The difference between present and past tense

I was catching up on some blog reading this morning, and happened to read Juno's recent post about finding out a friend she had lost contact with had died recently. I read the comments, and began to post a comment of my own.

When I went to begin the third paragraph, I realized maybe I ought to just post to my OWN blog, if I've got this much to say on the subject.


Dealing with my mom's death has been difficult, of course. I can't imagine the death of a parent is ever easy, no matter how difficult the relationship may have been.

A friend of mine, who I'm not as close to as I once was, lost her father a few years ago. At the time, the only emotion I could imagine her feeling was relief, because her father was... well, he was at best a very crazy man, and at worst a very evil man. Either way, any time she had to engage with him at all, she wound up hurt by it.

I look back now, at how I behaved after her father died, and I pretty much feel like an asshole.

I mean, I wasn't cheering and doing endzone dances or anything, don't get me wrong. But I had a really hard time keeping my own relief - that this person who never did anything but hurt my dear friend was gone - under wraps. And I also tended to assume that she saw him the same way I saw him, forgetting that even a broken clock shows the correct time twice a day. And in an entire childhood, almost two decades of sharing a roof and a dinner table and a life, there had to be some good times, even amongst the very very bad times.

A little over a week after my mom died, I posted to my LiveJournal, talking about how I'd been in the car with Caz and the kids and a song had come on the radio that had just... it had completely smacked me with this memory I hadn't even realized I had, of driving around in our old Chevy Nova on a hot summer's day, me and my mom singing along with John Denver.

It would be so easy, so simple and cut-and-dried and comforting, in the way that the pretty lies always are, to decide that happy memory captured the essence of my mom. That all of the problems between us were my fault, my doing, and my mom was pure of heart and intention all the time, and all the slights and slings and arrows were figments of my juvenile emo imagination.

God, that would be nice. Simple. So easy to just say, "See, the problem, Thorny, was you were just bad. And if you had been less bad, maybe you would have seen how woooooonderful your mom was, and so you only have yourself to blame that you two weren't closer. That, in fact, when she died you two were technically not speaking to each other."

If one were to point out that it's kinda effed up that self-hatred seems like an easier route than wrestling with the big complicated truth, I wouldn't disagree, though I would point out that when self-hatred was a part of one's life for a very, very, very long time, it's relatively easy to go back to. Kind of like how getting dropped in some byzantine foreign country would be terribly frightening for most, but if you grew up there and already knew the language and the customs, well then it's not so bad, even though you're still talking about pre-Glasnost Russia or whatever.

But regardless. I got out of the self-hatred game and learned a lot and spent a lot of time on therapists' couches to learn how to wrestle the big complicated truth, so I guess that's what I'll have to do.

It's not easy to face. It's harder, in fact, to face it now than I think it ever was. Because at least before, when I sat on some therapist's couch talking about how my mom hurt me in this way or that way, I still could cling to this John Hughes-ish fantasy that maybe someday, in some '80s-soundtracked future, my mom and I could sit across from each other and talk, and I could say, "You know, that really hurt me and I was pretty effed up for a long time because of that," and she would say, "I'm so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I've always just loved you so much." and I would reply, "I know. And it's okay. I know you were doing the best you could. I know things weren't easy for you back then either." And she would give the brave half-smile of the walking wounded, and she would say, "No, things weren't easy for me back then. But I still wish I'd known then what I know now, so I could have just done things better from the start." And I would say, "It's okay. At least we have now." And then we would hug or clink glasses or continue walking down the beach or bake some more cookies, whichever advertising-inspired soft-focus backdrop I'd assembled for my fantasy that time.

And so now, what hurts is not just the loss of my mom, but the loss of that chance. The knowledge that there will be no weepy reconciliation to soaring violins and plinky piano.

There's this whole body of literature out there about star-crossed lovers. What about star-crossed mothers and daughters? There doesn't seem to be a lot of literature about that. No guidebooks on how I'm supposed to deal with all this.

It would be so easy to pretend that it was all my fault. That if I'd only been more forgiving, less proud, blah blah blah, then everything would have been fine.

Except the whole thing about that being a lie gets in the way.

The things I had trouble forgiving really were bad. Were things anyone would have trouble forgiving. It wasn't that I was too proud. It was that after being hurt so many times, I had to put up barriers to protect myself and my family. I didn't make those decisions lightly, either. I agonized over them, and reversed myself many times. Really, for good or ill, I did the best I could.

