Email re: Mom's Hospitalization

Email from my dad dated July 26, 2006. This was one of the occasions that my mother was hospitalized. Based on the email below, my mother's reference to being hospitalized for dehydration in My Mother's Version of Events, and my memory, she was on some prescription medications (not sure which ones, but she had a history with muscle relaxants and sleeping pills long before this) that made her just sleep and not want to eat or drink anything. 

For reference, my parents were netting approximately $9k per month from my dad's disability and social security checks at this time.

 

Hey Sweetie, thought I'd get you up to date on happenings around here. First off, Happy Birthday. I sent you a present, I hope it was delivered ok. It should be there by now.

 

Well, Mom is out of the hospital now. Just nine days after being admitted. I really didn't expect her to get out that quickly, but without insurance, I guess they don't keep you very long.

 

They have her on some meds for depression, and her GU infection. She's supposed to see the doctor again Thursday, and begin outpatient physical therapy on Friday. Thing is, they also want her to see a shrink. How often these appointments will be, isn't known yet.

 

She can walk if she uses a walker, but when she first got home, she was still having your uncle help her. Today for the first time, she tried going to and from the bathroom without help from him, just using the walker. She managed to do it three times so far.

 

I know neither therapy is cheap, and we just can't afford to pay for it. We do have a little money saved in the checking account, but after paying all the back taxes and bills, it's not much. Now, we have one ambulance bill from before, and a new one left to pay. Not to mention whatever the hospital bill will be. I don't know if the doctors will bill separately. I was hoping after paying off all the back bills, we could save enough to pay the taxes at the end of the year, but I don't think that will be easy.

 

I went to the bank today, and opened a new account in my name only. Your Mother can't access it at any time, for any reason, unless I'm dead. I transferred some money to that account, so I could hopefully, do some saving from my social security check, and not have to worry about Annie draining the account.

 

The next time I'm at the bank, I will set it up so a certain amount of money will automatically be transferred from the old account each month as the main check comes in, and transferred to my new account. That way, there will always only be a steady amount in the old account, and your Mother will be less tempted to spend it.

 

I don't want to completely cut her off from the money, but I do want to have as much control over it as possible. I'm hoping that doing these things, will keep us from getting into the same situation we were in at the end of last year.

 

I'm getting her to eat, but only one hot dog a day, and some sliced peaches. If I can at least get her to eat every day, she might build up some energy and strength. This role reversal is very strange indeed.

 

Check ya later, Love, Dad...

Email re: Mother Taking the Greyhound Bus to the Hospital

Excerpt from an email to my BFF Jerry dated November 18, 2006. I'm eventually planning to post all the old email excerpts about my mother that I have, and I'll make a post that links to them all in chronological order of when they actually occurred. This excerpt corresponds to my retelling in The Time My Mother Went Crazy in the Hospital Waiting Room:

My mom called tonight to tell me that my dad is in the ICU.  Well, she actually called to complain that they aren't telling her over the phone why he is in there and to ask me to check into planes, trains, buses, and rental car possibilities to get her there tonight.  She wants to yell at them in person to tell her what is going on, and be a nuisance.  I actually think she wants a more dramatic way to fall ill, since doing it while on the road would be a major problem.  

 She went to the hospital today, she said.  I didn't ask why until later when she asked, "AREN'T YOU GOING TO ASK WHY I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL?!"  I obliged, and apparently her stools are black, and she said the doctor wants to do a colonoscopy.  This is silly since problems in the colon cause red blood and blood only turns black when it has gone through the digestive system (like when you have an ulcer), so the logical diagnostic would be an endoscopy (like a colonoscopy except from your mouth to your stomach), but whatever.  She does what she wants.  My dad and I each had one this year, so she must feel that she deserves one too.  I hope she enjoys the prep for it because it is a sickening experience.  Anyway, she ended up dissolving into tears about how everyone hates her and how her own brother said he won't loan her any more money to fund her insanity.  

She said her mother is even yelling at her now, and if her own mother yells at her, well, she might as well end it all now (these were her words).  I replied with random sympathetic sounds, but the word "irony" kept flashing in my mind.  She sobbed about how I chose my "daddy" over her, faking a whiny child voice on the word "daddy," and complained about how everyone hates her and I hate her too.  I didn't think any response I could give would help, so I sat quietly, flipping through my "The Daily Cocktail" book, trying to find something I have all the ingredients to make tonight.  

When she finally asked if I hate her, I don't think my "no" could have sounded much more callous, but I don't really mind.  I still answer some of her calls (though I admit we turned the ringer off on the phone), and she can't ask much more from me than that, as I see it.  I think she is still trying to get money from me though since when I found bus times and prices for her, her next words were about how she couldn't afford anything and how would/where would she pay for them.  I told her the station probably sells tickets.  If she shows up in Cleveland, my dad will be mad enough as it is.  I'm not paying to upset him.  ::sigh::

My Mother's Version of Events

My mother's version of events, as written for the Butterfly Glen house psychologist. All grammatical and punctuation choices are her own. I'll embed links to relevant blog posts so you can compare different perspectives. The only emails I've made into blog posts so far were the big ones, and most of my retellings aren't dated at all, so I'll have to go through my old emails and post the excerpts from the events my mother references in her letter (from 2005 to 2008), partly just to confirm the timeline.

She doesn't mention the times she called me or talked to me during the events detailed below, but we were still in contact. A lot of what I know comes not just from my dad but also from her.

She was often high back then and, based on how long she says we've been estranged, she presumably wrote her version within the last year. I don't trust my own memory that much, let alone hers.

Dear Curtis,

    Could you please help me find my long lost daughter Christina Rosetti Martin DOB 7-31-1980. The last time I saw her was on her wedding day 15 yrs. ago!

    When I married my paraplegic husband, I married in sickness & in health and I took care of him for 36 yrs. but as soon as I got sick he filed for divorce. Paul was in the VA Hospital in Cleveland when he filed for divorce. I was totally blindsided. We had talked on the phone and he hadn't said anything. He followed up the file for divorce by cleaning out our bank account right after I paid the entire mos. bills (wrote checks for) All of the cks. bounced & I was faced with pay up or we'll shut off water, lights, gas, phone & cancel insurance on house & Cars. Naturally I panicked, I called the bank & they told me that my husband had closed out our joint account & opened a single account leaving me penniless & deep in debt. He received $8,000.00/mos Disability & $325.00/mos SS. All tax free.

    I called Paul at the hospital in Cleveland & said, "What the hell do you think you're doing? I just wrote checks for all of the months bills & now thanks to you there's no money to cover them!" He hung up on me, so I called him back & he hung up on me again.

    Paul had an extensive music collection in our family room so I called Guitar Center where he bought it all and told them that my husband passed and I wanted to sell his music studio. Notice that I didn't say my husband died, I just said he passed, as far as I was concerned he passed for asshole of the century!

     I kept out his keyboard & bartered it for massages & as mad & desperate as I was I couldn't bring myself to sell his 3 prized guitars. I just sold the amplifiers & the recording equipment. I donated his harmonica collection to the church, and I donated microphones to the church. 

    Guitar Center came to the house & gave me a check for $1,000.00 which was a rip off but I didn't have time to quibble. I took Jeff's wedding ring (had diamonds) & his grandmother's second husband's wedding ring to a pawn shop, and I sold his computer. 

    I still didn't have enough money to cover the checks I had written and I took all of his record collection (jazz & blues) to vintage stock and they gave me $60.00 which I'm sure was a steal for them and a rip off for me but beggars can't be choosers.

    I went to the bank in tears and told them my sob story all they said was I could've done the same thing to him, he just beat me to the punch. You'd better believe if I had known he was going to clean out our account I would have done it.

    I went to my best friends house and used her phone to call Paul so he would answer the phone after I got served with divorce papers at 8pm on Tuesday. I asked him what brought on the need for a divorce and he said it was because all I did was lay in bed all the time, didn't cook & didn't do laundry. I told him I had been severly [sic] depressed for 6 mos and I had only gotten out of bed to go to the bathroom. I was hospitalized 3 times in 6 mos. for dehydration & falls. He hung up on me again but he said he would put some money back in our joint account.

    Many times after that I called to try to talk some sense into him about the divorce and explain bipolar disorder but he refused to listen, he said I was just lazy, no good.

