So it's been a while since I visited my parents. So I went. For some reason I slept an astounding 9.5 hours overnight. Very unusual. "I must've needed the rest." So I released the cats from their nocturnal prison--the locked bathroom -- and I did my ablutions and I was on my way. Three subways to Penn Station, a train ride to Great Neck, and a bus ride to my ancestral home. The subways and the bus were all covered by my monthly Metrocard. We're living in a golden age but I refuse to thank Gov. Pataki for it. He's tried to take credit for the Metrocard benefits, but I won't allow it.
My parents' house showed all the signs of Spring. Hyacinths poked out of the bed of short green plants alongside the house, and some powdery fertilizer peppered the lawn. And since it's Pesach, it's not unusual to see some boxesof matzoh in the house. However, Mom has pretty much forgotten all of our traditions, and she picked up an odd new brand of matzoh, Rakusens. We usually get the gigantic five-pound package of Horowitz Margareten. I usually take two boxes. One is never enough, but two is almost always too much. No matter how much "floor tile" I give away to curious Christian co-workers, it never seems to disappear. The Matzoh of Dorian Grey, I guess.
I down two pieces of gefilte fish while my mother makes me some matzoh brei. I am the only one who seems to like it in our family, if memory serves me correctly. But Mom makes it for me. I suppose she learned how to make it from her mother, who possibly learned to make it from her mother, who probably learned it from someone who learned it from someone who learned it from someone in Karelitz, a/k/a Korelicze, in what is now Belarus.
My poor mother doesn't remember a heck of a lot and she asked me "What's new." I have discovered it's so much easier to say "not much." She asked me how our new offices are, and I told her that we have not actually moved in yet, and that Monday's the first day in the new office. She tells me how good it is to see me. I try to elicit some storytelling about her grandmother, but there is very little to tell. She does tell me how her mother kept her grandmother away from the stove out of pyrophobia, and I think how ironic that is. Mom tells me that Aunt Millie is now senile. She called her a while ago. Aunt Millie left to go get a pencil and never came back to the phone.
Mom asked me "what's new?" and "How's your new office?" twice more. I gave the same answers. Those short answers are so much easier than giving full answers, truthful answers, that would reflect some personal fulfillment she would forget all about five minutes later. I realize it's not her fault, but when people constantly forget the things that matter to you, whether it's their fault or not, it wears you down to a nub.
Getting old must be so horrible. So full of horror, and denial. I think of my grandmother, whose comment on the nursing home was "It's full of all these old people! When people suffer for years I suppose death becomes a sad footnote to the whole ordeal. We watched about an hour of CNN coverage of the Kosovar refugees and the bombing of Belgrade and after that, I started to wonder if Life itself is just a sad footnote for some people. I flipped around the channels until we hit Lifetime. A Liz Taylor biopic starring Sherilyn Fenn was on. It was divine. With eight husbands and only four hours to tell the story, if you flipped away to another channel, you might miss a husband. Michael Todd was played by the same actor who killed Laura on Twin Peaks so watching him sleep with Sherilyn Fenn, who played Audrey on TP was practically incestuous.
The biopic was as good with the sound on as with the sound off. We got a call from my Seattle aunt and uncle, so I hit the mute button. Even with the sound off it was not too difficult to pick out the characters. Corey Parker played Eddie Fisher. Daniel McVicar played Rock Hudson. A slew of animals were on hand -- dogs and cats -- as part of La Liz's entourage. After testing my father's hearing for an hour, my aunt and uncle got a hold of me. They immediately asked me what I thought of the situation in my parents' house and I told them outright "I don't want to talk about it." "How are your parents?" has become an acceptable replacement for "How are you doing?" It's can be annoying.
I left my parent's house just as La Liz started cheating on Eddie Fisher with Richard Burton, who was played by a brawny fellow who I wish would show up in a Mark Antony costume at my doorway. Mom insisted on walking me to the corner. She walked back to the house and I watched her. She bent over to pull a weed out of those green plants whose name I don't know. I watch my mother walk back up the driveway and I wonder how much longer it's going to be before this scenario becomes a thing of the past.
I went to the Center and was completely appalled to see that SAGE (Senior Action in a Gay Environment) is already reaching out to men in the 30s and 40s. I went to Sapore and had a solo dinner on a crowded Saturday night. Another mistake. I rented Bette Gordon's Variety and remember that Kathy Acker helped with the script. When the movie came out in 1984 the Village Voice declared that hiring Kathy Acker was mistake along the lines of asking for more explosions around Vic Morrow during the filming of that Twilight Zone movie.
By the way, it's the tenth anniversary of the time I went to my parents' on the third day of Pesach and had matzoh brei and I came out to my parents and lost my boyfriend the next day. It's a long involved story and if you want to, you can read all about it by clicking here. I am doing this story on the Hebrew date since all my family coming outs seems to happen on Jewish holidays. My brother on Rosh Hashannah, my parents on Pesach, my aunt on Shavuos, and to an audience at the Center on Simchat Torah 1990. But in the end, the hardest coming out was to my parents, ten Jewish years ago, and in the end it wasn't so bad. In the end, I sort of felt like Miriam when she got to the other side of the Red Sea.
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Click here for the first of my three-part Coming Out story.
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