Over Scheduling

Since last Tuesday I have been over scheduling and my body is paying for it. I ache everywhere. On Thursday painters were coming to repaint the ceiling. The interior of the little house is basically a square and the ceiling is basically the inside of a pyramid with two porthole skylights. On the west facing side is a large round glass skylight and on the west facing side is a small recessed glass skylight. When the roof was replaced a year and a half ago, the roofers left a tiny pin prick hole at the base of the larger of the two skylights. So the slow seep from that hole left a line on the inside of the steeply sloping panel of the west side.


The owner of the roofing company came by to check out the damage and then we scheduled the painting of one of the four sides of the ceiling. (Now the other three are slightly less brightly white). At the base of that portion of the ceiling is a camel colored wall that is twenty feet long. Against that wall was a a lot of art work and one very valuable single piece of hand crafted Stickley furniture--a hall chair, tall backed with a beveled mirror top center of the back and hooks on either side. The chair seat lifts up and could contain a chamber pot. But I keep winter hats and gloves in it. In the Winter I use it for coats, scarves and hats, as well as tucking winter boots under it. I have kept it in the little house for sentimental reasons, but it's too crowded in here as it is, and there is no way to appreciate its beauty when it's hidden under coats and dripping scarves. So I finally got smart enough to let Ms M use it in the main house. She has always coveted it anyway. Now it's back where it looks best. But it is oddly heavy. So I started the moving with that piece of furniture.


My two favorite book cases are also on that wall filled with a few hundred of my favorite books. The taller of the two book cases has a glass door with a lock. But I wanted to turn the glass to the wall to protect it from accidental bumping. And in order to turn it, I had to empty it and move all the books into the greenhouse. The other bookcase is also glass fronted but can be moved in four pieces. As one solid piece of furniture I would not be able to turn it. So I remove the top--a lovely lid of oak, and then empty the top glass fronted piece of its books move them to the greenhouse and lift that section and move it to the greenhouse. And so on. I have no idea how many pounds of books I moved on Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Wednesday I had to move my two ton couch. I wanted to get the Persian rugs up and out of the room. This involved a lot of vacuuming and the lifting furniture to uncover every inch of rug. I stacked all the rugs, rolled them up together and leaned the round tower of rugs against a corner of the greenhouse. Now the greenhouse is completely filled. There are more books than I can pack into the space in the greenhouse so I start putting them on the couch. And once all this is done, I have to drape most everything with plastic, including the red leather club chair I got from my grandfather's office in the Judge building. It was built locally in the 1920's by a local furniture company. It's the only thing I own from my father's side of the family. I move it and drape it.

It's tricky, but I manage to move the TV to my bedside chest of drawers. I have to tent it in plastic, but I cannot go an entire day with no TV. It's on MSNBC all day and I'm taping news programs I can't watch all at the same time. Then there is Cyrus, who thinks the space between my bed and the closet is a fancy kennel. He has a very large dog bed and another smaller round dog bed rolled up as a barricading pillow. He's fine with the guys, but the taping of plastic on the walls to protect the camel colored wall beneath the ceiling unnerves him a little. A portion of my bed is draped in plastic.

I had a great time with the two hispanic painters. Omar is the crew boss for the roofers and the fix-up boss for repairs. I thought Omar would be alone on Thursday but he has a helper named Ricardo. They are careful taping and draping. While they work I'm watching Hillary in Mexico talk about the drug wars. She talks about our responsibility for this war--our insatiable apatite for drugs, and our assault weapons going to the drug cartels. So now I want to talk to the Mexicans who are working in my house. It is a fascinating conversation. What would have been a couple of hours work max, turns into four plus. I especially like the new guy, Ricardo. And in talking with him I discover that he is a handyman. I ask him what he can fix. His answer is "everything." I like him even more. And he's so obviously smart. He's thirty one or two and very nice looking. His manners are lovely as is his English. By the time they're through I have his phone number. I have many things that need fixing between this house and the main house.

After the guys are gone, I have a large expanse of painted concrete floor and it needs mopping. So the mopping begins. Once dried, I shift furniture from the north side of the house to the west side of the house. Oh my aching back. I know from past experience with a year of sciatica, that I'm getting close to doing more serious damage to my lower back. Two things are verboten for those with sciatica or even a propensity for sciatica--vacuuming and mopping. Once the floor is dry I begin the rearranging of my big room. And back come the books, now in need of alphabetizing by author's last name. There is nothing worse than wanting to find a book and not being able to locate it. Well obviously that's a bit of hyperbole, but you librarians know what I mean.

