Daddy's Boy

My mother died when I was seventeen. Thank God!

JoAnne died from a heart attack, which was no surprise to me. She was a heavy smoker, the stench of her cigarettes filling our house and glomming on to our clothes, the furniture and everything else it touched. In the end, she certainly paid the price for her obsequiousness to her vice.

Mother had been in some sort of physical distress for several days and we all knew it, even though she never said a thing. JoAnne simply prayed to God for strength and healing. She loathed doctors and refused to go see one. Stupid whore. God gives us doctors as a source of strength and healing!

She fancied herself a good mom, despite the overwhelming evidence that she was anything but. I knew this because the neighbor ladies made it very clear. JoAnne was just one of the gossip gaggle; five women in my neighborhood all roughly the same age, who frequently talked and smoked and pointed hypocritical fingers at anyone and everyone. And these lovely ladies were all glad to tell me what a wonderful mother JoAnne was. I would laugh out loud at that, because it beats crying.

JoAnne was a petite woman with dishwater blonde hair and the darkest eyes you can imagine. Not dark brown, but black. Black to the point of having no clearly defined pupils. Black to the point of not even seeming to reflect light even under a bright sun. I think they reflected only her soul. Or perhaps her lack of one.

It pains me to admit that my brother and I were JoAnne’s offspring. Just over a year apart, Micky and I both looked like Joanne. I favored her a bit more than he, much to my chagrin. I never wanted to admit that she and I were related. Thank God my eyes were brown!

So it’s fair and accurate to say that when JoAnne died I wasn't distraught. I would never forget her, but I also would never miss her. Let me tell you why: Pull up a chair - this isn't a short tale, if you have the stomach to make it all the way through.

JoAnne considered herself a pious woman who liked to read her Bible and could quote from it with ease. Every night she sat down with the Good book. Said it was “the guiding force in her life.” If this was true, then she chose a path that didn’t lead her to the God that I came to know and love in my life! It looked to me like she used the Bible less as a guide, and more as a handy reference for holy-sounding excuses. Excuses to justify doing what she was planning to do all along. “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” she’d declare before laying into my brother. Because “good” mothers do this!

So, as with many a “fine, upstanding Christian,” religion was her weapon of choice. Of course, this meant every Sunday was a church day. I sat through a lot of sermons that were just so much droning to a child: ’blah blah blah blah”. But as I grew older some of the lessons started making sense to me and I was comforted by the fact that I was a child of God.

I never got the same comfort from being a child of my mother. And it was never clear to me that she heard anything the pastor said.

I was determined not to be the religious hypocrite that JoAnne was. After her death I wasn't a devout church-goer. I took matters into my own hands. I read the Bible, and learned many of its lessons. More importantly, I understood what I was reading and learning. And it became clear to me that God wanted me to know His word, to give myself to Him and in turn He would help me with my earthly needs. And for most of my life I tried to live these lessons. After all, I didn’t want to be like JoAnne when I had my own family.

All of this involved a lot of prayer on my part, although I like to think of it more as chats. God and I chatted often. I was always good at talking, but eventually I became adept at listening. As a result, I was amazed and pleased with what I heard. Because what I heard was that together, He and I would accomplish much. “My thoughts are your thoughts” Isaiah taught us. It dawned on me, that if His thoughts are my thoughts, then MY thoughts are HIS thoughts. Seemed that maybe we’d reached an understanding.

Clearly I was being heard by my Father.

In my 17 years with her I have no recollection of JoAnne as my mom. Mom implies someone who loved her children and worked to nurture them and raise them in a fair and loving fashion. There was nothing about my childhood that left me feeling loved or nurtured. She spent so much time and energy simply ignoring me. She was just my mother, the woman who carried me to term and brought me into this world. Any fertile fool can be a mother.

I suspect her own upbringing was none too pleasant, but she never talked about it. She never talked about any family of any kind. But too often our parenting skills are a reflection of our own upbringing. For JoAnne and more importantly for me, the family I never knew was the family best forgotten.

