Author: MaggyMac

First published at 6 years old (The Daily Gleaner, Fredericton, NB, Canada). Have written something every single day of my life, if only a To-Do list. Bearing down on writing THAT book for me and myself alone. If it resonates, reaches, inspires, disgusts, bores, or otherwise affects external readers, I have achieved all I wished to achieve on this planet.

Getting Real

I have only a few days left to say whatever I might have been holding back this past year. I’m going through the list to see what I might have missed as issues of note.

I have come to realize I write to stay sane. Was I ever insane? Well, no. Not in a clinically diagnosed sort of way. But I definitely drifted far enough away from the piers of nice North American female normalcy that caused many, and me, to wonder.

I didn’t have you would call a “normal” childhood. At least, I now know what a normal childhood means. A set of parents (or caregivers) who were consistent, available and sober.

Children knowing what bed they were going to sleep in every night. Kids who had a right and got to enjoy their privacy. They could slap a “no boys allowed” sign on their bedroom door and expect it to be respected.

Nope. Didn’t have any of that. So forgive me if you have read all this before. Essential backdrop if you haven’t. My father was an abusive, alcoholic, womanizer. My mom got through the marriage with countless bottles of “Mama’s little helpers.”

No one was there to answer my questions and help me sort out difficult situations. Just as often when I would bring an issue to my mother, I was mocked and invariably silenced. A very dry well.

It wasn’t so much that my parents were not interested in listening. For the most part, it was more that they simply weren’t there. Booze and pills are famous – and relied on – for taking you far, far away from your troubles.

Looking back on my life from this vantage point, I can see what was missing and forgive myself for the things I did to stay alive. The caregiving gaps in my early childhood affected me. What I did to make up for those gaps was rarely what I wanted or needed.

Booze couldn’t take the place of genuine love. Sex was a particularly transient and unsuitable substitute for comfort and belonging. I was a very poor conformist, no doubt partly due to my upbringing.

I never could happily adapt to the 9-5 life. I did one mindless contract after another over the years with the single intention of keeping body and soul together. No joy. no sense of purpose.

I didn’t have the courage to follow my dreams of international photojournalism. I had limited faith in the Universe at that point. My great dream of international media stardom never came to pass.

Truth be told, fame was never a real goal. Most of the time, I was just happy to have the press credentials to get me behind the scenes at a lot of big travel events. The official opening of Disney World’s Chautauqua Institute as one example.

I look back with some bemusement on the doggedness that led me to do a deep dive to see why I landed where I’d landed. I learned a lot. For starters, no man is an island. We are all part of a bigger story. Our people were working-class stock through and through – a fact I believe chagrined my mother.

To compensate for the lack of family pedigree, she imbued her three daughters with an undeserved sense of specialness and entitlement that could never have been sustainable in the real world. Even the best and brightest will falter and fail to thrive without safety and careful sensible nurture.

What I realize today is that above all else, I needed stability and safety to grow. I am only just finding it in my life. The stability gap between my life today and where I came from is vast.

In retrospect, mine was a story of survival that grew into eventual stability. It is not the sexiest script out there, I realize. But it is mine.

From the age of fifteen, I tried to find the source of my constant emotional discomfort and deep insecurities. I swung from one vine on the healing path to the next and the next.

I learned a lot along the way, including the importance of my famous catchphrase, “sayin’ ain’t doin’.” There is lots and lots of talking in the world. Backing up what people often say with action, however, is just not as common.

So this year of daily writing has been about seeking answers and finding my own authenticity. What matters to me and what most emphatically doesn’t.

It has caused me to look back on many of the roles and work I tried on just to get by. Some of it was ridiculous. A lot of life is actually if we give it a hard look.

Now I am planning the next phase. The final one. And mentally exploring what I think I want to do and where I might go one day.

I now have the time now to pursue any dormant passions. I have cleared most of the interfering childhood crud out of my psyche.

The future beckons and is also right in front of me.

Armed with my emerging sense of a solid self, I say, “Bring it on.”

