Mistakes I Don't Want to Make -- Garbo

My poor mother, at the end of her life, wanted to go back to teaching Sunday School; those two hours on a Sunday morning had been a refuge for Mom herself when she was young. Weekday secular school in rural West Virginia, for Mom, had been a perfect storm of (what we now call) dyslexia, the demands of farm life, and lack of transportation to the high school in Huntington. All of that made learning reading, writing, history and math miserable and hopeless. 

But the Sunday School my mother attended was full of understanding people who taught the children that everyone was equal in God's eyes, even little girls in flour-sack dresses and too-small shoes. When young Lydia grew up to become my mother, she gave me a special first name, the name of the woman who was her favorite Sunday School teacher. 

After my middle sister and I left home, Mom (in partnership with my late father) taught Sunday School off and on  But the death of my youngest sister, Joanne, in 1973 was followed by a grief that triggered the depressive gene present in many members of Mom's family. 

For longer than I can bear to think about, my mother sat on the sofa in the living room, looking out bleakly at the trees growing bare in early November, brooding over how awful winter was and how long it would be till spring. My mother smoked one Winston after another and drank cups of lukewarm Sanka, and called me far too frequently to tell me that the leaves were falling off the trees and winter was horrible. Spring was coming, of course, but it was muddy, and summer was hot, and fall was pretty but it meant winter was coming again. 

At first, I didn't understand and I tried to cheer my mother up because I thought she was in a bad mood. But then I began to catch on. Popular magazines of the day had begun to publish articles with questionnaires built into them: "What Is Depression, and Do You Have It?"

Question 9: How often do you phone your adult daughter to tell her that the leaves are falling of the trees? 

a. Once a month
b. Once a week
 c. Once a day
d. Hourly 

Having chosen "c" and wondering gloomily when the answer would become "d," I would hold the phone receiver to my ear and listen to Mom's troubles as sympathetically as I could. Her complaints were valid. My father, God rest his soul, was a jerk. My sister did cause a lot of problems. (Hi, Sissy!) November rain on bare trees could be ugly. (The natural cycle of life, blah blah blah, we all hate it.)

I suspected, however, that if my mom would find something to do besides look out the window at the leafless trees, she would be happier. I knew she was too overwhelmed by other adults to go back to practical nursing work. (I have always been pretty overwhelmed by other adults myself.) Even bowling, which she'd used to enjoy with friends, didn't appeal any more. 

So during our informal phone counseling sessions, I'd ask Mom about teaching Sunday School, and she'd demur. I think she was waiting till she felt better; I thought taking the action might help her feel better. But I am not someone who likes to push people. 

Then my formerly-troublesome sister was finally able to drag Mom to the doctor to confirm what our mother was worried might be true. Mon had a terminal illness. And this tremendous blow, unpredictably, blasted away the old depression. Suddenly, Mom was more mentally and emotionally alive than she'd been in years. In particular, she expressed interest in teaching Sunday School. 

That didn't happen. The desperate medical treatments failed and within a year my mother died at the age of sixty. I don't know how things would have been if she'd gone to the doctor sooner. I'll never know what choices she might have made if she had been able, say at age fifty, to glimpse her future and know she had ten years. I don't blame her for her illness or her depression. As a parent myself, the inkling of what the pain of the loss of a child must be like is a terrible thing. People get sick; medicine can't fix everyone. 

But from this experience I know just how easy it is to delude yourself into thinking that you have forever to do whatever you want to do -- teach Sunday School or go kayaking or write. 

Speaking of writing, here's something that may sound odd to you. But it's connected to the lost-opportunities idea. Ready? I believe I literally remember a couple of previous lifetimes in which I wanted to write and didn't or couldn't. 

I understand why some people would be skeptical about this, but when I remember, I mean I have that distant foggy semi-recall that is like remembering my family's old house before my parents moved to Indianapolis with us two older girls. The older I get, the more faint these recollections are, but they are there, and real. We did live upstairs in that old house with the blue-gray wallpaper. Because I was so young, though I reecall more feelings than observations or sensations. That's the same way I remember what I accept as past-life memorie: I get hints of old feelings and situations. 

In both of the lifetimes about which I get the strongest memories, there's deep regret that I didn't write more while I had the time. In one life, I was always scrambling for money and for social recognition. In the other life, I had money and an established place in society but I had an alcoholic's outlook on life and I put all my energy into tumultuous personal relationships. Rich or poor, in society or outside it, I could have written but I put other things first and then I ran out of time. 

I feel about these misty hints of my past the way I feel about newspaper horoscopes: even if they are wrong, there's no harm in them. In fact, I've usually found daily horoccopes to be loaded with good advice: Save your money. Visit a sick friend and cheer them up. Look in the mirror before a job interview and make sure you look your best.  Group efforts work when everyone cooperates. 

That's how I regard about any lingering regrets I have in this life about how I might have used my time in my previous incarnations (or other dimensions or however that all works) -- it's positive motivation. The non-stop urge I experience, to remember that at age 62, every day without pain or illness and diminished cognition is such a blessing. I might get three thousand more days like today, or I might get three hundred, or thirty, or three. 

My motivation is a combination of not wanting to blow opportunities as I did in past lives plus my memories in this life of my late mom wishing she could have the last few years back so she could make Sunday School lesson plans instead of sit on the sofa thinking gloomy thoughts. 

I am motivated to write every day, and do my best work. I'm highly motivated. 

Gertrude Stein pretending to write something.

Garbo

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