Mothers and Daughters

Six years.

Six years is both a lifetime and a fleeting moment.

Nothing is the same and everything is the same.

My life is different. I am different, changed by the ups and downs of six years, by the ebb and flow of mortal life.

The ache, the longing, the sense of loss, and the constant wish to pick up the phone and talk to her is the same; the never-changing constant in my up and down, ebb and flow mortal life.

Around the time we found out my mom was dying, I discovered a book by Joan Didion called The Year of Magical Thinking. It is a memoir of the year following her husband's unexpected death, an explanation and written exercise in grief. A year that also coincided with the repeated hospitalization of her only child, a daughter, because of complications due to an illness.

I read The Year of Magical Thinking at least twice the fall before my mother's death and again, at least once, after it. Not only am I fascinated, as a wannabe writer, by Ms. Didion's writing, her structure and syntax and ways of stringing words and sentences into coherent thought, I was drawn to the subject matter. Ms. Didion's way of explaining the experience of grief, of sorrow, of loss, and of the pain of being the one left behind brilliantly captured and put into words what I was feeling and experiencing. Despite our circumstances being different in all respects, Ms. Didion could say what I wanted and needed to say about my experience of my mother's death.

Shortly after The Year of Magical Thinking was published, Ms. Didion lost her daughter as well. Five years after her daughter's death, she wrote another memoir Blue Nights, about both the extended experience of that loss, of the one left behind, of aging, and of the relationship between mothers and daughters.

Again, despite our circumstances being different in all respects, Ms. Didion has said in writing what I have been needing and wanting, but unable, to say about the experience of being left behind, of being a part of a mother/daughter relationship that has been fundamentally altered by death. What Ms. Didion ultimately says is that it is a relationship central to our beings, complicated beyond measure, and haunting in its impact once the relationship is altered by death.

The same fall I was devouring The Year of Magical Thinking, my brother was being much more productive and forward-thinking and asked my mother to record her story of her life on video. For various reasons, none of us actually watched it until after her death. Shortly, maybe a day or two after her funeral, my brother suggested (or perhaps insisted, my memories from those days are hazy and incomplete) we watch the video. It was difficult to watch. Even in my numbed and shell-shocked state, there were moments that made me flinch. I don't remember why but I do remember that she had structured it so that the video seemed like an extended conversation with my brother, a private conversation in which things were phrased in a way that seemed to exclude me from the conversation. I was not the center of her universe.

I was far too old for that to have been a surprise to me. But it was. My mother was amazing at making people feel like they were the center of her universe.

I have not watched the video since.

Not long ago, my brother asked my father to make a photocopy of the few journals of my mom's that remained (my mother kept notebooks of writing, especially during difficult times, but they seemed to disappear, either lost or repurposed or destroyed). I haven't read it from front to back, but as I skimmed pages, I had the same reaction.

I have not looked at the journal since.

Exactly a week ago, an email notification from YouTube popped up in my inbox, informing me that my brother had uploaded the video to YouTube. An image of my mother, the first part of the video, was the only thing I could see. I closed my inbox immediately and have kept junk mail, offers from Land's End and ThinkGeek and a myriad of other online retailers, in my inbox on top of it so it is not the first thing I see every time I open my inbox.

I assumed it was because I was selfish, vestiges of sibling rivalry, of remaining displaced anger that I should have to live the rest of my life without my mother.

But, as I contemplated my reading Blue Nights, new and different reasonings for my reactions came into play. The whole book is a personal exploration of how perception in the moment and subsequent perception of the past in the leisure of the present can cast doubts on memories, on experiences, and definitely on the understanding of who you thought someone was. It is a secondary sort of loss, the realization that the person you have been mourning and grieving for might not have existed in the precise form for which you have been mourning and grieving. It is a reopening and an expansion of an old wound because the one person who could answer the questions and make sense of it for you is not there to respond. All that remains is a gnawing question to which the only answer available is that you have somehow misunderstood something. Something you can never put right.

I am not a crier. It is rare for books, movies, television shows, etc. to make me cry. Real life can occasionally make me cry. But, as I read the final passages of Blue Nights, I cried. Cried because I understood why I cannot revisit my mother's written words, cannot revisit the last images and spoken words I have from her.

I will quote a portion of that passage here. Hopefully no one sues me.

   "The familiar phrase 'need to know' surfaces.
     The phrase 'need to know' has been the problem all along.
     Only one person needs to know.
     She is of course the one person who needs to know. . . .
     I imagine telling her.
     I am able to imagine telling her because I still see her. . . .
     I know that I can no longer reach her.
     I know that, should I try to reach her -- should I take her hand as if she were again sitting next to me. . . -- she will fade from my touch.
    Vanish. . . .
    I know what it is I am now experiencing.
    I know what the frailty is, I know what the fear is.
    The fear is not for what is lost. What is lost is already in the wall.
    What is lost is already behind the locked doors.
    The fear is for what is still to be lost.
    You may see nothing still to be lost.
    Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her."
                 ~ Joan Didion, Blue Nights, New York: Vintage International, 2011, 186-88

There is no day in my life on which I do not see my mother.

