TheNew30

Forgiveness.

Happily, I am not the person I was when I left Media, Pennsylvania, 33 years ago (yes, I was a baby when I departed). That girl fought, and fought hard, with the woman responsible for bringing her into the world. What we battled most passionately about was politics. I loudly protested the Viet Nam war. (Although I didn't understand why people were spitting on soldiers newly back from the bungle in the jungle. They'd been drafted. Didn't people understand that it wasn't their fault?)

My mother, on the other hand, curled back her lips into a grimace of hate whenever I spoke of anything that smelled even remotely like liberalism. One night, at the dinner table, she called me something, I don't remember what, and I responded with, "Well, you're a bitch." She then swung and hit me hard, but what surprised both of us was that I then slapped her back. Before you knew it, my dad and my sister were trying to pull Mom off of me after she body-slammed me off my chair and onto the floor. I was 16.

I've done a lot of growing since then and one of the things I've learned is to pick your battles. With Mom, I just take what she says with a grain of salt. Yes, she can get under your skin, but the best thing, for both of us, is for me to be the adult in the relationship and just brush it off. A couple of afternoons ago, my sister and her teenage daughter and the attendant angst came up in conversation. I responded in sympathy by saying, "Oh, gosh, I know what that's like." I mean, I was only making small-talk.

"Oh, so YOU know what it's like, do you?"

"Yes, I think so. Having visited emergency rooms to see my daughter in alcoholic comas, that's pretty hardcore."

"Oh, did you ever have to go get her out of JAIL?" she shot back, referring to the time when I was 18 and 6 of us in a VW microbus got busted for less than an ounce of pot by a shiny-booted New Jersey State Cop.

"Mom, I don't really think that compares to my daughter nearly losing her life."

"Oh you don't, do you? That's how much YOU know."

I took a deep breath. What was the point of playing along when she was spoiling for an argument? Again, pick your battles. I shrugged, the universal symbol for "Whatever." Having breathed, I was able to laugh, and not in a bitchy way, which lightened the increasingly heavy air between us immediately. Ah, power. You gotta take it where ya find it.

Then, Ted Kennedy died. I had always had a grudging respect for the old codger. Yes, the Mary Jo Kopechne episode was pretty horrible - and while I didn't believe he deserved to do time for the accident, the fact that he never got even slapped on the wrist for leaving the scene of the accident because of his family name really rankled. As I'm sure it did with most people.

But over the years, I watched as the man fought - and fought hard - for the people of this country who, without someone of power standing up for them, would never have had a chance. I applauded his tireless work on the behalf of millions of people across the country who have no health care. The hairs on my arm stood up whenever I listened to him passionately speechifying in the senate. He NEVER backed down from a fight. But something Obama said in his eulogy yesterday struck a chord. Kennedy would go to the mattresses for what he believed in, and then in the next breath, would joke with and most likely go have drinks with, whomever he'd just decimated - or whomever had decimated him.

Politics aren't like that anymore. To brush off the crap of the day and share a brief, humanizing encounter is now seen as Sleeping With The Enemy. We can thank Dick "The Dick" Cheney for that. Cheney's like the difference between tossing a water balloon at someone, like a Kennedy might have, and hurling a balloon filled with blood.

I want to take a lesson from Ted Kennedy. After that foggy night on Martha's Vineyard, he could have slunk into an alcoholic hole and stayed there for the rest of his life. That's what his enemies wished for. But instead, he kept coming back to fight for the little guy. To battle the giants who, if they had their way, would thrust upon us a new caste system featuring only two societies: above-class and under-class. And throughout it all, he loved his family and lived his life, full of tragedy and joy, til the end of his days.

Something Jamie Lee Curtis said in her Huffington Post piece really stuck with me:

"It is the gift of a very public death, long in coming, that we can learn from... that we all, from every corner of the globe, are in contact and intertwined in the lives of each other... Teddy's ... legacy will live on..."

Kennedy never, ever backed down from trying to make health care a right - not a privilege. He believed in the dignity of each human soul, and their basic right to enjoy the same hand reaching out to help them, regardless of their economic background. I believe he developed this stance as a result of having been, over time, forgiven for his many public (and private) sins.

Who among us couldn't use a little forgiveness? I know I need it. Ugh, and I know I must give it. The Kennedy funeral was banned in my mother's home. She had never forgiven him - for Chappaquidick and for his politics. I respected her wishes. But secretly, I was a bit miffed. Then, today after Mass, we were driving over to my sister's, and Mom pointed at something out the window.

