The Cheshire Mama

PART ONE

Growing up with a bipolar mother is not all it is cracked up to be, no matter what they tell you in the pharmaceutical commercials.  Still, there were some bright moments when I was caught like a deer in the headlights, and now all I remember is the glow.  I have a limited knowledge of astronomy (one semester in college that was, disappointingly, all math.)  However, I have intimate knowledge of giants, supernovas, and black holes.  I am the progeny thereof.
As a child, I accompanied my mother to Harry Dark Cakes to procure a wedding cake for my aunt and spent the afternoon listening to a debate as to the nuances of peach versus apricot colored frosting with Harry himself.  The same shop later became The Shutterbug, and my mother displayed her black and white photography there.  It was all rather hairy and dark to me, but it was fertile ground in which I grew.
Evenings were spent at the university library while Mama went to classes for her Masters Degree in English with a focus on literary archetypes.  I had rescued two wild rabbit kits from the dogs , and I played with them in the library while she listened to Shakespeare on record albums.  I loved Macbeth.
A college student once found himself in line behind me at the vending machine and asked this pint-sized  pseudo-professor, "My God, woman, where is the rest of you?"  I answered that she was in class right now, and I am now rather haunted by the fact that I considered myself such an extension of Mama and that others would naturally assume me to be, as well.
When I was a toddler, Mama taught English and government at Carbon High School.  She was a fierce advocate for truth and justice, and I knew her as a raging force.  But as an adult, I met one of her students who said the only time he saw her anything other than funny and pleasant was when her UIL team had received unfair treatment at a meet.  She taught half days when I was very little, and we watched the Watergate trials when she came home.  I don't remember those.  I do remember a black Lab/Collie with white tips & keyhole named Gordon and two hills covered in purple irises.  My mother's first name was Iris, but she didn't like it.  Apparently, she was named for Iris Murdoch, but I guess she disliked the pre-ordained structure within which she fit so well.  Her father chose the names for his kids, and his is a story much further down the road that I look forward to telling as I pick my way through the past, the stepping stones that have led to where I stand, looking back.