And so it goes with the rehanging of paintings, the rearranging of furniture, the filling of the two big bookcases. I'm exhausted just writing about it.

Friday I start preparing for dinner with L. And you know all about that. I do one nice thing and seem to have to negate it with nit picking about literature. What the fuck is wrong with me?

Saturday, I am nearly paralyzed with muscle pain and fatigue and too much guilt. Do I call him and apologize? No. I do not. Why? I'm not sure. At least I didn't poison him.

Sunday I'm worse than exhausted. Due to the Warfarin I take to keep my blood from being too thick and therefore too clotty, I'm covered in bruises.

Monday I get a call from the owner of the roofing country. He says Ricardo wants to paint the other three sides of the ceiling. I say I can't spend money on anything until I finish paying my property taxes. He says, "He's making you an offer you can't refuse. Can I put him on? " "Sure, why not?" Turns out he likes my company and wants to be my handyman. But first he plans to paint the other three sides of the ceiling for free. Can't beat that. But I will pay him something. It won't be what he's worth, but it will be more than he planned on getting. Is it me or is it the glimpse of Ms M, when she came home from school on Thursday? It is Ms M. And if he hopes to court Ms M, he will need my advise. And only I know how long he will have to work here before they can first become respectful friends. It may take a decade for her to find out he is the love of her life, or not. But I will enjoy the story no matter how it turns out, and now I have a handyman. And he has a fantasy future grandmother-in-law to talk politics with.

Tomorrow I had a doctor appointment, vet visit for Cyrus, and the belated birthday date with Nick. I rescheduled the doctor appointment, but Cyrus is almost out of pain meds and needs to have blood drawn for another liver check. And Nick will wait until we're through here. Then it's lunch in a nice restaurant and the movie of his choice.

The next round of painting starts Friday, mid-morning. Thank god I only have twenty cook books or so.

I Feel A Depression Coming On

I've been hearing and watching a lot of hand wringing over Obama's firing of Richard Wagoner on Monday. It seems it's a fine idea to call for blue collar workers to take cuts in wages and benefits, but to hold the man at the top responsible for the failed policies of the company he heads? Well that is... well... It's just Un-American. Why it's fascism! My god, it's communism!!! No, even worse, it's a dictatorship!!!? WTF???

In my humble opinion the CEO's and other top executives of every financial institution in need of public tax payer money should be asked to resign without compensation. Do not start at the bottom and start cutting salaries. Since when were the workers responsible for the direction a company takes and for all the bad mistakes it's made over the last eight or ten or thirty years? No, it's the rot at the top that got us here. And nothing Rush or Bill O, or Coultergist or Rupert or any right wing politician says can make that come out differently. But what really baffles me is the oodles of time they're given to make that case on any network news show on any channel other than Fox. Why must we always give the Republicans and their right wing operatives the time of day to frame that failed argument? They have the entire Murdock empire to do that.

And what do we expect President Obama to have done by now to fix it all? How many days has he been in office? How hard has he worked? Seems to me it's night and day. He is reaching out to us, he is taking questions and making an effort to inform us directly about what he's doing. He is taking questions from us. I know how much that must piss off all the pundits, but I like it.

What I don't like is to read the same kind of criticism from the progressive bloggers out there. Patience people, please. Yes, I'd like him to legalize pot. But I'm not yet ready to crucify him because he has more pressing problems to deal with in this first six months. Maybe next year.

In the meantime I'm getting depressed. I may take a day or two or three off. I have been avoiding the political because there is just too much of it to focus on one thing. So I talk about the personal instead. I'm always paying attention to the political. Obama laughs at the overwhelming number of crisis situations he's dealing with on a daily basis, and the pundits fall all over themselves criticizing him for the inappropriate laughter. Oh get a grip you morons. If he can't laugh now and then when the sky is falling, then the rest of us just might as well kill ourselves now, and get it over with.

I'm Through With Love

Why Can't All Mothers be Like Jasmine

I have tried to post about this three times today and have now resorted to simply posting the link to the original.

