Leaving....Losing

I'm losing friends. By attrition, mostly. But a few by death.

You see. I've come to what the French call un femme de certain age - a woman, mature. There's a point where we all start to watch the obituaries to see if there are familiar names. Sometimes, we hit the jackpot by attention. Other times, if we keep our friends close, we know when their bans to the Pearly Gates will appear in the paper.

I have three of my girls on the edge of check out at this time. Oh. There is always the occasional surprise where one of us 'young chicks' will phase out before our time in a sudden accident. Like SIDS, the mature can go too, unannounced, unexpected, and unwarranted.

I have one in hospital. Critical care unit in town. I'm too chicken shit to call and find out her status because I've promised her that if she dies, I'll kill her. Afraid I'll have to follow through because her son, a NASA scientist, tells me she's fatalistic. Another is in full term adult care, wasting away of a disease that struck her down. Like the Gaelic Boddicia of old, Sally is six foot tall. She was a cop - twenty years worth of manhandling the bad side of life. I have her marked on the doorpost on the archway in my living room to the dining room of my old house along with my child; his friends, my friends, and whoever made enough impact or asked to be tallied up to stature here.

So. Sally Jo was part of the conversation at the whenever number next get-together of The Committee. This is a group of us women that have been meeting since we all gathered for the first meeting of a Codependents Anonymous group I put together back in the 80s. We all bonded. Only one of us dropped the ball for a spiritual quest at Ba'hai. The rest of us have more or less kept covenant with each other since.

Sally has an incurable disease called Supranuclear Progressive Palsy. It will end up choking her as her throat muscles give up the ability to clamp down and loosen. Sal is sixty something. Awful shitting young to have to say adieu. I have told her sister Katy that I did not want her to strangle. Katy agreed. I will be second in the duel if needed. You understand what I'm saying.

Shirley, on the other hand, is as hard as rocks and as fragile as a lotus in her seventies. She's spiritual leader and divine hag and crone for at least three hundred seeking individuals she guides from her quaint book and herb store where there are resident spirits. She has worked hard all her life. She is integrity exemplified. She has taught me how to use my mean bones so that I wouldn't get stepped on. In her seventy-somethings, she still has the best gams around left over from a modeling career where she sported Russian Wolfhounds down a runway. She's had the umpty-umphth operation on a recalcitrant colon in ex many years. All leave scar tissue, a little less colon, and this time, fistulas.

Fistula. Sounds like a Roman Emperor, a Caesar that rampages through the good land of a body that was once brave and strong and beautiful. She is the one that I can't seem to bring myself to follow up on. I've talked to her son. He gives me news that isn't welcome. There is something in his reports that tell me she has given up. Fatalistic. Or almost. Either way. Almost is too close.

The third chasing Death is Miz Miriam down the street. She walked up to the house here about two months ago to tell me in person that she has CML - some kind of chronic leukemia that strikes later in life. Miriam is 82. She has raised her children. She's raised her grandchildren. She's also raised her GREAT grand children. She gardens. She curses. I've seen her dive in the creek to rescue a child overboard on a bike like she was 16 years old. She asked me to try to help her find some cannibus to treat the awful pain that she cannot take opiates for. She gets ill on pain meds. I am a friend. The mission was unsucessful. That's all I have to say about that.

So. What do I have to say to you tonight? Wisdom? I don't have any. I am wallowing in my own insecurities and skitters at being left with three less good women. I will be losing these very special people from my life. I don't know how to do anything other than honor them by kicking my own ass in gear and getting on with the Cosmic Cotillion that we sign onto when we check onto Planet Earth.

I believe in an afterlife. I must. Neither the purported rapture nor glory calms my soul as much as believing that I will have the chance to touch the ones I love, have loved again. Or that I will have the chance to come back and make it a little better the next time. I hope to see Miriam, Sally Jo and Shirley on the next taxi back to planet Earth. They are good company.

Mother's Day

There will be no cards, no call, no declaration of love from my one and only child. I am a scourge to him. The beautiful child who was a miracle to my life has me as anathema to his as he became a man.

