Like Mother, Daughter

Apples don’t fall far from their trees.



I am the daughter of a single mother and the single mother of two daughters. My mother wanted no boys and I wanted no boys. Don’t get mad, boys are wonderful, but I feel I am a girl mom. If I had had a boy, I’da loved him, but…..well, I didn’t, so it worked out. Actually, I’ve been thinking about it lately and with the right hubs, I might have wanted a boy. Perhaps my feminine intuition suspected I wasn’t destined to be a wife, and knew girls would be easier for a single mom.


Dot always said, if I had been a boy she would’ve left me at the hospital. She also would have named me “Jerry Wayne”. I would be a good ol’ redneck boy, I reckon, probably would have wanted to be a cotton farmer like Unca Honey. Of course, I wouldn’t call him that, it’d be Uncle Bill, cos that’s manlier and stuff.


My daughters look a lot like me, I think, I can see it in old photographs. I never thought I favored my mother, but I do, after all.


“The Look” comes from her:




Sometimes it’s attitude:




Sometimes it’s less than ladylike:




Once we were 3rd graders

Birth

It was 27 years ago, today.

I had been admitted in to the hospital in a small central Arizona town. In labor. A southern girl, 1600 miles away from her mommy. Kin to no one. My mother-in-law, Estella, was there, but she had never actually given birth, (X1 was adopted at age 3 months) so she could not offer the experienced comfort of a woman who had experienced the miracle I was about to achieve. She did as best she could, though. Also there was the girl who passed for my bestie in my Arizona adventure, who had had three children, in rapid succession; she was a little more comforting. A belle needs her mother and aunt at these times. Know who wasn’t there? Flippin’ X1, that’s who.

I had to drag X1, kicking and screaming to every childbirth class we attended. He used this labor time to hang out with buddies of his that I didn’t get along with, and therefore had missed out of hanging with the year that he had to kowtow to a pregnant belle. It’s a good thing, in retrospect. He would’ve gotten on my nerves and I would have strangled him with the IV cord. I would not have done time, however. The readers who have met him can tell you it would have been justifiable homicide. Not that X1 is a bad guy, he’s just…well….that’s a story for another time.

Pam. That was her name. The nastiest, evil temperedest nurse I have ever come across in my entire lifetime, and she’s the day shift nurse. Fellow belle’s, the medical professionals I encountered out west, do not have the empathy we belles have grown up around. My Dr Cuz is a doctor out West, now, an eye doctor. I’ve not been examined by her, but I am sure she is beloved by her patients, all sweetness and gentle concern. My OB out there looked like Merlin Olsen and had the bedside manner of that Scrubs doctor guy that is so abrasive. I’ll admit, I was a bit over dramatic, when first admitted. I was breathing deeply and moaning, as you do. Pam said, and these are her first words to me, “you need to cut that out, Honey, you have a long way to go.” HEEFAH, if Ah wadn’t standin’ here pregnant, I’d whoop yore ASS!!!!!!! But she was right, I wasn’t at that point, I just thought that went along with it. See? A girl needs her mother at a time like this. Likely Dot would have told me to cut it out, too, but that’s the difference between the Mom and an OB nurse with a grapefruit apparently lodged in her ass.

The labor was long and not very productive. Pam came back for day shift and said, “My God, Vi, are you STILL in labor?” No, Bitch, I just love walkin’ these bright sterile hallways pushing a squeaky rv cart around, listening to stupid X1 prattle on about crap I did not care about. Now he shows up, and had not the decency to shut up about WWII battles and navy experiences. Southern boys know better. A Southern boy shuts up and lets you rant, while pushing the IV cart for you.

The hospital was tiny in 1983, one me and one other girl occupied the maternity ward, which doubled as the geriatric ward. I can’t complain about anything else, and it was sort of nice to have the place to myself, the nurses paid a lot of attention to you. The other nurses were pleasant. Isn’t it funny? I can remember everything about Pam, it pissed me off just to look at her. The nice nurses just all blur together, I can’t remember one specific thing about anyone else. The old saying about a squeaky wheel is true.

Neither X1 nor Estella had the common decency to phone Dot, who sat on pins and needles back in Lafayette, and let her know what was going on. This was long before cell phones for everyone, and she couldn’t even get in touch with me by calling the hospital as I was in a labor room with no phone. The desk staff never came back and said your mom called. That is something that would NEVER happen down south. That would be a jaw-smacking offense.