Make Up Your Own Mind

I wrote something exactly like the excerpt below lately. Being an adult means thinking for yourself. And acting on what you actually think. Not what wins you a popularity prize.

So I was pleased to stumble across this quote from Erich Fromm that validates my point of view.

We are all saturated in the cultural and familial ambitions we were raised in. For many, life becomes a series of dutifully and somewhat mindlessly following in someone else’s footsteps. Either by choice or by gentle – and not so gentle – coercion. “My son, the doctor!!”

It is one of life’s great ironies that we accept as real that which we learn from our environment. And more, we come to believe that we are making choices and decisions on our own. While we are conforming to beat the band.

“We”, in effect, become “they.” We believe what “they’ believe. We do – in the main – what “they” do. We think what “they” think. Or close enough to it to keep our membership viable at any one of a number of social settings.

I always had trouble with this way of thinking personally. I think a lot of current North American values simply suck. Inequities always jumped out at me. The stacked deck that shapes the lives of the rich and the not so rich.

The easy intercourse of hatred between different groups. The worship of money and raising its value above all else. Even, and especially, above human dignity and integrity.

Nikki Haley famously quoted Margaret Thatcher on the occasion of her withdrawal from the 2024 US Presidential race: “Never just follow the crowd. Always make up your own mind.” 

That’s a tall order these days as pressure to conform and consequences for not doing so are predominant.

Still, it is important to remind ourselves of our individual power and our own ability to work through a problem or issue and come up with our own conclusion.

So sayeth Erich Fromm. And fittingly on International Women’s day today, so does former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Thatcher wasn’t known for mincing her words or pulling punches. A great female role model for our time.

Most people are convinced that as long as they are not overtly forced to do something by an outside power, their decisions are theirs, and that if they want something, it is they who want it.

But this is one of the great illusions we have about ourselves.

A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside.

We have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort.

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom [ad] https://amzn.to/438Pn3g

Happy International Women’s Day!

The Universe

Funny isn’t it, how concepts creep into our parlance?

“Gifts from the Universe,” is one.

I get the theory of energetic interconnectivity between all living things.

I get the theory that our planet is just one heaving, breathing, undulating organism trying to stay in balance like the rest of us who are temporarily parked here.

Vague platitudes – if that is what they are – are comforting. Or can be. Sort of.

“Everything happens for a reason.” “Nature leans towards balance and harmony.” “That was an unexpected gift from the Universe.” “We can do hard things.”

I have had more gifts from the Universe in my life than I can count. For that, I am grateful. And I feel so undeserving. Ergo, the gratitude.

With this post today, I am exactly one week away from the one year anniversary of starting this blog. That’s significant to me. A goal achieved. A target hit. Barring any unfortunate developments over the next seven days.

I have been wondering internally and on these pages, what’s next? I have committed to hanging up my computer keyboard for a while and taking a break. Airing out the brain cells, Maybe seeking out some new inspiration.

So when an email invitation arrived last night, I was as bemused as I was surprised. Peter Murphy, founder of the Murphy School of writing at Stockton University in New Jersey, was writing with a proposition.

“Would you consider coming to the annual weeklong Florida “Get Away to Write” workshop that starts on March 19th?” he wrote. There are still places available and he added a financial sweetener.

It was at the Get Away to Write workshop in New Smyrna Beach, Florida on March 14, 2023 that I started this blog writing exercise.

I like the implication of coming full circle by attending this year. It is almost as if I had been assigned a yearlong research project. Now I can attend again this year and report on what I learned from that exercise.

This time I will be able to take part in the memoir session. It was fully subscribed last year and I attended the retreat as an independent writer. Whether the memoir I set out to write when I signed up last year, or another memoir emerges, only time will tell.

If nothing else, the writing flame within me continues to be fanned. Which is how creativity works in my experience. Slow and steady regular effort prevails over intermittent flashes of brilliance and insight. Much like life.

There are good writing days and there are bad writing days.

So yes, I’ll go to this writing workshop if the stars align. Not sure what that means or what it would take. Surmounting entropy likely.

