*While I salute the many, many wonderful moms out there, on this day every year (in fact, for the entire week leading up to this gawd-awful ‘holiday’) I need to, contrarian that I am, acknowledge the less than stellar mom-sters who are worthy of little or no celebration. Moms have so much power, and in them resides so much – too much – cultural mythology and expectation; no one, no single individual, can live up to that bullshit, and most moms are doing the very best they can in a country and world that talks big about honoring mothers and loving children but delivers little to actually support women, and their families.
That said, I used to wish my mother had put out cigarettes on my arms or legs, so that I would have the actual scars to show those who insisted that all mothers love their children, a cohort that includes my first therapist. Uh, no, no they don’t. Deep breaths. Somewhere in the early 80s, when the trade edition of ‘Mommy Dearest’ by Christina Crawford came out, my mother called me from her hairdresser’s to ask me to promise not to write a book like that about her, and while I was surprised she had any level of self-awareness regarding her behavior toward me, I was also at that time exhausted, struggling to survive, and – as I said to her – ‘I don’t even own a typewriter, mom, leave me alone’. And no, I didn’t make that promise. Fuck that annihilating bitch, and the friends who watched and supported her from the sidelines. That hairdresser, a woman who was also a former student of hers, a fellow Catholic, and big fan of my mom’s, told me that when I was six years old I was such a horrible child she was tempted to drown me in our pool. She would have been twenty-four or five at the time, with a daughter my age, a child that she resented for revealing her imperfect Catholicism, as getting married in March and delivering an 8-pound baby in September isn’t consistent with purity a.k.a. virginity ’til marriage. She went on, after telling me of her former homicidal instincts, ‘But, I’m glad I didn’t because you’ve turned out okay’. Was I supposed to thank her? Did she think I was unaware of her, and other friends of my mom’s, hostility? Did it ever occur to her that maybe, just maybe, growing up in such an atmosphere was not ideal for a child, any child? And, did it ever occur to her that maybe I was not ‘okay’, in and of myself? More deep breaths.
The text below is an excerpt from the eulogy I wrote for my mom in 2007, subtext heavy but only to me – only, it seems, to me. As for my own personal version of the ‘no more wire hangers’ story, I’m still thinking about and working on that. Perhaps you’re reading it right now?
Hello and thank you for coming. Today is a good day – mother wanted not a funeral but a celebration of life – so let us celebrate the life of Dorothy Jean Byrnes Miller. Mother is at peace, with those she loved who went before her, and so again I say to all of you: today is a good day.
First a short list: my mother’s favorite word – yes, she had a favorite word – pavement. Pavement. My mothers favorite Roman; Julius Caesar. My mother’s favorite food: ice cream. My mother’s favorite person: Dick Miller. She had great taste. My mothers favorite family: the Byrnes Clan. My mother’s favorite thing to hold: babies. My mother’s favorite students: Ray Sprague and the Rosa twins, Gary and Gene, although Chuck Jenkins gets a gold star for effort and making her laugh – after all what student in the history of teaching didn’t get his homework done because his mother saw a UFO the night before? Christine Geehrer also gets a gold star for remembering and singing Gaudeamus Igitur over the phone once when mother was getting her hair done at Marcia’s. Something mother never was: cynical. Something mother always was: an idealist. My mothers other favorite thing to do other than read or eat ice cream: talk.
…to those of us who had the privilege of knowing her, my mom was a great lady – brilliant, stubborn, willful, full of laughter, sentimental, naive, generous, volatile, quick-witted, warm, fierce, loyal, rarely unforgiving, a great story teller, a great teacher – a loving, complicated, endlessly fascinating and tender mother and a wonderful life’s companion to my dad, her very best friend. An orphan at twenty, a teacher at twenty-two, a wife at twenty-seven, a mother at twenty-eight, a mother of four at thirty-three, a loving daughter-in-law to the end of my grandmother’s life, a devoted sister, and, finally, a women who wanted and deserved only to rest.
…Mother’s ultimate legacy lies in the students she taught, especially those she inspired to teach or lead their lives to the very best of their abilities – and in her love for my dad and the immense impact their relationship had on so many people their lives touched.
…Finally, I want to quote one of her other favorite Romans, Cicero, who said that the ‘life of the dead rests in the remembrance of the living’. Mother will always be remembered – well-remembered – by her students, her colleagues, her friends, family, and those who cared for her these last few years. And today – today is a good day.