    Eventually the hospital disconnect [sic] his telephone so I couldn't call him anymore. My mother always said, "There's more than one way to skin a cat." So I bought a bus ticket and rode 4 hrs. to Cleveland, to confront the jerk face to face. He was in the ICU so I couldn't see him very long, he looked like Jabba the Hut all propped up 350 lbs. buck naked with a colostomy & foley catheter & IV's & Blood. I slept in the waiting room til it was time to catch the bus for home. As soon as I got on the bus I fell asleep and when I woke up my head was on the shoulder of the man in the seat next to me. I was so embarassed [sic]. We got to talking and he told me he had just been released from prison. I told him my story and when we got back to the bus station in Cincinnati I discovered that I didn't have enough money to take a taxi to my house so he offered to share the cab & he would pay for it. When we got to my house I drove him to the building where he was staying downtown but first we had to go to the Emergency Room to get him some medicine. He asked me to get in touch with some friends of his and tell them that he was back in town.

    I got in touch with his friends and they decided they were my friends too. They moved in with me and proceeded to sponge off of me. I was lonely so I went along with it. My son, Dante came over and he expressed his concern for me taking in a bunch of strangers. Without me knowing he hid my husbands prized guitars in the garage.

    We had a bad storm and the roof was damaged, when I called the insurance company they said they would have to do a walk through inspection of the entire house. The house was a mess so I offered $100.00 to every man, woman or child who would come over & help me clean up & get ready for the inspection, Of course the ex convicts friends were the first in line and the five teenage neighbors of my parents came over too. Dante was suspicious of all the people who helped me.

    After about a month I got tired of supporting 3 freeloaders and I told them it was time for them to go home.

    Dante came over and he asked me what I did with my husbands guitars. I told him they were on there [sic] stands in the family room & then they just disappeared. That's when he told me that he had hid them in the garage. I don't know who took them but it wasn't me.

    Anyway, I'm sure that's why my daughter quit talking to me, because I sold part of my husbands things and she thinks I sold his 3 prized guitars. She hasn't ever let me tell her my side of the story. Being left penniless. I had no choice. She also doesn't understand bipolar disorder.

    If you can help me find her, you can share this letter with her.

    Thank you in advance!

    Annie Rosetti 

 

From checking my old emails, I know that she took the Greyhound bus across the state to visit my dad at the hospital in November 2006, right before Thanksgiving. She says in her letter that it was to confront him about surprising her with divorce papers, but he didn't file for divorce until April 2007, long after she'd invited the ex-convicts to live in their house, and long after two of the convicts had been arrested for stealing Dante's car. Based on old emails, she sold my dad's music equipment at least a week before being served with divorce papers, and she had been threatening to sell all his belongings since at least December 2006. I also knew Dante took the guitars. My dad had been relieved that he'd managed to save something. I don't remember being aware they ever went missing. The only pieces of information that seem new to me are that she pawned his rings and told people he was dead.

I Want to Understand

I read a book recently called Dreamland by Sam Quinones.  It's about the opiate epidemic in the US and how it came to be, from medical journal articles to pharmaceutical companies to pill mills and the Mexican dealers selling black tar heroin in small towns.  I don't know if my mother is/was on opiates.  But I assume so based on their being the norm at the time and the side effects I saw.

I've started reading a book about benzodiazepine use and addiction because benzos seem likely to have been prescribed to my mother too, based on her complaints and again what was common to prescribe.

I want to understand what happened with my mother.  The more I read, the more I feel unsure.  How much of her behavior was because of how she is?  And how much was because of what she was taking?  How can I find out what she was taking?  Even if I reached out to her and asked, I don't think she'd necessarily tell me.  And if she's as sedated as Dante said she was the last time he visited, who knows if she'd even remember what she has taken, or what she used to take, if she replied at all.

The only place I think I might be able to find a record of what my mother was taking is maybe in my grandmother's letters to my cousin.  But I haven't looked at them since the time I read through them for genealogical information and realized my grandmother -- the sanest, kindest, highest functioning person in my extended family -- habitually talked about me behind my back.  She judged me for not being concerned enough about my mother because I didn't come to her with my worries or tears.  I cried regularly about my mother, just not to her.  I remember sitting in my dorm room after my mom really went off the deep end, spending hours Googling her symptoms and behaviors and trying to figure out what was wrong with her.  I spent too much time on WebMD and the Mayo Clinic website because I thought it was a disease.  I feel so stupid.

It was years before I realized it was the pills, and even now as I read about opioids and benzodiazepines, I'm just now realizing just how much can be explained by the pills.  Example:  I thought when I didn't hear from my mother for days or weeks at a time (glorious breaks from her calling to yell at me, apropos of nothing) that she was going through a deep depression.  But she was probably just on pain pills.  She was probably mostly asleep.  The muscle weakness my mother insisted was some sort of progressive illness like multiple sclerosis and the doctors and I explained away as muscle atrophy from her refusal to get up and walk -- a common side effect of extended benzodiazepine use.  I should probably just do a search for most commonly prescribed pills in 2003 if I want to know what she started taking when she went well and truly off the deep end.  She had gone to the doctor to treat her sadness at the death of her brother.  I had asked her to just grieve instead -- told her her feelings were normal and wouldn't benefit from antidepressants -- but she took whatever that doctor gave her anyway.  This was six or seven years after the first time I saw her high on Soma (Carisoprodol, a muscle relaxant and non-benzodiazepine hypnotic).

I feel like an idiot.  I didn't understand anything about drugs.  I remember hearing about celebrities developing addictions to pain pills after surgery or injuries, but I didn't understand what that even meant or what that addiction looked like.  I didn't understand what being high on pills looked like.  When it came to what being high looked like, I had only seen caricatures of stoners in comedies on TV.   It seems from my grandmother's letters that everyone realized my mother was addicted to drugs but me, and I feel like an idiot.  When I was a freshman in high school, my mother had explained her behavior away with menopause (on the rare occasion she admitted it wasn't just me who was acting differently), and I was desperate to figure out what had happened that made her this way and how to prevent it taking hold of me too, since I had inherited half her DNA and assumed all of this was just happening to her and would do the same to me.  I had never seen my mother partake in so much as a glass of wine, and she was adamantly against any form of drugs.  Except the ones billed as medicine.  Then her adage of "little do good, lot do better" seemed to come into play.  Even when it came to Tylenol, she urged me to take more than the amount indicated on the bottle if the pain was "really bad," and she took god knows how many Tylenol herself everyday for as long as I can remember.  I wonder what her liver looks like.

I don't think my mother had any idea what she was getting herself into when she started with the Soma.  This all started in 1995 or 1996, around the same time doctors decided pain was "the fifth vital sign," no one should endure pain ever and, if you are in pain, you should drug yourself out of it.  Oxycontin was new to the market and a hot, highly prescribed "non-addictive" opioid (spoiler alert:  it's highly addictive and has killed a lot of people). 

The good news is I don't have to worry about inheriting any of my mother's madness, even come menopause.  The other good news is I understand more about pharmaceuticals now than at least 85% of the US population.  And I know not to take anything a doctor prescribes until I've thoroughly vetted it online and, even then, not if I can do without.  If I ever take morphine, it'll be because death is imminent because I don't want to have to try to STOP being addicted to it.  Had I been a high school athlete or gotten into a car accident that left me in pain, I probably would've been prescribed opiates and quite possibly ended up a situation like my mother's.  It happened a lot to other people at that time and for years afterward.  The only reason it didn't happen to me was luck.  But now I know at least.  Now I have information.  And I guess it's good my mother ended up in a nursing home after her last suicide attempt and her refusal to take care of herself (and our family's collective refusal to take care of  her anymore) because she might have died of an overdose by now if she were left to her own devices and dosing schedule.

My mother is the case study I teach my daughter.  They still do DARE or some variation on it in her school, but it doesn't go into enough detail if you ask me.  The "just say no" tagline implies a hit of pot and an oxycodone are equivalent, and if a kid comes to see that something like pot doesn't actually destroy their life, they might just assume the other one won't either.  Lack of nuanced understanding is dangerous when it comes to what we put in our bodies.  My mother's insistence that alcohol and sex are evil while indulging in prescription drugs and junk food multiple times a day is a good example of how black and white thinking fails us.

