All Eyes on Me

There was this funny thing my mother used to do-- I suppose this joke or reference she'd make sometimes --when she thought somebody was being overdramatic about a situation. It's a little tricky to describe, but basically she'd hold up her hand, palm facing front with fingers spread, and shake it, while saying in a kind of wobbly voice, "Woe!" It was meant to indicate that the situation wasn't that big a deal, and she felt somebody was being a little silly being so miffed about it. While the meaning of the gesture is clear without a ton of explanation, I somehow also got an impression of where the gesture came from, so to speak, and I can't recall where I got it from.

I have always been under the impression that the bit was meant to represent a court jester holding a little head-on-a-stick version of himself-- Google tells me this is called a marotte --acting as a Greek chorus to whatever the king said. So, like, if the king is lamenting some terrible thing, the jester backs him up by shaking the head-on-a-stick and crying "Woe!" In my mom's impression, the wiggling raised hand is meant to represent the jingling marotte, and the "Woe!" becomes sarcastic.

Thing is, I don't know where this understanding of the gesture came from. I can't remember if Mom ever explained to me that that was what she was doing, or if I actually saw it somewhere and put two and two together. Wish I could ask her. Has anybody ever seen something like this? Or did I complete hallucinate this explanation and graft it onto that weird little thing my mom did?

I don't know why I was thinking about this today, but it came into my head.

A funny little bit of magic happened today.

Wine is pretty important in my family. My immediate family makes (and drinks a lot of) it. My mom particularly was fond of Beringer Knights Valley cabernet. It was fairly cheap when she started drinking it twenty years ago, but got more expensive and harder to find as time went on. I remember a time she found it actually in stock at the Gordon's near me on Main Street, and she bought the place out and drove it all the way home to Pennsylvania with her.

Today would have been my mother's 67th birthday. My brother is a wine guy and works part time in a wine store. They don't carry Beringer Knights Valley cabernet normally. But today, one showed up. One single bottle for my brother to find.



He's taking it home to drink tonight. Gonna save the bottle, so my dad can reuse it and fill it with wine he made.

Definitely a message from my mom. Ghost magic. <3

Apparently they're making a sequel to this horror movie from a few years back called The Conjuring. It makes me weirdly melancholy. See, my mom always loved horror movies, but never had anyone in the family to see them with her. When we were kids we didn't like them, so she always had to find somebody else to go with if she wanted to catch one in the theater. But then, when the first Conjuring came out, she said, "I saw enough of your movies when you were kids. How about you see one of mine for once?" So I ended up seeing that film, that I probably never would have on my own, as the one and only time I went with her to one of her horror flicks. Seeing that there's a sequel makes me particularly miss her. I still don't really like horror movies, but I'd take her to that one if I could.

On the lighter side, I think I'll tell her funny story of why she could never watch The Exorcist with a straight face. She was in college when it came out, already a fan of the weird and creepy, and was SUPER excited for it. Everything she heard said it was INCREDIBLY SCARY, like, the best horror film ever. She was pretty hard to scare, and she was looking forward to something that might actually be able to get to her. So she got tickets and went to see it in a packed theater.

And she spent the whole damn movie cracking up. Why? Because everyone in the theater was FREAKING THE HELL OUT. She told me they were yelling at the screen, falling out of their chairs, rolling around in aisles. They were trying to warn the characters of danger, calling out to God, screaming at every scary turn. It sounded like a particularly frightened version of MST3K. And my mom was utterly unable to find it scary, even though it was supposed to be this superb horror story, because she found the carrying-on so hilarious. And ever after that, she couldn't watch The Exorcist without cracking up at the thought of all those people. So much for the scariest horror film ever made!

Nostalgia seems to be a big thing lately, at least if society perceives you to be a nerd. The media lately is all about making money by reviving so-called “nostalgia properties,” making rebooted versions of things you supposedly will see now because you liked them as a kid.

Generally I’m not really that susceptible to nostalgia. Not because I’m any more sophisticated than anyone else, but because of how my memory works. As in, my memory kind of DOESN’T work, at least not in that particular way. I retain very few experiential memories of anything longer than a few months ago. Sure, I more or less remember what happened in my life, but only as facts, or at best as narratives— I have the story, in words, of what happened to me. Of sense memories, of what it felt like to actually be present in those memories, such as images in my head or sensations or sounds or smells, I have practically none. And correspondingly, with that level of remove from my own memories, I have very few emotional connections to those experiences. At least, not the kind of emotional connections that nostalgia plays on.

I tend not to hold onto my past because of this, which is a two-edged sword. The upside is I move on from difficult times pretty quickly and easily. I don’t have many emotional scars. Old shames, embarrassments, disappointments, and pains just kind of fade. But the downside is most of the positive feelings of my past don’t really endure either. They don’t make much in the way of lasting marks. I have a few, of course, but not many. My mother is the most major one. I hope to God I never forget the experience of my mother. I still have what it was like to look at her and be around her and how she loved me and the sound of her voice.

