mary left us (i’ve written about this before) but she never really left our life.  even my step-father liked her & she would come to visit my mother & he & they her before my mother died.  mary & her final companion, vi (who is still alive) came to visit m. & i one summer in chicago.  they drove their ‘rig’ (lesbian-speak for pick-up with a camper shell) from colorado & the afternoon they arrived, mary walked into our house & said, “i need a safe place to put my gun.  you know how it is, two women alone on the road just aren’t safe anymore.”  i loved mary too.

the motorcycle diaries: (appropriations ‘r’ us) we are going to move toward the subject of this photo from behind, so let’s talk about me first.  see that speed racer parked at a jaunty angle in front of the camper?  (a side note: the camper was a pop-up tent that when opened looked just like a conestoga wagon — you know, a prairie schooner & the only time we seemed to use it was during unexpected cold snaps, deer-hunting in the black hills or grouse-hunting in the badlands, it offered no real protection, but fuck that, it looked awesome) but attention, please, to the bicycle; the handlebar grips were decked out with those multi-colored, plastic strip hangey-down things (what’s the word? oh, yes, streamers) & on occasion (as often as possible) i would have a playing card clothes-pinned to the back wheel in imitation of mary’s motorcycle (a suzuki that my mother is astride in this photo.)

mary promised me that i could have a lambretta vespa scooter as soon as i was 14 (the legal age for a motorbike license at the time.)  although a few years away from turning 14 (say 5 years), i was nonetheless in love with motorbikes (what boy isn’t?  many years later, in chicago, i dated a man one summer [a fling], let’s call him don north [my mr. big], who was a motorcycle-driving, leather-wearing bearded daddy whom i had snagged at my local neighborhood leather bar when i was wearing a white mohair sweater a la nicholas hoult in ‘a single man’ & yes, i rode bitch, at least for the summer of 197_.)

when this photo was taken, helmets were not the law of the land & mary & my mother would take off from our gravel driveway with a little pouf of dust & grinding of gears, & hard rubber scattering loose stone, take the dip to the street & fly off for a ride of indeterminate destination & length of time.  they’d return, sunglasses bug-splatted, a little sweaty (road sweat) my mother a little uncertain on her feet after dismounting, head for the kitchen & maybe have a beer (or not.)  sometimes, after they returned, i would get a short ride from mary & i would wrap my skinny nine-year-old arms tight around her amplitude & revel in the thrill of being so exposed & traveling at what seemed the speed of a rock thrown at furtive movement in the lilac hedge that ringed our neighbors backyard.  i loved it.

as it would, as if foretold by a mystic, my mother wanted to learn to drive the motorcycle.  on the appointed day (the stars must have been in alignment) mary rode the bike & we followed in the car to an abandoned (or seldom-used at any rate) go-kart track east of town (out by a trailer park of a town named underwood, sodak, which always made me think of underwood deviled ham, a canned meat product of dubious distinction, yet surprisingly tasty & exotic to the palate of a nine-year-old) regardless, mary, a natural leader (so masculine!) took my mother through the steps of ignition, shifting, braking, banking, acceleration until it was certain (at least to me) that mom was all set to take her first solo ride on the suzuki.

kick-stand up, pop & roar of pistons firing, engage the clutch & she was off

for about 20 feet when the bike abruptly stopped & hesitated for just a moment but for what, in retrospect, now seems like minutes, while my mother calmly sat atop the leather seat & in slow motion fell over to the left, my mother’s leg trapped against the racing engine.

end of story.  actually end of story of my mother ever getting on another motorcycle.  end of story of my ever having the promised lambretta vespa scooter.  & i suspect the end of many other stories,

but one.  a few years after mary had left us, & i was still too young to drive, we were traveling east on omaha st. in rapid city, waiting to turn left onto 6th st. to cross the bridge & go up the hill to home, & as we turned there was the sudden crunch of metal on metal & mother screaming “i hit a motorcycle!”  we stopped, she jumped out of the car & ran to the cyclist who was standing, dusting himself off, “ma’am, i’m just fine.”  now, that’s the end of the story.

