Flood of memories pours in for Mother's Day (5-6-2005)
Published: May 6, 2005
Last Modified: December 20, 2005 at 04:27 AM
To me, Mother's Day feels bulbous and jagged, like an old scar.
Sometimes, I run my finger over it until it aches. I like agitating it now and again in the same way I like the melancholy of traveling alone. My father died of cancer on Mother's Day 1983. It fell on May 8 that year too. My maternal grandmother had died two weeks earlier, so it began a long string of bad months for my mother. I was 19.
Growing up, I remember my father's hand clenched around Mickey's Fine Malt Liquor in big-mouth bottles or Olympia in cans. At the end of one two-week road trip, he didn't spill a drop as he veered out of a head-on with a behemoth as big as our burnt orange Plymouth. No one wore seatbelts in those days, and my brothers and I spent hours pounding each other's thighs and arms with knuckles. We measured our road trips in bruises.
When I turned 15 or so, my parents bought a saloon in Folsom, Calif. My father came home drunk plenty of times after that. He looked disheveled and depressed at the head of the table, alone and obliterated. I stood by him one day and thought, "How many times did he almost kill someone tonight, and how many times was he almost killed?"
My mother likes to say we only had one bad year with his drinking, but I know better than that.
That sort of thing creeps up on you. It festers. During the worst of it, he fell down the stairs and scraped a wide swath of skin from his shin. A month later, the wound looked gruesome, almost gangrenous. It took months to heal and plenty of pills to keep infection at bay. All that time, my mother smoked cigarettes and put on a good front. She went to school events and made payments and followed through on social engagements. She looked skeletal with hair cut to thin, thin frays. My father spent many days in the hospital after he quit drinking. About the same time, I bought my first car. I insisted on a sporty, two-door Capri in canary yellow. My mother should have put up a fight, but I figure she wanted me to spend my money my own way. She wanted me to have something I wanted.
My father genuinely liked the taste of beer, so he drank nonalcoholic varieties after he quit. He never looked satisfied. Even those tasteless, canned beers taste better than N/A brews.
I imagine he wanted to luxuriate in the flavor of malt and hops now and again, but he knew the tongue's pining would only lead to blackouts and misjudgments.
As it is, we had three good years with him before he died. We went to ball games and beaches and films. We jogged, talked and passed notes. We caught up and talked about the years ahead.
Since he died, I haven't spent many Mother's Days with my mother. I'm always in another time zone or frame of mind, but I imagine her sitting in a chair with her legs crossed, one knee bobbing to some internal tune and a glass of wine in her hand.
I won't see my mother this weekend, but I'll think of her in that chair. I'll twist off the cap of a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and drink, pondering the way some of us can enjoy that simple pleasure while others have to give it up to live.
MOTHER'S DAY PICKS On such a day as this, try Midnight Sun's Arctic Rhino Coffee Porter for its caffeinated spirit; Sierra Nevada pale for its crisp spring soul; and Midnight Sun's M beer for its celebratory heart.
M (for maniacal, not mild) is the 1,000th batch of beer made at the brewery to celebrate Midnight Sun's 10th anniversary this year. M is a Belgian-style barley wine and consists of seven malts and four yeasts, two of Belgian origin. The beer aged for several months in American oak bourbon barrels before being blended and bottled. Get 22-ounce bottles of the stuff from the brewery or Yukon Spirits.
The brewery turned 10 Thursday but will celebrate at 8 p.m. May 14 at Cafe Amsterdam.
Reporter Dawnell Smith can be reached at dsmith@adn.com.
