Mum Says (a eulogy for my mother)

 

Beginnings and endings are never so simple as we would wish. Few things are, are they? We wish for simple things: a simple solution, an easy answer, an easy birth, an easy death. We are seldom granted any such. More’s the pity. 

Instead life is harder - and richer  - than we could ever have imagined when we were young. Even the simplest life; the most honest, straightforward existence is fraught —and full. And yet, “No one is so old that he does not think he could live another year,” said Cicero. We hope to die, when we come to it at last, “in a good old age, full of days.” Another wish not often granted. 

And even when it is, it is seldom enough. It is not enough now. How could it be? How can we be satisfied when life is all we have, all we’ve ever known, all we leave behind when we go?

Ninety three years our mother was here. Full of days. Still, not enough. How could it be? If you knew her, if you loved her as we all did, as she loved all of us, present and absent, how could it be? 

I’m grateful for the time we had.

What would she want me to say now? That she looked good. She’d want me to mention that. That she has her eyebrows on. A nice outfit. Her hair done. This was not vanity. She was proud, but not vain. There was effort put forth, right to the end. It mattered to her, the effort; that she looked good, that her clothes looked pretty, not expensive but nice, that her husband was proud to be seen with her. She liked color, pattern. She had taste. 

She would want someone to say that she didn’t look ninety three years old — even now. That she couldn’t possibly be that age. That delighted her every time it happened and it happened a lot.

What else?

She loved flowers. She arranged them beautifully. She made pretty things from paper, scraps, paint. It mattered that there was beauty, all around her pretty things, even as her world grew small, her eye was on all of it — that things were… so. “Not where that goes. That looks better.” It mattered. What she couldn’t find that was bright or cheerful or right, she made, made better, made brighter, made right. In a long life she’d seen enough ugliness, hurt, pain. She fought against the dark with the tools she had to hand: color, pattern, scissors, paint, furniture. And of course she could see in the dark, couldn’t she? ”Owl lady.” She needed but a very little light. She used what there was.

“The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.” - Garcia Marquez

When the love of her life died after sixty two years together, she knew a new solitude. To be so alone at last was hard. They had been everywhere and always together. One never thought of one but with the other; Jerry and Stella — almost one word for 62 years. And then not. She filled the quiet as best she could. She was never left entirely alone — and for that she would want me to thank again and always my good brother and my amazing sister-in-law who between them made her life and home possible, and kept both my father and mother alive for years longer than either might otherwise have lived. I will never be able to thank them enough.

What she knew best was love, in which she was lucky and knew it. And what she had she gave away, always: food, affection, care, kindness. In this above all else she fought against not just the dark but the false light of being seen to do good. She despised the lie of public piety and ostentatious good deeds. She said once of a neighbor of my grandmother’s, “She’d be happy to stop and help — but she had to get to church.” Wicked little woman, was Stella. Funny.

“I guess I wasn’t very nice,” she’d say afterwards — when she’d been a bit sharp. Sometimes I’d agree. Didn’t much like that. “You not supposed to agree, damn you.” And then she’d call me a “smart ass,” and we’d giggle.

What she did mostly she did because it was right, because it was what you did, how you do, because that’s what you do if you aren’t awful. She could not fathom people being awful. “What on earth do they get out of it?!” she’d say with hurt astonishment, genuinely mystified by evil. Knew it when she saw it though it might take her a very long time, and even then she’d shake her head at what must have brought someone to be so cruel. 

She intended us all to always do better if we could, when and where we could. She did not understand people who wouldn’t or don’t. She always felt the need to see good in others. She was often disappointed. Never stopped her. 

To love is to help where help is needed.

“You don’t have to like it, and they don’t have to deserve it. Just do it anyway.”

From when we were very small and she was our world to when in the end she was small and we were hers, she never didn’t pay attention. There was great humility in this, and a greater good. “Do what you can.” She never claimed to know the answers to large questions. She could not explain much of the wider world, or why people did as they do. She knew we all might do better, and that she might, and that that was not always enough — to know that and to keep trying — but that it would have to do.

