In case you haven't heard, the United Nations has just elected a new country to its commission with the name of this blog.
And the country is Iran, and yes--you read that right.
This is the same country which, not even two weeks ago had a man (who obviously has the IQ of the freezing point on the centrigrade scale) released the statement that scantily clad women cause earthquakes. I remember looking down at my capri pants and polo shirt when it was on the news; since I don't adhere to the dress code of the Iranian government, I'm going to assume that I'm one of those scantily clad women-it's only logical, right? Wow--my attire causes earthquakes, guys!! Someone send Bill the memo--I cause earthquakes, but somehow I can't keep him from falling asleep in his chair six nights out of seven.
I should point out here, first, though: I have never considered myself a feminist--or rather, not a feminist who was designed by Gloria Steinhem, Betty Friedan or the NOW. The NOW and the early feminist movement leaders have always struck me as having nothing more and nothing less than a good solid case of penis envy, and I don't have that.
And my Daddy paid me plenty of attention when I was a child. I never needed anyone to tell me that I was as good as a man.....Daddy did that for me. I don't want to be treated equal to a man--I want to be treated better. Because that's the way it should be, and not because some law or 'panel' decrees it, or because someone has shoved that notion down a man's throat. It should be because: as a woman--yeah, I'm that good. Now, there are those who would argue (Gloria, Betty?) that I was simply born into a generation who is reaping the benefits of what they fought so hard for. The way I see it, though, they have simply fought for women to have the playing field leveled for us--forced everyone to accept women on lower standards than men.
I wouldn't stoop to it. Another thing my Daddy taught me was that unfortunately--it's a man's world. And to get along in a man's world......my sister and I would have to be smarter than the boys, tougher than the boys.......and he made sure we were. We grew up knowing there's no such thing as women's work, and no such thing as men's work--it's all the same, roll your sleeves up and get to it. My sister and I came into adulthood knowing how to cook and clean, how to do the laundry and take care of babies....
We also know how to do the yardwork, change a flat tire, use jumper cables, check the fluids, know our way around the fusebox in the house, and have been shooting guns since we were strong enough to hold and control one. In other words--we were taught how to get by if there wasn't a man around.
The really amazing part of this is-- my father is probably what people like Gloria Steinhem and Betty Friedan fear most: a white man from a small, rural Southern town. And he was also raised from age thirteen by a single mother. In spite of his lacking a father figure from such a young age, it has always amazed me that my Dad is one of a dying breed: a gentleman. He's as manly a man as you'd want to meet, too--and his daughters are not only secure in their womanhood; we revel in it. While Misty and I can both be as sweet and gentle as they come, if you care to cross us, do it at your peril, because we also epitomize the statement that 'Hell has no fury like the scorn of a woman.' We're the only Hell our Mama ever raised--but not our Daddy. We're his bumper crop, and his pride in that is apparent.
Now, I say that I have never considered myself a feminist, and I don't. But...having left my father's house when I was seventeen, I have found that the world (and moreover, most men) are not nearly as cognizant of women's capabilities and accomplishments as he was and is, and the ones who at least pay lip service to it are only out to do one of two things: shut her up, or get into her pants.
It didn't even occur to me to become angry about the 'status of women' when I was in countries like Iran--her neighbors, in fact. One of the first things I was issued when I entered the country of Saudi Arabia was hijab. And I was told to wear it if I went off base. I only did so a couple of times, and not out of any objection to being shrouded up like I was being prepared for burial; or moral outrage at being slowly suffocated simply because I was born with breasts and indoor plumbing. It was just too damned hot.
Nor did it occur to me to become angry after doing a semester long research project on Islam....which included several trips to mosque. This is by no means an attack on the Islam faith, because I know there are women in Islam who genuinely feel that hijab is for the good of women--and good for them. There was the sense of family and community that I haven't had when attending even a Christian church (not knocking Christianity, either.) Organized committees to go into the homes of congregants (not sure if that's what they call it) to take food and provide care to families who had new babies and sick family members.......to actually stay and help care for the other family members. Nadereh--my guide for most of the time I was there--explained to me their view behind women remaining in the back of their mosque: Muslims, when they pray, prostrate themselves on the floor. It is their belief that if women were in front of the men, the men might be distracted from keeping their minds on worship--and the suggestion seemed sensible enough to me at the time--it still does. This is so wrong, but I'm going to ask you to get a mental pictures of men worshipping behind a hundred women who have their foreheads pressed against the floor, knees on the floor and hips (and as such, their backside)--slightly inclined? Have you ever heard the locker room discussions that have come about from visions far less titillating than that? I have.....boys will be boys, after all.
After I read Azir Nafisi's 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' my ire was definitely raised. Before the Ayatollah, under the shah--the veil was optional. Iranian women could choose to wear the symbol of their faith--and that, to most Islam women, is what the veil is. A symbol. But like anything.......be it the veil, or be it arbitrary and stupid laws like we're seeing passed in the United States on a daily basis--when something is imposed on you, when it is enforced.....you begin to lose sight of the meaningfulness and the values that those symbols/principles represent. As such......what those who impose the laws ultimately do is give those who are subject to the laws a disdain and even a hatred for whatever they're legislating. The most immediate example that comes to mind after the veil would be something like the unwritten laws of 'being PC' in America. We are constantly censuring ourselves because, "Uh-oh, if I say that, I'll piss off the __________." (Fill in the blank.) And that doesn't foster an attitude of tolerance. What it fosters is the burden of having to appease everyone. And 'burdens' don't foster a good attitude about ANYTHING. It's counterproductive. The powers who enforce these things are bringing an end (and a very abrupt and disdainful one) to the very thing they think is good enough to enforce.
Which brings us back to--at long last--the status of women. We have laws here in the United States that force companies and institutions to accept women NOT because they're qualified, bright, and just as good as the men......but to fill a quota. If you're a woman and you're reading this, do you think that is going to make the men fall all over themselves in their awe of our accomplishments? Nope.
And the 'women' of our country, the ones who probably immediately come to mind because of their feminist agendas--the Nancy Pelosis, the Hillary Clintons, Janet Napolitanos and Sonia Sotomayors.....where are they? Those women who probably had the first subscriptions to Ms. magazine and probably read Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer? Who probably had a poster of Gloria Steinhem hung in their dorm room at Wellesly? Where are they when an organization like the United Nations (keeping in mind its HQ are in the largest city of the United States) elects a country who not only ignore women AND their status--but who search women on university campuses for cosmetics and arrest them for wearing lip gloss or a mini-skirt?
They're nowhere to be found. They rode their feminist agenda to get them all the way to where they are (in positions of extreme power in what is, for the time being, still the greatest country in the free world, no matter how they might try to compromise that). That says to me their own adherence to feminist principles is nonexistent. They should be screaming from the top of the Capitol building.....threatening to boycott the UN and throw its HQ out of New York if Iran is not removed from this panel immediately. They have yet to utter a word in comment, and it's not likely they will......they will turn a blind eye to the women they at least once said they would fight for the rights of in favor of promoting the only bigger agenda they've ever had: their anti-American one.
The only good thing that could possibly come of allowing Iran to have a say in the status of women is that maybe Nancy, Hillary, Janet, Sonia and Co. might have to slap on a burka.
The men would be thankful for that, anyway.......and so would some of the women. At least we wouldn't have to look at them.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Tea Time......
Wow!! Did you know that you can now walk--actually walk, and not sprint--down MLK, Jr. Drive past Grady Memorial Hospital after dark with not a cop in sight and not be in fear for your life?! Atlanta's come a long way, baby!! I remember a time when you only went near Grady was in an ambulance--if you were on foot, it was because you were being chased by a mugger.
Two words I remember hearing from my Daddy--ad nauseum--when I was a kid: "Damn hippies!" Of course, he was usually watching something on TV on the news or about Vietnam War protestors......
And his girl has grown up to join what I suppose is my generations' version of the SDS and other radical groups from the heady days of the 1960s: the Tea Partiers.
Sounds benign enough, right? I went to my first Tea Party tonight, and definitely not my last....I am seriously considering going with Cherokee County's contingent who goes for the Tea Party in D.C. (which has, by the Tea Partiers, been dubbed the 'District of Corruption') on September 12 of this year. I found myself in the midst of between 10 and 15 thousand other people as opinionated as myself tonight! Whew....I was starting to think maybe I was just weird.
Before I launch into the ironies I found myself thinking about tonight on my way home, first--a few observations I had at the State Capitol:
John Berry, a country singer, sang with just his guitar and his wife--a song he wrote just for tonight's rally........a great, simple, folksy song called Give Me Back My America.
John Berry is by no means Jefferson Airplane--and he wasn't singing about White Rabbits (because I'd bet my next paycheck he's never done LSD) but I was dumbfounded to realize: Barry and Co. would probably find his song--about red-blooded, blue-collar American values 'subversive.'
Everyone's seen that old video footage about the war protests of the 1960s--and some of it is downright lewd. I looked around me tonight. Nobody's clothes came off. No free love. People ranged in age from college kids at Georgia State University, Georgia Tech and UGA to an old man who had a sign on his wheelchair: "World War II Veteran." The events started off with the Pledge of Allegiance (very cool here--everyone in attendance, with prompting from absolutely no one, put a huge emphasis on "UNDER GOD"), the National Anthem and a prayer. The Pledge, The Star-Spangled Banner, and prayers......from a 'dangerous faction of society'.....'racists'......'radicals'.......and my personal favorite, 'right-wing extremists.' There were absolutely NO parallels between the people I met tonight and the protestors I've seen from years gone by, and it occured to me more than once how sad and sick it is that our government actually thinks we are dangerous.
We were delighted to learn--from a lobbyist (I know, I know--but she actually lobbies for the PEOPLE and not special interest groups) that the powers that be in Washington may hide from us and ridicule us--but they are scared as hell of us. They're scared for their jobs--and good, they should be. However--unlike SDS and the Weather Underground, we won't be bombing any buildings--our bullets are our ballots.
We did have--I was a little bit excited to see--some party crashers. They stayed on the other side of the barricades behind the police, I noted. One man had a sign that read something about the Obama Administration's charity, and how Jesus preached for charity--the Tea Partiers were going to Hell. His only statement was 'We love our President!' and his wife's: 'We love our First Lady and her baby daddy.' Oh. My. God. From one of the other party crashers: "You lose your job! You lose your job!' I would also bet my paycheck THAT guy was on parole. Yet another man--when the subject of replacing Congress in November came up--screamed, "You will lose! You will lose! November's gonna be a landslide!" There were thousands of Tea Party Patriots--there weren't even a dozen of them. I'm gonna look that old boy up in November and ask him again about that landslide. Another: "This poster is ALMOST as white as this Tea Party." But.....the minorities in our society, I found tonight, need to speak up--they're being grossly misrepresented, too. Tonight, not only did I see African-Americans, I saw Latinos, I even saw a few GAY couples. And they were with us.
And I couldn't help but wonder, on my way back to the car......the current group in Washington. Barry, Joe, Harry, Hillary, Nancy--how is it, what with the things they were involved in, in their youth--how the hell is it they can call US subversive? The current president of the United States began his political career at the foot of a man who was arrested for numerous bombings in the 1960s......a man who is now a college professor. How can any of them know what is good for 'we the people'--much less LEGISLATE it to us--since most of them have never held a real job a day in their lives?
The Democrats in Washington are scared.......they know that WE know their past. The Democrats began the Civil War by and large over the issue of slavery--and disguised it as 'states rights.' The Democrats fought Reconstruction, women's suffrage, and started the Ku Klux Klan. (Someone forgot to tell Barry.) The wars this country has been involved in--both popular and unpopular, aside from the wars fought in the Gulf and Afghanistan--we were led into by Democrats. Liberals don't like to acknowledge a conspiracy theory as explosive as the ones they have about 9/11, and that conspiracy theory is the one about how FDR had his 'Day That Will Live In Infamy' speech written on December 6th, 1941. The Democrats don't like to acknowledge that they were involved in having what might have been the closest thing to a decent Democrat we ever had in the White House murdered and allowed Democratic Senator Arlen Specter to shove the biggest lie (rather, what USED to be the biggest lie) ever told down the throats of the American people with a bullet.......a pristine bullet, that is.