what does a nine-year-old know about love?  you’re fed, & pampered, & guided, & cajoled, & encouraged (all of this, if you’re lucky, it’s certainly not a given,) & that’s what you think love is.

you’ve seen your grandparents, your aunts, uncles, adult neighbors & you’re told that they are in love (or you assume that they are, because that is the ideal,) you may even, at this tender age, talk about love with your friends, but it still seems a thing that is immensely far away from your reality (pluto to the sun.)

no adult ever told me that two women (or two men) could not love each other.  at least no one ever said out loud that they could not love each other like a man and a woman love each other (the assumed ideal.)  when you’re nine-years-old, you are only interested in stability, consistency & attention (positive preferred.)

early in their life together, i imagine (it’s all i can do, imagine) that mary & my mother were in love, undaunted by the murmurings & whisperings that i can only imagine (knowing now what i do of my disapproving aunt, her cowed husband [cow, coward] & the unloving step-father, my grandfather) provided an undercurrent, a rip-tide of innuendo & subterfuge, that finally & successfully drove them apart.

but before that, there must have been times when their world revolved around the sun of their love.  & i think that must have been a very special world to have lived in, to have survived in, to have drank in the sunlight, & the rain, to have walked & danced, to have sung out (to no one in particular, because who would listen at that time?) their love.

my mother always worked & from my earliest memories i always came home from school to an empty house (sometimes, depending on where we lived, i would check in with a neighbor to let them know i was at home.) so we moved around a lot after my parents’ divorce in 1958.  at least it seemed a lot to me, but perhaps not so much after all; i think i remember at least four or five houses/apartments we lived in before my mother got all proprietary & purchased a little house on the north side of rapid city, south dakota (before that though, there were stints in springfield (paternal grandparents,) highwood & highland park, illinois & two apartments in rapid city.  without siblings & with only adults (mostly) in my home life, i learned at an early age how to entertain myself (i read a lot: my first ‘adult’ book was robert louis stevenson’s ‘treasure island’ when i was six.)

this photo was taken at the train depot in springfield, illinois, summer 1958.  i was five & the birdcage eventually welcomed (after being a locker for a basket-ball) the first of many green parakeets named ‘petey bird.’

robert lee patrick and mother, evelyn (written in my mother’s palmer method cursive script on the reverse)

the summer this photo was taken i spent a month on the johnson’s dairy farm outside of hermosa, south dakota.  the decision to put me there for an extended period of time came suddenly and without discussion, the only explanation ‘your mother needs some time for herself’ coming from mary, her lover (a fact that came to me much later than the date of this photo.)  i have a vague memory of feeling abandoned, but it’s fleeting.  i don’t know how we knew the johnson’s & i don’t ever recall seeing them, hearing from them, writing to them, after my time on their farm (it could be a dream.)

i stayed close to mrs. johnson for most of my time there, she & i would gather eggs in the morning (until i was comfortable doing it myself,) feed a brood of turkey hatchlings they were nurturing in their kitchen (the turkey hen had abandoned them,) bake, cook, clean for & after the men (mr. johnson, an adult son, perhaps 1 or 2 hands, i don’t recall exactly.)

i do remember the slightly erotic feeling of having a calf that i had watched being born, sucking on my fingers like a teet, then quickly pulling in my whole forearm into its mouth (a moment of fear—could it eat me?) helping with the milking both morning and night — they were mechanized & i did learn to apply the milkers to the udders of the cows without incident or injury.  the smells of cows, cow shit, hay, and the lusciousness of fresh milk (the cream alone enough to make you swoon) may be hard for some of you to imagine, but it is pungent & immediate for me.

we never left the farm; there was a vegetable garden, they slaughtered & cured their own meats — i had my own room with lace curtains & a white chenille bedspread with colorful flowers (roses?) woven into its center covered the bed & which i dutifully made each morning.  the bedroom was on the west side of the farmhouse & the afternoon sun streamed in through the lace’s tatwork scattering a pale kaleidoscope of shapes (like clouds) that guided me to sleep/a nap each afternoon.  all the time, the scent & sounds of farm life was a constant companion—& always, always something to do.  literally from sun-up to sun-down, the johnson’s were in motion (or parts of them were—mrs. johnson would sit down to shell peas or darn socks,) but always busy.  the men sunburned below their cowboy hats, their forearms sinewy & hairy & darkly veined—but all so gentle, i remember this constant gentleness, no swearing, no rough-housing, just guidance & example.