When I was mourning another loss she told me, “Just do what you can, then see if you can do a little more.” She said, “That’s all I know to do, all I know to tell you.”

And a hundred times she’d tell me she was done. Very seldom true. She just might try again.

And so she did. And so we do.

But then all our mothers are saints when they die, at least in the newspapers. She laughed to see so many perfect marriages memorialized, such stainless reputations and sterling characters — if only in the obituaries she always read first in her newspaper. She was particularly amused at the idea of everyone automatically becoming a sweet little old lady if they lived long enough.

She’d read or hear about someone having been “a blessing to all” or “a gift to all who knew her,” and she’d say, “Not really,” or “not that I ever noticed,” and smile. Wicked little smile.

She told me years ago, “Whoever you are already, old age just makes you more so.”

Old age took much from her; her husband, a grandson, but it left her nearly all she had always been, to very nearly the end. She was funny, sharp tongued, self-deprecating, kind.

“If you can’t do anything else,” she told me time and again, perhaps because I particularly needed reminding, “you can at least try to be kind.”

I try. I will try. 

She also taught us what it was to be useful, to work, to help, to be proud, to fight, to survive, to defend one another, and to laugh — specially at ourselves.

She’d say, “Don’t you laugh at that,” when she was mad or foolish — and then she’d laugh.

“That’s all I know to tell you,” she’d say. “It will matter more,” she told me, “that you tried.” Even if it mattered only to her, if only for her. “That’s for you, not for anybody else. You do that for you.”

“You’ll want to know you tried.” 

And so we do, don’t we? We try. I am trying. And so we shall.

Thank you, my sweet, tough little mother, our Stella, our North Star, for all you taught me, all you gave all of us. I promise. We will try.

Sorta Sorting Sinners

 If I'm being honest, the reason I drive the same way to work every day is because that's the way I drive to work. It's the same reason I make tuna salad the way I make tuna salad, why I put on my socks before I put on my trousers each morning. There was probably a learning curve to the way I drive to work back when I moved to Seattle and got the job, but twenty-some years in who remembers? Don't ask me how I came to this or why I do as I do — I just do, yes?

Part of my routine commute is that I take an exit downtown and then just follow the feeder lane back onto the freeway just before Cherry Street. I don't remember why. Something to do with traffic and a bottleneck. I don't remember. I just do. 

For years the three left lanes after the exit narrowed to two and then to one and then rejoined the freeway. For a couple of years recently, there was construction that forced everyone not exiting right to move to the left lane almost immediately. Bottleneck. Defeated my purpose (?) That may be the only time I changed my routine and believe me, I took some convincing. Eventually the construction, whatever it actually was, ended and I returned to my usual drive. However now, when one pulls up to the last light before returning to the freeway, there is not one light, there are not two, now there are three lanes and three traffic signals that go green one after another and feed all three lanes onto the Interstate. 

This is… better? I trust it is. I can’t say. I tried to read a whole book once about how parking defines American society. It’s an interesting idea but I couldn’t finish the book. The only thing that is more boring than cars is traffic. Turns out, parking is more boring than traffic.* Evidently I cannot be made to care about any of it even when I think I do. I can’t read maps well either. Don’t have that gene. Transportation generally? Yes, please! Glad to have it. Wouldn’t want to have to walk everywhere. Stopped taking buses when it became clear I’d never see my husband awake again if I didn’t drive to work. Three cheers then for the wheel.

Now, how does it all work? No idea. Cars? Just so much magic. I do what I'm told in terms of gasoline and oil changes and maintenance generally and hope I don't offend the engine faeries or the suspension gremlins. This is very much how I also take my pills in the morning, why I save my receipts with sales-tax, and what I actually understand of the bookstore’s hellish inventory system. I just try not to piss off the imps and the angels. 

