Family: July 29, 2010
Posted on July 7, 2010My mother has Alzheimer’s Disease. She was diagnosed with dementia when she was 58. She is now 63. She looks 75. She is a sad woman who cries whenever anything makes her uncomfortable. She has reverted to almost child status.
Which is very sad because she had a shitty childhood. Her father was an asshole. That is putting it mildly. My mother was the oldest of 12 children, and in one way or another my grandfather sexually abused each one of his 12 children. For years my mother thought he had only messed with the girls, which meant there were nine boys who had a chance to be normal. However, after their father died, the adult kids swapped some stories.
My grandfather sexually abused each one of his children. And because they had been raised in an environment of disgusting, dirty, bad, shameful incest, some of those children abused some of their siblings. It is horrible and shameful and the thought of what it must have been like to grow up as one of many military brats moving around often and finally settling in rural northern California all while their father had “special time” with each of them makes me alternately nauseous and weepy.
So it’s extra sad that my mother thinks both my sister and I are her sister because that means she sometimes thinks she’s still a kid, when things were shitty. Really shitty. Horrible.
My mother was disowned and shunned by her family when she came out as a lesbian. That was when my mother and father were divorcing when I was four and my sister was eight. My father didn’t take the news too well. He drank a lot. I get my alcoholism from my father. He got it from his Native American grandmother. He stopped drinking for the most part when he became a born again Christian.
My dad and step-mother planned a family get-together at Whiskeytown Lake. The plans began back in December 2009 when my step-mother reserved the multiple camp sites. My step-sister had requested that the family camp at Wiskeytown, where we had gone camping numerous times when we were kids, living in Redding. I lived in Redding, California, roughly from the time I was eleven until I was fourteen. We did a lot of camping during that time.
When we were kids, my step-sister and I went “cruising for boys” when we went camping. She was infinitely more comfortable and flirtatious than I. I always went along for the ride, talking to whomever she had lured into talking to us.
I realized that it would be a good idea if I visited my mother, and then my father and his family planned the camping family reunion. I could visit both parts of my family on one trip; two birds, one stone, and all that. I would drive up to Humboldt County, where my sister and my mother lived, and then over to Whiskeytown, in Shasta County, to camp, before driving down the 5 to get home to San Francisco. I figured I could visit my mother and my father and his family, along the way announcing to everyone that I was moving. Moving far away. Moving to Chicago.
It was also on that trip when I’d introduce everyone to the Viking. The Viking was nice enough to go with me on the trip despite all the stories I’d told him about my family.
On Thursday morning I picked up the rental car. We loaded the trunk with our gear. Our gear consisted of a small ice chest we bought for the trip filled with food we had prepared for the family pot luck dinner on Saturday night, clothes, and some sheets and blankets. The Viking and I do not camp. We have no camping equipment, and we like it that way. We justified the ice chest purchase because it’s small enough to use for picnicking, which we do do. My parents, who camp all the time, had everything else we’d need, including a huge tent, sleeping bags, a camp stove, and folding chairs.
We put Isis, along with her two beds, in the back seat of the car and we were off. After a stop for ice and coffee we were off. The Viking had never been across the Golden Gate Bridge so after a very foggy drive where most of the bridge couldn’t be seen at all he had to trust me when I told him that the Golden Gate Bridge was, in fact, behind us.
Up the 101 we went. It got a lot warmer, and then cooled down again by the time we reached Humboldt County. We found my sister’s house, no thanks to Google Maps which directed us off the 101 via a road that doesn’t exist. My sister and her girlfriend showed us their cute little house complete with two dogs and garden.
We had a quick snack of local oysters. The Viking doesn’t like oysters, but he was nice enough to do all of the shucking for us. Then we went to visit my mother. We picked her and her dog up and went to a park.
My mom can barely walk. She’s often confused. When I told her about the move to Chicago she burst into tears. She was very happy to see Isis. Isis used to be my mother’s dog; I got her when my mother’s partner abandoned her and kicked her out of the house the two of them owned together.
It may not seem like much. It probably seems like nothing, me taking care of a dog that used to be my mother’s rather than taking care of my mother. But it’s what I can do.
After a tearful goodbye with my mother, we went back to my sister’s place where there was a pot luck dinner already in progress. We drank wine, ate, and socialized. My sister has lived in Eureka for over ten years and has a group of loyal friends.
Eureka is too small a town for me, and the weather is a tad depressing, but my sister loves it. She went to college in Humboldt County, too. Coincidentally, the same college our parents attended when they met. She lives in the same town both she and I were born. She’s gone back to her beginnings, while I’m making a break for it.
To be continued.
I swear. True story.
Categories: True Story.
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03.08.2010 18:35