The Parable of the Clogged Toilet

My office building is actually an old converted house, built in the 1910s or 1920s. As such, some of its systems do not work as well as a building built in this century. The furnace can't hope to keep the draughty place warm in the winter, even with new windows. The plumbing doesn't stand a chance. The downstairs bathroom serves both the downstairs employees and any clients who might need to use the facilities. Unfortunately, the system doesn't seem equipped to handle that kind of traffic. Because of this, it has a pretty steady habit of becoming clogged (usually for no apparent reason) about every two weeks. 

In general, the system acts up at the end of a day. Which means if you are the one closing up the office, you will have to deal with a finicky toilet. I have absolutely no patience for the toilet at work and try my very hardest to not use it at the end of the day. Of course that doesn't always work.

Last week, whilst dealing with yet another inexplicable clog that required twenty minutes of hard plunging and amidst all the name-calling and creative non-cursing running through my head, I had an epiphany.

Some trials and tribulations are exactly like a clogged toilet. They are unpleasant, inexplicable, in no way a result of your actions, and, yet, an issue or problem that you alone have to resolve. The most frustrating part of these clogged toilet-like trials is that there is no time limit that you can see. You know eventually, with enough plunging and flushing the clog will eventually disappear, the toilet will resume normal functioning. You just don't know when. It could be five minutes, it could be an hour. You just don't know. You start out energetically, thinking that if you work hard enough and fast enough, it will be cinch, you'll be out of that situation in a snap. And then it doesn't get fixed. 

As the minutes tick by, you get more and more frustrated. You are doing all you possibly can and still the water doesn't drain. You get frustrated, angry even. You work harder only to give up and walk away from the problem for a little while, hoping it will just resolve itself. You come back to it, full of hope, looking forward to the miracle of a fixed, functioning toilet only to see that nothing has changed, that all that is ahead of you is another long, exhausting slog of plunging with no end in sight. You have to choose between picking up where you left off or simply beating the toilet to death with the plunger. You are a responsible person, so you choose to work harder. Frustration and stress and exhaustion after an already long day kick in, maybe tears are shed as you plead with the toilet or the universe or God to just fix the problem already. You irrationally envision being found in the morning by your co-workers still plunging away at this stupid old toilet. You can't take this interminable, repetitive cycle any longer. You want to be done, to be free, to have a view, an aim, a purpose outside this small, dank space. 

And then suddenly, you hear that tell-tale gurgle, the water starts to drain. You flush, mental fingers crossed, hoping against hope that the clog has worked itself out. Sometimes, it doesn't. Sometimes it is a false hope, a respite, a surge of renewed possibility. And so you set to work again, with tears and more pleadings, and maybe another angry walking away. But sometimes, it isn't false hope. Order has been restored. Sometimes the clog is gone as inexplicably as it came. You are free, consoling yourself that you've got a great arm workout, and can go enjoy the fresh air and evening sunshine with an intense satisfaction you might not have had if you hadn't just spent thirty minutes fighting old plumbing. 

Because We Need All the Prayers We Can Get

This is my adorable, amazing 4 1/2 year-old niece, Bug.

She has grown a lot since she made this face:

However, her attitude remains quite unchanged. Which is good, because this little girl has had to go through a lot in her very few years. She already conquered and bounced back from open-heart surgery. Now, on to brain surgery. She has what is known as a Chiari I malformation. To fix it, and keep her from developing all sorts of unfortunate problems, the doctors have to perform an operation. If you have a thought or prayer or two or five to spare, if you wouldn't mind sending them her way tomorrow, I would be forever grateful.

My Two Cents . . .

are not going to Scouting.

On Sunday, at the beginning of the Relief Society meeting, it was announced that class would end early to make time for a special announcement. I felt this was an odd announcement, seeing as how the time it would take to talk about the special announcement could just as easily be taken at the beginning of class. I decided it might just be something they were leading up to with the lesson or that it was supposed to be super inspirational and they wanted to end on a high note. Imagine my surprise when the ward's Scouting specialist got up to make a spiel about the Friends of Scouting program and to ask for donations because Scouting is expensive. 

Now, I think Scouting is a fine program. My brother liked it, my dad is his stake's go-to Scouting guy, and I think it does a lot of good. However, as I listened to the continuing plea for funds by this woman and, ultimately,  her testimony of the Scouting program, I got angry. I realized that even if I had more than two cents to spare, I would not be giving it to the Friends of Scouting. Initially, I was not going to publicize my decision, but then I read this entry at the Tumblr site AmenAlready (which is a site guaranteed to make me laugh daily and also make me think about my assumptions. For reals.) and decided I needed to say something.