And yet here I am about to talk about traffic again like I suddenly have something to say.

Here goes. Since I can’t listen to my radio in the car anymore — it’s not broken, our country is — I’ve been driving mostly in silence. Maybe that’s why I’ve noticed something mildly interesting about that additional traffic light and feeder lane. Mildly, mind.

As I’ve said, I’ve no idea what that third lane and light are meant to do and I genuinely don’t care. Trust it’s doing what it’s supposed to. What I see it do every morning though? It sorts out The Shits. 

You know those people who think changing lanes gets them somewhere sooner? Yeah, those. The right-hand lane, the one that has always eventually had to merge left before one gets onto the freeway, a car could just sort of end up there. Not always worth the effort of merging left until circumstances necessitate. But that second lane to the right of the right lane, that new third lane? That one has to be chosen. It doesn’t exist as such until after the last exit off to the right. To even go to that third light the driver has to get there. It’s a choice. 

That’s The Shits sorter.

From the lights to the freeway entrance is less than what? Five hundred feet? (Estimating distance in yards etc. isn’t really a thing of mine either. Let’s just call it “not far.”) So what possible advantage can there be in getting the whole way over to the far right to then have to inevitably merge left shortly thereafter?

The line is shorter, sorta. It moves sorta faster. 

But the real answer? Pretty sure the real answer is that it doesn’t do shit. It takes a few seconds off the drive maybe? A car-length or three if it’s busy? That’s nothing. That does nothing.

Years ago a very dear friend was staying at our house for a week and arranged to get his regular newspaper, to which we did not subscribe, temporarily diverted to our address. That’s how much he loved his hometown newspaper. In addition to being a devoted reader of the Los Angeles Times my friend happened also to be a devotee of lane-changing on the freeways. I was actually with him the morning his favorite paper published a scientific study proving that repeatedly changing lanes had no statistically significant effect on drive-times, fuel consumption, or anything else other than a greater propensity for what we used to call “fender benders” when there were still fenders to be bent. That’s right. Complete waste of time that accomplishes nothing, aggressive lane-changing. I suspect my friend almost lost faith in his favorite paper for printing such obvious and deliberate lies. 

I was easily persuaded myself, and not just for the pleasure I took in my friend being wrong.

So scuttling over to that third, supposedly faster feeder lane? I’d bet you a dollar today that it does nothing. And yet every morning they do it, The Shits, that mad dash out of the left lane. They scramble and scurry to the right and then the right again. They bolt and jockey and speed as best they can and they achieve what exactly? Break-lights. They get to jump a couple of car-lengths? Ahead of whom? Me? Is that a thing worth doing? Am I such an impediment? 

You should know I generally let The Shits in pretty much whenever they want. They always merge late. Always. Sure sign. I understand why you might hate me for doing this. I hate doing it. I get it. I wait my turn. I get over before I’m required. I observe the rules generally. Maybe I go a little fast sometimes, but that’s pretty much it. But yes, if some driver waits to merge until there’s really no excuse to have waited so long, I’m the person who lets them in rather than play bumper-chicken to try and block them from cheating. I agree this isn’t right. In a just world I wouldn’t do it. If this was a line at the movies (remember those?) or for the free government cheese, I would object loudly to someone cutting in. But in my car? A car I had to pay for? A car I have to insure? I’m not fighting The Shits. They're dangerous. They will hit you. They don't care.

You know how they are.

And we all assume we can anticipate who they are by what they drive as well as the way they drive. Not entirely false, I shouldn’t think. You drive a Tesla Truck or a giant pickup with tires higher than my car windows, I would guess you’re likelier to be one of The Shits. Stands to reason. Sort of a class thing: dudes in expensive douche-wagons. Likewise all the balding brats in Bugattis, the men with modified mufflers, feckless fucks with fancy rims. But The Shits come in un-moneyed versions as well, rednecks in those demolition-derby junkers they repair with tarps and tape and meth. No idea how they keep going, though obviously nothing’s going to stop them short of a major car fire. Pray note that the horn seems to work in everything driven by The Shits. Turn signals are less reliable. They must burn through break-lights, them boys. (There must be females or presumably the genus excrementis would die out. I would not know, but my guess is they all fuck like they drive; fast, haphazard, without a thought to anybody else on the road. Just sad to think on.)

