Also from July 2011, this sonnet got me in trouble, and it hadn’t even been written yet! Warning: this post is a bit longer than others, but it gives you some idea of why I called my first postdoc years the “Decade of Awfulness”.
A mother insane who disdains hearing reason,
a brother inane, who’s to blame, crying treason
and I am half mad, though none the worse for it.
To tell you the truth, I do wholly adore it.
It gives me a window to see and be seen
through what was, what is and what hasn’t yet been.
But don’t dare let on that ‘twas I told you this,
for if they find out sure they’ll scream and they’ll hiss
since out loud I’ve dared utter truth to their lies--
and in truth’s rich, bright light their bleak, dark falsehood dies
a natural death, though far too long delayed.
I shall not unspeak it--I’m far from dismayed.
For to every thing, as you’ve heard, there’s a season
and every rhyme, e’en half-mad, does have its reason.
Hear it declaimed here: https://aprillynnjames.com/track/4735364/a-mother-insane-who-disdains-hearing-reason-3-2026
It began with these scribbles in a notebook: “a mother insane”, “a brother inane”. I kept the notebook by my computer in the living room and had intended to take it upstairs to my room. But I forgot, went out, and my mother saw it. “Don’t call me insane!” she wailed. Notably, she didn’t waste any breath on the second scribble.
But, dear reader, ’twas not I speaking truth to power. This is Madison seeing and saying what I could not permit myself to see or say. My father had fought in World War II, and the phrase, “Loose lips sink ships,” had often been bandied about our household. Once Dad passed, this rule continued to apply. Mom would never talk about what was bothering her, and would never call what my brother was going through “alcoholism”, although she’d had two sisters who’d been tormented by that demon.
So I didn’t see it either, and I didn’t know how much of a toll Bro’s activities were taking on Mom until she wound up being hospitalized for depression and I took over running her finances. That had been from Thanksgiving 2005 until New Year’s Day 2006. I discovered that she had given her son an American Express card linked to hers and he had run up a $10,000 bill, much of it on alcohol purchases. Now I understood an incident from October 2005: she was ironing a favorite shirt and the collar frayed. I said, “Just get yourself another one,” and she wailed, “ I can’t even afford to even buy myself a shirt!” She had been retired for over a decade by then, and could only count on her pension and Social Security. Oh, and she did have a meager annuity which went to pay off that Amex bill.
Once out of the hospital and seemingly cured, Mom slowly fell back into the behaviors that got her hospitalized, and slowly the physical and mental burdens reappeared. One time, she rushed out to Western Union money to her son, but her right leg was giving her trouble. She wound up crashing the car into the parking lot wall at the supermarket, damaging the headlight on one side, because she had not been able to brake properly. My godmother, her best friend, who had lost her only son to drugs, tried to talk sense into her, to no avail. Nor would Mom listen to her therapist or anyone else who said that this situation might be a little problematic, and she certainly wouldn’t listen to me. Mom would not be dissuaded from her heroic efforts to save her son from himself.
Madison helped me to see things correctly and poetically. By the time the full sonnet came through, I knew that I had to get out. After all, the knight in shining armor can’t save the damsel in distress if the damsel insists upon chaining herself to the dragon.
Oh, and the line about “treason”? Bro was on the losing end of a paternity suit from which Mom had sheltered him for decades. One day in the summer of 2009, the sheriff came to deliver the papers to our house—again. Mom was out. I took them, because, as he explained, all he needed to do was serve them. What we did with them was our business. I convinced Mom to send them to Bro. She did, and he threw a fit. Shortly thereafter his wages were garnisheed for back child support. One can’t run from one’s responsibilities forever. For the record, he is not “inane”. It’s just that his smarts have been turned toward darker purposes, and also that Madison could not resist such a perfect rhyme.