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

Preface:
(This piece was written August 11, 2016 – I found this in my “Writings” files I brought on my getaway to Buckhannon, WVA this weekend. I was re-reading it and decided I wanted to add it to my blog. I recall being in the earlier stages of meeting with a therapist in Alabama and sharing as much as I could about my own upbringing as context to the situation I had found myself in and how it was affecting me on so many levels. While the details of the situation differed – often as adults with complex forms of formative traumas – we find ourselves triggered and the end result is we feel some of the same feelings when we are in traumatic adult situations that resurrect certain patterns, experiences and feelings. As I read this I sound so very angry and so very direct and so full of biting sarcasm. I really think it was a place I was in, emotionally, at that time and I may have even given myself a writing challenge of allowing myself an unbridled verbal expression of anger at her for her behavior and basic personality. However, this writing feels a bit foreign to me in some ways, because I generally don’t have this flavor of anger at her….generally it more of a disconnection and interest in relaying stories of her bizarre behavior as seen through my eyes and my lifestory-telling. But here, I seemed to have written this as though it is “Adult Eileen” admonishing “Adult Margaret Slifer” while referencing the needs of “Child Eileen.” I really think this creative writing expression was connected to my own life-goal of aiming to be the best mom I could – while dealing with my own personal stuff – and I was providing context/contrasts between my own childhood and that which I sought to give my children. While I have never struggled with personal hygiene, keeping a normal home or refraining from calling the FBI on neighbors, ha ha…I did and have struggled with a number of things referenced here relating to feeling unconditionally loved, nurtured, valued and more…by my mother. My father truly was a saint…someday…a piece called “St. Rodney” should be written…since I do believe my connection to him and the help of my “village” is what pulled me through…A strange thought occurs to me as I write this preface to this very angry-sounding piece toward my mother…perhaps it is my way of voicing what I might imagine that my father was thinking but couldn’t clearly say to her…or if he did voice it in private…have any effect upon her behavior…I do hold many questions still about her culpability and ability to have done better. Surely just about everyone around her must have been giving her direct or indirect messaging of “do better….for Eileen, if not for you???” As for me, I did have some struggles in my mid-twenties I consider, in retrospect, largely entwined in post-trauma and early marital issues and at one point, I made a conscious decision that I had to be the adult, the parent…to lay aside my own struggles at that time in my life and do all possible to give my own children the childhood I so very much wanted them to have. That I am currently in the situation I am in, brings heartbreak and rekindles struggles that I believe should have been put to rest in some ways. In life, a variety of things in our journeys tend to keep ripping open and re-ripping open old woundings and bruisings of so many kinds…)

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

• Take a bath and wash your hair.

In fact, do it daily. Calling the FBI can wait 10 minutes.

Hey…it’s a sunny day.

• Go outside and walk around the yard and smell some flowers.

While you are at it,

• follow the sounds of happy children’s voices…

…you will find them at the neighbor’s house where children are running around the yard unsupervised, having a wonderful time.

No one there is nervous about it.

• While you are there, go inside and have a cup of tea with ‘said neighbor.‘

Look around their house!

• Notice there are chairs to sit on that aren’t full of newspapers and paper crap.
• Notice the furniture is arranged so people can sit and interact and the living room isn’t blockaded.
• Notice the kitchen table is fairly clear except for the mail that just arrived that day.
• Notice the drapes are open and light is streaming in, and the room is not filled with FBI files.
• Go ahead…pet the cat. Say “here kitty kitty kitty kitty!” Listen to him purr.

Now…think of the song:

“One of these things is not like the other….one of these things just doesn’t belong….”

Now, go home and spend every day

making your house look that THAT house.

• Thaw something out for dinner.
• Open a cook book and figure out how to make a casserole.

When it’s Eileen’s birthday, make her a cake and have her friends over.