Like Mother, Like Daughter

I have spent my life trying to avoid being like my mother. I know that somewhere in the world there are good mothers whose children do not have nervous breakdowns at the thought that they might have to spend time with their mothers. I know not all mothers are as abusive as mine was. But I have done an informal survey of my adult friends, and though they preface their comments with this--"I love my mother, but..." What they end up saying is "I'd rather not have her visit me--she cleans my house as if I can do nothing right. I know she means well, but she makes me feel like a failure at everything I do."

My mother was many things. She was foul mouthed and confrontational. But of course she kept her abuse of me a secret from her friends. To her friends she claimed to love me, but was baffled at what a mess I'd made of my life. To my mother's friends I was a fuck-up and her cross to bear. To her friends she was a fabulous creature. She was beautiful and fierce. She was a pioneering feminist. She was unafraid of power and willing to stand and face the powerful and in a full throated blast call the powerful out as the frauds she believed them to be. She started the Utah Chapter of the National Organization for Women. She started the Utah Chapter of the National Women's Political Caucus. She won awards for her contributions on behalf of women. She was fearless and shocking in her confrontations with Utah politicians running for state or national office. She was a fierce advocate and champion for the Equal Rights Amendment to the constitution. What she could not see was that I was a woman too.

Though I was proud of her stature, and supported her causes, I kept my distance. She was on the board of directors of the ACLU. I was always a supporter of the ACLU, but avoided the board meetings, and tried to keep out of her way, which made me seem like a woman without a strong commitment to social justice and civil rights. Some of her friends tried to befriend me, but from past experience, I knew that my mother would see that as competition and betrayal, so I kept my distance.

It's easy to admire a parent with such stature, but hard to love one who claimed to have never had a maternal feeling and believed the concept of maternal instinct to be one more oppressive way men kept women down. I knew too well the way a child feels to hear her mother claim to feel no maternal feeling. It is devastating. It makes you feel profoundly unlovable, for if your own mother never loved you the way a mother loves her child, you feel responsible and internalize her assessment that you are not a child worth loving.

My mother always had me call her Maggy. To her the word mother was a diminishment, an insult. So she was always Maggy to me. And with my close friends, especially the friends I grew up with, she was a cold and dismissive bitch or she was competitive with them as well as me.

You would think my history with a mother I thought of as a political powerhouse and a bitch I'd do almost anything to avoid, would make me a sweet and gentle woman, uninterested in the political. But it hasn't. There are moments I fear I've been possessed by her malignant spirit. I am not gentle, nor sweet. I am not soft, I'm fierce. I do not treat the few men in my life well, though I'm glad I know a man or two who still speak to me, but I don't think I really deserve their attention.

I looked forward to L's visit and worked hard enough the week before to make every muscle and joint sore from the exertion. It was important to me to feed him a nice meal. He is a man who had a friendship with Maggy independent of his relationship with me. I think I still hold that against him a little. But one on one, I'm truly not much gentler or kinder or nicer than Maggy. My mother was competitive. Well so am I. My only saving grace was that I did not have children.

The Next Morning

We're having a blizzard. I just took Cyrus out for his morning pee and we have about 2 inches thus far and it's sticking. My car is covered, the cafe table in front of the greenhouse has a couple of inches on it. Yesterday was warmish and sunny. Today the snow is falling fast enough to cover the green that's emerging. The buds on the pear tree are white with snow. I hate this shit.

L and I had a lovely evening, but I fear my bulldozer approach to conversation leaves much to be desired for a man of his scholarly disposition. He is a philosophy professor, retired but still teaching a couple of classes a year. He loves teaching and will probably keep teaching until he dies. But I'm nobody's student. I've read as much or more than he, and we don't value the same writers in the same way. He teaches literature as philosophy. If I were a student of his, I would be one very argumentative and opinionated student, challenging his taste and conclusions at every turn. I don't think he enjoys this much, this intellectual bully I've become. And I realize as I write this, that, like a younger sister, I am always pushing back, always trying to prove myself his intellectual equal. We disagree about one of the writers he teaches, Penelope Lively. "I think her prose is thin and her characters a bit boring." I realize when I said that, I was poking him with the sharp stick of my many years of glutenous reading. Why? Why do I do that? He is a lovely man--kind, sweet, warm. Why am I so competitive with him? Odd that even when I was twelve and he was almost sixteen we were intellectually competitive. It was important to me even then that he know I was no light weight in the reading department. I had read Lolita, he hadn't. One up for me. He had read Thomas Hardy, I had not. On up for him. Let the battle of the minds begin. And yet I do still love him. I always have and I always will.