But recently a weird nostalgic feeling has crept over me a lot, for some things that once meant the whole world to me but in recent years I haven’t thought much of. And I’m not exactly sure why. Moreover, it’s been making me very sad to think of, and I don’t know why. I might talk more about this later. But it reminds me of when Don Draper explained on Mad Men that the word nostalgia comes from the Greek, meaning “the pain from an old wound.” I guess this was an old wound to me. But you’d think having moved on from it would mean it wouldn’t hurt anymore. I guess I’d figured it healed.

So I did what I was threatening to do, changed my hair color for the first time in my life. Because I wanted to be Betty Draper for Halloween but don’t have the right coloring for it, the idea occurred that maybe I could use the costume as an excuse to change it. The idea, once pondered, of a change seemed nice, not just for the costume but to try something new. I was nervous, because I was really afraid it wasn’t going to come out, and some stylists warned me off because of how big the transition was going to be. But you should do something drastic with your hair once in your life, and I never have. So, repeating to myself the mantra that it’s just hair, it grows back, I took the plunge.



I am actually pretty happy with it! It is noticeably a different color, not just a different shade of brown, and doesn’t have that brassy falseness a lot of brown-to-blonde dye jobs turn out. It’s honestly not exactly what I wanted— I was hoping for something a little lighter, a little more golden –and it’s not quite Betty’s color. But one Halloween costume is just the excuse, not the point, and I will take looking good over trying and failing for perfection. I was also concerned that my eyebrows would look odd still being so dark, but now that I think of it my mom's were darker than her hair too. For reference, here's the brown I was previously, in case the difference isn't obvious.



My younger self would be very surprised this was the direction I went in. But my tastes have gotten blonder as I’ve gotten older. I used to be drawn almost strictly to brunet men, but these days I’m finding blonds catch my eye more and more. I don’t know if it’s because of my favorite look for Chris Evans, or if my love for it is symptomatic of the larger pattern. Though I’ve always admired the looks of a number of blond women. I’ve always adored crearespero’s wavy golden hair, and that feature of course naturally made it into my visualization of Mrs. Hawking. There tends to be a particular shade I’ve gone for— not too dishwater, not too platinum, but that medium gold is my favorite.

And then, of course, there’s my mother. My ur-blonde, the first beautiful woman in my life. I remember when I was very small, wondering what I would look like as a grownup, and having a tough time picturing it for some reason because I wasn’t blonde like her. She was also the origin of my admiration for blondes with green eyes, a feature that Frances and therefore Mrs. Hawking share.



I’ve been working to remake myself in a way recently. The shape of my life, generally, but specifically my body. The diet and exercise have been to really to make me become more like what I feel is my true self. But this hair thing doesn’t feel really ME, not really PHOEBE. I thought that might make me uncomfortable. I’ve never been much of an experimenter before. I tend to find myself always working to get to the place I want to be, rather than seeing what possibilities are out there and trying them on knowing they won’t all be forever. So it’s very unlike me to make a change in the service of being something other than what I want to truly be. But I find I’m okay with it right now. It’s fun for right now, it makes me smile and shakes things up a little. Overall I like my natural hair better for me. But this is a nice change of pace.

I wonder if, now that I’ve made the transition, if I could make it more the blonder shade I imagined. I don’t want to over-process it. There was no bleach in this treatment, which I was told spared my hair a lot of damage. I also don’t feel like dealing with that now. But I’m curious, now that I know it’s possible to change at all without completely wrecking things.

I have talked about my mother’s death here before. But today, on the one-year anniversary of her passing, I want to talk about the night she died. I don’t have much point to make. This is a very disjointed, stream-of-consciousness entry. But I’m ready to talk about it, and I want to have a record of what it was like.

Casey, Sarah, and I drove down together. We came home into a very clean house—partially, I think, for all the people who would be coming in, and partially as way for my dad to feel in control. He’s a strong man— believe me when I say almost impossibly so —but he channels stress into things like that. He had food waiting for us. And he took us upstairs to see Mom.

They had put a hospital bed next to the big bed in their bedroom. That was good, she hadn’t wanted to die in the hospital. She wasn’t conscious; she was on a sort of liquid morphine that basically knocked her out. They put her on oxygen, but it wasn’t doing much good, and she kept gasping, trying to breathe. She couldn’t, really, but her body would try to anyway.

Dad was so in tune with her condition, with everything he’d done to take care of her. He’d called the previous day and said it would happen very soon. And we went home the next day, because he was right.

He asked if we remembered the part in Harry Potter with the thestrals, which are only visible to you after you’ve seen someone die. “I think we’re going to see thestrals soon.” He’s not usually one to talk in literary references, so that one struck me.