But my calendar that week is clear. Hubby says he’ll come with. As an end of blogging for one full year celebration, five days in a setting with other creative people at an arts retreat center set in a jungle in a charming Southern oceanside town may be just what the doctor ordered.

Or the Universe.

Immutable Truths

If I’ve learned one thing from writing this blog for almost a year now, is that there is a lot of life wisdom and guidance to be found in the world.

I hope I have imparted some of the wisdom I’ve picked up along the way. I hope I have internalized some of it.

Today’s social conceit of our entitled right and access to “almost everything” – if we but follow the program on offer or buy into this person’s philosophy – is essentially a crock. Ultimately, we have to figure out what works for us, the direction of mentors and charlatans notwithstanding.

Most simply put, there are immutable truths about life. We can ignore them but they won’t ignore us. Change your gender. Lie about your birth date. Concoct a fabulous and false story about your origins and lineage. See how far that gets you.

Because, in the end, it all comes down to getting right with ourselves. That’s a lifetime commitment for most folk right there.

We see and read so much about “ensuring the rights of” – name it. The gender confused. The victims of domestic violence. Blacks. Asians. The mentally ill. The homeless. Republicans.

The description of fighting for those rights always provides lively copy. Speaks to the great interest and inherent sense of light-seeking that I believe all humans wish for: justice, fairness, equity, truth.

What isn’t so common is the follow up. We rarely hear what oppressed person or group learn from their “liberation.” Who do they credit for their eventual success? When do they settle into a sense of peace with that they have achieved?

In the end, I believe any joint victory is felt as a personal victory. We are part of many groups and all carry our own inherent prejudices and biases. When a group we feel part of is victorious, we feel victorious.

That’s the reason I believe it is absolutely essential to get right with yourself and whatever you conceive god to be. No matter how solid and comforting and supporting all those groups have been in your life, at the end, we are all completely on our own.

It is not selfishness to focus on and sort out what really matters to us in this life. It is wisdom. Only from that vantage point can you share yourself with others in any meaningful way.

Pity the parrots who never completely come to understand who they are and why they believe what they believe. Those who never learn to think for themselves.

So, once again, I found wise words that spoke to me. I acknowledge wise words for their consistency and relevance over time.

There is no shortage of them. Our task – the biggest – is to sort through them and apply the wisest lessons to our own lives. In my case, it is an ongoing work in progress.

As is much great wisdom, the list of life lessons below is simple. Not easy to follow. But simple.

And as much life wisdom does, this list comes from our First Nations. They had centuries to figure out solid life lessons before “progress” irreversibly altered their way of life and brought us into the great age of “modernity.”

15 REMINDERS FROM THE ELDERS:

1. Get up with the sun to pray. Pray alone.

2. Be tolerant of those who have lost their way. Ignorance, presumption, anger, jealousy and greed come from a lost soul. Pray for them to find guidance.

3. Find yourself, by your own means. Do not let others make your path for you. It is your path, and only yours. Others may walk with you, but no one can make your way (or walk your path) for you.

4. Treat guests in your home with great consideration. Serve them the best food, give them the best bed and treat them with respect and honor.

5. Do not take what is not yours, whether from a person, a community, from the jungle or from a culture. It was not given or won. It is not yours.

6. Respect all the things that are on this earth, be they people, plants and animals.

7. Honor the thoughts, desires and words of all people. Never break them in, or make fun of them, or imitate them rudely. It gives each person the right to their personal expression.

8. Never talk about others in a bad way. The negative energy you put into the universe will multiply when it returns to you.

9. All people make mistakes. And all the mistakes can be forgiven.

10. Bad thoughts cause illness to the mind, body and spirit. Practice optimism.

11. Nature is not FOR us. It is PART of us. She’s part of your family in the world.

12. Children are the seeds of our future. Sow love in your hearts and water them with wisdom and life lessons. When they grow up, just give them space to grow up.

