I had my teeth cleaned.

Reading: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children. If I were reading Jean Auel, would I admit it?

Moving: walked something more than 2 miles. Allegedly I'm going to do weights soon. Last night I did those cool thigh-stretching weight exercises

13 August 2001: Then and now

Watching RDC do some complicated weight thing with his legs in the air, for contrast with my first passport photograph, forehead and chin breaking out, hair not having yet learned how to be long. I showed this picture to Coolboss alongside the current passport photograph (all the way upstairs, far from the scanner), and she couldn't see all the acne that was there. Her two photographs from ten years apart show almost no difference at all. She wears her hair the same way and her skin is still perfect and unlined. Naturally she sees a huge difference in her appearance. I think I'm better looking, or at least happier looking, now, and am pleased to report that while I was at least ten pounds lighter in 1991 than now, I don't seem to carry much in my face.

Now I'm just writing along so I can space out the next pair of photographs the same way.

Writing....

actually just typing...

along...

knowing nothing about formatting but that this won't work at larger resolutions and is unnecessary at smaller.

Anyway.

My little guy. Percy. It always surprises me when people can't tell the difference between my little guy (Percy) and my little buddy (Blake). The only human-imposed difference is that Percy's cuff was green and on his left foot where Blake's is red and on his right. Percy was paler grey, not darker gray, which is obvious; he kept his tail better and his feet were pale pink instead of pinky-gray (RDC calls Blake "Scrotum-foot"), which is not (to anyone but me).

But my point is not Percy but Rocky. DWJ found Rocky wandering in the street. Anyone's best guess is that he's part Papillon, and DWJ is not at all the toy dog type. He is the best, possibly the only best, small dog I have ever known. He is a great dog, a big dog personality who happens to be in a 15-pound package and has no Napoleon complex. He has always accompanied DWJ everywhere, including fishing, such that DWJ realized that whenever you held Rocky over water, he'd paddle. (I had to prove this myself over the Charenton hottub at my wedding.) Here, in the fall of 1994, he was maybe seven years old. He and Percy found each other fascinating. It's not quite visible in the scan, but Percy has his beak open a bit because he's whistling to Rocky. Rocky would cock his head and listen. Once he licked Percy's breast. I can't imagine allowing a dog('s mouth) so close to Blake, but of course at this time I hadn't abandoned Percy to his lonely death at the vet nor shouldered this paralytic guilt that manifests as my self-imposed punishment of doglessness.

But they liked each other! They were pals! Nose to nose. I bet Percy would have groomed Rocky's tail if the chance had come up. Whenever he stood on a man's shoulder, he would lean to pluck out facial stubble.

Compare Rocky at 14. I have seen DWJ only once, at EJB's wedding, since we moved, and EJB's was not a dogful wedding like ours. So I haven't seen Rocky in six years. RDC saw him last month and warned me that he looked old, old, so old, and he does. He is nearly deaf, he has cataracts, and he's arthritic. But as far as DWJ can tell, he still enjoys his life, even if he doesn't hold his tail in a proud plume anymore.

(Also note the brown tile that comprised the floor of our tenement.)

---

Last Friday I received my mother's response to my letter. I read it to Haitch, wanting an objective opinion from someone who evaluates the written word for a living instead of resents her mother for a hobby. She found no thesis, which I, even I, do not fault my mother for, since I myself wouldn't know a thesis statement if it bit me on the nose and bought me breakfast. She didn't find much of anything else either. As I expected, there is no there there. No, there was a tiny there there: she said that denial is a symptom of alcoholism and asserted that my sister and I are in denial--even if we fully acknowledge whatever it is--merely because of our rearing. That was so not how the subject came up. That fateful afternoon in my mother's house, I had said something about not blaming alcoholism for everything, and my failure to do so prompted her to say, "You and your sister are both in denial." Her accusation of my being in denial did not come up in a discussion of How Adult Children of Alcoholics Are, as she now claims in the letter. And I will never buy that All Adult Children of Alcoholics Inevitably and Inescapably Are One and Only One Way, cookie-cutter-style, as if the great god Alcohol were the only damn thing that gave us a personality--all of us, plural, a personality, the exact same one.

