Month: May 2012

And Yet She Cried The Day He Died

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 1 Comment

IMG_0838My earliest recollection of my dad came when I was four or five and he had come home from working as a second shift foas foreman at a drop forge plant.  He was sitting at the kitchen table eating poached eggs and dry toast, washing it down with a boiler maker.  “The Twins” as he would refer to them with great affection were my dad’s undoing; he would drink when manic, especially near the end of an episode, when his aching bitterness and resigned sarcasm hinted at a common premonition: he would soon retreat to his basement work shop for days on end tortured by his emotional evolution, and his inescapable march down the steep stairs of depression.  He must’ve been in the throes of mania  when convention insisted they marry upon discovery that his rakish bullying on the back seat of his Packard on a rural road outside Thorp not only massacred her wide-eyed naiveté but abolished any hope of extricating herself from beneath the clammy, sour-smelling, incoherent beast.  Her surrender of modesty produced more than forty-five minutes of vintage 1955 passion.

They found themselves in a stone-cold courthouse in Green Bay with a couple of bar friends to witness.  My mother clutched a small handful of wildflowers they bought from a farmer’s road stand that morning.  My mother was a beauty queen back in 1955, with full, red lips, wavy, blond hair that fell over her shoulders, and bright, anxious blue eyes.  She stood looking at my father, the barrel-chested, dark-haired, first-generation Norwegian she met less than one month before.  I’m certain that neither one of them intended for the wedding to be the result of a quickie in the back of a sedan on a country road, but in 1955 it was more important to uphold convention than it was to be in love.  No one ever questioned their motives in getting married, instead hoping and wishing them the best of luck in the new life together. They never won the prize of a 1960’s nuclear family, a foursome driving a new sedan, owning a new house in a new sub-division, boys going to the standard public school, belonging to a crisp, new Catholic church, it just never happened.  It never worked out and eventually corroded beyond what was once recognizable as a relationship, and turned physical, my father opting for punches and slaps instead of hugs and kisses. I want to believe that it was hard for both of them, especially my mom, of course, but also my dad, landing punches onto the delicate face; the face of a woman that once he had found so attractive that he invited her to share his rumble seat.  I want to believe that neither of them was a monster, that neither of them hated the other, that maybe, in the beginning they held the same blind, young hope that life would work itself out.

It started with a cymbal crash, or it might’ve been a car accident, or even the frying pan falling out of my mother’s hand as she scrubbed the caked egg.  But it struck with velocity, as though it had been tossed, no, more like it had been thrown, aimed at the floor, or better, the cupboard, for it never made its mark, instead falling short and striking the edge of the table and finally the floor.  My eyes shot open and I listened only to hear the sirens race toward the accident, but the suburb was four-thirty quiet, and the only sharp wheeze I heard bumped first against my door, then slid slowly down to the floor, her form eclipsing the bright kitchen light. As though the car she was driving careened out of control and struck some child in a cross walk I heard her whisper some apology and asked him to think about me.  I slipped out from my bed and crawled over to the rag rug, and put my face to the door.  His voice was a distant gush of slurs and profanity, italicized by the growling.  She stayed there, mashed against my door, her long, painted fingers clutching the same rag rug on which I sat and which had slid half-under the door, clutching, as though her whole life was that simple rag rug.

Suddenly the door thumped with a low, heavy sound, like dropping a melon on the table.  I dropped to the floor and pressed my face into the colorful coils, and saw his black, steel-toed Oxford’s sparkle in the bright overhead light.  I saw the swift shadow, perhaps a bird and heard that same heavy thud, and watched as crimson rain sprinkled the linoleum.  The color spotted the vinyl floor slowly, as though it were being restrained somehow, pulled in, withheld, and swallowed. It was quiet for a moment, the shiny black Oxford’s rolling as though they were standing on the deck of a heaving ship, the scarlet rain drops preceded by a sniffle.  Through the whole time I had held my breath until I exhaled with a small sob.  My mother’s face grew enormous as I saw her eyes and bloodied nose drop to the floor, pressing herself to the door.  Her hand waved him off saying, “Ssh, he’s awake, he’s been listening. . .”  Her bright blue eyes caught mine and we looked at each other for a moment.  As I began to move towards her, to . . . I don’t know what, help her . . . again I saw that fluttering shadow, except this time it was no shadow, but a black, heavy steel-toed Oxford, and it landed its iron nose at the back of her head and crushed her face into the crack at the bottom of the door.  Her eyes didn’t close, but opened further as though she were releasing any blind hope and I moved quickly away from the door and crawled under the bed.  I heard his heavy steps move off and watched as the kitchen light was turned out.

It was months before I could sleep in my bed, often crawling under it once she turned out the lamp and closed the door.  I suppose the worst part though was for her: For me to see her like that, in a position of no hope, no dreams, just the flat end of a hand or the blunt toe of a shoe.

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Rights are Blind

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 1 Comment

I am not a fan of convention.

Convention was the double-barreled shotgun pointed at my mother and father back in April, 1955.  Convention forced them to marry.  And I suppose convention could be held partially to blame for my mother’s black-eye’s, broken nose, bruised ribs, cut lips, broken dishes, thrown plates, kitchen walls stained by brown gravy as the thrown pot-roast stuck then slid to the linoleum floor.  Yes, I suppose convention could be held partly to blame for decades of humiliation, abuse, eventual divorce, and questions my mother never had answered as to why convention revoked her right not to marry.

