I Wish I Had Never Conceived You

I was standing in my mother’s kitchen, in my childhood home.

I was in the same kitchen where my father had stood over the sink six years earlier on a Friday evening in early May, arguing with my mother, while having a heart attack.

I was trying to get past my mother and out the back door, and she stood on the step or two between the kitchen and the back door landing.

She was holding the wrought-iron railing and blocking my way out of the house.

I kept trying to push my way past her, but she pushed me back into the kitchen area and would not allow me out of the house. I was twenty-one and she was sixty-years-old and I’m sure if I would have used my full force and strength I could have easily pushed her out of my way and went out the back door.

But, she was standing on the short number of steps, or perhaps the landing where the back door opened inward, and to my left was a flight of steps into the basement. She was raging at me and I am certain I was aware that if I pushed hard past her she could lose her balance and fall, and that would be my fault, too.

I recall the scene in my mind’s eye. We argued back and forth and I insisted I wanted her to let me past her and leave.

I am not sure how long this went on, I am guessing a good ten minutes. Each time I thought I might make a break and squeeze past her along the wall – or perhaps duck under under arms and switch places and quickly open the back door and run out before she might grab me by my arm or shirt – I was unable to bypass her.

Perhaps I did get past her and she grabbed me on the little steps and pushed me back inside. I cannot recall, for certain.

I mainly recall two very specific things other than the generalities and context of this situation.

The first thing was that she said I was making terroristic threats toward her, by what I had said and the purpose of my visit there. She said that I was a “terror” and that she “wished she had never conceived me.”

The second thing I clearly recall is how very physically strong she had become – and I was truly having some difficulty escaping past her despite the thirty-nine year age gap and me in the prime of my life. In the midst of this situation, which was not a typical situation (at least not at this point in my life nor with these details and context), I do recalling feeling some amount of fear during this altercation.

Here is the Situation as Best as I Recall and Can Reconstruct:

January 1985

I was in my senior year in college, living in Park Place Apartments on Elkton Road in Newark, Delaware. I was in a relationship with the man that would become my first husband in June of 1985.

I can recall in the late part of 1984 and early month of 1985 my mother’s erratic and somewhat bizarre behavior seemed to be escalating, as seemed to be the pattern around holidays, going far back into my childhood.

At that point in my life, I still somehow believed the textbook reasoning and protocols concerning my mother and her “condition.” At that point in my life, I could recognize changes in her when she went off the medications that the Delaware State Hospital and Hudson Center Clinic prescribed and (I suppose) I believed these would ‘fix’ her.

I believed what I had learned, watched and experienced since her first hospitalization (which occurred in 1976 when I was in seventh grade) was the solution. Between 1976 and this time in 1985, she had been in the Delaware State Hospital two other times. And both times, I had been involved in the process. I was twenty-two years old in 1985.

I believed that if only she took her “meds” (I really hate that slang term quite passionately, and explaining why I hate that term rather than “medication” would require a whole blogpost/rant/dissertation of my views on that) that she would be normal, fine…honkey-dorey and A-okay…as they say…

It was true. She was different when taking medication than when she stopped. Absolutely.

But, different doesn’t always mean better, normal or whatever...

She was just, a different kind of different. Subdued, tranquilized…(definitely the day I was trying to escape her kitchen, she was not subdued nor tranquil).

Two recollections come to me during that time period just before I purposed that visit to her house and was trapped in her kitchen. I mean, technically is wasn’t my house anymore after I was eighteen, and she made that abundantly clear. But that’s another story.

The first recollection is Jim and I coming in (or out) of the State Theatre probably sometime in December I’m guessing, since I recall now he stayed in Pennsylvania for winter session that year. We had seen (or were about to see) Harold and Maude.

It was late on Main Street and I saw my mother’s blue 1976 Buick Century parked at a meter. What on earth my mother was doing on Main Street that night I don’t know – I didn’t think downtown Newark was an area my mother would drive to or park at. I do think she used to go to the old Rhode’s Pharmacy that was across from there sometimes – I believe they had a notary service and maybe shipped packages, too.

Anyway, we saw her on Main Street. I believe she had only met Jim one time before – I had taken him to her house for dinner probably during the fall of 1984.

I was a young girl. I wanted what I saw others in my Christian friends’ circles had. I wanted to be normal. I wanted to be loved…but mostly I wanted to love and give…and give…and give and give and give and give and help and help and help and help…and…well…let me return to the Main Street encounter with my mother.

My point. Maybe I was a little happy inside. My mother got to see me with my boyfriend. Or, whatever we named whatever was between us. My complicated romantic entanglement. The person who on and off, up and down…all kinds of all kinds of…well…I wanted to be his lifelong helpmate. I did. Truly.

That’s what I knew of love. And as dysfunctional as it was, it was pure. I say that with all that is in me. I wanted to have his babies. To grow old with him. To love and love and love him til our love (the love of Jesus through me) healed away all his pain and past…all his troubles. And in that, of course he would love me back. Of course I would be like…um…some missing rib or something…we would be…soul mates. Eternally.

OK. Back to the encounter. What young woman doesn’t want their mom to see them with their guy?