The gargantuan pristine bullet lie has been replaced by a lie this Congress keeps telling the American people via the legislation they pass: "We know what's best for you."
But I think--the Democrats are afraid not so much because we KNOW their past.......
........but we HOLD their future. And they ain't got one in Washington. November is coming.
Two words I remember hearing from my Daddy--ad nauseum--when I was a kid: "Damn hippies!" Of course, he was usually watching something on TV on the news or about Vietnam War protestors......
And his girl has grown up to join what I suppose is my generations' version of the SDS and other radical groups from the heady days of the 1960s: the Tea Partiers.
Sounds benign enough, right? I went to my first Tea Party tonight, and definitely not my last....I am seriously considering going with Cherokee County's contingent who goes for the Tea Party in D.C. (which has, by the Tea Partiers, been dubbed the 'District of Corruption') on September 12 of this year. I found myself in the midst of between 10 and 15 thousand other people as opinionated as myself tonight! Whew....I was starting to think maybe I was just weird.
Before I launch into the ironies I found myself thinking about tonight on my way home, first--a few observations I had at the State Capitol:
John Berry, a country singer, sang with just his guitar and his wife--a song he wrote just for tonight's rally........a great, simple, folksy song called Give Me Back My America.
John Berry is by no means Jefferson Airplane--and he wasn't singing about White Rabbits (because I'd bet my next paycheck he's never done LSD) but I was dumbfounded to realize: Barry and Co. would probably find his song--about red-blooded, blue-collar American values 'subversive.'
Everyone's seen that old video footage about the war protests of the 1960s--and some of it is downright lewd. I looked around me tonight. Nobody's clothes came off. No free love. People ranged in age from college kids at Georgia State University, Georgia Tech and UGA to an old man who had a sign on his wheelchair: "World War II Veteran." The events started off with the Pledge of Allegiance (very cool here--everyone in attendance, with prompting from absolutely no one, put a huge emphasis on "UNDER GOD"), the National Anthem and a prayer. The Pledge, The Star-Spangled Banner, and prayers......from a 'dangerous faction of society'.....'racists'......'radicals'.......and my personal favorite, 'right-wing extremists.' There were absolutely NO parallels between the people I met tonight and the protestors I've seen from years gone by, and it occured to me more than once how sad and sick it is that our government actually thinks we are dangerous.
We were delighted to learn--from a lobbyist (I know, I know--but she actually lobbies for the PEOPLE and not special interest groups) that the powers that be in Washington may hide from us and ridicule us--but they are scared as hell of us. They're scared for their jobs--and good, they should be. However--unlike SDS and the Weather Underground, we won't be bombing any buildings--our bullets are our ballots.
We did have--I was a little bit excited to see--some party crashers. They stayed on the other side of the barricades behind the police, I noted. One man had a sign that read something about the Obama Administration's charity, and how Jesus preached for charity--the Tea Partiers were going to Hell. His only statement was 'We love our President!' and his wife's: 'We love our First Lady and her baby daddy.' Oh. My. God. From one of the other party crashers: "You lose your job! You lose your job!' I would also bet my paycheck THAT guy was on parole. Yet another man--when the subject of replacing Congress in November came up--screamed, "You will lose! You will lose! November's gonna be a landslide!" There were thousands of Tea Party Patriots--there weren't even a dozen of them. I'm gonna look that old boy up in November and ask him again about that landslide. Another: "This poster is ALMOST as white as this Tea Party." But.....the minorities in our society, I found tonight, need to speak up--they're being grossly misrepresented, too. Tonight, not only did I see African-Americans, I saw Latinos, I even saw a few GAY couples. And they were with us.
And I couldn't help but wonder, on my way back to the car......the current group in Washington. Barry, Joe, Harry, Hillary, Nancy--how is it, what with the things they were involved in, in their youth--how the hell is it they can call US subversive? The current president of the United States began his political career at the foot of a man who was arrested for numerous bombings in the 1960s......a man who is now a college professor. How can any of them know what is good for 'we the people'--much less LEGISLATE it to us--since most of them have never held a real job a day in their lives?
The Democrats in Washington are scared.......they know that WE know their past. The Democrats began the Civil War by and large over the issue of slavery--and disguised it as 'states rights.' The Democrats fought Reconstruction, women's suffrage, and started the Ku Klux Klan. (Someone forgot to tell Barry.) The wars this country has been involved in--both popular and unpopular, aside from the wars fought in the Gulf and Afghanistan--we were led into by Democrats. Liberals don't like to acknowledge a conspiracy theory as explosive as the ones they have about 9/11, and that conspiracy theory is the one about how FDR had his 'Day That Will Live In Infamy' speech written on December 6th, 1941. The Democrats don't like to acknowledge that they were involved in having what might have been the closest thing to a decent Democrat we ever had in the White House murdered and allowed Democratic Senator Arlen Specter to shove the biggest lie (rather, what USED to be the biggest lie) ever told down the throats of the American people with a bullet.......a pristine bullet, that is.
The gargantuan pristine bullet lie has been replaced by a lie this Congress keeps telling the American people via the legislation they pass: "We know what's best for you."
But I think--the Democrats are afraid not so much because we KNOW their past.......
........but we HOLD their future. And they ain't got one in Washington. November is coming.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Those who do not remember the past.....
You'd have to have lived under a rock the size of Stone Mountain if you don't know the subject that has been on the lips of almost everyone over the past month: health care.
In the wake of passage of the healthcare bill, there have been accusations of all sorts fired at the current Administration (all of which I agree with, I have to admit.) The most damning and accurate accusation is the one that this bill smacks of socialism. (And, in my opinion--it does alot more than 'smack' of socialism. It's a sucker punch.)
....which has inevitably led to a re-examination on my part to 'socialism' as outlined by Karl Marx; the leaders of the most famous socialist movements in the 20th century--and the hypocrisy that exists among those socialist revolutionaries. I've always been fascinated by history, and in another life, was a history major. And after my nursing degree is finished, I may go back and finish my history degree yet. (There's always a community college that can use a part time history professor.)
George Santayana stated that 'those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it'. With the exception of perhaps China and North Korea--true communism--the ultimate goal of socialism--has failed, and failed miserably. And even in China and North Korea, there exists not true communism as outlined by Marx; but totalitarian regimes in which the government and its sycophants live in the lap of luxury while the people live in abject poverty. They epitomize the statement that 'absolute power corrupts absolutely'. Socialism and communism, IN THEORY, are ideal economies. The problem is this: these economies won't set themselves up--they have to start somewhere, and people have to get the ball rolling.
Note here that I said 'economies'. According to Karl Marx, in order to set up a communist regime, communism wouldn't require government after an unspecified amount of time known as 'the dictatorship of the proletariat.' I point out that it was unspecified because history has proven: the dictatorship of the proletariat drags on in the still-existing communist regimes. The former Soviet Union was still governed by a system no better than the tsarist government they overthrew when the Soviet Union ultimately collapsed in 1989.....72 years after the 'workers' revolution of March, 1917; 71 after the Bolshevik revolution Lenin launched in 1918.
China. Mao Tse-tung secured power in 1949. 81 years later, the people of China are still the subjects of a government that is recognized by the UN as a government that is in perpetual violation of human rights.
China and the Soviet Union are the most notable communist regimes, because of their place in world history. Before I go on into an examination of socialist leaders--first I would like to repeat here the definition of 'proletariat'--as defined by Karl Marx (the original definition of 'proletariat' was a class who had no wealth other than sons):
Proletariat as defined by Marx is a worker--one who uses their 'labor power' to earn a wage. Remember again Marx's philosophy of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat.'
The problem here is....without exception, those who succeeded, however briefly, in establishing socialist regimes were NEVER proletariats!! If you look into the lives of the most notable socialist revolutionaries of our time, you will see that they weren't much more than poor little rich kids who had way too much time on their hands--because they were FUNDED by the regimes they eventually overthrew.
And.....people who (their behaviors and the revolutions they led would suggest they had overwhelming compassion for others) had little, if any regard for morals and human life.
Vladimir Lenin. The son of an educator who was decorated by Tsar Alexander II for his dedication to tsarist principles. The brother of a man who was executed for his involvement in the assassination of the tsar who recognized and rewarded his father--and in doing so, elevated Lenin's family to an almost aristocratic status to them. Lenin himself spent many years in exile, living off the money sent to him by his mother......his mother's income being the pension awarded by Tsar Nicholas II for Lenin's father's service to Nicholas' father.....the assassinated Alexander. (It should be noted here that Lenin wrote Karl Marx just before Marx died, and asked him how to precipitate a socialist revolution in Russia. Marx's response was that a socialist revolution would be virtually impossible in Russia because--even with the vast wealth of the Romanovs--the tsars--there was not enough wealth to go around.) It should also be noted that every socialist revolution in history have taken place in countries of abject poverty....populations with illiterate, uneducated people who would naturally fall under the spell of someone who would promise them the world. The ruthlessness of those who promised them the world keep them silent. There is a story about Lenin at the time his mother in law died. His wife, nursing her dying mother, asked Lenin to wake her if her mother needed her. Lenin's wife woke to find her mother dead. When she asked Lenin, "Why didn't you wake me?" Lenin's response was, "She was dead.....she didn't need you."
Stalin. Born to a relatively wealthy family in what is now the country of Georgia. Studied for the priesthood before embracing socialism. Went on to murder 30 million of his own people.
Mao Tse-tung. Son of a wealthy trader. Educated at secondary schools and universities (in China at that time, a miracle in and of itself.) Married a woman already promised in marriage by her father--Mao's professor--only to have her murdered while he lived openly with a 17 year old girl. Mao raped countless young girls--the younger the better--only to have them executed or resigned them to live as his concubine for as long as he willed. In his little red book, Mao stated that 'political power grows from the barrel of a gun.'
Ho Chi Minh. Son of a lawyer and a baroness, under then-French ruled Indochina. Educated in Europe. The guerilla war he fought against South Vietnam and the United States cost North Vietnam 900,000 of the people he pledged to protect. And ironically enough.....worked for a U.S. intelligence agency.
Pol Pot. Born to an aristocratic Chinese-Khmer family. Moved in high circles in French-run Indochina. Attended college in Paris. Joined the communist movement in Cambodia and later went on to lead a revolution and founded the Khmer Rouge, who would ultimately kill 1/3 of Cambodia's population, and who systematically tortured and killed 'educated' members of Cambodia, whom he felt a threat to his system and the agrarian society he wanted to establish.
Kim Il-Song. Here is one example of a man who lived neither in poverty nor in particular privilege. Born in Vladivostok to a minister. Only formally educated for eight years. Kim Il-Song's placement in power can be attributed only to being in the right place at the right time: Stalin need a puppet regime for North Korea. Kim Il-Song was chosen by Stalin for this task--and it is believed it was due to his lack of formal education: Stalin felt he would be easier to manipulate. During Il-Song's regime and now that of his son, the notorious Kim Jong-Il, hundreds of thousands have died of famine--and there is open cannibalsim in North Korea in hopes of staving off starvation--while the government lives in obscene luxury.
