My Southern Gothic Life

For those of you reading my latest Sweet Briar post, you might enjoy this one as well:

https://mysoutherngothiclife.com/2013/03/26/chapter-71-big-fat-southern-weddings-part-1/

This is going to be somewhat of a valedictory post. A summation of the past and a look to the future.  And like most valedictory addresses, it will probably be too long…

This blog has served me well during a difficult chapter of my life. I started this blog when my Mother was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and I had a certain distance from the past. The humor and detachment came easily to me. I had not been “home” for a very long time for more than the obligatory few hours at Christmastime. I had the distance that is necessary for perspective.

That all unexpectedly changed over the last two or three years. I had to go home again. The humor became more difficult to find and the past seemed much closer than it had for years…

When I look back on this blog, I can see a journey. Socrates once stated, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Well, based on this theory, mine is definitely worth living because I have examined the hell out of it for the last few years on this blog. It wasn’t always pretty and I cringe at some of it, but it was honest.

It was truly how I saw things at a certain time and place.

Looking back on this blog, I can see the struggle to deal with reconciling people and places with how I remember them and how others do. I lost a few friends along the way and made some people very mad. I can see the evidence of depression during some phases of the journey.  But I am grateful that I made a few people laugh….

And I would not change one damn thing.

This was my journey “home”.   A journey home to a difficult family and a difficult place. A journey to and through a difficult time.

And I learned an important fact. It may be a cliche, but “You can’t go home again.”

There are a lot of reasons for this. I think the main one is that, at least for me, home is a changeable concept. It’s not the place I was born, the town I grew up in or where I came from.

It is where I am now- with my partner, my love and my family of choice. It’s a house in Sunset Hills in Greensboro, NC.  A  place in my soul where I live in comfort and safety. I am more than ever aware that the “home” place may change over time. For now, it is that house in Sunset Hills in Greensboro, NC where we live a very happy life. I like to think it always will be that, but who knows? Someday it may be somewhere else, but the constant thing that makes it a home is being with someone you love. Feeling loved and feeling safe.

Based on that theory, it should have been easy to do home to Danville. I still have family and friends there that I love. But it isn’t “home” and hasn’t been for a very long time. When I was forced to deal with my hometown on a regular basis, it was not a good experience. It depressed me in ways those who still live there will never understand….

It also challenged my identity.  I’m a pretty free and easy, openly Gay man in Greensboro.  Going back to Danville, I was immediately reminded of a time and place where this was not the case.  I remembered the closeted, fearful young Gay boy I once was and was challenged to reconcile the two….

I was older now.  Heavier, but more self assured.  I’ve been to London, Paris, South Africa and all over the U.S.  Going “home” to Danville was the strangest journey…

Sometimes, you have to be away, have a certain distance to have a different view from those who live in a place day by day in your old hometown.   It surprised me how hard it was when you come back to your past and realize others see it as their present….

And memories can be colored by time so that things may not be exactly as we remember them…

Going home…

First of all, it’s always difficult to have change forced upon you. I was forced to go home. I didn’t want to do it. I knew I was treading on dangerous ground. But my Mother had come home to die.

It’s difficult to deal with going home when you know it’s to deal with the death of a parent. It changes the perspective and makes everything much more real. It intensifies the feelings.  It makes you see things and doubt things you would never have imagined doubting or questioned your perspective of otherwise.

It makes you look back….

And it makes you deal with the present in surprising ways….

And I was immediately struck by how different it all was from how I remembered it….

The town I grew up in had an economy based on tobacco and textiles. Both industries are as gone with the wind as the Civil War. And with the loss of these industries, the town seemed to have lost its identity. It was no longer “The World’s Best Tobacco Market” or “The Home of Dan River Mills.” These industries had been the foundation of a thriving middle class. That was all gone too….

I was struck by how a pretty little town had become ugly and bare. They were tearing down the mills and selling the hundred year old bricks and old growth wood  flooring to “reclamation” companies for use in new construction by rich people.  They were throwing up corrugated steel and aluminum buildings in the place of historic structures.

I hate to say it, but there was an obvious leadership vacuum.  Everyone younger and educated got out as fast as they could.  This did not leave much of a leadership class….

I was struck by the acceptance of casual racism as it seemed everyone who still lived there seemed to need to blame someone else for their troubles.  They saw everything as Obama’s fault or the fault of giving too much to “them” so they didn’t have to work.  Even though there were no jobs….