13. Avoid hurting the hearts of others. The poison of their suffering will return to you.

14. Be true (transparent ) all the time. Honesty is the test of one’s will in this universe.

15. Keep yourself balanced. Your Mental person, your Spiritual person, your Emotional person, and your Physical person: they all have the need to be strong, pure and healthy.

Evelyn D Springfield  ·   · 

Pinky Blinders

Today’s writing prompt: “You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?“

Mine is:

“For me, the Fifties will forever be symbolized by Jayne Mansfield and her pink, heart-shaped pool.”

That is an image I have long carried of the Fifties. Beautiful, buxom, platinum haired Jayne Mansfield hoisted in the arms of her weightlifter husband Mickey Hargitay at the edge of her Beverly Hills swimming pool.

What is it about that image that sticks with me? For me, it was everything that was wrong with the Fifties. The garish and overt sexualization of women’s bodies. The plasticity and pretentiousness of the bottle bleached blonde. The artifice. The illusion of endless summer.

As a child you don’t know what is real and what isn’t. You learn what the accepted reality is from the adults around you and what – according to them – is supposed to matter.

Children have no choice but to accept and mirror this version of reality and it becomes their own. Until it doesn’t. The choice of opting in or out that comes with adulthood.

Even as a child, I remember being appalled by the behavior of a lot of the adults around me. Especially at our frequent house parties. The adults drank too much. Many smoked – a stupid, filthy habit I eventually adopted for many years and then finally discarded.

They laughed too loud. There was a constant low level of tension and forced frisson at these parties. Adults trying really, really hard to have a good time.

The disconnect between what many of these people said and what they did was evident to me. Way too much flirting and laughter in corners between men and women who were married to other people in the room.

I have come to understand how traumatized that entire post World war Two generation must have been. Sure, the Allies had been victorious over the evil forces of Nazism. Sufficiently to declare victory, disband the active war effort and move everyone back into a semblance of normal living.

Turns out that was easier said than done. Women used to making their own money and living independently were forced back into the domestic arena to make room in the workforce for the returning menfolk.

Possibly worse as an expectation, these displaced women were supposed to be happy about it. Doing their bit for the boys and country and all that.

Little wonder that the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield became popular. They were part of the post-war myth that life was not only better after the war, but bigger and better than it had ever been. These women and all the pretenders were symbols of all the freedom and glory the war effort won them.

It was bound to buckle. No society can live disconnected from the dictates of reality indefinitely. Enter the Sixties and what soon seemed to be constant social upheaval on every front: civil rights, the anti-Vietnam War protests, the rise of feminism, Baby Boomers starting to come of age. New rulebooks being written.

I see myself and my life goals as having been marinated in the stew of the Fifties. As an adult, I still tote around my little bag of values from the influences of that early upbringing.

The Protestant work ethic. The focus on external symbols of success. An expectation of affluence. A certain generational narcissism about our “uniqueness” that came with being part of the largest cohort of babies born in one period in the history of the world.

Today Boomers are vilified by many. Our focus on accumulating wealth and security worked well for us as a generation. To the point it seems that we have unintentionally scanted the generations coming behind us.

How in the name of heaven did a simple single family dwelling get to be so ridiculously expensive? Everywhere. I’ve yet to find a logical economic explanation.

While my autobiography would open with a description of that superplastic vision of hyper-happy and beautiful young and rich people like Jayne and Mickey, it was evident that fantastical image and lifestyle was bound to be time-limited.

It was a pablum period. No grit in the corn meal. No starch in the shorts. Just fun and glitz and partying and happy. Always happy. Perpetual adolescence.

The generation that lived it up in the Fifties eventually came back to a place of reckoning in the decades that followed. More settled and mature. Yet some of the Fifties core values are worth hanging on to.

A fierce sense of justice and atonement emerged from the detritus of war. An inherent world-wide sense of the fragility of peace and human life. The focus on stability to ensure the healthy growth of the upcoming generation. Medical and technological advances galore.

For those of us shaped within the confines of that decade, many of the images endure and maybe some of the values, too. Our crowd is leaving the planet and will have left its mark on the world as every generation inevitably does.

