Do you happen to know the Philip Larkin poem, This Be the Verse from 1971?
If not, here it is in its entirety.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
When I was a kid myself, our hometown newspaper had what they called a “Society” section, which was every bit as thick and avidly read as was their Sports section. Most American newspapers had them back then, with such highfalutin news as who had recently been initiated into the Elks Club or whose daughter was introduced to the society via the cotillion. Tacoma’s cotillion was always at the Winthrop Hotel, the best in town, though now it’s a halfway house for homeless people, some of whom might have been Elks or introduced at a cotillion themselves.
My mother was a diehard aficionado of the Tacoma News Tribune’s Society section, as often as possible trying to get herself mentioned there. She was on committees for various clubs, some intent on teaching their memberships the difficulties of doing a proper mambo or the tango, while others, like the Orthopedic Guild for Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital, were engaged in worthier endeavors whether it said so in the paper or not.
My mother grew up poor, the second of six children, born in a cabin in the wilds of Alberta, Canada, when her parents were up there searching for something… oil, gold? She went to Prosser High School in Eastern Washington. Three of her four brothers, Chuck and Archie and Frank, also went to that school, and were expelled a couple of times; once for dissembling the principal’s Model T and reassembling it on the school’s roof, and once for leaving a horse in the gym over an entire weekend.
Both were antics that neither the principal nor the horse appreciated.
But my mother was a good girl. She was the primary caregiver to her 14-years-younger brother, Jack; she had a part-time job selling tickets at the Prosser movie theater to help her family make ends meet; and she was on the staff of her high school newspaper. Years ago I read a couple of the articles she wrote and was surprised by how good they were. She told me that her dream had been to become a writer.
After high school she moved to Tacoma to attend nursing school at Tacoma General Hospital, after which she became a surgical nurse. She loved the job and felt a huge amount of pride in the respect she got from doing it well. But she met and married my dad, a newly minted dentist, and so quit nursing. It was what women did back then, yet for the first twenty years of my life she often said in a starry-eyed way, “When you boys are grown, I might very well go back.”
She never did. Instead she found footing in the sort of ‘social’ recognition that is easy to make fun of now, but that meant the world to legions of American women who awoke to find themselves upward bound. It seemed that no matter how trivial the reference - “Mrs. Smith Travels to Fresno” or “Mrs. Harvey’s Daughter Gets a New Bike,” the Society Page printed it. My mother even convinced them to put a photograph of our family on its front page one time, because we got a new carpet!
If you don’t believe me look at this, from April 1, 1951. It’s grainy, but if you zoom in you’ll see our new carpet! Comfort dwelled at our house, with me a six-year old in cowboy boots!
My mom was thirty-nine when that photo was taken - when I think of that now I feel sorry - but for decades after it she was like a sky-high socialite rocket, making double sure that the rest of the family conformed to her imagined world, with proper haircuts and shirts tucked in… If I said, “Hey, Mom, what about going back to nursing?” she could be counted on to grow wistful yet dismissive at the same time. She was a long way from the Alberta cabin by then, but, of course, still living in it.
I hated the social life she chased, so I escaped whatever was ‘expected’ of me by roaming the beach for days on end or staying at my mother’s mother’s house, where we opened Campbell’s tomato soup cans, ate the soup, then nailed the tops of the cans over mouse holes in the baseboard of my grandma’s kitchen. The Alberta cabin lived in her and seemed to be quite welcome.
Then one day perhaps four or five years after we got that new carpet, I surprised my mother who was sitting on her bed, tears in her eyes and with a smallish 22 calibre pistol in her hands. When I saw the pistol I went nuts, as kids are wont to do in such situations, even though I also saw that the butt of her pistol didn’t contain the requisite magazine, so I knew it wasn’t loaded. And I’m not sure I surprised her, either. I think she wanted me to find her that way. My mother was loving and kind in many ways, but it took me a while to forgive her for that.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
I didn’t come to understand the depth my mother’s emotional dysfunction, or how deeply embedded it was in me, until I read Evan S. Connell’s masterful novel, Mrs. Bridge, when I was in my forties - older than my mom was when we got that carpet.
I found her so embedded in that novel that I had to stop reading often, if only to catch my breath, yet I read it through three times.
If you haven’t read Mrs. Bridge, it has my highest recommendation. You’ll find my mom alive again and conforming to Larkin’s poem.
I only hope you don’t find yours, as well.
Dick, I have been negligent in keeping up with your postings. I am using annual January trip to a Mexican beach to catch up. My mother was a complicated person who wasn’t always a great mother. My father died when I was eight and my brother four. In the 1950’s the usual response would have been to find another man to support her and my brother and me. She instead got a Ph.D and became a college professor. My brother and I were left to fend for ourselves a good part of our childhood. At my advanced age I have come to understand she did the best she could. I was fascinated and moved reading about your intact model family where things weren’t perfect. Amazed that things turned out okay for both of us.
I'm obsessed with the photo. Was the tie a prop?