I was struck by the loss of thriving local restaurants and businesses and the domination of chain restaurants and stores that obscured what was left of the uniqueness of the town….

I was stuck by how much it had changed and it pained me…

I didn’t recognize the place I was born…

And I was struck by the overall hopelessness of the remaining people and their need to justify why they were still there. Like there was a judgement awaiting them for staying.  They closed ranks and hung to each other like the steerage passengers on the Titanic who didn’t get a place in the lifeboats and didn’t quite know why.  They defended their choices because they had to to survive and live with their choices….

I was struck by the coarseness….The hardness.

And I was stuck by the kindness, graciousness and gentility of some old friends and members of the Old Guard. Mainly older members of the community who made me still feel at home with their acceptance and graciousness that made me proud to still be a Virginian by birth.

And I was struck by having to deal with my family again.

My family, as it remains, is small. It was once much larger, but we lost so many families members in the 1980’s that I once joked we paid for wing on Townes Funeral Home.

I had to deal with my sister….

I’ll be honest, as I see it,  we had never bonded while we were growing up. I am four years older, which makes a difference when you are young and through High School. I was at college before she came to my High School. And High School is very important in small Southern towns.

The Friday Night Lights burned bright over Christopher Stadium at George Washington High School for the Football games that are a rite of passage in the South.  But I was already a “boy in the band” ghost, away at Washington and Lee University, when my sister entered the spotlight in her sequined majorette uniform.

It was always her town more than mine…..I knew even then I truly belonged somewhere else….

And  we never bonded at home. It was a house too filled with fights, thwarted dreams and frustrations that had to be kept from the neighbors at all costs. It was a house where my Father’s temper was a land mine to be carefully avoided or manipulated to one’s own advantage. It was a house where we were all passengers on an American Titanic fighting for our own places in the First Class lifeboats. And it was also the “Mad Men” era facing the changing times.  We all just tried to survive as best we could.  There wasn’t time to make friends.  It makes me think Familial Darwinism is a new concept that is worth studying….

Then, we had spent 25 years only seeing each other at Christmas for a few hours, then going back to our own lives. Twenty-Five years of shallow conversations and hidden truths.  Twenty Five years of avoiding old land mines left over from previous wars.

You really can’t go home again.

And if you do, you have to play by their rules.  That was the hardest part for me.  I am still very rule and structure oriented.  I did not recognize the place I was forced back into…I knew my rules, but was hesitant to see if they still applied.  I feared I was too formal and old school Virginia….It was like landing in a foreign country without a Rough Guide.

I like to think we all have an imaginary soundtrack to our lives.  I try to make mine Cole Porter and the Gershwins as sung by Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald.  My sister’s seems to be Journey, Bon Jovi, Boston and a touch of Loretta Lynn.  Not a compatible combination….

For functions, I believe in sterling silver forks and china plates.  My sister is disposable plastic and paper plates.

I love old things and tradition, she loves the here and now.

I believe in formal dining rooms and proper situational manners, she is great rooms and casual lifestyles.

I believe in formality and social rules. She is anything goes….

I won’t judge which of us is right.  At least not in public….At least not now…

And I’m not sure which of us is adopted…..

So, it was all bound to explode….

We managed to get through the my Mother’s prolonged death.  We were civil and kind to each other.  We practiced admirable degrees of give and take on both sides.  Much to my  regret, I even gave in on the funeral home choice- which is a whole different blog to follow.  We compromised.  We got through it.  I don’t think either of us was happy with how it all  went, but we got through it….

Then we had the fight from hell.  We got down and dirty and mean in the way that only families can. The scary thing to me is it seemed to energize her.  It exhausted me.

It made me want to go back to my real home and get away from that place I grew up in and the family I left there….

It made me want to put up walls and fill the moat….It made me want to lock myself in my castle and defend it against all comers.

That’s when I realized “you can’t go home again”…..

Funerals do seem to lead to drama.  People seem to get so emotionally tired from the process and trying to figure out what is  expected and what is the “right”thing to do, that they eventually crack and have to tell the truth.   It’s an escape valve.  And someone being dead is a great rationale to break confidences, let your hair down and all it as you see it.

Now,  what I hope to get back to doing is telling the truth as I see it…

From a respectful distance and with a revised perspective.

It may take some more time and some more distance, but I will be back…

I’ll get the time and distance to remember a truly Southern Gothic Life….