the only time we did leave the farm, mr. & mrs. johnson (which is what they called each other) took me fishing up to sylvan lake in the black hills.  they had their motorboat (a skiff with a motor attached) i sat in the prow & mrs. johnson in the middle & mr. aft (at the controls of the motor & the rudder.)  we trolled—a slow meandering around & around & around the deep, deep waters of the lake, fishing line dragging behind us or to the side or in front.  mr. johnson was having the most success & with each catch he’d swing his fish (brown trout) up & out of the cool water & swing it around in a grand arc & plop it directly into the belly of the boat.  at last mrs. johnson got a bite & saying out loud “i will show you mr. johnson” & she swung her pole with fishline & fish hooked in a grand arc toward the prow of the boat & neatly slapped the fish in my face.  i had the presence of my mind to laugh, because it was funny, & mr. johnson hooted & mrs. johnson jiggled with mirth.  it was lovely.

[my mother doesn’t look well in this photo.  i do not know what caused her to have to have time alone, but i surmise that family pressure to break off her relationship with mary may’ve been at the root of it.  a few months later that year, mary found a house a few blocks away from us & moved out.  she still marshalled my time, tutoring me in math & sciences, encouraging & loving.  a year later, she transferred out of state & that era ended.]

mother issues (but not in a bad way, at least i don’t think of it in those terms, but who knows, hmm?) after she shed husband no. 2 & ranch life & teaching school in a one-room log cabin under the shadow of the devil’s tower (wyoming) my mother made a bold decision (for a woman in the late 1940s) she enlisted in the women’s army corps.  egads.  but, why not? it was an opportunity to escape her past; 2 marriages, the traumas of the great depression (her mother farmed her & her brother out during the really tough times, even as her mother lived in relative comfort with her 2nd husband & child—half brother, my uncle who has alzheimer’s now—talk about ‘modern family!’)

there’s a lot i don’t know about this time in my mother’s life, but i do know that she made life-long friends during her time in the army, she was assigned to fort sheridan, north of chicago, as a telephone operator (a skill she’d developed between husbands no. 1 & no. 2 when she had lived in carlsbad, new mexico — she even remembered directing a phone call for & speaking with shelly winters when she visited the caverns there) she traveled to europe, lived in germany, fell in love with & married my father, adopted me.

digression: my mother smoked (marlboros killed her) as you can see in the left-hand photo.  i smoked too, but not until my sophomore year in university & started quitting two decades ago, & finally got rid of it a decade ago.  we joked, my friends & i, when i was at the goodman & dancing that ‘we were on the dancer’s diet: coffee & cigarettes’ which in many ways is true, even today (which always surprises me after all we know now about tobacco.)

now when i look back at her life & examine what i know about it more closely, one of the most compelling aspects of her character was her moral certainty, her integrity never wavering; something i find less & less apparent in the character of people i know these days.  everyone (& perhaps myself as well) seems to have a fluidity of character, rising & ebbing with the times; it may explain the lack of motivation among ‘liberals’ to get, you know, really indignant about the state of the union AND actually DO SOMETHING about it—like organize, fight back, stop writing checks & get into the streets & make a difference.

my mother never seemed selfish to me (yes, like all of us, she’d liked to have things her way, but…) she was always thinking of the other person’s needs as well.  ‘how will what i do impact their life?’ a question not asked as often these days (socially, in business, personally.)

