Believing in Wishes Made on Stars

On TV it seems natural that families gather for holiday celebrations. I marvel when I see images of adult children meeting with their parents for coffee or dinner, talking walks together, or sitting on the porch of a family home. TV is such a wonderland. I used to think people had amazing imaginations and wished I could have a TV family like those that seemed to enjoy each other’s company and depended on one another for support or advice.

We don’t gather for holidays anymore, and haven't for decades. When I was a child my parents held traditional Easter basket and egg hunts. My dad set up a grill in the yard and my mother dressed a picnic table for summer cookouts. At Halloween we wore costumes and went trick-or-treating, as well neighborhood kids came to our door for goodies too. For Thanksgiving my mother made a small bird and we ate together, the one for Christmas. Of course, larger holiday celebrations took place at my maternal grandmother’s house, and we gathered with my aunts, uncles, and cousins for the festivities. When my grandmother died, aside from hell breaking loose in my mother's hoard, contact with the extended family ended altogether.

These days, my parents and I don’t gather for coffee or dinner at "home." While I did, years ago, spend time with my father on Saturday mornings, we discontinued that practice when my mother’s mother died and my mother's hoarding escalated. Since then she's made a dead-zone of the kitchen and eliminated the remaining chair available for seating. When we spent time together, my dad sat on that single chair and I sat on the floor. He read the first portion of the newspaper and then handed it to me, all the way through the entire paper. It was "our" time and I enjoyed it immensely. While reading, my father and I sipped coffee, pointing out articles of interest to one another. It was the most wonderful time I can remember having with my dad in recent years. And, by recent… I mean… in the past 10 years. But, again, my mother’s hoard managed to eliminate this father-daughter ritual, and often I wonder if it was intentional that my mother took over the kitchen so we couldn’t continue.

None of us can sit in one room and watch television together, like the families on TV that watch TV together. The original TV room, the “rec” room, is hoarded with clothing and easy-bake boxes of cake. The second TV room, a garage remodeled into a spare room, is hoarded with holiday decorations, “spare furniture”, and an always-assembled Christmas tree. The remaining space, in which my parents watch TV, is the formal living room. It’s newspaper laden and hoarded with “picks” (floral stems), and house “décor”, among other things. The smell of litter and stale air is enough to stifle my breathing, and the thought of sitting in such clutter leaves me feeling claustrophobic. My mother has said, numerous times, that she likes how she feels in the hoard, because it “hugs her.” She’s said the same thing about overstuffed thrift stores and discount-o-ramas that have too much stock and not enough space; her favorite places to spend time away from home.

I can’t bear to be there, in my mother’s house. I don’t want to traverse dead-zones looking for a place to be. I don’t want to deal with piles. And, the last thing from which I want a “hug” is the hoard. I really wish I could spend time visiting with my parents, learning about the adult versions of them and finding ways to appreciate them as we all age. I really wish there were a place for me in their home, even just for visits. I really wish they were the ones giving me hugs. There just aren’t enough stars for all my wishes.

What strikes me as strange is how desperate my mother was for her own mother's attention and affection. My mother made sure we never missed a holiday with her mother, and she--my mother--was at her mother's beck-and-call until the bitter end. By "bitter" I also mean the tenor of the family as my grandmother lay dying. So, the second half of what strikes me as strange is that my mother seems to have absolutely no care for involvement with my sibling's children. There are 5 grandchildren, total, and there's not a single space in the house for me or my sibling to gather with our parents, let alone for the second generation to gather with their grandparents. They'll have no holiday memories and no sense of belonging to my sibling's side of their "family." I feel like a "hoard orphan". I can only imagine what my sibling feels, or how the grandchildren feel about such disenfranchisement.

Mortal Steps on the Staircase

Service people aren’t allowed in my parent’s house. My father's afraid someone will report the hoard to an “authority.” In which case, I wish I could ask, “If you’re afraid someone will ‘report’ you, doesn’t that mean there’s something wrong? And, "If there’s something wrong, don’t you think it’s time to fix it?” But, “wrong” and “something” and “fix” are all subjective words, and I don’t have the energy for arguments that define those words. Instead I say nothing. I am a “child”, therefore, I am nothing. They are the “parents”, therefore, they are everything. The rigid dichotomy is suffocating and scary.

