Mirror

As I sit and write this, it’s the day before Mother’s Day. My latest column was supposed to be going up today, and I’ve had a hard time coming up with this one. You see, sometimes I can have all the makings of a decent column, and plenty of ideas, but the damn thing just won’t take shape. Then, out of the blue, another idea on a completely different topic will just spring into my mind and I’ll have to scrap an almost completely-written column.

DRS hired me to be their political writer. My column has expanded in the year since I started here, but politics were supposed to be my anchor topic. Ironically enough, lately I’ve actually been too busy observing politics in action to have the time to find a topic to write about in that arena - unless you all really WANT to hear about that afternoon I played hooky from work to go sit in on a House subcommittee meeting in my home state’s legislature. No, didn’t think so. I’ve been tracking the progress of a pot-decriminalization bill I helped write up, and I’m not in such a hot mood about it. The session’s almost over and it’s doubtful whether the bill will make it out of committee and onto the floor - which I’m sure is what the committee members who opposed our bill wanted all along. I had fully planned to write a protracted rant about this, but somehow I kept scrapping everything I started on it.

Why?

Because Mom kept appearing and ruining it.

I don’t mean my actual, corporeal Mom. That Mom has been dead for 21 years now – half my life. But every time I find myself doing something I know that she wouldn’t have approved of, she makes a series of ectoplasmic appearances in my mind. It starts with dreams, or rather, a dream. Because whenever Mom shows up it’s always the same dream: I wake up, look in the mirror that faces my bed, and she’s standing over my shoulder frowning at me. “You really shouldn’t sleep without any clothes on,” she’ll tell me. “What if there’s a fire?”

“There won’t be a fire, Mom,” I tell her. “But I’m glad you’re here, I can introduce you to Al,” I’ll add, referring to my daughter. But of course when we go to my daughter’s room, she won’t be there.

“You have to keep better track of her,” Mom will tell me, then the dream will end.

I don’t believe in the symbolism of dreams so I won’t even get started on why the hell this always happens. But I always find that in the weeks following the dream, Mom will remain just at the edge of my mind, manifesting without warning. I see her younger face when I look at my daughter, her older face when I look at myself in the mirror and I am seized with sudden urges to visit her gravesite. I do double-takes when I pass short, plump, middle-aged women on the street, swearing to God I’ve actually seen her. And I think about what she’d say about what I’m doing, whatever that might be.

I’ve written columns mentioning my dad many times here, and how his passion for politics shaped many of my own views, but I haven’t said much about Mom’s views - mostly because we disagreed about nearly everything political. Mom embraced a trust-in-authority political philosophy. A rules-exist-for-reasons philosophy. A don’t-ask-too-many-questions philosophy. In short, just about everything I gleefully trash in this column every chance I get.

On the surface you might say that Mom was a conservative. She did adore Goldwater and Reagan. But in an odd way, she also embraced all the tenets of Democratic Big Government. She claimed she didn’t really like LBJ or any of the Great Society initiatives, yet every time a social problem arose that affected her, she wondered why the government didn’t do something about it. I never bothered trying to discuss any of this with her, because it would always end in a fight.

A couple of years after she died, my father fell in love with Bernie Sanders. Okay, let me back up and flesh that one out a little better. Shortly after my mom’s death of cancer – a death that took my family completely by surprise and happened with a brutal swiftness – my father took up with a much younger woman, the daughter of a friend of his. The “young whore”, as my sister and I fondly referred to this woman as, lived in a public housing complex in Burlington, where Bernie was the mayor at the time. The housing authority put on a barbecue at this complex, and Bernie came and made a speech. From the moment my father heard that speech, he became a dedicated Sanders supporter and contributed money to all his campaigns right up until his death. My father quoted Bernie’s speech to me and we had a lot of long discussions about his stance on the issues and I decided that I, too, had a political crush on Bernie Sanders.

You can imagine how the Ghost of Mom had plenty to say about that. Every time I’d attend a rally, cut a check, or get in the booth and fill in the box by Bernie’s name, she’d remind me that it was that young piece of ass that had gotten Dad going on Bernie in the first place, and that by me supporting him I was essentially giving the nod of approval to my Dad’s relationship with this “young whore”. Even after my father broke up with this woman, and took up with someone more suitable (the widow of an old friend) I still couldn’t shake the vague feeling of disloyalty to Mom every time I made any gesture of support for Bernie. The political had become hopelessly entangled with the personal, and trying to figure out where one ended and the other began was just becoming too much like work.

When it would all become too troubling, I’d do what I always did in those days when I wanted my mind to shut up – I’d spark up my trusty bong and keep it lit till I passed out. Never mind ignorance - oblivion is bliss.

But that wasn’t enough to keep Mom away. If anything, it just pissed her off further. “You’re gonna end up like Ricky,” I’d hear her say, referring to a party-animal cousin of mine who ended up paralyzed from the neck down when someone accidentally shot him during a booze-and-drug-soaked poker game. “And how much a week do you spend on that stuff, anyway? I never could stand the way that stuff made you act. Like you weren’t even there, that your body was sitting on the couch but your mind was off in left field.”

Which seamlessly brings me back around to the pot-decrim bill, and Mother’s Day, and Mom at my shoulder in the mirror. This morning it’s all swirling around inside of me at once, and I suppose in a way it’s fitting that, while Mom’s body is gone, no longer here, her mind is never too far from mine. Sometimes I have to struggle to remember what she looked like, how her voice sounded, how she walked and dressed and laughed.  But I never forget the advice she tried to give, or my refusal, even 21 years later, to take any of it.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I know you tried, and try still.

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