Which leads me to what would appear to be the next socialist revolutionary on the world scene. President Barack Obama. Born in Hawaii (we would be led to believe) to an American mother and a Kenyan father (whom, after the age of two, only saw once in his life.) Educated in Indonesia at parochial schools. Attended Harvard and Yale. Elected to the U.S. Senate after having worked (and at least he's had a job, I'll give him that) as a constitutional rights professor and a lawyer. Spent 158 days in office before deciding to run for President, wins the election and manages in his first year in office to trample of the constitutional rigths he formerly taught (and how I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in that class, because I wonder what he taught.) Passes openly socialist legislation in spite of a public who did all but launch an armed assault on Washington to stop it. Which makes me wonder what he would do if he were really backed in a corner--what would armed resistance be met with?
Reverend Al Sharpton openly admitted recently that when the American public voted for Obama, they voted for a socialist agenda. If that is true, I would encourage Americans--and those of you who read this, encourage your liberal Democrat friends to research the history of socialism.......and remind:
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
In the wake of passage of the healthcare bill, there have been accusations of all sorts fired at the current Administration (all of which I agree with, I have to admit.) The most damning and accurate accusation is the one that this bill smacks of socialism. (And, in my opinion--it does alot more than 'smack' of socialism. It's a sucker punch.)
....which has inevitably led to a re-examination on my part to 'socialism' as outlined by Karl Marx; the leaders of the most famous socialist movements in the 20th century--and the hypocrisy that exists among those socialist revolutionaries. I've always been fascinated by history, and in another life, was a history major. And after my nursing degree is finished, I may go back and finish my history degree yet. (There's always a community college that can use a part time history professor.)
George Santayana stated that 'those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it'. With the exception of perhaps China and North Korea--true communism--the ultimate goal of socialism--has failed, and failed miserably. And even in China and North Korea, there exists not true communism as outlined by Marx; but totalitarian regimes in which the government and its sycophants live in the lap of luxury while the people live in abject poverty. They epitomize the statement that 'absolute power corrupts absolutely'. Socialism and communism, IN THEORY, are ideal economies. The problem is this: these economies won't set themselves up--they have to start somewhere, and people have to get the ball rolling.
Note here that I said 'economies'. According to Karl Marx, in order to set up a communist regime, communism wouldn't require government after an unspecified amount of time known as 'the dictatorship of the proletariat.' I point out that it was unspecified because history has proven: the dictatorship of the proletariat drags on in the still-existing communist regimes. The former Soviet Union was still governed by a system no better than the tsarist government they overthrew when the Soviet Union ultimately collapsed in 1989.....72 years after the 'workers' revolution of March, 1917; 71 after the Bolshevik revolution Lenin launched in 1918.
China. Mao Tse-tung secured power in 1949. 81 years later, the people of China are still the subjects of a government that is recognized by the UN as a government that is in perpetual violation of human rights.
China and the Soviet Union are the most notable communist regimes, because of their place in world history. Before I go on into an examination of socialist leaders--first I would like to repeat here the definition of 'proletariat'--as defined by Karl Marx (the original definition of 'proletariat' was a class who had no wealth other than sons):
Proletariat as defined by Marx is a worker--one who uses their 'labor power' to earn a wage. Remember again Marx's philosophy of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat.'
The problem here is....without exception, those who succeeded, however briefly, in establishing socialist regimes were NEVER proletariats!! If you look into the lives of the most notable socialist revolutionaries of our time, you will see that they weren't much more than poor little rich kids who had way too much time on their hands--because they were FUNDED by the regimes they eventually overthrew.
And.....people who (their behaviors and the revolutions they led would suggest they had overwhelming compassion for others) had little, if any regard for morals and human life.
Vladimir Lenin. The son of an educator who was decorated by Tsar Alexander II for his dedication to tsarist principles. The brother of a man who was executed for his involvement in the assassination of the tsar who recognized and rewarded his father--and in doing so, elevated Lenin's family to an almost aristocratic status to them. Lenin himself spent many years in exile, living off the money sent to him by his mother......his mother's income being the pension awarded by Tsar Nicholas II for Lenin's father's service to Nicholas' father.....the assassinated Alexander. (It should be noted here that Lenin wrote Karl Marx just before Marx died, and asked him how to precipitate a socialist revolution in Russia. Marx's response was that a socialist revolution would be virtually impossible in Russia because--even with the vast wealth of the Romanovs--the tsars--there was not enough wealth to go around.) It should also be noted that every socialist revolution in history have taken place in countries of abject poverty....populations with illiterate, uneducated people who would naturally fall under the spell of someone who would promise them the world. The ruthlessness of those who promised them the world keep them silent. There is a story about Lenin at the time his mother in law died. His wife, nursing her dying mother, asked Lenin to wake her if her mother needed her. Lenin's wife woke to find her mother dead. When she asked Lenin, "Why didn't you wake me?" Lenin's response was, "She was dead.....she didn't need you."
Stalin. Born to a relatively wealthy family in what is now the country of Georgia. Studied for the priesthood before embracing socialism. Went on to murder 30 million of his own people.
Mao Tse-tung. Son of a wealthy trader. Educated at secondary schools and universities (in China at that time, a miracle in and of itself.) Married a woman already promised in marriage by her father--Mao's professor--only to have her murdered while he lived openly with a 17 year old girl. Mao raped countless young girls--the younger the better--only to have them executed or resigned them to live as his concubine for as long as he willed. In his little red book, Mao stated that 'political power grows from the barrel of a gun.'
Ho Chi Minh. Son of a lawyer and a baroness, under then-French ruled Indochina. Educated in Europe. The guerilla war he fought against South Vietnam and the United States cost North Vietnam 900,000 of the people he pledged to protect. And ironically enough.....worked for a U.S. intelligence agency.
Pol Pot. Born to an aristocratic Chinese-Khmer family. Moved in high circles in French-run Indochina. Attended college in Paris. Joined the communist movement in Cambodia and later went on to lead a revolution and founded the Khmer Rouge, who would ultimately kill 1/3 of Cambodia's population, and who systematically tortured and killed 'educated' members of Cambodia, whom he felt a threat to his system and the agrarian society he wanted to establish.
Kim Il-Song. Here is one example of a man who lived neither in poverty nor in particular privilege. Born in Vladivostok to a minister. Only formally educated for eight years. Kim Il-Song's placement in power can be attributed only to being in the right place at the right time: Stalin need a puppet regime for North Korea. Kim Il-Song was chosen by Stalin for this task--and it is believed it was due to his lack of formal education: Stalin felt he would be easier to manipulate. During Il-Song's regime and now that of his son, the notorious Kim Jong-Il, hundreds of thousands have died of famine--and there is open cannibalsim in North Korea in hopes of staving off starvation--while the government lives in obscene luxury.
Which leads me to what would appear to be the next socialist revolutionary on the world scene. President Barack Obama. Born in Hawaii (we would be led to believe) to an American mother and a Kenyan father (whom, after the age of two, only saw once in his life.) Educated in Indonesia at parochial schools. Attended Harvard and Yale. Elected to the U.S. Senate after having worked (and at least he's had a job, I'll give him that) as a constitutional rights professor and a lawyer. Spent 158 days in office before deciding to run for President, wins the election and manages in his first year in office to trample of the constitutional rigths he formerly taught (and how I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in that class, because I wonder what he taught.) Passes openly socialist legislation in spite of a public who did all but launch an armed assault on Washington to stop it. Which makes me wonder what he would do if he were really backed in a corner--what would armed resistance be met with?
Reverend Al Sharpton openly admitted recently that when the American public voted for Obama, they voted for a socialist agenda. If that is true, I would encourage Americans--and those of you who read this, encourage your liberal Democrat friends to research the history of socialism.......and remind:
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
The heart of the matter...
"The Heart of the Matter" is one of my favorite songs by Don Henley. It's a lesson to everyone.....more profound words have hardly ever been written.
I have been honest here on my blog about bipolar disorder...although I am lucky in that mine is not as bad as it could be--that doesn't mean I don't have bad cycles. I do.
And the past month has been one of those bad episodes. It's the first depressed episode since I was diagnosed five years ago. I consider myself lucky....and thanks to a good doctor and good meds, I am already on the mend.....
....two weeks ago, I couldn't say that. I sat in my car in the parking lot of the skate park and just sat behind the wheel and cried. I was so close to not going home that I actually made a left hand turn toward 575 and reluctantly turned around....only after I remembered: my babies.
During a check up today, to see how the new meds were working and to talk about what was bothering me....I broke down and cried, out of absolutely nowhere.
And--LOL--she was probably glad to see me go today. She was kind and caring enough--but today I was having a pity party of the first order......or maybe not.
It's alot of things that are bothering me. Things I haven't been able to give a name to. For someone I hadn't seen in years and years, my cousin's suicide haunts me.
It's George, but it's other things, too. It's the desperation to get into clinicals in the fall. It's work....I am so very disgusted with the situation there.
But today, the doctor was able to put her finger on it and name it, and it was so obvious that I am ashamed to admit I couldn't give it words: my overwhelming need to have people like me, to need (for the most part) forgiveness.....that nothing I am doing in making a difference, and that I am a burden to others. My condition alone is a burden.
It's when my paycheck falls short. And when it does, Bill has to pay for groceries. It's the look on his face at the check-out....pure disgust. It makes me feel helpless and yeah--like it's a burden to him to have to feed his family.
It's the messes the kids leave everywhere. I clean like crazy on my days off.....it does absolutely no good. I come in most nights and have to pick up, or clean up a mess the dog has made they didn't bother to pick up. I woke up this morning to find my son had emptied his backpack of his gym clothes......and had strewn them all over my office floor. What kind of shit is that?
It's when I clean the living room couch and chairs, and lift the cushions--the shit I find. I took covers off the couches the other day, washed them, steam cleaned and Febreezed, and found yogurt cups, spoons, broken pencils (Christopher) and any number of small toys and doo-dads.
It's going in to work to find a packdown list a mile long, and it all requires using the lift equipment--and that means me.
It's Bill telling me that respect is earned. It was a blow.....three kids. Worked up until the day before the girls were due. Came home from the hospital and cooked dinner after they were born--he didn't want to spend money on eating out. Work. Raise the kids. Go to school.....all this with a heart condition--not to mention the emotional issues.
It's Misty......when she says, "Go take a pill--you're good at that."
It's my father's wife, for whom I can never do anything right. It's the scares-the-living-shit-out-of-me fear that something is going to happen to Dad and she'll keep me away. When wondering aloud why she thinks I'm such a bad person--both my Dad and Misty ask me, "She never said you're a bad person...." Does she really have to? She won't speak to me and has spurned my efforts to make things right. I know that Misty has had at least one discussion with Dorothy about the whole situation.......that knowledge that Misty and Dorothy have discussed me feels alot like betrayal....because I know that Misty is willing to do just about anything to stay on her good side--up to and including writing me off. While I don't want my sister to write me off......the small part of me wants to write her off for siding with Dorothy. And while she says she isn't taking sides--her actions say different.
It's my father-in-law. Bill--without thinking, no doubt--revealed a conversation he'd had with his parents a few weeks ago. The impression I got was that, once again, his father was putting me in an unfavorable light. The fact that Bill allowed the conversation to go on makes me feel pretty shitty. For the kids' sake, and in the interest of hoping--as I always do--to repair and make amends.........allowed him back in my life. Temporarily. And damned if he didn't turn right around and piss me off once again about my lack of submissiveness and the fact that I am not under the authority of my husband--nor do I obey him. (I never promised I would--there's no way in Hell I'd agree to that.) Since Bill allows this of his father, I decided to let Roger in on what his beloved son--you know, the one whose authority I'm supposed to be under--has pulled here lately. He lashed out at me for airing dirty laundry.....and I told him he seemed pretty eager to air mine; and that if he wanted to bitch me out on the Biblical characteristics of a wife, Bill's job is priest, provider and protector--and that he's got the provider part down for the most part--but I still have to work, so he's not holding up that end of the proverbial deal. If he was providing, I wouldn't have to. And as to protector--there have been times I'd have been better protected by a serial killer........