They put me on pitocin, and everything after that is a blur, until the delivery room. X1 was at least supportive there. The nurse tried to position the mirror so I could see but I said to never mind. When I had to count push to the count of 10, I would see a treasure chest under water, slowly opening and closing. I’ve always said that’s cos Chris was a treasure.

If I'm Middle Aged, Do I Get to Live to 100?

One more month of 49 and then……(sigh) I’ll be 50.


I don’t know why I am stuck on this. It’s a landmark, a half century. I think I am bothered that I don’t have anything to show for it.


Let me share with you some things that may come in handy in your lifetime.

Don’t put food in the refrigerator with a metal eating or cooking utensil in it. I do not know why, my Mother said don’t do it, so I don’t do it.


Barbie’s full name is Barbara Millicent Rogers.


To say someone is “cussin’ up a blue streak”, means that they are spewing profanities so fast that they are putting a jet stream into the atmosphere.


If you should burn, cut yourself or have lice, use tea tree oil.


No other crayon besides Crayola has any serious value as a crayon. We Southerners calls ‘em “colors”.


If you hear a noise that sounds like gunshots, look at the clock and see what time it is. The police will need to know later. I once saw a tv crime show where the murdered person pulled the plug from the clock out of the wall right before they died, therefore establishing the time of death for the detectives. Well, when is the last time anyone used an electric analog clock? It’s asking a lot of a dying person to get the clock off the wall, pull the battery out, then expire. They should use that time to dial 911.


For gosh sakes, take care of your teeth, by gum. Dentures are not the dream answer you suppose them to be.


Dogs have owners, cats have staff. It’s true. Any cat lover will attest to this. Without shame.


Three things you never discuss with a mental patient: religion, politics or sex. Actually, that’s a good outline to follow with most people you meet.



Now, a few things I should like to see happen while I’m still rattling around.


Let gay people have their happiness. Legalize gay marriage. You’re lucky to find love, what’s the difference if it with one’s own gender? I’ve heard “It’s against the Bible!” The biggest rules are outlined and carved in stone. It’s called the Ten Commandments. People break those every day. Self avowed Christians take the Lord’s Name in vain, without the bat of an eye. Not all, but some. I do. I get angry, cuss a blue streak and “GD” pops out. I always whisper, “sorry, God,” in case he heard. If we can break those commandments willy nilly on a daily basis, why are we holding so tightly onto that one ideal? I left the church I was baptized in due to their constant badgering of gays, (among other overwhelming theologies). I really miss the music; it is Southern Gospel at its finest. N E WAY…..I think you should have the right to marry who you love, and you have no control who you fall in love with. This often leads to the breaking of commandment #7. Nobody’s perfect, we are all sinners, and we are forgiven. Everyone.


Bring the troops home. It’s been almost ten years. Let’s pick up our toys and go home. Too many young Americans dying.


Legalize Marijuana. Criminalize bullying. Eradicate intolerance. Abolish racism. Stop cancer.


Bring Shoney’s back to the Desoto County area. Slow down with the technological advances, we have enough gadgetry. If you loved the movie, the book is worth reading. Be excellent to one another. And…..Party On Dudes.

Ann and Dot PI

And, Speaking of Sneaky

I honed by deductive reasoning skills at an early age, just by being a little shadow in the lives of Dot and Evil Ann.

Dot and Evil Ann’s hubbies, Hardy and Jeff, were truck drivers. They were partners on long hauls between Lafayette La, and California. I have no idea what Californians would need from Louisiana, but they brought back fresh flowers, fruit, and candy shipments. They worked for the Durell Franks trucking firm, and I have never been able to find a track of this company ever existing, even when I moved back there in 1974. They were on the road five days and home three. That’s some hard driving back in them days, California and back to Louisiana in 5 days. One slept while the other drove.

So, that is how the Terrible Twosome met. They were road widows five days at a stretch. Just a couple of housewives, both aged 27. Dot had me, and Evil Ann had three boys, but they were not in the picture at this point, and that is a story for another time. So here are two young women, in the mid 60’s, with a five year old that was quiet and compliant. 3 channels on TV. A rotary dial phone and phone numbers that began with letters. That was as far as their gadgets went in those days.

