The Devil's Workshop

Idle hands, my grandmother remarked pointedly with a scowl at my mother, are the devil's workshop.

The ladies gathered in the sunroom with their assorted handicrafts on their laps were careful not to look up from their work but I could sense their hidden smiles. My mother gave a mighty, put upon sigh and set aside her newspaper and afternoon manhatten in favor of a mending basket Nana kept beside her chair. The ladies resumed their quirky chatter,
twittering like sparrows about the upcoming Sunday School Picnic, the fact that Aunt Vi was about to have a new grandchild, that Clifton Elliott had been seen, again, leaving a certain farm in the wee hours before dawn when everyone knew the farm's owner was away on the mainland and his wife alone, about the termite infestation in the barber shop and how it was to be managed. The Ladies Sewing Circle met weekly to knit, crochet or put together patchwork quilts while they gossiped and shared stories of local events and island life. Later, Nana would serve iced coffee or tea in frosted glasses and whatever homemade cookies or cakes the ladies had brought would be laid out on the dining room table for all to sample. Recipes would be exchanged, they would comment on each other's stitchery, inquire after each other's families, but mostly they would carry tales and set rumors in motion. My grandmother had decided that my mother had been the subject of these get togethers long enough and so had incorporated her into the Circle, as it was commonly referred to, in hopes that the ladies would shift their focus. It was, she had decided, a good plan, but my mother's obvious resentment and exasperation only served to make matters worse and to my grandmother's dismay, the gossip simply became more creative and less discreet. All you have to do, she would tell my mother, is make an effort to join in! Stop being so cussed high toned and selfish! And my mother would storm out in a temper, often stopping to rip out whatever stitching she had done and fling it in the kitchen stove. I need a drink! she would shout and my grandmother would respond You need a good whipping! and the fur would begin to fly.

Even as a child, sympathy for my mother was a foreign emotion to me and I almost always sided with my daddy or grandmother. I understood very little of what was actually happening but I sensed a great deal - unhappiness, fear,
bitterness, resentment, and rage - nothing I could articulate clearly but things I sensed and was acutely aware of were always in the air. I was beginning to realize we were not quite like other families although I didn't recognize the patterns of behavior we were caught up in. My own relationship with my mother was headed in the same direction as her's with her mother - an unending battle for approval mixed with a kind of vicious contempt, a trap of our own making with no starting or ending point. Contentment with life always seemed to be just beyond my mother's grasp, hidden and put securely out of reach by her own expectations. With each setback and disappointment, she sunk deeper into her own misery and alcoholism until she was carried away by both, an angry, unhappy woman lashing out at any target she could find, lonely and stricken by the failures of others but never seeing her own.

Among other things, it taught me that life is what you make of it, not what you expect it of it.