I did find out one thing about his "new" wife that made me think I would like her--she's a fan of fart humor.

And I did not poison him with my cooking. The meal was delicious. But I'm pretty sure I spent my sleeping hours farting. I wonder if Cyrus, my old dog, notices.

My Very First Boyfriend Is Coming to Dinner. Do You Think I'll Poison Him Too?

Yes Larry even predates Cal. And unlike Cal, Larry and I have kept in touch over the long span of years. It seems to me he has always been married, kind of like a serial polygamist. I think of the young woman he's married to now as bis fourth wife, but I could be wrong.

I am wrong about a lot of things. But still I persist in telling you how I feel. These are merely my observations and opinions, clouded by long experience, and my own skewed view point. Still, I knew his last wife and loved her. It really pissed me off when they got divorced. It was her choice, but still, since I am female, I assume he had something to do with letting her get away. He's a good man, a smart man, an interesting man. I have always loved him, but more like a little sister grown old who is fierce in needing some attention to the first man she fell in love with. I was only 12. He was almost 16. We were babies. And we never had intercourse or even really tried. Though we had plenty of touching and tasting and feeling.

He came to my sixteenth birthday party and I asked him for one thing. One thing that wouldn't cost him anything. I wanted him to have sex with me for my birthday. He gave me a Nat King Cole album. Unforgettable, was one of the songs. It was after that I asked Cal for the same gift. It seemed for a long time like getting deflowered by a boy was out of reach for me.

So, Larry is coming to dinner. I'm fixing stuffed roast chicken, steamed asparagus, cole slaw, cantaloupe, and cocktails --not exactly in that order. I have chocolate from France and chocolate ice cream. If all else fails I have peach pie. And we have much to talk about. We haven't seen each other face to face in so many years I've lost track.

Hello Quizzy

So far this is the most accurate test I've taken. Give it a try and lets see who you really are.

Your result for True Colors Test - A Self Inventory...

NT - Scholar (Green)

Congratulations! You are the SCHOLAR.

First, the bad news. On any given bad day you're most likely to be perceived as cold, arrogant, know-it-all. At times you are closed off and independent, seemingly absentminded, and have probably been told that you've got your head in the clouds. You get lost in thought easily, and sometimes you leave people back on Earth when you go off on a reverie. All of this means that you can come off as aloof and unappreciative of other peoples opinions. You know better, you're probably just smarter than them.

Now that we've got that out of the way, on to the good news. You are a critical thinker and an innovator. A lifetime learner, your passion and thirst for knowledge will entertain you throughout your lifetime. You are the "ideas" person that people come to for solutions. To hell with implementing the ideas, you'll leave that for someone else to figure out. In the meantime, you're probably always eager to share solutions and wisdom with those who seek it. You're good at being alone, and probably need alone time periodically to recharge and just be in your head. You're a visionary, mentally tough, analytical and capable of meting out judgment. You are highly knowledgeable and people seek that out in you. Try not to let that get to your head.

Scholar Traits:

• Visionary


• Conscientious


• Calm and patient


• Sees the big picture


• Serious


• Competent


• Inquisitive


• Meticulous


• Innovative


• Insightful and intellectual


• Adaptable


• Can never know enough

Take True Colors Test - A Self Inventory at HelloQuizzy

Susan, Bearing Gifts

Susan has shown me another, more contemporaneous version of Jeff Beck and I like it. I love the bass line, the slow build, the... Well you know what I mean.

Jeff Beck Group

I didn't know about Jeff Beck until Darkblack turned me on to Rollin and Tumblin with Imogen Heap in a 2001 Recording. But this is The Jeff Beck Group of my favorite decade and I was listening to Bill Evans and Miles Davis. Thanks for giving me Jeff Beck. Better late than never.

"It's Just A Simple Meme", He Said. And Then He Was Gone

But it has rules. Yes, there are always rules. This is painful, as I am unruly. And if you are squeemish and under 21 do not peek at some of the links herein. You will be offended. Oh well, here are the rules:

The Rules
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

The big Ape thinks of me now and then. I can die happy now knowing that. Yes I know I am a blog slut, but it's very safe sex because it's all in my mind. Okay, here goes.