My first memory of her comes when I was about three. My older brother was throwing a fit. Over what I don’t know. Small kids throw fits. JoAnne yelled at Micky to quit and slapped him smartly across his left cheek. Micky stopped his tantrum and looked at her with wide-eyed shock. A thin trickle of blood seeped from his mouth and down his chin, though he didn’t seem to notice. Amazingly, he didn’t cry. I wasn’t old enough then to understand what I had just seen, but reflecting years later I am impressed. Micky was barely a year older than me, and that slap would have stunned a grown man. JoAnne seemed pleased by the whole thing as she walked away.

To this day it still shocks me that she had two kids, as I can’t imagine the man who would have been foolish enough to sleep with her. She seemed so cold and isolated from nearly everything and everyone in our world. And sexual congress outside of wedlock was a sin! Yet she had boyfriends, although she only rarely brought them home. Except for Jay. He was clearly her favorite. More about him later.

Whatever she did with her other men, she did during the day, while my brother and I were at school. I do not recall ever having a sitter at our house so she could go out at night. As a boy watching all of this, I never figured it out.

JoAnne wasn't an alcoholic. When you view the abuse that was so easily doled out to me and my brother, you would almost hope that she wasn’t sober. That might explain at least some of what we endured. But I never saw her drink anything stronger than her favorite, RC Cola. Our house was frequently littered with empty soda cans, most of which doubled as ashtrays. Never any beer cans nor any bottles for hard liquor. Never any signs of drugs. That wouldn’t have been Christian, after all.

Abusive as she was, she never hit me, not once that I can recollect. Micky was her target of choice and she hit him a lot. So much so it seemed he flinched every time he walked past her. He frequently bore the marks of her handiwork: red skin on his cheeks from being slapped, bruises, nearly always under his shirt, and an occasional lump or welt that needed ice. Though none was ever given. What could a young boy have done to earn JoAnne’s wrath? His only real crime seemed to be that he was born. This was a crime we shared.

JoAnne’s chief weapon for attacking me was indifference. She usually paid me no never-mind and I often felt that she was looking through me, with her hollow dead man’s stare. No matter what transpired in the course of my day she never asked how things had been. I would tell her anyway, hoping to spark some sort of exchange with her, to see that she cared about something in my life. But she never engaged in these conversations and seemed to hear nothing. It left me feeling as if we were separated by a pane of glass and only I could see through it. I often longed to step through that window, like Alice going through the looking glass. But as I grew older, I became thankful for that protective pane, because I had suspicions about what lay on the other side. I don’t think it was very pretty over there.

Getting a good grade, bringing home a great report card, these successes drew the same lack of response that misbehavior drew. The biggest compliment I ever got from her was one that wasn’t even my own; I had to share it with Micky. At the end of the school grading period once upon a time, we both brought home what I think would have been wonderful report cards in most homes. Joanne looked at our cards and simply remarked, “I am glad to see you boys doing so well.” Good parenting in action!

This level of praise was so rare that I nearly wet myself with excitement. Though she was never again this effusive, I believe that this one episode spurred me to study hard the rest of my life.

The only good thing about being ignored as I grew up was it meant I wasn’t getting knocked about like my brother. As I got older, I would find myself getting upset, sometimes even mad, over minor issues in my life. With no adult to turn to for guidance, these events would often cause my temper to escalate to a point of being out of control. My anger was always toward JoAnne: Why aren’t you there for me? Give some help. Throw me a lifeline. Spank my bottom until it hurts. Pain is a big step up from nothing. It took a long time before I learned to redirect my anger elsewhere. But when I did, I was good at it.

Oddly, in spite of her worst efforts, I didn't hate my mother. Make no mistake, I did NOT love my mother, I didn’t even like her. But I should think her attempts to be a mom were heartfelt and sincere, no matter how badly executed. So I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps this was wishful thinking on my part, but it doesn’t matter. She was never “mom” and never will be.

At least she died an early death.