Here's the freaky bit: She photocopied pages from her Al-Anon Book o' PsychoBabble 'n' Daily Affirmations. That's not freaky, except inasmuch as she can't think for herself. The bits were about Denial, Detachment, and Expectations, all of which concepts have been referred to thus far in our exchange and are thus not freaky for her to have included. Anyway, Haitch spotted the freaky thing: "Is Denial your special thing because it's on your birthday?"
"What?"
Holy shit. I hadn't noticed the dates, just the bookmark sticking up from further pages and photocopied in a shadowy way: "Just for Today."
This book 's like Astrology for ACOAs, the Horoscope for Houlihans. The daily affirmation for 25 May is Denial, that for my sister's birthday is Detachment. Expectations are covered on 1 June, and Haitch and I wonder if that date has some similar significance. Because otherwise it's pretty messed up that the two main issues I am trying to plumb with my mother are covered on her children's birthdays.

These passages come from what book I know not, but I bet it's the one that she started reading when I was in middle school, thus during the divorce, over whose cover she glued maroon fabric in an attempt to disguise it or make it inconspicuous (an attempt that had exactly the opposite effect). The following is the affirmation for my sister's birthday:

For me, detachment is relatively easy with casual friends, where I'm not very emotionally involved. I've noticed that when I am detached, I can listen to other people being critical or grumpy without being affected. But if members of my family act the same way, I often take on their negative frame of mind. My own behavior shows me that I have a choice about my response to other people's moods and attitudes....I don't have to have a bad day just because someone I love is struggling.

No, it's much better to be completely unaffected by other peole's emotions, to be self-centered and unfeeling and wholly lacking in empathy. Because that's such a useful response, so helpful, so accepting, so compassionate!

p. 146, May 25:

Denial is a symptom of the effects of alcoholism....Today it is important for me to be in an environment in which honesty is practiced. I don't necessarily launch into a detailed description of my woes or my joys--that isn't always desirable or appropriate--but when asked how I'm doing, I try to ask myself what the real answer is. This frees me from the habit of denial and gives me choices.

Evidently this wasn't a page she had read enough times yet when I got married. The day before, when we were all hanging out on the deck having a pleasant chat, an idle, timely, jovial comment about marriage from Nisou's father elicited from my mother a bitter emission about men (the Dittohead had just broken up with her). Soon afterward my sister took my mother along with her on a little jaunt to the Beasts' house to pick up coolers we were borrowing and seized the opportunity to remind her that when Usans ask "How are you?" they actually mean "Hello," and to apprise her of the fact that whatever had happened with the Dittohead was not appropriate conversational fodder among people she had met only glancingly.

Anyway, I clearly have no idea what "denial" means. I thought it was refusing to acknowledge a truth, such as hearing your husband verbally abuse you in front of your children, your family, and what friends you have left, yet continuing to believe "that's just his way" and that he actually loves and respects you. Apparently it's a symptom that you just have, even though it's meaningless; it's like having hoof-and-mouth disease: you won't die from it, but you will die from having it, because having it means you get shot. I have no idea what connection that first sentence has to do with the rest of the paragraph.

p. 153, June 1:

A long-time member says, "An expectation is a premeditated resentment." I take this statement to suggest that when I have a resentment I can look to my expectations for a probable source. Here's an example: I have a brother who is less attentive to being prompt than I am. When I make a plan with him that involves meeting at a certain time, I am co-operating in establishing conditions that encourage me to nurse a resentment. On the other hand, when I make a plan with my brother that is based on no expectation of promptness, I feel no resentment.

Do babies premeditatedly resent their parents for expecting to be feed, cleaned, and kept warm? If I were in the situation above, I'd damn well resent that if I had to associate with this brother, I couldn't call my time my own. I mean, I wouldn't ask him to drive me to the airport, but if I were making Thanksgiving Dinner, expecting him to show before the pie was served would not be unreasonable on my part. Would it?

What happened on June 1? The coincidence of dates could be no more than coincidence, but two of the three?