It's Alright, Honey

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 14, Verse 13

"Before every man there lies a wide and pleasant road that seems right but ends in death."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I've been married since 2006, but, when the shit really gets caught up in the blades of the fan, I call my mother.  Jewish boys are like that-- maybe you've heard.  And when venting about this conundrum or that, oftentimes there is silence on the other end of the line.  

I'm trapped in my current job.

We can't afford to pay the nanny.

The babies are sick.

I'm terrified I'll never make more than $30,000 a year.

The house is falling apart.

The family is falling apart.

We have too much stuff.

I'm anxious/depressed/scared/sad.

This.  That.  The other.

She's heard it all before.  Christ, she's been a mother to some neurotic, clinging idiot or other since 1967.  You think she hasn't heard it all before?

So, yeah.  Sometimes there's silence.  What is there to say sometimes?  There are no comforting words, sometimes.  There are no pearls or gems, sometimes.  So she listens.  Eventually, she sighs.  Oddly enough, her sighs are comforting.  Her exhalations, to me, have wisdom.  At the very least, even if they don't have wisdom, I know that, if she's sighing, I've been heard.  Finally, she'll conclude by saying:

"It's alright, honey.  It'll all work out in the end."

The first time I heard her say this, maybe three years ago, I took the phone away from my ear and looked at it quizzically  with my brow furrowed in-- I don't know-- surprise?  Alarm? 

"You mean-- in the end end?  As in, what I'm worrying about won't matter cuz we're all going to die?"

(Beat.)

"Well, yeah," my mother replied, laughing a little laugh of-- I don't know-- surprise?  Alarm?

I laughed too.  Because, shit: she's right.

Since that conversation, when I call her, sometimes I wait for that line-- sometimes I don't even wait and I give it to her.  

"Well, I suppose it doesn't matter because it'll all work out in the end, right, Ma?"

And she'll laugh.  I like when my mother laughs-- especially about death.  Or maybe she's laughing about life.  The futility of it, the silliness of it.  What we put ourselves through.  All the hand-wringing and the envelope-licking, the potty-training and the gutter-cleaning.  Maintenance.  Pluck the unibrow (I told you you'd learn all my secrets if you stayed here long enough), replace the washing machine, upgrade the cellphone, fill the tank, scrub the pan, go on vacation, come home.

Laundry

Laundry 

Laundry

Laundry

Laundry

Laundry

It's funny, if you think about it.  Most of the time we're too deep in it to step away and look at ourselves, tottering around, being funny.  I like to step outside myself and watch what's going on.  If I'm ever sitting around at the table sort of staring off at nothing, I'm not psychotic, I'm kind of just watching the show.  I'm trying to enjoy it for what it is.  Because I get so caught up in the terror of the moment, the choking fury of my little problems and struggles that I sometimes forget that this whole stupid thing is about being nice to people and paying your bills and bringing up children who aren't sociopaths, polluting as little as possible, making enough money so you can dither around the halls of your retirement home in non-thrift shop pants, leave some non-embarrassing amount to your offspring, and dying quietly in your Stryker bed.  

When my mother's mother was wasting away from lymphoma, her husband bought her a Basset Hound.  That's exactly the kind of well-meaning, though completely inept thing my emotionally retarded grandfather would do.  As if to more clearly demonstrate the inappropriateness of the gesture, the poor Basset Hound died shortly after being acquired.  "When that dog died," my eldest sister told me recently, "Bubbe said she stopped believing in God."  Then, of course, Bubbe died.  My mom was 25, and had already been a mother herself for 7 years.

Sometimes I think about what would have happened to me if my mother had died when I was twenty-five.  When I was twenty-five, I was working on an ambulance as an EMT and I was making $11.33 an hour.  I had gotten engaged that year, and I had decided to pursue a Master of Education degree.  I have no idea how it would have changed me.  I don't know if it would have put the brakes on everything.  I don't know if I'd have gone back to school, if I would have gone through with getting married.  Would I have turned to drugs or alcohol, attempted suicide, become severely depressed-- I don't know.  I don't know how she made it out of that hole herself.  Her relationship with her mother was very different than the relationship she and I have-- still, I don't know.  I'm often disappointed in myself because of the relatively poor and disordered way in which I cope with stress and anger and frustration in my life, and I cannot imagine how much worse off I would be today if I'd known real, true tragedy growing up the way my mother did.  

I know tragedy now-- I've seen it in the lives of countless people who come through the crippled gates of the place where I work, and I've finally seen it in my own family, too.  I know what it smells like and tastes like, I feel it in my skin and my hair and my eyes are so tired and dry and there's still laundry to fold and it really doesn't matter matter matter because it's alright, honey.  It'll all work out in the end.

My mother's laughing.  I can hear her.  I hope yours is, too.