Showing posts with label mom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mom. Show all posts
of money and guilt and love again
Mar 4, 2008
It's hard to remember the murderous pressure of 3rd grade, but i do recall the collective exhalation of 25 9-year olds when they saw i had had brought a packet full of foreign paper money for show-and-tell. Oh my! Of course i knew nothing about the money and what countries they were from until just before looking at each one, and some i'm sure i made up. But boy-oh-boy did it wow them! I wouldn't pass the envelope around but put splayed out the money on the desk next to the teacher and let the other kids ooh and ahh over the watchful eye of the her and i.
You see, to act the hero for the day i had stolen that money from my mom's sewing machine where she had shown me once in confidence and with great reverence. Of course i intended to return it - it could only buy so much 3rd-grade love and i knew it was wrong to take. But i would have it back in the sewing machine before mom even came home from work and she wouldn't even miss it. Wouldn't she?
The plans got a bit twisted up when on the way home from school, my contraband now burning sinfully in my pocket, i realized it was one of the days i went to the babysitters instead of directly home. No problem, i could still get it in the house before mom knew anything.
Buy my mom was crafty. Or perhaps i wasn't as bold as i was in my kid's imagination. Come time to bring the packet of money in the house and i lost my nerve. I stuck the packet in the crook of the pine tree out front. It was a heavy landscape pine that had branches that only little kids could find and a perfect little place to hold the money until i could see that the coast was clear and would replace it back in the sewing machine.
Except that the mind of little zen was as easily distracted then as it is now. And i played with my cars or something and completely forgot about the little packet of money hidden in the pine tree. For days, weeks. Through rain and wind until Mom discovered a single weathered bill in the front yard! Imagine her luck! She would add it to her already large collection of ... uh oh!
The murderous pressure of 3rd grade acceptance was nothing compared to the Spanish Inquisition of an irate mother. What had i done? Where was the rest of the money? Why would i do such a thing? I was deep in dog-dirt on this one because the packet had fallen apart and there was only a few tattered bills at the base of the tree. Double-uh-oh.
For whatever reason it was a rare treat night of getting to go to McDonalds, and i had blown it. I deserved a whipping, but mom couldn't get over her loss long enough to mete out a full punishment. So on the way to Mcdonalds, i would huddle in the back of the car behind the driver's side and fall victim to the angry arm of frustration and anger every time Mom thought about her loss. She didn't really slap me or hit me so much as just grab at me in a sort of futile rage. And not only would i have deserved a good whalloping, but i believe it was a better lesson to see how much it upset my mother and caused her to cry. Stealing wasn't wrong because it gave something to you that wasn't yours, it was wrong because it hurt people when they lost those things.
This month my mom wrote me about the incident from her point of view and it made me feel proud that i learned the lesson and had such a wonderful mother:
Zen,
My last few years in high school were during the Korean War. My boyfriend, Ron (who would become my dad - zen), was off in the service as were most of his High School friends. I loved to write letters to the “boys” and would come home each school day at lunchtime and delight in receiving a letter – be it from my boyfriend or one of he other guys who would write to me. Some were Marines fighting on the lines directly in Korea, some were in the Navy and some were in the Pacific, others were Airmen.
Occasionally one GI would send me a dollar bill from a foreign country that I had never heard of before. I collected these bills in a small envelope and when I didn’t receive a letter, I would check out the bills on which had printed their names. They had no monetary value to me. They were just memories. Some of the GI’s were Ron’s friends, some were just friends of friends who had no one to write to them. I was their connection back in the “States”.
After Christmas of 1953, Ron and I got married and immediately after the wedding we left for Kansas where he was attending Wichita University. Ron had a small coupe so my personal possessions were limited to one suitcase of clothes, my sewing machine, a box of recipe cards, a cookbook and a small white envelope of foreign dollar bills.
When you took the envelope for “Show and Tell” it was not the contents that got lost, it was a part of my past. Granted, it was well time for me to let go of the past but sometimes that is hard to do. I regret hitting you all the way to McDonalds. Sometimes we place our feelings and anger over what really matters to us. My loss was pale in comparison to the wonderful, caring son I had and probably did not appreciate at that time. You have grown into a very special man and words can’t explain how proud I am of you.
AND THAT IS THE REST OF THE STORY!
Love,
Mom
You see, to act the hero for the day i had stolen that money from my mom's sewing machine where she had shown me once in confidence and with great reverence. Of course i intended to return it - it could only buy so much 3rd-grade love and i knew it was wrong to take. But i would have it back in the sewing machine before mom even came home from work and she wouldn't even miss it. Wouldn't she?