1. I should be writing a book about the farting behavior of Americans. It's very strange. I'm not willing to give you details here, since you might try to scoop me, snigger, snigger.
(Well, one little tidbit). There is a huge Asian market for women farting. Honest to god, it's true. I know this because on one of Tom's overly long visits, he spent a great deal of time looking at either "Natural and Hairy Eastern European Naked Women" or Asian women farting. I thought the farting site was hilarious. I could laugh endlessly knowing that guys were getting off on the sound and sight of mooning farting Japanese women, probably due to a cultural tabu that keeps most women from ever farting in, say, Japan, for instance. Ring any bells with any of you repressed American women? Did you know that we all fart in our sleep? That should make you cringe if you are so repressed that farting is not part of the fun of your animal life. This is a bit horrifying, but in looking for fart sites, Utah Savage is right up there on top of the fart sites for Google.

2. I have trouble reading when I'm working on my own writing. But I am gluttonously, obscenely well read. There have been so many prolonged periods when I did nothing else but read, as if it were my job. I used to complain that there should be a professional career path for the obsessive reader. And I'm a literary snob. I admit it. There are certain writers I will not read unless I absolutely must. Like Stephen King, for instance. I hate his writing. I once had a small part in The Stand. I had to read that one. It was gawd awful.

3. The Unconventional Conventionist and I have a close personal relationship and we sometimes talk on the phone for hours. He was my first real blog crush. What do we talk about? I'll never tell.

4. My first boyfriend and I are still close. I was twelve and he was almost sixteen when I fell in love with him. We never had sex. He is coming to Salt Lake soon, like maybe this week end and we will see each other. Last time I saw him was just before I moved back to Salt Lake from Santa Barbara. I drove to Portland to see him. I stayed with him and my favorite of his wives. He and I played backgammon for hours. I was on a winning streak. He considers himself a very good player and continued to tell me that my last move was a mistake even though I was four or five games ahead of him. I went off on him. I though his insistence that I was not as skilled a player as he was terribly arrogant and condescending. Then I spent the next day and a half sobbing and unable to talk about why. It was a kind of epic grief and I haven't quite lived down the embarrassment of not being able to stop crying or explain why.

5. I worked for a professional gambler when I was putting the third husband through graduate school. The professional gambler was the one who taught me to play backgammon. I'm a pretty good player. Not great, but pretty good. Take that Larry.

6. I've mentioned this in passing, but I have a girlfriend who grew up in a Polygamist family. So I know details about the polygamists portrayed in the HBO Special Big Love which is based on the Colorado City group and it's Prophet, Warren Jeffs. Some of the shit they believe is hilarious. It's material for me, so I'm not talking about details now. Oh the hilarity of it all. And the generational cost, psychologically speaking. It is rich material. Magic underpants is the least of it.

So I now tag 1. Lady F, 2. Wee Mousie, 3. MRMacrum, 4. TheMom, 5. Bubs, 6. Sunshine

Sadly, I'm Not Here, But Imogen Heap Is Instead. Lucky You

World's Best Editor

MRMacrum has just given me 17, yes that's 17 very detailed and well thought out pages of editing on the first three chapters of the Novel, Maggy. I sent out a general call for help from those of you who are writers. And I did get a suggestion here and there, but MRMacrum took me very seriously and came to my aid in a big way.

I'm thinking MRMacrum is a teacher, or university professor. I know he's a damn fine writer, but the quality and detail of his efforts on my behalf are extraordinary. And so far I haven't found a suggestion or correction I'm not taking. What he's given me is a very carefully detailed map to every problem in those first three chapters and the solution to fixing the problem. Thank you MRMacrum. Now I have a mad blog crush on you. I hope this doesn't embarrass you. I know you're married, and a lucky woman she is. So I won't travel to Main to track you down. But I can't imagine how much time this took you. Not only did he give me a map to fixing what's wrong, make great suggestions, and correct my shitty punctuation, he did it so carefully, so meticulously, I will simply follow his directions.

It is my belief that every writer of long fiction needs an editor. If you are good enough or lucky enough to publish something that leads to publication of your novel, the publisher assigns an editor to you. It least that's how it used to be. I have a friend who has published two books, and the minute her manuscript was accepted, she was assigned an editor. Such luxury. However, I can't imagine a better editor anywhere than MRMacrum.

Darkblack Has Changed My Life

Very little brings me to my feet these days other than to move from one local in my small house to another. I take my dog out now and then. Once a week I go to the grocery store. I live in my head, not in my body. Not until today. I dropped in to see Darkblack today and heard this and it made me dance. I had no choice in the matter. It moved me in my blood and muscle, it made me dance. Darkblack, I love you like Tengrain. Thanks for the earthquake in my blood.