When they first got together, they sat up late into the night, EA drinking coffee and Dot and I drinking Coca-Cola (We are life long Coke people!) EA and Jeff moved a lot, but always managed to live in “duplex” apartments, that were really just a few rooms converted into a one bedroom living space for singles, or young married, in grand homes with spacious porches and weathered rocking chairs. EA’s hobby was those oil paint by number kits, scenes of Japan. She had lived in Japan in her other life, and she had a budda she had gotten there, that always rode on the front seat next to her during her many moves. I am sure this is where my love for fat budda statues comes from. In one of these homes, the kitchen had a long counter between the kitchenette and little dining nook. We would all three sit at that counter on stools, Dot and I on one side, EA on the other. They chain smoked Viceroys and told each other their life stories, while KXKW radio crooned out country western music in the back ground. I will always associate Patsy Cline’s standards, the smell of lighter fluid, (EA cleaned her paint brushes with it) and green stamp catalogs with this room, and that time. EA would work on her painting, I would pour over the stamp catalog, and they would talk.

Dot and Hardy and I lived in a little one bedroom apartment, in the back of an office of some sort, it was somewhere around Simcoe or maybe Surrey, in Lafayette, that is all I can remember. The owners of the business had lived there, starting out, then built a big home next door and rented their old living quarters out. You had to be quiet in the day time, so as not to disturb the “office”. I remember there was a huge yard to the side where there were a couple of rental trailers.

Dot and EA made buddies with the young couples in the trailers, so I had kids to play with finally. It seems one of the trailer’s residents sister came to stay with them to escape an abusive relationship. She was very mod, (that’s a 60’s word, for my younger readers) and the owners son fell head over heals in love with her. She wanted nothing to do with men, she had had quite enough of them for awhile. He was the obsessive type.

Now, there’s the back story, here’s the scene: It’s late one evening, the big double windows in my mother’s bedroom are open and we are sitting there in the dark, watching the owners’ son circle the trailer where the mod girl is home alone, trying to peek into the windows. We knew it was Macky, as he was a large boy and kind of lumbered. It was frightening and a little exciting too. It’s like Rear Window. I’m Thelma Ritter. (That’s a movie, younger readers, watch it, it’s very good) After that, when we were in that room at night and situations necessitated the light being on, it was a lamp, right in front of the windows, the shade down. That way anyone watching cannot tell what is going on by watching shadows. Then you take care of your business quickly, outen the light and raise the shade, cos it is Louisiana and it is summer, and only ritzy people had air in 1966. EA and Dot pieced the whole story together, Mod Girl had complained of scary noises at night. EA and Dot were on a stake out, and they did not call the cops on the perp. They did worse, they told his mother.

I'll take Olivia Walton for $200, Alex

Suppose you could pick your parents.

Let’s pretend, for a minute, that reincarnation is the one truth. You’ve gone though life 1. You learned a few things. This time you get to put an order in for parents. Once you are sent back into a womb, you lose all memory of that choice and you live the hand you are dealt.

So, who would you pick? Would you want parents as close to the parents you had to begin with, or did you opt for total opposites on the menu of characteristics you filled out before the trip back to a womb.

Previously in the blog I have shared some Mommie Dearest type memories of Dot, but I am feeling thankful by comparison these days, so I wanted to share a pleasant memory. I am wracking my brain and cannot some up with anything specific, but I think I’m being a little guarded. So many pleasant things intermingle with wincing memories. But, she did have wonderful qualities, it’s just that, oh well, this only my opinion, but she was a beautiful young woman, but was rather plain as she neared 30 and I think she was always bitter about that.

Dot was beautiful, but she was also a rebel. Not rebellious in a functional ways, but with an “I’ll do what I damn well please” outlook on life. She would not be told what to do, by gum. She was backed up by an adoring Paternal Grandmother, an indifferent mother and “Daddy”.

Her Dad died before I was born, but I heard about him all my life. It’s funny that the older she got, the more “Daddy” came up. She always said she was scared of him, but I also think she really loved him, and wanted his approval. About this, I am of course, I am speculating as I have no paternal memories, whatever. Step paternal, Uncle like a Father, had those, but no contact with Vi’s dad, as discussed in an earlier blog.

Dot quoted him daily. He had been a cook in two branches of Service and he was the highest authority on all things culinary my entire life until 2001. He was serious, forbidding and judgmental. He was an alcoholic though, and that was also an oft discussed visualization Dot passed down to me. In his defense I want to add that no one else I have ever heard of had ever seen him the way she did. Except for the alcoholic part, sadly, everyone agrees about that.