About 6 years ago my parent’s central air unit failed. It wouldn’t bother me to know that my elderly parents do without air, except my mother won’t allow my father to open any windows and she’s afraid of floor fans, believing wholeheartedly they will burn down her house. When their air conditioner failed and temperatures soared in the 90s outside, they sat huddled in their 80+ degree house with closed windows, hoping something would change but doing nothing to actively effect change. It wasn’t until the overflow pipe clogged and water backed up, leaking into the walls of the house, that my father decided to call for help. My mother’s hoard of clothing in the hallway soaked up much of the moisture, but my father recognized the very real potential for that moisture to become black mold. Otherwise he wouldn’t have called anyone and I likely wouldn’t have been wiser.

This year, as the country steeled against 90-100+ degree temps and high humidity for weeks on end, I feared for my parents and their fickle air conditioner. I called to ask how they were and delicately requested that they call me. I heard nothing. Not a peep for 6 weeks. Then, out of the blue, after phoning “one more time”, my mother responded, acting like she couldn’t understand why I called and pretending not to know 6 weeks passed. It wasn’t in conversation with my mother, but rather with my father, that I learned their air conditioner again backed up and that, while water streamed down their walls, they sat in a hot house during the highest temperatures on record and didn't call anyone for help. They seem oblivious to the dangers of their behavior and completely clueless when it comes to self-care. They would call it independent, claiming that because they called no one they are self-sufficient.

Equally disturbing were the years when--rather than have a clog in the kitchen sink repaired--my father carried each day's dishware to a utility sink in the basement. I visited him in 1992 and was told not to use the kitchen sink heavily because it was draining slowly. In 1994, when I visited again, my father was more sensitive to sink use and urged me not to “stress” that drain. By 1999 I was able to spend time regularly with my father; by then the sink was completely clogged. My father nursed the "slow draining" kitchen sink for 7 years with natural cleaners, futile attempts to snake the pipes on his own, and light use. When it clogged completely, rather than calling a repairperson, my father's solution was to buy a basin and carry his wash items to the basement. And, while it seemed strange to me, what was more disconcerting was his unsteady gait. I noticed the beginning of tremors and faulty footfalls. I recognized the early stages of Parkinson's Disease. I dared not say anything or give his tremors a name, else he'd have sloughed off my "diagnosis" as a "story" or--worse--not allowed me to visit with him anymore. For an additional 9 years, until 2009, I watched with dread as my father fumbled on the stairs, carrying a weight of dishes, cookware, and utensils in a basin. I feared the worst.

After my father started to show up with bruises on his arms and weak explanations of bumping things when he felt unsteady, due to tiredness, I took matters into my own hands. I called a doctor and set up an appointment for him to be seen for the first time in 20 years. Then, I called my own plumber and scheduled the kitchen sink for a reaming. Both were met with resistance.

My father didn’t want to go to the doctor because, in his mind, not knowing was better than knowing. And, not knowing meant… he would never have to admit that anything was wrong. Still he went. I was shocked. He was unhappy. I was ecstatic. The diagnosis? Parkinson’s Disease. In development from 1999 until 2009.

My mother didn’t want the plumber in the house because, in her mind, everything was fine the way it was. And, not having anyone in the house meant… never having to feel ashamed of the hoard. Still she relented. I was relieved. She was anxious. I was determined. The diagnosis? A full-on clog that only truck-mounted machinery and a heavy-duty auger could expel. In development from 1992 to 2009.

I can’t get back a sense of peace in knowing my parents are safe, and I can’t get back a sense of security in knowing they’ll tend to their own needs. I can’t get back something that never existed. While my mother was and is always too quick to tell me that I am the “child” and she is the “mummy”, that he is the “daddy,” and that they are "everything." But, my "mummy" should have called to schedule the doctor's appointment for my father... at least a decade ago. And, my "daddy" should have called to schedule the pipe reaming for the kitchen sink... nearly two decades ago. Instead, I am the "mummy" and the "daddy", 35 years their junior, with no real "power" to wield... as I am the "child" and I am "nothing." The rigid dichotomy will one day be the death of them… or the final demolition of me.

