Real Housewives Don't Act Like That!

You would think she had heard, for the very first time, that Santa was a phony.  “Real Housewives don’t act like that.  It’s made up drama...TV.”

I could tell I wasn’t reaching her, mainly because of her counter argument. “They may not be real friends, but if you throw that many women together in one room, you won’t have to invent drama, it will unfold naturally.”

I sighed deeply, my cousin luvvs reality television. Even though she works full time, maintains a household, and has raised four kids, she still finds ways to invest herself wholeheartedly into the guilty pleasure of reality fucking soap operas.

Real women don’t hurl things at one another from the other side of the room. They don’t kick and scream and cuss each other out. This kind of behavior is reserved for the men in their lives. You go all crazy cause you want a man to grab you, hold you, calm you down. It’s a strut, a dance, an attention getting scheme that only means, “I’m really, really horny. Come and get it while it’s hot.” But this behavior is not at all for girlfriends, especially if you’re heterosexual. I would have gone on believing my own point of view, but then my mother came to visit.  

I like to think I am who I am because of my mother and in spite of my mother. She is not the worst mom ever. She’s not the best one either. On a normal day, there are about three thousand miles separating me from her. But on holidays and special occasions, we find ourselves within arms reach of one another. Some families use this proximity to offer hugs or pats on the back. My mother uses this closeness as a microscope to magnify her misery.

“Mom, we’re taking a picture.  Can you smile for the camera?”

“What do I have to smile about?”

We’re dining over Italian when I attempt to stage this feel good family moment. “Fuhgetaboutit,” I tell her, then offer some unwanted advice. “Mom, they make very good anti-depressants these days. Maybe you should try one.”

“You want me to use drugs?” her eyes are resilient and defeated all at the same time.

“Yes, actually. There are good pharmaceuticals on the market that really could help you.”

This is probably my 999th attempt to convince my mother to get some help. I knew she suffered with depression before I knew what depression really was. Years ago when I had come home from college to find her camping out in the basement of our home (she had made this space her bedroom), I suggested to one of my aunts that my mother might be depressed. “Your mother is NOT depressed!” She said this like I had diagnosed mom with stage ten terminal illness. “OK, I guess it is “normal” to hide out in the dungeon away from any and all sunlight the entire summer. Sorry!”

My mom had visited a psychologist once, after her twin sister passed. She told me the shrink said it was quite normal to grieve the loss of a loved one so she didn’t go back. I’m sure the professional also offered grief counseling, but mom wouldn’t have heard anything after the expert affirmed living in the dumps was normal. 

When my mom had a stroke, I asked the recovery nurse to send her to a psychiatrist.  Maybe there was an ethical way to sneak an anti-depressant in with all of the other meds she was required to take. The nurse assured me that mom would see the doctor, but depression, after a stroke, was quite normal. There was that word again, normal.

This is Cleveland, a city with over 12,000 abandoned buildings. When brick and stone structures are literally falling around you, being down in the pits makes perfect sense, it may even feel normal.  

But we’re thousands of miles away from the midwest. The sun is shining and my mother notices we haven't driven past a single dilapidated building. Yet and still a cloud of gloom hangs overhead, like Charlie Brown’s filthy friend who walks through the comic strip with a halo of dust. I know the kind of depression my mother has is not some geographical illness regulated to a city in ruins. I know it because I have it too. When I first took up residence in LA, I was a young thing in my twenties. I stared at the palm trees and the bright blue sky and wondered why, with all of these signs of joy, was I feeling so downtrodden? It took some time in mental health jail to understand everything I needed to do to maintain complete wellness. I take the pill. I exercise daily. I sleep uninterrupted. I eat food, the kind that grows from trees and bushes, and try my best to avoid the junkie stuff. I write or make art and shoot little films because these are the things that make me whole, that allow me to see a palm tree or a blue sky and smile at God’s gifts of nature.

My mother concludes our dinner with the speech where she explains how she loves us, but doesn’t really like us. I’ve heard this speech many times before. What she’s saying is that family is like a contract signed with blood. You have an obligation to be in the same room with people you don’t really care for, just like the housewives on reality TV. Remember my cousin’s argument? If you put a whole bunch of people in a room together who aren't really friends, some catastrophe is bound to unfold. By the end of the night my mother was staring me straight in the eye, “Fuck you!”  she said. She pointed at my aunt and told her, “Fuck you too!”

