“It’s not what you say, but how you say it.”

— Pamela Andrea, A Momily Bestowed upon Her Children (late 1970s onward)

“True. Except of course when it absolutely is what you said.”

— The Voice in My Head, During Mom’s Critiques (1962-)

My mom’s name is Lorna Lee Mansfield (née Jourdain). She was born in Oakland, California, on August 14, 1939, to Lily Edith Jourdain (née Castle) and Leo Henry Carl Jourdain (né Jourdain). As her mother’s two older children were already out on their own, she was raised as (a) an only child and (b) the apple of her father’s eye... both of them, in fact.

It was the second marriage for both of her parents, where they had swapped partners with their neighbors after their divorces; in fact, my grandmother and her friend had gone to Reno together to toss their rings into the river. It was all very modern.

As a child, I didn’t understand why my grandmother didn’t refer to Leo’s first wife as “The Baroness” instead of as “The Baron Woman.” And since her first husband later died when a car ran into him, she always considered herself to be a widow.

* * *

My mom is highly intelligent and creative. She is a designer of fashions and interiors, a genealogist, an artist, and a master gardener.

But she also has ADD, with a possible 'H' in there, as well as a kind of autism that seems to be peculiar to women (at least in our family). One whole hell of a lot of grand artistic projects get started (along with a load of smaller, more practical ones), but the vast majority of them end up scattered in incomplete piles around the house.

She isn’t really a hoarder, as such. At least, there’s not filth. She doesn’t compulsively buy things with which to fill the living space. It’s really just bags and bags of incomplete paperwork, pieces of projects, and then loads of materials for future projects... where those future projects often get a step or two completed just to kind of hold a place in line, but then get covered by more recent stuff.

I have only seen her cry twice. Once was when I was about 5 years old, and she found out over the phone that a child of distant relatives had died a truly horrible death. The other was just a few years ago, after we had established a shared home here in Oregon, and a box arrived with some of her possessions from my brother’s home in Wyoming, sent by my sister-in-law. She interpreted it as a cruel gesture of rejection.

That part I was able to escape when I moved out of my childhood home. There are times when we have shared houses since then, but I keep my area decluttered. And in recent years, with a whole lot of support, My mom had made truly admirable efforts to keep the clutter to a livable level.

In the summer of 2023, it ended up being just me and my mom living in the house.

That event was like releasing the hounds. When I told my mom about the pending divorce, her response was, “Ohhh... when can we rehome Jax?" (which is my son’s cat who had attached himself to her), and then a tape measure Skywalkered into her hands from three rooms away. While I grieve, she can’t stop talking about shopping sprees, changing out the furniture, and so forth.

It is a chronic reminder of how very little time she spends wearing anyone else’s shoes. It doesn’t happen at all unless there is specific prompting put into place.

To be fair, if I risk hurting her feelings by pointing out that this is not a celebration for me, and I am not poised and ready to drive her to all of the decorating stores, she will say that it is a sad time, and that she will wait a while for me to calm down. And then she will tell me again about the plan to get rid of the modular couch out in the living room and replace it with two recliners so that the two of us can sit there and watch TV together like she and my dad did in their room. And about how “we” should be more social, whereby I should invite big groups of my friends over and cook big meals so that she can sit out on the porch with them and talk.

I don’t have big groups of friends. I don’t do parties. There are a select few people with whom I might take in a movie, or meet with at the pub, or get together for RPGing. And I am not a chatter. I don’t natter. I am not one to make small talk over dinner.

I am not my mom’s buddy. I am not a replacement for my dad. I don’t enjoy my mom’s company on a general basis.

I have been so thoroughly traumatized by my mom’s abuse over my 60 years of life that I often don’t like her.

There.

I said it.

I don’t like my mom.

She can do nice things. She can be very generous, like my dad was.

But she learned from her mother to pick on people about their weight, complexion, clothing, life choices... lots of stuff.

I mean, there are some things that aren’t a problem at all. Camrin, my son, is transgender, and while my mom has some trouble remembering the right pronouns, the change didn’t phase her at all.

She has never expressed any racial bigotry about any of my family’s friends, although there are still the occasional very general comments that aren’t terribly unusual from an 80-year-old woman who had a nanny as a little girl. Her mom was raised by a Chinese family from the time that she was about 10 years old, which is a story in itself, and my grandparents had close friends who were people of color back when that could get your house burned down.

I’m not sure how to best express this meaning, but our family has Venned the LGBTQQIP2SA+ community for generations. I never heard either of my parents say anything that wasn’t supportive, and there was nothing but pure acceptance and admiration... it just goes on and on.

The following is the point that I feel that my insides are wanting to make...

Of all of the subtle insults and other abusive remarks that my mom would hide inside of supposed compliments and jokes, none of them were ever about who someone was. It was only ever about surface appearances. Weight. Clothing. Complexion (acne, not color). Odor. And even the clothing comments weren’t about conventionality. It was more a matter of trying to make me feel bad that I had no interest in displaying the same devotion to her interest as my brother did. I didn’t mannequin for her. I wasn’t her dress-up doll. And that felt like a personal insult to her, so she punished me for it.

So, yeah... the abuse tended to be reserved for the people close to her.

Like a lot of Autistic women, she wiped out in her first year of college once she was outside the structure of home. She went to work for Petersen Tractor Company as the secretary of a man named Dewey Edwin Mansfield, and they engaged in a workplace relationship that we know better now than to support. My dad gave her what he refereed to as a “terminal raise,” and they got married on June 4, 1960.

She wasn’t quite 21. My dad was 31 (and a half).

Her mother, Lily Edith Jourdain (née Castle) did not approve of my dad. (I don’t know how my mom’s father, Leo Henry Carl Jourdain, felt about it.) You see, my mom was engaged to man that Lily had chosen for her. A member of the Coast Guard. My mom precipitously married my dad instead as an attempt to defy her mother and break free.

As an alleged sign that there were no hard feelings, Lily said that she and Leo would go on a grand Airstream trip, something that Leo had long been looking forward to. That would leave the house open for my parents to live in. Doesn’t that sound grand?

My dad was leery, but he was leery about lots of stuff. My mom insisted that there were no risks, and in they moved.

And a few days later, after Lily felt that my folks would be stuck there, she canceled the trip (much to Leo’s disappointment), and turned around to start running my parents’ lives.

She didn’t really think it all the way through. Either that, or she wasn’t yet used to my mom’s defiance. My dad just said Hell Naw and moved them out of there.

* * *

This essay will change over time. It is just a placeholder that I suspect is needed.

2023-06

[Letting Go of Bill]