Heavy Hoard

Clothing inundates my parent's house. Clothing overruns all three bedrooms, cascading through the doors of five double closets. Piles of clothes cover the hallway floor and hang from hall closet doorstops. Clothing swamps the bathroom and drowns the bathtub. More clothing drags down the shower curtain rod in such quantities it's frightful. Clothes are stacked in piles behind the bathroom door, in the laundry room, and in the "rec" room. In the basement, most of the clothing accumulation on the floor stands 4-5' in height. What dangles from the ceiling hangs 3-4' down. All of it comes together like stalagmites and stalactites. My mother calls herself a "Fashionista"; that's fancy talk for "Hoarder."

In the early days, most of the clothing came first to me as hand-me-downs from older cousins. Things I received but into which I couldn't fit and styles I refused to wear, instead of passing them to my younger cousins, to another family, or donating them, my mother collected everything and swore she'd wear it all. Things my mother bought for me, she took those too. My mother enjoyed saying she was wearing "little girl styles" or "teenager styles" and proclaimed--as often as possible--she was "cute" in her outfits, demanding agreement and expecting me to confirm that she looked "like a little girl" or a "school girl", and that she was "too cute for words." As I got older, taller and bigger, and fit into clothes that were too large for my mother, wanting styles she didn't like, she started to resist buying anything for me. It felt like she was punishing me for deviating from her "program" and for attempting to express my own voice, define my own style. So, at 14 I was forced to start buying my own clothing with my own money. I got a job so I could support myself.

For a time, when my mother paid for my things, I went with my mother's likes, allowing her to steer me in the direction of frilly collars and pastel colors, fuzzy sweaters with hearts or flowers or teddy bears woven into the patterns, and corduroy "slacks." When I made my own money, I bought jeans, sweatshirts, t-shirts, and sweatpants: nothing my mother liked and nothing she cared to brag about "fitting." I eschewed frilly pastel "girly" clothing for "duds" that fit me, mentally and physically. I became acquainted with comfort rather than "style." And, I felt "free." In years to come, my mother found a way to appropriate even those items, adding them to her "sleepwear coordinates."

When I was old enough to leave home, I fought to take my clothing with me. Not only did I buy all of it with my own money, but I chose my outfits to suit my taste. Claiming anything brought into the house was automatically hers by virtue of its existence under HER ROOF, my mother hawkeyed me to ensure I wasn't "stealing anything." Once packed, she inspected my bags, claiming to be protecting herself from me, the thief. It felt, to me, like she wasn't so much protecting herself as she was shopping for possessions in my suitcases. If memory serves, there were several things she pointed out and said she wanted before I left. It was hard to separate, and even harder to enforce boundaries when she behaved and talked like that. But still, I escaped.

Once I left home, my mother took to "visiting" discount racks and second-hand shops where she "couldn't pass up a bargain." Eventually my father bought armoires, chifferobes, and old department store racks with wheels so my mother could "organize" her "closet", not protesting all all... even as the house became a 1,500 square foot closet. My mother lined the basement with racks, not unlike a stock room. When she ran out of space, she started lining the floor and making mounds again.

Today my mother wears three select outfits. She wears them no matter the season. She's "saving her wardrobe" for special occasions. These days she doesn't leave the house for anything more than medical appointments or to have the "senior special" lunch at a local diner. For decades there hasn't been a special occasion for her to attend. Yet, when I've tried to discuss the possibility that other people might greatly appreciate clothing donations or that she might have better use of her space if she were to give away some of her collection, she resists. She has a multitude of reasons for "needing" 31 white blouses of the same style.

She might stain one and need a backup.

She might forget to wash one and need one in a pinch.

She might not ever find another nice one like the ones she has.

She might regret giving them away.

She might have to deal with seeing someone else wearing "her" blouse.

The manufacturer might go out of business and hers might be a collector's item... someday.

So on and so on and so.