Every morning I watch them. Far from a real majority, you understand, The Shits. But they are noticeable, yes? All I've ever wanted in a car was reliability and anonymity. Exact opposites then. Most of us just don’t want to die on our way to where we have to go. Simple rule. The Shits could not give a. That’s really why they stand out in so not a good way. Not just rude like the people who drift or wander or never signal (obviously a lot of crossover here though,) The Shits are all daredevils. The lot of ‘em, whatever sports car or shitbox they happen to be driving, whatever fancy corporate job or appointment with their drug clients to which they all are rushing, they all roll as if pursued by cops, bears, and the bad Transformers. 

That’s why there’s the last minute third light and lane then — to let them pass.

Seriously, I know it feels wrong. It feels like we’re letting them win somehow even though it’s really only a competition amongst themselves. And even if we are letting them get away with something, and even worse if somehow we’re wrong and they’re right and it is somehow a contest to see who can get wherever before whomever gets there first in the natural, logical, inexorable way of things, we have to let them. 

Just let them go. 

Let The Shits go, people. Let them pass. Better out than in-line behind you. Healthier for everyone to keep an eye.

Of course there are other sorters as well, other sorts of metaphorical third feeder lanes as it were; the ballot, most obviously, but that one can be tricky to trust — as we’ve learned to our collective horror yet again. But there are others, some more subtle, some not:

As a bookseller I’d say Bukowski, reading 48 Laws of Power or anything by Robert Greene, returning travel guides after thirty days with your paper airline ticket still in the book, asking for Gildersleeve’s Latin Grammar and being shocked it isn’t on the shelf — expressing shock generally at the absence of anything in a bookstore in 2025, frankly. Also asking for the book you wrote before saying you wrote it, buying golf books as gifts for non golfers, and just buying golf books come to that. Then there’s the existence of golf books — and golf.

There are things not specific to how I earn my living but I've learned to recognize from being in a retail service job, like people who eat while talking on the telephone, or go shopping when they have the flu, or stay in public with a noisy pet or a screaming baby. Also anyone who comes in or stays to browse five minutes before a posted closing time, or brings a full basket to register after closing has been announced.

Wider popular culture is a virtual labyrinth of third feeder lanes. Warhammer, professional gamers, professional poker players, owning a casino, owning a sports team and or moving a sports team to another city, Andy Cohen, “contemporary worship music,” twenty thousand dollar handbags, complaining about fake twenty thousand dollar hand bags, TikTok videos of “recipes” that involve crockpots or skillets and whole loaves of store-bought, pre sliced bread, etc., etc.

There must be lots of others. You decide. Make your own list. 

The great benefit of being aware of the ways life lets us sort out The Shits is that most can then be avoided, at at least let pass. DO. Honestly it will help. You know the signs. Ignore them at your own risk. Seriously, it's no good going to say a tailgate party and then complaining that there are exactly the people there that one would assume go to tailgate parties or worse, people who use "tailgating" as a verb. How could one not know? They went to a football game hours early because presumably football doesn't last long enough?! Admittedly there are not many of us who can give The Shits a hard pass altogether. They will come up. But at least we can stay out of their lane, yes? At least we can usually see them coming. 

They sorta sort themselves.

* * * 

A couple of days ago the family of Anita Bryant announced that she had actually died at 84 on December 16th, 2024. Presumably they delayed making her death public because it is pretty hard now, even in Oklahoma to find someone to drive the stake through her withered, black little heart and bury her anonymously at a crossroad at midnight.