[part of this little rambling rant has been brought to you by recent events in my ____ life.  i imagine i’ll get past it, but i feel compromised somehow, a little dirty, completely unhappy with decisions made & sort of don’t want to get past it, as advised, you know, but compelled to ride it out, all things considered.]

clarence ouden, glenn brimmer, ben moore—june 1948 on the russell ranch outside of sundance wyoming (within shouting distance of the devil’s tower) — were cowhands on my mother’s second husband’s ranch— i have always loved this photo even though i never knew the men pictured, somehow it spoke to me of the times & the feeling riding on the range can give you.

manners are important (pls. note that at age 10 i was still ‘robert’) boys club was another attempt to make me less ‘artistic’ and more like other boys (whatever that means & why, in heaven’s name, would i want to be like other boys, i ask you?) the future was pre-ordained & these half-hearted attempts to straighten me out were a big waste of time — which i’m sure my mother/uncle understood (“he needs a man’s influence.”)

this photos was taken that last summer i spent in rapid city (1973) before moving to chicago to go to school.  i worked at the local elks club golf course as an assistant greens keeper; i was a legacy hire — just like yale or harvard — my uncle was the grand poobah (or stag with the most points or whatever) of the elks lodge & my soon-to-be stepfather (he married my mother the day i flew to chicago) was the greens keeper.  i’m not, as you may have surmised if you’ve been following me, much of an ‘outdoor’ type, now granted i do love the outdoors, but more from an aesthetic point of view as opposed to actually working out of doors.  but the fix was in, i was funding my own schooling & needed to make as much money as possible before heading off to become a star in chicago (at least that was my dream.)

my stepfather, a gentle soul who perfectly understood my special needs, was encouraging & helpful & a great teacher (you should have seen me on the tractor mower—ooh, baby!) & overall, it could’ve been much, much worse.  to help matters (or make them worse) was the presence of the other assistant, randy (we’ll call him,) a year older than me, shorter (most people are) with auburn hair & a gymnast’s body (from high school.)  of course, everyone thought we’d be best buds, but most of the jobs on the course were solitary ones & we rarely spoke except at the start of the day, lunch & end of shift.

randy asked me out on a date. at least that’s what i subliminally understood this to mean, “what’re you doin’ on saturday? want to drive up to sheridan lake and go swimmin’?”  “shit yeah,” i thought i said, but instead it may’ve been, “oh, that sounds like fun.”  saturday comes along & randy shows up at my house & i throw my knapsack in the bed of his pick-up & slide in beside him & off we go.

but the devil got a hold of me & just before we get to the lake, i say to him “randy, want to go to my favorite swimming hole? it’s just before the lake & no one knows about it.”  he makes a hard left where i indicate onto a rutted dirt track hidden among the pines & we bump & grind down gears & come to a little clearing where rapid creek’s just getting a flow from the lake & boulders have made a dam & the water’s just deep enough & cool enough to make it a perfect spot to skinny-dip (cause no one, i repeat, no one knows about it but me — and now randy.)

we spread out our towels on the boulders & suddenly we don’t have anything to say to each other. randy swims for a bit & comes up out of the water like a god all muscly & shiny tan (the tan an auburn-haired man gets is golden) & i hide behind one of the boulders rubbing myself uncomfortably turned on & not knowing what to do next & randy sort of looks over at me (i think cross-eyed) & rolls over onto his back, closes his eyes laying an arm over his face which gives me time to jump into the limpid pool that just recently had held him buoyant & the rest of the afternoon spent in an odd silence of whispering pine trees & bird calls & the sparkling repartee of the creek.  we drove home in silence & we never mentioned our day out (date) again.

a la mode in post-war germany, all the chic future gays (via thizizit) were traveling in style in wicker perambulators with big rubber tires & white walls (for god’s sake); their mothers decked out in the latest ‘little edie’ headgear & chic sunglasses (appropriated by givenchy & head for audrey in breakfast at tiffany’s)

it’s hard to tell, when all the facts are considered, if this photo represents a moment of love.  obviously the child is happy & reveling in the attention, but with the man’s face hidden from view you can’t really determine his degree of emotional involvement.

my parents (adoptive) divorced when i was three—my memories of my father are based on photographs from those few short years when he was part of my life.  ‘they’ determined that there should be no contact between he & i—so when he was gone, he was truly gone; no cards, no gifts, no congratulatory phone calls when i had childhood/teenage triumphs & milestones, no visits, no nothing.  my mother had to have the sheriff go after him twice for child support ($50.00 per month!)  & even though he had another family (i have half-brothers & sisters i’ve never met) he/they never felt any desire to know more about my life (this from his sister, my aunt, who caught me up on all the drama after i was an adult.)

i met him as an adult 18 years later, for the first & only time, when his father died & i was living in chicago & went to the funeral.  “ask me anything, i’ll answer you,” he said to me the night he drove me back to the train station after the funeral (where everyone except he & his family showed deep emotion at the passing of our gentle grandfather, husband, uncle.)