If I repeat back what my mother says, so she can hear how strange the reasoning sounds, she gets angry with me, saying I'm making fun of her.

If I attempt to question her as to the last time she needed a white blouse, she blows up at me, saying I don't understand.

If I explain to her that she has enough white blouses to go a month without wearing the same one twice, she smiles with glee as though I've just complimented or congratulated her.

If I suggest she might help others with the donation of white blouses, she wants to change the subject and talk about how poor and unfortunate she is.

If I dare ask how many other similar blouses she has in other colors, she tries to make me leave her house.

And, If I tell her that there's no such thing as "collector pieces" in modern day "throw away" clothing, she scoffs and claims I'm undervaluing her collection.

At one point, after threatening to report my parents to the fire company, my mother lightly packed 4-dozen trash bags of clothing and let me donate them to Goodwill. I was afraid she might go to the area Goodwill and repurchase all her donated items, so I drove an hour out of town to deposit items that were usable and threw away the rest, which was unusable (i.e. a single shoe, shoes with holes, shoes from which the sole was separating, etc.). In that episode, the first and only of its kind, over 6 weeks, my mother and I cleared a 3' path from the front door to the dining room (all of a 15' strip). In less than 3 months the path was closed by new hoards of clothing my mother collected from friends who were cleaning their closets for spring.

It was impossible to thrive when I was thrust--without my foreknowledge and against my will-- into competition with a woman 35 years my senior, someone charged with looking after my development, who poached my growth and my things and then who made laud her. Today it feels just as daunting to spend time with her, as I still look to her for that fleeting and fading "Mother" I always wished I had.

J-E-A

I don't remember my mother's first cat's death. I was too young. I do remember its name was "Scritch" and that she got it, as a kitten, from her father. Scritch was many years old before I was born, and died some time when I was learning to toddle. In no time my mother replaced Lucky with a breeder-born Himalayan show cat named "Scratch." As an adult I recognize the expense of such a purchase and I question the validity of such an expense, especially at a time when my youngish parents were strapped with a new mortgage and a new child.

I do remember Scratch's arrival. We drove to New England to meet the breeder and to visit him with his siblings. It was a full-fledged adoption process, complete with application, waiting period, and references. And, when my mother brought Scratch home she spent an inordinate amount of time holding him, hugging and kissing him, playing with him. Still greatly in need of her affection and attention at 3 years of age, I tried to climb into her lap while she held "my little brother." My desperate play for her to touch me was met with resistance as she said aloud and to no one in particular, "Oh! Look! Who's J-E-A?" Rarely spelling the entire word, my mother meant "jealous" and laughed at my distress. Instead of welcoming me into her lap or sharing the cat with me, she literally pushed me away with one hand, saying "It's Scratch's time now."

As months passed, when my mother hugged and kissed Scratch, I pressed for her attention too. Instead of recognizing my toddler need for her, she shooed me away saying I was upsetting the cat. When my mother fed Scratch, cooing at him for having a big appetite and praising him for eating so much, I picked food from his bowl and "num-nums" from the floor, crunching them loudly with my teeth, hoping she would hear me and praise me the same. I snuck into kitchen cabinets to steal cat treats, eating Scratch's "special food" and hoping my mother would think I was as cute and pretty as the cat. When she started to feed Gerber baby food to the cat, I asked for tastes too, trying to show her that I was a "sweet baby" and longing for her to notice me. Instead she told me how expensive the baby food was, how little there was in each jar, and reminded me curtly that it was Scratch-baby's food.

I competed with the cat for my mother's love. She played with him, whipping braided lengths of yarn in the air and running through the house so he could chase her in games of "tag." I felt rejected. I felt dejected. And, I felt forgotten. When all of my childish attention-getting behavior failed, I started to attack the cat in anger. As a toddler, I was too young to know how to express my feelings or understand why I felt the way I did. So, in my frustration, I took to chasing Scratch around the house, growling and shrieking at him. When he ran from me in fear, I was happy. The joy I experienced when he ran, slung close to the floor, was exciting. When my mother realized what I was doing and told me that my behavior was "bad", that I should "love" my "brother", and encouraged me to stop, I was rewarded; I learned that I could hurt my mother by hurting her cat. And, from then on, any time my mother neglected me or left me feeling rejected, I chased the cat.

