My late mother had more of an influence on me than I care to admit.
We were not close. I may have grown inside of her, but once the umbilical cord was cut, that was it. All ties were severed. WE DID NOT LIKE EACH OTHER—so much so that it needs to be typed in upper case. We inhabited different worlds. My world was filled with light and fairies and question marks, while hers was a dark, gray industrial landscape with ghosts and enemies waiting to tear her limb from limb. She accepted my homosexuality, although she never used the word "gay." It stuck in her throat like a fishbone. She once phoned me from England to tell me about her new neighbor. "He's very nice, you'd like him. He's your type of person," she hinted—then after a pause, "He has gentlemen callers."
My mother had two sides to her: one a Victorian gentility of the Maggie Smith variety, the other a vulgar truck-stop waitress. Once, when a scurrilous tabloid reported that Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II's sister, had yet another boyfriend, my mother remarked in her truck-stop waitress voice: "Not another one, you could drive a column of tanks up her ___ and there'd still be enough room for a Spitfire to land." Her outbursts were littered with British World War II isms. She had been strafed by a German plane during a bombing raid and became stuck in that moment.
So my mother and I were estranged, and yet after she died I noticed that sometimes when I open my mouth, it's my mother that falls out. When I first started reading articles about Kim Davis, the Kentucky County Clerk who refuses to marry same-sex couples, I heard my mother's voice of Victorian gentility. She would describe Kim Davis as "one of life's unfortunates."
"Unfortunates" was my mother's word for anyone slow-witted, anti-social or two sandwiches short of a picnic—another of her colorful phrases. "She's as daft as a brush," she would have said huffily over a cup of English breakfast tea, "about as useful as a chocolate teapot." Davis is all these things and more.
I noticed on Facebook that the anger Davis generated with her tantrums caused many people to make rude remarks about her appearance. My mother's Victorian gentility voice would say the nasty comments were "rather uncalled for." However, it is not surprising people lashed out at her, calling her names. Again, I can hear my mother's vulgar truck stop waitress voice commenting on Davis' rosy-cheeked countenance: "What's wrong with that woman, she's got a face like a smacked ass." Or "I can't watch her anymore, she looks like a cat licking shit off a kettle."
No, my mother and I never liked each other and yet we have held hands from beyond the grave on the issue of Kim Davis. At times, my attitude toward Davis has been genteel and sympathetic; other times, I've released some vulgar statements about her frumpy appearance.
What started out as a fascinating chapter in LGBT rights—the Kim Davis Affair—has now lost its interest. After meeting secretly with Pope Francis—who took time out from his busy schedule of transferring pedophile priests to South America, where there is minimal scrutiny—I've become less interested in the Kim Davis Affair. The sooner she resigns and gets a job more suited to her, like cleaning the toilets at Wrigley Field, the better for the rest of us.
The Victorian genteel Maggie Smith side of me agrees with my mother that Kim Davis is "one of life's 'unfortunates.'" She's a working-class woman being exploited by Mike Huckabee and other rich white men for political gain. It saddens me that Davis will end up in the trash can of history, and I'm sick and tired of Republican men using women as political pawns.
And then there's my mother's vulgar truck-stop waitress in me that thinks Davis is an adulterous ho with a face like a bag of hammers.
