Mom Found Me

I received mail from my mother at my house for the first time ever in spring of 2024. I've owned this house for 15 years, and my address is one of the first things that comes up if you Google my name. I heard nothing here until I started being penpals with my mom's friend Mindi, so I assume Mindi gave her my address. I always knew this was a possibility. Not a big deal.

The first mail was an anniversary card. There was no return address on the envelope, but I knew her handwriting on sight. The only message she'd written in the card was an updated phone number for Butterfly Glen, the assisted living house where she's been residing since her parents died over a decade ago. I brought it to my therapist, and she found this amusing.

Months passed. Then I got a birthday card with a check for $100. I threw them both away (I'm reasonably rich at this point, as evidenced by giving my brother the entirety of our dad's $10k life insurance policy). Thankfully my best friend was visiting for my birthday when it arrived, and she kept me from spiraling.

Last week Mindi sent me an email asking for my address -- which she knows and where I have previously received her letters -- so that she can send me a Christmas card. She confessed she had told my mother about my daughter (I had assumed my mother already knew about my daughter -- she's nearly 13, she's never been a secret, and everyone else in the family knows about her, Dante included). Mindi apologized and swore she wouldn't give her any more information I didn't want her to know. She asked me not to tell her anything for a few days because she was going to Butterfly Glen for a visit and didn't want to let anything slip on accident. I haven't responded.

Then I got a Christmas card addressed to "Mr. & Mrs. Michael Martin & Family" (one of my pet peeves is being addressed as Mrs. [Some Guy's Full Name], but I don't know if she was trolling me or just ignorant of that fact). She'd used a return address label this time. She wished us health and added something to the card about Jesus being "the reason for the season," which was funny to me because I haven't been Christian in many years and, despite being a regular Methodist churchgoer for my entire childhood, I don't remember her making a big fuss over Jesus in the past. Church-wise, we just did whatever my grandmother did. I might be misremembering just how religious a baseline churchgoer was though. Anyway, it was the first time my mother has ever sent a Christmas card as far as I'm aware and can recall. We lived so close to our extended family that we just saw them in person instead. I threw the card away. I assumed I would get a reprieve until my next wedding anniversary, assuming she's still interested in sending me mail next spring. I was wrong.

I checked the mail today and found a thick card envelope literally bursting at its seams, addressed to my full name in her handwriting. It said:

Do not Bend
Photo enclosed

A lot more than photos were enclosed. It also contained, for the first time ever, a multi-page letter detailing her version of events I've written about in this blog. I'm going to type it up and include it as its own post. 

My Mom's Friend Messaged Me

I don't remember what I've called her on here if I've referred to her, but my mom's childhood best friend's sister (let's call her Mindi) found me on Facebook (I'm intentionally easy to find) and messaged me. I assumed my mother had asked her to because why else would she. I know better than to tell anyone anything I "wouldn't want on the front page of the newspaper" anyway.

 

We're pen pals now. She told me her niece is pregnant and her sister (my mom's childhood friend) is moving into a nursing home. I told her about my daughter's surgery and how nice my mother-in-law is to me and how much I like having her in our home. I'm honest with her, but I know what kind of message I want to send, and she'll never hear truly personal things like "I'm sad."

 

In her last letter, Mindi confessed that my mother had asked her about me (shocker) but that she wouldn't tell her anything I didn't want her to know. So in my next letter I told her I hope my mother is doing well but that she was abusing prescription pills for the last several years I was in contact with her, I hadn't understood what was going on at the time (my mother had blamed her behavior on menopause, though I didn't get into that), and my mother has a history of calling me at all hours of the day and night to demand money and/or tell me what a terrible person I am. I told Mindi I don't know what my mother's relationship with pills is like right now and I don't want to have to change my phone number again. This information shouldn't have been 100% new to Mindi since she had hunted me down 15+ years ago and emailed me at work to tell me my mother had called her asking for money and that I needed to take better care of her. "I don't have the money to take care of your mother," Mindi had said. I didn't either, I explained, and I gave her a rundown of my parents' finances at the time and the fact that I knew my mother was receiving and spending several times my income every month. She had been nice to me after that. I had also seated her with my mother at my wedding so she could corral her as necessary. My mother had left early, but I assume Mindi had noticed that she was unwashed, shoeless, and high. After this last letter, I was prepared for Mindi either to support my choice (or pretend to) or to unfriend me on Facebook. I haven't gotten a reply yet, but she hasn't unfriended me either and she "loved" a picture I posted. 

