In this adult life I’ve been existing in, what with the being an orphan and all, holidays have been missing a certain something on which I couldn’t quite put the old finger.
Last night, though, I solved the mystery and perhaps it will make sense to those Irish Catholics or possibly Jews among you bored, I mean thoughtful, readers out there. My holidays have been relatively guilt-free with the passing of Pat.
Don’t get me wrong, I really do wish Pat lived through more holidays and happily (or about as happy as she could constitutionally muster). But, the woman was a master at making her baby daughter (and all of her children and her siblings and her students and likely random strangers on the street) feel helluva guilty. No matter what, she did more for you than any effort on your part could ever hope to equalize.
I’m trying to think of a good example of the Pat guilt conversations. Here’s one, which has stuck in my head for a good 20 years now. I went to an expensive private college, because it had the kind of journalistic writing program I wanted, and for pride and values and not letting the goddamn world keep her down any more than it already did, Pat, goddamnit, made it clear that her kids were going to school anywhere they wanted.
(OK, not anywhere, she wouldn’t let me apply to Barnard and/or Columbia’s journalism school, because the idea of her daughter in the mean streets of NYC ghetto was untenable. And, there were many arguments over Holy Cross, because it was small and not very far away and Catholic and not very far away. I chose 326 miles away. Coincidence? I think not.)
So, anyway, I froze my ass off in Syracuse and studied pretty seriously, because there was fuckall else to do in arctic February.
Money was pretty tight, and tuition was pretty high, and I purposely worked hard enough to get a couple of bucks extra in financial aid via academic scholarship. Only in Pat’s world, and it was a world of extreme levels of pride, extra cash from the school was charity and she wasn’t taking charity from no one. Therefore, she never signed and mailed the forms that she, as my parent and guardian, was required.
Nevertheless, there were moments when the bills from the bursar’s office were looking to be unpaid. Honestly, I could never quite tell if the money was non-existent or my mother was just habitually late in bill paying. I called home, needing to know whether I could stay or should line up some work back home to come back another semester.
The guilt above all other guilt, the alpha-omega of gut-wrenching, heart-aching, ungrateful kid conversation ensued. She had discovered that she could stretch even Hamburger Helper to cut back on costs. In fact, she had been eating almost exclusively items she could buy with a coupon or skipping meals entirely to save for my tuition. At one moment, she implied that the meat in catfood was essentially the same as buying a can of tuna.
(That last is classic, diva, drama-queen Pat. She wouldn’t actually eat pet food, but she loved the drama of suggesting the possibility. (As a note, there is absolutely no resemblance in this point to this author. I fucking swear.)
So, with coupons and grit, I graduated an expensive school with honors, and she almost watched me do it (but had to go get air).
Anyway, I was remembering all of this guilt, because M.’s landlady, who is extremely nice to him, has been cooking up a storm. She made spaghetti and sauce the night my plane came in, so I would have something to heat and eat on my midnight arrival. Last night, she made a gigantic pot of chicken stew with dumplings and wouldn’t let me do any of the cleaning up. For breakfast, there was fresh brewed coffee and sausages, and tonight a roast pork is planned, which she will start as we roam around sightseeing and what not.
I haven’t done anything and I surely haven’t done enough. Pat’s spirit is here for the holidays.
