Oh dear gawd, my mother, her mother, my aunts and my sister were the older females in my life. They treated me poorly and collectively agreed it was necessary. My grandmother was the worst…she was certain she could bully me into having a better relationship with my raging mother. She was like gas to our inferno relationship. I have never genuinely developed an appreciation for older women and suspect that is because I find them to be terrifying. I was grateful when I married a man whose mother had already passed on to her eternal place of rest. Hahaha—laughing but not kidding. I refuse to imagine how much more difficult our loveless marriage could have been. His older and Oedipal sisters fell right in line with that sort of fiercely righteous presence. Anne Lamott suggests we should flirt with all old people and go out of our way to engage them and to connect. Honest truth—all I can think is too much perfume and mean as fuck. I know it is not true and I marvel at those with loving aunts, great aunts, grandmothers, and meemaws. While I never had one, I might one day be one. Unlearning is not easy. Opening my heart one day at a time is one of the many gifts of recovery. Having a Greg in my life is a large part of why I have the courage to try. He fills my heart and so- I have more to give. I love you baybee! You are most wholesome badass mutherfukkuh. You give and nurture without expectation, and mostly without even thinking to do so. 100% Natural WBA. Because of you, I breathe better and more deeply. As I am also a recovering breath holder. Learning how to breathe is part of my journey and makes me more badass.
Oh how amazing, the vast array of differences between us, yet the one single common desire to become better people, funnier ones, kinder ones, more generous ones… that’s my top ambition, to be more generous.
I’m so blessedly fortunate as to come from families of strong women; good strong women and evil strong women. My mother had a stepmother she never had to live with. Her mother died and Grampa married Harriet a couple of years later. Poor Grampa, he had never been happy, but maybe Harriet made him happy. Hard to tell.
One day when Harriet was getting on down the trail, my cousin Lynnie was helping her, Harriet, out of the car and into the house. Harriet looked her in the face with a meaningful glare and said, “The only regret I have about my life is that I was not meaner.”
Lynne, the world’s sweetest girl, told this to her mother, who was always kind to Harriet, and they just decided that Harriet was not a nice person, but in a family you have to take what you get.
I had Aunt Dorothy who gave me money many times, Gramma Scott who let me stay at their large house overlooking the ocean, even though she and Grampa had to sleep in the attic, it being a one-bedroom though large house. There was Aunt Helen Marie who gave me boxes of luxurious clothes and offered to pay my way to Arizona State (I was afraid of the strings attached), Mother’s aunts Anna and Kate and Martha. Martha let me play with her long red hair. And dust all the furniture in her big old Craftsman house.
This is just burbling on, but I do see now what a set of good older women I had in my life. Mother’s friends, I loved them all! Dad had a lot of (I’m sure Platonic) friendships with great women. I loved them in a different way, but love them I did. They were writers, artists, scientists, not like Mother’s women friends and relatives.
I honor myself for having loved many men, too, good and bad. Too much, ladies. I must go get ready to see my doctor for a purely routine visit. He’s odd and a half-step down from my “great” people.