There just has to be a neat story here. Please fill us in.
Her web site is terrific Beez. She's plugged in and well respected in the arts community. Must run in the family.
My family's history is very complex and mostly heartbreaking.
You have to understand that the story involves things such as mental illness, shame, homelessness, abuse and death. You name it. And coming from several directions.
But the gist of this corner of it is, I met her at my mother's funeral in late 1995. I had found out she existed a few years before that. She was standing at the door to an old Catholic church in Philly wearing a blue pants suit and combat boots. I knew we would get along at the sight of her.
She was going to an art school and living in downtown Philly. I've never met a more rugged person when it comes to the very hard edge of our civilization.
I was stunned at that time, having only a month earlier deciding to see my mother again after more than 25 years. That would have been hard enough as it was, but she died before I arrived.
It became surreal after that. I remember sitting in a Catholic halfway house for mentally ill women, sitting at a table with some dozen women, all chain smoking, and all thinking I was my mother's brother because I look so utterly like she did. Even the social workers and nuns that I met at her funeral couldn't stop staring at me. Here was a version of Mary, but not under the wet blanket of thorazine. Maybe the wet blanket of guilt, though.
In walks Janet and her family. Very quiet. They knew my mother over the years after I was taken away from her.
Then over the few years after that we got to know each other. She moved out here and lived in Oakland and Berkeley, then went off to graduate school and now teaching art in Tacoma.
Yeah, it would make a good book. Now if I could just write...
PS, we can keep all this between "us." (hello world) Janet doesn't really make these things public. I on the other hand am an open book sort of person. So I keep most of my family out of it, but I mostly let it all hang out.