Convention is simply a thoughtless reaction designed to uphold order.  Marriage has been painted as the villain recently when the “have’s” and the “have-not’s” start arguing.  But it’s not Marriage we’re defending or demanding, it’s Convention.

There are lots of people willing to go to great lengths to defend Convention.  I am not interested in Convention.  I was sucker-punched by Convention once, as a child, when it told me to do as I was told, even if it seemed odd or strange or painful.  And yes, Convention said, Priest’s are adults.

Keep your Convention.  Here, take mine; it’s never done me any favors.  I have lots of friends who’ll gladly off theirs.

I just want what Convention thinks it is.  What I want is quiet, firm, loyal, blind, and the most powerful tenet of American Citizenship.  I want my Rights.  I don’t want better or different or bigger or smaller.  I just want my equal rights. And if there are fellow American Citizens that are afforded rights which are different than mine, then the Declaration of Independence is a lie from the very beginning.  We’re not all created equal.

And if the foundation upon which all our rights are built upon is fundamentally a lie, then not one American Citizen has a right to anything.

Tell that to Convention.

When you listen to Judy, …

~ Harlan Didrickson

When you listen to Judy, you’ve got to listen; Judy Garland isn’t background music.

My Mania (Happy Hour Shanghai’d)

~ Harlan Didrickson

You’ve been there no doubt, among friends as he lobbed the volley across your bow, the venerable question, similar in fact to a different question asked coincidently, at the same inopportune moment but by an anxious and adversarial opponent. These unexpected questions immediately illicit an aimless and incomprehensible teeter-tottering, a rambling as you trying to buy time; you eye-ball the inquisitor attempting intimidation; finally, you size-up your buzz and with resolute conviction attempt to answer millennia’s enigmatic math word problem: If it took 3 (enter drink of choice) to get this buzz, how many more will it take to keep it?

The adage, “quit while you’re ahead” immediately springs to mind, as do other 20/20 hindsight anecdotes.  But if you hesitate when asked, it’s likely that your next stop will be the Twilight Zone.

When I was trying to decide what experience might help describe my experience of hypo-mania, the Happy Hour Glow, that injection of confidence, power, and entitlement right before the inevitable “do you want another” question felt close.  Close enough.  The big difference between Happy Hour and Hypo-Mania is choice: You choose to drink.  I don’t choose hypo-mania.

But if we removed reason or choice from the experience, for me, my experience, or, how hypo-mania feels in the beginning of an episode is very similar to that buzzy, invincible, gregarious, handsome, well-deserving, flush-with-cash, ultra-capable, electrifying, one-of-a-kind, tell-it-like-it-is feeling moments before the bartender greets you at the fork in the road.

My episodes of hypo-mania can last several months and stretch into years.  At some point, like drinking one too many, the invincibility begins to sour, bitterness edges out respect, and consequence becomes a quickly discarded garnish.  By that time nature is doing its best to expunge toxins and take-out; by instinct you discover your bed; by morning regret arrives before the newspaper and promises of self-control hack through the dense thicket of your mind.

But me?  Me and my Mania?  We’ve been awake all night on e-bay bidding on those Rolex watches; we’ve been on Amazon looking for iPad’s. . .it’s just Day 2. . .

 

Has Been’s, Could’ve Been’s, Once Was’s, and Children

~ Harlan Didrickson
My brother got my dad’s physique; I got his mental illness.

Once I assumed the role of cook a couple of years ago, I planned my menu so that every other day I’d prepare a new meal.  The only cookbook I owned was a 1960’s copy of Betty Crocker’s Cookbook.  This cookbook was my mother’s, and if you saw it, you’d think Betty Crocker herself passed it along to my mother.  It was a solid first-step for me, my hesitation quieted by my mother’s obvious use of the cookbook, evidenced by the incredible number of batter-splattered pages; missing pages; half-pages; and an index at the rear which resembled the color palette of Crayola’s 64-Color box of crayons.  There were highlighted recipes; notations at the margins; and just a few, but oddly significant in an extreme way, an ad infinitum decree by way of thick, heavy lines, one or two eliminated altogether by a formidable, dense marker, applied as determined and repeated coats, forbidding any chance that these recipes might appear on our kitchen table.

My father was already a train wreck when my brain began recording his presence.  Failing at life (mainly due to his undiagnosed mental illness, bipolar), his appearance was infrequent: his social mask was one of humor: albeit acidic sarcasm and shearing, pointed wit composed in the key of tease and enacted before an unending column of untried yet promising second-shift ladies.  His role as a bullying, boorish big shot, whose sole domestic purpose was to reprise the 1963 verbal variety of water boarding. His peacocking drove us  closer and closer to suffocation, as though with each matinée he pressed another thick pillow of despair onto our faces and then, just when our desperation went quiet and we felt that first, foamy wave of disappearance, back we’d go into his second act and the shrill, ingenuous cackle of his subordinate’s callow laughter warned us that he was gaining adoration.  And the louder the laughter, the more lewd, raunchy, and viscous his anecdotes became, and our mention increased proportionally until, by the end, the three of us, his family, descended well past indecency, a good way beyond degenerate, and somewhere between contemptible and worthless.

And as the ladies stood and he, broadcasting his manners, helped them with their coats, those ladies whose saturating attention fueled my father’s mania sending him further and further afield, looked at the three of us, fodder of my father’s insanity, and delicately lifted the corners of their mouths in an effort to produce a symbol of empathy that my father couldn’t decode.

But what those lips produced was that sneer tossed at has been’s, could’ve beens, once was’s, and children who repeatedly witness their father falling apart.