A bracelet in time

The little things

Sometimes, it’s the little things. A song we listened to together. A photo of her favorite beach. Or, a chance sighting of a pair of sunglass clip-ons. My mom was forever searching for her clip-ons.

Yes, sometimes it’s the small things that hold the strongest memories for me.

Forty years is a long time to miss someone

It’s been almost forty years since she died. That self-detected lump in her breast led to a radical mastectomy and chemotherapy and hair loss. But the malignancy would not be defeated.

Within two years, I would take her on her last car drive, to South Coast Community Hospital in South Laguna Beach. By that time, the cancer had spread to her bones, and it was all the doctors and nurses could do to keep her from passing out in pain.

Even the best memories are poor substitutes

I was a teenager when she died, so I’ve spent the better part of my life with only the memories of her to provide a mother’s closeness. Those memories have been a poor substitute: a memory doesn’t have a shoulder to cry on, and can’t offer a word of encouragement. Nor can a memory tell you to “break a leg” or “show ‘em all you know.”

A small triumph

And yet, sometimes the little things triumph, bringing her back into focus. Today I am wearing one of those plastic bracelets they give you at the hospital; the nice lady in Admissions gave me one today at the hospital outpatient center where I go for my annual mammogram, a talisman against the cancer that struck down my mother.

The last time I saw her alive, which was the moment she took her last breath, she, too was wearing one of those plastic bracelets. Today, I look at my wrist inside of the plastic bracelet, and I imagine her wrist inside of her plastic bracelet. That little thing, that shared experience brings me comfort.

Parenting ourselves

Empty Swing 9.26.12

The Child-Less Swing

I love the story this photos conveys: a swing without a child, a bench without a parent.

As the child of an alcoholic father and a codependent mother, I was that child, often too busy parenting myself, too serious, to let go, to be a child in a swing.

A Father Present, Even in His Frequent Absence

Strangely, although my father was primarily absent, his presence permeated our home. I recall much time spent in nervous anticipation of his arrival home. And when he was home, there was an undercurrent of expectation toward his imminent departure, not to mention a wellspring of fear that one of us might trigger his anger.

I particularly recall his insistence that my mother have dinner ready by 5 pm, though he would depart shortly after we ate and remain out until long after we were asleep. I am sure his swift after-dinner departure was a source of sadness for my mother.

A Mother Doing, Rather Than Being

My mother. We revolved around her, as the moon around the Earth, yet she was in her own orbit, revolving around my father, as the Earth revolves around the Sun. If she wasn’t anticipating his needs, his anger, or his betrayals, she was likely protecting herself from them by staying in almost perpetual motion.

She was a “human doing,” and not so much a “human being.” Although she did not hold a job outside the home, she was a prolific volunteer and joiner. There were Women’s clubs and Hospital Auxiliary clubs, school PTAs and Community Playhouse committees. These I remember.

Taking on a Parent’s Role

For me, parenting myself meant earning the highest grades, selling the most Girl Scout cookies, getting in the least trouble, making the fewest demands. As a result of parenting myself, I became hyper-responsible. I felt responsibility for others lives, whether or not they wanted me to.

As an adult, I now try my best to let others take responsibility for their own lives, while I pay attention to that little girl named Gretchen in the swing, from my place on the bench.

Contract Cohabitation

Contract Cohabitation Softcover

Two bookends, and a book

If a cruel confrontation with polio in his childhood, and a visit from the same foe in his last years were the bookends to my amazingly smart, amazingly flawed father, Edmund’s, time on Earth, then surely one of his most prized accomplishments, set midway between those bookends, was the publication of his book, Contract Cohabitation: An Alternative to Marriage.

Published in 1974, while the scent of the hippy movement was still in the air, and the promises of “Open Marriage” had not yet been betrayed, his book was widely and well-received, even earning him a turn on “The Merv Griffin Show.”

The essence of Contract Cohabitation as a concept is a rejection of the limitations of traditional marriage, in favor of an employer-employee relationship in which either party is free to leave within thirty days.

Looking for love in all the wrong places

As Edmund tells it in his book, he came upon the idea of Contract Cohabitation almost accidentally. After leaving my mother for her former best friend, who was also the wife of his own former good friend, he was swallowed-up by a series of tempestuous romances filled with passion and recriminations.

One day, as he was driving in Northern California, it came to him: he envisioned a relationship that would allow him to be himself, and yet still have committed companionship. For this, he was willing to pay a salary.

Blank contract included

At one-hundred-ninety-two pages, Contract Cohabitation is part-memoir, part-showcase, and part-instruction manual. The book, published by Avon and by arrangement with Grove Press, Inc., is physically impressive, and includes a blank contract for the parties to fill out.

There is also an engaging compare-and-contrast between the ideals of Open Marriage and Contract Cohabitation. Edmund opines that Open Marriage rarely works in practice because one partner to the marriage invariably is overcome by jealousy or feelings of rejection.

In the realm of Contract Cohabitation, however, such feelings will never be an impediment, because both the employer and the employee are free to leave at any time (with a thirty-day notice).

When sex is involved, can it really be that easy?

In a perfect Contract Cohabitation world, calling one partner an employer, and the other an employee, and signing a contract and paying a salary will obviate the need for jealousy and possessiveness.

This, even though sex is an integral part of the arrangement. And, as we know, any time sex is thrown into the mix, all bets are off, no matter what you call the relationship.