The plans got a bit twisted up when on the way home from school, my contraband now burning sinfully in my pocket, i realized it was one of the days i went to the babysitters instead of directly home. No problem, i could still get it in the house before mom knew anything.
Buy my mom was crafty. Or perhaps i wasn't as bold as i was in my kid's imagination. Come time to bring the packet of money in the house and i lost my nerve. I stuck the packet in the crook of the pine tree out front. It was a heavy landscape pine that had branches that only little kids could find and a perfect little place to hold the money until i could see that the coast was clear and would replace it back in the sewing machine.
Except that the mind of little zen was as easily distracted then as it is now. And i played with my cars or something and completely forgot about the little packet of money hidden in the pine tree. For days, weeks. Through rain and wind until Mom discovered a single weathered bill in the front yard! Imagine her luck! She would add it to her already large collection of ... uh oh!
The murderous pressure of 3rd grade acceptance was nothing compared to the Spanish Inquisition of an irate mother. What had i done? Where was the rest of the money? Why would i do such a thing? I was deep in dog-dirt on this one because the packet had fallen apart and there was only a few tattered bills at the base of the tree. Double-uh-oh.
For whatever reason it was a rare treat night of getting to go to McDonalds, and i had blown it. I deserved a whipping, but mom couldn't get over her loss long enough to mete out a full punishment. So on the way to Mcdonalds, i would huddle in the back of the car behind the driver's side and fall victim to the angry arm of frustration and anger every time Mom thought about her loss. She didn't really slap me or hit me so much as just grab at me in a sort of futile rage. And not only would i have deserved a good whalloping, but i believe it was a better lesson to see how much it upset my mother and caused her to cry. Stealing wasn't wrong because it gave something to you that wasn't yours, it was wrong because it hurt people when they lost those things.
This month my mom wrote me about the incident from her point of view and it made me feel proud that i learned the lesson and had such a wonderful mother:
Zen,
My last few years in high school were during the Korean War. My boyfriend, Ron (who would become my dad - zen), was off in the service as were most of his High School friends. I loved to write letters to the “boys” and would come home each school day at lunchtime and delight in receiving a letter – be it from my boyfriend or one of he other guys who would write to me. Some were Marines fighting on the lines directly in Korea, some were in the Navy and some were in the Pacific, others were Airmen.
Occasionally one GI would send me a dollar bill from a foreign country that I had never heard of before. I collected these bills in a small envelope and when I didn’t receive a letter, I would check out the bills on which had printed their names. They had no monetary value to me. They were just memories. Some of the GI’s were Ron’s friends, some were just friends of friends who had no one to write to them. I was their connection back in the “States”.
After Christmas of 1953, Ron and I got married and immediately after the wedding we left for Kansas where he was attending Wichita University. Ron had a small coupe so my personal possessions were limited to one suitcase of clothes, my sewing machine, a box of recipe cards, a cookbook and a small white envelope of foreign dollar bills.
When you took the envelope for “Show and Tell” it was not the contents that got lost, it was a part of my past. Granted, it was well time for me to let go of the past but sometimes that is hard to do. I regret hitting you all the way to McDonalds. Sometimes we place our feelings and anger over what really matters to us. My loss was pale in comparison to the wonderful, caring son I had and probably did not appreciate at that time. You have grown into a very special man and words can’t explain how proud I am of you.
AND THAT IS THE REST OF THE STORY!
Love,
Mom
zen, the designated trip guide
Feb 28, 2008
Over at the Mountain Xpress forums, this thread is an interesting discussion of whether or not someone should take hallucinogenic mushrooms. Having been a "good trip guide" or "designated reality driver" for many people taking drugs in the past (and specializing in first-timers) i have learned techniques to prevent a person's hallucinatory experience from going awry which could prevent whatever lesson are possible from being mind-expanding. At the very least, my job has been to prevent anything bad happening to the person tripping, real, virtual or imagined. And maybe sometime i'll outline the main points, but for now i'd like to tell the story my first time as an unwilling drug guide. It was for my father.
it was 1971 and i was around 17 and still living at home, hanging on the streetcorner after dark with my buds when my Mom called me in. "Ruh roh," i thought, "what am i in trouble for now?" I came into the house and Mom told me at the top of the stairs that Dad had a question to ask me. WIth a worrisome look on her face she promptly left me with Dad in the living room.