Gaudeamus igitur Juvenes dum sumus! Post jucundam juventutem Post molestam senectutem Nos habebit humus.Nos habebit humus.
Therefore let us party While we are young! After pleasant youth After troublesome old age The earth will have us. The earth will have us.
*you better believe it was a good day.ding dong, t.w.i.d.!deep breaths.
*Richard Q. Mueller doing a headstand circa 1970. He might – he just might – have a pipe in his mouth, but from this angle, we can’t be sure…
April 15, 2010 The Thing Is….
My dad really is one of my favorite people on the planet and the thought of not having his irreverent person around to joke with is just so God-awful awful, my heart is breaking. I have got to pull it together. Here are some of the things I remember and value (and always will) about him: his humor, his intelligence, his goodness, walking down the street with him when I was a little girl and the feeling that everyone knew him and liked him, how he made people laugh and feel good, and how safe he made me feel, his voice resonating in his chest when I would sit on his lap when I was little, his bursts of song from behind the pharmacy counter (today, in an attempt to ask the “important questions” I asked what were the rest of the words to one that began “in the south of France, where the ladies don’t wear pants” and discovered that they are as follows “all they wear is grass just to cover up their ass” which I think explains why I never heard them in the store all those years ago…), his ability to make any moment funny, his devotion to my mom and to doing what was right, his incredible cheap-a-tude (omg is he cheap!), his appreciation for good looking women (last night at the hospital: “did you see the hips on that one?”, “Not really dad, but I know where you’re coming from, so stop right there, please!”), his love for his kids and grand kids which was without ego although yes I sometimes wished he had taken more credit, more pride in himself and in the fabulous dynasty (I loved calling him the patriarch) he co-created, his modesty, his attachment to coins and stamps and collecting things, his depth and sweetness, the fact that he could stand on his head, and even on his hands on a chair when we were little, little kids and that I knew that he was the best dad of all the dads, ever. And that’s all, but just for now. All I want to do is sleep, maybe tonight. Last night was a wash until I called the hospital at 2:30a.m. to ask how he was. Asleep, she said. And so, I went back to bed for the seventeenth time and finally dropped off at about four a.m., waking at six. He told me today to be strong and that “this is life”; I know he’s right and I will try to be strong, but it ain’t easy.
April 17, 2010 Hospice
My dad is home and yesterday was admitted as a patient into Hospice, or, as it is known locally, the Catskill Area Center for Palliative Care. I have always been a fan of hospice care for at least as long as I have understood it, an understanding that dates back to a PBS show Bill Moyers did about it in the 90s. It’s great, and, it’s really great as it exists in the present, not only for the absolutely terminally ill i.e. “you have three weeks to live, yes, you can go into hospice”, it also now admits those whose diagnosis is longer term. Although the many services to my dad have yet to begin in full, he was checked out by an RN yesterday who will now visit every week. He will also be getting daily visits from a nurse’s aide named Lisa, a woman I understand to be quite a hottie, something my dad will appreciate very much. A social worker will also be checking in with him weekly and this daughter who loves her dad is feeling much better and much more supported in getting him through this transition, however long it takes. I wonder now, in useless hindsight, if I should have stayed with him Wednesday and allowed him to continue to say no to going to the ER. It would have been hard, but courage and strength are what is required now. Well, he is home, rested and resolute. He told me yesterday that everyone else is a lot more upset about him dying than he is, which is true. He misses my mom and his good friends, the closest of whom have been gone many for years, Uncle Hubert, and Seager Fairbairn, among very few others. Quality over quantity, always. His mother lived to be ninety-seven, almost ninety-eight. I adored her, but saw that she too was lonely for those who shared her memories, her peers, her college buddies and beloved siblings who had long pre-deceased her. My mom, even in her dementia, gave my dad a reason and purpose in life. She saw him in 1953 and grabbed him. He was (and is) a reserved man, shy although yes, with a large bawdy streak, but essentially private, and not easy to draw out. My mother’s vivacity, intelligence, and energy were the perfect foil for his quieter temperament; their relationship worked in part because he was willing to go along with whatever she wanted 99% of the time. Now I am concerned about him doing the same for me, for my brand-spanking new M.D. niece who loves him, for all of those who love him, and don’t want to lose him, ever. And yet, this is the natural order – and yet, it will happen, probably sooner than later. We have got to let go. And yet, letting go, while trying hard to respect and allow this sweet lovely intelligent man to decide for himself what he wants requires a boat load of grace.
