Lifetime Difficulties by Julene Tripp Weaver (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

Lifetime Difficulties
by Julene Tripp Weaver

My mother married an older man,
sixteen years her elder, she was nineteen.
She knew he would be her husband
the moment she saw him. She fulfilled
the role of a housewife, while she studied
stenography, Gregg and Pitman.

Early I learned my mother distrusted men.
She said they didn’t want women with big feet
who wore orthopedic shoes. She made chiffon
pies and celery boats. She bowled on a league
with my dad. They wed at a VFW hall. Pictures
show her standing on the grass, my father

on the sidewalk making him look taller.
She was fearful of thunder and lightning.
She never read to me, but said my classes
were too hard. She wrote her name everywhere
around the house, on mail, magazines, random
pieces of paper. She had nice handwriting.

On the side of their bed she explained how
she planned eight years between my sister and I—
showed me her diaphragm in its round case.
My mother repeated words. Diaphragm, eight
years. I wondered, why eight? Once she gave
away a rat terrier my father bought,

she didn’t like the label rat and it ran under
her feet. She lost her mother, then her husband
at age thirty-three, moved in with her brother.
I learned she could not live alone. She gave up
driving after Daddy died. She’d been a good
swimmer, on the Dolphin team

in high school, but she never swam again.
Never put on the lilac dress she looked beautiful
wearing. She pulled herself together for the funerals.
After, she put butter in her hair to protect herself
from the stylists and stopped bathing
till she smelled.

After Uncle died, my little sister got help,
we learned her diagnosis was schizophrenia,
She’d always had a busy mind filled with voices.
She stopped going to outpatient care,
became suicidal on Haldol, with its
serious side effects.

My sister moved her in with her after three attempts.
My mother threw away her knives, candles, anything
she thought dangerous. I remember when she tried
to throw my friend down our stairway in Queens.
How my mother said I was a difficult child,
but she was the tortured one.

PHOTO: Page of shorthand notes by Robyn Mackenzie.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My mother died in 2017, the same month my third poetry book was released revealing my status as a long-term survivor of AIDS; a fact I choose not to share with my mother. The year before, for my mother’s 85th birthday, I visited her with my sister at the nursing home where she lived her last years after a stroke. It was the final time I saw her alive. When she was actively dying I had my first panic attack and a depression that lasted several months, I lost 25 pounds. It was hard to know if what I was experiencing was due to my book release or the grief of my mother’s death. Because I never had the kind of relationship with her I longed for, and because we fought through my teens, I never felt close, so the emotional reaction was a surprise. No doubt it was a combination, but I realized the enormous grief I held about the loss of a mother I’ve felt my whole life.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: A photo from my childhood, after my sister was born. To the right is my mother’s mother, who was with us on a road trip. I’m standing between my grandmother and mother. Guessing it’s 1961 or 62.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Julene Tripp Weaver, a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle, Washington, worked in AIDS services for 21 years. Her third poetry collection, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, and won the Bisexual Book Award. Slow Now With Clear Skies, published by MoonPath Press, was released in April 2024. Widely published, her poems can be found in HEAL, Mad Swirl, Anti-Heroin Chic, Feels Blind, and in two recent anthologies, I Sing the Salmon Home and Rumors Secrets & Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion & Choice. Find more of her writing at julenetrippweaver.com. She’s on on Instagram  @julenet.weaver.

Author photo in Vashon Art Gallery (Seattle, Washington)
by June Sekiguchi.