Summer: Mother, Me, and the Demons (1)
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Photo on left: The author and her grandmother, June 5, 1968, just before she left for L.A. Photo on right: The author's mother ____________________ I have a complicated relationship with my late mother. I spent most of my youth in my grandparents’ custody, for my time with Mother had been sporadic and haphazard – life, in her house, often filled with drama, domestic violence (on her part; she married nice men), and insecurity. Mother was smart, beautiful, artistically talented, and sweet – when she was sober. When she was drinking – which was most of the time – she was unstable, mean, and slurry. It was like she was speaking another language, which, in a sense, she was: the language of drink. The language of drink is a mish-mosh of incoherence and mispronunciation with a good dose of anger. Woe-be-onto-me if I couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell me. She never hit me – she saved that for her men – but she had a way of making me feel as if I were the