Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

mom

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My life weebles and wobbles but it just doesn’t fall down. I can’t explain it. Despite the most awful things happening, they always turn out for the best in the end.

My mother and i were essentially kicked out of our house at the end of my Junior year by the owners because they wanted to sell it. I had lived in that house for all but three years of my life. I refused to leave. My mother wanted to buy a nice little house somewhere verging on suburbia, but there was the small matter of my attending the best highschool in the state, which i would hardly have left just for senior year. In the end i convinced her to rent a house on the verges of South Philly, because i know that when she actually buys a place it should be one she loves, not one she settles for. It was all very depressing at the time, but Senior year wound up being one of the best of my life, despite all the shitty parts. I wound up living within walking distance of Gina and Anastasia, and i could actually take a shopping trip to South Street at my leisure. I had my own room on my own tiny third floor. Our kitchen was nice. I was happy.


Lots of other things have righted themselves over the years to keep my life going at its usual pace. I only got into a local university but they gave me lots of money and inexplicably wound up happy there. I almost didn’t find an apartment (chronicled at length in the first week of the archive) but wound up in a super-cheap and easily accessible one. But, life doesn’t always work out so perfectly. For some people, it doesn’t work out at all. I have too many friends who got into a local university and got zero money who are now unhappy and in debt. I know too many people who had to move home because they didn’t figure out where to live in time for the beginning of the semester. I know too many unhappy people.

Yesterday i confronted the fact that my smile might have finally become used up. For years and years i just glided through my occasional problems with a grin pasted onto my face, because they all got fixed eventually and life moved on. Suddenly i’m starting to realize that not everything fixes itself, and that i don’t know how much good cheer i really have left to get me through the bad spots


Imagine that… i’m 19 and just learning that “happily ever after” only really happens in fairy tales and first-date movies. I’ve never had to confront the possibility before; i always assumed that bad things only happened to people who weren’t thinking positively. Now i’m starting to realize that keeping a smile on my face isn’t the best defense, and that sometimes it cuts as cruelly as any situation i might be unsuspectingly plunged into. But my life is still all-good, and that scares me. No one is continually blessed. The gods only have so much attention to give.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/2097862/

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So, my mother doesn’t share stories from her youth too often, but there are three very infamous tales from when she was my age about David Bowie. You see, my mother used to be obsessed with Mr. Bowie. If you were to take my fanatical worship of Peter Mulvey, combine it with the awe in which i regard Tori Amos, and then send that all through my nearly frightening dedication to the cast of Friends, you might get to somewhere near how my mother felt about David Bowie.

Her one claim to fame is that she met Bowie in the Sigma Sound studio while he was recording Young Americans here in Philadelphia. At first this story was simple… her friend knew the percussionist, so they got into the studio and then Bowie came out and motioned vaguely in their direction. Over the years i managed to eek some more details from her, like the fact that Bowie was discussion a saxophone passage with David Sanborn (who played on the record). Then i learned (from VH1, which never lies) that David Bowie was on so much cocaine when he recorded in Philly that some of it is actually a blur to him now. I made sure to rub this in my mom’s face at every opportunity, but she’s trumped my coked-up-Bowie with a brand new detail divulged this weekend. Apparently, she got into the studio not because her friend knew the percussionist, but because the percussionist stepped outside for a smoke and asked if anyone had any rolling papers. Of course, my mother’s friend did have them, and somehow they got them into the studio, where her paper-possessing friend proceeded to vainly attempt to make conversation with a surely glazed-over Bowie.

Isn’t she a fun gal? I’m starting to have suspicions about why she doesn’t recall the experience too well…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2000/12/1787405/

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My mother has this compulsion to open Christmas presents entirely before Christmas morning whenever possible. After trying to persuade me to open gifts last night, tonight she finally trapped me when she just woke up and wandered downstairs on what is undeniably Christmas morning. We went light on gift-giving this year (although she’s helping me shop for a new guitar), but she did buy me my very own compact disc copies of Like a Virgin & Young Americans, both of which i wanted very badly all this year. So, yay for intuitive gift-giving! Now i’m off to listen to a digitally remastered “Dress You Up” (why, oh why, wasn’t that song on Immaculate Collection? I’ll never figure that one out…).

https://crushingkrisis.com/2000/12/1763954/

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Yes, so, now my emotional life rests on the whims of a four year old, which honestly makes me feel a hell of a lot safer than when it rested on the whims of any number of nineteen and twenty year olds. But, this is just a symptom of my newfound adoration of young children. There’s this question on theSpark.com’s mating test that asks “Aren’t babies special?,” with the obvious intention of trying to suss out whether or not you are interested in having children any time soon. I always answered no, but this week i was thinking about it and i suddenly wanted to get online and change my answer to yes. I think it’s an age thing – i spent the entire week with three women aged roughly 75 who are slightly erratic and senile but also very funny, warm, and engaging. At the same time, tonight the only person who was missing from my family dinner was my paternal grandmother, who is in hospice care and not even 70.

My mother has a 26 year lead on me, so when i’m 40 she’ll be a venerable 66. She had the good fortune of having me while she was young and also forming a career for herself, so she now gets to watch me grow to be an adult as well as working at something she somewhat enjoys. All of my tiny cousins were born to aunts in their 40’s … when Audrey is my age her mother will be on the other side of 60 (and i’ll be 38… dear lord, let me find the fountain of youth before then…). How old will she be when Audrey has her own children?

I’m obviously biased by having such a young mother and father (it’s his 50th birthday today), but in my reflections on when i want to consider children in my own life a very certain and relatively small window of time is developing. I obviously would want to be out of college and securely in a job, but i’d want to have children while i was still young enough in body and heart to truly enjoy the experience and still have a life afterwards. That leaves a span of years that’s something like 26 – 35, which in today’s society (and recently in my family) is relatively young. But, what’s a boy to do? I might not be done living my own individual life by then, but do i really want to be in a retirement home when my kids graduate from college?

These are the thoughts that run through my head when i’m trapped in a condo in Florida at 4am with nothing to eat other than a bag of mini Twix bars and nothing to do except watch teevee or dream. These dreams are almost nightmares in a way, not because they’re frightening in and of themselves, but because they make me realize just how small the span of life really is. I somehow expect myself to mature into a lover and father in the next decade and a half… doesn’t that mean that i need to start dating eventually? Or, that i should start experiencing the things i want to do now rather than assuming i’ll get to them later?

Or maybe i should just start packing benadryl with me when i go on vacation so i’m not left with the time to ponder this sort of stuff. Either that or bring my guitar next time…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2000/12/1763273/