Do you see what I see?

All my life, I've lived with the knowledge that I come from a long line of strong, Southern women. I've known this, I really have. And I've always feared that I would not live up to their expectations. Because I don't really know what it is to be Southern, I'm not always sure what the Southern response should be in any given situation.

My great-grandmother, Gladys, was ninety-five years old when she died. We actually put her in the ground on her ninety-sixth birthday. We stood by her grave and shouted "Happy Birthday" to her, while trucks stopped out on the road to see what was going on. You see, she had 13 children, 11 of which were still alive. Twelve of those kids had kids of their own, only my namesake uncle died before marrying and raising his own family (baby of the family, only one that died in Viet Nam, very tragic story). Most of the grandkids already had children. And some of the great-grandchildren (like me!) already had children. There were a LOT of people there for her funeral. I'm sure we made quite the sight, dressed in every color of the rainbow, screaming our heads off at the side of the hole in the ground.

My kids are fifth generation babies, just like I was. There were pictures taken of each of them, resting snugly in my great-grandmother's arms, printed in her local newspaper. After the birth of each child, I had to make the pilgrimage, no matter where I was living, to her home in Oklahoma, so that she could have her picture taken with my babies and put in the paper. She loved those pictures, she felt that they showed she'd accomplished something. When she passed, I felt a hole open up inside of me, and that really surprised me. No more pictures would be taken of her and my children, to be printed in that paper, so that her friends could see how beautiful her family was. Yes, they mostly equated beauty with how many grand-children you could claim. For my great-grandmother, her family was beyond just simply beautiful, for she had over three hundred, if you counted them all up.

I think that hole was there because she was the least complicated female family relationship that I'll ever have, and I truly mourned that simple friendship we shared. She teased me because I stopped at six children, telling me she did it with more than twice as many. Yes, I'd agree, but life was simpler back then. She'd reply that it was simpler because the adults ran the house, not the other way around. I'd silently agree. We bonded because of our big families though. Not to say that she was a sweet little old lady, because she was far from that. By the end, her eyesight was all but gone, her hearing only worked when you were two rooms away and muttered a curse under your breath, and most of her internal organs decided to go to work on a part time basis. I guess after almost ninety six years, some things just decided they'd worked long enough.

My relationship with my mother was tumultuous, at best. We rode this roller coaster of recriminations and regrets, love and laughter, for most of my life. In hindsight, I can see the signs of a very manic depressive life in the way that we lived. I've charted and graphed and diagrammed my life with my mother ten ways to Sunday, and no matter how I look at it, I see the peaks and valleys in the journeys that we took. It fills my heart with sadness when I think of how unhappy she must have been at her core, for most of her entire existence, to keep leading such a vagabond life, searching in vain for a peace that would release her from the demons in her mind. It shatters me when I think of all of the angry words I hurled at her, so many times, when she announced she was uprooting us, again, to start over somewhere else. Yes, I loved the adventure of moving, but part of me really longed for a place I could call home, and I wasn't getting it with my mom. Still though, seeing so many ugly scenes in my mind's eye, and having the knowledge that she was most probably bipolar, really puts a different spin on why we traipsed across the bottom half of the country as often as we did.

My daughters, each of them, are very assuredly Southern, even though the oldest will deny it if asked. However, I am trying to eradicate some of the baser Southern tendencies from them. I don't want them to think that nice girls do what they're told, and never complain, and boys are in charge of everything. I want them to use their brains. I want them to use their mouths. I want them to do math, and science, and drive fast, go to college, and want more, and be able to actually get it. I have difficult, and very beautifully distinct, relationships with each of my four daughters. My oldest is truly one of the best friends I have. My baby is the song that is sung in my heart. The other two are mercy and grace, always doing for others and unto others, and both know just how to smile. I am truly blessed with my daughters.

My hardest relationship is with my grandmother. I call her Mama, or Grams, depending on my mood. My mother gave birth to me when she was only 18, so my grandmother was around quite a bit to help out. Or at least that's the story I used to tell myself. I think the reality is that my mom was with my dad, in another part of the country, for the first few months of my life. My dad was not all that great back then, and I think my mom left him. Or my Papa went to get her. I'm really not sure. That part is fuzzy. Hey, don't blame me, I was less than a year old. I think.

Anyhow, we somehow ended up living with my grandparents. My grandfather, or Papa, up until the day he died, was the man that I compared all other men to. He was my measuring stick, in the way that my husband has become the same thing, encompassing all that is right and perfect with men, a living reminder of how chivalry is not dead. I have long-treasured memories of that special man, and all of the ways that he spoiled me and doted on me, and showed me that I was worth love. I didn't always feel that growing up, as there was never a 'dad' around long enough to establish that bond that is so essential in a girls life. My Papa forged that bond with me, and made sure I understood that the parade of men that went through my house like there was a revolving door on my mom's bedroom had nothing to do with me. It didn't really have anything to do with her either, except as an indicator that something was wrong. But we're Southern, see, so nobody would dare accuse her of being a mental case. Instead, it was whispered that she was still shaken up about the way my dad had treated her, and she'd never gotten over that. Whatever. Anyhow, Papa was the single steady male in my life, and I adored him for it.

Why do I keep skirting the issue of my grandmother? When I started this, it was just going to be short blurbs about everyone else, because I really wanted to talk about my Mama. She's been on my mind a lot lately, because we're going to see her soon. It's been since my great-grandmother's funeral, in December of 2005, since I've seen her. Half my family hasn't seen her since December of 2004. I can't believe how long it's been for some of them. And I don't call as much as I should. I know I don't. Part of me rebels, because I honestly can't remember a single time, ever in my entire life, and I mean EVER, that that woman has picked up the phone and dialed my number. She just doesn't do that. It goes beyond hating the long distance bill too. She just thinks that she shouldn't have to call. She thinks everyone else should call her. She's the matriarch of the family now, and she takes her role very seriously.

