I don’t have the power to control myself as a teen. Mom controls my inner self. I feel that I’m doing wrong most of the time.

“Son of a bitch! You’re just like your father!” screams Mom over something or other I did that she doesn’t like.

I silently, woundedly, wonder, “How can I be just like my father, when I never see Daddy, and haven’t seen him in years?” I think Mom is stupid for saying this, but dare not say so.

Years later, in college, saved by Art, I fly away.

“Art gives wings and carries you far, far away! Anyone who is sick of filth and petty, mercenary interests, who is revolted, wounded, and indignant, can find peace and satisfaction only in the beautiful.” – Masha, Misail Polozniev’s wife in “My Life” by Anton Chekhov, 1896, (Ward Six And Other Stories).

“Who do you think you are? Do you have to know everything?” Aunt Dee Dee laughs into the phone as I call my mother’s eighty year-old, younger sister with questions about Uncle Pippi. She laughs, but I can tell she is quite serious and closes the book on this conversation. It’s tough to find out secrets.

“Marie, Jeanne looks just like you!” says Aunt Mae, as she lights a Pall Mall cigarette, takes a seat on a dark wood club chair in our livingroom, nervously taps her foot, places a plastic ashtray on the t.v., and playfully tugs at Maria’s sleeve as she walks past, to say “hello.” Her thin frame is one bundle of energy. I stare at the cigarette carton on the coffee table that exclaims, “Pall Mall’s natural mildness is so good to your taste!”

“Marie, Jeanne is the spittin’ image of you!” says Jean, a long-time friend of Mom’s. She has the nerve to push my long, brown hair out of my face.

“She’s too quiet. She has to come out of her shell!” she says, as though I’m not standing right there.

I feel like a clamshell, tightly closed up from the audacity of their tasteless judgments about me.

“Marie, Jeanne, looks just like you, when you were in high school!” says Aunt Matheline, wistfully wishes of long-ago days.

“Marie, Jeanne looks just like you and you looked just like your mother! Three generations of beautiful, Italian girls!” says Uncle Joe, as though he tells us something new. I cringe as he looks me over from head-to-toe, lingers on my big, brown eyes and eye-catching breasts, as he reminisces over Mom’s stunning bathing beauty looks, then gives Mom a lecherous grin. She flirts back with a smile.

Why can’t Mom see the pain I’m in? Why can’t she think of me?

I shrink, eyes cast downward to my toes, shoulders curve miserably. Down, down, down, into Dear, Sweet, Jesus’ earth I want to go. I hate hearing that I look just like Mom, something I’ve heard over and over again, throughout my childhood, and, now, as a teenager. I’m not like Mom at all, I think, confusing looks with being. I hate any attention thrown my way, and furiously hold my anger at the gall people have to comment about my looks.

Never any in-between, there’s either too much attention, or too little attention. I hate not being told things, too. Other words blow in like a vicious summer thunderstorm, with raindrops that soak through clothes in an instant, cling to skin. I need a towel to roughly, quickly, smoothly, dry off the sticky, yucky rain evaporating on my soft, warm body. Words thrown at me as though I’m not there, or words overheard, or conversations stopped mid-stream as I enter a room, or as I’m shooed out a door.

Aunt LaLa is 93 years-old. She tells me that my daughter is adorable, my son so handsome, as they are with me on this rare visit. Her words fall on me, yet I don’t feel like a fifty-something mother. I feel like a sixteen-year-old girl next to her; her smile wraps around me, her chatty voice still so comforting after all these years. The pink-painted bedroom, so familiar, yet, so strange. The faded, white-painted furniture and silk flowers in a vase, greet me like old friends.

As a child, I wondered, “Why on earth are there fake flowers in the house, when the yard offers so many pickings?”

Back then, the yard was filled with living, powerful zinnias, roaring dandelions, swaying black-eyed susans, buttery buttercups, trumpeting honeysuckles, peeping blue violets, the uplifting, blue flowers of the tall, chicory stalks, long, wild grass, soft yellow forsythia, dainty, doll-cups of lily-of-the-valley, purple hydrangeas, laughing-blue dayflowers, brilliant marigolds, and the deep, dark, secretive green of the pine trees that rule on the top of a stone wall.

“Jeanne, you’re an old lady!” jokes Aunt LaLa. She smiles at my children, smiles at me, chuckles a soft chuckle.

I laugh and hug her and tell her she is wonderful.

“Hello Uncle Pippi!” A chorus of four, young girls greets him as my uncle comes into Nanny’s kitchen, brings a blast of cold air in with him, shakes a chill from his body, warmly smiles at us, walks past, through the dining room, livingroom, to his bedroom to change. Silently, he comes in, a pattern, a routine, a day in his parents’ house. Mom always reminds my sisters and me to say “hello” to Uncle Pippi, and Grandpa, too, which we do, but this isn’t a necessary order. It’s a soothing routine to me.