I wonder what she would be like if she weren't on the drugs.  I mean, she fit the criteria for borderline personality disorder before any of that.  But she started taking hypnotics and god knows what else when I was in eighth or ninth grade.  What would her non-drugged behavior even look like to adult me?  I don't know.  I don't trust my childhood memory and childhood interpretation of what she was like before the drugs.  She wasn't all bad by any means.  Sometimes she was great, and I loved her so much.  Would she still have drained my bank account?  Would she still have tried to turn my grandparents against me?  Would she still have tried to turn me against my dad?  Yes.  That started before the drugs.  Telling me he wasn't my "real" father and that I couldn't talk about it to anyone was earlier.  Telling me he'd never wanted me and had wanted to beat her into miscarrying me was earlier.  Telling me she'd let me decide if she should divorce him and that we'd be poor and have to find somewhere else to live was earlier.

I don't know what she'd be like now if not for the pills, but I trust this particular scenario has played out as well as it could for me.  Sometimes, since reading Dreamland, I think about reaching out to her.  I hadn't realized until that book just how much the deck was stacked against her NOT becoming an addict.  But I don't want her to have my phone number, and I don't want the nursing home to start demanding money from me (I'd never pay them, so it would just be frustrating for both of us).  I'd like to check in on her and see how she's doing and what she's doing, but I don't want to interact with her.  I'm not sure if it would be worse to let things go and maybe have some regrets when she dies, or to take the chance of appearing on her radar and what backlash that could prompt.  I wonder what drugs she's on now.  I wonder how she feels, or if she feels much of anything at all.

"Dad's Dead"

I got a call last week from my estranged brother who has literally never contacted me in our lives except at the behest of one of our parents.  Caller ID showed his name, so I let it go to voicemail.  Even if I hadn't seen his name, I won't answer calls from that area code unless I recognize them.  They could be from my mother.

Dante left a voicemail saying to call him back, nothing more.  I received a Facebook message from a random stranger immediately after the voicemail.  A Google image search showed that the profile photo had been all over the internet, and a search of the name yielded no hits, so I assumed it was Dante incognito.  I discovered I could read the message without "accepting" it or sending a read receipt, so I did.  It was Dante saying our dad was doing poorly and the phone number he had for me was defunct (this is the beauty of not having an outgoing voicemail message, Friends) and to call him back.  Dante is still living at home with our dad.

My best friend, Jerry, didn't think I should call him.  I knew the only reasons anyone from my family would be calling me would be either 1) because they wanted money, or 2) they wanted me to do something, and I didn't have any intention of giving them anything or going there, even if a parent was dead.  Still, I hoped for the narrow possibility that something would finally force to the surface the fact that I am not my dad's biological daughter.  Maybe Dante would be asking me to donate a kidney or bone marrow and I could say nonchalantly, "I'm not any more related to him than you are.  Didn't you know?"  Maybe Dad actually wanted to talk to me for the first time in years.

I called back on speaker phone so that I could record our exchange and listen to it later and get thoughts from Jerry as necessary.  That is why I have a recording on my phone of Dante choking back a sob and saying, "Dad's dead."

Dad had been in the hospital in Cleveland again when he died.  His wound had reopened, as it always has, and the VA hospital in Cincinnati had shipped him back to Cleveland to stay in their spinal cord injury unit, as they always did.  He had been in the ICU lately, which wasn't a first for him.  I've visited him in ICUs since the '90s.  Dante said he hadn't been able to get in touch with him lately, though I'm not sure how "lately" he meant.  Some of his updates, such as Dad's driver's license expiring, were things I remember happening four years ago.  He said he had tried calling Dad's cell phone but got no answer, which doesn't surprise me since he always avoided taking valuables with him to the hospital out of fear they would be stolen, even if they were his primary means of communication and entertainment and he didn't know how long he'd be there.  He said he'd finally gotten in touch with a doctor at the hospital and learned that Dad had gone into cardiac arrest, which was a first for him.  He was alive but couldn't communicate except for subtle head movements.  Dante said the doctor had called him on his own cell phone from the ICU and was asking Dad if he wanted "to be made comfortable," and Dad supposedly nodded.  He died later that day, right before I called Dante back.  He was a four hour drive from anyone he knew.

Dante and I talked for several hours over the next two days, mostly trading ridiculous stories of our parents.  Every time one of us tried to get off the phone, we'd feel compelled to share one more thing and stay on the line for another ten minutes.  He was doing it too.  It was good.  I've never connected with Dante that way.  Maybe he had changed.  Maybe I had imagined some of his scariness and inflated it over the years of estrangement.

I was also surprised at how little Dad and Dante had presumably talked since Dante had moved back home.  I'm not sure how long Dad had been in Cleveland when he died, but Dante didn't know we weren't in touch.  I told him that he had all my contact information but that, when he wouldn't ask me any questions about my family or my life and I stopped working to maintain the relationship, I stopped hearing from him at all.  It had been three years.  Dante had no idea.

He also had no idea what Dad wanted to happen when he died.  He'd apparently only had that conversation with me.  As I recall, it only happened because he wanted the go-ahead to cancel all his life insurance policies minus the one the VA paid for, and we were confirming it would be enough to cover the cost of cremation.  He didn't want a big service or burial, he said.  He just wanted his favorite jazz song playing on a boom box to send him off.   I can do that, I had said.

More to come.  So much has happened.

Meeting My Sister for the First Time

I'm hesitant to write about this because, as largely unread as this blog is, it's not private.  My nearest and dearest are well aware of it, though they aren't interested enough to come here (they hear enough of this stuff in person), and I should assume any up-and-coming nearest and dearest will be clued into it too, which is why I don't talk much about my paternal half-siblings.  I want them to like me, even if they someday read my blog.

To recap, I was conceived with anonymous donor sperm.  The only half-siblings I've found so far are the two adult children my biological father raised with his wife.  I'm the only DC one I know of, though there are probably more.

When I found Joseph, my biological father, he seemed very concerned that I would out him publicly, tag his children in Facebook posts, or somehow stalk or inconvenience his family.  I forgive him for this because he doesn't know that's not my style (except for the stalking -- I'm an exceptionally quiet cyberstalker).  He didn't want to know me, but my half-siblings did.  I have spoken to my half-sister Simone once on the phone.  We text sometimes on holidays.  We're Facebook friends, as I am with my half-brother Hans.  It's a strange relationship.  I've always been afraid of being perceived as too forward or forcing myself on them.  Both have been welcoming and kind to me.  Neither have seemed particularly interested in me though, so I've tried to take their lead.  Our relationships cooled, which I think was actually a good thing because they feel more solid now.  I feel more vested.  I feel like I would have to make a misstep for them to strike me from their lives now, whereas I previously checked Facebook every day to see if they had spontaneously unfriended me yet.

Here's the point of this post.  Simone wants to visit me and stay in my house.  Right away.  I do not want this to happen.  I would like to meet her.  I would like to share a meal and talk for hours, maybe even spend the day together.  She is my sister, and she will be forever, no matter how this relationship plays out.  But we have never met in person, we've only spoken once, and I don't want to host her in my home.  I am self-conscious of my home, and I have a husband and child and dog to take care of in my home.  I want to be able to give Simone my undivided attention somewhere else.  I want to be able to decompress after we meet and be alone to process everything.  I declined her request.  I said maybe in a few months.  Want to set a date in a few months?  Maybe then I'd have time to get to know her enough I could handle it, though I didn't say that part.  She asked again.  It needed to be now.  To avoid saying no again -- but also avoid saying yes -- I asked what was going on and expressed concern.  I knew she had had a fight with her boyfriend.  I knew to a certain extent what this was all about because she posts a lot of information on Facebook, which I appreciate as a quiet cyberstalker.  We messaged back a forth and few times over the next couple of weeks.  Then she asked again if she could stay in my house.  I've gotten good at drawing boundaries over the years, but I never learned how to maintain a relationship with someone who might not want those boundaries in place.  At the advice of my best friend Jerry, who is good at complex interpersonal relationships, I did what Simone frequently does and didn't respond at all.  The next time we talk, I will -- like Simone frequently does -- pretend it never happened.  This might sound cold, but I think it's the kindest way I could handle this particular situation.  It's strange.  I feel like I'm relearning how to play a game I was never particularly good at.