I used to get so angry with her for her attitude. She acts like people owe her something, because she's buried her Daddy and her Mom, her husband and her daughter. Yes, my grandmother is the last person behind me now. When she's gone, there will be no one for me to turn to with questions about my past, about my history. Of course, she's not always been the most reliable source, or so I thought. I'd get upset because I'd share a memory of mine and she'd tell me it hadn't happened, or tell me I was remembering it wrong. Generally, I felt she wore rose-colored glasses when it came to memories.

It wasn't until recently, until reading another blogger talk about memories, that I came to understand that there is truth in what my Mama remembers, but there is also truth in what she doesn't.

I am not yet thirty five years old. I have my life stretching before me, like a blank book, waiting for me to write my story, waiting for me to fill in the missing pieces. She has her book almost full.

She's buried the people that meant the most to her, and now she lives in a house alone, waiting for the phone to ring. I helped her move from the home that she shared with my grandfather for over thirty years in Texas, to a smaller house in Oklahoma. It's still new, and unfamiliar, and strange to her. There are no memories of her children in that house. There aren't even really memories of her grandchildren or great-grandchildren, as not many people have visited her there.

Every day, her world shrinks a little bit, and there is nothing she can do about it. She was diagnosed with macular degeneration a few years back. She went in for cataract surgery and instead left knowing that her world would slowly go dark until she saw nothing. I can't even imagine that. So much of my life is centered around my sight. Yes, I think that there are many blind people that live full and happy lives, but those people are not my Mama. She's had her sight for so long, and to know that it's going must be heartbreaking for her.

Beyond the sadness though, I think there is anger. Her life is written, but she's not ready to put down the pen yet. Her dad has been gone for over twenty years, her husband for over ten. Her daughter has been gone for five, her mother for over one. Her and I? We're still here. She looks behind her and sees emptiness. She looks in front of her and sees me, the child of her baby child - the daughter of her daughter that is gone, the one that almost didn't make it, the one that endured.

I spent so many years not understanding her, being angry with her, wanting her to step into my whirlwind of a life and rescue me from my mother. She didn't though. She was the safe harbor from the storm in the summer, but she never let us stay beyond Labor Day. We always had to return to the craziness of our "normal" life, and I really hated her for that. My brother was there, but I've learned that his memory is very subjective, almost non-existent. On most days, he'll admit that *I* am his memory, because he's blocked most everything about our younger years. It's just too painful for him.

So here I stand, in the middle. My daughters are in front of me, with more blank pages than even I have. My Mama is behind me, with only a few empty pages left. I stand in the middle, surrounded by the ghosts of strong women, strong-willed women. Here I stand, in the middle, hoping to raise four daughters to be the kind of women that know their own worth, that know not to measure themselves against women in magazines or on television, frightened that I will fail them. Here I stand, in the middle, hoping to live up to the expectations of my Mama, expectations that have been colored by her many years spent twisting and shaping the past to fit into a mold that is acceptable to her.

I take all of this with me when I sit down to write. I feel this pull to include my mom's gypsy-ness, to pull it apart, to try to understand it, to hopefully escape it. I feel compelled to include the adventurous spirit of my daughters, how they each think of going to colleges, far apart from each other, getting married and settling down someday, dreams so far from what I dreamed, but also similar in many ways. They want home too, but they want it because they know, from the experiences I've given them, what home really is. I feel like I haven't failed them there. When I write, I want to describe my great-grandmother's patience, her steadfastness. Hers was not really a love match, but she stood by his side for decades, and she wept at his funeral. He was not an easy man to love, my great-grandpa Joe, but she managed it. She lived her entire life in a forty mile radius of where she was born, never venturing beyond those boundaries that were set back then, never seeing what was beyond those imaginary lines.

Mostly though, when I write I want to re-create my Mama. I want to tell the world of how she married young and had two daughters, then divorced that man because he was not nice. Divorce in those days rarely happened, and the scandal was swift and harsh in her rural Oklahoma town. She left her two small girls with family and went to California on her own. The courage it must have taken to do that astounds me. She knew that she needed to get her head together, knew that her girls were going to be cared for, so took off on an adventure of epic proportions in order to grab the life she must have really wanted. While there, she met and married my Papa, a Marine three years her junior. Again, the scandal must have been intense. Instead of marrying an older man that could take care of her and her children, she chose the man that made her heart melt faster than ice cream on a California beach. She grabbed him and held on tight. My mom was born shortly after that, in California, the product of a love so dazzling, so blinding, it was a thing of beauty to behold. Their marriage lasted forty three years. Only the hands of death could separate them. She stood by him through the military, the Korean War, when he drove a gas truck to put food on the table, when things were rough and lean, when things finally started getting better. She stood by him. She wasn't always the picture of gentility, she had her moments of fire, but she stood by him.

When I look back at her life, when I glance behind me to see the pages that were written before I arrived on the scene, it's sometimes like re-reading my very own chapters. Maybe the reason I have such mixed emotions where she is concerned is because I connect with those parts of her that are me. Her sense of adventure, her courage, her willingness to face a scandal because she knew it was best for her to get out of a bad situation no matter what society said, these are all things that I've always admired about her but have not always recognized in myself. She gave me those things, but it took me quite a few years to see that. She whispered them in my ear when she rocked me to sleep as a baby, she hid them in the stories she told me as a child, she wove them through the memories she shared with me as a teenager. Always, they were there, her gift to me, though sometimes I tried to refuse. Still, they were there.

When I look back at her life, when I read those pages that she has already written, I see something very clearly. She is me. I am her. And that is not a bad thing at all.