But it still sucks. It sucks that that was the reality of the situation. And it sucks that she's gone. It sucks that the situation can have no other reality.

I'm finding, thus far, that life after Mom's death is in one way very similar to life when Mom was alive. Some days I think of her fondly and can only remember the good times, and I find myself thinking, "What the hell was wrong with you, that you couldn't make things work?" And other days I remember the bad times, I look at myself and see the scars I've carried for so long, and I think, "Why did it have to be that way? Why couldn't it have been different? What was going on for her, that she felt she had no other choice but to treat me the way she did?"

On the surface, it seems like the big difference is a matter of verb tense. And it is. But there's a reason Mrs. Griffith made such a huge deal about verb tenses and grammar in eighth grade. Because they aren't just words. It's the difference between present and past. The difference between something which is currently true, but may change at any moment, and something which is over and done, and can never be changed.

It used to be that what we had was simply what we had right then, which was transitory. With some work and the right set of circumstances, it could all change.

Now though, what we had is all we had. There will never be anything more, nothing new or different. The ledger on our relationship is closed.

My sister made the comment, in the days after my mom's death, when we were talking about it a lot while planning the funeral and making the arrangements, that while she feels bad that like me, she was "on the outs" with Mom when she died, at least they weren't fighting. Her last interaction with Mom was terse, but at least it was civil, just like mine was.

In a relationship defined by shouting and door-slamming and arm-waving, I suppose it's a blessing that my last words to Mom were, "Hope you have a happy birthday," and her last words to me were, "Thank you."

It isn't much. But considering the ways so many of our conversations ended, it's not bad.

I might still be am!

Before I begin, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who sent kind words and compassion my way this past month or so. It's been rough, and I've been pretty thoroughly effed up for much of it, but I'm recovering, at least as much as I ever will. I'm sorry for not thanking everyone individually, but I hope you'll all understand. It helped, during a very difficult time, to know there were so many people out there, thinking good thoughts for me and mine. Thank you all very much.

And now, on to the knitting, and a little reminder that life does, indeed, go on.


Second note: So for several days now I've been going, "Dangit, I can't believe no one has commented on my high-larious post!" And then I got a lovely message from Crazy Lanea this morning mentioning that she hopes I can get back to posting soon, as she misses my posts. (Admit it, Lanea - what you really miss are the stories that make you look at your pets' shenanigans with a new, grateful-they-don't-have-thumbs perspective! Am I right? Thought so. grin) And that's when I thought, "Wait, what? But I just posted a few days ago! ....didn't I?"

Yeah, apparently not. As Homer says, "I am so smart! S-M-R-T!"


Written on June 14, 2007:

Lesson learned: Never buy yarn named after an accursed gem.

I've been having trouble with my STR Jewel of the Nile yarn since just about the beginning. I started it as a Jaywalker, was doing well, and then I realized, while working a seriously endless gusset, that I had made the hugest heel flap in the history of creation. The leg was a little loose, but I wasn't too worried about it. The heel flap, however, was right out.

So I frogged back to just before the heel flap early one morning, and Ben woke up to find me frogging directly into the ballwinder.

I guess it looked like fun, because a few hours later he Houdini'd his way into my Active Stash, got out the yarn and the partial sock, and frogged all but the first inch and a half of it all over the living room, including tangling some of it into the workings of my Precious, the recliner, getting freakin' chair grease on my beautiful beautiful yarn.

I set it aside for a while, until I could deal with it without either crying or calling the gypsies (that's 1-800-GYPSIES, for all your child-unloading needs!). Then Mom died, then a bunch of other stuff happened, and finally a little over a week ago I hauled it out, untangled it, trimmed out the greased up section, frogged the remainder of the sock, and wound it all back up. A day later, the little anklebiter got at it again and undid half the ball.

That night I untangled and rewound it, and pondered pattern choices. Jaywalker felt tainted. I wanted something interesting but not too complicated. Alison has been working on Embossed Leaves, and I thought perhaps the predominance of the greeny blue in Jewel of the Nile would work well with Embossed Leaves.

I cast on and worked the ribbing, only to discover it pooling freakily. No way was it going to work for Embossed Leaves. So I decided to change it up, leave the ribbing as it was and do Monkey instead. So I printed out the pattern and got to work. An enjoyable knit, even though I'm still uncertain as to how I like the actual final product. But nice and easy - had it memorized by the end of the first repeat.