Now according to my belief system, grown women don’t behave this way in the company of other grown women. I had just explained this to my cousin. So when mom walked away, I could have let the night end with “fuck you,” but she was in my house. There is one thing to know about my house...I am so committed to peace that I’ve escorted more than a few people out the front door. My mother was about to be one of them. I let her know as much, but this did not have the effect I was looking for. She continued shouting, “Shut up! Just shut up!” Full blown housewives craziness. I paused. All of the people I’ve put out before had somewhere else to go.  They knew LA well enough to find another couch to crash or a shelter or something of that sort. This woman only knows how to get down the street and back, and that’s about it. If I showed her the door, I would be stepping into the reality TV role of the infamous bitch, a character required to maintain the theatrics of reality programming. So instead, I did as mom requested and shut the fuck up. Otherwise this situation would escalate and the next thing you know, we'd be throwing each other across the room without the benefit of the paycheck provided to the ladies on television.

I’ve been processing this most recent family visit and the emotional circus that came with it. Could my cousin be correct? Is drama par for the course when grown ups are forced to gather together? How do you keep peace in the midst of multitudes? 

A Tiny Place Called Home

My soul is drawn to cabins.  Cabins in the woods.  I often wonder about those seemingly abandoned little huts along the trails of the Santa Monica mountains.  Why are they empty?  Who lived there?  Star-crossed lovers?  A compact family? Escaped convicts?

Maybe it's the teeny writer inside that wants an unassuming place.  Or maybe it's the chaos of the city that propels me toward a world that's more quiet and quaint.  

I could also just be tired of cleaning my house.  When you're the primary picker upper, less feels like more.

I thought you might appreciate a tiny glimpse of three dream spaces.  When you click on an image, you'll be transported to the story behind the home.  Enjoy!

The Sauvie Island Home

The Beach Home

The Chico Home

What's your dream space?  Add photographs in the comments.

A Woman Wearing Red

I wrote The Curious Habits of a Wanton Wife as a short piece of fiction loosely inspired by rumors.  These were rumors of my grandfather's philandering, but the truth is a little more heartbreaking.

I grew up in a pretty open family.  Any skeletons hung out with us at the breakfast table, never in the closet.  I was awash with childhood stories.  And I thought I heard all there was to hear.  I was wrong.  Here is what I learned.

My grandmother Mary Lillie loved to talk on the telephone.  They had one jack installed for each floor of the house.  This was new.  Before the two jack system, there was only one phone.  My grandmother kept this one phone occupied.

The year was 1972.  Grandpa Saul had been laid off from work at the steel factory.  He used his down time to get better acquainted with the neighbor.  On the 1st floor phone, he and the lady made plans to meet up.  On the upstairs phone, my grandmother made plans to dial up a relative in Georgia.  She never made that call.

As Saul found his way out the driveway, my grandmother sat still.

Before long, she was searching, fumbling with keys to a locked cabinet.  This was a curious thing.  She avoided this cabinet.  This is where Grandpa Saul kept his gun.  Mary Lillie was afraid of guns.

Saul would pull out his pistol only on New Year's Eve, shoot as soon as the clock struck midnight, then put it away.  This gun made my grandmother very nervous.  Now she was standing with it by her side.

She took it to the meeting place of Saul and the lady.  They were not found.  She searched late into the night. She searched long enough to return home and lock the gun back inside the cabinet.

***

Saul was the controlling type.  He didn't want Mary Lillie to work.  He didn't want her to spend time with her elder sister Maggie (Aunt Maggie wore platinum blonde wigs, owned a beauty shop, and dated Big Timers).  He also didn't want Mary Lillie to wear the color red.  Tramps wore red.

The morning after overhearing that phone call, my grandmother got up and dressed herself.  She wore red from hat to heel.  She wore red and went to church.  It was Sunday.

She soon took to bed. Then the hospital.  She was dying.

My mother remembers receiving a late night call.  Her mother had asked to speak to Saul.

"Mama, daddy isn't home."

Mary Lillie, from her hospital bed said, "OK, do not tell him I called."

When my mother and her eight siblings were carried to Cleveland Clinic the next afternoon, they saw their father sitting by a man's bedside.  The man was unable to speak or move.  My mother at age fifteen was confused.  She asked, "Why are we in a room with this old man?  Why aren't we visiting my mother?"  My grandfather answered her, "This is your mother."

Mary Lillie's hair had turned white over night.  Her skin ash gray.  There was little trace of herself.  Her own children did not recognize her.

When my grandmother passed, shocked and weeping mourners crowded 113th Street.  Mary Lillie had meant a great deal to them.

My grandfather wed once again, but found himself at my grandmother's grave every Sunday.

He died a decade later, of a heart attack, while having sex with a woman who wasn't his wife.