 

My Facebook account is set to private, but I only post things I would be comfortable having public to the entire world including my mother. I even friended my brother Dante. He posts nothing and likes nothing of mine. I doubt he shows anything to my mother, but if he does, that's okay. I don't mind quietly haunting my family.

My husband Michael was concerned Mindi would give my mother our contact information. Literally anyone could do that though. A simple Google search of my name reveals our home address and one of my phone numbers (and I wouldn't give Mindi my phone number), and we've been here unmolested for over ten years now. I'm no longer concerned about my mother showing up on my doorstep, partly because I have a contingency plan but mostly because I can't imagine her being able to focus long enough to make a travel plan. I haven't heard of such a thing happening since the time she showed up at Dad's hospital four hours across the state via Greyhound bus. And her substance abuse issues got worse after that from everything I've heard. And I live twice as far away.

Things That Have Happened in the Last Year

I didn't realize it had been nearly a year since my last post.  Between then and now I've met my paternal half-brother Hans and his wife and young son.  I rejoined Facebook after a 2+ year hiatus, reconnecting me with my paternal half-sister Simone, the paternal first cousin once removed who orchestrated the Von Trapp family reunion, and my various maternal relations who I only ever communicate with on there.  Apparently no one was avoiding me; they just don't bother replying to emails.

No new half-siblings, leaving the donor conceived sibling count at zero.  No new word from my adoptive brother Dante or any other family.  I haven't heard from Dante since 2017 after I wired him our dad's life insurance payout.  I thought he might've friended our cousins on Facebook since he'd said when Dad died that he wanted to get back in touch with them, but the only thing I can see that he he has done on Facebook since then is join a group from our hometown, get into some internet fights with locals, get banned from the group, and then post that he has no idea why he was banned and they're all just too cliquey.  Now that's the Dante I remember.

No new word from my biological father.  No direct communication since he asked me not to contact him again after receiving my letter in 2014.

I can't remember if I wrote about discovering on Newspapers.com that my dad's father had another family and a well documented criminal record (thank you, Fresno Bee) before he moved back to the Midwest and married Grandma.  And thus my dad had a secret half-brother he may or may not have known about.  I emailed Dante about it but got no response.  The half-brother died a few years before my dad did and had no known biological children.  He had been named after my grandpa, but his stepfather had adopted him when he was little and given him a new surname.  I'd like to ask my dad's brother and sister if they knew about the secret half-brother, but I haven't seen my uncle since Dad's funeral or my aunt since my wedding over a decade ago.  I could probably count on my hands the number of times I've talked to them in my life, so reaching out for this would be more awkward than I'm willing to do.

My mom's suspected half-sister's daughter took a DNA test, confirming my grandpa was, in fact, her grandfather too.  I thought I'd written about my mom's secret half-sister/cousin, but I can't find it anywhere but here.  My cousin Michelle and I had started to doubt the veracity of the claim that Grandpa had fathered Ruby shortly before Ruby's mother had married his half-brother.  It was the big family "secret" all the cousins knew.  Ruby's daughter showed up as a first cousin match for me on 23andMe though, which is way too close a match for us to be half-second cousins (we share more than triple the DNA I share with my known half-second cousins on AncestryDNA -- the ones who should be her first cousins but aren't), so I know for sure now that we're actually half-first cousins.  We chatted on 23andMe a bit.  She asked after my (our) remaining uncle, Eugene, who neither of us has heard from in years.  I assume she knows as well as any of us who her grandfather is, but since I'd never talked to her or her mother (my half-aunt) before in my life and I don't know how their branch of the family feels about any of this, we never got onto the topic of biological grandfathers.  I wish I knew a polite and inoffensive way to say, "I've seen some wonky shit on here and I'm comfortable talking about anything you want to talk about.  You won't upend my world; I just don't want to upend yours either."

Excerpts about Mom from Grandma's Letters

I went back through the old letters from Grandma that my cousin Michelle lent me.  I copied down all the excerpts about my mother starting with her strange behavior, which I remember kicking up in 2002 shortly after my uncle's death, but which Grandma didn't start writing about until my mother stopped talking or eating for spans of time in 2004.  No drugs are mentioned by name.  Here's what she said:

Aug 24, 2004
Annie [my mom] still isn't doing very well.  What I can't get used to is that she doesn't talk to me. We can spend the whole day together, & she won't say 10 words all day. I know there are a lot of things bothering her, but I have never seen her like this. I guess part of it is a let down from all the years Chrissy [myself] was in school, & now that she is graduated she is making a life for herself miles away. Part of it is Paul [my dad, Annie's husband]. Part of it is physical, & part of it may be menopause. Beats me.