I recently read there are now more millennials in Canada than there are “baby boomers.” The great cull has begun. Soon, the pluses and minuses scored by our generation will be consigned to the history books.

And when it is, I have a strong suggestion for the image that best represents us for the cover.

The Paradox

Every day, I seem to live the paradox poet Sarah Kay writes about.

Her insightful poem speaks to the fragmentation of attention and focus.

Let’s face it. There is never not a time when there is something else we could be doing.

I suffer regularly from this paradox. It can be attributed, in part, to unclear priorities. If you know exactly where you are heading and what you want to be doing, the paradox may not be as frequent or troubling.

But who among us has such clarity and certainty of purpose at every age and stage of their lives?

I think the paradox referenced here troubles everyone at some level and at some point. I’m not enamored thinking the only resolution might be on our deathbed, though that makes sense.

I’d like to find – and often enjoy – more periods of peace well before then. Those periods of peace seem to happen most reliably when I manage to get out of my head.

The Paradox

When I am inside writing,
all I can think about is how I should be outside living.

When I am outside living,
all I can do is notice all there is to write about.

When I read about love, I think I should be out loving.
When I love, I think I need to read more.

I am stumbling in pursuit of grace,
I hunt patience with a vengeance.

On the mornings when my brother’s tired muscles
held to the pillow, my father used to tell him,

For every moment you aren’t playing basketball,
someone else is on the court practicing.

I spend most of my time wondering
if I should be somewhere else.

So I have learned to shape the words thank you
with my first breath each morning, my last breath every night.

When the last breath comes, at least I will know I was thankful
for all the places I was so sure I was not supposed to be.

All those places I made it to,
all the loves I held, all the words I wrote.

And even if it is just for one moment,
I will be exactly where I am supposed to be.

Sarah Kay, https://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/paradox-15406

Blinders Off

Stock taking begins.

I am not the great writer I hoped, and secretly believed, that I am.

It turns out that years of personal upheaval, creative subterfuge, dismissal and avoidance did take their toll.

I had plenty of “deep thoughts” about a lot of things to share when I was young. The childish arrogance is sweet, but laughable. But it came to a point I didn’t dare express them anyway.

I didn’t have the tools or necessary distance to start dissecting and unpacking the multi and various lapses of my childhood until I was well into adulthood.

I think a great writer – and I’m thinking of the great novelists here – can invite and bring you into their world. Any world they devise. Seemingly effortlessly. You are led around by the author as a steady companion might be.

They tell you their stories which tells you something about who they are. You overhear something from one particular conversation that stays with you. You meet people. And people got stories.

When I think of the great protagonists in novels I’ve enjoyed, I liked that the author helped me get to know their character’s character. Warts and all. Right off the bat.

There is something particularly compelling about a character being vulnerable that can advance a story dramatically.

The 24/7 superhero character can become an uninteresting drag. So even the best of them usually have some trauma or tragedy that has shaped their path and who they are.

For a time, I entertained the delusional notion that I might present myself to the world as that broken but not beaten female superhero. The one who could help others make sense out of an unstable and abusive childhood. I would show them how they could do it.

I can be downright amusing. I have carried this conceit of my writing prowess for years to offset the real life gravity that pulled my biggest desires and goals wildly off course. There was always going to be a “some day.” Until one day, there isn’t.

I am going to work on acceptance of my own limitations and the inevitable deflation of ego that propelled this little adventure over the past year. I do dearly wish that the place of peace and healthy self-confidence I have now, I would have had when I needed them most.

But I read few stories that read that way or actually go that way. Challenge and growth seem to be the mandatory edicts laid down for human beings in order to move forward in life.

Will a book suddenly come rushing out of me one day with all the words and stories I have been holding back for decades? I’m doubtful. Over thirty years, I’ve actively pursued therapy to talk out my issues and by writing endless journals to explore every aspect and screwup of my life. To date.

The same urgency is no longer there. Words padded and protected me most when I needed them to. They have been my tools, my playmates, my confidantes, and my critics for as long as I can remember.