I got angry listening to the extolling of Scouting's benefits and the plea for funds not because it isn't a good program but because as a girl growing up, and as a woman in the Church today, it often feels that the Scouting program is run at the expense of the girls and young women of the Church. For example, have you ever tried to get permission, organize, or participate in a fundraiser for Girl's Camp? It is a nightmare. You have to do something big, it can only be once a year (please correct me if I am wrong), it has to be in exchange for something (not just soliciting donations), and you have to strong arm people into helping. I speak from personal experience as someone who went to camp 7 times, who had to get people to buy cookbooks filled with ward recipes after having to beg them for recipes to put in the cookbooks, who had to convince people to buy homemade pizzas. What do the Scouts do? They have an individual get a calling to go around to ward meetings and straight up ask people to whip out their checkbooks and write them a check. Which people do. That tells girls and young women that the people in their ward do not value their development as much as they value the boys' and young men's development, that the limited funds of the ward and the individuals in it should be given to the boys and the young men, and that whatever is left over will have to worked for and scraped for by the girls and young women themselves.

I got angry because the unequally funded programs are also unequally recognized. I can't speak for the Primary Activity Days because I have no experience with them. However, I have never heard of an equivalent recognition night for Activity Days achievement for girls like the Cub Scout pack meetings that recognize the achievements of Cub Scouts and mark advancement through the ranks on a monthly basis. I do have personal experience with the differences between Personal Progress and Boy Scouts. I'll share the most glaring. When I was in Young Women, Personal Progress required that from the ages of 16-18 that I do multiple projects, two each year, one of which had to be specifically focused on service. Each were expected to take at least 30 hours to complete. This was on top of the other Personal Progress goals required in the previous four years for each of the, then, seven values of Young Women (Faith, Divine Nature, Individual Worth, Knowledge, Choice & Accountability, Good Works, and Integrity). Time-wise, if a young woman did Personal Progress right, it was roughly equivalent to the time required by Boy Scouts and the Laurel projects were roughly equivalent to the time required for the Eagle project. The expectations were similar, but the recognition was vastly different.

I received my Young Women's medallion the same year my over-achieving brother received his Eagle Scout. The work we had done was equivalent, his was just packed into a shorter amount of years (which you couldn't do as in Young Women when I was in it lo these many years ago). I was given my award over the pulpit in Sacrament meeting, without advance notice, on a Sunday in which both my parents were in other wards for their respective Stake callings. I didn't even think it was my place to ask that maybe the Bishop wait until a Sunday when my parents could actually be there. It wasn't something you did. You just went up when your name was called, shook the Bishop's hand, said what one of your project was, got the medallion, and sat down. It took all of 30 seconds. Now compare that with an Eagle Scout Court of Awards. The Court of Awards is a separate meeting that can include multiple Eagle Scouts or be held for one Eagle Scout. It is a night dedicated to the Eagle Scout(s). It is a special event in which people are specially and specifically invited to come recognize and celebrate the Eagle Scout(s) achievements. There are large displays of the project(s), time dedicated to ensuring that everyone have a chance to look at, understand, and comment on the project(s). There is a whole ceremony dedicated to recognizing the accomplishments and achievements of the Scout(s). My brother had the night to himself. My parents ordered a cake with an image of the award and my brother's name on it. Family members traveled to attend the event. Even though I knew that my parents loved me as much as they loved my brother and that they would have done the same for me, there wasn't the opportunity to do it. It wasn't, and isn't, done. 

I don't fixate on this discrepancy, I don't let it influence my testimony or my faith. However, it does send a clear message that the girls and young women of the Church should just get used to not being recognized, that their work, their achievements, and their progress spiritually, emotionally, physically, and intellectually is of less importance than that of their male counterparts to their families, the members of their wards, and the Church as a whole. 

And that is why I will not be donating to Friends of Scouting. And why I will definitely be supporting my ward's Young Women's fundraiser this spring, even if it is only two cents.

I Felt Like One of the Women in Annie

And unfortunately it wasn't Grace Farrell.

A few nights ago, after a particularly long, chaotic, emotionally exhausting day, I was lying in bed trying to get my brain to turn off. I needed something to relax the insane speed and disorder with which thoughts were racing through my head. Usually I would listen to one of the playlists I have created for just such occasions, however, my iPod was already docked in my alarm clock cued to play my wake up playlist that ostensibly motivates me to jump out of bed and get moving but never really does. Additionally, it seemed like a lot of work to find my headphones, listen for a while, and then re-dock and re-cue the iPod.

Another great way of getting my brain to calm the heck down when it is at DEFCON 3 is to listen to something equally soothing. That equally-soothing something being Mr. Benedict Cumberbatch's reading of "Ode to a Nightingale" on YouTube. His voice is mesmerizing and the poem's rhythm and subject are nicely suited to lull one to sleep. Despite my best efforts I have been unable to find a legal way of getting the mp3 or hard copy of the disc of poetry for which he read this. So YouTube it is, even though I can't watch the video that accompanies the reading without feeling like a stalker.

So, as I pulled my laptop up onto my bed next to my pillow, I had a flashback to that scene in Annie, right before the "Little Girls" number, in which Miss Hannigan is curled up in bed whispering sweet nothings to her radio.

On the plus side, I dress better and have never brewed bathtub gin.