“why did you and mom divorce?”

“there are some things between a man & a woman that are private.”

end of questions, the remainder of the ride conducted in ambient sound (john cage would’ve loved it.)  a few years later i heard from a cousin that he had died, alone, found days after a heart attack in his recliner, the tv on—his 2nd family divorced & uninterested (or too fearful) to have even checked in on him.  how was i to feel at that news?

it’s possible that he was abusive (it is, at least, my suspicion) that he may have harmed me or my mother.  he was career army: serving in korea, germany (where they found me,) & 3 tours of vietnam; it’s possible that all that war made him what he was, but i think he was probably already there & his parents knew it & they loved me all the more in compensation for a perceived failing (or disgust.)

it’s also possible he was my biological father although all relatives that would’ve known (including my mother) refuted/denied that theory.  but my parents’ 16 year old housemaid is suddenly pregnant & they adopt me pre-birth, sex unknown, (my father was 10 years my mother’s junior) all of it seems inconclusive to me.

of course, it may be wish fulfillment on my part—to have some grounding or blood relative that i may call my own & i try to accept that i’ll never know (or should even know) but when i stumble across a photo like this one, i always wonder.

where fairies live.  i was lucky, an only child of a single mother in a family of dominant women—the men always at the edges of our reality looming to reach in as needed, but usually content with their satellite position in the universe created by the women & i was a focus of attention by these women (more than any other child in our family that was my contemporary) fawned over, held, encouraged, taught (they never minded that i wanted to learn all the ‘female’ arts: sewing, cooking, decorating, arts & crafts, presentation, make-up, perfume, how to wear clothes well, dancing, theatrics — yes, a drama queen from the get-go.)  i never had to share a room with a sweaty older brother or annoying younger one, my room was always my sanctuary, sacrosanct & respected, the honeysuckle outside one window a constant reminder of the season with its bare branches scratching the side of the house & its scent when in full bloom filling my room with its perfume.

random thoughts & memories
on the way to the farmer’s market this morning i stopped to get gas; it’s now $3.15 per gallon & i remembered then that at one time, many years ago, it was a tenth of that & my mother always went to the same mobil station on 8th street in rapid city, even after i started to drive that was the same station i used.  she always flirted with the attendants (full service then, anyone one remember that was the norm, not even considered out of the ordinary or something that you would have to ask for—it just was.) her flirting wasn’t serious, but playful, a gentle repartee with the owner (who did all of our car repairs) or with the men who filled the tank & checked the oil — me sitting in the passenger seat learning the ins & outs of casual relationships.

that memory led to this one:  i am completely captivated by a man’s hairy forearm resting out of an open car window.  there is something about that that triggers a surge of feeling (desire sometimes, jealousy others — i have baby fine light brown hair on mine — when the sun hits me i have a golden aura surrounding me because of the fineness) but it’s that hyper-masculinity that a hairy forearm signals that always catches my eye & causes such reverie.

lovingly brother “dick”

the last we saw of brother dick was the night before we found his made-up bed & his room empty of his presence, his few clothes gone & the window open & mother’s lace curtains billowing inward with a gust of spring.  this portrait laying on the pillow arranged just so.  he always had a way of looking at you, like he knew something you didn’t, but not in a mean way, but somehow saying something to your soul, a whisper of the future, a hint of the past.

i left, i left them without a note. what was i to say?  their constant scrutiny of my every mood & my every movement; trying to parse the vocabulary of my difference, i could not tolerate another minute of it.  i left, i left them for somewhere that i can be myself, perhaps get lost in the crowds of a large city or another country.  i don’t feel that i’m alone, but i don’t know that i’m not. & being away is more important to me than staying, chained to such anguish.  i am not ready to give in or give up.