With her father, and if you ask me, her conscious gone, Dot went a little wild. She was young, beautiful and in Memphis Tennessee in 1957, a career girl from Attalla County Mississippi employed as a long distance operator for Southern Bell. Her Aunt Meriwether lived in Memphis, and of course, fresh off the farm, Dot went there and found herself attracted to her aunt’s newly begotten step-son. Despite being “cousins” and the scandalous fact that Kenny was newly divorced, they became an item. Kenny asked Dot to marry him, and she hadn’t given a reply.

She mentioned it off handedly to Aunt Meriwether , the next morning at breakfast.

“Oh, no you’re not,” Aunt Meriwether scolded. “You’ll ruin your life.”

And, because she was told not to, she did, every step of the way knowing she did not love this man and that the marriage was doomed for failure.

I guess I had a Bohemian upbringing at the hands of Dot. I guess that I have somewhat raised my kids that way too. I like the kitschy, I don’t really do “sets”, it’s more, pieces I like for one reason or another. Dot loved “sets” though, they were very important to her. Back to the Bohemian……I spent my teen years in Lafayette La, and my mother liked to hit the bars, that was her thing. My mother taught me how to drink. She taught me to appreciate a good looking butt on a man. She taught me how to be self sufficient and support myself as a single woman. One trait she and I share is that we have two failed marriages. She died before I had been single barely 6 months from marriage 2. She didn’t see me buy a house and wrangle a fast paced life. I think she would be proud, but I also know she’d be critical. Heck, the way she haunts us, I guess she knows all about it.

I think I’d like to come back pretty much into the same situation I was raised in. I really had two mothers, sisters. Isn’t it funny how you know so much about your mother’s sister (in my case) and absolutely nothing about your father’s family except what you were told by your mom. My father had a brother who was a famous crime fighter in Memphis. I heard about him on the news and read about him in the paper, but never got to meet him.

Which brings me to Dads, I’d get to pick that too, on my next life value meal menu. I know I’d pick my UncaHoney , with all his horns filed down. The man he was before he broke his back. I moved away to Louisiana soon after that happened and I really did not see him again until ’86 and this was not the same man. So, I’d like to take UncaHoney ages 23-37, and mix in Indiana Jones, only because I want a dad as bohemian as mom. UncaHoney could out McGuyver McGyver.
James Garner and Doris Day should play them in the movie. Well, if the movie was made in 1960s, we could use them, but I guess Harrison Ford and Meryl Streep. But no, that’s only cool for a 80s movie. How about…..Johnny Depp and Lois Griffin?

Picnic

Hum Moonglow

June 1971
Alligator Ms

Four of the Eleven Swinford (Names have been changed to protect the innocent) Children's Birthdays are in June. They are all grown with children of their own, in some cases, grandchildren.

The clan gathered at Unca Honey and Auntie Virg's for a mass birthday celebration. Also in this vid, yours truly, Dot, my step-dad Hardy and Mama Lou.

This comes from the home movies of Unca Honey and Auntie Virg, and all those are silent, the movie camera they brought out once or twice a year had no sound recording apparatus. I have added one of the tops songs of the era that was one of Auntie Virg’s faves. (Hope Ray Stevens don’t sue me) It must be providence that I chose this song for this clip cos it seems perfectly set up to the images. The song isn’t long enough for the entire vid, but I’ve decided that silence belongs to the many people in this clip how no longer walk among us.

Every time I roamed far and come back I always wanted to see the home movies. Even though, I wasn’t in them very much. The process of even being able to watch the movies was quite the production. First the projector, a huge, daunting Bell and Howell monstrosity had to be lugged out, set up. Individual reels were loaded up, someone did a shadow puppet thing in the dusty projector beam between films. We never “flew the bird” we were much more refined than we are now, cos now “the bird” is so common place, we no longer consider it “common”. The whole process took hours, but everyone was together, laughing, reminiscing.

The large family in this clip is the family my Auntie Virg married into in 1961. They were a close knit bunch. When I stayed summers with my Aunt, we would visit Unca Honey’s family frequently. I shyly sat back and observed these people. My earliest memories of a traditional clan involve this family and I don’t think any of them knows it powerful impact that had on me. Thank You Swinford family.

