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Eyes Cast Downward- Memoir Excerpt

Originally hand written in July 2015 Late Spring of 2014.  Just Months before liver failure Our eyes are nearly always cast dow...

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

What Forbidden Act? (Part One of Three)


I was asked several years ago to write a few things I had never done or allowed myself to do.  
after some contemplation I came up with a very short list.
 "Forbidden acts" is what the instructions were titled.  Telling my mother the following was one of them.



Dear Mother,
I do not think your death would cause me any anguish. I do not think I will even cry. I will not even visit your ailing body upon your death bed, or the morgue if your already dead. Unless I had to by law to identify your body. I would glance down at you nod my head to the mortician and walk away with the same cold apathy you showed me throughout my life. I think you will appear the just as cold and uncaring on that slab as you have always looked to me, since before i can remember.
Almost never being held, kissed hugged or praised. I suppose the first memory that arises is when I was a child (perhaps eight or nine, not sure). I had two first place writing awards in the only two you let me involve myself with.I remember we were driving in that blue mini van,with the sliding side doors. The one that GrandMary almost fell out of while the van was in motion and the door slid open. 
I remember much fear I overcame It and Asked you with a much courage as I could muster, "Mom"
"Yes, What?" She didn't even glance at me i the rear view mirror.
"I was just wondering...ahh, What could I write that hasn't been written?"
a pause, then "I don't know..."
"Well with all the books in the world and all those people that wrote them and all this time, what could I say that no one else hasn't said already, (embarrassed, I finish the thought a little more quietly) and said it better 'prolly'."
Silence, then- "Alright! Buckles off! Tim, Mary we're here."
That was the end of the conversation a conversation I desperately needed and wanted to have-To her it was merely an audible passing whim of a child that has no thoughts of her own.
Later that night I remember (strange how certain things you can remember so clearly and others are pitch black like your life ceases to exist for a time) writing in my Journal this mad scribble "What could I write that hasn't been written? I'm only a girl once smitten, twice bitten."
Another memory comes. Mother did not read to me at night, or during the day for that matter, certain not often if at all. She purchased (with money she was always complaining she didn't have) audio book's instead. So, it was "good night" push button, walk out the door leaving my night light on.  (What were you doing Mom? What was so important?)
My mother didn't keep an exceptionally clean house a slightly tidy pack rat, disorganized random thindgs covering seventy five percent of counter and table tops, at this time she was a divorcee and she was no cook either. In fact I think she might have been an employed microwave promoter
 ("So fast! So much easier! So convenient! Idiot.)
Which brings me to another point, another memory, another cheap convenience for her. "The McDonald's" almost every fucking birthday was at the play yard of a fucking Mcdonald's. This went long after I noticed the odd taste and texture of the "Mcnugget". that and the odd brown discs carelessly flopped between puffy bleached flour called a hamburger. They had long lost their novelty and disgusted me. 
Frugal and lazy? 
Could that be it? Yet still we went. 
I was demanded to eat all my food, told I was ungrateful if i didn't want to or just couldnt. 
between that, the microwave obsession and the McDonald's, It is astonishing I wasn't a chubby child. 
Then again,  the fact that you had me on speed since five (or was it six?)  years old might have helped.
You never asked me where I would like to go for my birthday, or what I wanted or who I was for that matter. 
Did not once stop and think that I had a mind of my own, that couldn't be more different then the one you tried to enforce upon me?
Why can't you be like cousin one or more like cousin two?  How about this Mom, maybe if you were a decent and sane parent like uncle this or aunt that.
 that may make a slight difference.

What were you so afraid I would become Mother?! 

proceed


Mary Catherine, Cowardice Queen

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