So my guy Jim and I…began talking with my mom. Now of course, Jim knew some stuff about my mom.

I recall it was a strange encounter, my mother said she had a boyfriend. Actually the man she had broken up with in 1946 prior to her first hospitalization in the Weston Hospital in West Virginia (now known as the Trans Alleghany Lunactic Assylum). She said that she and Victor Vance had started communicating again and that he was a widower and he was still in love with her. She said he sent her flowers and cards and all kinds of letters…once again…were going back in forth.

I suppose that’s a summary. When my mother passed in 2001, I did find an amount of current letters and cards from him – mostly cards. “Thinking of You” and such…maybe he simply was concerned for her and wanted to make her feel less lonely. Who knows.

Now, I’m sure my mother was dressed unusually. She typically wore a crocheted blue hat that had fuzzy fur on it. Kinda like a Russian hunting hat, perhaps. I could illustrate it. Ha. In my mind’s eye, she definitely had that hat on that night!

And, surely a furry coat and lots and lots of jewelry. You know, big jewelry. Bling, as they now say.

To be fair, a lot of ladies from that generation did that. But…oh the costume jewelry collection she had! Broaches, earrings, beads…single strands, double strands…shiny stuff with fake diamonds. THAT.

So there was the encounter on Main Street.

And of course, the phone interactions I’d have with her. And some amounts of visiting her. It was complicated to explain. It was just all this STUFF. I can remember she would call the apartment often – daily – and my three roommates all ran interference for me.

It was Adrienne, Gail and Pam. I think Gail often answered and would say loudly, “Hi Mrs. Slifer,” and then put her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece, while I’d come and lock eyes with her and she would whisper, “Do you want to talk with her?” and I would say yes or no, and then whomever had answered might say, “She’s not available right now..” etc.

I don’t know. I might be only partially re-creating the scenarios in my mind. But, definitely I’m in the ballpark! Ha.

So I recall there was some issue with my mom over my wanting and arranging for my social security survivor’s and pension portion benefits to come directly to me, rather than through my mother. Since my father died when I was in high school and I was in college, I received portions of these things (added into my mother’s benefits) until I was finished college.

Dealing with my mother over her writing me a check at a regular time, without seemingly hours of unnecessary discussion – notes – calculations – interrogating me about how much I needed, what I was buying, etc (which, was not her business) – it was all so grueling.

At some point, I learned they could simply split the checks.

So, that is one thing in my mind from sometime during my senior year of college. I do have one item in my “mom bag” that is exquisite! I mean, this item was dropped off at the apartment for me that January, I believe, and my roommates gave it to me. Together we studied this thing!

Two of them were nursing majors, and I recall quite the conversation over this thing!

Any time I have shown this thing, which I still have, to friends, Pastors, therapists…whomever on occasion I feel should see this thing…um…my only request it…please please…let’s make sure this thing gets put back exactly how it came to me.

Because, that is the peculiar beauty of the thing!

Think, Russian dolls. You know…a doll within a doll within a doll…

Um.

It wasn’t a doll. It was…first…inside a bag from Kinko’s.

Then, there was an envelope with writing on it…inside that another…and another…and so forth…I think what prompted this was that I would not come to the phone! And also, I was suspecting she was not taking her medication (she had a 2-3 month hospitalization in the summer of 1982, and this was early 1985) and I do recall going to her house and using my key to go in and look around, when she was not there. (This is what she is referencing in parts of her writings on the envelopes).

I suppose I was doing the super responsible thing.

Because that’s what I did! Be super responsible. I followed protocol.

First question, is she on her “meds?”

Ha. Um….the better question honestly is….“should she be put on ‘meds’ so she will stop bothering me and others?”

Because, then she would be “fixed” – a shaking zombie of a mom – since she was on so many “meds” she couldn’t think straight – but, at least, she was quiet. Ha. I suppose that’s…um…how people get fixed.

So surely I was a twenty-one year old expert on mentally ill, bizarre, possibly even demonically influenced (I’m serious on this) somehow….I would do a house search to see if I could find her “meds.”

I have no idea what I found or didn’t find. Did I find bottles? Dates? Did I count the pills?

Probably not.

I mean…likely I walked in…saw stacks and stacks of dirty dishes, rotten food….pans with mold…mounds of papers and trash and notes….multiple TV’s in one room….lots of lamps, mirrors….telephones….grimy bathroom….piles of filthy stinking clothes on a bed (how or where did she sleep?)….who knows….whatever I saw is some composite of everything I saw and in mounting amounts (ever seen Hoarders?) from my childhood until the day she was taken from that home for the last time in July 2001 and died four months later.

I mean. I didn’t need to find “meds” bottles.

Although, surely she had plenteous supplies of Mylanta, aspirin, tylenol, cough meds, cold meds, blood pressure meds, any kind of meds you might imagine she had…I don’t know…maybe she still had supplies of the Seconol they gave her prior to the 1976 hospitalization. That’s a story. I doubt she had that. Maybe there were still my dad’s meds…you know…the nitroglycerin tablets he’d pop for angina pains over the commotions that went on there in our home between his first heart attack in 1976 and his last in 1979….meds meds meds…sure…I probably saw DHS meds…Hudson Center meds….