At the kitchen table, Aunt LaLa grabs a sharp knife and cuts handmade, flattened dough into ribbons, for noodles. I place them on a wooden pasta drying rack that stands on green-striped dishtowels laid out on the washing machine. The noodles hang over dowels, moist dough with white flour flecks, and wait to dry overnight in the warm, moist-air kitchen, the smell of coffee percolating the air as Mom fixes a slipping barrette in Maria’s hair, hands Barb a star-shaped cookie with round, colored sprinkle dots on it, and tells Donna to go watch a show on the little t.v. in Aunt LaLa’s bedroom.

“Be quiet. Be good. Nanny’s sleeping,” warns Mom, a reminder that our grandmother’s napping in her bedroom.

“My Ma liked a good joke, Jeanne. She had a great sense of humor,” Mom tells me. Mom’s eighty-two years-old, lives in a nursing home, and it’s many, many, many years since Nanny’s been gone.

“She used to joke and say, Mary, did you have your brasciole today?!”

Named after her Ma, my mother’s birth name is Mary. Her Pop nicknamed her “Marie,” and that’s the name she used. I learned her birth name when I was in my twenties, and found her birth certificate while organizing files. It simply was never mentioned, one of many silent episodes that occurred in my maternal side of the family.

“What’s so funny about that?” I frown and try to figure out the joke. Brasciole is a flattened, round steak, stuffed with an Italian seasoned breadcrumb mixture and tied with kitchen twine into a tubular shape. It’s browned, then dropped in gravy to cook. I chalk-up Mom’s words as meaningless conversation, one that leaves me stumped at trying to figure something out, a feeling I’ve had over and over again in our relationship.

“She called a man’s member a brasciole!” said Mom.

I laugh, not only from the joke, but from the pure pleasure of having a laugh with Mom, from the pure pleasure of remembering Nanny, the pure pleasure of women connecting, from grandmother, mother, daughter. A sense of humor filters out through a lifetime of domestic abuse, child abuse, elder abuse. A sense of humor peeps out in my dementia-afflicted Mom.

Dear Blog Followers,

I recently submitted this piece to a publication, with a requirement of 800 words of text. Cutting 700 words or so from the original piece was not an easy task. However, in the end, I think the piece’s rhythm flows better, and, perhaps, the emotion is even sadder. What do you think?

In Mom’s home, I know where everything is kept. She puts her possessions in their own, particular place. Don’t move them, or, God forbid, who knows what she’ll do! I know how she folds towels, in thirds, which is different than how I fold mine, in fourths. I know where she stores her cream-colored coffee cup as the cup sits upside-down on its saucer, with a red rim faded by age.

Mom’s bills, receipts, scams directed to the elderly, tax returns, bank statements, doctor’s appointments, are all handled by me. I shop for her, shop with her, take care of her car and home. When she loses a job, I make the weekly call to the state’s unemployment service to process a $52 payment. I read her brother’s will aloud and Mom listens quietly, hangs on to my every word. The only movements are her dark eyes that fervently dart back and forth from the legal document to my lips.

I research about junk I don’t want to know about, for subsidies and sales, to help Mom squeeze every penny from a Social Security income. Scrimp and save, Dear, Sweet, Jesus!

“Mom, you can save eight bucks a month for telephone service with a senior discount!”

We discuss supermarket circulars to find bargains on broccoli rabe and Sclafani tomato. We shop on Wednesdays to access markdowns. She thrills to save a dollar.

“At least I get something for being old, goddamn it,” she laughs.

The applications for senior citizens’ property tax assistance and for prescription aid in conjunction with Medicare are filled out by me. I take Mom to the senior center to apply for state assistance with electricity. We learn that ten grand in a savings account is the eligible limit. She has twenty grand, a gift from her brother, Pippi, before he passed away, as he started to distribute his sisters’ future inheritance of $1.7 million, as stated in his will.

“Jeanne, you should write a book on how to help seniors. How would I figure this out? Seniors could use the help.” She believes I could do such a thing easily.

“I don’t want to write a book about that,” I say. What do I want to write about, I wonder? We look at a display case in the hallway, filled with helmets and medals from World War II veterans.

“My brother fought in World War II and got a Purple Heart,” says Mom.

“Yes, I know. I’ve been researching Uncle Pippi’s military history. He was the only American officer on the 38th Parallel when the Chinese crossed the border in the Korean War. He was in the Korean Military Advisory Group as an advisor to the 12th and 17th ROK Regiments.” As of late, we’re in the midst of a court case contesting Pippi’s will. I’ve taken to searching for all I can find out about him.

