Old Humble Pie

Anyone from the east coast will raise their eyebrows slightly when I mention where I was born, so if asked I generally say, "New England".  If they continue to press, I answer, "Connecticut", and if they want to know what city?  I will admit, "Greenwich".  Certainly I am not ashamed of my birth place, but I do not enjoy being pre-judged.   After all, to some it implies that I was born 'into' something that I did not earn and I resent the implication. 

Yes, my early childhood was blessed with lovely Greenwich beaches and a yacht club life, but financial comfort is not always the defining element of happiness.  Having normal parents and living an average American lifestyle seems more alluring to me.

My mother cared where we would be born just as she lied about her own birthplace.  In a misguided effort to track down my grandmother's information, I applied for a copy of my mother's birth certificate.  My mother had always claimed she was sorry she knew nothing about her paternal grandfather. Finding that somewhat sad and not expecting to find any dark secrets, I had innocently conducted my research.
 
Have you ever thought of the perfect gift for someone else, but in the end realized it was only perfect for you?  I had planned to surprise my mother with an illustrated family genealogical chart for her 70th birthday, until I discovered she was not born in Everett, but Revere, Massachusetts.   In those days Revere was on the opposite side of the tracks, but I was shocked that she would be ashamed of something over which she had absolutely no control.  There's nothing wrong with Revere.  It is like any other town, good parts, bad parts, medium parts.

Besides, I have always believed that shame should be reserved for things in which we have had an active participation.  Certainly one's place of birth or parents would be off limits and taking on a little too much omnipotence for my taste, but that was my mother's thing. 

She lived in a universe that had none of the common sense rules most of us live by. She assumed everything that happened was in direct correlation to her, caused by her, affected her, and was about her.  She took everything personally and thought the rest of us should ... well, in truth, she never really thought about other people as being particularly meaningful.  Anything we did or said affected her, of course, but she never understood or felt concern for how what she did affected anyone else.  She was the perfect narcississtic storm all by herself.

A child prodigy, she had eventually attended the New England Conservatory of Music on scholarship and graduated at the top of her class.  Her operatic soprano was so admired that years later I actually witnessed a European violinist, who recognized her, get down on one knee and kiss her hand with the most dramatic flair.

She handled it the way only a diva could.  Turning around to make sure the conductor and we other forty symphony musicians were watching - which we were - she bowed.  It was a small, elegant bow and the most queenly gesture she had ever made in front of me, but it suited her well.  I and a wind musician, who later became my brother-in-law, were the only high schoolers at the time, but even we were impressed.  She had this thing that people could feel if they were of a certain caliber of... something.

Her flashing brown eyes penetrated people in a way that made them remember her, as did her voice.  It had a genuinely unique timbre that few could ignore and her pitch was perfect.  There must have been groans all over the Northeast when she succumbed to the mating ritual known as marriage and soon thereafter retired.

The only other time I have experienced that same sensation she created in people was in a close encounter with a wild brown bear.  The shock jammed the experience into my very cells and the snap of a twig in a still forest will still conjur this memory as fresh as the day it happened.  That was exactly how my mother's presence felt.  Exhilarating, exciting, intense and dangerous.

When we moved to Massachusetts my life changed in some ways for the better, but it was a cruelty to her.  During those early days my mother had tried to fit in.  She held teas for fundraisers, had even performed a few times, but the accompanist was never to her standard and requests were later denied with excuses that were never believed.  Everyone knew she was a snob, but they admired her for it. 

None of them realized part of her self-imposed isolation was in response to mental illness, as she was  functioning for many years.  Who could really blame her if she comforted herself with a little too much of the grape when my father was at work?  After all, he was happy and had assumed that she was cured after he removed her from her Martini Friends in Greenwich.  The family home was in his name only, which is particularly important as it was not a community property state.  He controlled not only her environment and friendships but the finances.

My father's business ventures were flourishing, but he worked hard not smart and one day his 39-year-old heart gave out.  He toughed it out for three weeks, but eventually he was doubled over in pain and his brother brought him to the hospital.  The news was not good and he was astonished when they told him to retire immediately, as they didn't expect him to make it through the winter. 

My mother's friend had rushed up from Greenwich when she'd heard the news and my mother was sobbing when I got home from school. 

"Leah, at least you own your own home.  Things will work out.  You have investments and you can go back to work when Patricia is older."

"But I hate it here.  There is no one I can to talk to, Jan.  I don't drive and they don't even like opera here.  This town is full of such ignorant, uncultured... immigrants!  You can't imagine how horrible it is. One of them actually told me she liked 'Chop-pin' the other day.  To be with these in-breeders and townies is so....". 

Her pathetic sobs muffled her final words. 

I eavesdropped as I shook my head.  My father's family had been there since the 1600's, so I didn't know what she meant by immigrants. Opera?  It wasn't that I disliked it per se, I actually despised it.  As far as I could tell it was responsible for my mother's misery.  The proof?  Whenever I heard her sing any of her favorite arias, I could expect some sort of meltdown shortly after.  If I was lucky, before she stopped, I could run outside. 

If it was close to dinner time I would hide in our upper field, listening for the crunch of gravel under my father's tires.  He loved shutting off the engine and coasting down into the driveway in an effort to catch one of us, my mother included, doing something we shouldn't be.  Later he would be the one who listened in on our teenage phone calls and snooped in our diaries, but we blamed her.  None of us could bear to think of him that way. 

Sometimes my mother's mood was so foul I would take off and walk in Dogwood Commons.  It was a 1000 acre wooded area the professor up the street had gifted to the City for safekeeping.  The occasional creepy man who would chase after me there felt safer than what she might do.  If she found me I knew what would happen.  Those same flashing eyes would first land on my face.  Then they would harden as I tried to appear more valuable by standing up straight or attempting to defuse the situation with a compliment.  No matter how hard I tried, I would fail at my childish diplomacy. 