It's Rebecca. She is steeped in her own issues right now, and I haven't been such a great friend to her. I am trying to do more of the listening.....I hate to think she is going through what I am, because it's a living hell that I wouldn't wish on anyone, especially not my best friend. She doesn't deserve this.
I think I have decided that my need for forgiveness......and it always points back to this--and I don't mean for it to; Mom is dead and not here to defend herself. But......I always wanted Mom's love and forgiveness.......and yeah, for her to like me. Ultimately, I know she loved me......but I don't think she ever LIKED me.
And.....back to the heart of the matter. I have done what the lyrics say--I am carrying alot of anger--among other things, and it is eating me up inside right now, I do believe.
While I'm doing better than I was two weeks ago, I'm still ironing some things out. There are some things that I have to work on--as always.
Now these times are so uncertain
There's a yearning undefined
And people filled with rage
We all need a little tenderness--
How can love survive in such a graceless age?
The trust and self-assurance that lead to happiness
They're the very things we kill, I guess
Pride and competition cannot fill these empty arms
And the work I put between us
You know it doesn't keep me warm
I have been honest here on my blog about bipolar disorder...although I am lucky in that mine is not as bad as it could be--that doesn't mean I don't have bad cycles. I do.
And the past month has been one of those bad episodes. It's the first depressed episode since I was diagnosed five years ago. I consider myself lucky....and thanks to a good doctor and good meds, I am already on the mend.....
....two weeks ago, I couldn't say that. I sat in my car in the parking lot of the skate park and just sat behind the wheel and cried. I was so close to not going home that I actually made a left hand turn toward 575 and reluctantly turned around....only after I remembered: my babies.
During a check up today, to see how the new meds were working and to talk about what was bothering me....I broke down and cried, out of absolutely nowhere.
And--LOL--she was probably glad to see me go today. She was kind and caring enough--but today I was having a pity party of the first order......or maybe not.
It's alot of things that are bothering me. Things I haven't been able to give a name to. For someone I hadn't seen in years and years, my cousin's suicide haunts me.
It's George, but it's other things, too. It's the desperation to get into clinicals in the fall. It's work....I am so very disgusted with the situation there.
But today, the doctor was able to put her finger on it and name it, and it was so obvious that I am ashamed to admit I couldn't give it words: my overwhelming need to have people like me, to need (for the most part) forgiveness.....that nothing I am doing in making a difference, and that I am a burden to others. My condition alone is a burden.
It's when my paycheck falls short. And when it does, Bill has to pay for groceries. It's the look on his face at the check-out....pure disgust. It makes me feel helpless and yeah--like it's a burden to him to have to feed his family.
It's the messes the kids leave everywhere. I clean like crazy on my days off.....it does absolutely no good. I come in most nights and have to pick up, or clean up a mess the dog has made they didn't bother to pick up. I woke up this morning to find my son had emptied his backpack of his gym clothes......and had strewn them all over my office floor. What kind of shit is that?
It's when I clean the living room couch and chairs, and lift the cushions--the shit I find. I took covers off the couches the other day, washed them, steam cleaned and Febreezed, and found yogurt cups, spoons, broken pencils (Christopher) and any number of small toys and doo-dads.
It's going in to work to find a packdown list a mile long, and it all requires using the lift equipment--and that means me.
It's Bill telling me that respect is earned. It was a blow.....three kids. Worked up until the day before the girls were due. Came home from the hospital and cooked dinner after they were born--he didn't want to spend money on eating out. Work. Raise the kids. Go to school.....all this with a heart condition--not to mention the emotional issues.
It's Misty......when she says, "Go take a pill--you're good at that."
It's my father's wife, for whom I can never do anything right. It's the scares-the-living-shit-out-of-me fear that something is going to happen to Dad and she'll keep me away. When wondering aloud why she thinks I'm such a bad person--both my Dad and Misty ask me, "She never said you're a bad person...." Does she really have to? She won't speak to me and has spurned my efforts to make things right. I know that Misty has had at least one discussion with Dorothy about the whole situation.......that knowledge that Misty and Dorothy have discussed me feels alot like betrayal....because I know that Misty is willing to do just about anything to stay on her good side--up to and including writing me off. While I don't want my sister to write me off......the small part of me wants to write her off for siding with Dorothy. And while she says she isn't taking sides--her actions say different.
It's my father-in-law. Bill--without thinking, no doubt--revealed a conversation he'd had with his parents a few weeks ago. The impression I got was that, once again, his father was putting me in an unfavorable light. The fact that Bill allowed the conversation to go on makes me feel pretty shitty. For the kids' sake, and in the interest of hoping--as I always do--to repair and make amends.........allowed him back in my life. Temporarily. And damned if he didn't turn right around and piss me off once again about my lack of submissiveness and the fact that I am not under the authority of my husband--nor do I obey him. (I never promised I would--there's no way in Hell I'd agree to that.) Since Bill allows this of his father, I decided to let Roger in on what his beloved son--you know, the one whose authority I'm supposed to be under--has pulled here lately. He lashed out at me for airing dirty laundry.....and I told him he seemed pretty eager to air mine; and that if he wanted to bitch me out on the Biblical characteristics of a wife, Bill's job is priest, provider and protector--and that he's got the provider part down for the most part--but I still have to work, so he's not holding up that end of the proverbial deal. If he was providing, I wouldn't have to. And as to protector--there have been times I'd have been better protected by a serial killer........
It's Rebecca. She is steeped in her own issues right now, and I haven't been such a great friend to her. I am trying to do more of the listening.....I hate to think she is going through what I am, because it's a living hell that I wouldn't wish on anyone, especially not my best friend. She doesn't deserve this.
I think I have decided that my need for forgiveness......and it always points back to this--and I don't mean for it to; Mom is dead and not here to defend herself. But......I always wanted Mom's love and forgiveness.......and yeah, for her to like me. Ultimately, I know she loved me......but I don't think she ever LIKED me.
And.....back to the heart of the matter. I have done what the lyrics say--I am carrying alot of anger--among other things, and it is eating me up inside right now, I do believe.
While I'm doing better than I was two weeks ago, I'm still ironing some things out. There are some things that I have to work on--as always.
Now these times are so uncertain
There's a yearning undefined
And people filled with rage
We all need a little tenderness--
How can love survive in such a graceless age?
The trust and self-assurance that lead to happiness
They're the very things we kill, I guess
Pride and competition cannot fill these empty arms
And the work I put between us
You know it doesn't keep me warm
Friday, March 12, 2010
Black sheep
Everyone has a black sheep in their family. In my family, that would definitely be me.
I have struggled with this blog for days--over a week, easily. This is my little spot where I can be completely and totally honest with myself and others. I don't want to come across sounding bitter and angry, because there's already been enough of that in this matter. And the truth of the matter is, most of the biterness and anger has been on my part. (That's also not to say I'm not still bitter and angry--I am still very bitter....but the anger has turned to defiance.)
Defiance....not one of my finer qualities. Bitch is another one. People need to realize that calling a woman a 'bitch' doesn't even hurt anymore. It's a badge of honor. It means I'm not going to put up with anyone's bullshit. If I think something's not right--you can bet I'll call you on it. The way I call you on it depends entirely on the way the offender has treated me in the past. I have tact. Sometimes, I can show a great deal of it.
Other times, I will show my entire Morgan ass--and it's big and ugly.
And here goes the honesty--my thoughts and feelings; proceed with caution.
Let us start with this: a couple of weeks ago, my stepniece (whom my father insists has NO idea who I am) messaged me on Facebook with some very interesting things to say. Very interesting vocabulary and sentiments from a nine year old. I'm not saying someone put her up to doing it, what I am saying is--she heard this from an adult, and kids, God love 'em, will say exactly what they have heard.
My first reaction was this--there is no way on Earth or in Heaven my father would have tolerated that from my sister or I. We would have needed a dentist, if we weren't buried in the backyard for it.
The argument from Dad and Dorothy--she doesn't even know who you are. Oh, really? So--I'm to believe that 1) my stepsister allowed her to become 'friends' with someone--an adult--with absolutely NO explanation as to who I was; and 2) Not only would the child talk to an adult like that, but a complete stranger, too?
Does anyone smell shit yet?
My father once told me I'd be a GREAT lawyer. Because I can catch someone shoveling crap, and damn if I won't question it. My father and I had a very heated argument. I got a double dose of temper. My stepsister then messaged my daughter with a message I didn't like at all--and I heatedly called my father and told him to tell his stepdaughter to keep her f****** mouth shut to my kids.
I admit--that was an overreaction. I am in no way claiming to be perfect here.
I asked my father's forgiveness. Publicly. He said that he, of course, forgave me, and I would never stop being his daughter. But that there were two other people that I needed to ask forgiveness of.
I never spoke a word to Dorothy or Sonica. Not one. And....to back up a little here, I've been more than a little galled by the following:
Dorothy is 'friends' on Facebook with my Dad. Her daughter. Her granddaughter, my sister, and my kids....
But not me. She blocked me, and it hasn't been just since this argument. She has never allowed me to be among her 'friends'.
So, I have no way of apologizing to Dorothy, other than to do it on Dad's page where she is sure to see it--I'm sure she has. I have called Dad.......and at first, he told me to give it a week, and I mighthave to eat some crow. Okay. A week became two or three. And now two or three has become, "Maybe you two can sit down and talk at the family reunion....."
The family reunion is in July.
Now, I ask--if someone doesn't want to talk to me until July, that tells me that they're hoping I'll forget all about it; and that she doesn't want to talk to me, not now, and yeah--not ever. Would that not say the same to my readers here?
I'm a pretty black or white kind of person. I see that my Dad and my sister have their place in her heart. I don't. And neither my Dad or my sister are willing to plead my case to her because they don't want to rock the boat (I'll rock the boat. I'll turn that son of a bitch over.)
I admit here--I want my Dad to intervene on my behalf. I want my sister to do it, too......because they are the only way I have of reaching out to her. She will not speak at all to me. There's nothing I can do. Dad's the one who told me I have to apologize--and now she refuses to accept it.
There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just say it like it is: being the black or white person I am--their attitudes and their refusal to intervene for me spells betrayal. I understand that Dad has to keep the peace with her--she is, after all, his wife. My sister's continuation of any sort of relationship with her hurts like hell.
On this note I will end it: she wants me to wait until July to speak to me. Which to me says, "You can stew in it until then." I am going to do my level best not to stew in it another minute. And I've got SUCH news for everyone concerned--she wants to wait until July.........and she'll keep right on waiting. Because I'll be damned if I go crawling to her for anything after she has time and again spurned my attempts at making things right. She can take her forgiveness and shove it up her ass--because that's sure as hell where I'll put my apologies.
I have struggled with this blog for days--over a week, easily. This is my little spot where I can be completely and totally honest with myself and others. I don't want to come across sounding bitter and angry, because there's already been enough of that in this matter. And the truth of the matter is, most of the biterness and anger has been on my part. (That's also not to say I'm not still bitter and angry--I am still very bitter....but the anger has turned to defiance.)
Defiance....not one of my finer qualities. Bitch is another one. People need to realize that calling a woman a 'bitch' doesn't even hurt anymore. It's a badge of honor. It means I'm not going to put up with anyone's bullshit. If I think something's not right--you can bet I'll call you on it. The way I call you on it depends entirely on the way the offender has treated me in the past. I have tact. Sometimes, I can show a great deal of it.
Other times, I will show my entire Morgan ass--and it's big and ugly.
And here goes the honesty--my thoughts and feelings; proceed with caution.
Let us start with this: a couple of weeks ago, my stepniece (whom my father insists has NO idea who I am) messaged me on Facebook with some very interesting things to say. Very interesting vocabulary and sentiments from a nine year old. I'm not saying someone put her up to doing it, what I am saying is--she heard this from an adult, and kids, God love 'em, will say exactly what they have heard.
