Sons and Mothers

“History is a balm capable of healing America’s deep-seated racial wounds. To do so we must tell a fuller story about our national past to our present selves.” Peniel E. Joseph, The Third Reconstruction

My mother tells me that she had a very long talk with herself and has decided that her days of worrying about her elevated blood pressure are over. God will know what to do with me, she says. It’s in his hands. I’m not going to take my blood pressure every day, it just makes me more anxious. I’m telling all my doctors to stop pestering me about it. It’s all they want to talk about. But they don’t listen because they’re always typing on the computer! I had a better conversation on the phone with Dr. Pham than I did in person. She hardly even looked at me, and of course she was wearing a mask. She kind of spit this last sentence out, like a person who spent the pandemic watching FOX News, as if it’s somehow offensive that a doctor, working in a hospital setting in the Covid age, would still wear a mask. 

I’m not particularly close to my mother. Except for a few months in my mid-20’s, when I lived with her in a high rise condominium near the Ala Wai canal in Honolulu, I’ve only seen my mother in the flesh a handful of times since the early 1980’s. My wedding, the birth of my son, her first grandchild, for these events she flew from Honolulu, and she may have come five years later when my daughter was born, though I can’t remember for certain. Perhaps there are photographs in one of my wife’s many photo boxes. In those days it was a little uncomfortable with my mother, tense at times; she isn’t an easygoing soul, in fact she’s pretty uptight, stuck in the era in which she came of age, the 1940s and 1950s, and not easy to be around. She can be a little holier-than-thou when it comes to diet and exercise. She thinks there has never been anything on television better than “Dancing with the Stars.” Our relationship was never particularly close, and for long periods of time it was as emotionally distant as the miles between Santa Barbara and Honolulu, limited to birthday and Christmas cards, occasional calls, sometimes a short letter. But she’s 88 years old now, with some hearing loss in one ear, a weak back, and chronically high blood pressure. Around two years ago she had back surgery, but made an amazingly quick recovery with the help of physical therapy. She resumed her routine independent life and was fine for more than a year. Then in late March she aggravated her back walking up two flights of stairs. After a couple of days of painful spasms she took herself to the ER at Kaiser and was later admitted. Her blood pressure was high, her sodium level low, and her lower back screaming. 

Since her back surgery, I’ve had a lot more contact with my mother, talking with her several times a week. I have her power of attorney for financial and medical matters, instructions for her cremation, etc. When she was at Kaiser this time I spoke with one or more of her doctors every day. Within three or four days her pain was being managed with medications and her sodium level had improved, but her blood pressure was still high and she was anxious because her bowel movements were inconsistent. When she was moved to a skilled nursing facility for rehabilitation, she complained about the food claiming it was contributing to her constipation. There’s no fresh fruit, she told me. I have fresh fruit every morning!

It has been a long time since I talked about politics with my mother. Several years ago it became evident that she was a consistent viewer of FOX News as well as a consistent listener of right-wing talk radio, and that made talking about politics practically impossible. I assume she voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Every now and then she lets a comment slip that I can tell comes from right-wing media. For example, while she was in the skilled nursing facility we were talking about her finances and she made a disparaging remark about Joe Biden and inflation. At one time I might have challenged her, but to do so now is pointless. I’m somewhat baffled by her conservatism, but if one consumes a steady diet of propaganda like that offered on FOX News, it’s a predictable outcome. 