"Why's that flag at half-mast?" She sounded genuinely puzzled. I could have been a smart-ass and said, "Uh, what rock are you living under?"

But instead, I just said quietly, "Kennedy."  And believe it or not, all she said in response was, "Oh." Not some nasty quip, not an expression of disgust, just "Oh." Maybe, just maybe, the priest's homily this morning had gotten through to her. In it, he included the oft-spun "What Would Jesus Do" when talking about little moments of human meanness, and why we should try to free ourselves from their power. He spoke at length about the transformative power of love. And forgiveness.

So maybe, just maybe, a little forgiveness for Kennedy had seeped into my mother's heart. I like to think so. It's the longest journey we make, from the head to the heart. And although she despised him and practically everything he stood for, hopefully in her heart she recognized that here was one human being, deeply flawed, but deserving of the one thing that Christ represented. Maybe I'm not the only one who's capable of growing up, after all.

IT'S COMPLICATED.

I was just going back in time on thenew30, to an entry from about a year ago. At that time, I had decided to move from my house into the guest house behind it. In short, a rather painful come-down.

What actually transpired over the next few months was: my house wouldn't rent, I then sold it and made NO MONEY (hello, Great Depression part 2!), moved to the Bay Area to be nearer my daughter and then, with the economic bottom dropping out completely (I am a copywriter in advertising and hadn't worked a regular gig for a year, dont ask), I left for Pennsylvania and moved into my childhood home. A return to the scene of the crime, if you will.

Yup, I'm a bleep-year-old barely published writer who had to move into her mom's house. I don't know if ANYTHING beats that experience for humiliation. However, I blogged throughout, and I'm so glad that I did; else how would I ever remember the pain that I've blocked, er, blogged? (Note to self: if I ever go through childbirth again - not likely, but if I do - I must remember to blog as it's happening.)

Anyway, this afternoon, Mom's house is redolent with lovely short ribs, vegetables and wine stewing in the oven, and I came away to the study where I've set up shop. And rediscovered Cindy LaFerle's blog. Oh, how her latest words hit home: the writer's life IS lonely. And many times, it is very disappointing - and downright unproductive. However, the connection I felt upon reading her words (and the words of her readers) reminded me why I got into this business to begin with. And gave me great comfort.

"Only Connect" is what E M Forster wrote, and I couldn't agree more. I may not any longer be at the geographical epicenter of creativity (and the posturing that goes hand in hand), but there are such gifts for my writing in the one place on earth I swore never to return to. The heavy, end-of-summer humidity that beats the tar out of you day after day and still manages to cough out every-other-day cloudbursts, thunder and lightning. The luscious perfume of the evenings - if you could bottle it, people would be walking around drunk. The tension in my mother's home that provides comic/furious punctuation to the tears of gratitude I weep practically every day.

And the house. Look, there's the corner cabinet I would fold myself into when I needed to hide (do most 5-year-olds feel the need to hide in their own home?). Oh, and over there? That's where I put my adolescent fist through the drywall. Ah yes, and this is the bathroom doorjamb I lost a tooth to as I played "Jump into the Laundry Piles" at the age of 6. There's the same road out in front, where I stood countless times with one hip thrust out, and my thumb too, wanting to get as far from here as possible. I connect with all this history, and then, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I get big-time cognitive dissonance. I'm pickling, body and mind, in the brine of lost youth and the broth of new-found age.

My mother is trying to sell the house or else she'll go broke. She's lived in it for 50 years, and I now know why I got put on this assignment. It wasn't just because I had nowhere else to go. It was to be here for the woman from whom I ran 3,000 miles away, 29 years ago. To be her strength in possibly the most wrenching emotional experience she'll ever have. I can climb on chairs to get things out of a dusty cupboard - or run the vacuum, mop and straighten up each day in preparation for another group of real estate looky-loos. I can hold her hand and whisper soothing nothings as she cries for the loss she's about to endure.

Alice was thirty years old when she moved into this house: an intelligent and beautiful woman trapped in the suburbs with two small children and a claustrophobic sense that life was passing her by. All that was available to her, for years, were the neighborhood gossip-mongers, a stoic and maddeningly silent man she couldn't feel loved by, and her needy daughters. She'd often tell us that she was glad she'd married our dad because she wouldn't have had us otherwise. But that didn't disguise the fact that she was stone miserable. Which manifested as anger, whether it was threatening to "come up there with a hairbrush if you two don't stop giggling" or an embarrassing (for us) scream-a-thon with sales people at the local department store, Korvettes. When I became a teenager, she and I clashed endlessly about our politics. That's right, there was my 40-something mom furiously debating the Viet Nam War with a flower child of 15.