But, I didn’t need to see meds nor anything else…just use my own eyes and nose to figure out the situation.

Anyway….back to the thing she delivered to my apartment. I mention the part above, because she mentions it on this thing. She was angry because I “entered 333 Tamara Circle” without her permission.

Since this thing is (slightly) three dimensional and not fully scan-able…I think it is best to made a video of it. And insert. Now. I will go into the bag in one closet and retrieve it….hold on….once you see this, I will resume my story about her blocking me from escaping out of the back door of her house! And explain why (um…from her view?) I was making “terroristic threats” and that she wished she had never conceived me.

That’s right, at least in that moment, my mother wished I had never been born.

Me…whom had heard over and over and over and over ad nauseum how I was some “miracle baby” she had at age 39, after being married nearly fifteen years.

• After a couple years or so trying to conceive me, because of problems with a subserosal myoma that got the size of a grapefruit when she carried me.
• After she had followed the special diet so literally during pregnancy that she weighed less when she gave birth than when she got pregnant.
• Me…who entered the world from her…well…special place while she screamed and demanded for Dr. Raiber…where the “h” is Dr. Raiber….(oh he was delivering some other baby…or or…I forget…out to dinner…). Dr. Raiber showed up…my mother said her hand was blue. He said, “I’m just scrubbing in”….somehow…he got me out of her and I was a miracle baby.
• In her letters when I was about a year or two, she told her sister that both baby and her were sick and on same antibiotic! We were…twins! Every illness she had (oh believe, me, there were a lot!) she made sure I didn’t get! Her miracle baby couldn’t cough…she might have pneumonia. Miracle baby needed perfect everything – temperatures, grades, smiling for photographs, poses….there could only be one inch of water in a pool so I wouldn’t drown. First grade teachers were told I was not permitted on any outdoor playground equipment where anyone had EVER gotten hurt on, in any way in the past. (I have my first grade pupil info card…lol…I was to be followed into the bathroom…you know…to make sure I did my duty regularly and…had enough toilet paper!)
  
  

So yes. THIS IS THE INDIVIDUAL that my mother wished she had never conceived.

And she told me this that day.

Because, when I showed up at her house, I followed protocol. Hudson Center had told me to try to convince her to go voluntarily for an evaluation there.

And if she would not, I was to call the police and attempt to initiate a 72 hour evaluation.

I knew the drill.

Around January of my senior year of high school, because I was only 17 and an 18 year old blood relative could request this type of thing…I contacted her brother, Roderick, and he came up from Martinsburg, W VA. She was hospitalized almost 3 months, and I lived alone at the house. This is another huge story, for another writing.

The summer of 1982, again, I was 19, and went through the drill. Involving the police.

So, there I was. Probably January of 1985…in her kitchen, trying to persuade her to get a psych evaluation. She said “no” and I told her, if she didn’t, then I would need to call the police.

We argued.

I kept trying. Then, I attempted to leave. And that is when, she became physically strong and aggressive, blocking me into the kitchen so that I could not leave the house. And during that encounter is when she said that I was a “terror” and she “wished she had never conceived me.”

I did eventually leave the house.

And while I went to the neighbor’s for a phone, she got into her car and drove away.

For several days, there was no sign of her when I would drive by the house, or call a neighbor to inquire. No one knew where she was.

Eventually, a neighborhood woman called me and said that she knew where my mother was, and that she was coming back to the house during the night. She said my mother was in a motel up near Christiana Hospital area…I vaguely recall…somewhere in the area where there is now a Home Depot.

I went there.

I saw her 1976 Blue Buick in the parking lot.

I called the police, told them the situation.

I talked to the owner of the motel first, I believe. Told them the situation.

The police came. I can’t remember exactly what happened, I think I kind of watched from a distance.

I “think” the motel owner opened the door.

I “think” I watched them take my mother, forcefully, into the police car and to the ER. That was protocol.

From there, the ER sends her to DHS.

From there…according to the pattern …then I had to talk to DHS on the phone about her situation.

They committed her at the end of the 72 hour, but they knew much sooner that would be the outcome. She was released about three months later or so…maybe she went in February, I don’t recall. I do remember she had only been released about one month before my wedding on June 1, 1985.

In the video in this piece, toward the end, she is sitting next to me (her hand visibly shaking…she was so drugged up she had irreversible heavy tremors…) while I am opening my wedding gifts…

WHITE LACE AND PROMISES – JUNE 1, 1985

The three pieces that need to sit alongside this story have these titles:

Post-Humous RX for Best Meds to ‘Fix My Mother’

My Mother Was Also Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Carter Was Particularly “Violent” Toward Me

Additionally, I am working on another piece from my trip to Buckhannon, WVA over the July 4th holiday weekend and will feature footage and commentary on the Trans-Alleghany Lunatic Asylum (formerly the Weston Hospital, where my mother was committed in 1946). I plan additional research into several other questions and issues surrounding this incident, as time permits, in the future.