Ascia, Christmas 2001
(The following is actually a chapter from my never-ending, self-perpetuating autobiography called My Forty Pages–way more than that and still growing. I hope to put it up on my website someday.)
As distant and estranged as I felt from my father growing up, so I seemed attached and connected to my mother. Not in a cloying, spend-lots-of-time-together way–in fact, I don’t remember ever spending much time with my mother. But somehow, my mother got me. There was one stretch, somewhere between grades five and ten, where she had a spy planted in the midst of my life. No matter what prank, misdeed or devilment that I performed, my mother was aware of it before the sun went down. My sisters swore their innocence (and how would they know, anyway?), and my brother’s loyalty was beyond question. Truth is, I didn’t mind her peephole into my life since she observed my deeds more with bemusement than moral reserve, perceiving the antic inside of the crime. No, if I truly displeased my mother, her response was always the same: “Wait until your father gets home.” (Terrible words, future mothers!)
Ascia was not a Mother’s Day kind of mom. The maternal streak did not run that deeply in her. I have often wondered how Ascia would assess her own life. I suspect she would express disappointment. I believe she felt called to greater things than being housewife and mother to a husband and six children, which is an accurate if cold assessment of her accomplishments (albeit she left most of the actual housewifing and mothering to Dowanee, my live-in grandmother). Ascia was a dreamer, not a doer. In fact, I believe I share a hidden trait with all five of my siblings–we ascribe to (but would never acknowledge) an underlying belief that we are somehow superior (intellectually? morally? spiritually?) to the common masses–that we are of a higher ilk. We got that from Ascia. Come to think, my dad probably shared that conviction–he was always attributing things to our Tartar blood–so it’s a recessive gene! (Lest I appear a raging egomaniac, I’d like to state that 60 years of observation have taught me that the trait is delusional–but present nonetheless.)
Raskelnikov comes to mind. In my mid-twenties I went on a Russian literature jag. I read Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, the stories of Chekhov, even some Solzhenitsyn. I loved their extremism–the extremity of their depression, of their joy, of their aspirations and their cataclysms. And in retrospect, I realize that I was bonding with my mother.
A second topic of wonderment regarding my mother is what she actually did with her time. I just don’t remember her being around very much even though she was always there. (Dowanee was the omnipresent one.) She was a voracious reader, she loved to play bridge, she enjoyed the company of her neighborhood friends (“cronies,” she called them). I don’t remember her gardening much, but she must have because we had lots of plants and our yard was well-maintained–I’m sure we wouldn’t have hired someone. Perhaps the reason I don’t remember her being around is because I avoided her even more than she avoided me.
There was nothing she liked to do more than outrage and shock. My parents did some entertaining–cocktail parties, Christmas parties, barbecues. Those of us who were home would dutifully greet the guests when they arrived and then be banished up to our rooms while the grown-ups partied downstairs. I remember there would be intermittent burst of wild raucous laughter, and I knew it was inspired by something my mother said or did. She was no great beauty–her features were Slavic, almost homely–but there was something about her face that held your interest. She would meet your gaze with a vivacity, an audacity, a composure that was daunting. There would sometimes be fights between my mother and father after these parties ended. I believe my mom was a tremendous flirt, and my dad would get jealous.
She didn’t confine her outrageous behavior to her own social circle. She loved to corner our friends and engage them in “soulful” conversations. Her best trick was to steer the conversation in a certain direction, set her victim up, and then drop a bomb. Her favorite target was girlfriends:
Mom: So, Karen, Dallin tells me you minor in art. What do you do?
Karen: Well, I like to draw.
Mom: Oh, yes. Dallin’s old girlfriend–Lou, did he tell you? She was a
guitar player and a singer. She was fantastic. She sang right here
in this room.
My friends either loved her or feared her.
She was, sadly, a bad grandmother. Our first family reunion was in Seaside, Oregon when Bethany was seven years old. Beth had spent very little time with either grandparents on my side since they had moved to the West Coast before she was born. My old friend Randy lived near Portland, so he came to visit for a day and brought his six year old daughter Alex. My mother, responding to some self-perceived slight from me or Karen or Bethany, proceeded to shower all her attention and affection on Alex. Bethany was devastated. I’m sorry to say that both of my parents were crappy grandparents, their overlying attitude toward all their grandchildren being one of apathy. My dad used to say that people didn’t really interest him until they were old enough to hold an intelligent conversation. By time most of my children were, he was dead. One of Ascia’s crowning gestures came at a Christmas we celebrated in Texas. Some of my family and some of Karen’s family were present. Nathan and Zachary eagerly opened their gift from Grandma Ascia. They each got a box of condoms. Nate was fourteen and Zack was twelve.
I think she took all her pent-up familial love and diverted it toward animals. You never met a woman for ooohing and aaahing over creatures–dogs, cats, ducks, and birds. She hated zoos. She considered it her ministry to care for any stray, lost, mistreated or just out of sorts animal that appeared on the horizon. She was effusive in her affection, and that’s the only place I ever saw it.
She was a hard woman, a difficult woman, but I loved her and she loved me. When I was up, she would consider it her duty to put my world in perspective. I remember her favorite catchphrase: “Life is not all la dee dah.” But in times of duress, she was always in my corner, both defending and prodding me forward. She raised us to be independent—my siblings are scattered across the planet and wouldn’t have it any other way.
Ascia went out on her own terms. She had said for the past few years that being an “octogenarian” was plenty for her. One day she took her dog Tut out for a walk, got tangled in his leash, and fell and broke her hip. She decided not to recover. My sisters who lived on the West Coast contacted those of us who didn’t, and we all gathered to sit by her deathbed. I remember when I walked into her hospital room, fresh from Texas. She looked up at me, the ghost of a smile flickered across her face, and she said, “I have AIDS.”
We took shifts sitting by her bedside as her consciousness faded, as her breathing became more and more shallow, as her face became skeletal. When Karen and I were alone with her, we blabbered in her ear about Jesus and God’s love and eternal life. If anything registered, she sure didn’t show it.
But I don’t think she would have.
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