It was right around that age that I began writing. Just journals and sketchbooks, but I kept them religiously. I thought every idea I had was worth scribbling about. And now, look at me. Forty years later, and I'm pretty much doing the same thing.

Only now, I don't argue with my mother. Just today, for instance, I was driving, she was in the passenger seat, and she'd instructed me to turn right after three stoplights. She began gesturing wildly to turn right, but we were only at the second light. I mentioned this to her, only to have her "take the tone"  and shut me down with a self-righteous "No, THAT was THREE lights."  I just shrugged and went on. She sat back in her seat; satisfied that she'd proven that she was right.

But several years ago, someone asked me a provocative question: "Would you rather be right, or happy?" And that stopped me. Because I've seen where a life of being right gets you. Not all that happy, joyous and free. It could be the president who steps in to correct her; Mom would argue him to the death. (Correction: if that president was Richard Nixon, she would acquiesce.) And as I look back on my marriages, I was always trying, on some level, to prove I was right. Sure, I'd married men who were completely inflexible about their certitude. But I always took the bait, when I could have just smiled and shrugged and known in my heart it wasn't worth a divorce or even an argument. Nowadays, unless someone is getting hurt, I say: let them think they're right. Who cares? Really?

I'm definitely not in "The Happiest Place on Earth" these days. But I'm seeing E M Forster's philosophy playing out all around me. In each muggy morning as I sit across the dining table from Mom, drinking coffee the way she likes it (weak as hell, ee-ick), and sharing a few laughs, I feel a solid sense of connection. Today, I looked at her animated, no-one-would-ever-believe-she's-eighty face and thought, "Unless I jump off a bridge tomorrow, someday, and it might be soon, I won't have that face to look at."

That concept baffled me; it seems impossible to think of Alice as being merely mortal and someday shuffling off this coil. It's hard to believe that she has difficulty seeing, and has already had the conversation with my sister wherein she asked if she needed to surrender her driver's license. Peggy diplomatically, but truthfully, answered "No, Mom, you just need to quit rubber-necking while you're driving!" But the fact that my mom felt compelled to ask that question breaks my heart. Clearly, her smug sweater is unraveling. She's become -dare I say it? - vulnerable. No longer does she live on Mount Olympus with Zeus and the other gods. She's just... my mom. With all the stuff that involves. And, in our case, it is a LOT of stuff.

So I guess that's what I'm doing here in Godforsaken-yet-picture-postcard-pretty-Media, Pennsylvania. Finding my way back to the mom I deified as a child. And then the mom I never seemed to get far enough away from.  I've raised my own daughter, and, at the age of 23, if she knows one thing, she knows I love her. Now, I have to take what little time I have left to try and redeem my complicated relationship with my mother. And make sure that, at the end, if she knows one thing, it's that I love her.

Going through ugly times, together and on the ground, instead of being a faceless voice on a telephone, is a lot harder and more frustrating. You can't just turn your involvement on and off like you can when 3,000 miles are protecting you. But in some unknown-to-me-as-yet way, I have a deepening suspicion that being here is a gift I'm giving not just to my mom, but to myself.

After her coffeemaker had leaked all over the kitchen counter and  floor Monday morning, the Sis and I went out in search of a replacement last night. We headed over to Tar-jay around 8pm.

And were deeply saddened by our experience.

Not only was there little-to-no choice (Mr. Coffee and Black & Decker was all that was on offer), the selection of product throughout the entire store was woefully absent. Nearly empty shelves in the food section featured only a smattering of items that looked picked over and discarded, and when I tried to find some blush in the cosmetic section, even with all their "name brands", I was SOL.

As we pushed our empty cart up and down the aisles, we began to be creepily aware of the fact that it seemed we were the only shoppers in the store (Twilight Zone music plays). It was as if the economy had singled us two out to illustrate just how bad things have become. "What are you doing out of your house on a rainy weeknight?" it seemed to say, "People who have any sense know better than to voyage forth on fruitless missions like this. You should be at home, watching that big screen TV you're still making payments on, and munching the crackers which have become meal replacement items."

