For days my mind has been a jumble of contrasts: California versus New England; work-quitting; sleep-wake; man-woman; love-what? hate?; death-life, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I know it’s bullshit, and I also know that when I get moody and introspective nothing comes of it (other than my ability to demonstrate the profound reserves of my utter bitchiness).
The weekend was a contrast to life back east, and I wasn’t prepared to jump right back into work and bad weather.
Then, there’s Pat. I was thinking about Pat, because either as a kid or an adult, I generally knew where she stood. And, then, probably more often than not, I would force my actions in the opposite way. Not just rebelliously, but deliberately, determined not to end my life with a laundry list of regrets or might have beens. I wonder what she would think about M., about my probably foregone likelihood (Jesus, could I hedge that more?) of moving west. No doubt she would be skeptical, but simultaneously open to my doing my own thing. Who knows if she’d be happy for me (of course, if she were here right now, she’d be a pain in the ass and not tip her hand, so I still wouldn’t know if she were happy for me).
It’s not so much that I feel alone or ungrounded. It’s more like I’ve lost a soundtrack, rather than, say, the actual script.
With all previous relationships with men, she wouldn’t necessarily give an outright endorsement or dismissal of the guy. No, it was an undertone, an understanding, a catch in the conversation to let me know. Actually, she was like that about every friend I ever made. Nancy, who she hated absolutely from the age of 11 into adulthood, for her, any mention would be followed by a pause, not exactly thoughtful, and maybe an intake of breath and then a flat statement of her name or whatever. Leaden, I guess would be the best characterization. By contrast, Kevin, who I also knew from junior high and am friends with to this day, would engender a pause and then questions–where was he living, where was he working, when would he be home (east), what happened to his old girlfriend and my old roommate, how is his mom? When Kevin’s dad died, she called me (a rare occurence, since she was clearly the one to be called) immediately and made sure I had all of the particulars of the services. When Nancy’s dad died, she was far more abrubt, the reference made in passing with no real push for me to attend anything. I guess, in short, subtlety was not my mother’s strong suit. You generally knew where she stood, regardless of her protestations to the contrary.
The amazing thing was she often had an uncanny knack or laser really for spotting the good ones. There were students and friends and random folks that had all the appearance of strays, and she would champion them as the underdog and find something special, and usually turn out to be quite right about them. By the time I was in college, I had met a few old students who singled her out as the teacher who stood up for them or taught them when others failed. (I used to joke with her that her annual performance reviews from school always mentioned that she was a patient teacher. My joke was that she never wasted that patience at home with her own kids, so she could have plenty at work.)
But, that same laser for identifying the misunderstood was also fucking deadly. You crossed Pat and you had an enemy for life. Back to Nancy and Kevin–interestingly when my mother, herself, died, I heard nothing at all from Nancy or anyone in her family, all of whom had met her, except the estranged father of Nancy’s child, who hadn’t actually met Pat, I don’t think. Kevin lives in California, but he stood by me virtually and essentially, calling every week or more frequently, checking in unobtrusively and just talking and being around. So, even post mortem, Pat called that all pretty correctly, the good egg and the bad.
So, what would she say about my life as it is today? The friends I have made through comedy? And, M.?