Maybe one day I’ll get honest enough to throw off my tidy 3 minute writing restriction (a broadcasting hangover). Or shuck the internalized discipline of a professional writing career and tell you unedited what I really think and feel. But I actually do that already. But there’s always more.

Like how much I have come to resent my dead mother and her chronic overwhelm. How sorry and sad I feel for our fractured and flailing family. How much rage I carry over the “preventable tragedies” I watched unfold around me. And within my own life.

So that’s where I am at for now. I had no intention when I started out to monetize this blog. Still don’t. I could try some of the WordPress “marketing” tricks to reach a wider audience. In truth, I don’t know how many of you found me in the first place. Tags, maybe?

At the moment I am treading water. I’m trying to decide whether to swim out to deeper waters in the hope of finding a luxurious desert island to hang out on. Or whether I will be heading dutifully – and sensibly – back to shore.

Guess we’ll see.

Two. Weeks. Today.

March 13, 2024. The one year anniversary of starting this daily blog is just ahead. This is blog post Number 355.

Today I believe this is what I am going to do the day after I celebrate that anniversary.

I am going to take a rest and not post anything for a while. At the minute, I have no idea how long “awhile” might be.

I follow other bloggers who post only occasionally. No set schedule. Just when they feel like it or have something they really want to say. I enjoy reading what they write when their blog posts pop up in my email.

Maybe I will be doing my faithful readers a favor. “Not her again!” someone might have been saying every day for the past 350 days. But I know some of you faithfully read what I’ve written because you’ve showed me.

Sometimes you are even kind enough to say something about what I’ve written and leave a comment. I must be a great diplomat. So far, I have attracted no haters. As far as I know, my views have been personal and even enough not to start any divisive or hostile threads.

I am not thrilled with where the world is at this time in history. Humans are unfailingly odd. I grew up in the backwash of the Second World War. Peace, harmony and cooperation were overriding social goals.

That generation knew how badly everything could go wrong if evil prevailed. They had a keen sense of what needed to be done to maintain peace. As human beings generally, we are good at enduring, whether we want to or not.

We seem to have lost that shared understanding of fragile peace. It has been traded for a slavish devotion to materialism and tribalism.

Cheap and easy ways to seek satisfaction abound and ways to buy our way into a sense of belonging. “I’m a Gucci girl!” As if that means anything in the grand scheme of things.

Men and women spend an inordinate amount of time on their external appearance while letting their internal life wither and shrink away. It is as if the way to stay relevant these days is to don the persona of a perpetual adolescent.

A fantastical place where pain doesn’t exist (unless it is in the aid of “beauty”). Where money and resources are in unlimited supply. Where no-one’s needs or feelings matter but your own, because, dammit, I am a Queen.

We can’t blame people. That’s the sales pitch. It is very attractive and looks easy. You can’t be surprised that people buy into it. Until, of course, they don’t.

That happens when reality trumps fantasy and pain becomes very real. And then, the pain when you turn inwards to seek relief and comfort, there is nothing inside you to support and guide you.

Seems the very definition of dystopian to me.

So we’ll see what is ahead. I have learned what works and doesn’t work for me. I have learned that growth is possible at any age if the spirit is willing. I have learned that the world is nuts, was nuts and likely always will be nuts. I just don’t have to engage.

I headed into this exercise with one resonant message. I write for me. If it resonates for you, that’s a bonus. Maybe we could have a discussion about those points of resonance one day. Maybe we could even become friends or colleagues.

I have a better handle today on who I am and what I believe than I did around this time last year. That’s made this writing exercise worthwhile.

A famous maxim on the sign at the Oracle of Delphi says: “Know thyself.” The principal meaning of the phrase in its original application was “know your limits” – either in the sense of knowing the extent of one’s abilities, knowing one’s place in the social scale, or knowing oneself to be mortal.

In the 4th century BC, however, the maxim was drastically re-interpreted by Plato, who understood it to mean, broadly speaking, “know your soul.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself

I’d be happy to share a cup of tea with you and swap some of our soul secrets any time. Just say the word.