He has just cause for many psychoses we all bequeath our children, even if we try our damndest not too. After all. How many couches would go bare in psychiatrist’s office if we didn't have someone to blame all the pestilence and ill luck that burgeons in our lives as we grow up. Someone to blame like our mothers. He could claim that I wasn't there a good bit of his growing up time and he'd be right. I was not there. I was dealing with juggling three different hats just trying to put food on the table and a roof over our heads.

And, don't you know that his father and I played the eternal tug of war many single mothers and divorced fathers play - a begrudging fight for every dime of the paltry sum the courts awarded me monthly to raise a boy to a man without one. I went five years without any payment whatsoever as my ex moved on to wife number two and then number three, had other children and declared that he indeed had a family to worry about and couldn't understand why I nagged him about paying money for his first born on my first call to him in five years.

I had requested a pair of shoes from my ex because I noticed my son running funny and asked him what was wrong. He told me that he folded his toes under in his old shoes because he knew that I didn't have money to buy him any for his growing feet and that it was okay. He understood. So.

I located the ex and asked for a new pair of sneakers. This is when I got the sentence about being a nag. This is after five years of no calls and just hope that he'd find a conscience and pay up. This is when I got pissed and contacted the state to help intervene. This is just one of the setups some of us mothers get from the 'system'.

He may also blame me for his father's absence and failure to pick him up on scheduled visits. I don't now how to convince him that his dad really did want to be with another woman and was sorry about getting all obligated by impregnating me. I don't know how to convince him that there was nothing I could have done to make his father continue to love and treasure us both and to stay. I don't know how to convince him that my best friend of the time was much more appealing than a dowdy housewive with a two year old. It's the system.

Now. When I speak of the system, I am talking the whole stink, soup to nuts. You see. We do not really honor motherhood. Ah yes, you say. There's mother's day, the whole American charm bracelet with mom, home and apple pie on it. There is this patriarchal meringue we're fed about how mothers and children are important. Not really. And then there is this outer system and society that sets up dodgy sitches for us if we do become mothers: Where was/is the health care system so we don't have to beg for school shots and treatment for recurrent earaches? Where was/is the judicial system that really makes sure that child support really supports a child instead of throwing pocket change at an already really skinny situation like groceries being on a wish list? Where was/is the community that helps with child care, psychological services, help with a damn day off? Where was/are the wages that honestly allow a woman on her own to afford a decent life for her offspring?

Am I bitter? No. Simply older, wiser and disgusted by the crumbs that are thrown at women one day a year in this country. Elsewhere on the globe, women are chattel - much like mules. Women endure wars, rape as part of the psychology of warfare, early death from multiple pregnancies, fistulas when they are forced to bear children at eleven and twelve years old and their tiny wombs burst. Women are sold as sex slaves, forced into prostitution for the animals that connive to get them there and then live off of the income from those female bodies like fat ticks. Women are aborted in India, China and many other countries because women are not as valuable to society as males. They are killed or abandoned at birth in some countries so that the natural population ratio is skewed towards males making it difficult to find them wives when they grow up. Women have little or no control over the birth and rearing that their bodies are subjected too. It's all decided elsewhere by men and religions and governments who will never have the experience and never understand the risks.

We women are set up from birth to endure all this as our lot. Forget the fact that it is women that give birth and nurture life. Several centuries of male dominated religions, government and HISstory have left us this legacy. We. Women. The unclean. The unable to handle public office or education or jobs that we very damn well did when necessity was on us - thank you Rosie the Riveter. It wasn't all that long ago that we were given the vote in good ole U S of A.

So our jobs as mothers are set up double hard against us by our society, our religions and especially by the male children that we bear. Do you know that women do more than 90% of the work and labor on this planet? Do you understand why we're molested and beaten? We're the only species that I know of who give birth to our own predators.

So I secretaried, read cards, sold stuff at flea markets and craft shows - anything legal to earn enough for us to live. Of course, those long days and seven days a week often left little time for the real mothering I would have liked to have done. Could I have done better? You bet your ass. But I did the best that I could with the material I had on hand and the time allotted to me in the days.

I hope at some point he does see a counselor. I hope he curses me and squalls and rolls around on the floor in front of that counselor. I hope he's given some tools to cope with and take responsibility for his addictions and shortcomings. I hope that he can clear his eyes and see that the people he replaced me with sold him out, including his friend, the drug dealer. I hope at some point he will man up and see that I am not the cause of his financial problems, his drug exploits, his sex life and the inner unhappiness he may feel. I hope he sees that I never abandoned him, never gave up on him, even when he gave up on me. I hope he sees at some point that I really, truly do love him regardless and that he is the one that has seen fit to cut something wonderful out of his life. That was the last thing I said to him when I saw him the end of 2004.