And tell it as I see it….

Here is the annual report on blog activity that I receive from WordPress,  the company that hosts my blog…

Many thanks for all your readership and support!

I’ll be back soon with new posts~

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

It’s the wee small hours of the morning.  Hours I always think of Sinatra when I am feeling sad and a little lonely….He had a classic album of this title.

There are hours in the morning.  Late in the morning when you can’t sleep.  Thoughts are coming too quickly.  You know you should be in bed, but your mind won’t let you.  You’ve had a few drinks.  You started smoking again…Still no respite.

Your mind won’t stop.

And the older I get the more I understand and relate to Sinatra.

Sinatra sang:

“In the wee small hours of the morning.While the whole wide word is fast asleep.  You lie awake and think about the girl and never think of counting sheep. When your lonely heart has learned its lesson.  You’d be hers if only she would call..”

He sang this song about his lost love, Ava Gardner.  My Mother told me that….

I’ll make this correlation on the grounds that all Southern boys have a special love for their Mothers.  They put them on pedestals.  It’s trained from birth and it makes it that much more challenging for both when they inevitably tumble down to earth.

And I’m still awake at 3:oo am, having had enough wine and out of cigs, but still not able to sleep. It’s just me and Frank still awake in the house…

My loving partner, who understands me so well,  has learned to give me space when I get like this.  Sometimes, you I need to be alone with Frank, a little wine and a few cigarettes….

I’m thinking about the women in my life and in my family in a totally different context.

My Mother, my feisty, complicated difficult Mother died last week.  I’ve been forced to deal with my very different, emotionally unfiltered,  totally unlike  me, unreserved sister-who is currently furious with me because I suggested she might show some reserve in her public behavior.  And I’m furious with her for many reasons, too.

Death is never easy, but families can make it worse….

Sinatra sang:

“In the wee small hours of the morning, that’s the time you miss her most of all.”

I don’t know if I miss my Mother most or miss what I wish she had been.  It makes grief much more complicated when you remember both a beautiful, ephemeral woman who floated through life in an unthinking cloud of Elizabeth Arden Blue Grass cologne and a woman totally unequipped to deal with any variance to the small town social codes.  A woman who would never really accept as I am once I found and accepted my own true self. She still loved me and I loved her.  And she also  understood keeping up appearances and making the best of differing views.  We agreed to disagree even on vital issues.  We just grew more apart, more distant….Don’t ask, don’t tell was born and raised in the South.

Growing up in a small town, we always knew how to adapt and follow the rules even when they weren’t published and didn’t make sense.  It was a ritual ingrained in some of us from birth.

But my sister has never understood the game that is life in the South-especially in small towns.  She has always thought she could ignore the rules she found inconvenient and do whatever she wanted.  She never realized that others still do recognize the rules and that the price that one pays for disregarding them is not always obvious.  She has never been big on subtlety.

I love my sister and, in my own way  have tried to do everything I can to make this loss easier for her.  I know she was the one who took Mother to Doctor’s appointments, the hospitals and moved her from nursing home to nursing home.  I’m the one who kept his distance, made occasional visits and wrote the checks.  A lot of checks.  That doesn’t mean I cared less….

“In the wee small hours of the morning….”

I  said goodbye to my Mother a long time ago.  I’ve always believed the mind, not the body, held the soul of the individual.  I said goodbye when my Mother stopped recognizing me and stopped making rational comments.  To me, that was harder than watching her last breaths at the nursing home….

But I was there as she took those last breaths.  Because it was part of the ritual and because it just might give her some comfort.  I was willing to do “the right thing” and check my emotions at the door- something I’m very good at.

And I wish my sister didn’t publicly judge my attempts or motives to make her loss easier and help her manageh ow others may view her comments and actions.  Frankly, you must be careful with blogging.  I’ve learned that.

I’m coming out of the closet yet again.  She is the one causing me to break my promise not write about those who are living and recognizable.  When I advised her, in a very private message,  to “dial back” her Facebook comments about her grief, but never her grief itself, she lashed out at me in a public way that I don’t know that I can ever forgive.  I’m too old to forgive an emotional recklessness that is only, possibly, tolerable in the very young.

My Father always said grief was a personal, quiet thing.  You sucked it up and went on.  That it was tacky and self-indulgent to wallow in grief too publicly.  It makes some people uncomfortable and seems, to some, self-serving.  Life has to go on.  People do talk and judge- especially in small towns. Maybe I was wrong to give that advice to my sister, but it’s how I was raised to get through the public rituals of death.