• Play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.
• Buy her a surprise gift. (Oh…and wrap it too. You know, it’s more surprising that way!)
• No…I don’t mean wake up one day and decide Eileen’s begged enough for a party and run to the store, buy a cake, set it out on a card table in the front yard, bring her 70’s yellow checkerboard record player out, do a solo dance to the “Monster Mash” and cause a general hilarious neighborhood commotion while flagging down random kids—some who hate her guts—to come celebrate her birthday. (Yeah…I have pictures of this, too. I also have the Cinderella plastic cake topper, still. I keep it. I guess it was better than nothing, my one-and-only birthday party growing up. My friend Anna still remembers the Monster Mash party!!! (Actually I’m laughing thinking of it). Maybe I actually had a cool mom. (???) I mean, she did buy sunglasses shaped like apples and butterflies at Woolworth’s and wear them…it was the 70’s. Maybe it was an Elton John thing.

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• Let Eileen sneeze in peace.
• Stop taking her to the doctor just about weekly, monitoring her health in inappropriate ways, demanding antibiotics, giving her paragoric with Pepsi and other medicines kept around or leftover, causing a general commotion and medical phobias….let her play on the playground and don’t send notes saying she must be excused from gym and sit along the wall because she’s “too sick.“ Eileen really doesn’t need to share in your medical conditions, too. Umm…was that like…some type of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy?
• Fill Eileen’s pool with more than an inch of water. Yeah, kids can, as you said, “drown in a teaspoon of water” but it’s pretty unlikely. When she gets in 4^th grade and the kids take swim lessons at school, don’t refuse her to participate and have her sit outside the pool and watch everyone. That’s no fun. She feels weird, and the kids think she’s weird. They all her “Auuleen…Auuleen“ in your West Virginia accent and yell at her when she gets off the bus, calling her “Crazy old lady Slifer’s daughter.”

Oh, and stop calling the school district insisting the bus stop be moved to your house so you can monitor everyone. They are just kids…standing at the street waiting for a bus. They don’t have plastic explosives and frogs in their backpacks that they are going to put in your mailbox. They aren’t talking dirty to Eileen. Yeah, they are looking at you and laughing and teasing her, but….you get what you ask for. They can see you watching them through the venetian blinds and the holes in the curtains. They think it’s funny. Hey, they are just kids. Just like HER.

• Take her to the ocean, it’s only an hour and a half away. She feels left out hearing people describe being there on their fun vacations. Oh…and when you finally do go and she sees it for the first time…don’t freak out when she wants to go touch the water.
• Play the piano.
• Learn to knit and do it every night – instead of popping Seconal and making my dad take a vacation day while you sleep a good 18-24 hours straight after going stretches without sleep. Oh yeah…and that time I came up the steps from the basement and you had your head in your folded arms with your face buried on the tiny kitchen table with a cigarette going and I tapped you to ask you something…”Mommy…mommy…” and you didn’t respond…several times…and I thought you were dead and panicked…then you raised up your head and were laughing at me with a strange drugged look on your face…um…that was frightening. I can still see it in my mind’s eye…

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Hey…when it’s Thanksgiving, cook a turkey. Visit relatives or have someone over.

When it’s Christmas, put up a tree! Plan ahead. Don’t decide to make your husband drive you to Wannemakers and have him sit for hours in a car with Eileen on Christmas Eve while you suddenly decide to randomly do some shopping. I mean…I know they are open til midnight, but it’s confusing Eileen…she thought Christmas Eve is when you go to bed so Santa comes. It makes Eileen anxious. She thinks he won’t come if they are not home in bed…

…speaking of which…why does Santa bring Eileen’s friends dolls and stuff but you take Eileen in Wannemakers to go in and pick a doll, send her back to the car, and next morning there’s that same doll (under no tree) and there are packages of pencils and paper wrapped up from Santa.

What a *cluster*fudge*!

Speaking of late night excursions….stop waking Eileen up at midnight on a school night and making your husband drive you and she (in her pajamas) into Wilmington to the Post House because you are hungry. I mean, I know they stay open all night and the waitresses are nice to a child half asleep in her pajamas at midnight on a spinning stool, on a school night…but…Eileen just didn’t want eggs and bacon that badly.

Hey…remember how you string beads with Eileen and paint nails once in a blue moon? Next time you feel like calling the FBI, do THAT instead. Heck….paint poca dots and all kinds of eccentric stuff if you want…be colorful and have fun…anything but calling the FBI. Just stop already.

Stop saying Eileen has five mothers all over the neighborhood. Just stop. Get a grip.

She’s one child and she really isn’t that bad.