the day of my mother’s wedding to her 4th husband (i gave her away) was also the day that i left rapid city for good & moved to chicago to study acting at the goodman school of drama.  she married at the recreated norwegian kirche — followed by a brunch at the local howard johnson’s (or some such.)  they honeymooned in a remote lodge in custer state park — she was over-the-moon in love with this one.  i believe i was happy for her (them,) but i was so consumed with my own burgeoning life (just days away from an official ‘coming out’ event) that all i could consider that day was: go, just go, i’m going, i’m gone & that’s the smile that’s on my face in this grainy photo (the only one from that day that i can find) — body there, but mind far, far away.

the way i see it: the whole ‘bob patrick’ thing was an aberration.  pronounced as if it were a 3 syllable word—it was my nom de guerre from my senior year in high school until…i went back to my given name in the late ’70s, at which time my mother commented, “if i’d wanted you called ‘bob’ i would have named you that.”  (i asked her once how they decided on robert as my name, her reply, “you’re named after my first boyfriend.”)  a true adoption story.

what to do (or not do) at the news of the death of a child
“did they tell you?” s. asked as she led me back to her cubicle (i was in the tooth fairy’s shop for a cleaning;) all i thought was ‘she’s leaving. i’ll have to train someone new.’  “my son died on thanksgiving day.” she gut-punched me.

i stopped.  she stopped & turned to me/her doe eyes, dark & liquid (but not with tears) an expectant look on her face. “my god, s., no they didn’t. i am so very sorry.” i stammered/mumbled, catching my breath.  this sweet woman, this horrible loss.

“i’m just back to work this month,” she continued down the hall to the cleaning room (it felt suddenly like a 25th century space-age abattoir — the carpeted floor slick with her quiet grief/the gentle, menacing whir of dental appliances.) “it’s been horrible, you can imagine,” she motioned for me to take my place in the chair & once seated lowered me for the slaughter/tilted so severely i thought i would slide right out head first onto the floor, ready to cry out, say something/somehow to share her pain but she made it right before i could utter a syllable.

“the girls are having a tough go of it,” she paused with the floss tight between her two hands/fingers splayed in a cat’s cradle of waxed string & implied tears.  her daughters, on other side of the boy (all young adults but living at home/single mother) age-wise, bereft.

the day before he died (an accidental death on a motorcycle/twisting/harrowing road/truckload of sandbags skewed across a blind corner/he swerved & shot over the canyon & plummeted to his instant death,) they were talking about the aunt (who died the same day he did) who had just been put in hospice “mom, i can see this cemetery from my office window, it’s beautiful/peaceful & it looks out over the ocean, it’s where i want to be buried when i die.” (true this.)

“his soul knew,” she said & paused with cleaning implements in her hand, the vacuum gently purring on my napkin covered chest, her eyes boring into mine, but i’m not sure she saw me/her grief so enormous. i reached a hand to her thigh & touched her lightly—it brought her back/she smiled at me & i at her.  “i’m so sorry, i can’t imagine in spite of the losses/deaths i’ve had/what you must be feeling.”

“i know, robert,” as she resumed cleaning/scraping/measuring/her warmth (what i love about her) radiating still/gentle/kind/a spirit of humor that floats just below her surface, but now, but now, but now & on a holiday/now every thanksgiving memorialized/a stele erected on this day. this day, for her it will be hard to forget & today, for me this human contact/this shared moment/this abject sorrow.

my mother (l) and mary, the best dad i ever had, photographed on skyline drive by dinosaur park in rapid city, s.d. 1964 (easter.)  it took me years, decades, to realize they were lovers in spite of the fact that they slept in the same bed…when you’re a kid/adult/son you just don’t think about those things.  all you know (or care to know) is that they loved you.

mary pushed me to excel in school (all subjects, she was particularly strict about the subjects i despised the most, math/algebra/geometry); when it was time for me to come in from playing or for dinner, she would stand on our back porch (or from the doorway if it was cold) and put her fingers in her mouth and whistle for me—you could hear that call for blocks—all the other kids thought it was remarkable, and remarkably crude (go figure) but i, like a puppy dog, ran home right away when i heard it (as there were consequences to ignoring that siren call which i preferred not to inflict upon myself, once learned.)

