Chrysanthemum vignette

I am having unhappy thoughts about my mother and I haven't been sleeping well. I alternate between thinking I should try to reconcile with that poor old lady (I've been out of contact for nearly a year and a half after she purposely injured my child slightly) and be the "bigger" person - the mensch - and thinking that to spend more time captive to her way of viewing the world could well be fatal to me - or at least to any definition of "self" away from her and partial peace that I've managed to achieve.

Today I am thinking of my own death but I will not let it happen today if I can help it. I will be brave, even in the face of being totally alone. I know this sounds self-pitying, but in reality, being alone is my strength. I can only disappoint myself in predictable ways that I've learned to live with.

In the fall of the year I turned 12, it was her birthday. I wanted to get her a present. I didn't get an allowance or have easy opportunity to make money, and we lived 7 miles out of town. It would be a sacrifice to somehow plan and execute the giving of a present for her.

Somehow I possessed $5 - I forget how. I decided my only possibility was to walk to a nursery approximately a half-mile from our house and buy her a living plant. I did walk by there on the way home from my school bus stop, but on the afternoon I had the money in hand, they were closed. (Why?!)

There was a lovely display of chrysanthemums out front, with prices displayed. I really thought the proper thing was to wait for the business to be open, to go inside with my selected plant, and to pay properly. I figured my mother must like mums since we often had some near our front door during autumns. Mums maybe weren't her favorite, but they were nice fall flowers, I figured. Who could really take issue with the gift of living flowers, I wondered? I had to put a lot of thought into her gifts because she was usually quite critical of the family's gifts to her. I wished I had a mom who treasured a child's creations and only wanted that. This woman expected Tiffany's but got less. When she did get Tiffany's, she was unhappy with it, though, and let it be shown/known. This fall I did not have my father to help me with funds and transportation, because he was away on a business trip.

Some of the mums on display had been dyed to unnaturally bright colors. I knew she would not like those, would find their garish colors vulgar and offensive. So after battling with my conscience, I selected a yellow one, walked around the whole perimeter of the nursery property again, looking for someone to pay properly, but ended up leaving the money pinned under a rock central to the mum display area. I felt quite guilty and scared to do that, and I felt bad, but I thought, what choice did I have?

I managed to secret the mum home, and later, created a pretty bow and card to go with it. I also created a booklet of I.O.U. things I promised to gladly do for her, as I sometimes saw kids do on the sitcoms or read about in books. Such happiness and humor was portrayed when the kids gave their moms their coupon books, and the moms smiled and hugged them, and said, aww, that's sweet, honey. I thought the coupon book was a cute idea ("for someone else") but didn't know if it would go over with my mom, so I made the jobs I promised to do rather large, so she would know I seriously wanted to do something momentous for her.

When I gave the gifts to her, it was evening. She was in a pisser of a mood, as she so often was. I hoped the gifts would soften her and bring a little smile to her face, at least. Maybe she was upset my father was away on a business trip - not that she would have been pleasant even if he had been home.

I gave her the mums first. She asked where I got them from, in a somewhat menacing voice. (She knew I had no opportunity for transportation, and I was not allowed to walk into town.) Next she looked at the hand-lettered and -colored coupon book. She was clearly more unhappy now. She went back to the yellow mums. We were standing in the entryway. She said, "These are Shit!", and then dramatically opened the front door and tossed them out onto the flagstone, pot breaking, dirt scattering. "And as for the coupons: you should be doing all these things every day, without my asking you!" (Daily wash the wall of glass second story windows on a ladder?!) I went out into the night, to the cool of the flagstone on this late October night. I had some tears streaminig down my face, but would not, Would Not, let her see me crying or let her hear me make a noise. I started to brush together the dirt and the flowers; I felt bad that the flowers had been affronted and treated with a lack of respect. I wanted them to continue to live.

Then I suddenly stopped tidying. Let her find the mess of her creation - just like she sometimes now left some of my father's alcoholic debris for him to find and regret and have to deal with himself. I gathered my resolve and went back inside.

I was a lonely 12 year old with an incredibly annoying flipping digit clock (yes, I know this revelation dates me) next to my bedside that kept me awake at nights - way into the small hours - as my only companion.

Little was I to know that in just over 8 weeks, I'd be saving her life - scooping at least 50 partially decomposed valiums out of her mouth, clearing her airway, and restarting her breathing. Sometimes since that episode, I think it might have been easier if I had lost her then. After all, my brothers had already found her like that and abandoned her - for me to find after coming home from our church youth group New Year's party with a parent from the youth group.

That winter, I started writing down a lot of times in a notebook, compulsively and excessively. My mother and one brother used to snatch those notebooks from me and cruelly laugh and belittle me. Years later, she asked, "But Why did you write down random times compulsively? We never could understand that."

I answered, "The times were not random. I was simply noting down times I knew you to be alive, and could stop worrying about you for at least that minute." To her credit, one time in my twenties she hugged me and said she was sorry I lived through that anxiety, but other times, it was back to the earlier ridicules, often with that brother that shared some of her notable personality traits.

Anyway, during that school year, I started walking to school (5 miles away) and into town (7 miles). Sometimes during snowstorms. I'd even sometimes create little shelters against rock outcrops with leaves and branches. I just Had to get out of the house, away from the B-goddess, away from the notebooks. They'd be there when cold drove me back - how I hated my weakness of having no choice but to go back. In the next years I got myself onto the track team and onto the ski team through sheer willpower, not because of any natural athleticism. It was my found escape of my teenagerhood.

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