I got about midway through the third repeat before I took a long hard look at it and realized that it just wasn't going to work. It was huge. Hugely huge. I was going to have to go down a needle size.

I frogged back to the ribbing, figuring the ribbing would be fine, and started again on US1s. Fine.

Yesterday, the little fiber bandit got at the damned sock AGAIN and yanked out the dpns, but I busted him before he could cause any further damage (though one dpn is still AWOL, dammit). I worked the needles back in without incident, pilfered a US1 from a different sock, and carried on my merry way.

Then this afternoon, the kids were in the bath and I was sitting at the doorway to the bathroom knitting on the sock when I realized that where I should have had 16 sts, I had 17. I counted and recounted and counted again, and there were still 17 gorram stitches on that needle. I then looked and looked and looked, and could not for the life of me figure out where the extra stitch had come from. I counted across the stockinette rows of the repeat previous and it had 16. WHERE was this extra stitch coming from?!

Finally, I decided it was just easier to frog back to the end of the previous repeat and try again. Which I did.

Then tonight, I was on the phone with my sister for a long time, and I was knitting away. All was fine. It was a little awkward, because my nifty super-cool hands-free rig for the cordless phone lost a fight with a nose-miner about a week ago, and so I was back to having to cradle the phone between my shoulder and my ear while I knitted. But I was managing just fine, and had even managed to reach the heel flap. Yay!

So I tried the sock on once I'd done about half the heel flap, and interrupted my sister's charming little anecdote about going to a baseball game with some coworkers with an incendiary stream of cussing. Then I had to explain that my sock, that I'd been working on for almost a week, was too damned small. My sister, who tries hard to understand the Knitting Thing, was as supportive and compassionate as she could be, considering how little she comprehended of the issue. But still, full points for trying.

I chucked the whole kit-n-kaboodle aside, knowing that if I tried to frog it right then I would use Lanea's butane-and-lighter fluid frogging method, and that would definitely kill any last remaining wisp of a chance of us getting our security deposit back some day.

I went and chatted with Caz a bit, and he kindly made me a late-night snack (PMS gives me insane food cravings, it's seriously unfair). I told him about the sock and how mad I was and how I was more than a little convinced the yarn is cursed. I shared with him my plan to give this cussed yarn one more try, and if that blew up in my face, then I was going to throw in the towel and pass it on to some other sucker more capable knitter.

We got up from the table (where I'd spilled a huge mug of water all over the place, and bobbled my scrambled egg sandwich a total of FIVE times - thanks PMS, the clumsy-beyond-all-reason thing is a HOOT!) and I said,

"Oh hey, come here and see this damned sock. I still can't believe it's too fraxing small!"

I got it out, sat down and pulled it onto my foot, expecting it to stop dead over my heel as it had before, only this time? It inched over my heel. It was snug, no mistake, but it worked.

I thought about cussing some more. A LOT more. But instead opted for sitting in near-catatonic shock.

Caz, trying to be supportive said, "Maybe it's just because I'm here. You've always said I've got 'Luck' written down on my character sheet." (I apologize if some of you don't get the joke, but please do not ask, because it is seriously the nerdiest thing since Revenge of the Nerds VIII: Nerds in Spamadise.)

I spoke in a monotone: "No. I think I'm just dumb somehow. I don't even get it. I'm telling you, it did not fit this foot 45 minutes ago."

Caz said, quietly, "I believe you... You can still be mad about it, you know."

To which I replied, "I know. Heck, I might still be am!"

(Yeah. "I might. Still. Be. Am." Those are the actual words that came out of my mouth.)

This prompted him to scramble off the couch and down the hall, cackling and hooting like a loon, leaving me helplessly cussing and trapped by the now-sorta-kinda-fitting half-sock, while he sent out emails to everyone I know calling me The Great Conjugator and laughing himself ill.

One of these days, he's going to wake up with a dpn shoved where the sun don't shine. I'm just sayin'.


Epilogue: I have tried the damned sock on again since, and it still just barely, BARELY fits over my heel. And so I think it's just not salvageable still. So it's definitely going in the time-out corner for a while, and then we'll see what happens.

Besides, I don't want to say too much about it yet, but um... I cast on something new.