My mother has enjoyed good health for most of her life, partly because of genetics (several women in her family, including my grandmother, lived well into their 90’s) and because she has taken obsessively good care of herself. She takes vitamins and supplements like garlic and probiotics, but hates taking medications of any kind. She’s of slight and slender build, fastidious about her appearance, eats mostly fruit, vegetables, and fish, walks everywhere, and for many years danced at the Elks Club and Eagles Lodge and on all the hotel dance floors in Waikiki that played “traditional Hawaiian music,” as my mother calls it, always with vocal emphasis on “traditional.” My mother loves kitsch. She was a fan of several local musicians, and followed them as they changed venues. She may have done a competition or two. But to her way of thinking, she was as good as a professional, and dancing was her Fountain of Youth, the thing that kept her body fit, but, strangely, had no effect on making her mind and way of being more flexible. She still sends me checks in the mail, and refuses to use online banking. She has a very simple Jitterbug smartphone that drives her crazy. She needs help with her iPad. She doesn’t do Venmo, Uber, Lyft or even Google. She’s a medium-level Luddite. Other than dancing, I don’t think she ever took an adult ed class or set out to learn a new skill. She’s never been into gardening, and if there are houseplants in her Honolulu studio, they’re probably fake. She most definitely considers herself a Christian, though I don’t think she identifies as a Catholic despite being raised in a French-Canadian Catholic milieu in Salem, MA, and attending parochial school from kindergarten through high school.

My mother’s not matronly, nor is she outwardly maternal. Not cuddly. Not a hugger. 

She believes in positive thinking and prayer. 

I can detect parts of my mother in myself. I have some of her vanity and stubbornness, of which I can’t say I’m proud. I guess we cannot expect to turn out completely different from our parents. Finding traces of my father is a little more difficult because I spent very little time with him; he passed away at 57. Never saw his grandchildren. 

My mother is the kind of person who seems to lack substance, and it doesn’t take much time to exhaust topics of conversation with her. But one thing I admire about her is her willingness to take risks; she convinced my father to move to California in the mid-50’s, just pack up and go, find a town and settle down. In the late 70’s she moved to northern California, Los Gatos, then a few years later to Hawaii. Honolulu. Waikiki. After more than 40 years in residence, she retains the mindset of a tourist. 

Food From Far Away

I read the labels on the cardboard boxes I toss in the baler at the Market. Beef from Yosemite Valley. Bison from the high plains. Tomatoes, avocados, asparagus, and bell peppers from Mexico. Apples and grapes from Chile. Bananas from Ecuador and Guatemala. Crab meat from Vietnam. Shrimp from Thailand. Fresh fruits and vegetables and seafood year round, a miracle of international trade and commerce for those who can afford it. But do we ever pause to consider the human and environmental cost? Where I live we buy vegetables and fruits and seafood at a relatively inexpensive cost because at the start of the chain of growers, middlemen, brokers, distributors, trucking companies and retail stores, stands a supply of cheap, pliable, exploitable labor. The invisible people who plant, harvest and pack tomatoes and mangoes and celery and whatnot, who perform hard manual labor for hours each day. People with families, stories, a past and maybe hope for a future. Immigrants from neighboring countries with few legal rights. Migrants escaping war ravaged countries. Climate refugees waiting for the wheels of the immigration system to turn. The people growing our food are in many instances living the most precarious lives. 

But we don’t want to see them, do we? Out of sight, out of mind, abstract as our own death. Not our fault, it’s globalization, NAFTA, capitalism, the way it is. I didn’t make the rules. It’s life. I can’t help it if I earn a lot of money. Everyone has to pull themselves by their own shoe laces, bootstraps, and Velcro. 

I read all the labels and ask why some of these products can’t be produced domestically. Perhaps they can, but we’d pay more and maybe have access to less, be forced to wait for the seasons to change and certain fruits and vegetables to become available. Would that be the end of the world? Not for me, personally, maybe, but the possibility of a desire being unavailable is unthinkable to many. We’re conditioned from Amazon to Uber to DoorDash to expect immediate fulfillment; it’s a God-inspired right for certain human beings.  

Capitalism fucked up American agriculture as surely as it created virtual monopolies in banking, insurance, technology, telecommunications, airlines, and grocery chains. What are the main cash crops in the American heartland, corn and soybeans? Duo culture. Bad for the soil over time. Uses a lot of scarce water and pesticides, fertilizer.  Big agriculture, large scale, thousands of acres. Corporate-food. 