My Dad, a nearly 40 year old former fringe beatnik was pacing the floor in an agitated state that i hadn't seen him in before. In fact his pacing was pretty self absorbed and i wasn't sure he knew i was in the room. I cleared my throat and he looked up, acknowledged me with a nod and turned to pace some more. My dad and i had a pretty glib relationship in which we could discuss most things theoretically, but i was still his kid and not beyond the discipline of "being grounded" if i did something that we both knew was wrong. However, i couldn't think of anything - at least recently - that i'd done, so i sat down and waited for the lecture. Twice he approached me, stopped and drew in his breath, and ended by shaking his head in thought and continuing to pace. Finally, he sat down on the other end of the long Scandanavian-style couch which left space for at least 2 people between us and began.
"Is it possible," he said in measured words "to 'bad trip' off of pot?"
At first i was floored. This was about him and not me? Was this a hypothetical question to trick me? Had he smoked something he thought was pot (he was a heavy cigarette smoker)? I couldn't help a Mona Lisa expression on my face. "Dad, have you smoked some marijuana?" I had to suppress the timbre of my voice wanting to sound the way a parent talks to a child who knocked over a glass vase and broke it.
He then proceeded to delineate his evening thus far, not just choosing his words carefully, but describing in an uncharacteristically detailed manner how he had rolled up two "marijuana cigarettes" down in his work den, began smoking them and timed the finish of both of them to coincide with the start of his favorite television show at the time, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. He had done this because pot, he had heard, was supposed to increase the hilarity and accentuate his enjoyment of things he normally liked.
At this point Mom swept past the living room towards the kitchen to exclaim, in passing, that Dad had laughed at all the wrong parts and seemed to take the show much too seriously at other times. I don't believe she was listening in the halls deliberately or anything, just not real comfortable with Dad's mixed behavior.
"Where did you get the pot?" I asked, trying not to sound accusatory. Dad looked at me and didn't answer, probably judging on what level to answer me. As a parent (It's none of your business, son). As a concerned friend (From a guy behind the Bus Station, dude). As an authority figure (I grew it myself, officer). I continued. "I only want to make sure it is real pot and not laced with something." In the late 1960s, a US government sponsored program had an herbicide paraquat sprayed on marijuana fields in South America which caused a scare about whether people were actually smoking paraquat-laced pot and doing even more damage to themselves than just regular pot.
"Gary, a dealer i know who works for the government." He responded. "I trust him that it's good and untainted pot." "Ok, that's good." I told him. "Real pot shouldn't give you a bad trip, but you also need to learn a little bit about how to handle it."
I myself had tried pot years earlier only after reading Aldous Huxley and writers in "Le Club des Hashishins" which romanticized drug use to some degree, but that's another story for another time. "What makes you feel you're having a 'bad trip'?" Dad brightened. I was approaching this as he would, from a scientific, almost medical standpoint. He stopped for a moment and i could tell turned within to sense what it was he felt was wrong at the moment.
"I think my left leg is dying." he pronounced. I guess i gave him a bit of an askance look because he looked back at me sheepishly. "Well, i'm not sure i can't feel my legs." I said, "You were using them pretty well to pace a minute ago." And we laughed. And i knew he was going to be alright. I also knew what i had to do was get his mind off of the "fact" that he smoked pot and needed to evaluate every sensation in a left-brained sort of way. He needed to relax and enjoy rather than evaluate, but he was sort-of stuck in a mindset of this-is-going-on-this-very-moment-and-i-need-to-understand-it. So i moved closer to him and opened a magazine on the table and started a sort of question/answer game with him about what he thought about each photograph. His answers were pretty normal for the most part and i could see him begin to relax into having a mission pretty quickly.
On one of the photos the printing was malformed and it produced a pretty trippy version of a pirate ship that looked kinda like one of those 3D images that you have to unfocus your eyes to see. I pointed, "What do you think about this?" i almost smirked thinking he'd say "Wow, man, that's weird!" but he looked at it only casually and said, "Some sort of printing error i suppose, but look at THIS!" He pointed to an ad for a brand new corvette and threw back his head and laughed heartily. A belly laugh. "Now that's weird!" he said, pretty much leaving me to wonder what he thought was weird about it. A few more minutes and i could tell he was starting to get bored with the analysis game and so i said "Hey! Why don't we go down to the rec room and play some Toss-Across?"
