Deidra Alexander's Blog

June 12

I was cleaning out another closet when I found boxes of old clothes, too small for me. I keep thinking I’ll get down to a six again. I haven’t been a six since the eighties, leg warmers and stirrup pants. It’s a shame I was thin when fashion was stupid. I donated them to charity; maybe someone will need a Halloween costume or some rags.

A dusty box on the top shelf had pictures from my childhood. There was Allie staring up at me with red pigtails and a front tooth missing; Bryan in a cowboy hat sitting on top of a pony; and the three of us on Christmas morning.

I flipped through pictures, instead of organizing. It was a good distraction and distractions are what I need most these days. I found a black and white of my father. He was best man at his friend, Chuck’s wedding. I think Chuck was at Dad’s funeral. There were too many strangers to remember.

I came across the only picture I had of Mom, an old picture from when she taught art at the local high school, blue background, white shirt, red hair flung back over her shoulders, and green eyes.

I remember how Dad was after Mom died, like a drowning man. I asked him if I could put a few pictures of her up in my room. He grabbed them from me, hanging onto her images like they were life preservers. I think he knew he was slipping away and was desperate to stay afloat. It was like he hoped her memory could pull him back to the surface. I watched him slipping further under, further away each day, unable to help him, unable to bring him back.

Dad died not long after Mom. He’d been sick, but I hadn’t realized how sick he really was. Perhaps if I had, I could have helped him somehow. One night he didn’t come home. I called Grandma the next morning.

They found him at the cemetery lying on Mom’s grave. He had pneumonia and he died a few days later. It was rumored that someone gave Mom a lethal dose of morphine. Even at the funeral, I heard people talking. It must have been Dad. He was the only one who took care of her. It must have been him. I always wondered if he died from a broken heart or guilt over what he’d done. As a kid, I was angry at him for taking Mom from us. As an adult, I realized it wasn’t as simple as it seemed. Dad would have done anything for her and maybe he did.

When they met, it was love at first sight. Dad seemed to have found what he was looking for when he met Mom. He quit college, gave up a full scholarship and never looked back. He took a job working for her father. Always a loyal employee and devoted husband, both of those seemed out of place these days, old fashioned.

These were the only pictures that had survived the many evictions and moves from when we were in college. I lost so much during those times.

It wasn’t hard to figure out my parents had to get married, if you counted the days between their wedding and my brother’s birth date. Mom had been on her way to New York to become a commercial artist when she was waylaid by my brother. Girls didn’t have babies out of wedlock like they do now. She dutifully married and settled down, having a couple more kids.

When I was a child, she took me to gallery openings and art exhibits. We went to Olla Podrida, her favorite gallery several times a year.

I asked her why her pictures weren’t in the galleries.

“That’s not what Mommies do,” she explained.

Even I knew her art was as good as any in those galleries. I heard other artists urging her to submit her work, but I knew something they didn’t, that’s not what Mommies do.

She never got rid of her easels, always kept painting. Painting pictures for no one. That would never be hung.  I could tell she wanted to do more than teach. She regretted having to throw away the life she wanted.

As a girl, I thought I wasn’t going to let that happen to me. My pictures would hang in galleries. No one was going to stop me. But then I did stop. I accepted the responsibilities life handed me. I couldn’t just abandon Allie. I wasn’t like Bryan.

I did what women of my generation are expected to do get a job to support themselves and their families. Don’t be dependent on anyone else, especially a man. Be responsible for yourself and your family, always doing your duty and ignoring yourself. Am I like my Mother? As much bound by my modern societies’ conventions as she was by hers? What would I have done if the rules hadn’t applied? It’s too late to even consider what if’s now. Nothing could come of that.