It wasn't until I reached teen years and Scratch became sickly that I became aware how incapable my mother was at dealing with death. I was overseas when she decided to put the cat "to sleep." My mother claimed she chose that time because she didn't want to hurt me with his death, but it was one more exclusionary slap in the face, especially considering that my sibling--4 years my junior--was on hand for the "procedure." When I arrived home, my mother showed me fur she cut from Scratch's weak body, lost whiskers she collected from the floor, and nails she clipped from his feet. Eventually she had ashes to show, talk to and cuddle. They came in a styrofoam box and she transferred the "cat" to a decorative container. As a teen I no longer pressed for my mother's attention and knew I couldn't win her affection, so watching her "love" a dead cat was no great affront. Neither was seeing her carry on with it as though the ashes were alive. When my mother finally decided on a "resting place" for Scratch's container, a spot where he enjoyed sleeping, I was instructed not to disturb "him." When I joked about our house becoming a cemetery, my mother informed me curtly that she didn't appreciate my "jibes" and that I'd not cared as much when she put Lucky in his "favorite resting place" in our midst... behind the living room couch. To date there are three living cats in my mother's house and three deceased cats in "special spots" where they once roosted.

I do sincerely believe the only reason my mother doesn't have 987,123 cats and 465,321 ash containers in the house is solely because my father doesn't permit it. My mother is a hoarder, incapable of attaching to and building relationships with people. While my father does enable her, it's because of him that my mother isn't hoarding cats. Financially, in retirement and on a fixed income, my father is sensitive to my mother's emotional abyss, her excessive demands, and their lack of money. If he were younger, healthier, and more financially capable, I'm certain my mother would sneak in more cats, and my father would enable her. It's sad, to me, to see my mother giving her cats the attention and affection she seems utterly incapable of giving another human being, but which my father so sorely deserves and which I surely deserved.

It came slowly, sneaking across surfaces

I don't remember exactly when my mother's strict cleaning schedule stopped and her hoarding started. The hoard crept up on us, as a family. I think it was always beneath the surface, but that our house was initially large enough to accommodate small "savings." I do remember that I got my first mall job and that my mother's father died during the same year. Which seems to provide, in hindsight, a loose time frame and speculative rationale for some of my mother's changes: my desire to be free from parental control and her lack of ability to deal with the loss of a parent. i was 15 years of age, which made my mother 50 years of age.

Mail started to gather on the entry table. Newspaper clippings of obituaries began to appear in plastic bags, preserved from fingerprints and "messy hands.' Then, newspaper articles revealing obscure information about famous people my mother liked, faraway places she wished to see, recipes she planned to try, and crossword puzzles she intended to solve started spilling across surfaces. Eventually my mother lamented "lost information" and started to save entire newspapers to prevent the "destruction of something important."

Around the same time, food appeared en masse. If my mother saw a sale on jar olives or artichoke hearts, she bought double--sometimes triple--at a "discount" and "for a savings." We didn't eat olives or artichoke hearts. We didn't eat most of the sale food my mother purchased. Instead of using what she bought, my mother stored it in paper grocery bags and hid them under the kitchen table, in the family room, in doorways. Eventually my father, the Facilitator, felt forced to build a wall-to-wall and ceiling-to-floor unit in the basement (5 shelves measuring 2' x 12' x 2'), a place to store my mother's already overflowing stockpile of food and a real attempt to reclaim the house from that stockpile. On those shelves she built a formidable army of tin and aluminum cans, organizing them in pyramids and forbidding anyone to touch her "things" or "mess up" her "system." Despite the shelving unit, my mother started collecting boxed easy-bake goods and stored them in cabinets around the basement.