Thanks Ghost, MySpace won't have me. I hope this is better.

Henry Miller the Painter

I was a lover of Henry Miller's writing and didn't know the man painted until I was in my forties and living in Santa Barbara. My mother was the companion to a very wealthy and intersting woman who was an artist herself and a patron of the visual arts. Her name was Aida Siff. She was a remarkable woman. And through Aida, my mother met Henry Miller's last wife. I met her too, but only briefly. She was a very attractive woman in her sixties or seventies when I met her, and though I don't remember her first name, or even if she remarried, her fame was that she was Henry Miller's last wife. She had a great many of his original paintings, and gave my mother a collection of small reproductions of Henry's paintings. My mother was never a fan of Henry Miller, "that old misogynist," but she knew I was, so she gave me the prints. I never thought of Henry Miller as a misogynist, but I did think Norman Mailer was and not only that, he was a really shitty writer. I mention the two men in the same sentence because that's the way I read them. I must have been plowing through the M's or something. But Henry Miller led me to Anais Nin, where as Norman Mailer led me no place at all. (At least no place I remember). Henry Miller took me to Paris and a lot of other great writers. Henry Miller was a real artist. Norman Mailer was a bully and like all bullies, he probably had a tiny dick.

Love Is A Dog From Hell

Without the bar, without the "other" to love or hate, this is how I feel. Do you think this is something I choose? You would be wrong to think that. This is the way I am. Can you not be you?

The Personal Face Of AIG

Lulu Maude has written a piece about how the collapse of AIG has affected her personally. It is such a clear explanation of the cost of this debacle on the very real personal individual life of one of our own and our neighbors and friends lives, I beg you to go read this piece.

Forgetting the Important Stuff

Tonight I forgot whether or not I fed my big old dog Cyrus. I know I fed him at least once today, but I'm supposed to feed him twice a day and give him his thyroid and pain pills. I don't eat on a schedule, but Cyrus does. But I was lying in bed trying to find something worth watching on TV when I realized I might have missed feeding him. Not that he was begging, and it wouldn't kill him to miss his dinner, but the pills. The pills matter. I don't know whether or not it's worse for him to have too much of his medication or too little.

I used to have this problem with myself. I do not eat if I'm not hungry. So that gives me clues about the food thing. But the pill thing is always the same. I take the same pills or thereabouts at roughly the same time every day morning and night. And sometimes I think I took them but might not have. It is a mindless routine. Finally I had to start putting them in pill minders for a week at a time. Now I can know for sure if I took them or not. Sometimes I still forget to take them. I will eventually discover the error. But I never double dose myself like I used to. I have no daily pill dispenser with morning and evening measured out for Cyrus. Am I finally losing it? Do I even deserve to have a dog? So in guilt I fed him just in case. But I might have dosed him twice. That's bad. And in guilt I probably won't tell the House Call Vet.

Editing

I have posted these three chapters as they would appear in a book. The most recently posted chapter (chapter three) is posted last in the series, for anyone who has been reading along.

I've taken some very good advise on the first chapter edit from MRMacrum, a very fine writer and generous reader/editor.

La Belette Rouge reminded me that the "show don't tell" rule is a good one to follow. So all history of how this family came to be has been cut from chapter 2. I now begin it with the rape of the child, Judy.

Chapter 3 is very short and is the scene in which the Maggy takes Judy in the middle of the night and runs for it. So far, there have been no edits on chapter 3

Maggy, 1st chapter

CHAPTER ONE
Gifts from Maggy

Lucy, my dog, sprawls across my bed and I'm nearly swallowed by a small mountain of down pillows. I'm waking up, sipping my second mug of espresso with two tablespoons of sugar and hot milk and having my first bong hit of the day. Not exactly the breakfast of champions but I like it. The Young and the Restless is on TV and Nick Newman is thinking of sleeping with his slutty secretary, Grace, when Lucy springs up.