In case you're reading this ever, Simone, I do want to know you.  You are interesting, and we have so much in common in spite of all the ways we're different.  I think we'd both enjoy taking absurd numbers of selfies together and posting them on social media for attention with various #sister tags.  I like you and want to know you better.  But I want to take things slow.  I know it's been over two years, but we've barely spoken in that time, let alone bonded.  I am afraid of being the rebound from your current relationship.  I am afraid the novelty of meeting a new sister and posting selfies together on Facebook will not be enough to make you feel better again and that you might end up upset or mad at me.  I can be a good friend, but we barely know each other, and I'm not the best person for this job.  We could talk over the phone, and I could listen and sympathize, but I'm not good at hosting guests.  I don't like doing it, and that's not about you.  I want to get to know you, but if I let you light a fire under this sister relationship, I am afraid it will explode.  You mentioned starting DBT once on Facebook.  I clicked "like."  It made me happy that you were getting the kind of therapy I had always thought would work best for you.  I wanted to express support in that small Facebook way.  You don't know that borderline personality disorder is one of my areas of expertise.  You don't know anything about the family that raised me (well, you might now, if you're reading this here).  I want to have a functional relationship with you, so I'm not letting this go too fast.  Maybe I could come visit you and stay in a hotel.  We could go out to eat and you could show me around.  This is the best I can do.

Looking Up My Family Online (Again)

Have you ever remembered something one way all your life and then seen it again later and it was completely different?

I was looking up Eugene, my lone surviving maternal uncle, online today, as I sometimes do.  He's hard to find.  I'm Facebook friends with his wife of nearly three decades, but she never mentions him, her photos don't include him, and based on some posts from her family, they didn't spend Thanksgiving together.  I wonder if they got divorced or maybe he died.  Surely one of my cousins would have known and said something.  Surely my regular Google searches for his name and the word "obituary" would have turned something up.

My uncle Eugene has lived in the same house for about three decades.  My other uncle used to live there too until he died in 2009 just shy of age 60.  They didn't live apart in my lifetime.  Uncle Boyd would pay the mortgage and Uncle Gene would pay the utilities.  Uncle Gene had always worked odd jobs that earned below the poverty line, selling used cars, playing in a band at a local nightclub, and working in collections at one point.  Pooling their resources was the only way they could afford their beautiful and spacious house, my mother said, and there was plenty of room for everyone.  I remember Uncle Boyd lived in a ground floor bedroom off the kitchen.  Uncle Gene and his wife lived in one of the upstairs bedrooms.  There was a stained glass window in the corner of the stairway, a gazebo off the front porch, and the sprawling backyard had fruit trees.  It was the nicest house anyone in our family owned.

I looked up the only address I could find online for Uncle Gene, but the picture was of a tiny shack of a house.  He must've moved.

But there was a gazebo in the same place.  And the front stairs looked the same.  And I realized my uncles had lived a tiny shack of a house all along.  How is this possible?  The lines of the roof and walls aren't even straight, and they're at odd angles.  According to the internet, the bank foreclosed on the house in 2013.  I guess they couldn't pay the mortgage without Uncle Boyd's contribution.  He lost his job at the steel mill to a machine back in 2000 and he never found another one -- it was the only job he'd had since he was 16 years old -- but I guess he received something in unemployment or maybe disability since he was diagnosed bipolar around the same time.  He should have had a pension too, though I don't know when that would have started paying out.  Grandpa started collecting his pension from the same steel mill when he retired at 55.  Anyway, Boyd died, the bank took the house, and my uncle Gene doesn't live there anymore.  One of my cousins said she had wanted to reach out to him after Boyd died but she'd held back because he's mentally unstable.  He was the most stable of all of them, I thought.

The bank auctioned off the house for $18,000 to something called BLT Homes Inc., which appears to fix up homes just enough to rent them out.  Uncle Gene and his wife started renting the place two houses down after that, according to the internet.  But I can't find anything about where Gene works, if anywhere, or what he does or how he is.  Why does no one in my family blog?

Then I started looking for my mother.  That way madness lies.  I haven't found an updated address for her since the group home the hospital released her to after her last suicide attempt by self-poisoning (don't try it, folks -- Harvard School of Public Health did a study, and ODing by pills has a less than 2% success rate).  And my dad said she left that place years ago when they told her she'd have to pay something to keep living there.  I keep searching by her name and her past addresses and diagnoses and the churches she's attended, but I find nothing new.  I don't want to reach out to her; I just want to watch her quietly while she is unaware.

Spending My Childhood on Antibiotics

I complained of stomach aches a lot as a child, from as early as I can remember until I was in high school.  As much as I loved seeing my friends at school and socializing, the idea of inadvertently doing something wrong or getting in trouble terrified me.  I approached almost every school day terrified that I'd forgotten to do some piece of homework, or that something had been assigned during one of the many hours I'd spent zoned out and daydreaming without even realizing it, or that I might get scolded for something I didn't mean to do wrong.  In hindsight, my stomach aches were probably a combination of stress and my looking for any excuse to get out of school.  In most cases, my mother wouldn't let me stay home unless I could produce physical evidence that I was ill -- either a fever, which I ran only a few times in my life, or vomiting.

My mother took my temperature rectally until I was at least six.  When I asked why I couldn't use the oral thermometer like everyone else in the house, she said I would bite down on it.  I promised I wouldn't.  I don't even know what the problem would have been if I had -- it was a plastic digital thermometer, not one of the old style ones made of glass and mercury.  When I asked why we couldn't get one of the digital thermometers they stick in your ear at the doctor's office then, she told me they aren't accurate enough.  I wonder now how much of her insistence on using a rectal thermometer was as a punishment for my daring to ask to stay home.  I think it was at least a little bit punishment.

On the rare occasions that I was allowed to miss school, my mother took me to the doctor without fail.  I remember her saying something along the lines of how, if she let me miss school, I wouldn't be allowed to just stay home and lie on the couch watching TV all day like she did in my absence.  If I didn't go to school, by god, we would spend the day at the doctor's office.  She wasn't going to incentivize my sicknesses by letting me lie around at home all day.

No doctor ever found a source for my stomach aches or proposed that they might be stress related.  With few exceptions they told us instead that I had an upper respiratory infection and prescribed antibiotics.  I also had strep throat a lot, for which they injected me with penicillin and I was allowed to rest at home for 24 hours without being treated like someone who was trying to get out of something.  Getting a positive strep test was like winning a small lottery to me and always made me happy. 

Once when I was eight or so, my mother found an open packet of Sweet Tarts candies on a file cabinet in the family room.  I don't know how long it had been there -- it was a hoard house after all -- but she mistook them for antibiotics and got very upset at me for not taking them.  "Those are candy," I explained.  They weren't even mine.  Dante might have left them there, but they were from one of the communal baskets of candy my mother left scattered around the house, so it's anybody's guess.  I always took all my medicine though.  It never would have occurred to me not to take a dose of the medicine she gave me, let alone leave them scattered on top of a file cabinet.  To this day, I have never stopped taking a course of antibiotics before they ran out.

I was also about eight when I got my first vaginal yeast infection as a result of the antibiotics.  My entire vulva felt like an inflamed mosquito bite, and it itched so badly I writhed on my bed and cried.  I didn't know what was happening, but my mother did.  When she took me to the pediatrician and announced that I had an yeast infection, the nurse asked, "Oral yeast infection, I assume?"  When my mother said, "No, vaginal," the nurse raised in eyebrows in surprise.  When she left the room, I asked my mother why she had done that.  "Vaginal yeast infections are normally just from having too much sex," my mother told me.  "But yours is from all the antibiotics." 

She bought me Monistat antifungal treatment from the drug store later that day.  I didn't need the vaginal suppositories, she said, just the cream, but she insisted on applying it herself.  When I asked uncomfortably why I couldn't just do it myself, she argued that I wouldn't be able to see where to apply it.  "I don't need to be able to see it," I told her.  "I can feel where it itches."  She denied my request and rubbed in the cream with her fingers while I laid on my back on my bed hoping she would stop soon.  Not knowing how to explain the creepy, skin crawly feeling that was upsetting me, I told her, "I don't like it.  It doesn't feel good."  "It's not SUPPOSED to feel good!" she barked.  "If you liked this, there would be something wrong with you!"

Genetic Counseling for the Donor Conceived

I'm getting to the point where I'm posting enough stuff my half-siblings know that, if they stumbled across this blog for whatever reason, they would be able to identify me.  This makes me nervous, but not nervous enough to stop posting.  Obviously.

