Curses seem to run in my family.
Not the kind of curses involving old gypsy crones and boiling cauldrons with bat wings and lizard nuts, and those sort of thinga-ma-jiggaroos.
(Lizard nuts has a nice ring to it. We will make that the word of the day. Just like Pee-wee Herman’s Playhouse:
Pee-wee: “Ok, everybody, when I call someone Lizard Nuts, everyone scream!”
Mr. Chair: “AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHH!”
Pee-wee: “Thank you, Mr. Chair, but you were early! That was just an example… lizard nuts.”
Everybody: “AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHH!”)
Soooooooo… anyways. Curses run in my family.
My father, or so I am told, had very bad knees. Now my knees are not necessarily decrepit or anything, but then again, I had enough synovitis in my knee to warrant the doctor a sharp intake of breath, and a muttered “damn” on the exhale. Not pretty. And I have the pictures to prove it (bottom right quadrant).
See… bad knees. And I can thank my dad for that one. Raising fists into the air, screaming: “FATHER!”
My mother, and the rest of my motley Irish clan, comes from a long line of raging alcoholics. You just can’t say “irish” without mentioning the wanton liquoring and raging fisticuffs, now can you? I don’t know if you can call that a curse, but the nurture portion of the nurture versus nature equation generally reinforces the behavior in the subsequent generations. My mother, while not being an alcoholic, suffers from a bunch of the symptoms of alcoholism. First and foremost, that deep and powerful depression that generally drives many people to escapism via liquor. I can’t say that I have experienced that level of self loathing before, but even if I had, I am sure my mother has felt worse. Still… every once in a while, for seemingly no reason at all, I will just get that funk.
An existential funk that just sucks the dance right from my feet… and we all know that I just gotta dance.
I am sure everyone gets depressed. Hell, my dogs get depressed. But mine seems to have no trigger, no cause, just like a switch. One day, I wake up and the world is just a bit darker and not very fun. And I have a deep and dark desire to eat and drink and not be merry in my own lonesome sort of way. Drink my beer of tears, my pancakes of loneliness, and my ice cream of angst.
mmmmmm…. delicious pancakes of loneliness.
I have these memories of my Mom always crying when I was kid. They didn’t make much sense to me as I was growing up, but in recent years, I am starting to understand the whys behind those memories. My mom is a tumultuous personality… very vibrant and unique for lack of a better word. If she was rich, she would definitely be eccentric. Should would be one of those rich people that buys every left shoe in the state just so they can make a sculpture of them in their front yard. That kind of eccentric, where you might call them crazy, but it is not quite nuts enough to get them locked up, cruising on meds, and drooling on themselves.
She would cry a lot though. Sometimes, I wonder what she was like before she got ground down under all that emotional weight. I have seen pictures of her in High School, long black hair, skinny, and obviously pretty… but was she different before she had me? I can just imagine the eccentricities coming out in more youthful and energetic ways… like a brilliant artist that just wows the world. Odd how parents can seem so different when you are an adult. You start to see them as people and not heroes.
In one way that is sad, but in others, quite liberating. To be able to sift through knowledge of your parents and see the causes and effects of choices and decisions throughout their life, and loving them even more when its all over. Because they are, after all, your parents. And even with all those bad choices, they still loved you.
My sister in law’s mother is dying from liver failure. Too much alcohol can do that. And every good irish boy has seen someone in their family die from it. My grandpa died before I even met the guy. But when I heard that, the first thing I thought of was my own mother. And how she could have been the one in the hospital, on that bed, just waiting to die.
Her choices don’t seem so bad after all. I tried to explain that to her once… that her depression was bad, but it wasn’t the worst. Things could be so much worse… so in the end, it is just little stuff after all. Like waking up one day and feeling a bit off. Yeah, those pancakes may be delicious now, but with the loneliness on the side next time, they even taste better.
With that in mind, my funk really isn’t all that bad. And I think that is the real medication for a bad mood. Not any sort of pharma magic pill… just a bit of perspective.
It always helps to look up.
