Speak for yourself John Alden...
to my Mom. I love you!
I'll let my dear dear friend of this lifetime Jack Kerouac speak from his little masterpiece entitled 'Maggie Cassidy' published in 1959 overlooked and humble little novel within ' the Legend of Duluoz' series. Kerouac writes of Teenage Angst and Lust and Love and growing up in Lowell, Massachusetts in the 1930s. The son of French/Canadian American hardworking parents..
"Ah go home - Jack - let me sleep. I'm going to sleep tonight."
"No Maggie, I don't wanta leave when you feel this way -"
"Yes you do - I don't feel any particular way."
"Yes you do-"
"Particular feeling? Just because I just happen sick and tired-of this- and that-what I expect-what you
expect- I just want to quit and go home-"
"You are home. There's your door."
Looking at it with a rich frown and a fnuf, "Sure. Home. Okay. Sleep"
"Aren't you home?"
"Dream it some other time, so what if it's my home I don't want to get all overexcited about it -"
"I wasn't-"
"You never nothing. Oh Jack- (pain in her cry) - "go home- stay-do something- I can't stand it hanging around day after day not knowing what to do with myself and whether I should get married or not or just - blah - nothing - Oh fer kri-sakes, ain't you gonna go yet!" (as I am grabbing her to kiss her) - "Leave me alone!"
Pushing my hand off.
I turn around and walk off into the night.
Four houses down, my neck burning and strangling in the still winter star solitude she says, distinctly, "Ha ha," and I hear her going into the house, the click of the door, the "ha ha" not laughed but spoken signifies not only she's not through with me but it worked to get rid of me tonight. I can't face my own conclusions.
I drag along in wonder, hatred, stunned, realizing it's nothing; I go by the cemetary so bemused with these witchery-tortures of whether this, that, Maggie, I don't notice the ghosts, the tombstones, it's just backdrop to my anxious hunchings over knuckles.
Three miles home again I walk, in midwinter midnight, this time not fast, or joyous, but dispirited with nowhere to go and nothing in back -- all the night does at the end of a street is increase it's distance--
Yet in the morning I wake up reconciled with the fact that not only she'll make some kind of apology but I ought to laugh and shake it off and shake her off and she'll climb on again.
My mother sees the palings in my thoughts, advises me ---
"Stop braking your head on all kindsa junk - concentrate on your track and school, never mind Gus Poulo and your gang they got nothing to do but hang around you got lots of things, see them later and never mind that Maggie Cassidy -- see her this spring or this summer -- don't rush things and don't rush around with every-thing and every-body-- Take some advice from you old la-dy, aye?" And she'd wink, and pat my head, and reassure me. "I'm not crazy me" Stopped in the middle of the kitchen floor, my mother, with a kind of ribbon in her coalblack hair, rosy cheeks on both sides of her big blue eyes, her hands joined at her lean rest on the back of the chair just loosely and for a second, looking at me seriously, primly, grave understanding of the prime things pressed down in her lips, , a twinkle in her eyes "Mama always did show you how to get things done and everything will be allright, I got you for Saturday night guess what?"
"What? Quoi?"
" A nice pair of new shoes, when you go the track and change to your sneakers there won't be nobody be able to say you got old shoes, te vielles son pu bonne" she'd announce and sneak in in an entirely different authoritative almost greedy-sneering tone, as a shoe worker she was talking about they condition of a pair of shoes - "so I got you a new pair of Thom McAns, didn't cost much."
"Aw Ma tu dispense tout ton argent!" (Aw Ma you spend all your money).
"Voyons, ta besoin d'une paire de boittine, ton pere itou, fouaire n'atchetz avant l'moi est funi lui itou - weyondonc-" (Look you need a new pair of shoes, your father too -look here!) angry such a thing should not be realized, going off into the parlor to straighten out a lace armrest on the sofa while we're talking over my breakfast.
"Ah Ma, I love you" I say to myself, and I don't know how to say it to her out loud but I know she knows I love her anyway.
"So mange, eat, forget it - a pair of shoes ain't no china
bazaar, ah? And nods, and winks. I sit in the firm eternity there.
I sit in the firm eternity there. actually sitting in the firm eternity here... getting late.. that was hard work transcribing Jacks's words...
My Mom brought home a couple of books to me one winter day when I was laid up with some horrible ear ailment in my early teenage years. Miserable and sick and read "On the Road" which she had picked up from the library .. ....
My Mom was working hard in those days with 5 kids to look after.. and selling Encyclopedia Brittanica door to door .. or was it Amway products or both simultaneously .. ? Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York. about 1966 maybe '67 .. I love you Mom.
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