My half-brother Hans emailed me the other day to say our uncle had tested positive for some sort of mutation that puts people at higher risk for specific types of cancer.  He said our father had asked him to let me know in case I wanted to get myself or my daughter tested.  Below Hans' note was a series of emails between my biological father and my uncle's wife.  She had the job of informing my uncle's family members that they might want to get tested.  There was a limited amount of information exchanged.  The emails were from several months ago, but the dates showed my biological father just had forwarded them to Hans to forward to me this week.  It reminded me vaguely of how people who find out they have an STD are supposed to reach out to everyone they've been intimate with.  "Hey, it's Joseph.  Yeah, the Joseph who sired you about 30 years ago.  Good times, huh?  So anyway, I tested positive, and it turns out you might want to get yourself tested too..."  I wish I had more known half-siblings, just to add to the comic effect.

I had a check up scheduled with my doctor for just a few days later, so I brought a print-out of the email chain to my appointment and asked my doctor what he thought of genetic testing.  I'd assumed he would say there wasn't much point in it if I'm not planning to have more kids and there is nothing actionable I can do with the results anyway.  When I'd brought up prenatal testing before conceiving my daughter, my OB/GYN at the time had said, "What for?  If you don't even know your family medical history, how can we know what tests to run?"  I hadn't known who my biological father was back then or anything about his family medical history, but I thought there were standard tests doctors could run for common disorders. 

To my surprise, maybe because I have more family information now, my current doctor had a different reaction.  He referred me to a local cancer center that does genetic counseling and strongly recommended I do it.  He said that, while there isn't often something actionable to be done with a heightened cancer risk, there might be more screening options in the future, and the field of genetics is progressing constantly so it would be good to have my results on file.

I called the genetic counselor to make an appointment.  She asked me if I had a copy of my uncle's report because there was relevant information in it that they could use in testing me.  I told her I might be able to get a copy.  She stressed the importance of it until I finally explained that my biological father was an anonymous sperm donor and I'm still a secret to most of his family, said uncle probably included.  I told her I would ask my brother for the report, but I wasn't sure I could get it.  She told me it was okay.  While it's useful information and would inform what genetic tests would be done on me and would probably make my testing cheaper, they can work without it. 

Then she asked me to compile a list of every  member of my extended family who has had cancer too, as well as which type of cancer and at what age it developed.  I know some of that.  I know what I know anyway.  I don't know when their various cancers developed, but I know they all died soon thereafter or as a result of the cancer, and I know when they died, so surely that counts for something.  My information isn't lacking enough that I would try to ask for more anyway.  Most of the cancer in my family is on my father's side.  All of the "lady cancers" are, and those are the ones whose risk are heightened the most dramatically by this particular gene mutation.

I told my brother thank you for the information and thank you when he got me the extra pages from our uncle's report.  He's always very prompt in his replies.  I didn't mention that I already have heightened risk for colon cancer, which I inherited from our father's genes, in spite of our father pointing out in the email chain that he thinks he got "the good genes" because he hasn't yet had the same colon issues his brother or mother have had.  I'm not going to tell any of them the results of my genetics testing either, both because I don't think they want to know and also because I want to have information they don't have for a change.  I'm not mad at my half-siblings.  They are nice and kind to me, but I'm angry at my father every time I remember he exists, not just for this.  I get so angry when I think of him that I often cry in impotent rage, and I don't want anyone in his family to know that.  I want them to think I'm calmer and cooler than them, as I've always pretended to be.  I do not want them thinking I'm irrational and ungrateful or expecting too much.  I will take what I can get.  I will take months' old forwarded emails indicating that my daughter and I might want to get ourselves checked out for new and exotic cancer risks, carefully funneled through a third party so that I don't dare take liberties with my father by responding to him directly.  I know I have more than most DC people already.  But I'm still angry.  

Bright Side:  At least it's not ALS.  I scoured my raw genome data from 23andMe, and I'm definitely not getting ALS.

Breaking Up with My Mother

Near the end of our relationship -- just before the several months of silence that preceded my wedding -- my mother left me some rather fucked up voicemails.  I've mentioned them here before.  Sometimes I would come home from work to a happy morning voicemail chattering away about wedding cakes and an angry afternoon voicemail calling me an ungrateful little bitch.  Sometimes there were more than two.  I still have them.  Almost all of them.  My voicemail at the time was set up to send mp3 files to my gmail account, and I didn't delete them.  I starred the most fucked up ones so I could find them later if I needed to build a case against her or I guess just feel sorry for myself in a masochistic sort of way.

I listened to two of her starred voicemails the other day for the first time in at least five years.  I'm not entirely sure why, though I have wanted to post them here for a long time.  I've run across them before in my email, but I have avoided them until recently because I anticipated they would make me feel bad or start shaking like I used to whenever I heard her voice.  It was the first time I've heard her voice in at least five years.  I didn't start shaking, so that was good.  I didn't cry either, which is also good.  They were a lot meaner than I remembered.  Pretty much every time I run across an old email or story about her, I'm surprised again by how much worse it was than I remembered. 

In both the voicemails I listened to, she said something along the lines of, "Answer me this one question and I'll leave you alone forever.  What did I ever do to deserve the way you treat me?"  That might not be verbatim, but I don't want to listen to them again to check.  Take my word for it that it's close enough.  And the answer to her question is that she did very little to deserve the way I treated her.  I was kind to her.  I tried to help her and make her happy.  Bear in mind that these voicemails were before I ever cut ties with her, when I tripped over myself trying to save both my parents at the expense of most other things in my life.  Most people would have considered me a good daughter, or at least that's what they say out loud.  She didn't deserve the way I treated her.  She didn't have to because she was my mother and I loved her and felt responsible for her. 

After I got married and my mother stopped contacting me again and my dad made his threat to let himself die of infection rather than live in a nursing home, my husband I moved.  That was when we bought our house so that my dad could move in with us.  My mother hadn't reached out to me in the ten months following my wedding, and I didn't reach out to tell her I was moving. 

I didn't hear from her again for three years, when she finally found me on Facebook.  She sent me this message:

I miss you, I love you. I sent you an anniversary card but it came back. Just wanted you to know I am getting the help I need and would love to be in contact with you again. I am living in a group home called Butterfly Glen and it helps. My address is 12986 Appleton St Cincinnati, OH and my phone number is 513-555-9876. I would love to hear from you. I was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and am being treated for it. I feel much better. Love forever and always, Mom

My first reaction was shock.  Not at the content so much as the fact that it was her.  Sort of like how I used to start shaking whenever the phone rang.  Flushed face, pounding heart.  I'm not sure if it was more fear or excitement.  I find them hard to tell apart. 

I didn't know what to say.  I wanted to tell her good job.  I wanted to praise her for getting help, even if the help she was getting was not by choice.  I knew from my dad that she had only ended up at Butterfly Glen because of another "suicide attempt" after both her parents died and she was going to have to find someone new to take her in and take care of her.  No one retrieved her from the hospital's psych ward, so she had been released to Butterfly Glen, an assisted living home I presume she selected from a short list based on its name.  She has always loved butterflies.  Butterfly everything.  Also, it's a shithole -- I've looked online.

The problem with responding to her was that I didn't want to renew contact.  It felt like an abusive ex with a drug abuse problem was reaching out to say she'd gotten clean and was ready to be together again.  Why?  I'm fine now and it was so hard to break up -- why would I ever walk back into that?  I want her to be happy and healthy, but what I don't want her to be is my problem.  I reached out to my best friend, Jerry.  I explained that I didn't want to have to deal to my mother again but that I felt I owed it to her until the next time she went off the deep end.  "Don't respond for three weeks, and I bet she'll comply," Jerry said.  Jerry knows my mom.

The fact of the matter is that I don't know if my mother was still abusing prescription drugs at Butterfly Glen.  I have no idea how much of what she was on or how diligent her doctors were.  I thought back to how she'd been before the muscle relaxants and the sleeping pills and god knows what else.  Back when I was thirteen and younger.  Her behavior wouldn't have been mistaken for bipolar disorder back then, before the drugs.  And that's when I started remembering some of the stories I've told here, and I realized I still wouldn't want her in my life.  No version of the mother I've ever known would be someone I would choose to have in my life.  Life is easier without her. 

I explained to my therapist, "The more I think about my childhood, the more the good memories are colored by the things I know now.  It seems like the love I felt for my mother was mostly Stockholm Syndrome." 