Because of our peculiar way of seeing the world, it’s not always easy to recognize that climate change is happening. But don’t take my word for it, just pay attention to the number of stories in the media about weather and water, and the locales where never-in-my-lifetime events are happening. Climate and food and humans are intertwined, like lovers.  

Night of the Caudillo

 “I’ve watched the days pass with the slow downhill feeling we all experience sooner or later.” Javier Marias, All Souls

The would-be American Caudillo is angry. Seething in the Florida night. Indicted. Criminally indicted. This is new, uncomfortable, and can’t be part of the script. It’s preposterous because he did nothing wrong, he never does anything wrong; evil and jealous people want to take him down. He’s a victim. They persecute him because he is strong and beats them all the time. Don’t they know he never loses, at anything! Indestructible. Infallible. Immense. His likeness must be carved into monuments, cast in bronze, captured in marble and placed for eternity in the Great Hall of the Patriots. He poses before a full-length mirror, tilts his chin up, glares with contempt. He likes the look. Tough. Manly. Virile. He sucks in his stomach. Still got it. 

His loyalists in the legislative branch rush to his defense, attack the prosecutor’s race and integrity. The nerve of the man! All politically motivated they say, all designed to derail the Caudillo’s candidacy for a triumphant second term. It doesn’t matter that the alleged crimes were being investigated long before the Caudillo announced his intent to run again, it’s still a political hit job. The loyalists line up to speak to the scribes and cameras, and in chorus link the prosecutor with a cabal led by a wealthy Jew, one of history’s most reliable and durable villains. In service of the Caudillo, evidence is unnecessary and logic the obsession of impotent intellectuals. What matters is the narrative. Create it, repeat it, add to it as needed, alter it on the fly. Keep it simple so the faithful understand. Us against them. Our kind against those others. 

Everyone is out to get him. 

The Florida night feels inhospitable and the shadows beyond the windows bend like the bars of a cage. In another room, behind a dead-bolted and electronically alarmed door, his wife sleeps alone. No comfort there. The gilded ballroom is empty. He doesn’t tolerate the quiet of these hours well because thoughts creep in, memories, sensations, and he struggles to hold them at bay. He reminds himself that there has never been a more perfect human specimen than him. He’s the one without defects or flaws or blemishes. Mental and physical perfection. The ultimate winner. His father drummed into him that peace is for the faint of heart, the weak. Be a killer, son. Win, whatever the cost. Hasn’t he always?

He learned to keep his own hands clean by getting others to do the heavy lifting, the unpleasant work. He also learned the importance of having someone or something to blame when things don’t fall his way. Accuse the accusers. Turn the tables. Twist the truth. Push the boundaries. Stoop low.

The night reminds him of the military boarding school his father sent him to, a place he hated from the moment he arrived. The older cadets lorded over the younger cadets, treating them with meanness and cruelty. They stole sheets from beds and urinated in boots and jerked off into socks. Bastards! How he hated them. In the communal showers they pointed at his cock and compared it to a Vienna sausage. They nicknamed him “Stubby.” Only Thomas understood because he was also harassed and ridiculed. Thomas lived down the corridor, the last room on the left. He spent hours in that room after Thomas’s roommate returned home for medical reasons. Sitting side by side on Thomas’s single bed, shoulders touching, the room dimly lit by the lamp on the desk. Talking quietly about this and that, but mostly about their hatred of the older cadets. Plotting revenge. Totally simpatico.

He remembers how the warmth of their young bodies mingled. Even now he can feel Thomas’s arm around his shoulders. Forbidden thoughts became forbidden deeds committed under the coarse sheet and heavy wool blanket of Thomas’s bed. It was breathless and furtive, a first for both. Clumsy and uncertain and shrouded by the risk of discovery. When he placed his lips on Thomas’s neck he felt the boy’s racing heartbeat. 

Where, he wonders, is Thomas now? Aside from his father, Thomas is the only other person he never betrayed.