chris at 4:08 AM |

Thursday, October 23, 2003

 

Coming up on my birthday--midnight.

I never know what to do with my birthday.

And so: ever since having children of my own, on my birthday I spend some time thinking of thanks and respect that my mother (who died in 1994) should have had from everyone who benefitted from her oddly irreconciled existence.

3 x Of course
Ofcourse
Ofcourse:
Of course--in terms of being recognized, thanked, respected--it never did work that way very well for her.
Of course, I never showed her enough respect and rarely thanked her until it was very late in everything. So, never enough for her to know how appreciated she was/is.
Of course she just, anyway, kept on being the mother I took for granted.

3x Ah Wells and 1x Ah well: whatever It was, It Wore Her Out.
Ah well common story, though there was only one Irene Murray, so not so common, too.
Ah well, I suppose she didn't know what else to do with her very solid, driven, smart self but drink enough for ten Mothers (!).

100x Let alone, what to do with the polyester crater
being filled by her readerly-self? Hungry like a polyurethene fox:
scouting around acetylene;
hungry as an antifreeze squirrel:
where did that 289th pile of nuts
and bolts go, anyway?

She read all the time. Those who found a way to say: de Beauvoir, Sartes, Greer, Steinhem. Alongside whatever romance novels the grocery store fanned her face with at the check out lane. And whatever handed out the loudest inspiration: Graham, Fulton-Sheen (the mediocre conservative male-lot). But don't forget those who didn't believe it: from the Brontes to Beckett to Jong. Hell, she'd grown up hungry and waiting in bread lines, Roch NY. Game of dominoes and Tennyson as ammo. In her pocket.

Grandpa, her dad, holding her hand. Work is worth wanting, worth something toward a self. Reading is suspect. Yes?--Can I help you?--she says glorifying the Penney’s Women’s Undergarments in aile 4 with Thunderbird breath 60 years later. New mall, very nice for the neighborhood. Smile.

Something important--everyday working life in her family--made sure she couldn't wait to grow up enough to work in a factory. Kodak, Bell Tel, or General Dynamics. And then she did. There's this foto of her on the concrete sidewalk outside the brick wall of the Gen-Dyn factory: the world is certainly 19 years old, sunny all over, full of outside.

And then married--foto of Niagara Falls honeymooners pouring looks onto each other--and then: the six Catholic children santioned by two churches to which she devoted her thinking. That's when love was a Bible split many ways but still read aloud for every offering; way before devotion was her Thunderbird bottle full enough for twenty more and needy Irenes; and just around the time everything was beautiful as a fresh faced, devoted sailor-man, kissing her cheek: both standing tall at altar. One quaint in partial veil.

Somehow they did everything suburban
or sunburned or in terms of both.

Then, strange dream they had, we tried to think later. How did this happen?--something to do with factory work in chemicals--he wore a full skin rash most of his life from working with experimental chemicals at Kodak Park (they called it a park!), and then, too, there was always excess and unusual sound: he was a drummer in his free:

time. Oh, yes. She would say a time for every thing. Don’t forget to season
the season. Me?--I think they had a piece of cake together once. Chocolate.
With special icing, maybe cinnamon, nutmeg dash.

Catholic. Of course.
And then she died.
He still always.
Sure.

I don't know how they did any of it: result, that six of us think and act in kindly ways over life. Sort of amazing, considering the circumstances (not apocalyptic but certainly not conducive to kindly-goodness, either, yet somehow we are okay that way). Something in that is a little remarkable.

3 x Here's to:
Here's to Her:
Here's to Irene,
Here's to my mom,

that one mom who carried me,
bore me forth on this date, a long while ago.

And hey! Happy Birthday to me!

Mostly, though,
Thanks, Mom.
Wish you were here.
Oh, you are not.

By the time I write this out and post it, midnight will have long passed. I'm never very pleased over my birthday but this time writing a little like this was okay.

Best,
cm