So, as if my upbringing and my hand-me-down family furniture and my behavioral habits and my patterns of speech and the drawl that slips out somewhere between my second and third glass of Pernod didn’t prove beyond a shadow of a goddamn doubt that I am, in fact, a product of the South, I now have confirmation: my mother (adoptive, not biological) has been committed to a loony bin.
I’m not kidding: an honest-to-god, men-in-little-white-coats loony bin.
Now, even when I was little, I could tell she was a bit…off. I mean, yes, she was always completely loving and caring and a good mother, but she was also really wacko at times. Like, flying off the handle for no good reason. Like, taking to her bed for weeks and months at a time, doped up on goofballs. Like, getting totally worked up about something–antiquing, old home tours, or B. J. Thomas concerts, for example–throwing us in the car, and driving ’till her obsession was sated. (But never more than four hours in a day–she couldn’t sit for longer than that.) You begin to get the picture.
This condition has only gotten worse with age. Her genetic disposition toward schizophrenia hasn’t helped matters. Neither has her drinking, nor her typically Baptist denial that she’s ever touched anything stronger than creme de menthe. Three failed marriages–including her divorce from my (adoptive) father–have been the icing on the cake of her sad downward spiral. (God, I should write romance novels.)
But whatever. The fact of the matter is that these days she’s using safety scissors and plastic utensils.
Curiously, her…confinement hasn’t really affected me. I mean, I’m not very close to her anymore. I think I’ve spoken to her twice in four years (mostly because her last husband lived in a really rural part of Mississippi and didn’t have a phone), and both of those occasions ended in frustration and wringing of hands and me remembering why I don’t bother. Simply put, we’ve lost the ability to communicate. We bear no grudge; we just accept the fact that we’re different people now and that we don’t have much to say to one another.
If I feel anything for her, it’s pity. Not guilt: she’s dug into this hole all by herself, despite years of effort from my brothers and me. Not sadness, either: at least she’s under supervision now–though I don’t hold any hope that the doctors will be able to improve her condition. Just pity.
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