The Mama Panic Attack

Okay, I fully am aware I have been slacking here. A few of you have went out of your way to email me privately, a few more to others asking if I had (a) went off to parts unknown without a map, (b) taken ill and retreated to some unfound hovel, or (c) finally won the lottery and just decided to bypass my previous humanitarian ways. It's true I have been working some on my online radio at Live 365, and also have been helping out some friends at their new website, The Tall Poppy Pub, so keeping up with 3 creative projects has been a struggle at best. But, sadly (and this will disappoint some and astonish fewer), it's none of these things. Oh no, it's a tad bit more extraordinary (well, for me, anyways). Instead, it's something and/or someone I've been trying to help since, it seems, like about age 10 (although it's been more the other way around most years LOL).

Welcome, dear readers, to the Continuing Chronicles of Mama.

My Mama...the truest of the true, the bravest of the brave, the angriest of the angry (when she gets so inspired)...has decided to move. With no warning. In the middle of an advancing winter. And it gets better...she doesn't know nor care where she's going. Just all she does know is that she wants to be someplace else than her current apartment by Christmas. And she tells me this by our regular Friday afternoon phone call...last Friday. So, at the proud age of 65, widowed, in fair health but with a overflowing heart, she has decided enough is enough and she's moving on. And, no, she doesn't need help, thank you. She just thought I'd like to know, in case I would be worried or in case "someone else told me first". She said it so matter-of-factly and in such hurried and breathless tones, I was taken aback for a minute or two and actually had to ask for a repeat of the information.

The devil's in the details, and that's the troubling part of this. So far, the status is 'everything's fine' and absolutely no details beyond that are forthcoming...very un-Mamalike. Mama, though known to be a wild hair in her teenage years (considering it was the 1950's and rural), is not known for her spontaneous decisions as of late (say the last 40+ years). She has, in fact, chastised me for my travels because they were 'too openly planned', my friends for 'being too diverse and unknown' (which the latter in my teenage years could be loosely interpreted as 'gay'), my ideas for being 'too impractical and unrealistic'. (Mama can be a real pick-me-upper at times; if she knew anything about their culture, she could go head to head with a Greek mother and probably win.) She's lived in small towns...for almost three decades...that's smaller in population than my current apartment community and its whopping eight, two-storey buildings. In the four calls we've had since the announcement, Mama's given up nothing and seems totally resigned to making a final decision only when she absolutely has to and not a moment before.

Now, for those of you (especially the women) my age (mid-thirties) or younger, this is enough to cause one temporary panic. Or maybe not so temporary. One unspoken theory is that maybe she's wanting to come live with me, as she clearly adored it last year. And, while I love her dearly and would protect her to the death, the position of my mother moving in with me brings up a whole multitude of potential dilemmas, such as: (1) whose rules govern the household...my new ones or her established ones?; (2) how do I define 'my' space and limits versus hers?; (3) how do I establish myself as an adult in her eyes, especially someone like me who will 'always be her baby'?; and, here's the ringer of (4) how do I help her start over a new life for her, when I haven't even figured out the first one for myself?? Those of us from spoilt or only-children upbringings don't know anything other than having an undivided attention of our parents as children, but we are so adverse to anything remotely close to a role reversal hitting us twenty, thirty, or forty years (or more) on. While Mr. Right has not arrived on the scene yet and Mother Nature will not allow me to have my own child, I still have hopes of having my own family someday, someway, as happenstance as it may come about. Somehow I always had imagined Mama coming back into my everyday family scene later.