A hospice nurse came and spoke to us. We were kind of normal and together, which I think surprised them a little. But we don’t act out in front of strangers. I was proud, though, when the nurse took a moment to tell my dad how impressed they all were with how my dad took care of her. She actually said she’d never seen anything like it. He is strong, and he loves her.

It was very surreal. How normal it was, while Mom was right there dying. Mostly it was waiting. We’d sit with her for a while, holding her hand, talking to her. My dad and my brother had a lot to say. How much they loved her, but how it was okay for her to go, that she didn’t need to hurt anymore. Neither of them have ever been afraid of or uncomfortable with their emotions, but their frankness and their verbosity impressed me. This process made my brother a lot softer. And my dad, well, he’s perceived by some to be a hard, intense man. But he loved my mother utterly. Reordered his whole life to be there for her in her illness. And damn certain he was going to tell her everything as she died.

Dad told us stories of how they met, when they were young. How they were friends for years before they ever dated. How after graduation they traveled cross country to Yellowstone National Park in a van with three other friends and a German Shepherd. How they were camping in the park, smoked some weed, and went swimming at the same time there happened to be an earthquake, but because they were high, they weren’t sure if they imagined it or not. How my mom said to my dad, “If you grow up a bit, you might be worth keeping.” It made me smile to hear all that. Funny to think of my straight laced parents being cooler and more adventurous than me.

I just cried a little, quietly. Weirdly, I found I didn’t know what to say, and felt too embarrassed to try. Words are supposed to be my thing, and I didn’t have any for my dying mother.

It’s okay. She knew how I felt, and she couldn’t hear anything anyway. But it was weird.

So we sat with her, listening to her try to breathe. Then we’d get hungry, or have something to do, so we’d wander off and do it. Dad had a little camera set up in the room, so we could watch her from the kitchen. In case it happened, we could rush up and be there.

She looked like a scary troll. I feel awful about thinking that, but she did. Not like my mother at all. Her hair was gone, her face and body were bloated and stressed. She had tubes coming out of her all over. Horrifying. The picture of death.

We took a picture of her. Not sure why. I guess because it was real, it happened, and there’s no pretending that it didn’t. I have it and Casey has it, but my dad asked us not to show it to anyone. It’s private. It’s the last picture of my mother on this earth.

Casey’s girlfriend Sarah was with us. My family is private, intensely so, so it was a question as to whether or not she would come for this part of things. Bernie was working, so in deference to both of those things I had chosen not to bug him until there was actually a funeral. Dad probably would have been okay if Bernie came. Though in fairness he hasn’t known Bernie as long. Casey and Sarah had been together for like six years then, and he wanted her there, and Dad was fine with that.

Sarah was so good. The whole time I couldn’t imagine how awkward everything had to be for her. Being in the middle of other people’s uncomfortable, private, tragic moment. But she was perfect, being present and quietly, lovingly supporting my brother. I have so much respect for how she conducted herself in what had to be a deeply difficult situation. I already liked Sarah, but that was when she became family.

It was late when it happened. When the life finally slipped out of her. Her breath, already choppy, became more and more infrequent. She twitched for a while. Then she was still.

I posted on Livejournal when it happened. And Twitter, I think. That’s probably kind of sick that I even thought of it. But I wanted to mark the moment.

Dad called the hospice. They would send the right people. So we waited, there in the bedroom with the remains of Mom. I had been laying on my parents’ bed, right beside her hospital bed. I stayed there, staring at her as she went cold. Her skin became so gray, that weird troll that replaced my mother.

Nobody came for a long time. Everyone curled up someplace and slept. I don’t know where everyone ended up. I think Casey was on the floor. I slept there beside her. It didn’t seem strange. She was either a sack of dead disease, or she was my mother. I’m not afraid of either.

The hospice nurse came. I dragged myself up, sat in a chair and was polite. Same as I was with the nurse the previous day, be nice to the stranger, have good manners, even if you just lost the most important person. She asked for all mom’s medications and destroyed them. She was decent and said nice things, but I don't really remember what they were.

Two men in suits came from the funeral home. My dad remarked how weird it seemed to come ready to move a body dressed in a suit, but I guess it was supposed to be gesture of respect. They were very careful gathering her up, zipping her into the body bag. I watched them do it, which likely made them take extra pains, but honestly I didn’t care. In that gray shell there was more remaining of the cancer that killed her than there was of my mother. What did I care what happened to a dead sack of tumors, when the person who bore me, raised me, loved me, made me who I am, was already gone forever?

I went to my own room and slept. The next day, I stripped the hospital bed, washed the clothes, made up the guest bed. They were the only sheets we had that fit it. Bernie and I slept that night on the sheets my mother died on.