Mom stores a blanket under a couch cushion and shoves bills in a magazine rack. She keeps Pippi’s will in a dresser. She loses things and accusations fly. An angel ornament and a tube of hand cream have gone astray. She bitches behind my back and to me directly.

Sometime later, I empty out Mom’s home, as she moves to an assisted living facility. Her home is quiet. I don’t play the radio because I listen for my mother’s voice to call me, tell me to put the coffee on, or demand an order to relinquish dishes from a cabinet to set the table for supper.

It’s hard to go through an aging mother’s things. It’s even harder when she’s your mother-friend-child-enemy. I save my children’s notes.

Happy Birthday, Nana!
Nana, do you want to have a sleep-over, go for pizza, swim in the pool, give me a hug, see my school play, paint my fingernails shocking pink, sew a button on my shirt?
I love you, Nana!

I go through shoes, clothes, old, old, old pots and pans, stacks of dishes enough to feed an army with, suntan lotion, beach towels, pocketbooks, garden tools, ten cans of Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee, food in the fridge…anyone want a frozen turkey? I search, search, search for an answer, a sign of love, an explanation of the mixed, witch’s potion of meanness and love that my mother has dished out over me.

Boxes of Christmas ornaments sit in the nearly empty livingroom. They are covered with hand-written messages, in Mom’s marker scrawl. Paranoia is part of dementia.

“Keep out BITCH. Don’t you know GOD sees you! Keep out of my things. FUCK. BITCH.” These same messages are written on shoeboxes, a sewing box, on a paper note in a dresser. The orders scream at me, belittle me to dust, crush me to garden listlessness, a winter garden of no use.

Pippi’s Plow

Pippi sows the seeds,
deep, brown dirt striped in furrows,
shirtless to the sun.

In Mom’s home, I know where everything is kept. I know how she puts her possessions in their own, particular place. Don’t move them, or, God forbid, who knows what she’ll do! I know how she folds towels, in thirds, which is different than how I fold mine, in fourths. I know where she stores her cream-colored coffee cup as the cup sits upside-down on its saucer, with a red rim faded by age.

Bills, receipts, scams directed to the elderly in the mail, tax returns, bank statements, mortgage paperwork, health and life insurances, doctor’s, dentist’s, ophthalmologist’s appointments, prescriptions, and conversations with all involved, handled by me. I read her brother’s will aloud as Mom listens quietly, hangs on to my every word. The only movements are her dark eyes that fervently dart back and forth from the legal document to my lips.

I research and read about junk I don’t want to know about, to apply for discounts, subsidies, and sales, to help Mom squeeze every penny from a Social Security income. Scrimp and save, scrimp and save, scrimp and save, Dear, Sweet, Jesus!

“Mom, did you know you could save eight bucks a month for telephone service with a senior citizen discount?” I say, happy that I found another savings as I put the discount into place.

“Damn that Cablevision! They don’t give a discount to seniors! Can you believe that? What a rip-off!” I angrily squawk, as Mom insists on paid t.v. service to watch her beloved baseball.

“Why the heck does she have to waste money on that?” I ask myself. Sports are not on my agenda as I find a book better evening entertainment, another difference between Mom and me.

An AARP card is used for other senior citizen rate cuts. We discuss supermarket circulars to find bargains on meat, broccoli rabe, Sclafani tomato, and macaroni. We shop on Wednesdays at Kohl’s to access markdowns. I let Mom think that she helps me as I use her senior discount on blue jeans and football jerseys for my son. She thrills to save a dollar and we joke about it.

“At least I get something for being old, goddamn it,” she says, as we share a laugh over that. “We always have a laugh, Jeanne.”

I laugh, yet, at the same time, feel sick to my stomach.

The city and state applications for senior citizens’ property tax assistance are filled out by me, along with the application for the state’s prescription aid in conjunction with Medicare. The websites are tagged, phone calls made, applications filled, mailed, followed up on, followed through, files followed, followed, followed, by me.

I buy a calendar and write the grandchildren’s birthdays on it and fill an address book with her daughters’ names, addresses, and phone numbers. I shop for her, shop with her, take care of her car and the maintenance of her home. When she loses a part-time baby-sitting job, I help her apply for unemployment, which she insists upon, and make the weekly call to the state’s unemployment automated service to process a $52.00 payment.

I take Mom to the senior center to apply for state assistance with electricity. We learn that twenty grand is too much to have in a savings account to be eligible. Ten grand saved is the limit, not factoring in a monthly Social Security check. She has twenty grand, a gift from her brother, Pippi, before he passed away, as he started to distribute his sisters’ future inheritance of $1.7 million, as stated in his will.