Maybe neither my Father nor I were made for the Jerry Springer world of the internet and the modern tendency to put all your emotions on public display.

Neither was Sinatra….

Some of us still struggle quietly alone through the “Wee Small Hours of the Morning” alone- trying to find out how to balance the old ways with the new. The small town upbringing with a wider world view and experiences we’ve gained since we left there…. Still trying to navigate the minefields of familial relationships and small town rules and games- even when we think we have moved on and left all that behind….

In the wee, small hours of the morning…

Writing on about our journeys and our thoughts on the internet.

With Frank, a little wine and an empty pack of cigarettes….

I started this blog when I was forced to re-enter the world of my youth due to my Mother’s alzheimer’s disease.  I had been away from my hometown for many years- only spending a couple of hours there at Christmas.

When circumstances forced me to spend more time there, I was shocked at how it had changed physically and how so much of the physical past was being destroyed.  For the first time in many years, it made me want to look back.

Looking back is like crack cocaine to a writer.  Once you start, you are hooked…

And as I looked back, I realized I probably saw things differently than those who never left that little town….

And my observations have made a few of them angry….

Frankly, I don’t care.  These are my stories, my memories and my realities.

I started this journey with a sense of humor and detachment.  As time went by and I spent more time in my hometown, it was harder to keep the sense of humor and the sense of detachment.

The past became very real again.  I dug  more deeply into my memories and thoughts than I originally intended.

My Mother died last week and I thought this blog might die with her.  But people, through memories, live on.  And I’ve realized I’m not through yet.  There are stories I haven’t yet told….thoughts and observations I haven’t yet expressed.

I’ve dug too deeply over the last few years on this blog to give up now.  I may have made a few people question and re-evalutate their memories- and a few re-evaluate me.  I know I have made a lot of people defensive.  But to me, that means I may be evolving as a writer.  At least, I hope so….

And I hope I can keep the humor and maybe regain some of the detachment.  Or maybe not…

Time will tell…

But I’ve decided, My Southern Gothic Life will live on…..

I think I knew my father best at 2:00 o’clock in the morning…

In our house, when I came in from a night on the town in my Teens and early twenties, I had to pass through the downstairs den on my way to my bedroom.

The den was his Den. I guess what is now called a “man cave.” He would sit down there and play records, watch TV and drink. Mainly drink…

He was in remission from the cancer he thought he had beat that ultimately killed him in his mid ’50’s. He was dying and may or may not have known it…

I would come home from a night of trying to escape my own demons and trying to find my own way and hope I could just safely reach my bed without encountering him. I was always so relieved when I could go to bed without running in to him, but more often, I had to share a late night chat. I wish those chats had been kinder, gentler and more understanding on both parts. But mostly, they were an endurance test that I seldom won….

Late night/early morning conversations after one has had a few drinks take two routes; either people say things they don’t mean and you can laugh it off in the morning or they say things they really mean, but normally wouldn’t say, that cut to the core and are hard to forgive or forget. And it’s not always easy to tell the difference…

It took me a lot of years to understand and forgive some of those conversations, but I will never forget any of them….

Especially now, when I realize how much like my Father I am and the lessons I learned at 2:00 am….

He expected people to do what was expected. One did ones duty. Period. He always did. Few saw the price he paid to do that or the anger he had for doing it. But at those 2:00 am meetings, I saw it all….

I saw a man who struggled between being happy with what he had and anger at what he never had….

I saw a man who was a victim of a time and a place who would never see himself as a victim…

I saw a man who wanted to fight, fight hard, but didn’t know the enemy to whom to direct his anger…

At 2:00 in the morning, after numerous glasses of bourbon or cans of Budweiser, it’s hard to be precise and to hit the intended targets. Targets are hazy and moving on their own volition. They won’t stand still for you. Therefore, your attack is scattered and often results in collateral damages.

His anger was a shot gun blast. Fire from a semi-automatic weapon that hit random targets. And occasionally from a stiletto welding with just the right amount of momentarily perfect insight and direction…

We had a love/hate relationship on both sides. He hated me for my youth, my freedom and potential to make my own way. He hated me for having the chance to not make his mistakes. He hated me for asking too many questions and not just accepting the status quo. I hated him for his power to make me feel insecure and to make me hate and doubt myself when his attacks hit their targets.