She comes to full alert all at once, from a snoozing dog to a tall standing, hackles up, silent attack dog. There's a slight rocking of the bed and the delicate tinkle of her various dog tags. I lean over and look out the second story window of my bedroom to the yard, sidewalk, and street below. Nothing. No dog walking by, no mailman, car, or pedestrian. Then, before I settle back into the pillows and take my second bong hit, I hear the unmistakable sound of the UPS truck's slight screech as it rounds the corner and pulls to a stop in front of the house. The minute it rounds the corner, Lucy is off the bed, down the stairs, at the door and waiting when the UPS guy hits the porch. The second his hand touches the screen door she barks once--deep, loud and with authority. He still has to open the screen door, cross an enclosed porch, ring the bell, and all the time Lucy growls and barks ferociously. It's the confident barking of a very competent watchdog. Both participants know this ritual. She acts tough. He believes her, drops his package, hits the bell, and runs like hell. It's always the same.

I have a cold that's gone bad. I dial my doctor's office and get a busy signal. Hit off. Redial. A commercial comes on and I go down to retrieve the box. It's a big one. I heft it to my hip and grab a knife from the kitchen on the way back upstairs.

I know the package is from Maggy. She sends at least two a month. Thanks to Maggy, Lucy and the UPS guy get to play their ritualized game. Now I have to play the same sort of game with Maggy--different rules, different players, but no less ritualized. After I open the package and sort through the treasures I will have to call her and comment on each piece with interest and enthusiasm, but most importantly my gratitude will have to sound real to her finely tuned ear. I have the rest of the day to prepare my remarks. I'll definitely bathe and change clothes today.

Today's boxes are better than most. These are her rejects from this past weekend's garage sale purchases. It's her obsession. There are five cashmere sweaters. I probably have fifty or sixty cashmere sweaters. I keep the best and pass on the rest of them to friends. This box also contains a pair of Gianni Versace beige suede pants, size 4 (I'm currently an 8 but one of my model friends will be able to wear them) a beaver top hat, some glitzy clip-on earrings, and two pairs of shoes size 7 1⁄2, (her size, not mine). The top hat is my favorite item in this box. I can work up some genuine enthusiasm over a beaver top hat. Who knows, I might want to dress-up like Marlene Dietrich some night.

She's always had the power to wipe me out--mistress as she is of the eviscerating tongue-lash. I know she's just an old woman, opinionated and imperious, alone and hardly much of a threat to me, really. Without me she has no single, aging daughter. Without me she’ll have no one to take care of her when she can't take care of herself. Because of her I have no child of any sex to love me or hate me. Without her I'm home free.

A lifetime of expensive psychotherapy has taught me I can give her the power to hurt me, or not. All the rationality in the world can't make me not fear her, though I still wish it were so simple, since it's hard to love someone you fear. And I do love her. I love her most satisfactorily at a distance. The greater the distance, the more I love her. Once or twice a year I wish her dead with about as much success as I wish I could love her in an uncomplicated way. Not painfully dead, but dead nonetheless.

I'd like to outlive her long enough to know what it is to be free of the need to suppress my rage and be nice, bite my tongue, keep my feelings to myself. I’m so tired of being told I stink and I talk too loud. She has always expected me to share her passions and her prejudices. (She hates fat people and feels entitled to berate them for their food choices in line at the grocery store, while I try to pretend I don't know her.) In person, she requires my undivided, adoring attention. If I don't get that just right it ends in her extravagant crocodile tears and recriminations. I must endure her long rambling critique of everything wrong with me--from my fiscal irresponsibility to my poor housekeeping skills. When I object, whatever the tone of my voice, she says, "Please don't yell, your voice hurts my ears." It's often the only thing she says, but waiting, in case I open my mouth and suck in air, as if to speak, there is the next thrust, "Why must we always talk about the past? You'll never be a grown-up if you can't stop living in the past. Get over it. Move on."

Last time she came to Salt Lake to visit me, my first impulse was to kill myself. Instead I called the therapist I keep in touch with for just such emergencies. It cost four hundred dollars in therapy sessions, canceled bookings (and a pissed off agent), doctor's visits and a new anti-depressant. I spent a month in bed recovering after she left. Usually I can anticipate her impulse to drop in on me and beat her to the draw by scheduling a short visit to Santa Barbara. I can stay in Yankee Farm with my friend Jack.

I'm not proud of this pathetic fear of my own mother; it's such a loathsome admission, and not entirely the truth. What I feel for Maggy has never been simple fear and it's certainly not uncomplicated. Maggy has never been just my mother. We've been rivals since my conception. I worship and fear her as only a powerless rival can. To most people she's a fabulous creature. She was to me too before I got to know her.