The cold comfort of smoke
The smell of cigarette smoke on Saturday morning meant all was right with the world. My mom was home, not working at the seafood restaurant where she served lobsters and steamers five days a week, 12 hours a day, since divorcing my father.
Smoke meant she was already up, probably reading the newspaper and drinking coffee, getting ready for a day cleaning the house and. She'd give my brothers and me a few bucks
each, enough money for a movie, candy, a slice and a soda.
The duplex where we lived on Long Island's north shore was shared by another woman who, years after beatings by her husband--we could hear him hitting her, through the shared walls and she always wore sunglasses in unsuccessful attempts to hide her battered eyes--finally divorced him.
It was a cause for celebration; my brothers and I used to cower in our beds when our neighbor heat his wife. It brought back fresh memories of how our father used his fists and his tongue to beat our mother down, with punches and words.
Mom divorced her abuser in 1969, ten years after they married and years after he started beating her. My oldest brother Scott was 10; K*** was 7, and I was 4 when he pulled away from the house for the final time in our white Ford. It was the day after a particularly vicious fight that netted my mother 120-plus stitches in her arm, sliced wide open when she tried to get back in the house by putting her arm through the window.
That was the first of what I consider my mother's many moments of bravery. Rather than stick with the man who beat her--but, who, as a succesful tax lawyer provided a comfortable middle-class life--she, a high school graduate with few marketable job skills, opted out.
World be damned, she said, we'll make it on our own.
Pregnant and married right out of high school in 1958, my mother had been taking care of children virtually her entire life. Her own mother died when my mom was just 13, leaving behind six boys, two girls, and a husband who coped through drinking. And meanness. My mom became the primary caregiver to her younger siblings and the cook and housekeeper to her older brothers and father.
I never met my grandmother but my mom tells me she was a strong woman. Her strength must have been genetic; my mother is the strongest woman I know.
So the decision to divorce my father, while enormously tough and complicated in those turbulent times--1969 saw an explosion in free spirits but divorce was relatively uncommon--was something my mother did to save herself and her children. And though money was tight, we never wanted for anything.
I can't remember a time, except briefly in the mid-1990s, that my mother wasn't a smoker. Menthols have been her smoke of choice, the cool taste of a slender, papery tube of tobacco provided instant stress relief.
And I learned early to associate the smell of smoke with comfort. While some kids came home to the chocolately warm scent of fresh-baked cookies, I knew my mom was home from work by the smell of smoke.
Mingled with odors from the restaurant, a surprisingly pleasing smell of seafood and butter, the scent of smoke told me that Mom, not the babysitter, was fixing dinner in the kitchen. That was a rare treat. Not only was my mother a great cook, but having her there after school to share my day was a bonus.
As I got older I remember the smell of smoke mingled with her perfume as she readied herself for work. She tended bar, first in a restaurant and then later in an old inn in Rhode Island, where she'd moved us on a whim in 1974 when her car broke down and she fell in love with the view of Narragansett Bay.
Mom modeled in the late 1970s. A beautiful woman, she carried no more than 120 pounds on her 5-foot-7 frame. Cigarettes, I suppose, substituted for meals on the job.
It seemed natural then, that my brothers and I would take up the habit. Scott was first, followed by K***. I began smoking at 16 but had my first at 10 or 11.
For me the choice now seems ironic: Looking through the box recently ( a collection of cards, letters and yellowed photos), I came across a card that I made for her when I was in sixth grade. "All I really want for my birthday is you to quit smoking" I wrote.
She's quit now. There is no more smoking in the house she shares with my stepdad. Not since she was diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer. The cancer is stage 3B, on a four-stage scale.
My mother is dying.
She learned that last week, in the office of an oncologist younger than her by decades.
The comfortable chairs are there by design, I suppose, to make people feel more at ease when they learn their fates. It didn't make the news any easier to accept. Six to 12 months, on average, he said, stressing the average. She could have more, or less, time.
The duplex where we lived on Long Island's north shore was shared by another woman who, years after beatings by her husband--we could hear him hitting her, through the shared walls and she always wore sunglasses in unsuccessful attempts to hide her battered eyes--finally divorced him.
It was a cause for celebration; my brothers and I used to cower in our beds when our neighbor heat his wife. It brought back fresh memories of how our father used his fists and his tongue to beat our mother down, with punches and words.
Mom divorced her abuser in 1969, ten years after they married and years after he started beating her. My oldest brother Scott was 10; K*** was 7, and I was 4 when he pulled away from the house for the final time in our white Ford. It was the day after a particularly vicious fight that netted my mother 120-plus stitches in her arm, sliced wide open when she tried to get back in the house by putting her arm through the window.