She replied, "Maybe it was."  I didn't expect that response.

I didn't reply to my mother's Facebook message.  She sent me another a few months later on my birthday, but I didn't see it until even later because it was in my "other" inbox, where unsolicited messages from strangers go.  She wrote:

Happy Happy Birthday!!! I can't believe that 30 years ago today you came into my life and changed it forever. I wanted to update you on family events. I'm sure that Dad told you that Grandma Wilkes died in May after your wedding. Uncle Jim died last November and Grandpa Wilkes died on August 4th this year. All I have left is Dante and you and Michael. I'm living in a great group home called Butterfly Glen I am being treated with medication and group therapy for Bipolar disorder. I am doing great and the only thing that could be better would be to hear from you. I don't want anything from you just to hear from you and to know where you are and what you're doing and how you are doing. Love Forever and Always, MOM

I was pregnant with Eliza at the time.  I never replied.

Bright Side

If you don't yet know the identity of one or both of your genetic parents, and you don't yet have life insurance, consider buying a life insurance policy in 2016.  The forms generally ask for family medical history, and if you don't know yours, your life insurance can actually be a tad cheaper than it would be if you knew just how sick your biological family really is.  I got life insurance between finding out I'm donor conceived and finding out who my biological father is, and my family medical history for those forms was half the length it is now that I've found him.  It's called "plausible deniability."  Might as well force something useful out of parental anonymity.  Happy New Year's Eve, Everybody!

An Open Letter to My Mother in 1965

Dear Annie,

I'm writing this to your 15-year-old self because that is when I believe these words might have meant something to you.  We met when you were 30 and I was born.  I think 30 was too late.  Fifty-something, when I tried to tell you some of these things for the first and last time, was far too late.  The last year we were in contact, you were generally drugged and sometimes barely lucid.  So I'm telling you these things in 1965, when you were old enough to understand but still young enough you might have believed you could change and choose your own fate.

Things are going to get rough.  I know they've already been rough.  I know you are the only girl among all your brothers and that you have to help out around the house in ways they aren't expected to, and I also know your dad is kind of an asshole.  Don't try to claim he isn't.  We both know he is, and it's as much my right to say so as yours, so deal with it.  I also know you're poor, but you'll be surprised to learn your family is doing better than the majority of American households fifty years in the future, and your parents are going to be just fine thanks to unions and pensions.  You're going to be just fine too -- physically and financially -- but you won't see it that way, which is the bigger problem.

You are smart.  You might have always suspected this and someone convinced you otherwise, or maybe you never even realized it, but you are smart and resourceful.  If you are willing to believe these facts, you can be unstoppable.  But you have to try.  Continually trying is the really hard part.  Perfection is not important.  It's not even possible, so forget about trying to be perfect and trying to avoid failure, and just do.  Stop taking all the remedial classes in school so that you can get the best grades.  Stop taking the jobs you think no one else wants.  You are smart enough to do more, and you will never be perfect no matter how low you aim.  Just do the best you can.  Take every opportunity you can.  Keep trying, and you'll be fine.  You know how I know this?  I'm really smart.  Trust me.

In a few years, you're going to marry an asshole who reminds you vaguely of your father.  Emotionally stunted, fits of rage, decent provider, all that same old comfortable bullshit.  Don't let him break you.  Just because the disability checks come in his name doesn't mean he is the only one of value in your relationship.  Your innate value isn't based in US currency.  Neither is your daughter's.  Try and remember that.

I know you're pretty hard-wired at this point to buy goods cheaply and avoid investing in nice things, either because you've grown up poor with parents who grew up even poorer or because of your low self-worth or both, but please know this deal-seeking tendency is not the most fiscally intelligent tactic.  You will have plenty of money soon.  You'll have more than you immediately know what to do with, which will prompt you to eat steak sandwiches every night, as you will tell me, because apparently this is a stupid and expensive thing to do.  Anyway, if you avoid seeking deals and shopping for thrills and hoarding because it makes you feel safe, you will continue to have more money than you know what to do with.  When you need a new pair of shoes, spend five times as much as you would on the cheapest possible pair and get something nice and comfortable and sturdy.  It took me years to learn to shop this way, but it's actually less expensive than buying a ton of cheap stuff you won't end up using.  You'll also have less of a hoard, which I realize is also something you're probably hard-wired for at this point based on what your childhood home looked like and the stories you told me. 

You are mentally ill.  I know those words sting, and I want you to understand that it isn't something bad about you.  It's just something that is.  You are too young right now at 15 for most decent professionals to diagnose you with what ails you, and it probably hasn't even occurred to you anything is wrong yet at this age.  You probably seem like a fairly typical teenager.  It will get worse, but it's not entirely out of your control, and a good portion of what goes down will be courtesy of prescription drug abuse.  Yes, it's still abuse even though they're prescriptions.  Remember that.  If you can effectively treat an ailment without a prescription drug, do it, even if it involves hard work like therapy or regular exercise.  I kind of doubt even your 15-year-old self would hear me out on that particular note, but seriously, even prescription drugs can be dangerous and you will have a tendency to get out of control.  Know thyself.

I'm not sure how you feel about control at 15.  I've always craved control over my own life and my own situation, but the version of you I know generally wanted people to take care of her so she could check out.  I hope you aren't like that already.  You are powerful when you try to be.  If you don't like something, you can change it.  Please don't check out.  Please don't expect other people to take care of you like the wilting flower you will pretend to be. 

It might be hard to believe that you could get a full-time job that would support you comfortably or that you could earn a college degree or seek help from a mental health professional until you start to feel good from something other than excessive doses of prescription drugs.  You could do those things though.  I know your parents "don't believe in therapy," but fifty years from now, most of your family will be dead, your parents included, and the rest won't speak to you.  You'll be left with very few options beyond stepping up to the plate and taking care of yourself.  Please rise to the challenge.  Please take care of yourself.  Please be the smart, capable woman I know you could have grown into.  It's not too late.  It's never too late. 

And when your family stops talking to you, it isn't because they hate you or because you're "bad."  It's because you behave in a cruel and crazy way and they choose to stop dealing with you because they have to take care of themselves too.  You are almost full grown, and you haven't been the baby of the family since the year after you were born.  I'm going to lay some ugly truth on you:  you will never again be someone's number one priority.  Ever.  I hope you got the bulk of your mother's attention in the months following your birth, but that was it.  No more.  I realize you don't even remember that time.  I'm truly sorry, but that's the hand you were dealt.  You have to be your own grownup now.  If you refuse, well... I guess someone in a nursing home might keep you alive, but it won't be all that pleasant, and you will still eventually languish and die.  You can be the capable, in control woman I know you can be, and you can choose your own happiness, or you can languish and die.  You don't get to be someone's baby.  You don't get to be the beloved golden child.  Not everyone gets a turn at that fate, and if you ever did, it's long done now.  Sorry.  Them's the breaks.

I hope this letter isn't too much of a downer.  I wonder -- do you ever cry anymore?  I know your dad was kind of a dick about that with the, "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about!" line.  You said the same line to me, followed immediately by how much you hated when your father said it to you.  You don't cry much in the future, at least not in front of other people.  I do want you to know though that people see how you feel.  You're not going through it all alone.  They can't do for you the things you have to do for yourself, but people are there and they do care.  They just can't save you.  You have to do that part yourself.  It's really hard, but I know you can do it.  You're smart and capable.  You feel things deeply.  It's hard feeling like you're all alone, but there is help out there, even when you're eventually old and alone.  But you have to try.  You have to choose to be the one in charge of yourself.  If you give up, no one will rescue you.  If you hit rock bottom, you will hit it hard and it will hurt.  No one will scoop you up and save you.  Know that.  It hurts, but it's important to know that. 

The most important thing you can ever do is take care of yourself.  You have a tendency to want to rescue people, to be their savior.  It doesn't tend to go as well as one might hope, but you could save yourself.  That would be amazing.  I hope someday in the future, more than fifty years in the future, when all the time I've known you is done, these thoughts reach you.  I hope you realize it doesn't matter how old or ugly or fat or poor you think you are.  You can still choose to take charge of your own life and take care of yourself.  And I hope you do.  Because I love you and have always wanted the best for you.  I just can't tell you face-to-face anymore.  I have to take care of myself and my daughter and my family instead because that's how this was always supposed to work.  I can't save you, but I will always pray you decide to save yourself like I know you can.  That's the best I can do.  Now let's see your best.  -- C

The Time My Mother Gave Her In-Laws a Dog

A few years into my grandfather's dementia, my mother decided what he really needed was a dog.  My dad's dad had Alzheimer's, and my grandmother took care of him at home.  He had reached the stage where he believed he was in prison and his wife was his jailer, but he hadn't reached the stage where it was taking a toll on his physical body yet.  In short, he spent a lot of time running away from home, and my grandmother spent a lot of time retrieving him.

