Maudlandia

Do you remember the movie ‘Days of Wine and Roses’? It was Jack Lemon, in a distinctly not-funny role, and that beautiful actress... She died very young, of some kind of cancer. When I read she had died I was shocked. I was so young myself, I didn’t know anyone who had died yet, much less of cancer….it seemed impossible. She was so beautiful.

A couple of years ago at the height of the pandemic I decided to join one of those ‘urban farm’ subscriptions that would provide me with beautiful produce every 2 weeks. They had different plans for different prices, but I went with the cheapest one, at about 30 bucks a month. I think they called it ‘Farmer’s Surprise’. 

Oh Maudie, It looks like I forgot to mention some things... I don’t know if you could ever take it in, but just for the record, here goes:

Mother was third-generation Irish, many decades removed from that gritty bombastic hard-drinking nay-saying catastrophizing race of people. She was well-educated, well-dressed, even elegant. She always wore a string of shiny pearls and little pumps on her feet, brown in winter and beige in summer. That attention to dress didn’t travel down the leash to me. It was a miracle that I even bathed.

1. Late-night eating. Bread, pasta, even oatmeal, as long as it’s heavy in brown sugar, and topped with butter. These items won’t work in the daytime...you have to start after 7 PM for full effect.

+9 more ways to fill the void.

I’m left with a haunting memory from childhood of my mother’s constant refrain “Maudie, clean your room.” I could not (would not) do it, no matter how she begged and pleaded. I understand now that there was a clear issue of defiance playing out. One way to ensure that a teenager will not obey you is to ask over and over again.

It was November of 1989 and I hadn’t had a martini for four months. The whole world was feeling bright and new, and the pile of shit I’d been driving all those drunken years, a beat-up Honda Civic, simply wouldn’t do. I myself wasn’t responsible for all the dents and scratches, mind you...my (soon-to-be) ex-husband did a lot of the damage. He never caught on to the trick about not driving drunk. I had the good sense to do my heaviest drinking alone at home.

Probably the only good thing that came out of my very bad marriage was a lasting friendship with his sister, Melissa. Well that, and the catering. For years after he lost his food business to drugs and alcohol, I continued cooking, as we had done together, with a tiny business of my own...so tiny that it never had a name, and I never printed a business card, and I barely spoke about it, except to complain about how damn hard it was to be cleaning shrimp at midnight for some corporate lunch I had going out the next day.

Back in the mid 80’s my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. She had been an avid smoker for 40 years, and her standing joke was that if she found herself waiting for a bus on a cold corner she’d just light a cigarette and the bus would immediately show up. It was her little trick. We knew right away that this was a terminal cancer. The first doctor she saw, a lovely avuncular man in late middle age, came into the waiting room and said ‘Can I be frank with you?’

I’ve been in therapy as far back as I can remember. I want to say that none of these mental health professionals ever really helped me, but that’s just unfair. What if I hadn’t seen them? What would my life have looked like? Could I have been a suicide? Isn’t drinking a quart of vodka each day a kind of slow suicide? Of course, it doesn’t feel like that. You do it seeking some kind of relief. Ultimately it provides none, but you continue on, thinking maybe the next martini will do the trick.