Toss Across was a Mattel game which players scored X's or O's by tossing a small bean bag at the plastic board and depending how the bean bag hit the surface either an X or an O would result. Dad liked the mindless skill of the game and so i bounded downstairs after him. Opponents stood opposite each other about 10 to 12 feet and would take turns tossing bean bags at the board. Dad tossed first and the bean bag just flopped on the corner of the board scoring nothing. Then he went and got his bean bag. I tossed my bean bag and managed to get an O but not in the critical middle. Dad went up and got my bean bag. He tossed again and then i did and each time he would retrieve the tossed bean bag until he had all 6 of the bean bags in his hot little mitts, nudging his chin towards me telling me it was my turn to go. But i didn't have any to toss and he forgot about it anyway because he began dropping bean bags on the ground and just laughing a high-pitched cackle as each one dropped. He kept dropping them and laughing. I guess he even forgot i was there so i had to interrupt him to ask him what the story was.
"Oh!" he looked up, surprised there was another human in the room. He got a bit serious for a moment and said, "You know how when you drop something it has a certain reaction? Like for instance a plate strikes the hard floor and splatters into a million shards. " he paused to let me imagine it as vividly as i'm sure he was imagining it. "Or a rubber ball takes that stored energy, compresses it and then like a coiled spring leaps back up into the air. You know?"
"Yes, i see that." Dad and i are both visual processors. Dad got a kid-like grin on his face. But a bean bag, " he said and dropped one of them from his hand to the ground, "a bean bag is unwilling to do ANYTHING!" and pealed laughter filled up the rec room with his huge infectious mirth. I laughed too. Each time he would drop another bean bag he would roar with laughter as if the bean bag were the laziest object in the universe. And it was.
And slowly as several hours unfolded father and son enjoyed Dad's 'bad trip' filled with personal and philosophical revelations until he got the munchies and several bowls of "tongue-lickin' crackers" Which is a whole other blog entry, but this was my first introduction to taking someone down the drug path to meet themselves on the other side.
Dad never smoked again to my knowledge, however. The first experience of confusion and unpleasant body sensations kinda took the thrill out of the experience. The bag of pot he got from Gary which he kept in the back of his filing cabinet, seemed to be affected by a mysteriously slow evaporation where about a bud a week would be gone until it was only stems and some flakes. It was dank and powerful. And tasted good!
it was 1971 and i was around 17 and still living at home, hanging on the streetcorner after dark with my buds when my Mom called me in. "Ruh roh," i thought, "what am i in trouble for now?" I came into the house and Mom told me at the top of the stairs that Dad had a question to ask me. WIth a worrisome look on her face she promptly left me with Dad in the living room.
My Dad, a nearly 40 year old former fringe beatnik was pacing the floor in an agitated state that i hadn't seen him in before. In fact his pacing was pretty self absorbed and i wasn't sure he knew i was in the room. I cleared my throat and he looked up, acknowledged me with a nod and turned to pace some more. My dad and i had a pretty glib relationship in which we could discuss most things theoretically, but i was still his kid and not beyond the discipline of "being grounded" if i did something that we both knew was wrong. However, i couldn't think of anything - at least recently - that i'd done, so i sat down and waited for the lecture. Twice he approached me, stopped and drew in his breath, and ended by shaking his head in thought and continuing to pace. Finally, he sat down on the other end of the long Scandanavian-style couch which left space for at least 2 people between us and began.
"Is it possible," he said in measured words "to 'bad trip' off of pot?"
At first i was floored. This was about him and not me? Was this a hypothetical question to trick me? Had he smoked something he thought was pot (he was a heavy cigarette smoker)? I couldn't help a Mona Lisa expression on my face. "Dad, have you smoked some marijuana?" I had to suppress the timbre of my voice wanting to sound the way a parent talks to a child who knocked over a glass vase and broke it.
He then proceeded to delineate his evening thus far, not just choosing his words carefully, but describing in an uncharacteristically detailed manner how he had rolled up two "marijuana cigarettes" down in his work den, began smoking them and timed the finish of both of them to coincide with the start of his favorite television show at the time, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. He had done this because pot, he had heard, was supposed to increase the hilarity and accentuate his enjoyment of things he normally liked.
At this point Mom swept past the living room towards the kitchen to exclaim, in passing, that Dad had laughed at all the wrong parts and seemed to take the show much too seriously at other times. I don't believe she was listening in the halls deliberately or anything, just not real comfortable with Dad's mixed behavior.
"Where did you get the pot?" I asked, trying not to sound accusatory. Dad looked at me and didn't answer, probably judging on what level to answer me. As a parent (It's none of your business, son). As a concerned friend (From a guy behind the Bus Station, dude). As an authority figure (I grew it myself, officer). I continued. "I only want to make sure it is real pot and not laced with something." In the late 1960s, a US government sponsored program had an herbicide paraquat sprayed on marijuana fields in South America which caused a scare about whether people were actually smoking paraquat-laced pot and doing even more damage to themselves than just regular pot.