she was so butch, motorcycle-riding, outdoors/gun-toting (to her dying day) hunting deer/pheasants/grouse and keeping pace with the men (and to her credit oftentimes a better shot, more patient, as still as a breath-waiting for the perfect sight on her prey.)

her raucous laugh started as a snort & then shot out of her mouth in deep guffaws her whole body aquiver with pleasure — she liked to hug/bear hug & when you’re young (and queer) to be brought into that embrace / masculine as it was / was thrilling & touching (i’m welling up just remembering it, dammit.)

she left one day, time to go & have her own life/it was wrenching (i believe now that family pressure — god forbid — a lesbian relationship! prompted the move.) and eventually she moved far away & found another lover (as i did in chicago) and they would come to visit us (or vice versa) & always had a grand time (even with the guns in the house.)

a street level wall of the temple skyscraper from brunswick plaza (now the home of miro’s ‘chicago’ or ‘sun, moon & 1 star’ sculpture) chicago, 1973 — photo taken while i was there auditioning for the goodman school of drama at SAIC (the year i was accepted there, also got accepted at yale & north carolina school of the arts for their acting programs,) but it boiled down to money & my mother’s insistence that i stay in the mid-west—i’m glad i did—chicago was a great place to be gay (& fab, mais oui) in the ’70s.

i’m succumbing to the whispery post format, for this truly is a whispery post:  m. is starting to sound like his mother. (!) vocally, his timbre & register, syncopation & rhythm, all point to the north-western chicago suburbs & that eastern european immigrant speech pattern (damn me for studying speech in college — along with all those speech therapy classes my mother made me take as a child when she was trying to rid me of my german accent/lisp/stuttering [she achieved success] but then i sounded just like everyone else. oh god, i prayed to arthur lessac.)  listening this morning to m. as he cajoled the dogs into doing his bidding, i couldn’t help but wonder if she had lived (or even now that she’s long gone) if i wouldn’t be sounding a lot like her as well (maybe i do & i just don’t know it—there’s no one left who knew her to say ‘you sound just like your mother.’) those speech habits/patterns/are deeply ingrained-what to do?  nothing, just smile at his antics with the dogs sitting at his feet all attention focused on the treats in his hands & the love radiating all around them.

i worry.  i worry that i consume too much/not food—well, maybe a little worry there/but that i consume too many objects/paintings/pottery/plants.  i worry that i worry about this.  once m. & i had dinner at an architect’s house/new friend (for about 5 minutes in gay time) his abode was stunning/stunningly empty & every object was spotlit/sparse/solitaire.  he takes me by the hand to show me his glass collection (both pieces, okay maybe there were 5, i don’t remember how many exactly [something else to worry about] all were exquisitely displayed,) but completely drained of personality which made worry about what kind of person lived here or could live here (his house—i wouldn’t have called it a home) what should’ve worried me, but didn’t at the time, was that he had taken me by the hand—as i later find out, was a ‘move’ on his part, i totally missed the signals when they should’ve been obvious since there was nothing in his house to distract me from paying attention to minor gay details such as hand-holding by the host, he may’ve even patted my hand or stroked my wrist—i was trying so hard (because i worry) to be the gracious guest and ooh & aah over every little detail/how little detail there was too ooh & aah over made me worry that i was being a tad over solicitous — was i sending smoke signals when there was no fire/misread?  no, no, all him, not me, m. assured me after we left & i had expressed my worry to him.  of course, m. said to me ‘i could not live like that.’  so i still worry that i consume too much/& what it might say about me/i don’t want it taking over my life, but i worry that it might be too late/that i’ve/we’ve taken that final exit into spinster aunt-hood, for christ’s sake there’s a crocheted doily under the fucking cherry pie pot/carrier which a friend gave us (fitz & floyd how i love you) and we’ve never used, but love anyway.