I have a head cold, and grace is easier to come by when I don’t feel like shit. Still, it is possible. I guess.
Doc Kavanaugh was our family’s dentist growing up and, for many years after my childhood had passed, I continued to return to my hometown to visit him, right up to the point when he stopped practicing at age – 75? He seemed ancient, so let’s say, 70? LOL. He had a very charming manner, and was, I discovered later, a total ladies’ man, which made complete sense. He’d given me several of those teeny mirrors on a long metal stem that dentists use to look at your teeth because I asked for one; how cool to see what was back there, I guess I thought? I was obsessed with the frightening possibility of having to have my tonsils out, which might also have been the reason I wanted one. I never did, phew! Doc Kavanaugh had the softest hands and touch of anyone who has spent a significant amount of time in my mouth. I do not like having other people’s fingers in my mouth; I suppose no one does? Are there people with hand in mouth fetishes? Yick, I hope not. Regardless, Doc Kavanaugh was the exception to that, for me, and I was terribly fond of the old geezer, who had white hair the entire time I was his patient, and seemed very wise, always, to me.
Round about the time I was ten or eleven, I decided to stop brushing my teeth for a year, just to see what happened between our annual visits to Dr. K’s office on Main Street, up over Marsico’s Department store. I decided to do this because, as I had long since learned, adults lied and told half-truths all the time, especially my mother, and it was she who insisted we brush nightly, otherwise we’d get a mouth full of cavities, guaranteed. But – the plot thickens – she had bad, cavity prone, soft teeth; her teeth were weak! And, Doctor Kavanaugh said I had perfect teeth, maybe a little crowded on the bottom in front, but otherwise, hard as rocks, strong teeth, and he said I had perfect and perfectly healthy gums. Also, and I’m sure y’all agree, these little every day, twice a day, style chores get really boring after a while. So! Like the true scientist I most definitely am not, I quit brushing for a year to test the reality of the so-called ‘absolutely true’ maxims around dental hygiene, cavities and teeth.
What can I say? I was a head-strong, stubborn little kid who deserved every rotten tooth and nasty cavity the universe could throw at me. I continued to eat candy at an unchecked pace, after all; the nerve! I had zero cavities up to that point, such a point of pride, the only member of my family to be so honored by the universe, all whilst trembling on the point of lift off into being a stubborn, head-strong teen, gleefully hopping into bed each night having skipped a step, living dangerously, amidst my year of not brushing my teeth!! Oh, Universe! Oh, Doc Kavanaugh! Oh, Colgate! Oh My!
The year swiftly passed, and I returned to Doc Kavanaugh’s office, hoping he wouldn’t realize I’d been so bad (surely, he would know, surely he would noticewhat I’d done, or hadn’t done?!!), hoping I wouldn’t have a mouth full of rot, or did I hope I would, be punished, as I deserved, or did I? It was time to find out the results of my experiment.
What can I say? I had one teeny tiny cavity, which I refused novocaine for the removal of, and while it sucked, sort of, well, so much for a disaster in my mouth, you lying son’s a bitches!
*No one, no one, wants to kiss a mouth full of lil black nasties (cavities), or, Gawdess forbid, bigger ones, thus the authoress – since her ‘experiment all those years ago – brushes twice daily, and flosses after every meal – without fail!!
Don Heitman was my neighbor for almost a decade, at 57 W. 106th street, from the fall of 1982 until the summer of 1990. He had a big two-bedroom apartment on the 3rd floor at the front of the building, and I had a tiny two-bedroom on the 5th floor in the back. It was a walk-up, and I think my buttocks must’ve been rock hard because the steps were steep AF, and I went up and down them – especially after I adopted a rescue dog – numerous times a day. The neighborhood was awful in the ‘80s, but the rent was cheap; Don paid less than I did, $285 or $300 a month to my $400. Ultimately, I realized the apartment was a trap, keeping me in an area that was plainly unsafe (my apartment had been robbed twice), and if I had to carry any more bags of grub six long, hot city blocks from the only decent grocery store in the neighborhood, then up five flights one more time, I was gonna lose my mind.
