29
What happens when someone urinates in your mind?
The Summer of Nineteen Seventy-Three, once mother had moved into my
sister's old bedroom at the family home, she would invite me in and
then use me as her confidante to tell me everything wrong with my
father, and sometimes how terrible Aunt Harriet or Dorcus Giacomo
were. Once we had moved to the apartment in the Summer of Nineteen
Seventy-Five, this was not something that just happened in the
bedroom anymore but the whole apartment and expanded beyond just
derogatory comments about a couple of people, but all the neighbors
in the apartment complex, various regular customers at the branch
grocery store, some of my siblings, and of course my father, as
always.
Whereas before I could just leave her bedroom to get a break from
these stories, with the apartment the only escape was to be at the
tree house or in the woods. The woods were better as with the tree
house she could check for me there and tell me to come back inside
where she could once again use me as a captive audience. One time I
told her I didn't want to hear any more and left the apartment to go
into the woods, only to find on my return that she had locked me out.
Despite being in the apartment she ignored my ringing of the
doorbell and knocking on the back glass doors and I ended-up spending
the next few hours stuck outside, unsure if I'd ever be let back
in.
Lesson learned: I just fell into the pattern of trying to do
other stuff, like playing with building blocks while my mother
droned-on about how terrible everything and everyone else was and of
course I was supposed to remember not to tell anyone what she was
saying. Of course remembering what I wasn't supposed to say meant
remembering everything she was telling me and keeping
in mind not to tell anyone. This crap would circle 'round and 'round
my head like a toxic whirlpool and I was slowly drowning.
Once skiing season had started it occurred to me I could avoid a
weekend dose of poison by staying at the family home and joining my
father to the ski area when he went to work and I could ski. Having
grown-up skiing at the park, this would have been a typical thing to
do during winter and my mother couldn't find a reason to say no. But
the months and months of stories of other people's incapabilities and
inadequacies had taken their toll and once I got to the top of one of
the lower slopes I discovered as I looked down the slope that I was
terrified to go down it. I had grown-up zipping down these
slopes, but now at age eleven, I couldn't.
Confused and panicked by this discovery, all I could do was take off
my skies and walk down the side of the slope as I fought off a case
of nervous shakes.
I spent about an hour at the base of the mountain trying to gather
myself and come to grips with the whole silliness of my being afraid
to ski. Eventually I steeled my nerves, put my skies back on, and
decided to start with the gentlest slope of the lower mountain. At
the top of the slope I decided, rather than facing down the slope and
skiing to the bottom so far away, I would ski across the width of the
slope thus just seeing the nearby side as I slowly slid across and
came to a stop. Then there was the scary moment when I'd have to
briefly face the length of the slope as I turned one hundred and
eighty degrees around, then slowly slid to the other side of the
slope. Fortunately, the easiest slopes weren't in demand by the
majority of the skiers and if another skier was coming I'd just wait
at the side of the slope until they passed, then slowly slide to the
other side. Doing this slow zigzag I reached the bottom of the
slope. I had survived it just fine and went for a second run, this
time not coming to a complete stop as I turned at each side. By
midday I had built-up enough confidence where I could ski with the
direction of the slope at its flattest points. By the end of the day
I had finally worked my way up to taking the easiest slope that went
down the full mountain.
Rattled by this whole experience, I decided not to ski the following
day, but as my father felt I was too young to be left alone at the
house, oblivious of the fact that mother had been leaving home alone
for years, he had my mother pick me up and I was back at the
apartment. I down hill skied very rarely from that day onward.
Soon after my eleventh birthday, my not as older brother decided to
move out of the family home before he got his official disowning from
dad. He took his savings from his various part-time jobs over the
years and left for an extended visit with my sister out west. His
plan after the visit was to go to Jackson Hole Wyoming and find a job
as part of the ski industry there. It turned out many people also
went to Jackson Hole for this only to find that those who already
lived in Jackson Hole got all the jobs. He ended-up returning to the
family home by Christmas.
That Christmas, for some reason my eldest brother decided to make
some two by four furniture and asked to do so at the house using the
basement workshop. By this time my father's disowning of my eldest
brother seemed to have softened to the point that he was willing to
let him do it. Perhaps it was also partially the case that he had
felt a little lonely in the otherwise empty house as Pappy was in his
apartment during the daytime. The two by four furniture comprised
three coffee tables, colored through wood burning then sealed with a
glossy clear coat. Once completed they were placed in the empty
space where the dining room table had been, the table itself now at
my mother's apartment.
One of these days, visiting my father on his day off, my eldest
brother was there and my not as older brother as well. He and I were
admiring eldest brother's work when suddenly all of the likely
disparagements mother might make about them bubbled up into my mind.
Like mental vomit, I fought to keep it inside as my eldest brother
and father were wondering what was going on from the living room.
Suddenly, all the poisonous things mother had been telling me over
the years wanted to escape, but I knew they couldn't. Out of
desperation I let the mildest comment of hers that I could think of
loose: That my not as older brother ''...wasn't mechanically
inclined!'' It burst out and I fled from the room to my bedroom
upstairs where I hid until I got it all tamped back down.
By the following Spring, I had come to let the comments my mother
made pass right through me and not take them in, personally. It
occurred to me that if I didn't hold onto them in the first place,
then I couldn't betray them by bringing them up later. This was a
useful skill to have learned as the following Fall was when my mother
told me about the circumstances of my birth and from that point
onward she would feel comfortable directly telling me stories about
my own incapabilities and inadequacies and I just let it flow through
me and not take it personally.
But like any channel with a constant flow of effluence going
through it, the edges of my mind did become stained and moldy over
time.
help me break even: Shop
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