About That Book I’m Writing

[If I published this post before, it is high time to post it again. I have two weeks from today until I reach the one year anniversary of publishing a daily blog post. I needed to remind myself why i started.]

I was born in the Fifties to a professional business family in a small East Coast Canadian town. I have been trying to sort out the logic behind my arrival and existence on this planet ever since.

If you want to know the narrative arc of my memoir, it is that. Making sense of where I came from and to what end.

I experienced zero to minimal stability in my childhood. There were pluses, of course, but also abuses and dereliction of parental duty – by times insignificant and at others, life-altering. Okay, I’ll say it: life threatening.

My mother fervently hoped that the pluses she tried to inject into our young lives would outweigh the abuses. She later managed the pain of our fragmented backstory by adroitly deflecting criticism and accountability by acting as if no abuses had happened.

And if abuses did happen to me as a child, she asserted, it was not her fault. I had somehow brought them upon myself. I was an aberration and accident of birth maybe. It takes a particular parental personality to react in that way upon hearing about bad things that happened on their watch.

As a “teenanger,” I was full of rage at my mother for her attempt to abandon us with a serious suicide attempt. (I note the typo in teenanger, but I’ll leave it as it fits.) I was also furious with her for what I truly believed then were unjust grievances she had against my Dad. I was fully onside with his point of view.

As a young teen, he used to bend my ear by the hour with detailed evidence of how horrid and evil my mother was. I once screamed at Mom that she was deliberately blocking Dad’s path to happiness.

You see, she put up roadblocks in his affair with a local floozy by refusing to sign divorce papers. The floozy was determined to not only bed him but wed him.

Apparently, she had made a couple of failed attempts with other lawyers in town. No doubt she thought the third time was a charm, but that didn’t work out for her either. So sad.

Much later it occurred to me that it probably wasn’t appropriate that my father shared my mother’s psychiatric diagnosis with 12-year-old me. I remember him handing me a single sheet of paper with a brief paragraph summing up my mother’s deficiencies.

What I remember from that shrink’s written summary is that “the patient” did not seem “to be able to clearly distinguish between right and wrong.” 

Mom’s suicide attempt when I was 11 years old rent the family neatly in half. Me and Dad were on one side of the divide. My two younger sisters and Mom were on the other.

It should be no surprise that our sense of “family” today (both parents are deceased) is shaky to non-existent. My mother and I never fully healed the rift between us until she died.

We were restrained and civil to each other in public. In private, we were two lions circling and sizing each other up for the next attack.

I eventually learned there wasn’t anything all that special about our family or our circumstances in my childhood. We were certainly not as “special” and “gifted” as my mother wanted us to believe.

Our way of life was different from my peers, for certain, and vaguely bohemian to be kind. Code for chaotic. Mom reveled in her outrageousness and little social rebellions in our tiny little town. She actively curried our sense of being intellectuals and adventurers.

I often reflect on how similar but different my story is to many of my contemporaries.

Dad may have been screwing around but so were many others. “Boys will be boys, after all!” Mom got through her days by consuming a cornucopia of pills chased down with a generous helping of vodka.

But that wasn’t unusual. Lots of ladies from the Fifties sought emotional deliverance from “Mother’s little helpers.”

We were all raised in a society awash in the post-coital ecstasy of the post-war Fifties having climaxed by summarily screwing Hitler and his evil Nazis.

Thank God we were able to. The world deserved to celebrate that victory. But as often happens at unchecked adolescent celebrations, the world went rather to hell with it all. The Sixties fixed that.

So off I sail into my daily writing labors today on yet another unknown adventure. Destination set but how exactly to get there is uncertain. The goal is the eventual delivery of a manuscript that is worthy of becoming a printed book. I’m primed for adventure, stormy seas, and lots of hard work and soul searching. That’s essentially been my life.

As former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt put it: “A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.” I believe I am more than qualified for my mariner’s ticket.

I truly believe I can master the roughest of seas these days. I have proven it.