Lovely stories and memories, David.

Lovely stories and memories, David.

What started as lovely memories with my sister turned into a deeper and darker discussion on issues with our parents, especially our mother.

I knew that my mother was institutionalized when I was an infant. I didn't know (a) it was for 8 months; (b) that she underwent shock therapy (ECT); (c) that she was heavily medicated for the rest of her life; or (d) that she had a bipolar diagnosis.

I did know that my parents were both on "diet" pills (aka, speed) at various points in their lives. And I did know that my father had to take hormones for several years to have me because he'd been exposed to an improperly shielded infrared machine (used in the hospital where he was a physical therapist).

I didn't know that (a) the military made my dad take speed because he was chubby, and (b) I never really thought about how being on speed and testosterone affected my dad's behavior (there were violent outbursts).

But the biggest weird thing was like one of those plot reveals where the narrative goes back in time and somebody you did not expect to be there was present at the scene of a key event and you have to re-think the context of everything.

I think I've mentioned before that the woman who taught me to read was named Buddy Newbury. She lived across the street from us on the Air Force base. She had cat-eye glasses, and very red lipstick (so in my mind's eye is sort of like Flannery O'Connor). And she was very smart, and skinny and kind to me, and I remember sitting in her lap as she read dinosaur books to me. These memories are very early for me - like age 3 or 4.

So my sister is talking about the moment where my mom had the breakdown where she was institutionalized (which I've heard before), and then my sister says, "When Mom collapsed I ran down the street to get Buddy Newbury who got mom cleaned up and looked after me when they came to take her away."

So the woman I remember dimly at age 4, was present when I was 8 months old as well and looking after me and my sister.

HOWEVER, she wasn't just some angel figure, she was her own complicated woman living in a crushingly sexist (I kept thinking of Mad Men and Betty's Twilight induced birth, and Alexis Beidel's character receiving shock therapy) world.

Other facts about Buddy Newbury I never knew: she grew up very wealthy with a governess; she ran away from her family and became a Rockette (my sister used to dress up in her showgirl outfits); she married a military man (but just a sergeant - not an officer as would be expected for her class); she had two children (?!) that were not at her house and she had difficult relationships with.

Well, that is a lot to take in!

Wow, Hec. That is a lot of new information. Buddy sounds like a very interesting woman.

Well, that is a lot to take in!

Yes, it is. I won't even get into the Faulknerian nightmare which is my mom's side of the family. eta: But then I do talk about it further downstream, so if you're not ready for Full Faulkner before breakfast skip the spoiler font.

The Buddy Newbury reveal was like in the MCU when they show Howard Stark interacting with Steve Rogers in the 40s, or a Pensieve scene in Harry Potter where new information about the past completely changes your understanding of what happened.

I'm trying to think what kind of diagnosis my mom would've received or what drugs she would've been on back then. Manic-Depression, I guess, but what would they treat that with besides something like Lithium? Maybe Valium? I have no idea but there weren't a lot of effective anti-depression options before Prozac in the 80s.

So we've made it to Friday and we have NO contractors in the house today (for the first time in two weeks) and NO large deliveries. My only significant responsibility today is getting Matilda to her Booster shot and hanging out with Emmett before he goes up to camp (where he's working for one two week session to hang with Kalena and his friends up there).

How's everybody else lining up their weekend?

I’m shipping ltc off to the in-laws tonight and heading out with Victor and Thessaly for dinner and a movie. D has plans on Sunday. So I think ltc and I will stay home and watch a movie.

Buddy sounds like a very interesting woman.

She really was. I remember her coming over to have coffee with my Mom, and my mother being very nervous when she visited. And I used to think my mom felt insecure because Buddy was educated and sophisticated. But now I realize it's because Buddy saw her and tended to her after her breakdown.

Judy was between 8 and 9 when it happened, and she saw it happen. Judy and my Dad were at the dinner table and my mom walked in from the kitchen with dinner, and then just fell to her knees sobbing, dropping everything, howling and incoherent.

The other thing I didn't realize was that there were two precipitating events that brought on that crisis, and it wasn't just the slow development of my mom's mental illness or stress in the marriage. Again, I had known these two events had happened, but I didn't realize they had happened within a short timeframe and right before my mom's breakdown.

The first thing was that my mom's older brother Clyde, had [spoiler font for triggering gruesomeness. Seriously, it's upsetting.] committed a murder/suicide. His first wife left him because he was viciously abusive to her and their two sons. He got custody of the sons. She remarried and had two kids. Years later when his sons were teenagers, he took them with him to see their mother. There was a confrontation and he shot and killed his ex-wife, then his sons, then himself. All in front of her two young children (who he didn't harm).

She found all this out on a phone call from the Child Protective Services down there in Georgia.

The other thing was that her younger brother Raymond [spoiler font with trigger warning. Again, quite upsetting] (who had raped her, and was the reason she left Georgia and joined the Air Force) began calling my mom at home threatening to kidnap and rape my sister. My sister was in the room when this call came in and Raymond was very specific about his plans, and also knew a lot of details about where my sister went to school. So my sister spent the next year being accompanied to school every day by the military police.

My mom had this weird way of answering the phone that had always annoyed me as a teenager. She would say "Hello?" with this wary, vulnerable, querulous tone, sort of like the final girl in a horror movie entering a dark basement. And now I know why she was so fearful of phone calls.

Jesus christ.

I’m shipping ltc off to the in-laws tonight and heading out with Victor and Thessaly for dinner and a movie. D has plans on Sunday. So I think ltc and I will stay home and watch a movie.

Oooh, Buffista mini-F2F! You have many options out there, and now Nanita lives in the area too.

I am working on having a plan for today after work. There's a yoga class at a gym in the next town that is in the right level that I can go to it at 7:30, so I was thinking yoga and then dinner but that is very late compared to my usual routing so I am considering dinner and then yoga and that seems reasonable but then I realized this whole plan hinges on GETTING DRESSED and it may fall apart on that basis. I mean, I got dressed yesterday, doing it again today may be too much. We'll see.

I got my cubicle all packed up yesterday, including my headset and dock other ancillary computer things that I thought IT would move with my monitor so that it could all be set up correctly but was told after I had sealed up all my boxes that, no, I needed to pack that stuff as well, so I tossed them in a bag with the Halloween decorations I was not sure whether I would actually bring in just yet. Me and the one other person who is there late-ish in the afternoon took all our boxes and the boxes of everyone else who is in the first wave of moving and had sealed everything up and put them on pallets to be moved by the company driver. Tuesday I will find out how the new commute actually is - per Google and Waze it doesn't look bad going, I haven't checked coming back but popular wisdom is that Thursday afternoons may get bad with people heading to Tahoe but I have side street alternatives that may be better.

There is a gym near the new work location, and I'm told it's pretty nice once you are in it but it's in a not great neighborhood, but it's in a higher level of the gym network so it would cost me more in fees if I wanted to go there. Which should mean that it has more amenities, and I already looked at classes and it has a couple on Tuesday/Thursday evenings that I might like but that would mean driving rather than taking the bus as well as just having very long days away from as well as the increased gym membership costs. So the cost-benefit on that is going to take some thought. Hopefully I can get a day pass to gather data.

I have scoped out a distillery on Mare Island (so real close as the crow flies but about 4 miles to get across the bridge and back) that I am looking forward to checking out after work, and there's at least one happy hour within a mile of work that I will have to try. Yelp is giving me good possibilities for breakfasts and lunches. Biking to the train station, taking the bus to the Vallejo Transit Center, and biking to work still a pretty good possibility that may be workable with a side trip to the gym.

Would still rather not be making the move, but what can you do