My first reaction was this--there is no way on Earth or in Heaven my father would have tolerated that from my sister or I. We would have needed a dentist, if we weren't buried in the backyard for it.
The argument from Dad and Dorothy--she doesn't even know who you are. Oh, really? So--I'm to believe that 1) my stepsister allowed her to become 'friends' with someone--an adult--with absolutely NO explanation as to who I was; and 2) Not only would the child talk to an adult like that, but a complete stranger, too?
Does anyone smell shit yet?
My father once told me I'd be a GREAT lawyer. Because I can catch someone shoveling crap, and damn if I won't question it. My father and I had a very heated argument. I got a double dose of temper. My stepsister then messaged my daughter with a message I didn't like at all--and I heatedly called my father and told him to tell his stepdaughter to keep her f****** mouth shut to my kids.
I admit--that was an overreaction. I am in no way claiming to be perfect here.
I asked my father's forgiveness. Publicly. He said that he, of course, forgave me, and I would never stop being his daughter. But that there were two other people that I needed to ask forgiveness of.
I never spoke a word to Dorothy or Sonica. Not one. And....to back up a little here, I've been more than a little galled by the following:
Dorothy is 'friends' on Facebook with my Dad. Her daughter. Her granddaughter, my sister, and my kids....
But not me. She blocked me, and it hasn't been just since this argument. She has never allowed me to be among her 'friends'.
So, I have no way of apologizing to Dorothy, other than to do it on Dad's page where she is sure to see it--I'm sure she has. I have called Dad.......and at first, he told me to give it a week, and I mighthave to eat some crow. Okay. A week became two or three. And now two or three has become, "Maybe you two can sit down and talk at the family reunion....."
The family reunion is in July.
Now, I ask--if someone doesn't want to talk to me until July, that tells me that they're hoping I'll forget all about it; and that she doesn't want to talk to me, not now, and yeah--not ever. Would that not say the same to my readers here?
I'm a pretty black or white kind of person. I see that my Dad and my sister have their place in her heart. I don't. And neither my Dad or my sister are willing to plead my case to her because they don't want to rock the boat (I'll rock the boat. I'll turn that son of a bitch over.)
I admit here--I want my Dad to intervene on my behalf. I want my sister to do it, too......because they are the only way I have of reaching out to her. She will not speak at all to me. There's nothing I can do. Dad's the one who told me I have to apologize--and now she refuses to accept it.
There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just say it like it is: being the black or white person I am--their attitudes and their refusal to intervene for me spells betrayal. I understand that Dad has to keep the peace with her--she is, after all, his wife. My sister's continuation of any sort of relationship with her hurts like hell.
On this note I will end it: she wants me to wait until July to speak to me. Which to me says, "You can stew in it until then." I am going to do my level best not to stew in it another minute. And I've got SUCH news for everyone concerned--she wants to wait until July.........and she'll keep right on waiting. Because I'll be damned if I go crawling to her for anything after she has time and again spurned my attempts at making things right. She can take her forgiveness and shove it up her ass--because that's sure as hell where I'll put my apologies.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Thanatopsis....
'Thanatopsis' is a famous literary work by someone whose name I'm not remembering right this very moment. I remember studying it in eleventh grade American literature.
The definition of it is a meditation of death...not in terms of doing something to precipitate your own death, but thinking of death from a philosophical point of view.
I found out today that my cousin George took his own life sometime late last night. Tonight as I think about it, there is grief inside me....and, as usually is the case with me, it's not so much grief for the dead as it is for those left behind.....George's brothers and sister. My Dad, who helped care for the five boys before Joy was born. I've known my Dad long enough to know the remarks he makes when he's truly hurting, and when I spoke with him today, there was a sadness in his voice that said, "Those kids never had a chance."
From what I remember of him--and admittedly, it's not much--he was very quiet. Jeffrey and Joy were the two I was closest to....Joy I went to school with, spent the night with several times; a couple of them at our great-aunt Opal's house. She lived in a house out in the sticks and it had an incredibly high porch with a front porch swing. Joy and I used to swing that thing so high Mamaw would yell at us--she was always afraid one of the kids was going to go right over that porch. Because she lived in the sticks--Aunt Opal used to leave the back door--the one in the kitchen--open, just the screen door between the kitchen and the outdoors. Joy and I woke up one morning to find that a racoon had chewed its way through the screen and was sitting on the kitchen table, and screaming like little girls (we were--I think I was 12 and Joy was 13) and Mamaw threatening to switch us over something so silly. The racoon had fled in probably sheer terror at us screaming. Joy and I were talking at Mamaw at once--we had gotten in behind her and was pushing her toward the kitchen. It makes me smile.
They are my Uncle Gene's kids--my Dad's oldest brother. My Uncle Gene died at only 46. Tonight I am thinking about the time--when I spent the night with her at my Aunt Eva's--Joy told me about the day my uncle died. She was eight years old...I haven't seen Joy in (God, is it possible?) eighteen years. George I hadn't seen in almost 20. The last time I saw George was the last time I saw all of Uncle Gene's kids together: Mitch, Jimmy, George, Robert, Jeffrey and Joy.
Jeffrey died the same day as my mother.
I've lost aunts and uncles.....it's something you expect. But when it's the grandkids--my cousins--it feels a little closer to home. I think George was about ten years older than me--which would have made him one year younger than Uncle Gene when he died. My Mamaw had 27 grandkids...we're now down to 23. I'm thinking of Mamaw tonight, too....George is with her now. But I'm thinking about both grandmothers. My Mamaw--my Dad's mother--outlived two children, her husband, and three of her grandchildren; Mark, Jeffrey, and little Vicky, who was stillborn. My Mom's mother outlived two husbands and five children. Both of them had long lives; lives well lived: Mamaw was 82. Grandma Ayers was 94.
I don't wonder what Joy is feeling tonight--I know what she feels. But once upon a time, I knew Joy very well, and I know that she is taking this really hard. And I'm so sorry for her.
While I don't remember much of George, I only wish there was something--anything--someone could have said to him. I understand the emotions behind what he did. I wish someone could have/would have told him that it gets better. I hate to think of anyone dying alone. Our family reunion is coming up in July....I was hoping to see the surviving cousins of my Uncle Gene. It's been too long.
As saddening as death is.....once again, there is the comfort of family. While of course nobody looks forward to the death of a loved one, the gathering of family is sustaining. It eases the ache; and although most of us won't be able to make it for George's farewell (he lived in Maine)--today I spoke with alot of the family; the memories poured out, even a few funny stories (thanks, Aunt Ann) and the 'I love yous', which I love about my Dad's family. They are healing.
So many grandkids did Mamaw have--I even have cousins with the same names. There are many namesakes in my family....some of them, I think the aunts and uncles must have forgotten: "Ooops, we already HAD one of those." I say that in the purest love and a little amusement.
I am thinking of the whole family tonight. We are one less. The family reunions when I was a kid--and there were alot of them--some of my cousins are second sisters and brothers to me.
I've run down all of our names many times in my mind today...and I'll say each and every one of them here:
George (Dave). Vicky. Russell (Mitch). James (Jimmy). George. Robert. Jeffrey. Joy. Rhonda. Michael. Lisa. Jeffrey (Jeff). Darwin. Melissa (Missy). Scott. Mark. David. Eugenia (Suzanne.) Mary (Libby). Vicky. Cheri. Misty. Patrick (Rick.) Caryn. Robert (Robbie). Ginger. Amanda.
Of all of us, Baby Vicky (who died when I was a year old), one of our Jeffreys, Mark, and now George have left us. This is my remembrance to them.
And my love to those of us still here.
The definition of it is a meditation of death...not in terms of doing something to precipitate your own death, but thinking of death from a philosophical point of view.
I found out today that my cousin George took his own life sometime late last night. Tonight as I think about it, there is grief inside me....and, as usually is the case with me, it's not so much grief for the dead as it is for those left behind.....George's brothers and sister. My Dad, who helped care for the five boys before Joy was born. I've known my Dad long enough to know the remarks he makes when he's truly hurting, and when I spoke with him today, there was a sadness in his voice that said, "Those kids never had a chance."
From what I remember of him--and admittedly, it's not much--he was very quiet. Jeffrey and Joy were the two I was closest to....Joy I went to school with, spent the night with several times; a couple of them at our great-aunt Opal's house. She lived in a house out in the sticks and it had an incredibly high porch with a front porch swing. Joy and I used to swing that thing so high Mamaw would yell at us--she was always afraid one of the kids was going to go right over that porch. Because she lived in the sticks--Aunt Opal used to leave the back door--the one in the kitchen--open, just the screen door between the kitchen and the outdoors. Joy and I woke up one morning to find that a racoon had chewed its way through the screen and was sitting on the kitchen table, and screaming like little girls (we were--I think I was 12 and Joy was 13) and Mamaw threatening to switch us over something so silly. The racoon had fled in probably sheer terror at us screaming. Joy and I were talking at Mamaw at once--we had gotten in behind her and was pushing her toward the kitchen. It makes me smile.
They are my Uncle Gene's kids--my Dad's oldest brother. My Uncle Gene died at only 46. Tonight I am thinking about the time--when I spent the night with her at my Aunt Eva's--Joy told me about the day my uncle died. She was eight years old...I haven't seen Joy in (God, is it possible?) eighteen years. George I hadn't seen in almost 20. The last time I saw George was the last time I saw all of Uncle Gene's kids together: Mitch, Jimmy, George, Robert, Jeffrey and Joy.
Jeffrey died the same day as my mother.
I've lost aunts and uncles.....it's something you expect. But when it's the grandkids--my cousins--it feels a little closer to home. I think George was about ten years older than me--which would have made him one year younger than Uncle Gene when he died. My Mamaw had 27 grandkids...we're now down to 23. I'm thinking of Mamaw tonight, too....George is with her now. But I'm thinking about both grandmothers. My Mamaw--my Dad's mother--outlived two children, her husband, and three of her grandchildren; Mark, Jeffrey, and little Vicky, who was stillborn. My Mom's mother outlived two husbands and five children. Both of them had long lives; lives well lived: Mamaw was 82. Grandma Ayers was 94.
I don't wonder what Joy is feeling tonight--I know what she feels. But once upon a time, I knew Joy very well, and I know that she is taking this really hard. And I'm so sorry for her.
While I don't remember much of George, I only wish there was something--anything--someone could have said to him. I understand the emotions behind what he did. I wish someone could have/would have told him that it gets better. I hate to think of anyone dying alone. Our family reunion is coming up in July....I was hoping to see the surviving cousins of my Uncle Gene. It's been too long.
As saddening as death is.....once again, there is the comfort of family. While of course nobody looks forward to the death of a loved one, the gathering of family is sustaining. It eases the ache; and although most of us won't be able to make it for George's farewell (he lived in Maine)--today I spoke with alot of the family; the memories poured out, even a few funny stories (thanks, Aunt Ann) and the 'I love yous', which I love about my Dad's family. They are healing.
So many grandkids did Mamaw have--I even have cousins with the same names. There are many namesakes in my family....some of them, I think the aunts and uncles must have forgotten: "Ooops, we already HAD one of those." I say that in the purest love and a little amusement.
I am thinking of the whole family tonight. We are one less. The family reunions when I was a kid--and there were alot of them--some of my cousins are second sisters and brothers to me.
I've run down all of our names many times in my mind today...and I'll say each and every one of them here:
George (Dave). Vicky. Russell (Mitch). James (Jimmy). George. Robert. Jeffrey. Joy. Rhonda. Michael. Lisa. Jeffrey (Jeff). Darwin. Melissa (Missy). Scott. Mark. David. Eugenia (Suzanne.) Mary (Libby). Vicky. Cheri. Misty. Patrick (Rick.) Caryn. Robert (Robbie). Ginger. Amanda.