That was the first of what I consider my mother's many moments of bravery. Rather than stick with the man who beat her--but, who, as a succesful tax lawyer provided a comfortable middle-class life--she, a high school graduate with few marketable job skills, opted out.
World be damned, she said, we'll make it on our own.
Pregnant and married right out of high school in 1958, my mother had been taking care of children virtually her entire life. Her own mother died when my mom was just 13, leaving behind six boys, two girls, and a husband who coped through drinking. And meanness. My mom became the primary caregiver to her younger siblings and the cook and housekeeper to her older brothers and father.
I never met my grandmother but my mom tells me she was a strong woman. Her strength must have been genetic; my mother is the strongest woman I know.
So the decision to divorce my father, while enormously tough and complicated in those turbulent times--1969 saw an explosion in free spirits but divorce was relatively uncommon--was something my mother did to save herself and her children. And though money was tight, we never wanted for anything.
I can't remember a time, except briefly in the mid-1990s, that my mother wasn't a smoker. Menthols have been her smoke of choice, the cool taste of a slender, papery tube of tobacco provided instant stress relief.
And I learned early to associate the smell of smoke with comfort. While some kids came home to the chocolately warm scent of fresh-baked cookies, I knew my mom was home from work by the smell of smoke.
Mingled with odors from the restaurant, a surprisingly pleasing smell of seafood and butter, the scent of smoke told me that Mom, not the babysitter, was fixing dinner in the kitchen. That was a rare treat. Not only was my mother a great cook, but having her there after school to share my day was a bonus.
As I got older I remember the smell of smoke mingled with her perfume as she readied herself for work. She tended bar, first in a restaurant and then later in an old inn in Rhode Island, where she'd moved us on a whim in 1974 when her car broke down and she fell in love with the view of Narragansett Bay.
Mom modeled in the late 1970s. A beautiful woman, she carried no more than 120 pounds on her 5-foot-7 frame. Cigarettes, I suppose, substituted for meals on the job.
It seemed natural then, that my brothers and I would take up the habit. Scott was first, followed by K***. I began smoking at 16 but had my first at 10 or 11.
For me the choice now seems ironic: Looking through the box recently ( a collection of cards, letters and yellowed photos), I came across a card that I made for her when I was in sixth grade. "All I really want for my birthday is you to quit smoking" I wrote.
She's quit now. There is no more smoking in the house she shares with my stepdad. Not since she was diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer. The cancer is stage 3B, on a four-stage scale.
My mother is dying.
She learned that last week, in the office of an oncologist younger than her by decades.
The comfortable chairs are there by design, I suppose, to make people feel more at ease when they learn their fates. It didn't make the news any easier to accept. Six to 12 months, on average, he said, stressing the average. She could have more, or less, time.
This news comes at a particularly difficult time. Two months ago, on March **, his 40th birthday and my 34th, my brother died from an infection that he developed after surgery. The surgery was the last of dozens; Scott was a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the shoulders down since he broke his neck diving into shallow water in 1979, at the age of 20.
My mother was 39 at the time; she whipped into action and made sure that my brother would come home and live a normal life. And he did, he lived: He did things as a paralyzed man that I have only dreamt of and many I haven't. I believe it was because of Mom's example. You don't survive, you live.
My mother was 39 at the time; she whipped into action and made sure that my brother would come home and live a normal life. And he did, he lived: He did things as a paralyzed man that I have only dreamt of and many I haven't. I believe it was because of Mom's example. You don't survive, you live.
My brothers and I inherited her strength, in many ways. But this is too much. I am not ready to let go of my mother.
Sometimes the ability to write seems to be as much a curse as a gift. Phrases and words float inside my head, tyring to give definition to something that I cannot undertand. Like, Why? Why is this happening to my mother? Why is this happening to our family? We just lost Scott--her son, my brother and best friend. Has God no mercy?
I have no answers. All I can do is write about what I feel. It's as though putting everything down on the page lessens the deepening decay I feel in my heart.
Sometimes the ability to write seems to be as much a curse as a gift. Phrases and words float inside my head, tyring to give definition to something that I cannot undertand. Like, Why? Why is this happening to my mother? Why is this happening to our family? We just lost Scott--her son, my brother and best friend. Has God no mercy?
I have no answers. All I can do is write about what I feel. It's as though putting everything down on the page lessens the deepening decay I feel in my heart.
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