Oh. I have others who do call and wish me a good day each year. They are surrogate children who come to me to talk over their problems or when they need my help or just to enjoy my company. Imagine that. I welcome them. Buddy calls and comes over to install an air conditioner in the spare room. He also just calls to see how I am. He was a best friend to my son growing up and spent a majority of his time here. He calls me mom. Vanessa calls from Naples where she is running with the jet set and busy being beautiful and a wonderful success. She calls me mama. Demetria calls and we exchange wishes for each other. She calls me honey. Darla calls to let me know that she's thinking of me, too. She calls me Other Mother or Shamanamama. My girlfriends all call and we exchange wishes too. We call each other Love You at the end of a conversation.

I really want everyone to start practicing the lofty ideals today is held up for. It really would be Mother's Day if the whole planet practiced the Law of the Mother - nurture, no wars, no putting more burdens on any person or system than it was meant to handle, true support for women in all that they do to rear young and produce good people. If we truly supported mothers, we’d be thinking about the rape and exploitation of our planet – the one really Big Mother we all depend on. We’d quit digging, blasting, boring, deforesting, overpopulating, polluting, bombing, genetically altering, testing nukes, strip mining and dumping our shit all over her.

Forget one day a year to drag out the accolades. Want to impress me? Let me see Mothers being appreciated the other 364 days of the year.

Swimming In The Big Creek

So. Linda Conner and I sat on the deck outside the room she's living in at Dogpatch this evening and talked about the heat. It is a matter of fact here in Florida. We are the Northernmost Caribbean Colony, don't you know. Listed temperate wise as Subtropical, having palms, beaches, and many of the denizens of the tropics flying by and nesting, we also have subtropical weather. It's hot in the summer. And sticky like sex.

Linda mentioned that she brought her bathing suit from Maryland and allowed as how she had swam in the Potomac. She said she remembered to pack the suit thinking that she'd go to the YMCA or the beach. "Posh. Tish. There's a 300 foot wide and three to four hundred foot deep channel cut right off the back of Dogpatch", I says. Adding that all she need be on the lookout for is water snakes and amorous gators during season. SWFTMUD (SwiftMud - the local water management authority in Southwest Florida) keeps them culled out.

The water is clear and cool and serves as the reservoir for drinking water here in the Tampa Bay area and points south. Okay. Hopefully, I won't pee in it. Fish are abundant and mostly left unmolested except by a few local fishers and water birds like Heron, Grey and Brown Pelicans, Eagles, Falcons, Cormorants, Seagulls and Terns. The fish grow so big that the big birds often drop them on lawns - instant cerviche.

The neighborhood kids across the canal know what kids have known for Millennia - that the water was made for swimming. Indeed. I swam these very same shores as a young girl when it was Six Mile Creek and before the Army Corps of Engineers came in to better it. There were small waterfalls then. And palms, palmettos, magnolias, vines big enough to hold a full-grown man. Gators, Florida Panther and Brown Bear thrived alongside Gopher Tortoises. They are all gone from the bed of that once lush and mystical place of my youth. They were bulldozed and bermed against the natural flooding that made sure this land was fertile and welcome for many species.

Instead of the meandering zees of the natural creek bed, the Army Engineers made sure that it was tamed into a nice, straight line. The Army likes everything straight, including their soldiers. They blasted the natural blowholes of springs, which fed the Creek. Those springs turned the water a lily blue and the underwater sand landscape lunar white. Water in Florida only gets brown when the leaves from oak and other indigenous trees tincturate it with tannins from the leaves when they fall in.

I swam in it then. One of a long succession of Florida denizens behind Temuccuans, Seminole, Florida Crackers who gathered wild Spanish cattle out of the underbrush to build their ranch herds. I'll swim in it now that it has lost all but a whisper of its original beauty and majesty. Maybe it will wash off some of the years I've accumulated since then. But, I'm sure the waters will do the same thing to me now as they did then. Chill.