My mother saw an ad for a free, unwanted, adult dog in a local Penny Saver and determined the deal was too good to pass up.  The people who were holding the dog said they had found him by the side of the road, so he had already been abandoned at least once before and, based on his behavior, abused as well.  He snapped at people, he was incredibly thin, and there appeared to be something wrong with his skin that resembled eczema. 

My mother gave the dog to her mother-in-law with the explanation that it was to keep my grandfather occupied.  My grandmother accepted the unwanted dog graciously, I presume because she didn't know what else to do.  Then every time my grandfather fled his "jail," Max the dog took off as well.  My grandmother would drive after them, coaxing each into the car with cold hotdogs.  Eventually she told my mother she couldn't do it anymore.  Max created twice the work for her, and she couldn't take care of him anymore.  He became our household's second dog.  Our first dog, Angel, was a sweet dispositioned Cocker Spaniel who we had raised from puppyhood.

I don't remember if it was before Max went to live with my grandparents or after he came back to our house that he mauled me.  He was still new to me, it hadn't occurred to me to be wary of him, and I had leaned down to hug him good night before going to bed like I always did Angel.  I was nine years old.  He had been asleep, I had startled him, and he had woken up taking a small chunk out of my face.  My dad said something along the lines of, "Of course you got bit.  He was asleep," and indicated he'd known exactly what was going to happen when he saw me getting too close to the dog sleeping at his feet.  I wanted to ask why he hadn't said something.  Why hadn't he warned me if he knew this would happen?  Angel didn't bite when I did the same thing.  I didn't know I "had it coming" by hugging the new dog.  Our conversation was cut short when my mother took me to the hospital to get stitches.   

The Time My Mother Found My Address -- and a Contingency Plan

Dear Jerry,

My dad says my mom finally looked up my name on the internet and found me.  My address is on the first page of hits, so it's an investment of about 5 seconds.  I figured it was only a matter of time, but 2 years is a pretty good run.  It's pretty obvious she is in the mania stage right now, based on my dad's email below.  I'm wondering how long this one will last and if she is still living at that group home and if she is or was on any kind of stabilizing medication while there.

My phone number doesn't appear to be listed online yet, but even once it is, caller ID makes it easy enough to avoid 513 calls that aren't from my dad or you or your family.  I doubt she'd take the 8-hour drive to show up on my doorstep if she hasn't been able to reach me by phone in 3+ years, but if she did, I have no idea how one is supposed to handle that situation.  I imagine she would take a bus like she did when she accosted my dad in Cleveland and then take a taxi to my house, and then say she can't leave because she'd need to call another taxi and doesn't have enough money for it to take her anywhere anyway.  Have you ever heard of someone in this situation?  My first thought was that I would call the local police, but I think they'd just say they don't want to get involved in a domestic squabble and that she hasn't committed any crime and she'd be left sitting outside my house waiting for me to make a move.  I'd like to have some kind of contingency plan that doesn't involve giving her money or letting her into my home.  -- C

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paul Rossetti <stargazer23401@aol.com>
Date: Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 3:53 PM
Subject:
To: Christina R. Martin <christina.r.martin@gmail.com>

By the way, you'd better watch out. Evidently your mom has access to a computer, and is with it enough to have found you there.
She's also told Dante she is going to sue me for another $500 a month for monthly maintenance. I'd sure like to know who's putting her up to all this.
Love, Dad...
___________________
DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF, IT'S ALL SMALL STUFF...

For a couple years after I stopped communicating with my mother, I still feared her showing up on my doorstep, as noted in the email above.  I had moved halfway across the country since the last time she knew my address, but my new address was highly findable.  When Michael and I bought our house, our county published our names, address, and the purchase price of our house, as they do with all real estate purchases.  For awhile it was the first thing that came up in a Google search for my name, and it worried me.

I live a full day's drive from my mother, but I imagined the craziest things she could do, such as taking a taxi to get here and demanding I pay the thousand dollar cab fare because she had no money, or something similarly ridiculous.  I worried about this scenario a fair amount, and sometimes it kept me awake at night.  How would I get rid of her if she showed up?  What if she threw a fit in my driveway and said she couldn't leave because she had no phone, no car, and no money?  I couldn't control it.  I can't control anything she does. 

What I can control is how I react, so I hatched a contingency plan so I wouldn't lose any more sleep imagining this stupid scenario.  First, I had to decide what else I had control over and what I would be willing to do.  I have control over my house and my property and my body and my money.  These were all things she had seemed to control up until I got my own apartment and a full-time job, so it was easy to forget I was a financially independent adult who could put my foot down. 

I decided I would not pay anyone who brought her to my home.  That would do nothing to benefit me, and no one could legally make me do it ("no one can legally make me" has become a big deciding factor in letting myself say "no" to things -- I say "no" to a lot of things now).  I also wouldn't give her money or let her into my home under any circumstances.  I could just imagine her kicking off her shoes, lying down on my couch, and declaring squatters rights or something.  I know squatters rights don't work that way, but it would still be harder to make her leave once she got inside.  I also wouldn't drive her anywhere in my car.  I refuse to put myself in any situation in which she could try to abduct or kill me, likely or not, and I also don't care for the inconvenience.

What I would do is tell her politely and firmly that she is not welcome at my home or on my property and that, if she doesn't leave immediately, I will call the police.  No conversation, no "hearing what she has to say," just my telling her politely and firmly to leave.  If she said she couldn't go because her cab already left and she had no phone and no money and it was raining -- my god, the rain -- and she had nowhere else to go, I would be willing to give a little to ease along the progress of the situation.   

If it were raining, I would give her an umbrella I don't mind parting with forever.  We have at least one cheap, collapsible umbrella that is sort of half-broken but still in use because it's small enough to fit in a backpack.  If it were raining, she could have that (envision "I am a benevolent god" meme here).  I would bring the cordless phone to the door (after locking the door behind me while I went to fetch it so that she couldn't sneak in) because if she tried to steal it or break it, I have two others and they don't work beyond my yard anyway so it would just be amusing to me.  I would let her call someone on my cordless phone to retrieve her, and if she swore she had no one, I would call her a cab myself.  I would allow her to wait at the curb for the car rather than calling the police on her immediately.  There would be a time limit on how long I would allow her to wait in sight of my home, and it would be based on how long it typically takes a cab to come.  Maybe 30 minutes.  I might be willing to pay a taxi driver in cash to take her to a bus station or airport, but I would give no money to my mother directly, and if she came back, I would not pay another cabbie again.  I consider this very generous of me since paying the cabbie in the first place isn't my job and calling the cops is free.  

If she came back again or refused to go in the first place, I would call the police, and they would come and remove her because the police in my town are very helpful and I am a thirty-something, affluent, white woman, while my mother looks like a crazy homeless person.  I forgot this fact a lot when I was younger.  I am an affluent white woman, I have power, and the amount of respect I receive from strangers has increased dramatically since I entered my thirties.  Even if my mother tried to claim she has a right to me and everything I own because she is my mother, the cops wouldn't accept that because it is crazy and not how America works, even if it's how my mother's mind works.  I would calmly and quietly explain that my mother is severely mentally ill, refuses any sort of treatment, and that I haven't been in contact with her for the last seven years for this exact reason.  I would express a subdued but believable amount of fear and, now that I have a child, mention protecting her.  They would take my mother away from my home because it's their job and also because I know how to behave in a variety of situations and she does not.  I have no problem calling the police as many times as necessary.  And unlike my dad, I have no qualms about pressing charges if it came to that.

I also had a clever plan in which I would sneak out the back door, go to my neighbor's house, sneak us both back in through my kitchen door, and have my neighbor answer the door to tell my mother I had sold the house and moved.  I think it would take too long to go get my neighbor though.  It might be worth trying if my mother were higher functioning and more dangerous, but I think the flat out rejection of sending her away or calling the cops would be equally effective at getting rid of her in the long-term.  She doesn't handle rejection well, and I don't think she'd be willing to put herself out there a second time.  I think she would crumple.  Sometimes I think if I were to look her dead in the eye and state point blank, "You aren't worth the trouble," she would explode into a pile of ash.