For any not old enough to remember the lady, in 1958 Anita Jane was 2nd runner-up in a national beauty pageant. She went on to sing on USO tours and on the kind of records and television shows that old church women loved like striped candy. She made the kind of music shared with young people as a punishment for kids who liked to dance to  that colored Rock and Roll music. Eventually Anita became the television spokesperson for Florida orange juice, making seemingly endless commercials in which she grinned bug-eyed with delight over a pitcher of "sunshine."

And then in 1977 Anita Bryant became the face of homophobia, leading a campaign to repeal an LGBT anti-discrimination ordinance in Dade County, Florida. And she kept at it, eventually getting her pancaked mug on the cover of Newsweek, among other dubious accomplishments, as the Queen of the Righteous Lie. In fact she became more famous for the vicious bullshit she spewed at and about us than for anything she might have done in the way of art or motherhood or faith in the sweet baby Jesus. For a spell there, we were her lifestyle. 

In case I've been unclear, she was a complete cunt.

Though her supporters always blamed "the gays" for wrecking her entertainment career, she actually fucked it all up with the fundamentalists when in 1980 she finally divorced her piece of shit first husband. Back in the days before Trump, the Bible-thumpers really didn't cotton to divorced Jezebels. Thereafter she sank like a dunked witch. Had she just stayed hitched to that abusive dude, she would still have been the darling of dipshits, and a babe among the bigots. Titter.

The harm she did was no joke. Her campaign became the model for American religious fascism in the twentieth century and the effect across the planet was and continues to be devastating. LGTQIA people proved a perfect scapegoat for reaction and hate. For our every victory, major or minor there has been an opposite and equal backlash that invariably still uses the template Anita helped to invent with her "Save the Children" campaign in the 1970s. 

And no, she never really repented, never apologized, never accepted responsibility for the thousands of lives and careers she ruined, the children she encouraged to kill themselves or helped send to religious re-education camps. The old bag lived to a ripe age and long enough to see her granddaughter marry a woman -- though she presumably did not attend the wedding. 

The reason I mention her here is most obviously because blithe as I might be above about avoiding The Shits and just letting them pass, there are evils too great to let go by. Anita Bryant was one. 

When I added my voice to chorus crowing over her corpse on social media, a well-meaning friend, "for the sake of compassion for all" suggested that even a monster like Anita might by the end have had regrets, might have been embarrassed or even ashamed. No evidence to support that supposition. But even if there had been, even if in her obituaries anywhere there had been some appeal for reconciliation and forgiveness, I'm afraid I would still be joining the kick-line virtually dancing on her grave.

For all of my annoyance at the thoughtlessness and arrogance of the rude and the self-important goobers sorting themselves into that third lane, none of them to my knowledge has or may ever do the like harm individually of this lovely, usually soft-spoken, former Miss Oklahoma. Think of that. 

She is in rare company: Reagan, Schlafly, Falwell, Buckley, Murdoch, Jesse Helm, Limbaugh -- she is among the monsters and the murderers of my youth and young adulthood. Thousands upon thousands died unspeakable deaths, often alone, often without family, directly because of the lies she told and never bothered to correct.

For all my irritation with The Shits, that's usually all that is and all most of them are. Collectively, as they recently proved again, they contribute mightily to the general coarsening and peril to the Republic, but there are ill manners and bad people, and then there are monsters.

Nothing for it but to fight the monsters. Only so much can be let pass. 

Fuck forgiveness. I'm not a Christian and I am not obliged. She didn't ask and I'm not offering.  I'm glad she's dead. I hope her death was every bit as horrible as, say, the death of my friends who deserved none of it and who suffered and died young without their mothers to comfort them. 

And here we are again. The Triumph of The Shits is upon us. Here be monsters aplenty. One less in the world. 

Good. 

*Golf is more boring than anything other than the men who talk about golf, parking, and traffic, and anyone who dresses for golf anywhere but where golf is being played.