Day Off

I'm sprawled here on my couch with my laptop, Shadow (a.k.a. Best Dog Ever), and a diet Coke. I took the day off. Chris is gone for the weekend, and I'm considering driving down to Queens to visit a friend tomorrow. I wanted at least one full day in this big, solitary house. Just to do this. Sprawl on the couch and do nothing.

I haven't really done nothing. I did vacuum, in preparation for my weekend alone. I like a neat house. And I've already returned from an appointment with an English professor at SUNY, where I'm very seriously considering starting a Master's program in English this summer. I have another appointment with the director of the Master's programs in English, next Thursday. Don't know if it'll come to anything, but I'm taking each step at a time and will just see where things lead me.

I've also been perusing other blogs, and I'm noticing a disturbing trend. And perhaps I've particpated in this trend, and for that I am ashamed. But the general tone of most blogs I've read is pretty cynical. I don't begrudge anyone the right to an occasional vent or rant, but I'm seeing this emerging as its own form of humorous entertainment. This is why I stopped listening to George Carlin. Someone who used to completely crack me up, and who I considered the funniest guy on the planet, presented one of the most miserable, cynical, negative shows I've ever attended here in Albany a few years ago. Maybe I'm getting older, but I just don't seem to have the stomach for it anymore. Life is short. Mine needs to be happy.

So, I'll stay away from other blogs for awhile and just write my thoughts. If people wanna read 'em, great. I'd love the feedback. If not, that's okay, too.

Here's something interesting that happened to me this week. But it needs some background. I came across a letter, while going through boxes of my mom's belongings (She died four years ago.), to my mom from one of her childhood friends. It had been written while my mom was in the hospital, so there was a good chance this person (Her name is Charlotte.) was still at the same address. I wrote to her.

I didn't know if I'd get a response or if she'd even want to be bothered. I knew she'd know who I was, because we'd met once or twice over the years, mostly when I was very small. After about two weeks, I had pretty much given up, when I came home and found a large envelope with 9 typewritten pages inside, and pictures! I read the whole thing before taking off my coat.

Not only was this great stuff about my mom from the time she was born until she was about sixteen (when my own creation began), but it's also fascinating from a social perspective. She really goes into detail about life growing up in the fifties, and what people did and didn't do. No TV until they were six, so their parents played cards and listened to the radio at night. Neighbor families would get together outside in the evenings and actually talk to each other. Your parents knew your friends' parents. Apparently, my great-grandparents, who I remember vividly, were the first on their block (I know, it's a cliche, but it's true.) to get a color TV, and neighbors would pile into their tiny living room every Sunday night to watch Bonanza. I remember watching it in reruns and my mom telling me she'd had a crush on Little Joe. She didn't know I did, too.

So, the letter made me cry, as I more fully began to realize how much my mother has actually lost by dying so soon (52). She had a lonely and somewhat unhappy childhood, as far as her relationship with her own mother is concerned, and she spent her adult life living for other people, never really finding the happiness she kept trying so hard to create. She raised me and, when I was seventeen, she had my brother. She raised him until he was18 ,and then she died. She married a wife-beater and then an alcoholic, always trying to turn them into something she could be happy with. It never happened. She never learned.

She had just started enjoying herself and told me, a month before getting cancer, that she was looking forward to my brother going out on his own so she could really begin to live her own life for the first time. She died five months later. When I think about it, I just cry. It just seems like such a waste to me. What was the point? Why did she live?

Granted, I wouldn't be here if she hadn't, but there must have been more to it than that. If we all have a purpose in being here, what was my mother's? And if it was only to raise two children, shouldn't I be doing something more important with my life?

So, there's a very good chance I'll be starting this English program in the fall. And if I happen to write some stuff and people happen to read it, and it makes a difference in their lives, I will have honored Linda Ruo's existence. And that's enough.