The eggheads in the media say if you've somehow made it out 'in the world' on your own, the 20s, the 30s, and the 40s (and maybe soon the 50s?) are your trailblazing years...what you do during this time sets what you'll be able to do later financially, physically, spiritually, mentally even. The years of taking care of ones' parents are supposed to be 'later on', whenever the hell 'later on' hits. But what happens to those parents who slaved over children and two jobs and sick relatives and poor credit...who didn't get to 'trailblaze'...do they automatically get shortchanged by default later on if they 'missed their window'?? Dear Mama has assured me that she's in as a good health as can be expected given her age and history, so that took an emotional load off my psyche. I'm not so sure what bothers me so about this: is it the feeling that she wants to come live near me and I selfishly think it will crimp my style, or is it the feeling that I am jealous of her decision...and, moreover, her determination and ability to do so...on a fixed budget? I've always been a fan of the "Papa Don't Preach" theory of life: solutions not sermons, who the hell cares the reasons why and how sometimes. I take inventory every so often of all the things I want to do still, and then days like Friday I realize she's less than 30 years my senior and certainly may have that same kind of list, too. It's amazing how I think I may still 'hit my stride' someday soon, but think hers is already over...and she's the one who has done so much more. Additionally, I want her to live by the same code I hate adhering to when answering her...the why, the what, the who, the where, the when, the endless Q&A monologue that I always flippantly blow off when she's asking the questions. Looking at it that way, one has to wonder just which of us treats the other most like an equal adult.

Maybe she just wants to move closer here for the warm weather, or maybe she wants to see some tall trees for a change. Maybe she wants to learn Spanish, a language that amazingily has not ambushed its way into her current local culture...yet.

Maybe she just wants to move to be closer to me, or the beach, or the mountains, or the nuclear power plant people are protesting against. Maybe she wants to find the voice she's lost in small towns across the Midwest, silenced all these years for fear of offending other townsfolk.

Maybe she just wants to get the fuck away from her older neighbours getting ill and dying around her, or wants to know she can still be lively and optimistic, or maybe she doesn't want to spend her time alternating between hospices, nursing homes, churches, bingo parlours, hospitals, and funeral homes.

Maybe she just wants a change while she still can, without having to explain it to anybody...and certainly not to me. Maybe she just wants to be someone else, or something else, before she dies...which she is certainly more than entitled to achieve. And certainly everything I would ever hope for her and her happiness.

Maybe I'm just worrying way too much about this change in her life and maybe everything is okay, even if I don't immediately believe that. Or, maybe, God forbid, I'm just turning into my Mama, as she gradually did in some small ways with hers.

We can only hope.

Driftlessly Contemplating the Inevitable

It's been one of those weeks as of late, sort of a rollercoaster of ups and downs, full of all those twists and turns that we all must navigate through. Some days have been jubilant, some have been anti-climatic, and some have just went by a little too easily. All of them, unfortunately, start to blur into one another after a bit...a fact that I am sure that I will ponder when I do not so easily take them for granted.

First, an apology...but not in the traditional sense that you would normally read and/or hear from me. I've been stuck a bit lately...arguably for the last few months, really...but recently the quicksand has pulled me in harder and with less resistance on my part than usual. It's not that I'm not thankful, I am. It's not that I feel badly again, because I don't but have had a few scares recently. It's instead just a general malaise of spirit, not a depression per se, but more like an apathy, perhaps even a bewildering disdain, for what I do on a daily basis. It's like now that I'm pulling out some of the issues I've shoved under the carpets for years and actually dealing with them...I realize that what I've convinced myself was a good life that I really loved has instead been a bitter, unfulfilled mistress that I've just tolerated all this time rather than leave. In short, I have been my own best/worst snake oil dealer.

I've been trying to find the words to communicate this here in the blog, but the words don't come exactly. I've been trying to get in touch with these disembodied emotions through music or poetry, but the verses and the rhythm are off meter. I vowed to myself last week sometime that I wouldn't post here again until I could better express myself, be more positive, 'analyze and then empathize' the mantra. Problem is that was a fool's promise...that I could not see the therapy in actually going through the process here, that I could not fathom not having all of the answers is generally not a reason for a humiliating death. I try to think of myself as witty, maybe a bit crude, maybe a bit smart on other days...but never without a plan. Not only do I now fully acknowledge the lack of a plan, but even a good sense of direction. And yes, that scares the holy hell out of me.