Dr Cuz had these reels transferred to vid and Dood Cuz made DVDs from those tapes. Now I am taking my set of those tapes and putting them into wmv files. Sometimes it makes me swimmy headed to realize how technologically advanced we have become in my lifetime.
If any of the family reads this and would like their own copy of the clip without my “commentary” they should let me know and I’ll gladly cyberspace them a copy.

This was to be my last “summer” with my aunt, as by December we would be back, Dot and I, as my mom and step dad parted ways. I lived at Alligator and went to a tiny private school in an charming old building. The 6th grade went on a field trip to Jackson and met the Guv’nah.

There would be other summers, but those summers at Alligator are part of who I am now.

...Perchance to Dream

Some people dream in color, I dream in weird.

I have always been a super intense dreamer. Sometimes, I am afraid I will wake up feeling heart attacky, so intense are these nocturnal teleplays. Some are prophetic. Sometimes a dream will be so real that I wake up thinking the event actually happened. Sometimes I have recurring dreams, and continuing dreams. I once acted on an emotion that came to me in dream form. It failed horribly, but it turns out that is best. I had to take the action, though, so strong was the message in the dream.

I dream in entire movies, sometimes. Epic stories of horror and end times, snakes coming out of bathtub faucets. Sometimes I dream about evil so real I wake up shaking and praying.

I remember being about 9 in Brandon Mississippi. I’d lie in bed at night waiting to go to sleep, grateful for Tinker Belle, my mother’s Siamese cat, her favorite child, asleep on my legs. I prayed to God for no dreams. “Not even dreams as good as gold, I’ll take the gold, keep the dreams”, I’d think every night with my eyes closed tight, afraid to open them. I was scared until sleep, that I would see a ghost. Also, the back door of the house was in my bedroom and I was subliminally scared by that, I think.

While I remember that vividly, no dreams from that Vi era come to mind. I do remember dreaming about a giant living Indian Buddha statue grabbing citizens off the ground and stuffing them into its mouth. I was probably 6ish, sleeping on Evil Ann's couch. When I was seven and living on the Breaux Bridge Highway in Lafayette, I constantly dreamed I walked into our living room and my mother sat on the couch, with her ankles crossed daintily, and without her head. I screamed in my dream. Evil Ann would be in the kitchen making lumpy oatmeal, wearing a “house dress” and without a head. (Not as tragic, no scream)

For years after I graduated High School, I dreamed I had to go through it again. I kept saying I’d already graduated, no one listened. I still dream about hallways at Comeaux High, in a creepy pink, Alice through the looking glass, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey kind of a way.

During “Arid Zone” year, X1, me, JD and Kip played D and D every night (Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft in person with tons of books, maps 75 different type of dice) I’d dream all night that people I knew were being killed off one by one and I was all like “No problemo, I have a save spell and a couple of potions.”

During the infancy of the “Bat(I hate that bitch) period, back when I didn’t even know what she looked like, I dreamed she was a gorgeous leggy blonde……hmm, another “opposite” dream….and after I had really and truly met her (OMG) {eyesrollingtobackofheadIcanseemymedulaoblongottathingie} well, in retrospect all I can say is the whole experience was a nightmare, a nine year nightmare, not only for me, but others as well. C’est La Vie, we’re still here.

After my mother passed away, I dreamed she was still alive, refusing to believe she had died. I’ve dreamed about places we’d lived, as if we’d moved back and now had to find jobs. I’m not lying, kids, these dreams are as detailed as a tv show.

Recurring dreams? I’ve had ‘em. Dreams so erotic I’ve woken up quite discombobulated, check. Dreams that have made me stop on the way to the morning tinkle and say aloud, “what the hell was THAT?” Sometimes, I’ve had a dream and I remember the act of dreaming, but no details, not sure if that relieves me or pisses me off.

One particularly frustrating recurring dream I am cursed with, is the “I can’t dial the freaking phone” dream. It’s so film noir, this dream. It’s in black and white, even. I think there may be trench coats involved,…any way, I keep trying to dial numbers, as I am in desperate need of help. Did I mention in this old timey dream the phones are touch tone? Go figure.

But then, there’s the nightmares so intense I used to be afraid I would wake up in the throes of a heart attack. I should keep a note pad by the bed, cos there’s a blockbuster horror epic/apocalyptic saga going on in these dreams, Bubba! Stephens King and Spielberg have decided to corroborate on the screen play and Johns Mellencamp and Hiatt are going to do the score.


Hey, if you’re gonna dream, dream BIG.