Since I had a full abdominal hysterectomy in '74, I don't know what she is going through. And I said at the time it was a shame, since I had planned to be a flaming bitch!

sept. 4, 2004

Annie isn't any better. She forces herself to take me out shopping on tues., but we can spend all day together & she doesn't say ten words. I can't get used to that.

sept 11, 2004

Annie isn't any better. In the "better late than never" category, now Paul and Chrissy have decided to be very concerned. Last Tues. morning she called and just said "I can't make it today."  I knew last week that she was just forcing herself to take me out. This time she admitted defeat, & stayed home. When Paul found out about it he called me, full of concern. I wished I'd had the nerve to tell him that he could help the situation if he would quit calling her a stupid, fat bitch, & pointing out to her that she has no friends. But I knew that would just cause more trouble, so I bit my tongue. I've done a lot of that in the 33 years they have been married. 

Then thurs. night Chrissy called, which is the first time that has happened since she went away to New York, in 2000. She had called & got the same one word comments from Annie that I have been getting for weeks.  Paul had told me that she sleeps 20 hours a day & that she has stopped eating. Chrissy is "worried sick."

I really think Annie is overmedicated, I know she is very bitter that she doesn't have a good relationship with either of her children, & there has been a real let down, since Chrissy graduated college & decided to live on the East coast. She is menopausal, & Paul can be as mean as a snake. All of these factors are a part of Annie's depression.

The same night Chrissy called, Grandpa insisted that I call Annie. When I was talking to her he said, "Do you need to be detoxed?" loud enough for her to hear it. I think it startled her & she seemed better after that. Asked how his appointment with the doctor went, & that is the first time she has initiated a conversation in weeks. Fri she took me to the grocery store & she did seem a little more like herself. 

sept 30, 2004

Don't want to jinx it, but I think Annie is starting to turn the corner. She talks more & even initiates topics of conversation. Still not going to church, but I take improvement where I can see it. We don't "do lunch" but the last three Tues. we have stopped at Wendy's for Jr. Frosties. The first week she only ate about half, the next week she ate two thirds, and this week she ate it all. Also she made it clear through Wal-Mart without breaking into a sweat. Keep praying for her.

Don't know how Chrissy is doing, since communications between her & Annie have broken down. [I'll have to look up my old emails to see what was going on at this time.  I can't remember "communications" ever "breaking down," just occasional respites from her calling to say I'm a bitch.]

oct 6, 2004

Annie and I went out shopping yesterday. She ate all of her frosty & was fairly talkative. I notice a difference in how she drives. She used to do it so naturally, like it was second nature. Now she grips the steering wheel tightly. Spends a lot more concentration before she backs out of a parking space, & seems tentative in a way. We come back out of Mason on a narrow stretch of road. End up to turn onto I-71 at Unity. Yesterday as we were getting ready to go off to the right, the car behind us came whipping around, on our right side, & could easily have caused a bad wreck! I made a remark about it & she said he didn't like the way she was driving. That surprised me & I said well, what was there not to like, she was driving in a perfectly straight line. She said she guessed she wasn't going fast enough to suit him, that he had been riding her tail-end ever since we turned onto that stretch.

Chrissy must think she is better -- she called whining & complaining about her job! She has an office now, but says they expect her to get way too many things done, & if they don't get her some help, she may have to quit this job. Our mantra has always been "don't quit your job unless you have another one lined up!"  

oct 13, 2004

Annie is doing better. She's talking more. Got her hair cut. 

dec 29, 2004

Annie seems some better. Yesterday was the first time in months that she wanted to eat an actual lunch. For many weeks we settled for a stop at Wendy's on the way into Mason. She would get a Jr. Frosty, I added a jr. cheeseburger to mine. Then when it got cold, we would go to Chilli's for plain water & a bowl of broccoli/cheese soup. Yesterday she suggested 91st Street Bar & grill for potato skins & stuffed mushrooms!

jan 5, 2005

I do think Annie is a little better. Last week she suggested we eat at 91st St bar & grill. Yesterday she said we should have just gone to Patrikio's to start with. We know they have good enchiladas, but knew we were under a time constraint because of the weather, & Patrikio's is over in KY. She has been in touch with the two people from her class at Cincy CC that she spent a lot of time with. I will know she is better when she comes back to church, she hasn't been to church since the first of July. Did you know she has lost 70 lbs?

jan 26, 2005

Praise God, I feel like Annie is finally coming back to normal!! Her appetite is back, & she is talking to me again. Starting to take care of some problems & take an interest in the world. Her main concern right now, is that she is losing her hair -- by the handfuls! Chrissy lost the gas cap off her car when she was home for Thanksgiving. I tried not to nag her about getting a replacement, but knew it needed to be done. Yesterday she finally bought a new cap. Grandpa had told me to pick up another bottle of "Heet" when she handed it to me, she asked what it was for. When I told her it would take any moisture out of the gas tank, she said maybe she better get some too. She also bought a gallon jug of windshield fluid. 

