I didn't choose to be son of a scared Jew
and angry Irishman
who never laid a hand on her, even when
she turned the butcher knife on him
when he tried to stop her from slashing
her red wrung wrists
this spectacle in plain view of 5 children for whom "woe is the world" was daily refrain
I recall Father's blood trail on the concrete between our house and the neighbor's, a surgeon not expecting a bleeding Sunday guest,
but my mother's madness didn't rest on the Christian Sabbath, nor on her own
after that, the shrinks did their magic: Mom did the Mellaril march, the Haldol hop, the Stellazine stomp, and the less alliterative Thorazine shuffle
none of those chemically induced dances did a thing to increase the chances for my mother's salvation
soon she was behind the locked doors of "Ward 30," where I visited and Mom told me she had found Jesus
a befuddled revelation since I didn't know she was looking for him--her kin had hung him from a cross and taken the heat ever since
the doctors released her to the street, where she made misty retreat to the hills of Saint Francisco's bay
though she found faint solace in Pacific waters, she would never again see her sons or daughters
half a lifetime later, I found a long lost cousin my mother agreed to see, though not with me, for I was too much a reminder of scars which never heal
she sat with Mother near the end of days, sharing silence, the scent of Salisbury steak, and a view of the distant shore
as my patient cousin rose to leave, my mother finally spoke of a sea she watched turn from cerulean to indigo dusk
childhood beaches my mother did recall: the castles she did craft, the crawling ***** she did follow, the sun bathed sand where she made her bed
far from the one where she now lay, the one in which she would go smoothly into the night, perchance returning to blue waters, where hot blood trails cannot follow
E. W. C. 6/27/1925--10/15/2006