I'm not sure when it happens to other people, but for the past few years I have had an ongoing internal panic about what my life has become. Or rather, what I've let it become. At some point back a few years I woke up in the middle of a winter's night, cold, frightened, heart racing. In one of the most vivid dreams of my life, I had dreamed I was sleeping and then woke up, only to voluntarily go back to sleep 'for a few minutes more' but then die in my sleep. Not something horrific, like a car crash or shark attack, but waking up and then choosing to go back to sleep in some sort of stalling tactic and then dying for real. Psychology degree holder that I am, I searched for weeks afterward for an answer or interpretation of the image; and when I wasn't doing that, I was in denial about the whole issue about death, and specifically, mine. While I'm not particularly religious myself (and actually have many deep issues with several religious 'establishments'), I am the proud offspring of two Southern Baptists. I prefer to think of myself as a deep believer in the overall product, but just loathe the salespeople you have to deal with along the way. At some point, though, after all of my scientific research and temporary evaluation of the religious texts I have somehow escaped all of these years, it hit me and I came to accept it: what we have is now, and one day we won't even have that. Death, dear friends, is inevitable so make sure you've led a life strong enough to help you survive the final trip home.

So I find myself buckling the seatbelts each and every time now, not so much for fear of a hefty fine, but 'just in case' of an accident. Whereas before as a teen and early independent woman I would work for the love of a job no matter the pay, I now work for the love of the money that will pay off my bills instead. In one of the sickest levels of my adult life, I've taken to planning my day and job goals with a calendar and appointment book for maximum efficiency...because, as we all know, it's vitally important to keep yourself on track when you're doing things you secretly hate very, very much. When contemplating what new skills I want to learn, it's no longer about what I would 'like' to learn, but instead what I 'should' learn for the sake of getting a better job, with better pay, doing something I don't like. I'd change that whole scenario except for one major hitch: I can't say there's a helluva lot of anything I'd like to work at anymore.

Truly, this is absolutely a horrible state to arrive at: after seeing the light now at the end of the tunnel with my bills (I grew up poor, so there's never been a time before in my life when the bills were paid and the savings account actually growing), I realize I wasn't working because I liked it or even wanted to, but instead only because I had to. As I've cleared some of the brushwood away, I am only now fully understanding the condition of the land beneath. And here's the absolutely shocking part: for whatever reason I cannot fully express into words still, I find myself wanting to replace that brushwork...i.e., return back to my comfortably cluttered challenged state of affairs...rather than do the real hard work now required to clear the land.

Which brings us to the deeply nagging questions: what else do I/have I done just because I 'had' to and not because I wanted to? When did I start to take the easy way of falling in line with the other lemmings to the sea? When did life ever get that hard for me (and it never has really) that being 'safe' became the answer? And, now, faced with taking on some challenges and meeting them head on somewhat, why am I so fearful of having that old routine pulled away? Or, more importantly, why am I so eager to sabotage myself and the dreams I've never explored?

There's a fabulous song by Bruce Springsteen called "The River" in which he laments a life unfulfilled due to an untimely teenage pregnancy, complicated further as the couple later just 'settle' for their disappointing outcomes. In perhaps one of the greatest lines ever penned (and Lord knows Bruce has penned several over the years), our lifesick hero asks:

"...Is a dream a lie if it don't come true?
...Or is it something worse?"

While I've never remotely had a hard life compared to so many and enjoyed the adoration of two great parents from birth, I can't help but feeling some deep connection to the protagonist here. Like so many of Springsteen's songs, it's not their grandiose layers that stick with you, but instead the 'common man' element as you 'know' the characters who populate his songs, and unfortunately, too often frequently, we are those same people. There are so many of us with dreams so vivid and glowing they practically breathe on their own, but yet either intentionally or otherwise, we won't allow ourselves to go for that golden ring or rebound from our previous mistakes. It's not guilt nor ambition nor greed that stops and/or propels us, I think, it's fear. And frankly I'm so very, very tired of living in my own fear-induced state. Problem is, though, I'm like the Cowardly Lion in that I don't know how to find my much-needed courage.

I have to wonder (and it's driving me wild): when nothing is motivating in and of itself anymore, how do you create the needed inspiration all on your own?

With one eye on the ever-rapidly dwindling hourglass of my life, and the other down the road at the Kingdom of Oz, how does one find the confidence to actually take a step out on the Yellow Brick Road...especially when it just feels so safe to stay in the woods?

I've gotta stop waiting for Dorothy to come by and save me from myself.