Feb 9, 2005

By the time we left walmart the snow had started. We started home, by way of KFC for grandpa's chicken dinner. Our problem was that we go by one of the mason high schools. Normally we are by there before all the nuts, in their pick me up trucks & soup up new cars, are turned loose. But because of the snow they dismissed early. We watched a pick up truck go tearing out of the parking lot, headed east, same as us. Because the road was slick, & he was going way too fast, we saw him fishtail. He went in a complete circle & was headed right for us! Annie jumped a curb to try & avoid a direct hit, but he still managed to smack her back fender hard enough to put blue paint, from his truck onto the fender.

He never offered to get out of the truck & his passenger sure didn't want to roll his window down, but finally did. The driver was giving Annie "I'm so sorry! Lost my traction! My tires aren't very good!" She let him leave, said afterwards she was thinking what if it had been Dante. Then she found out my elbow had been split open, & was bleeding. But the worst of it was when she started to drive away. I told her it sounded like the front tire on my side was blown out. And it was.

Annie bought a wig last friday. She doesn't like it much, but it looks good, & I think she will get used to it. [I had no idea my mother ever bought a wig.] Right now it makes her feel like she has a hat on.

April 6, 2005

Annie had a hit & run virus on Saturday. She threw up, & passed out , then threw up some more. Felt like death on a cracker the rest of the weekend, but is fine now.

Annie even feels well enough that she is going to have our party, at her house, on April 25th, which is a real break through. She is getting used to her wig, but still hates it.

sept 22, 2005

Annie has given up on the idea that she will ever have grandchildren. She asked Lea [my cousin, Annie's niece] if she could be an "honorary grandma" to her baby & Lea said she can. She wants to give her a baby shower in Oct, but hasn't gotten a list from Lea about who to invite. Now when we go shopping, she wants to buy everything she sees.

oct 12, 2005

Chrissy & Annie got into it (poor Michael got the brunt of it when Chrissy got off the phone). Annie made the mistake of telling Chrissy I won't allow her to call Chrissy "a little bitch" which has really always upset me. So I asked her to call her a "snotty little knothole" instead. It is from an old TV show, Barney Miller.  

oct 19, 2005

Chrissy & Annie have butted heads again, so I doubt she and Michael will be coming here for Thanksgiving.  [I looked October 2005 up in my old emails and saw one from Michael to me describing how my mother had called him in the pre-dawn hours to pressure him to come to Thanksgiving and -- because he knew I had already said I wasn't going -- he told her he couldn't get the time off from work.  I had only taken time off work and traveled all the way to my parents' home for Thanksgiving the previous year because my mother had lied and convinced me my dad was dying, but maybe Grandma didn't know.]

And that's the last of the letters.  My mother was so much worse in 2006, but I guess this was around the time my Grandma stopped writing letters.  By 2008, my mother had moved in with her parents.  Grandma died the next year.

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.

Free Sperm Donor!

FFS.  Ran across this today in one of the free sperm donor groups where I lurk.  While this one is comically gross, it isn't necessarily un-representative of the genre of sperm donor posts. 

In case you're new, "NI" stands for "natural insemination" a.k.a. sexual intercourse.  This particular gentleman only does NI (a.k.a. you must pay for his sperm by having sex with him).  Some of the group members will only do NI, while others merely prefer it.  (To be fair, a few don't advertise sex at all.) 

I just needed to share this somewhere and there's nowhere really appropriate I can think of.  It was too ridiculous to keep to myself. 

I Found Out Who Bought the Hoard House

I found out who bought my childhood home.  The county finally uploaded the sale paperwork to their database, and I looked up the guy who bought it.  He is a registered sex offender (child pornography) who was previously in prison but is currently out on parole.  When you Google his name, the first hits are all about his crimes and subsequent sentencing.  It seems fitting.  He sounds like an appropriate owner for the home that is still the setting for most of my nightmares. 

It would feel weirder if a family with young children lived there.  That wouldn't feel good.