Of all of us, Baby Vicky (who died when I was a year old), one of our Jeffreys, Mark, and now George have left us. This is my remembrance to them.
And my love to those of us still here.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
For my Mom.....
Tomorrow my mother would have been 61 years old. Every year near her birthday, I like to commit something to writing to her.
I'm not sure if it weighs on me acutely this year because of the general mood of things right now; things are up in the air at work; school is looming before me--and the question of clinicals--and I wish that it would hurry up and start, because not only does tomorrow mark her birthday, but it marks the beginning of the whole lousy spring of the year she died.
Mom was diagnosed with Stage IIIC endometrial cancer in mid-March. A mere six weeks later, on May 6, she was gone. And while the warmth and the flowers of spring remind me of rebirth and the fact that life can and does and has gone on--it sometimes doesn't make spring any easier. It seems to be going around; I talked to my baby cousin yesterday, and Amanda is very much at a cross-roads right now, too. It's a helpless feeling not being able to go to her right now; and not being able to know what to tell her. Her problems are greater than mine in the grand scheme of things, I realize......and all either of us can do is what we used to say when I was in the Air Force: "Hurry up and wait." Every other waking moment is bills.....school.....will-I-get-into-clinicals-this-time? The irritation of the work situation is helping not at all. It's driving me a little loopy.
.....just as that spring 14 years (has it really been that long since I've seen my Mom?) ago. The tests. The two surgeries to put shunts in her failing kidneys--both unsuccessful. The helpless knowledge that while we were waiting to get her functioning sufficiently to withstand chemo and radiation--the cancer could be, and was--metastasizing. Growing beyond the control of the doctors and medicine. It was over too quickly.......and not quickly enough, when I think of how she was suffering at the end. The night before she died was the longest night of my life--including the nights I was in labor with my kids; and anyone who has experienced that can tell you: those are some long nights indeed.
My Dad had sent both my sister and I home from the hospital; in spite of the fact that I was 21 and my sister 18, we would always be, to Mom I suppose, her little girls, and it wasn't the place for two little girls. I talked to her on the phone at about midnight as she took a breathing treatment. It was the last time on this Earth I'd ever speak to her, and after the relationship I'd had with her at times, it is still comforting to me, today, that the last words I ever spoke to my mother were, "I love you, Mom." My friend Michelle came and sat with me that night. I have no recollection of where Misty was, or when she got home, for some reason--but I do remember she was there when Dad called the next morning to tell us she was gone. The last thing I remember was it being four in the morning, and I had been working on a cross-stitch pattern--"Children Learn What They Live." I don't remember Michelle leaving--though she must have; she was gone when the call came. I woke up in my parents bed with Misty and Christopher--and it was storming violently when the call came. For a moment I was a little girl--storms always sent us to Mom and Dad's room. I remember the intensity of that storm, and I remember Misty's voice, and she was crying, "Daddy, tell her I love her......" she hung up the phone and told me, "She was already gone......" Christopher was awake now and looking between me and his aunt, only two years old and not accustomed to seeing "Aunt Tee" cry. I remember picking him up and carrying him to the kitchen, and the T.V. still on in the living room; the National Weather Service was warning that Campbell County was under a tornado warning. I was marvelling at the fact that I could never, ever, remember LaFollette having a tornado warning. And being in disbelief--Mom couldn't be gone. Not Mom. She didn't give up.....something that both impressed and infuriated me at times.
I didn't believe it until Dad and Aunt Mae pulled into the driveway, and I ran to the door. And the look on my Dad's face was all it took. My father, 6'2", had always, always looked huge and imposing to me, both as a little girl and as a grown woman. While he's still my hero--he's never again looked like the giant I always thought him to be. Devastation was written there, in his face, and almost appeared to have shrunk. I walked into the back hallway and cried furiously for about a minute and a half......and it was all I would cry for the next several weeks about it. I did not cry at her viewing.....her funeral....... And I didn't cry nearly as much for myself as I did for my Dad, who was clearly beside himself....or for my sister, now sobbing in my Dad and my Aunt's arms; Misty was completely lost. I dried my eyes, and I remember walking into the living room and picking that cross-stitching up off the couch. I folded it and put it in a bag......the bag from Oak Ridge Methodist Medical Center--from the day they ran the tests that would confirm the diagnosis. Mom had joked I had been working on that thing forever and would never finish it......I can remember working furiously on it the night before she died. I wanted to show it to her--before, and if, she died. I sometimes think now that I worked so hard on it that night thinking that if only I finished it........? What might have been? Of course my logical mind knows that nothing different would have happened. But....that cross stitch remains in that bag. It's never been taken out again, unfinished. While I sometimes think to myself if I took it out and finished it, maybe I could put my dread of spring behind me--again I know, it wouldn't be that way. Spring is forever bittersweet for me. And besides--not finishing it is my way of letting Mom have the last word in this one; God knows I never wanted to let her have it when she was alive.
I also remembered a conversation I'd had with her around Christmas: I had been working on that cross stitch and she had said, hearing the sleet on the roof, "I've never wanted to die in the winter." Something went cold in me when I heard it--and I realize now that I should have known then, at that moment--something was very wrong. I looked up at her, and she was actually tearing up. "Something about being put in the cold ground....." I remember that my heart was pounding. And, not knowing what to say, so shocked was I at this version of my Mom--had stammered out NOT, "You're not going to die, Mom......" or "Don't be silly," had said, "Well, uh, you know.....Mom, it's just your body......"
If I could turn back time and go back to that, I would have said something else, and again I have that thought, "If only I had said something different....." Now, I know nothing would be different, it's just the way I think sometimes. My answer had caused Mom to brush away a tear and smile quickly--"Oh, I know." God answered her prayers the day she was laid to rest; it was burning hot, and only the first week of May. I was never and haven't since--been that happy to be outside in that sort of heat.
Mom and I had some fights that the world's greatest generals are glad they missed. She was 5'1" and I was taller than her from the time I was eleven years old, but I was scared of that woman like a virgin on prom night. Bigger than her for as many years as I was smaller than her.....but she whipped my ass more times than I would care to tell you about, AFTER I was bigger than her, thankyouverymuch--and still could, because I know enough to know I would throw up the white flag the second she started in. And I say that with a smile.
There were days we could have killed each other. And tried......she had the advantage here, because I would never lay a finger on my Mom, although she laid hers on me!! (Again, smiling--laughing just a little.) Probably the sorriest moment of my life was one day when we were baring our fangs at each other and she had lit into me like flies on shit. Mom had said she would die and go to Hell before........and I had piped up and said, "Oh, yeah? You'd be in good company there!!" and the second it was out of my mouth, I was wishing the bomb would drop, because it would have been far less painful.......We could both laugh about it later after I was grown and gone, but at the time it happened, Dad and Misty stood poised to stop us from doing anything we might go to the pokey for.
And I admit, after I left home, I did things for pure shock value to Mom. I went to Mexico for a vacation. I dyed my hair (slutty, to her Pentecostal upbringing, and although she finally gave up that particular point as a lost cause, she could never stop herself from shaking her head at my new haircolor.) She would call me when it was two in the afternoon, demanding to know why I was still in bed.......and I would all too gleefully tell her it was because any movement made the room spin--and the ringing of the phone sounded like firecrackers in my ears; late night......"Don't YELL, Mom....." The time she came to see me and all I had in the place I shared with my roomies was Twinkies, Mountain Dew, cigarettes, coffee, and a half a bottle of vodka. She'd take me shopping for clothes when I was home....she hated mine, and although she hated the ones I picked out, she bought them anyway. ("That makes you look taller and scrawnier than you already are!!") She threw away every Aerosmith tape I ever had when I was a teenager--and for my twentieth birthday? She bought me Aerosmith tickets.....
Not long after survival school I was home, and she had been horrified at my appearance when she saw me...."You look like you're starving to death...." I had been ready to pack my bags and go back to Texas; we had bickered and bickered--wow!! The argument we had that stands out the most bears remembering here, because it's funny now: My mother had picked up my dog tags, where I had taken them off and laid them down. If you've never read dog tags, the following is engraved on them: Your name, Social Security Number, Blood Type, Religion and your branch of service. Mom looked at mine--and here is a classic Dora Elizabeth and Cheri Lynn Morgan exchange:
"Protestant?!" (Mom. And it didn't come out PRA-testant, as you would give the word the infliction when you're referring to religion; it came out Protest-Ant. This is important.)
"Yeah......" shrug of my shoulders, total nonchalance. I had thought nothing of it. "It's what I am...."
"You are not!!" She was really heated, and at the time, I was absolutely befuddled as to why. From the ensuing rant, I gleaned that my mother thought 'Protestant' was a euphemism for 'atheist'. And I remember saying to her--in a perfect example of why she found me absolutely infuriating......."MO--OO-OOM......I am not Catholic. I don't need a priest, Extreme Unction, or Last Rites!! I'm not Jewish, so I don't need a rabbi, or someone to say kaddish!! I'm not Muslim--so it's okay to embalm me and chunk me in a fridge for more than 24 hours before they bury me; I'm not a Jehovah's Witness--of course, if I WAS, we wouldn't be having this conversation, because I'd never have joined anyway--but just the same, they can give me a blood transfusion!! This is so they know what to do with me when they find me incapacitated or DEAD!!!"
"They're going to pray that you don't split Hell wide open!!"
NOW I understood. I had had enough arguments with Mom to realize--she didn't recognize this word 'Protestant'. "Mom.......it just means I am not a part of a faith that I am baptized, bar-mitzvahed, bat-mitzvahed, or, thank God, circumsized into, and,"--and here I said the wrong thing, "You're a Protestant, too!!" (I'm a Protestant, you're a Protestant.....would ya like to be a Protestant, too?!?!--she wasn't amused......)
Off to the races....."Your father's dog tags say 'Southern Baptist'!!" (And indeed they did.) "Well, I'm sorry--I was a little sobered at thinking about what they would think, looking at my dog tags when I am DEAD--they're not going to give a shit about whether or not I'm a Baptist--they only want to know what to do with my body!! 'Protestant' seemed sufficient!!" It went on for a bit longer before I finally, beleaguered, said, "Oh, for God's sake--I didn't come up with it. And I'll punch Martin Luther in the face for this when I get to Heaven--MOM!! The Roman Catholic Church thought up 'protestant'!!! HUNDREDS of years before you or I were ever born.....blame the Pope!!!! I promise--when they see that on my dog tags, they're not going to think I was the demon spawn of Madeleine Murray O'Hara......they're going to know I was God-fearing enough to know what PROTESTANT means!!!"
That woman NEVER looked at my dog tags again without her eyes squinting in suspicion. I still carry one of them on my car keys, and I laugh every time I think about it.
......and I had gone to bed, and drifted off into a fitful sleep.....
.....and woke up with a start, ready to start swinging at whatever woke me up--survival school in all the interesting ways they devise for sleep deprivation will do that to you--only to find that it was Mom who woke me up......
She had come in to my room to put another blanket on me, and was tucking the covers up under my chin--which was what woke me. She had jumped back when I sprang up, and said, "It's me!! It's Mommy....." I was eighteen years old. And heard not, "It's just me!!" But--"It's Mommy." She hadn't referred to herself as 'Mommy' since I was about six. And when I laid back down, she pulled up the covers.......and, in something else uncharacteristic of Mom, leaned over and kissed me on the forehead, and I could swear she let her lips stay there for a second, as if checking me for a fever.