Desperately, we managed to grab a few disparate items; hand sanitizer, some formula for my sister's grandson, "No Country For Old Men" DVD, some cheap-ass peanut butter and an enormo bag of cat litter. But as we headed toward check out, we began taking things out of the cart and returning them whence they'd come.  Sis decided she had enough DVDs at home, and a cute little toddler boy's outfit was decided against.

After we left Target, Sis directed me to drive across the parking lot (yes, you read that right) and make a stop at HomeGoods (which I guess is Marshall's home accessories store?). Upon entrance, she lit up when I pointed to a distant sign that read "Dining and Kitchen." But once there, she was crestfallen to discover that they didn't carry appliances. Disgruntled exiting ensued.

I dropped her at her house, and as we yanked bags of stuff she didn't really want out of the trunk, I could see disappointment writ large on her features. "Don't worry, Sis, you can order a great coffeemaker at Amazon," I said. But as she walked up the driveway, the Willie Loman posture of her defeated shoulders said it all. If no happiness can be found at Target, where on Earth can it be found? 

I know that sounds pretty materialistic, but come on. Speaking as one who has not shopped for so much as a pair of shoes for nearly 2 years, I don't think I'm exactly the poster child for Shoppaholics Anonymous. But if the behavior we've clung to (buying cheap stuff = momentary frisson of joy) doesn't work anymore,  it would seem survivors must refocus their collective aperture away from stuff, and point it toward spirit. On the ride home, we did share a few laughs about how her husband hid their credit cards in his workbench in their basement; complete with Sis's dead-on impression of his groans of frustration when she unearthed them. "Like that's gonna stop me," she said.

And we giggled together as if the moribund economy hadn't shaped our entire evening.   

The Eagle Has Landed.

The morning after our arrival in Pennsylvania, my dog got deathly ill and all bets were off, blogging-wise. Now, after the care of the good doctors at University of Penn Vet Hospital (and several thousand dollars) she is back to her old, cheerful self. I thought things couldn't get any worse than Oakland, but once again, it is proven that one should never have a failure of imagination when it comes to "things can't possibly get any worse."

Media is the town I grew up in, but I am amazed at all the changes I've found here. Now, here are  hipster restaurants every 50 yards, a live theater, Beemers. What once was a sleepy little hollow with a lively heroin/crystal meth trade is now a cool place to live for the upwardly mobile. Uh, okay.

But wow, do I love driving here - you can go for a mile and not pass a single car. Coming from L.A., that's not just a huge plus, it's a freakin' miracle.

Another thing that floats my once-shipwrecked boat? Thunderstorms. In the 30 years I'd been away, I'd forgotten that summer brings lightning shows every other day. One afternoon, as I drove my Mom downtown for something, the rain pelted down in sheets so thick, you couldn't see five feet in front of you, and the air repeatedly crackled with electricity. Awesomeness!

I spend most days hustling for work - and it's paid off. So far I have more jobs coming in here in Pennsylvania than I had in the last year of L.A. or the six months I lived in the bay area. Knowing that I can work in the morning and then take the afternoon to squire my Mom around as she looks for a house to buy is a gift that is immeasurable. Finally, I'm able to make amends to her for all the pain I've put her through over the years.

I do miss my daughter. That's a BIG downside. She's such a lovely young woman, and I don't say that because she's my kid. Okay, okay. Maybe I'm a bit biased. But how I have loved her return from the dark side of her teen years. She's funny, she's smart, she's honest. And I have plenty of company when it comes to craving her companionship. One thing I don't worry about: the girl has beaucoups amis. I hope that work can afford me the ability to go visit her with some regularity - but I suspect that any money I make (beyond repaying all the debt I've run up) will go to Cory's tuition fund. And that's fine. That's my job.

I look forward to doing stuff with my sis: going to the movies, having dinner together, listening to her kvetch about her 17-year-old daughter. That's also part of my new job description. I remember when my parents took me to university when I was 19, and as they drove away, my sister (then 15) leaned out the window to hold my hand as they drove away and, sobbing, wouldn't let go. A year later I left for NYC. And after that, L.A. For the next 30 years, the visiting we did was brief and always interrupted by a trip to the airport.

I was always the leaver in my family, never the returner. But now I find myself in the odd position of being the new guy in town. The prodigal. Surrounded by people who fully understand the parts they play. But not me. I'm uncertain. I'm tentative. I'm - dare I say it? - shy. It's all new for me - and I can only hope that I am enough of a survivor that I'll continue tapping my way along the darkened hallway of my new life, feeling for the light switch.

And that I'll have makeup on when I find it.