It doesn’t take five people to manage Eileen, it just takes one regular mom. You don’t have to farm her out to people between the time she gets off the bus until her dad gets home because you can’t cope with whatever it is you can’t cope with or you are using her as some pawn in your Hatfield-McCoy fantasy in Harmony Hills.

You know that game Candyland? Buy it and play it with your daughter.

• Take her to the park and push her on a swing. She won’t fall.
• Heck…take her for a walk in those big bad woods…and stop telling her when she’s in grade school not to go there because strange men might jump out from behind trees and shake their penises at her. She’s having difficulty imagining what this penis thing is you keep telling her about.
• While we’re at it, stop telling her about sex when she’s in grade school and that it’s a secret not to tell her friends that she knows about. That’s too much responsibility. I mean…that kinda got her in trouble in 4th grade science when the teacher said that a rooster fertilizes the chicken egg and Eileen raised her hand, in all serious curiosity (because she wanted to know if the rooster also had a penis, like her mom told her about!) and the kids at her table snickered. Apparently, it all wasn’t such a secret!?!? Teacher told Eileen, “I think you know the answer to that as well as I do” and sent her out of the Wilson Elementary School Classroom! Into the dreaded “wet room!” There, she burst into tears and was found crying in the bathroom by another teacher…because…um…Eileen never ever got in trouble in school! She…um…just wanted to know…um…how this happens. (Now, in her fifties…Eileen witnessed it first hand!! For more info…it’s like…THIS. HA).

This RX is getting off track.

Back to the beginning:

• Take a bath and wash your hair, daily. Your greasy head, body odor and noticeable grime on your face and neck is disturbing. In fact, it makes Eileen cringe when you try on occasion to be affectionate with her. But, that isn’t the only reason she cringes.
• Do laundry.
• Hang pictures on walls.
• Vacuum.
• Stop spending money on crazy stuff. Stop arguing about money with your husband. Oh, and stop calling him Rodney Slifer to everyone, even him. He’s your husband for goodness sake. I think he knows his last name. It makes Eileen feel guilty when you take her clothes shopping on your charge card and have to stand in line at customer service and make a small $5 payment on the account just to free up some credit. A 4^th grader shouldn’t have to worry about whether buying a pair of blue crushed velvet pants is right or wrong or going to make money problems worse. In fact, what she constantly hears makes no fucking sense.
• Read a book. And no, not True Detective. The local police are getting tired of you calling them and telling them you solved some crime across the country by reading the magazine very carefully. They call you Agent 99. Not that you’d get that.
• You are a pretty good seamstress. Eileen saved the lamp from your house you used to do mending under, after you died.

See….you can do it.

• Stop calling your sisters and brothers asking for money. Stop scheming how you can sue people or get a bigger share of Ora’s estate or even get it before Mabel dies. What a *cluster*fudge*. You’re all crazy, every doggone one of you.

What else will help you?

Hmm….

Empathy?

Humility. Go to church and get involved. Get down on your knees and pray.

I now understand (from a family member) your whole family was “dirt poor in West Virginia but you all thought you should be the Vanderbilt’s.”

Get over it.

Go take a part time job, but don’t boss everyone around and get fired.

Flee narcissism.

Stop telling people you took a special course by Dale Carnegie on How to Win Friends and Influence People. It just isn’t working. Instead, just shut up. For once, shut your doggone mouth, look someone in the eye and say “How are you doing today?” And then just listen and smile.

Talk to Eileen. Make jokes. Hold her on your lap.

Teach her what it means to a normal human being.

Oh, I forgot…and this one is HUGE.

Stop yelling and screaming with your husband. He’s going to have a heart attack. I just know it. And then he’ll die and well…it’ll just be you and me. And heck…I won’t take your bullsh*t like he did.

Well, what do I know? I’m no doctor.

All I know is no amount of Lithium, Depakot, Prolixin, Thorazine and Mellaril fixed you.

Hey it was the 60’s and 70’s…

maybe you should have gone to Woodstock.

Got yourself back to the garden.

Look down from heaven now and say,

“Wow…Eileen…you are remarkable.”

I Am Not An Illness, I Am Not A Disease.

Beyond what is helpful, stop explaining yourself to everyone.

Beyond what is helpful, stop explaining yourself to yourself.

Trust yourself and your perceptions.

The Interrogation is Over.