She would grab at my little blond head and scold me as her tone escalated.   She would begin to shake or slap me, depending on the intensity of her mood and whether or not my younger sister and brother began to whimper at my pleas and wails.

"You're nothing but a little brown-noser.  Everybody thinks you are just so adorable.  Well, they don't live with you, do they?  Do they!  I know the real person, the arrogant little bitch who thinks she is better than everyone else, including her own damn mother. "

Eventually she would substitute 'apple-polisher' after I inadvertently embarrassed her in front of a kindergarten classmate's mother.  Unaccustomed to attention, I responded to a woman's compliment on my motherly diplomacy by shyly trying to deflect it.

"Oh, I'm not really very good or nice.  My mommy will tell you I'm just a little brown-noser."

I suppose for some? Chickens coming home to roost can be a delight, but embarrassing my mother was never a good thing.  Five children and the financial ramifications of my young father's poor physical health put our family and her mental stability onto some sort of nefarious plane in which our misery assured the relief of hers.   Sadly she never totally recovered from this need to inflict pain on others.

When my father's health made it necessary for him to stay at home, I must admit I pitied her.  He began to control everything in her day just as effectively as he controlled our activities and friendships.  He liked to have us around where he could easily access us if he needed a fence hole dug or a trench in the frozen ground when the septic line broke. 

Her mood reacted immediately to his state of health, and none of us children knew from day to day what to expect.  The sicker he was, the happier this made her as her freedom was temporarily restored.  When he would recover from whatever episode he had been enduring, she would strike out at us like an injured cougar. 

As far as the rest of the world was concerned we were doing well. My older sister acted out, but her high school boyfriend died of leukemia three weeks after his diagnosis, so the community and our parents gave her a lot of latitude for a while.  I continued to get A's, although I had started babysitting whenever possible to stay away from the house, and soon I was coming home only to eat or sleep. 

If I gave her the money, she didn't worry about my absence, but if I tried to keep any for myself, she would ground me from work.  I learned quickly, and eventually I just handed everything over to her, grateful to have been out of her reach for a few hours.

Later that summer my father reunited with his childhood parish, an inter-denominational group of protestants.  After my father's heart attack, our Roman Catholic priest had refused to authorize birth control pills for my mother.  Harassed by my father and terrified of another pregnancy, she left the church. 

My father's church had not yet offered her the job of soloist, organist and choir director, but she and my father had become great friends with the minister and his wife.  He was quite brilliant and his wife was another well educated woman like my mother.  After sacrificing her professional ambitions, she also found it demoralizing to be the mother of five children in a small town.

In those days my father was a gambling man in his self employment and his love of insurance.   When he did become disabled, however, these insurances were reluctant to pay.  He was quite young and the benefits due for the puny premiums he had paid were the equivalent of hitting the Lotto.  Of course, they fought his claim and it took almost seven years for him to finally win. 

It was sunny that Sunday evening, which I remember because the minister and his wife had wanted me to babysit for them.  My mother was furious when I declined, but before she could object, I had told the minister that I had to study for a test.  He wouldn't have dreamed of interfering with my education.   My parents were having the minister and his wife to supper, which was rather odd as we had already had our mid-afternoon Sunday dinner.

I was in my room studying when my mother called up the stairs, her voice lilting with a feverish delight.

"Elizabeth?  John has some bags for us in his car.  Please go out and bring them in."

Barefoot I bounded down the stairs and out the front door, stubbing my toe on the cement step.  His black Lincoln, the envy of my father, was parked outside our stone wall, blocking one side of the road.  I saw the bags in the back seat first, and grabbed a few, shoving the door shut with one hand and crushing my thumb.  In agony I manipulated the bags, so as not to drop the contents, until I could free my swelling digit.  As I brought the bags inside I was grimacing and panting, my toe bleeding on the clean kitchen floor.

"You're getting blood on my clean floor!"  The outburst sent me limping back out the front door. 

"Are you all right," the minister asked as he followed after me.

"Oh, I just stubbed my toe and slammed my thumb in the door, that's all," I said in good New England under-statement.

"My goodness, do you need some ice?"  His wife followed him to help me and she grabbed my hand to examine it.

I gently pulled it away, embarrassed by the attention, and said, "Oh, it'll be all right in a few minutes.  I'll be right back with the other bags."

As they stood in the doorway, I disciplined myself from jumping up and down with the pain.  When I finally managed to pop open the trunk, my thumb was throbbing and my nail was already discoloring from the trapped blood underneath.  As I stared down at the contents in the trunk, I had a terrible realization.

The trunk was filled with brown paper bags full of food products.  Huge bags of rice, large boxes of non-fat powdered milk.  Bags of dried peas, beans, lentils and soups in enough cans to feed a battalion.  There were generic brands of crackers, cans of sardines and tuna, burlap bags of potatoes and netted bags of apples.  Six loaves of white bread and sufficient pasta and canned tomatoes for the entire population of St. Peter's were tossed across the tops.  I was used to the milkman bringing us fresh milk and butter every morning, my father's buddy bringing stale bread for our geese, our own fresh eggs, and perhaps my aunt bringing over squash from her garden... but this was different.

We were now those poor people everyone talked about helping at Thanksgiving.

Of course, these types of experiences are invaluable in life.  I was fortunate enough to learn not to take anything for granted, to seek spiritual rather than material security and that only a fool cultivates arrogance.

There but for the grace of my God go I, my friends.  And but for that grace you've been endowed... go you.
© 2008 Elizabeth Madrigal