It never occured to me when I was growing up--in spite of the fact she had cancer when I was only four--that she would go before Dad. Honestly, I thought that woman would be standing over ME (and I just might have gone at her hands.....) I had an unreasonable fear, after my Uncle Gene died at 46, that I would lose Daddy when he was that age. He had a heart attack at 44, and I was batshit with fear. Ironically--it was Dad who was 46 when Mom died; Mom herself had just turned 47. One of those little plot twists that sneaks up and surprises you in a way you never expect.
I have little reminders of Mom.....sometimes I see her in my own face. I see her in Cate--my youngest daughter is stubborn as her Me-Mom, and some of the expressions she gets sometimes are Dora Morgan made over. And Cate's got her temper!! Although Caroline has grown to be more like Bill than me, when she was born, the doctor held her up for me to see......and the line in my mother's forehead that would stick out when she was going to cry, or when she was angry--was etched in my newborn daughter's face. I had been a little stuck on a middle name for Caroline, and after that--Caroline Elizabeth Greenway she became; Dora Elizabeth Morgan's namesake. Misty looks shockingly like our mother........she looks like the Mom we had when she was young--before the cancer and the worry and everything else got her. Misty is beautiful like my Mom when she was young--because my mother was as beautiful a woman as anyone has ever seen when we were small. She has Mom's easy grin and her green eyes. She's little like Mom.........but she is Chuck Morgan's daughter. Gives not a shit about anything. She's not bad tempered like Mom (I AM!!)--I think I understand it more now; Misty was Mom's girl probably because.......well, Misty is like Dad, and after all--Mom loved Dad enough to marry him.
And while I don't look like her, and while I have dispensed with most of Mom's terrible temper--I am Dora Morgan's daughter. I think sometimes now that Mom didn't like herself very much, and I don't understand why, because when she wasn't in the death grips of one of her moods, Mom was a great person. She was pretty and funny, and she had a great heart. I think Mom sometimes saw the things in me that she liked in herself the least, and she tried--sometimes literally--to knock that out of me. When I was a teenager in particular, I was quiet, moody, and more inclined to be interested in what Mom considered 'dark'. A bookworm and a loner for the most part, it's easy to see why Mom didn't 'get' me sometimes, looking back. Mom became a believer in the saying, "It's the quiet ones you've got to watch," and I was the reason for that. I turned out to be the only Hell my Momma ever raised......sometimes I'm proud of that, sometimes not.
God has granted me life reminders--in 2001, my cousin Bonnie gave birth to her daughter on what would have been Mom's 52nd birthday. And Mom got another namesake that day--Carsyn Elizabeth Denney was born on February 26, 2001; and the very next day, on Bill's mother's birthday came my youngest child. I think that was God's way of making the month of February more bearable.......I know He was smiling twice as hard at our family that week.
On May 8th, 2004, I stood at the same cemetery where we had laid my mother to rest eight years before, to the day..........to lay her oldest brother to rest. Mom's mother had passed only weeks before. And while some might think that particularly cruel......I like to think that God would have it so that I don't have another painful reminder: My uncle died May 5th, 2001. Mom died on the 6th......the first week of May hurts very badly--and while it never goes completely away, it is eased away with the coming of summer.
I find myself thinking more of the good these days. I think more about times like.........when we used to go pick up Daddy from work--when I couldn't have been more than three, and I thought ALL the sailors were Daddy ("There's Daddy!!" at every single one I saw.......and Mom and I would sing, "Daddy, oh Daddy, where are you?!")......and Daddy would somehow manage to sneak around my watchful eyes and pop up in the back window and yell, "I GOTCHA!!!" And Mom and I would would scream, "DADDDDDY!!!!"
I keep my favorite picture of us near my desk.....one of me in a little white dress with navy blue polka-dots, sitting in her lap and beaming like the little ham I was at two years old--and her smiling a little wryly--either at the fact (as she said) that she wasn't exactly dressed for a picture or at the little turd she's holding.
I think about the last time we were stationed in Memphis--Chinese food every Friday night. I think about when she used to work third shift and would grin at us on her way out the door and say, "Oh, boy!! Full moon tonight......"
.....or the time we were on our way to Ohio, and, "Don't get off here!! THIS IS EXIT 69!!"--roared laughing and smacked me playfully on the arm after I spit Pepsi all over the steering wheel AND the windshield and yelled, "MOTHER!!" when I realized in horror that--yes, my mother was full of sexual innuendo when she said it--and more horrified still that she knew what a 69 even was.....and she said, "Well!! I graduated in 1968--and we used to say, 'At least we're not graduating in '69!!!!!" She laughed the rest of the way to Dayton.
....her howling laughing at me when my Mamaw Morgan, when Bill and I began to discuss marriage and the possibility of having more children later told me--"Girl, you'd best tell him when he gets to acting like that to find a slab of meat or a hole in the fence....." and I said, "Mamaw!!!" Mom laughed till she cried and all I could do was sputter. "She's speechless!!" I don't know what Mom thought was more funny--what Mamaw said, or the fact that her oldest daughter was speechless.
Or when I was in labor with Christopher. My pulse went up over 200--and I don't remember squat about it except ALOT of doctors, Mom telling one of them she wasn't leaving, and the last thing I remember about it was.....looking under one of the doctor's arms, and seeing Mom. Her eyes were squeezed tight, her hands were tightly folded under her chin, and her lips were moving in prayer......and I know I saw a tear. Her laughter when, in the delivery room, the first contraction in there brought "PUSH!!" out of all the doctors, nurses and Mom.......and Mom added, "Chin to your chest, honey!!" and I said--and the only reason I got away with it was I was in labor; 21 hours into labor and EXHAUSTED--said: "Mom, shut up and get the f--- away from me......"and she cried from laughing. The second he was born and they held him up, she said, "Oh, my poor baby--that kid weighs ten pounds if he weighs an ounce......." and then she squealed, "Ohhhhhh......HE'S GOT RED HAIR!!!!" while trying to give me a squeeze--which I was struggling to stay out of....."Go with the baby, Mom!!! Don't let them lose him!!"
So.....in closing: I once heard the expression "Everything is okay in the end. If it's not okay--it's not the end." I hope Mom went knowing that everything was okay......or at least in the process of being okay. We are.....
Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you and I miss you.
"Where is the light that I recognized.....gone away.....
...But I won't cry for yesterday; there's an ordinary world somehow I had to find."
I'm not sure if it weighs on me acutely this year because of the general mood of things right now; things are up in the air at work; school is looming before me--and the question of clinicals--and I wish that it would hurry up and start, because not only does tomorrow mark her birthday, but it marks the beginning of the whole lousy spring of the year she died.
Mom was diagnosed with Stage IIIC endometrial cancer in mid-March. A mere six weeks later, on May 6, she was gone. And while the warmth and the flowers of spring remind me of rebirth and the fact that life can and does and has gone on--it sometimes doesn't make spring any easier. It seems to be going around; I talked to my baby cousin yesterday, and Amanda is very much at a cross-roads right now, too. It's a helpless feeling not being able to go to her right now; and not being able to know what to tell her. Her problems are greater than mine in the grand scheme of things, I realize......and all either of us can do is what we used to say when I was in the Air Force: "Hurry up and wait." Every other waking moment is bills.....school.....will-I-get-into-clinicals-this-time? The irritation of the work situation is helping not at all. It's driving me a little loopy.
.....just as that spring 14 years (has it really been that long since I've seen my Mom?) ago. The tests. The two surgeries to put shunts in her failing kidneys--both unsuccessful. The helpless knowledge that while we were waiting to get her functioning sufficiently to withstand chemo and radiation--the cancer could be, and was--metastasizing. Growing beyond the control of the doctors and medicine. It was over too quickly.......and not quickly enough, when I think of how she was suffering at the end. The night before she died was the longest night of my life--including the nights I was in labor with my kids; and anyone who has experienced that can tell you: those are some long nights indeed.
My Dad had sent both my sister and I home from the hospital; in spite of the fact that I was 21 and my sister 18, we would always be, to Mom I suppose, her little girls, and it wasn't the place for two little girls. I talked to her on the phone at about midnight as she took a breathing treatment. It was the last time on this Earth I'd ever speak to her, and after the relationship I'd had with her at times, it is still comforting to me, today, that the last words I ever spoke to my mother were, "I love you, Mom." My friend Michelle came and sat with me that night. I have no recollection of where Misty was, or when she got home, for some reason--but I do remember she was there when Dad called the next morning to tell us she was gone. The last thing I remember was it being four in the morning, and I had been working on a cross-stitch pattern--"Children Learn What They Live." I don't remember Michelle leaving--though she must have; she was gone when the call came. I woke up in my parents bed with Misty and Christopher--and it was storming violently when the call came. For a moment I was a little girl--storms always sent us to Mom and Dad's room. I remember the intensity of that storm, and I remember Misty's voice, and she was crying, "Daddy, tell her I love her......" she hung up the phone and told me, "She was already gone......" Christopher was awake now and looking between me and his aunt, only two years old and not accustomed to seeing "Aunt Tee" cry. I remember picking him up and carrying him to the kitchen, and the T.V. still on in the living room; the National Weather Service was warning that Campbell County was under a tornado warning. I was marvelling at the fact that I could never, ever, remember LaFollette having a tornado warning. And being in disbelief--Mom couldn't be gone. Not Mom. She didn't give up.....something that both impressed and infuriated me at times.
I didn't believe it until Dad and Aunt Mae pulled into the driveway, and I ran to the door. And the look on my Dad's face was all it took. My father, 6'2", had always, always looked huge and imposing to me, both as a little girl and as a grown woman. While he's still my hero--he's never again looked like the giant I always thought him to be. Devastation was written there, in his face, and almost appeared to have shrunk. I walked into the back hallway and cried furiously for about a minute and a half......and it was all I would cry for the next several weeks about it. I did not cry at her viewing.....her funeral....... And I didn't cry nearly as much for myself as I did for my Dad, who was clearly beside himself....or for my sister, now sobbing in my Dad and my Aunt's arms; Misty was completely lost. I dried my eyes, and I remember walking into the living room and picking that cross-stitching up off the couch. I folded it and put it in a bag......the bag from Oak Ridge Methodist Medical Center--from the day they ran the tests that would confirm the diagnosis. Mom had joked I had been working on that thing forever and would never finish it......I can remember working furiously on it the night before she died. I wanted to show it to her--before, and if, she died. I sometimes think now that I worked so hard on it that night thinking that if only I finished it........? What might have been? Of course my logical mind knows that nothing different would have happened. But....that cross stitch remains in that bag. It's never been taken out again, unfinished. While I sometimes think to myself if I took it out and finished it, maybe I could put my dread of spring behind me--again I know, it wouldn't be that way. Spring is forever bittersweet for me. And besides--not finishing it is my way of letting Mom have the last word in this one; God knows I never wanted to let her have it when she was alive.
I also remembered a conversation I'd had with her around Christmas: I had been working on that cross stitch and she had said, hearing the sleet on the roof, "I've never wanted to die in the winter." Something went cold in me when I heard it--and I realize now that I should have known then, at that moment--something was very wrong. I looked up at her, and she was actually tearing up. "Something about being put in the cold ground....." I remember that my heart was pounding. And, not knowing what to say, so shocked was I at this version of my Mom--had stammered out NOT, "You're not going to die, Mom......" or "Don't be silly," had said, "Well, uh, you know.....Mom, it's just your body......"
If I could turn back time and go back to that, I would have said something else, and again I have that thought, "If only I had said something different....." Now, I know nothing would be different, it's just the way I think sometimes. My answer had caused Mom to brush away a tear and smile quickly--"Oh, I know." God answered her prayers the day she was laid to rest; it was burning hot, and only the first week of May. I was never and haven't since--been that happy to be outside in that sort of heat.
Mom and I had some fights that the world's greatest generals are glad they missed. She was 5'1" and I was taller than her from the time I was eleven years old, but I was scared of that woman like a virgin on prom night. Bigger than her for as many years as I was smaller than her.....but she whipped my ass more times than I would care to tell you about, AFTER I was bigger than her, thankyouverymuch--and still could, because I know enough to know I would throw up the white flag the second she started in. And I say that with a smile.