"Gary, a dealer i know who works for the government." He responded. "I trust him that it's good and untainted pot." "Ok, that's good." I told him. "Real pot shouldn't give you a bad trip, but you also need to learn a little bit about how to handle it."
I myself had tried pot years earlier only after reading Aldous Huxley and writers in "Le Club des Hashishins" which romanticized drug use to some degree, but that's another story for another time. "What makes you feel you're having a 'bad trip'?" Dad brightened. I was approaching this as he would, from a scientific, almost medical standpoint. He stopped for a moment and i could tell turned within to sense what it was he felt was wrong at the moment.
"I think my left leg is dying." he pronounced. I guess i gave him a bit of an askance look because he looked back at me sheepishly. "Well, i'm not sure i can't feel my legs." I said, "You were using them pretty well to pace a minute ago." And we laughed. And i knew he was going to be alright. I also knew what i had to do was get his mind off of the "fact" that he smoked pot and needed to evaluate every sensation in a left-brained sort of way. He needed to relax and enjoy rather than evaluate, but he was sort-of stuck in a mindset of this-is-going-on-this-very-moment-and-i-need-to-understand-it. So i moved closer to him and opened a magazine on the table and started a sort of question/answer game with him about what he thought about each photograph. His answers were pretty normal for the most part and i could see him begin to relax into having a mission pretty quickly.
On one of the photos the printing was malformed and it produced a pretty trippy version of a pirate ship that looked kinda like one of those 3D images that you have to unfocus your eyes to see. I pointed, "What do you think about this?" i almost smirked thinking he'd say "Wow, man, that's weird!" but he looked at it only casually and said, "Some sort of printing error i suppose, but look at THIS!" He pointed to an ad for a brand new corvette and threw back his head and laughed heartily. A belly laugh. "Now that's weird!" he said, pretty much leaving me to wonder what he thought was weird about it. A few more minutes and i could tell he was starting to get bored with the analysis game and so i said "Hey! Why don't we go down to the rec room and play some Toss-Across?"
Toss Across was a Mattel game which players scored X's or O's by tossing a small bean bag at the plastic board and depending how the bean bag hit the surface either an X or an O would result. Dad liked the mindless skill of the game and so i bounded downstairs after him. Opponents stood opposite each other about 10 to 12 feet and would take turns tossing bean bags at the board. Dad tossed first and the bean bag just flopped on the corner of the board scoring nothing. Then he went and got his bean bag. I tossed my bean bag and managed to get an O but not in the critical middle. Dad went up and got my bean bag. He tossed again and then i did and each time he would retrieve the tossed bean bag until he had all 6 of the bean bags in his hot little mitts, nudging his chin towards me telling me it was my turn to go. But i didn't have any to toss and he forgot about it anyway because he began dropping bean bags on the ground and just laughing a high-pitched cackle as each one dropped. He kept dropping them and laughing. I guess he even forgot i was there so i had to interrupt him to ask him what the story was.
"Oh!" he looked up, surprised there was another human in the room. He got a bit serious for a moment and said, "You know how when you drop something it has a certain reaction? Like for instance a plate strikes the hard floor and splatters into a million shards. " he paused to let me imagine it as vividly as i'm sure he was imagining it. "Or a rubber ball takes that stored energy, compresses it and then like a coiled spring leaps back up into the air. You know?"
"Yes, i see that." Dad and i are both visual processors. Dad got a kid-like grin on his face. But a bean bag, " he said and dropped one of them from his hand to the ground, "a bean bag is unwilling to do ANYTHING!" and pealed laughter filled up the rec room with his huge infectious mirth. I laughed too. Each time he would drop another bean bag he would roar with laughter as if the bean bag were the laziest object in the universe. And it was.
And slowly as several hours unfolded father and son enjoyed Dad's 'bad trip' filled with personal and philosophical revelations until he got the munchies and several bowls of "tongue-lickin' crackers" Which is a whole other blog entry, but this was my first introduction to taking someone down the drug path to meet themselves on the other side.
Dad never smoked again to my knowledge, however. The first experience of confusion and unpleasant body sensations kinda took the thrill out of the experience. The bag of pot he got from Gary which he kept in the back of his filing cabinet, seemed to be affected by a mysteriously slow evaporation where about a bud a week would be gone until it was only stems and some flakes. It was dank and powerful. And tasted good!
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