But, once I realized the power of his weapons and my own potential to weld them, I vowed never to use them myself. I am proud to say, I have mostly kept that vow.

I now understand his anger and I’m glad I’ve mostly avoided it myself. I know I am happier than he ever was.

There is nothing more desperate than a caged animal in pain. I learned that lesson well.

But at 20 or 22, it still hurt to have to face the tiger…

To hear him rage over what he had missed…to hear him rage over the places he would never see or go. To hear him rage over the trap of having to be a good provider who couldn’t provide for his own needs…To hear him resent those he felt he had to protect. To watch him throw himself at the bars of his cage, knowing he couldn’t escape, but determined to hurt those who captured him if they came close enough…

To see him realize how trapped he was- by love, by family, by the time and place. To somehow know that time was running out and he would miss so much he wanted to see….

I sat there,sipped my own drink, and heard him rage- saying things I won’t repeat. Things that cut to the core. I saw him rage against who he had become and spread that rage against those he saw as trapping him in a time and place he didn’t want to be in. I saw him rage at not knowing what to want…

Part of me is glad I’m the only one who saw and heard it all. It’s something, as a man of fiftysometing, I can now understand. I don’t think my Mother or sister ever would have….

I took the blows. He somehow knew I was strong enough to take them and somehow learn from them. That wasn’t intentional, it was instinctual. I guess it was a man thing…

I didn’t make the same mistakes he had made. I learned from his lessons without even knowing they were lessons or what I was learning. Over time, I somehow knew what to accept and what to discard. Maybe that was his unknown intent….

And, over the years, I’ve learned how much like him I am. And I’m so grateful, now, that I had those 2:00 in the morning conversations and learned those tough, subliminal lessons that let me avoid his mistakes and make my own.

Those lessons took me to college, to a successful career, to London, to Paris, to South Africa, to Mexico, to Toronto, to New York and so many places he never went. They made me strong enough to truly know myself…

But I still fear the tiger at 2:00 am….

I’m thinking tonight of a dying breed. The true “Southern Lady”. Even the definition of a Southern Lady is a challenge. Some see her as a weak, charming delicate flower. Most of us know “Steel Magnolias” is an understatement.

Let me begin by saying, no reference is intended to reflect any real person living or dead. I’m talking about my fictional friend “Sally Anne” who is an amalgamation of many ladies I have been privileged to know…

Sally Anne is a tough broad. Or she would be if I was writing a film noir script about a Yankee girl. “Tough Broad” is frequently viewed as a term contradictory to “Southern Lady”. That is a mistake.

“Southern Ladies” are “Tough Broads” with a better publicist.

They have it all…and get away with murder. Frequently in fact as well as in fiction.

They have that proverbial iron fist hidden in the velvet glove. They have the scent of “moonlight and magnolias” that can hide a desperate heart and desperate actions. They know their power is really in what they seem to be instead in what the are- up to a point- and have the balls to cross the line when necessary.

And some have the guts to just be who they are….

Remember, Scarlett O’Hara married a man she didn’t love, killed a Yankee soldier, stole her sister’s fiancé, all but slept with her best friend’s husband and still saved both Tara and her reputation. And is still the “Gold Standard” for Southern Ladies

A true Southern Lady has more balls than any Southern Man.

My fictional Sally Anne would be the person I called when my Father was dying one of many deaths in a hospital out of town. She would insist on going with me and sleeping on the floor while we waited…

She would have been the person I called when I was a twentysomethting emotional mess after he died and wrecked my car, late at at night, and said “come over here” we will fix it in the morning. And had the contacts and experience to do so…

She would never have said a word about any of this…

She would have loved her Father and her family no matter how many “Jerry Springer” moments there might have been. Because she loved them…

My Sally Anne would have been real. Very real. She might have said “fuck” as often as others said “hello” and allegedly might have gone water skiing naked at Smith Mountain Lake on the Fourth of July, but she was a true “Southern Lady.”

Why?

Because, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t hide how much she cared about other people.

And because no matter how many times she might behave “inappropriately”, she had the heart and soul of a champion.

She cared about other people.

Deeply.

She always tried to be there for them and take care of them…

No matter how hard she tried to hide it.

That’s what would make Sally Anne the last of the “Great Southern Ladies”…..

And why I’m glad she is a character on this blog….