i worry.  i worry that being gay is going to be more difficult than it already is.  i worry that we won’t ever have equal rights.  i worry that my neighbors denied me equal rights.  i worry that m. will die before me (true that.)  i worry that i’ll be all alone in socal, which i loathe (except for its beauty.)  i worry that i’ll lose my job.  i worry that people won’t buy art anymore, because everything is free on the internet & copyright will be a thing of the past & the elderly (me) will say ‘why, i had to negotiate the copyright agreements when i was your age & it didn’t stop me from enjoying life’/in the similar vein that ‘i walked 7 miles to school,’ shit your parents/parent/parent’s parents dished out in the last century to your parents/me (except i think my mother did have to walk a long way to school in the miserable wyoming winters with only newspaper to wrap her feet in so they wouldn’t freeze/frostbite still a worry in that ‘great depression.’)  i worry that i worry.  and then i don’t for some time/maybe hours/minutes/seconds/days/weeks/months (that’s not true, months that is) because something/someone/some object/painting/pot/plant/animal/friend/lover/neighbor/boss/associate/blog (multiple ones)/tumblr takes my mind off my worries.  thank you, i’m better now, maybe even a little corner of my lips turned up in a smile-kind-of-better, however briefly, before the next worry creeps up behind me on little cat’s paws and covers my eyes & says ‘guess who?’

my mother taught school at this one-room schoolhouse out by the missouri buttes and the devil’s tower in northeastern wyoming during ww2; that’s her second of 4 husbands (not counting the lesbian love affair—I was picked up during marriage no. 3.) she taught 7 boys ranging in age from 5 to 12 and said it was the worst experience of her adult life (but i think she lied, considering that she’d worked a cattle drive from texas to wyoming one year where she met husband 2.)  for some reason my mother collected mothers-in-law as she discarded husbands—all of whom were her fast friends until her/their deaths, declaring their sons no-good-s.o.b.s (which they were, except for no. 4, who adored my mother and she him.) this the short version (and maybe the beginning of something longer/remembered/truth/fiction)

gpoy — wife beaters for everyone edition, 1974.  my stepfather, r.w., & i had a great relationship, he was completely at ease with who i was & even after my mother died, he would come & visit m. & i in chicago.

r.w. enlisted in the army & fought in ww2 in europe, discharged after the war, enlisted in the marines & served in korea, discharged, enlisted in the air force & served 3 tours in viet nam, & then stayed with the air force until he retired after 25 years (my mother was a high-ranking civilian at ellsworth air force base outside of rapid city—they met there, actually he actively courted my mother, which was a great joy to her & fascinating to me.)

my mother took this picture—it’s always fascinated me the way the garbage can is the first thing you see, just right of center in the picture plane & our two heads more punctuation ( ) a framing device, but once you see us, its the contentment radiating from r.w. that really dominates the emotional tenor of the image.  i see love.

p.s. r.w. is gone too.  old photos are a bit of an emotional purge, aren’t they?

this is my very own musical version of ‘oklahoma’ my mother in stripes with her husband bill russell on the right with his brother & wife & children outside the russell homestead, sundance (wyoming.) it’s dated on the front july 1949 but on the reverse with aug. 1949 written in my mother’s perfect cursive hand (palmer method!)  everytime i look at it, i hear gordon macrae singing ‘o, what a beautiful morning’ which happened to be one of my mother’s favorite songs (writing this is making my nose run in anticipation of a good cry, partly because ‘oklahoma’ is one of my all time favorite musicals & partly because my mother truly looks happy…i think, or it could be allergies.)

later this same year, my mother divorced mr. russell & enlisted in the wacs (women’s army corps.)  her years on the ranch, i think, were good ones (cattle drives, school teaching during the war, round-ups, branding; a hard, but rewarding existence,) but russell wanted children & mother couldn’t provide that (he died the year after they divorced—i never knew from what) & my mother remained close friends with his mother, ina russell,  who originally homesteaded the land in the first decade of the 20th century.

[side note: ina russell made the best fried chicken in the world & when we would visit her after moving back to south dakota from our adventures around the world—she’d always have it ready & on the table with her beautiful haviland china, platter filled, gravy boat steaming into the white linen harbor, mmm-mmm good.]