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17. The Woman Who Hated Superman

"I'm not gonna let you watch that old show anymore!" Eunice Robinson, ca. 1959

My mother, the former Eunice Conley, was Kentucky born and bred. She lived up Bear Holler, not far from where Loretta Lynn grew up. Like the singer, Eunice too was a coal miner's daughter. Her daddy, whom she adored, taught her to work hard. As she was fond of remembering, he used to say, "I like to see my kids a'workin' when I leave and a'workin' when I git home." I can only imagine what a trauma it was when, one day, he didn't come home from work. He'd been killed in a cave-in. Eunice was fourteen.

Somewhere along the way, she met a young man named Homer. At first, she scorned "them little ears." Evidently, though, what he lacked in ears, he made up for elsewhere. They were married two days before Christmas, 1950. Their first child, a son, died the day after he was born. My soldier father got two days leave to come home for the funeral. Less than two years later, I was born. My sister Patty followed a couple years after that.

The one memento of her high school days I have, a Paintsville High yearbook, mentions no extra-curricular activities. I'm not sure what she did for fun as she grew into a pretty young woman. From watching her when I was a child, I've an idea she liked to dance and roller skate. I think, though, that what she liked to do more than anything else was work. She dropped out of high school and took employment at a Dime Store in town. She had a dozen jobs while I was growing up. Over the years, she worked at everything from glass making to stitching casket linings.

My mother was as solid and rooted to the earth as the coal her daddy dug out of it. She wasn't much for TV or movies, but she did enjoy the soap opera General Hospital. She wasn't a reader nor was she particularly imaginative or whimsical. Whimsy was Dad's department. As for fantasy or comic books, forget it. She'd ignored them out of existence. Or she had until I came along. Afterwards, well, she never acquired the taste. In fact, on a couple occasions she got a little nasty about it.

Elsewhere, I've told of my crashing through her kitchen window imitating Superman. On the tense ride to the medics, she avowed she wasn't going to let me watch that old show anymore. But that wasn't nasty. That was just a mother's fear put into words. No, nasty was her response to something I said much later. In Sunday school, I told her, the teacher had asked what our most prized possession was. I told Mother what I'd told the teacher, my books.

"Yeah," Mom spat, "Your funnybooks!" Three words, four syllables, and a brick load of invective.

Another time, we were eating at the kitchen table in our house on Rankin Creek. I don't remember what I'd said to evoke her response. I guess it had to do with Superman. "Too many Christians try to act like Superman," she said, "fast and furious!" What strikes me about her statement now is not only the contempt for Superman but the Christian commentary. Though she and Daddy took us to church, generally, my mother didn't talk like that.

When I was thirteen, Mom, Patty, and I were in a music store in Huntington, WV. There I found a long playing album, the music from It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's Superman! The musical had come out when I was ten. Though I'd never seen it, I remembered watching Bob Holiday, who played the title character, fly on I've Got A Secret. To me, this was a great prize. I've no idea what the record cost. I expect that, since the musical was long gone, the album was discounted in price. I showed it to Mom, asking for it. She reluctantly agreed to buy it for me. At the checkout counter, though, she felt the need to apologize for the purchase. I don't remember her words to the female clerk, but I seem to remember her calling attention to my size and my obvious need to put away childish things. I've always been a forgiving sort, though, and so, later, delighted with the album, I attempted to read from the back cover to her. "Oh, Gary!" she cried. "That's fick-tishus!"

I've put off writing about my mother. I guess it's because I don't want to commit the sin of Ham and reveal a parent's nakedness. While I may reveal, I couldn't revel in the telling if I wanted to - especially knowing my mother had serious problems. It took a while for the ugly face of schizophrenia to show itself. By that time, she'd been hospitalized and undergone shock treatments. She required the same a couple more times during the seventies and many more thereafter.

I wish I could report that she got better. I wish I could say she had a change of heart toward Superman. She did neither. I asked her and Dad to come with Barb and me to see the movie. Dad, whose days were numbered, didn't feel like it. Mom said, "Ohh, Gary, Superman?" I'll say this for her, she was consistent at least.