Many of the cans are still there, along with the boxes, faded and dusty. Some swollen and some rusted, but all unopened... nearly 3 decades later. In league with those now poison-loaded cans are packages of crackers, peanut butter, jelly, snack foods, drink mixes, salad dressings, condiments, boxes of pasta, jars of sauce, and glass bottles of soda. When I ask why she never used those foods before their expiration dates she tells me that much of it is "still good" because it was kept in a "cool dry place." I don't worry that my mother will suddenly decide to eat a jar of outdated olives with a side of artichoke hearts because those things have been on her shelves for 30 years; she hasn't eaten them so far, and I doubt she'll eat them any time soon. But, the fact that they're there, taking up space and completely unsafe, leaves me angry still today.

That my mother chose to invest her energy in a cleaning schedule, a newspaper clipping schedule, a coupon schedule, and a food collection schedule, instead of a childcare schedule, a daughter-hugging schedule, a playtime schedule, or a spend-time-with-the-family schedule leaves me angry. That she chose to spend my father's hard-earned money on things we neither needed nor would ever use leaves me profoundly offended. That she chose a course creating so much waste, while I had very real and present needs which could have been tended had she not squandered resources, leaves me deeply wounded. The piles of newspapers, the bloated and rusty cans, the enormous storage unit, are symbolic of my mother's insatiable obsessions and her excessive greed. They resemble her lack of respect for my father, her lack of interest in family, and her rejection of both me and her role as my mother.

Once Upon a Time

I don't remember when it started or what the house looked like before the hoarding. It's been so long and the hoard is so intense that the present reality is the only reality I know. My mother is a Hoarder. I'm the Adult Child of a Hoarder.

When I was a youngster my mother had "rhyme and reason" to her cleaning. First, she removed throw rugs and cleaned cloth-covered furniture. Struggling with a heavy, metal, egg-shaped vacuum cleaner and too-long "wand," she ran the attachments over cushions and counted her passes while making maid-cut lines in the fabric. Then, she spent an inordinate amount of time shaking the rugs ruthlessly or--throwing them over a wash line in the yard--beating the dirt from them.

Back inside, my mother used a cloth-swaddled broom to "knock the cobwebs" from the corners of the ceiling. Afterward, she removed the cloth covering her broom's bristles, folding the "dirt and bacteria" inside and delivering it immediately to the washing machine. With a bucket of Lysol water, painfully hot to the touch and a new, pristine white washrag, she wiped the walls from the ceiling corners down to the baseboards. Jumping on and off a kitchen chair doubling as a step stool, standing precariously on the edge of its seat, stroking the plaster in neat lines and overlapping them just enough so the edge of the previous line was her guide, my mother ensured that every portion of wall was touched by her cloth and that "cracks of dirt" would not be left behind (a kind of maid-cut technique on the walls). After changing her wash water and hand scrubbing her rag, she attacked the baseboards, quarter-round, and floors.

In our small house, my mother occupied herself with a 6-hour cleaning ritual. One room per day, each day of the week. It was intense. And, as a child, the only way I could garner any attention from her was to participate in the cleaning ritual, which i did... desperate for her attention and in need of her affection, neither of which I got. This was my relationship with my mother: Cleaning Assistant. From when I could toddle until I finished grade school summers, my mother just wanted me to sit with her or stay with her while she cleaned. She didn't trust me to do any actual cleaning, so I didn't necessarily learn how to clean. As a young adult, I knew the routine, but it was so intense and rigorous that I felt overwhelmed by it. Today, despite my exposure to the cleaning ritual, I feel frequently overwhelmed by the thought of cleaning my own home, not knowing or feeling secure with "shortcuts." I often don't vacuum, change bed sheets, clean the kitchen or bathroom for a month at a time, and this scares me... leaving me with thoughts that I too will one day live in filth; the kind of filth my mother now embraces.

My mother's "OCD" approach to cleaning not only deprived me of a parent to tend my mental and emotional needs, it left my physical and social needs untended as well. While my mother was present every day, she was an absentee parent for all the energy she put into the cleaning ritual. As I grew up watching my mother's behavior, I grew to resent her and her ritual: assuming she was trying to escape her role as a parent by throwing herself into the act of scrubbing the house "clean." It didn't help that she often said the house was cleaner before she had kids, that it was because of "the kids" that she had to do so much cleaning, and that she wished she hadn't "had" kids. It was hard to hear and a burden to believe.