4. March 2009 by Mary.

Food stories. I have a few those too. I think my favorite is the Good Ship Lollipop one.

     I am 5 or six years old. We are all living in a small northeastern town in PA with my father. Life is not good here. No one is happy. And we are not talking about it. My mother is teaching in the local elementary school where I am going to kindergarten. Dear old dad is not really working at all. Money was tight.

     One night my mother makes liver and onions; cheap and good for you(so my mom always told us). Mmm mmm good. Ewww. It smelled gross, it tasted gross and I was not going to eat it. Not for anything. As you may already know, refusing to eat my mother’s dinner was a capital crime. Since my mother had stopped hitting her children to get them to conform to her will, I was left to sit in the kitchen alone with my uneaten liver. I was told to contemplate why I wouldn’t eat it, and why I was doing this to my mother (her words).

      Now on this particular night, and this is what makes this story great, I was to be in the spring pageant at my mother’s school. I was singing the “Good Ship Lollipop” with two other girls while holding up huge lollipops. As it became clear to my mother that I was not going to figure out through solitary contemplation that I should eat my dinner, she had to come up with a plan to scare me into eating the now cold, gelatinous mess. Her anger was so intense that my sister was begging me to just eat it, fearing for my safety. But I couldn’t. My mother also has to go to the pageant as she had students performing in it too. The tension was high. Finally, after all else had failed her, she got me where it really hurt; sugar. No sugar or candy of any kind for a week. Two weeks. One month. Finally two months! Which would mean no Easter candy for me. I still didn’t care. And she knew it.

   Punishment locked in place; no sugar for two months, alright. Time served with the dead cow parts; time to get ready to go. But wait, mom had not yet dealt her final blow. Because harsh punishment was never enough when she could add in some public humiliation. During that evenings performance, I would not get to keep the lollipop like the other girls on stage with me. In fact, I could not even hold it on stage. I remember the look on my teacher’s face when she asked my mother if I could just hold it during the song. I remember the teacher looking at me questioningly; like “is your mom for real? Is she really going to do this to you?”

   Oh yes. She was very much for real, and she did exactly that. Over and over again, every chance she got. It was shortly after that time that I remember starting to compulsively over eat. Looking for some kind of comfort I could never find from her.

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21. February 2009 by Mary.

      I always knew my mother was different than other moms. It wasn’t just that she was into different things like obscure European philosophies and organic gardening. It was everything. She had her opinion about how the world worked and that was how it was, absolutely, there was no other way it could be. Until she changed her mind and then this new version of “reality” was true. Growing up, I didn’t really know how far down the rabbit hole she had gone. I mean living with a crazy mom is kind of like trying to explain to someone what its like to have dyslexia. I can’t tell you because it always been this way for me. My mom had always been crazy, I just didn’t really know how crazy.

      It wasn’t until I moved to CA and had some space from her and started growing up myself that I could understand that she wasn’t right in the head. It is a long hard journey to a place of acceptance for me. That’s part of what this sight is about for me. To let other people know that they are not alone. If you too have a “crazy mom” then you know what its like. It’s different and because she’s your mom you can’t just drop some change in the cup and walk away.

      It has only been since her death that I have been able to really heal and truly laugh about how tragically funny it all is. I hope that by sharing my experiences that you too can get a laugh and some hope. That was what I needed after wading through all her things and finding out the rabbit hole was so much deeper then I could have ever imagined. With twists and turns that are so far out there that they are beyond any screen play or book I could ever write. It has helped me put my own life in perspective.

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