March 20: Mrs. Morrow, Hot-Shot, Mother

Old Mrs. Morrow didn't say anything, but boy, you should've seen her.  I had her glued to her seat.  You take somebody's mother, all they want to hear about is what a hot-shot their son is.

Holden meets Mrs. Morrow on a train to New York City.  She's the mother of one of his classmates at Pencey, a "sonuvabitch" in Holden's estimation.  Yet, Holden likes Mrs. Morrow and tells her a pack of lies about her son, making Ernie out to be a "hot-shot" at school.  Popular,  Humble.  Shy.  Modest.  By the time the train reaches New York, Mrs. Morrow is inviting Holden to visit her son during summer vacation.

Mothers always want to hear the best about their sons and daughters.  Holden tells Mrs. Morrow exactly what she wants to hear.  Her child is a future President of the United States or Nobel Peace Prize winner.  I've had people tell me what a sweet, quiet girl my daughter is.  I usually look at them like they're describing a stranger.  Quiet?  My daughter?

My mother just became an octogenarian a little while ago.  She's always been a strong force in my life.  More than once, she marched up to the high school office when she thought they weren't giving me challenging classes.  When I was a freshman, she had a conversation with the principal on the first day of classes.  The next day, I found myself transferred out of study hall into geometry.  When she dropped me off at school that morning, she looked at me and said, "Don't disappointment me."  I got all A's the entire year.

I appreciate the fact that my mother pushed me as much as she did.  She was a tiger mother before the term "tiger mother" entered the popular lexicon.  She drove me to college scholarship interviews (I eventually received a full-ride from my school of choice).  She was the one who forced me to double-major--English and Computer Science.  She encouraged me to go to graduate school (where I received another full-ride).  After I earned my Master's degree, she suggested a PhD program might be a good idea (although I'd already started applying).  My mother has pushed, nudged, and prodded me through my whole life.  At the release party for my first book of poems, she was in the front row at the reading, smiling and nodding at her hot-shot son.

My mother's mind isn't what it used to be.  When I'm around her, she repeats herself a lot, asks the same questions over and over.  She suffers from macular degeneration.  A voracious reader her whole life, she's reduced to large-print James Patterson and Nicholas Sparks novels.  Last Sunday afternoon, I had dinner at her house.  We talked about my college teaching, and, in a moment of tiger mother clarity, she said, "When are they going to make you a full-time professor?"

I laughed and said, "When I hire a hit man to take out one of the poets in the department."

I worry about my mother now, grieve for the hurricane of woman she used to be.  She doesn't leave the house much anymore and uses a walker to get from her chair to the kitchen to the bathroom.  She could no longer strike fear into the hearts of school principals and counselors.  Yet, I still sense her over my shoulder when I teach or write or give a reading.

She's always there, smiling, whispering in Saint Marty's ear, "Don't disappointment me."

She is mother, hear her roar.

January 23: Ernie, Playing the Piano, Country Music

...It was pretty quiet, though, because Ernie was playing the piano.  It was supposed to be something holy, for God's sake, when he sat down at the piano.  Nobody's that good.  About three couples, besides me, were waiting for tables, and they were all shoving and standing on tiptoes to get a look at old Ernie while he played.  He had a big damn mirror in front of the piano, with this big spotlight on him, so that everybody could watch his face while he played.  You couldn't see his fingers while he played--just his big old face.  Big deal.  I'm not too sure what the name of the song was that he was playing when I came in, but whatever it was, he was really stinking it up.  He was putting all these dumb, show-offy ripples in the high notes, and a lot of other very tricky stuff that gives me a pain in the ass.  You should've heard the crowd, though, when he was finished.  You would've puked.  They went mad...

Ernie is the owner of the nightclub/bar Holden has just entered.  Holden is lonely and wants to be around people.  Everything is depressing him.  The hotel, the streets of New York, the people he sees on the streets of New York.  And now, at Ernie's, he's depressed about the music being played.  Ernie is a phony, trying to impress his audience with "show-offy" moves on the piano, and, of course, Holden isn't buying it.

I have to say that I'm pretty particular about music.  I can put up with almost any genre of music, from classical to rap.  There is just one type of music I can't stand, one that gives me a pain in the ass, as Holden would say.  The type of music is country. This hatred stems from years of being forced to listen to my brother's Johnny Cash records in the bedroom we shared.  I knew that, if I heard "Folsom Prison Blues" coming from the stereo when I was a kid, it was going to be a really long night.

This morning, the cable for the TV was not working in the waiting room of the medical office.  It was just cracking static.  So one of the radiology clerks pulled up a country station on her computer and started giving me childhood flashbacks.  When I first heard the music, I looked at her and said, "Please tell me you're not playing country."  She smiled and said, "It's better than silence."  I looked at her with the same expression I'm sure Holden has on his face listening to Ernie play.

This Worry Wednesday, I was forced to listen to almost two hours of pluck and twang, songs about dead guitars and disloyal dogs and cheatin' trains.  You get the idea.  It was not pleasant.  It got to the point where I wanted to find a sawdust floor, drink cheap beer, and vomit.  And I've done plenty of vomiting in the last few days.

Thank God the cable came back.  I'll even take Kathie Lee and Hoda over Willie and Waylon.  It's cold outside.  All the schools are closed, and the university is shut down for the second day in a row.  But at least I don't have to hear someone singing about Jesus taking the wheel.

Saint Marty is not a country boy.  Thank God.