[Edited:  Re-reading all this I realize my contingency plan has changed.  I would tell her to leave and then call the police.  I wouldn't give her an umbrella or call her a cab or let her wait at the end of my driveway for a ride.  I would just call the police.  Apparently I don't have the patience or benevolence I had four years ago.  Oh well.]

"57 Reasons I Hate My Mother": An Email

I was referring back to my old emails while writing the story of The Great Clean Out of '06 (or The Time My Mother Scammed the Poorest People We Knew), but I think this email might be better in its original form.  A few of the things I said at the time make me cringe in the rereading (e.g., repeatedly calling my mother a terrible person; calling the Gardner family "trashy" -- they remind me of Kenny's family from South Park, but still, it was unkind), but I prefer to keep it honest than to edit it to make myself sound better.  The first bullet points might sound familiar from other posts.

Dear Jerry,

It really relaxes my head to list off what is pissing me off about my mom, but I can understand how listening to someone complain can get old really fast (believe me -- I know), so feel free to skip the numbered section of this email.  Please note though that there is a shitload of crazy in there and you might find some of it interesting and/or amusing.  There aren't actually 57 reasons.  I just liked how it sounded.

1.  She called me repeatedly starting at 6am yesterday to tell me she wanted to fax me something.  I discovered later that she had started calling my cell phone at 5:30am.  She told me today that she had called about six other people before that because she couldn't find my phone number.  When each asked why she had called at such an ungodly hour, she got increasingly angrier.  I finally got her off the phone with less than an hour before I had to be at work.  The all-important fax was the name of a hotel in Cleveland, a wedding price list for the chapel in Cincy, and something that looked like spam and said something about 'girlfriends' on it.

2.  She called me tonight for her daily venting and to ask me to wire her $2000.  She said the car that was formerly mine -- which my brother ruined the engine on and then she tried unsuccessfully to give away -- was in the shop and wouldn't be leaving until she had $2k.  She said she hadn't planned on taking the $2k that my father had very carefully set aside in a money market account to pay their property tax, but if I wouldn't give her money, she'd be forced to use it.  Either she doesn't have access to the money market account, or my dad is completely unaware that she does and will probably have a breakdown when he finds out.  I hope for the former. 

Money she spent today:  her $2300 bed was delivered, and she had several scans run on her brain.  Tomorrow she is having an MRI, and she is having people come by to talk about installing automatic handicapped doors on the house. 

Do you know the Gardners (i.e., the very nice Tim Gardner's mostly -- not all, but mostly -- trashy family)?  Otherwise known to me as the poorest family in Cincy?  Well, my mom owes them money.  She told the youngest children and their boyfriends that she would pay them each $100 and all the candy they could eat to clean out her basement but that she would have to give them IOUs and pay them later (she mentioned this part after they arrived).  She also said she'd pay them to get my brother's car out of the shop.  Apparently their father called and yelled at her because his children had to put gas in the car to get it to her, and so far, they have made negative money.  She also offered the pregnant teenager Mikaela and her boyfriend a $1000 IOU to go to Queens and drive back the $3000 van she is still hell-bent on buying.  Mikaela backed out because she is in her 3rd trimester and recently learned that she isn't supposed to be flying.  My mother is a terrible person.  

By the way, I didn't give her the money.  I told her truthfully that I don't have that much money in my checking account.  There is no reason for her to ever know that I have a high-yield savings account and an 18-month CD because she is never ever getting her hands on them.

3.  She announced in church last Sunday that she needed help cleaning out her house and that she would pay people by giving them bags of candy and praying for them (I'm serious).  She was angry and resentful that people who were "supposed to be [her] friends" didn't chip in, and even "the Mormons," some new-ish neighbors who had once said, "If there is anything we can do..." didn't help (apparently "if there is anything we can do..." now constitutes some sort of binding verbal agreement).  Only two people came, a couple from church who we've known for decades who are around my parents age, maybe a little older.  When they asked if there was anything they should bring, she asked for Rubbermaid storage containers.  She told the woman how she wished she could scrub out the bathtub but that her fingers just weren't strong enough.  The woman scrubbed the bathtub clean for her.  I don't think it had been scrubbed since the mid-'90s.

4.  After she bitched about having to wait until tomorrow for the scans of her brain and after I denied her request for $2000, she told me she had no idea if my dad had had his surgery today or not.  She hadn't called the hospital to find out.  She said she had tried the hospital in Cincinnati and expected them to transfer her to the hospital in Cleveland but they hadn't.  Not sure why she didn't call the number she has for another division of that hospital in Cleveland, but apparently she gave up quickly.  That's when I told her that I had actually bothered to look up the hospital's phone number and talk to my dad's nurse, who said he was recovering in his room and doing fine.  My mother seemed genuinely shocked, though I'm not sure about which part.

5.  She tells the same stories ("complaints" might be a more accurate term) every time she calls me.  I think she tells everyone the same thing and actually forgets who she's told her shit to each day.  That, or she just doesn't care.  That's fairly likely, actually.  She is such a terrible person.  I really can't stand her.

6.  She has decided that as soon as my dad gets out of the hospital she will give him an ultimatum that either he treat her "like a human being" or she is divorcing him.  She said she has a terminal illness and life is too short to spend it unhappy.  What a lovely lesson to learn after wasting all of your youth, beauty, and money.  I am thankful for her sometimes.  Watching someone close to you make such catastrophic mistakes helps prevent you making so many of them, and sweet jesus, she covered a lot of them for me.  I honestly believe that, while I might not be a better person for having known her, I behave better for having dealt with her.

Okay, I'm finished with my list for today.  The good news, in addition to the fact that my dad's surgery went smoothly, is that I've been researching Ohio divorce law and Ohio is an "equitable-distribution" state.  This means, among other things, that upon divorce, the debts are divided up as fairly as possible to whomever created them.  My dad would still have tens of thousands of dollars worth of marital debt -- debt they earned jointly, like the mortgage -- but it would most likely free him from her mounting hospital bills.  The only thing really working against him is the fact that he is their sole source of income and a judge might determine that he stands a better chance of paying it off.  However, if he sues for divorce and cites the financial insanity -- and other insanity -- as cause, he might be able to get rid of those debts and of her, though I'm sure he'd have to pay alimony out of his significantly lighter check.  Also, there is a 90% chance (probably better) that he would get the house and would then be able to stop her from calling more and more people to do more and more expensive things to it.  Then I'd only have one parent spiraling out of control, and as long as she doesn't come knocking on my door (hell, if the pizza delivery guy can't find it, why should she be able to?), she can do whatever she damn well pleases.  Michael and I will move to Arizona where the schools are good, the property taxes are reasonable, and the weather is fine, and my dad can sell everything he owns and get a little house not too far away in the desert, the only place it seems he has ever been happy.

I am so looking forward to our Cleveland adventure.  Do you have any ideas for where we should eat?  The CDs I ordered for my dad arrived yesterday, so I now have some 15 CDs worth of jazz to upload onto his new mp3 player.  Plus, I consequently have a new $200 jazz collection.  Which is actually not bad.  I used to hate the stuff, but I think it must have seeped into my brain as a child because so much of it is familiar to me now, and hearing it is really soothing.  "Willow Weep For Me" and "Misty" always make me think of my dad because they are the two songs he played on his guitar every damn day for as long as I can remember.  I actually like them now, I guess because I hadn't heard them in so long.

It'll be good to see him, and I know there's a selfish reason behind it, but I love giving him gifts.  He's so good at receiving gifts, and I love that I know he'll really like this one and that maybe he won't be so sad or so lonely because he'll have something pretty and familiar to listen to and he'll know that it came from someone who loves him and wants him to get well.  I'd better head to bed since it's getting really late.  Be thinking of fun ways to spend our evening together.  There should definitely be mischief involved at one point or another, though I'm not sure how so.  I hope to talk to you soon, my best and favorite friend.  -- C

P.S.  #7)  She got upset when I told her after 11pm that I needed to go get ready for bed because I have work in the morning.  Michael says I should set the fax to call her in the middle of the day and wake her up and see how she likes it (ha!).  -- C