I mention all this because it feels like it should have been weird or creepy. But none of it was. At least not to me. I just love her, and miss her, and I still don’t quite believe she’s gone.

I have an odd relationship to the show Mad Men. I've watched it several times through, and I really admire it on many levels. Currently it's my best reference for the writing of subtext, something I'm really bad at and need to learn to improve. And the costuming is masterful; analysis of it really teaches you how to do it. But I wouldn't exactly say I like it. I get weary of how consequences for people's negative actions tend to not have all that much of an impact because of the need to keep the show going, and nobody ever grows or changes, which I find wearying.

My mom watched the show before I did. She found it fascinating as a depiction of a time period she remembered very differently. She was born in 1953, so she was a child in the '60s, and her family was working class in a small industrial town, "where people didn't have as much, and they weren't as miserable." She said she found it fascinating to see those people who lived the life that most of the people in her world aspired to-- especially when it didn't seem to make them any happier.

I connect it to her not only because she introduced it to me, but also because of the character of Sally Draper. Personality- and circumstance-wise, they were almost nothing alike. Sally was a privileged girl with a rough, rebellious relationship with her divorced parents, while my mother was nice and well-behaved, "ethnic" for her town, without much money, in a family that was loving and close. But I can't help but think of her when I watch that beautiful little blonde girl, born only a year later than Mom was, experiencing a number of the same cultural influences. Nobody pays any attention to Sally's potential; my mom was always regretful that she was never encouraged to be anything but a teacher or a nurse, when she was smart enough to do anything. And then, of course, there's the smoking.

I still find that part of Mad Men hard to watch. Not just the fact that everybody's smoking all the time, but the culture around smoking. It's ubiquitous, expected, almost enforced. That's the culture that taught my mom the habit. She didn't start as young as Sally-- who I think was around twelve --but not that long later, in high school. My granddad didn't even do it and took a hard line against it. But things still ended up how they ended up. So it's a little hard for me. To watch the culture shape that little blonde girl in the way it shaped another little blonde girl into something that ended up killing her.

That's kind of over-the-top and maudlin. I still watch the show; I've watched it like three times through. But I think about it.

Tomorrow I will be going home to spend Christmas with my dad and my brother and returning on the 30th. It's always a nice change of pace being at home, as it's a chance to not be super-busy all the time, but I'm going to have to make sure I'm still getting things done for Mrs. Hawking while I'm at home. There's a bunch of things I probably can't do from out of town, but there's still some plans I should be putting into motion-- maybe acquiring paint for the set, or the last couple of props, or hardware and tools for build. My dad may be able to assist me, which would be nice; he's also coming to see the show, and I'm definitely drafting him into coming to the space early with me to help with setup. :-D But otherwise I plan on eating a lot and hanging with my family in a lowkey way. Hopefully I can strike a balance between the two.

My dad recently has taken an interest in ancestry and genealogy. I think it has something to do with my mother’s death and a desire to preserve family history. He has made an elaborate chart of our family, both his side and my mother’s side, on Ancestry.com, partially thanks to other people who have listed our family members and allowed us to connected them to our tree. It’s been interesting; though most of my great-grandparents were peasant immigrants who arrived in America around the turn of the century whose ancestors we know little about, my one grandmother was a descendant of a family that can be traced back twelve generations to Ireland in the 1700s. And we learned those people existed because my dad found them on the site.

The site also offers genetic testing to tell you what your genetic pedigree is. It maps your genes and tells you where in the world those genes were thought to originate going back thousands of years. We decided to do that after we saw the results of a test my paternal grandfather took. He’s a first-generation Italian-American and conforms rather strongly to the stereotypical look. We were astonished to find that though he is mostly genetically of the Italian-Greek strain we’d expect, he was many other things we didn’t realize— he was about twenty percent North and Sub-Saharan African, for example, as well as a small fraction of Iberian, Persian, and Caucasian. (This makes me laugh to think of my racist British-American great-grandfather, who didn’t want my grandmother marrying my granddad because he didn’t like Italians. HOW’D YOU LIKE THAT HE’S ONE-FIFTH BLACK TOO SO SUCK IT.)

Mine and my dad’s tests came in too now. This is me:



And this is my dad:



Look at me. I am NINETY-THREE PERCENT WHITE EUROPEAN. Whiter than my dad, although interestingly more Italian than he is, when he visibly conforms to the visual stereotype of one. People tend to think I look WASPy, which is funny because despite my dad’s big chunk of British I got almost none. And of my mother’s family, who was Italian on one side and white and Asiatic Russian on the other, it seems I only got the Italian! We were making jokes about me being found in a space pod in a field until Ancestry.com confirmed the genetic relationship. I’m weirdly disappointed. I have a Mongolian great-grandfather! My dad’s dad is twenty percent African! And I end up assorted flavors of cracker.