Don was born and raised in Kingston, N.Y., and knew where I was from, in the Catskills; it created a bond. He was an odd job guy, a carpenter and electrician, plumber, plasterer, doing work all over the neighborhood and city in better, wealthier buildings than ours. We didn’t socialize, necessarily, we never went out to dinner, breakfast, that sort of thing, but we would often meet in the stairwell or lobby, where we would chat. That lobby was truly frightening, a long, dark concrete corridor with a single dirty window at its end; I was held up there once by a couple of crack addicts I’d told to get the fuck out from lighting up under the stairwell. It ended well; they ran off when a woman and her kid entered, breaking the momentum of our short struggle. Phew. I only had two dollars in my pocket, but it was mine and I wasn’t giving it up. I went to see Don after that happened, and after my robberies, one and two. He was helpful and supportive; his apartment had been been robbed multiple times as well. I used to take regular breaks from climbing those stairs to talk to him, and occasionally he would invite me in, where we’d shoot the breeze for an hour or two. We were both in our twenties, trying to make sense of our lives to that point, and we were both in therapy.
Don was smart, good looking, and gay, and in more pain than I could possibly fathom. He had a very gentle way about him, and had a great sense of humor, whatever else was going on with him, inside or out. Later in our friendship during those years, he would share with me that his father used to beat him, beat him for his queerness, trying to bludgeon it out of him. His father was old school Baptist, and I can’t remember exactly – it was so long ago – but he might also have been a pastor. And I will never know why, but people share shit with me, and one day Don told me about his dad raping him, all through his childhood, raping his sister, too. So, yeah, he was beating the gay out of him, and raping him at night, in his room, behind closed doors. I think his mother was dead? Maybe people tell me these things because they know I won’t judge them. How could I. How can anyone?
Don also told me he liked to hire young, undocumented or unemployed Latino men, some of whom he also paid for sex. Several of these men robbed him, stealing money and tools, other valuables, from his apartment, and one beat him so badly after sex that Don was laid up for several months, ribs and nose broken, his arm in a sling. He seemed to think he deserved it; I disagreed, urging him to be careful, please. I don’t know if he made the connection to his past, repeating a toxic cycle his father had established, but he must have, right? We were friends, but we didn’t get into it that deeply.
After I finally got out of there, out of that building and that unsafe neighborhood, we kept in touch, but vaguely. I moved two times in two years and didn’t reach out for another year at least, inviting him to see a show I was doing, letting him know I was back in the neighborhood, sort of, only seven blocks away, but in a building with an elevator, as I’d promised myself when I left 57 West. Months later his sister, who I had never met, wrote me back, telling me that Don was dead. It was 1992, or ’93, and I assumed he’d died of AIDs, as were so many of my friends, former classmates, and thousands upon thousands of strangers. I sent my condolences, and told her how sorry I was, how much I had loved her brother, and what a kind neighbor he had been, always.
Later that decade, I went for a walk back on the old block, just to see it, to stroll down memory lane, and make peace with a few ghosts. I ran into a former acquaintance of mine, a friend of Don’s, another gay man and near neighbor who had lived in a much nicer building across the street. He was no longer residing there, his partner had died and the partner’s family, there were no legal protections then, had thrown him out of the apartment the two men had shared for over a decade. He too was walking in the neighborhood for the same reason I was, because it held memories for him; he too was trying to make sense of it all, past and present, and let go.
He asked me about Don, did I know he was dead, which I confirmed that I did. Of AIDs, I assume? No, he corrected me, Don had committed suicide. Did I ask him how? I don’t remember, but he told me. Don had gone into Central Park with a shovel, in the middle of winter, where he dug a hole in the dirt, lay down in it, and froze to death. Up near the Great Hill, where I used to walk and play and nap with my dog, Lottie Lou Lenya Mueller. There is so much pain in the world.
There’s an Italian Osteria now, on the block where Don and I lived, practically downstairs from our old apartments. Life and neighborhoods move on, decades pass, and loss is endemic, but I will never forget him, never. His brokenness, and his beauty, remain.
*photo of the old ‘hood by my darling, dear Jeffrey Markowitz
I had, and have, another blog to post – but, it can wait – as yet another gun massacre in Texas has me once again furious, sad, distraught, and fed right-the-fuck-up with these callous, stupid originalists and gun-huggers who think the framers meant everyone should be armed in this country. JHFC.
19,000 children in the U.S. annually are either killed or wounded due to gun violence. This has got to stop. we have been telling our children since Columbine that guns, and the ‘freedom’ to own them with very little interference, matter more than they do.
Clearly, the only thing Americans really near to fear is no longer fear itself, but one another – armed to the teeth, and with legislators in too many places willing to let the carnage continue indefinitely. #Vote Blue #GunControlNow