Dad died in 81. When Mom lost him, it wasn't long before she lost everything else. I, however, eventually gained custody of a crazy woman. You can call it schizoaffective disorder. You can call it anything you want. I like to describe it as a trip through Wonderland.

It didn't all hit at once. Though she had to go into the hospital right after the funeral, she recovered fairly quickly. For another year or so, she continued to live in the house she and Dad had shared. Eventually, she felt the need to sell out and move into an apartment. She continued to work at a supermarket in Chesapeake, Ohio. Her illness caught up with her, though, and my sister moved her to her home in the southwestern part of the state. By this time, I'd moved back to Ohio from Illinois. Within a year or so of our arrival, Mom became my responsibility. She remained so for the rest of her days.

She clung fiercely to her independence, all the while slipping down a tin roof toward total dysfunction, fingernails screeching on the metal to make you grit your teeth. I remember the late 80s-early 90s as a warped merry-go-round wobbly revolving to the music of a scratched record. Our theme song was Here We Go Again. Mom was in and out of the hospital so much, she seemed to be caught in a revolving door.

Naturally, it was a very difficult time for me and my family. The pain didn't come from seeing her in the hospital. What hurt was watching her pitiful struggle to remain independent. She kept trying to hire herself out as a housecleaner. Twenty years before, she'd've had everybody in town clamoring for her services. Now she couldn't even remember who she was working for or when. Worse, in her delusional state of mind, she'd create conflict between herself and employers she demonized.

No, it was when she was in the hospital, where she was understood and cared for, that she was easy to deal with. When she was in the hospital, I didn't feel the need to make excuses or apologize for her behavior. I didn't have to run across town twice a day with medication - stuff I might as well have thrown against the wall for all the good it was doing. And, from time to time, in the hospital she made me laugh.

Mom: It's them prostitutes. They're livin' in the ceiling and watching me with cameras. Them prostitutes'r messin' things up!

Gary: Why do you think they're doing this to you, Mom?

Mom: Because I'm so pretty!

Please don't misunderstand me. I wouldn't make light of the plight of anyone suffering from mental illness, especially not their loved ones. But, I tell you, friends, if I hadn't been able to laugh at some of the things Mom did and said, if I'd dragged around a Marley's ghost chain hung with childhood resentments, I doubt I would've been much help to her. Coming from a woman who'd avoided wonder and whimsy like the plague, her delusions, while not a relief, offered something different. As Superman, under the hand of Mort Weisinger would've said about Eunice at this time, "How ironic!"

All things end, though, even Twilight Zone journeys to the Outer Limits. I'm glad to report that the last five years of my mother's life were happy and peaceful. She lost the ability to move, to speak, and to think, but she also lost the unreasonable fears and hatreds of her youth. Her smile became as sweet as a child's. One morning, I got a call from the nursing home in NW Pennsylvania where we were living at the time. They'd taken Mom to the hospital with a seizure. For three days, I sat by her side, hoping and praying while her heart rate raced beyond 120 and stayed there hour after hour after hour. And, then, suddenly, the race was over, the burden lifted from both of us.

That's going on three years ago. By the grace of God, I've been able to forgive her trespasses against me, including her mean words about my hero. But, wait, hang on a minute. Something has jogged the memory shelf, causing something to rattle. Look at this! It's a picture of my mother reading something to me. Can it be? It is! It's an issue of Action Comics! Wait, let me think now. Yeah, the story has something to do with the Superman robots stationed in the Fortress of Solitude. Mom's calling them "row-boats."

Is this really Eunice Robinson, the woman who hated Superman, actually reading one of his adventures to her son? I guess so. Maybe I understand her a little better now. Maybe she didn't hate Superman so much as what she thought he represented, carelessness and ignorance. Perhaps she somehow associated the character with daydreaming and lack of drive. Maybe she worried that these might seep into my character and stunt my destiny. She didn't hate Superman. She hated the thought that I might not fulfill my potential.

Or maybe not.

In any event, Mom, if you can hear me, thanks for reading that funnybook to me. I appreciate it.

Don't miss the next thrill-packed adventure: Superman Meets The Lone Ranger!

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17. The Woman Who Hated Superman

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