There were days we could have killed each other. And tried......she had the advantage here, because I would never lay a finger on my Mom, although she laid hers on me!! (Again, smiling--laughing just a little.) Probably the sorriest moment of my life was one day when we were baring our fangs at each other and she had lit into me like flies on shit. Mom had said she would die and go to Hell before........and I had piped up and said, "Oh, yeah? You'd be in good company there!!" and the second it was out of my mouth, I was wishing the bomb would drop, because it would have been far less painful.......We could both laugh about it later after I was grown and gone, but at the time it happened, Dad and Misty stood poised to stop us from doing anything we might go to the pokey for.
And I admit, after I left home, I did things for pure shock value to Mom. I went to Mexico for a vacation. I dyed my hair (slutty, to her Pentecostal upbringing, and although she finally gave up that particular point as a lost cause, she could never stop herself from shaking her head at my new haircolor.) She would call me when it was two in the afternoon, demanding to know why I was still in bed.......and I would all too gleefully tell her it was because any movement made the room spin--and the ringing of the phone sounded like firecrackers in my ears; late night......"Don't YELL, Mom....." The time she came to see me and all I had in the place I shared with my roomies was Twinkies, Mountain Dew, cigarettes, coffee, and a half a bottle of vodka. She'd take me shopping for clothes when I was home....she hated mine, and although she hated the ones I picked out, she bought them anyway. ("That makes you look taller and scrawnier than you already are!!") She threw away every Aerosmith tape I ever had when I was a teenager--and for my twentieth birthday? She bought me Aerosmith tickets.....
Not long after survival school I was home, and she had been horrified at my appearance when she saw me...."You look like you're starving to death...." I had been ready to pack my bags and go back to Texas; we had bickered and bickered--wow!! The argument we had that stands out the most bears remembering here, because it's funny now: My mother had picked up my dog tags, where I had taken them off and laid them down. If you've never read dog tags, the following is engraved on them: Your name, Social Security Number, Blood Type, Religion and your branch of service. Mom looked at mine--and here is a classic Dora Elizabeth and Cheri Lynn Morgan exchange:
"Protestant?!" (Mom. And it didn't come out PRA-testant, as you would give the word the infliction when you're referring to religion; it came out Protest-Ant. This is important.)
"Yeah......" shrug of my shoulders, total nonchalance. I had thought nothing of it. "It's what I am...."
"You are not!!" She was really heated, and at the time, I was absolutely befuddled as to why. From the ensuing rant, I gleaned that my mother thought 'Protestant' was a euphemism for 'atheist'. And I remember saying to her--in a perfect example of why she found me absolutely infuriating......."MO--OO-OOM......I am not Catholic. I don't need a priest, Extreme Unction, or Last Rites!! I'm not Jewish, so I don't need a rabbi, or someone to say kaddish!! I'm not Muslim--so it's okay to embalm me and chunk me in a fridge for more than 24 hours before they bury me; I'm not a Jehovah's Witness--of course, if I WAS, we wouldn't be having this conversation, because I'd never have joined anyway--but just the same, they can give me a blood transfusion!! This is so they know what to do with me when they find me incapacitated or DEAD!!!"
"They're going to pray that you don't split Hell wide open!!"
NOW I understood. I had had enough arguments with Mom to realize--she didn't recognize this word 'Protestant'. "Mom.......it just means I am not a part of a faith that I am baptized, bar-mitzvahed, bat-mitzvahed, or, thank God, circumsized into, and,"--and here I said the wrong thing, "You're a Protestant, too!!" (I'm a Protestant, you're a Protestant.....would ya like to be a Protestant, too?!?!--she wasn't amused......)
Off to the races....."Your father's dog tags say 'Southern Baptist'!!" (And indeed they did.) "Well, I'm sorry--I was a little sobered at thinking about what they would think, looking at my dog tags when I am DEAD--they're not going to give a shit about whether or not I'm a Baptist--they only want to know what to do with my body!! 'Protestant' seemed sufficient!!" It went on for a bit longer before I finally, beleaguered, said, "Oh, for God's sake--I didn't come up with it. And I'll punch Martin Luther in the face for this when I get to Heaven--MOM!! The Roman Catholic Church thought up 'protestant'!!! HUNDREDS of years before you or I were ever born.....blame the Pope!!!! I promise--when they see that on my dog tags, they're not going to think I was the demon spawn of Madeleine Murray O'Hara......they're going to know I was God-fearing enough to know what PROTESTANT means!!!"
That woman NEVER looked at my dog tags again without her eyes squinting in suspicion. I still carry one of them on my car keys, and I laugh every time I think about it.
......and I had gone to bed, and drifted off into a fitful sleep.....
.....and woke up with a start, ready to start swinging at whatever woke me up--survival school in all the interesting ways they devise for sleep deprivation will do that to you--only to find that it was Mom who woke me up......
She had come in to my room to put another blanket on me, and was tucking the covers up under my chin--which was what woke me. She had jumped back when I sprang up, and said, "It's me!! It's Mommy....." I was eighteen years old. And heard not, "It's just me!!" But--"It's Mommy." She hadn't referred to herself as 'Mommy' since I was about six. And when I laid back down, she pulled up the covers.......and, in something else uncharacteristic of Mom, leaned over and kissed me on the forehead, and I could swear she let her lips stay there for a second, as if checking me for a fever.
It never occured to me when I was growing up--in spite of the fact she had cancer when I was only four--that she would go before Dad. Honestly, I thought that woman would be standing over ME (and I just might have gone at her hands.....) I had an unreasonable fear, after my Uncle Gene died at 46, that I would lose Daddy when he was that age. He had a heart attack at 44, and I was batshit with fear. Ironically--it was Dad who was 46 when Mom died; Mom herself had just turned 47. One of those little plot twists that sneaks up and surprises you in a way you never expect.
I have little reminders of Mom.....sometimes I see her in my own face. I see her in Cate--my youngest daughter is stubborn as her Me-Mom, and some of the expressions she gets sometimes are Dora Morgan made over. And Cate's got her temper!! Although Caroline has grown to be more like Bill than me, when she was born, the doctor held her up for me to see......and the line in my mother's forehead that would stick out when she was going to cry, or when she was angry--was etched in my newborn daughter's face. I had been a little stuck on a middle name for Caroline, and after that--Caroline Elizabeth Greenway she became; Dora Elizabeth Morgan's namesake. Misty looks shockingly like our mother........she looks like the Mom we had when she was young--before the cancer and the worry and everything else got her. Misty is beautiful like my Mom when she was young--because my mother was as beautiful a woman as anyone has ever seen when we were small. She has Mom's easy grin and her green eyes. She's little like Mom.........but she is Chuck Morgan's daughter. Gives not a shit about anything. She's not bad tempered like Mom (I AM!!)--I think I understand it more now; Misty was Mom's girl probably because.......well, Misty is like Dad, and after all--Mom loved Dad enough to marry him.
And while I don't look like her, and while I have dispensed with most of Mom's terrible temper--I am Dora Morgan's daughter. I think sometimes now that Mom didn't like herself very much, and I don't understand why, because when she wasn't in the death grips of one of her moods, Mom was a great person. She was pretty and funny, and she had a great heart. I think Mom sometimes saw the things in me that she liked in herself the least, and she tried--sometimes literally--to knock that out of me. When I was a teenager in particular, I was quiet, moody, and more inclined to be interested in what Mom considered 'dark'. A bookworm and a loner for the most part, it's easy to see why Mom didn't 'get' me sometimes, looking back. Mom became a believer in the saying, "It's the quiet ones you've got to watch," and I was the reason for that. I turned out to be the only Hell my Momma ever raised......sometimes I'm proud of that, sometimes not.
God has granted me life reminders--in 2001, my cousin Bonnie gave birth to her daughter on what would have been Mom's 52nd birthday. And Mom got another namesake that day--Carsyn Elizabeth Denney was born on February 26, 2001; and the very next day, on Bill's mother's birthday came my youngest child. I think that was God's way of making the month of February more bearable.......I know He was smiling twice as hard at our family that week.
On May 8th, 2004, I stood at the same cemetery where we had laid my mother to rest eight years before, to the day..........to lay her oldest brother to rest. Mom's mother had passed only weeks before. And while some might think that particularly cruel......I like to think that God would have it so that I don't have another painful reminder: My uncle died May 5th, 2001. Mom died on the 6th......the first week of May hurts very badly--and while it never goes completely away, it is eased away with the coming of summer.
I find myself thinking more of the good these days. I think more about times like.........when we used to go pick up Daddy from work--when I couldn't have been more than three, and I thought ALL the sailors were Daddy ("There's Daddy!!" at every single one I saw.......and Mom and I would sing, "Daddy, oh Daddy, where are you?!")......and Daddy would somehow manage to sneak around my watchful eyes and pop up in the back window and yell, "I GOTCHA!!!" And Mom and I would would scream, "DADDDDDY!!!!"
I keep my favorite picture of us near my desk.....one of me in a little white dress with navy blue polka-dots, sitting in her lap and beaming like the little ham I was at two years old--and her smiling a little wryly--either at the fact (as she said) that she wasn't exactly dressed for a picture or at the little turd she's holding.
I think about the last time we were stationed in Memphis--Chinese food every Friday night. I think about when she used to work third shift and would grin at us on her way out the door and say, "Oh, boy!! Full moon tonight......"
.....or the time we were on our way to Ohio, and, "Don't get off here!! THIS IS EXIT 69!!"--roared laughing and smacked me playfully on the arm after I spit Pepsi all over the steering wheel AND the windshield and yelled, "MOTHER!!" when I realized in horror that--yes, my mother was full of sexual innuendo when she said it--and more horrified still that she knew what a 69 even was.....and she said, "Well!! I graduated in 1968--and we used to say, 'At least we're not graduating in '69!!!!!" She laughed the rest of the way to Dayton.
....her howling laughing at me when my Mamaw Morgan, when Bill and I began to discuss marriage and the possibility of having more children later told me--"Girl, you'd best tell him when he gets to acting like that to find a slab of meat or a hole in the fence....." and I said, "Mamaw!!!" Mom laughed till she cried and all I could do was sputter. "She's speechless!!" I don't know what Mom thought was more funny--what Mamaw said, or the fact that her oldest daughter was speechless.
Or when I was in labor with Christopher. My pulse went up over 200--and I don't remember squat about it except ALOT of doctors, Mom telling one of them she wasn't leaving, and the last thing I remember about it was.....looking under one of the doctor's arms, and seeing Mom. Her eyes were squeezed tight, her hands were tightly folded under her chin, and her lips were moving in prayer......and I know I saw a tear. Her laughter when, in the delivery room, the first contraction in there brought "PUSH!!" out of all the doctors, nurses and Mom.......and Mom added, "Chin to your chest, honey!!" and I said--and the only reason I got away with it was I was in labor; 21 hours into labor and EXHAUSTED--said: "Mom, shut up and get the f--- away from me......"and she cried from laughing. The second he was born and they held him up, she said, "Oh, my poor baby--that kid weighs ten pounds if he weighs an ounce......." and then she squealed, "Ohhhhhh......HE'S GOT RED HAIR!!!!" while trying to give me a squeeze--which I was struggling to stay out of....."Go with the baby, Mom!!! Don't let them lose him!!"
So.....in closing: I once heard the expression "Everything is okay in the end. If it's not okay--it's not the end." I hope Mom went knowing that everything was okay......or at least in the process of being okay. We are.....
Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you and I miss you.
"Where is the light that I recognized.....gone away.....
...But I won't cry for yesterday; there's an ordinary world somehow I had to find."
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