“Jeanne, you should write a book on how to help seniors. How in the world would I figure this out on my own? I’m sure a lot of seniors could use the help.” She thinks this is a great idea and states it quite seriously, fully believing I could do such a thing quite easily.

“I don’t want to write a book about that, Mom,” I say, yet, I wonder what do I want to write about? We look at a display case in the bright, sun-filled hallway of the senior center. It is filled with photos, helmets, flags, and medals from World War II local veterans, which I am quite intrigued with.

“My brother, Pippi, fought in World War II. He was in the D-Day invasion when we fought Hitler, that bastard. Pippi got a Purple Heart medal.” Mom proudly tells me a story I’ve heard time and time again.

“Too bad we can’t get vegetables from his garden anymore. Oh, those were the good, old days, Jeanne,” Mom says, holding back a sigh.

“Yes, I know, Mom. I miss the garden, too. I have to tell you that I’ve been researching Uncle Pippi’s military history. Did you know that he was the only American officer on the 38th Parallel when the Chinese crossed the border in the Korean War? He was in the Korean Military Advisory Group as an advisor to the 12th and 17th ROK Regiment.” As of late, as we’re in the midst of a family court case contesting Uncle Pippi’s will, I’ve taken to searching for all I can find out about him.

Mom’s surprised to hear this, as the story’s never been told to her by anyone in her family.

Mom stores a blue blanket under a couch cushion, and shoves a photo album, phone book, and old bills in a magazine rack. She keeps her wedding album and a copy of Uncle Pippi’s will in the top drawer of the tall, bedroom dresser, that was Daddy’s dresser when they were married long ago. In Mom’s home, I know where everything is kept.

I tell myself that Mom throws things out in the garbage by mistake. She misplaces, loses, misses things. She accuses my sisters and me of taking things. She bitches to me directly and behind my back, because I have a key to enter and visit her home almost daily. Things that have gone astray include an angel ornament, a can opener, a pair of black, leather gloves, the t.v. remote, reading glasses, gold hoop earrings, and a tube of hand cream.

Sometime later, I have to empty out Mom’s home, as she moves to an assisted living facility. Her home is quiet. I don’t play the radio, because, silly as it sounds, I listen for my mother’s voice to call me, tell me to put the coffee on, or demand an order to relinquish dishes from the cabinet to set the table for supper for my kids.

It’s hard to go through an aging mother’s things. It’s even harder when she’s your mother-friend-child-enemy. I go through drawers filled with memories saved…cards from my children, stories they wrote in just-learned script, drawings of our family, and heaps of photos of sunny faces.

Nana, I love you, they write.
Happy Thanksgiving, Nana!
Happy Birthday, Nana!
Merry Christmas, Nana!
I love you, Nana!

Nana, do you want to have a sleep-over, come over for dinner, cook me something to eat, get some ice cream, go for pizza at The Colony Grill, swim in the pool, go to the beach, give me a hug, shop at Wal-Mart or ShopRite, go to my cousins’ house, see my school play, paint my fingernails shocking pink, sew a button on my blue shirt?

I love you, Nana!

I go through old photos, old shoes, old socks, old make-up, old clothes, old linens, old, old, old pots and pans, stacks of dishes enough to feed an army with, furniture, paintings, mirrors, lamps, jewelry, bottles and bottles of suntan lotion, beach towels, pocketbooks, garden tools, paperwork, my kids’ toys, cleaning supplies, canned food, spices, ten cans of Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee, food in the fridge…anyone want a frozen turkey? I search, search, search for an answer, a sign of love, an explanation of the mixed, witches’ potion of meanness and love that my mother has dished out over me.

Three containers of Christmas ornaments sit for weeks in the nearly empty livingroom. I just can’t find the energy to go through them. The containers are covered in hand-written messages, in Mom’s marker scrawl. Paranoia is part of dementia, don’t you know.

“Keep out BITCH. Don’t you know GOD sees you! Keep out of my things. FUCK. BITCH.” These same messages are written on shoeboxes, on a sewing box, on a paper note in the top drawer of the tall dresser. They are orders to me. The words scream at me, belittle me to dust, crush me to garden listlessness, a winter garden of no use.

I make dandelion necklaces and crowns for my sisters in Nanny’s yard. A yellow burst of sunshine shines on my face. Later, Mom will carry little Maria, asleep in her arms, down the slate steps to the car in the driveway. A crushed, faded dandelion crown will droop from my sister’s clasped fist, the wrapped stems uncurling, the yellow petals withering, one less flower for a bee to bury in, one less flower to burst into white, fluffy seed that we’d blow into the wind.

Right now, Buttercup flowers reflect on our skin. Barb peers under my chin to see the yellow spot, straggly hair falls around her face, pearly white teeth in an open smile of “Oh, I see the buttercup yellow!”