I do a lot of thinking while I paint. Some pretty odd ideas get floated around, especially when I'm between audiobooks and don't want to start another. The mind wanders... yesterday it was why is the phrase "crazy cat lady" instead of woman, gal, etc. And what would the male equivalent be. Lol


But today it's a different thing entirely that I've been thinking on for hours. Prompted largely by this major discussion going on about sexual harassment. And so I thought I'd share. Because many, many things go to the grave without broadening perspective. And perhaps they shouldn't, because they make us who we are, and how we view the world. So I'm taking a break from the paint to share this.


My mom and I were very, very close, we talked about everything. And in that, she was the best mom in the world. She was always very honest, and straight forward, and empathetic. In the last few years, when my folks had moved to Sonora, and I was still in Modesto, they/she would come down every couple weeks to make sure I was O.k. We'd talk a lot, go to lunch, garage sale-ing, or just hang out. She'd grab one of my bills without telling me, or bring me groceries. I'd tell her about everything going on, sometimes dumb choices I'd made, the tougher ones I'll not go into here because this isn't about me. She knew everything, easy to talk to, easy to express an idea without opinion. And she would tell me things about her life, and how she dealt with them.


Now those who remember my mom, she was a 'big girl', I never knew her any other way. But she would try any diet, any thing to get smaller, to be well. Because she knew it was wrecking her. I can't remember how many there were, she'd lose the weight, put it back on. give up for a while, try again. But something always stopped her from getting all the way down to what she should be.
I always worried, because I knew she wasn't happy with it. Her body gave her many problems. She didn't have diabetes, and would never get to but it was difficult for her. I grew up with the firm decision that I would never ever allow that to be my trial. And it gave me a perspective about being overweight being something I really can't be happy about for others, get over or accept, to me it's a fear, it's death basically. I can't change that and I've tried.


Well, several months before she passed, I was expecting her to come down, I was off work. And she didn't show up. I waited and waited, and finally that evening she called and said she had come down but had to go right back home, and that we would go have lunch the next weekend. I could tell she was shook up about something but she said it was no big deal and we'd talk about it next week.


So the next week, we went to lunch at Ridgeways. She had been 'dieting' as we called it, but really she was just eating healthy, making good choices, and I was proud of her. She was down to about a 17/19?, the lowest she'd been in a long, long time. And she told me what had happened, she was in town, getting gas in her Camaro and this guy started hitting on her, non-stop. She had always said it was funny how guys were always interested in her shiny burgundy a year from new sports car and would flirt with her even when she was big sometimes. And why not, she was beautiful, always had the best smile ever, I think, her personality shone through in everything about her. But she said she hated it, hated the attention, she was married, after all, it stressed her out. She didn't know how to handle it and just wanted to run. And she felt safer when she was bigger, anonymous, unnoticeable, unthreatened. Safe. I have never forgotten this. I can identify with that stress, sometimes I feel it too. Even with people I know, I don't take complements well. I like to move past that, and it's not that I feel unworthy or bad about myself, I just don't like it, maybe it's genetic. But back to the story.


So, this guy was really trying to talk to her, (she wouldn't tell me what was said exactly) almost cornering her. She just got in her car and left. He got in his car and started following her. She drove around and around town, reluctant to go to my house or grandmas or Terri's, she tried to lose him, and finally she just headed back up to Sonora, and he gave up. She said she had never been so shook up by something like that, but that it made her realize. "You know I think I intentionally eat because I don't want to have to deal with that. Since college, pretty much, it's how I feel safe."


A week or two after that she was off of her diet. She said, the attention wasn't worth it. She'd just try her best and see what happened. Seven months later she was gone.


I know that's an abrupt end. But there really isn't much of a way around it. We never spoke of that again, but I never forgot.
My mom died of a myocardial infarction, or massive heart attack at age 45. I was 23. It's shaped a lot of things about my life, created a lot of ways for me to deal with life and death differently. I've now out lived her by 2 years, her sister by 3 and her father, my grandfather I'll pass up this year. It's a surreal life. But it hasn't made me unhappy, only challenged, and stronger, maybe wiser. It's influenced the art surely, but maybe not in ways you can tell.
Why did I want to get this down today? And on my blog, I don't know. But I wanted to get it somewhere, because it matters. Even though she's gone, it matters. How you treat people matters. That's all.