My ‘Crazy’
Posted on November 26, 2007
Filed Under suburban joys, snark, bat-ass crazy, holiday fun |
We have had house guests. Oh, okay, I have had house guests and the other people that live here have merely enjoyed the additional meals and exceptional fussing that comes with my having company. For everyone else it was just another long weekend save for the five course meal on Thursday and the addition of pumpkin bread at Friday morning breakfast. I call my immediate family, My Better Half and our offspring, the Walk-Ons. They amble in to celebrate and eat and belch and leave dirty napkins and crumbs on their chairs.
As far as company goes, it was, in some ways, a benign variety. My brother and his son have little expectation. They rent a one bedroom apartment in a decrepit old house. They share bunk beds. A forty-two year old man on the top and a five year old boy on the bottom. They eat a lot of peanut butter and jelly while listening to their immediate neighbor, a graying, psyhcotic crack addict, wandering the sidewalks in her bathrobe mumbling profanities and scolding God. But I still felt compelled to finish painting the dining room and make homemade pies and clean bathrooms before their arrival.
My Better Half muttered some unkind observation about my Really Pulling Out All the Stops for my clinically insane brother’s visit. My running the vacuum and washing the dog nose smudges off the storm doors really incites his disdain. It’s his way of saying I should be out earning an income in order to pay someone else to clean our glass surfaces.
I ran into a friend while leaving the supermarket on Wednesday. We exchanged the usual pleasantries about our Thanksgiving plans. I mentioned that our holiday should be quiet save for the fact that my crazy brother would be with us for days. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “It’s always interesting.” And she replied, “Oh I know, my sister-in-law’s a nut too,” as if we shared this unfortunate thing, this secret familial shame. And I could tell she was talking about a version of crazy that didn’t hold a candle to my version. Not that it’s a pissing contest. But I feel sure that she didn’t mean ‘crazy’ like institutionally insane. I suspect her ‘crazy’ wears seasonally decorated sweaters and uses the word slacks. Of course, I didn’t ask her to define her crazy and I just moved on,with my grocery cart full of provisions, turkey, whole cranberries in a bag, a loaf of french bread and green apples for the stuffing, hurrying home to box up all the alcohol in the house and clear the medicine cabinets, hiding all controlled substances in a box in the basement.
I had already done a lot of the mental preparation for the arrival of my ‘crazy’. The previous Sunday, while adding the finishing touches of Westminster Gold above the door jambs, I was remembering our family therapy sessions that began when my brother was institutionalized for the first time. I remembered that my mother wept and the rest of us sat around feeling awkward and abandoned. She did not cry as she struggled to terms with the diagnosis of her oldest son, who at eighteen had been declared an Obsessive Compulsive, Manic Depressive with substance abuse problems, nor did she weep for her middle child, who, at sixteen, had practically moved in with his girl friend’s family and only came home on the occasional weeknight to do laundry, nor did she suffer even a little over her ten year old daughter, who was smoking at the bus stop and stealing beers from the refrigerator.
Instead, she wept and moaned and railed against us because after a long day’s work she would come home to a sink full of dishes and a family room littered with dirty shoes and discarded sweaters and candy bar wrappers and pet hair. We spent hour after expensive hour listening to her lament the life she now led - professional by day, house maid and cook by night. She squeezed out angry tears. She spewed frustration and regret. This was not the surge of liberation, the gush of pride and independence that Gloria Steinem had promised her. Each and every Sunday, after hosting open houses and hopefully ushering out-of-town clients from one potential home purchase to another, she would walk through the door and feel the urge to shoot herself.
The licensed psychologist hired to shepherd us through the narrow passage of life with mental illness spent the hours tamping down his pipe, relighting it, drifting in and out of sleep. He was quietly nonchalant, allowing us to drift from one undisciplined battle about household chores to another. Our version of Sigmund Freud let us squabble about replacing the cap on the toothpaste and un-balling our socks before pitching them into the hamper as if this was the type of discord he’d expected.
A month later, the three of us, mounted an opposition to group therapy and refused to attend. My mother continued to visit the psychologist by herself. She began to leave notes on the bathroom and kitchen counters and on the top of the toilet, “Please don’t rush, remember to flush; A cap on the toothpaste saves waste.” We ignored the notes, eventually they became just part of the decor, sea foam green linoleum and messages about removing pubic hairs from the soap.
When my brother arrived late Wednesday afternoon, I made tea while he inspected the dining room. “I think you need another coat in here,” he called to me. And I winced, having just rolled up the tarps and replaced the furniture. I knew he was right but had convinced myself that no one but me would notice the patchy bits of white showing through in spots.
While we pressed our tea bags with the back of our spoons, attending to the ritual of steeping as if it satisifed us in the same way as cracking a beer or pouring a glass of wine would have, I asked him what he remembered about those early therapy sessions. And he remembered them just as I had. But he had more detail, a more fluent memory of the time. It was comfortable now, to sit at my kitchen counter and remember my mother as the crazy one. It must have been comfortable then too, a welcome diversion, something we could fix.
After finishing his tea, my brother excused himself to use the bathroom and take a nap. I could hear him brushing his teeth. The drone of the electric toothbrush went on for several minutes. It was the third time he had brushed his teeth since his arrival only an hour before. I rushed to the bedroom he’d be using to remove the decorative pillow shams and beige linen spread. I stuffed the expensive linens in the closet and replaced them with an old quilt we use to cover the furniture when the kids have the stomach bug.
My brother entered the room and promptly lay down on top of the old quilt and closed his eyes, his steel tipped boots poking over the end of the bed. I returned to the kitchen to rinse our tea cups and start dinner. And I whispered, “You’re welcome, Mom.”
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