"time moves on..."

Joyce Farmer's Special Exits really goes there in examining the trauma of aging. It was interesting, in that it wasn't Joyce's memoir at all, but the story of her parents. My head was thrown for several loops as I progressed through the book, attempting to figure out just what Joyce's story was in the midst of this. I had several questions (and still do): what happens when you write a third person memoir? What did people think about the speediness of the passage of time (time goes on...time tangoes on...months later...)? Did it feel rushed, or were these simply a compilation of the more interesting tales of their lives? How did Joyce know these moments were happening if she was not witness to all of it, except maybe through Laura's eyes? It makes me wonder how she framed the story overall. Also, how did she know where to end the chapters? Those are the questions, what follows are my thoughts.

It's more confusing (but not so confusing that I can't follow along -- I love this narrative!) when I read Joyce's own biography. She's a radical feminist who wrote underground comics in the 70s, such as Abortion Eve, either prior to or right after Roe v. Wade. (Here's the link to that here, if you're interested: http://www.ep.tc/eve/ ). She was a G for this. Joyce herself was working class and raised in LA, and actually left comics behind for real estate because she wasn't making a decent living from them. Strangely enough, Robert Crumb convinced her in the 2000s that she should write the story of her parents' latter days. When I saw excerpts from Abortion Eve, it sparked my interest in reading Special Exits, because I didn't know what surprises would creep from inside that house, courtesy of Rachel and Lars.

Everyone we've read so far in the class has located themselves front and center, even while keeping their fathers -- or mothers -- as the focal point. Mostly, they tell the stories of their parents to examine their own life model and relationship to the world, and realize just how much they were influenced by them. This doesn't seem to happen here. So, is Laura a representation of Joyce? Did Joyce get involved in the pro-choice movement because she was influenced by her mother? It was a completely unexpected moment in the story when Rachel informed the young Sharalee that she should have an abortion, and made me wonder about Rachel's past. More interesting was the seeming contradiction that she's pentecostal Christian, if even for nostalgia's sake, and also pro-choice. Was she an abortion provider, or just a part of the movement? From this, I couldn't shake the feeling that this story was part-fiction, part-memoir. Is it? Does it even matter, really?

This moment is also a major shift in the book, as it introduces the intersections of race and class through Lars' and Rachel's story. They're living in South Central LA in the 1980s-90s (though Joyce chooses to call it South Los Angeles, which actually didn't happen until the 2000's), and they have lived in this house for decades, so much that they're indeed a part of the fabric of the neighborhood as much as the Black and Latino residents are. They seem comfortable there, although they're physically "stuck" and would like to live in a nursing home. I mean comfortable in the sense that they're not positing the fears that most white folks have when they think of South Central LA, including Rachel's son and his wife ("the neighborhood is dicey"! WTF), and the driver of the taxi, who wouldn't get out of the car ("she didn't like the neighborhood").

These suspicions come to a head when the LA riots happen (p 81), which I'm really glad were included here. The story weaved into the American fabric is any white person who appeared anywhere near South Central LA on that day was beaten, robbed, and the like; as Lars and Rachel watched TV, these fears were heightened. Lars watched the flames expand from his living room window, and Rachel remained scared; Lars' attempt to quell her fears were in this sentence: "But we've lived a long time." Not "we've lived here a long time", but "we've lived a long time". In that regard, he knew the residents of the neighborhood weren't going to harm/rob them because they're elderly, but there was the hint there that they were immune to harm because they've lived there for years. Even as the electricity got knocked out, Lars seemed a lot less hysterical than most would expect him to be. Laura was more worried sick about them than anything, and feared for her own life, as she was a white woman as well, but later found out no one was harming women. Turns out, as the smoke cleared, they all were completely unharmed.

This story points to an interesting view on working class/low-income white folks who live in low-income communities, who don't have access to certain resources. Concerning their declining health, much of it was due to them avoiding the doctors/hospitals, and their situations worsening as a result. I can attest to this, as many folks in low-income communities don't trust hospitals, and would rather rely on their own families or themselves to take care of their ailments. Another aspect of that is the cost of being "healthy": those bills, I'm sure, would've been enormous for their upkeep, and it is unclear whether or not they had insurance (I'm leaning to not). Lars and Rachel were highly suspicious of any outside person, and rejected Laura's suggestion numerous times that they should hire a nurse. They were steeped in denial, across many fronts: denial of aging or having illnesses, and denial of their own behavior contributing to their failing health. As many times as Laura insisted on them eating veggies -- even the ones she made them -- they would rather eat an entire block of muenster cheese and snacks. A huge part of this, too, is cost of food, and availability of affordable healthy food in South Central. That transition to health is a difficult one to make when you've been living your whole life a certain way.

Another aspect, too, is their hoarding, and much of it stemming from them growing up in poverty. As Rachel continued to make dolls, Lars justified it to Laura as: "Go easy on her. You don't know what it was like to be so poor. After we married I noticed she felt obliged to buy something at every store she entered." (p 66) This notion of holding onto things even when they have no immediate significance manifests through a feeling that you'll never have anything. It was a shift to see Lars getting rid of his stuff though -- the car, namely -- and this seemed to hint at accepting his fate. 

Also this statement: "It's going to happen and we...must get ready. I'm 79. If I can get ready, you can." OOOOHHHH. I got CHILLS from this, and later, when the reaper decides to show up in his imagination (partially). It hit me even harder, because my own grandmother is also 79. She doesn't talk about her own death necessarily, but it makes me wonder when and if she thinks about as she reflects on her life. I'm always picking her brain and begging for her to tell stories, much like Laura; she has yet to begin having any major ailments, but she also is the one person in my family who never misses a check-up or her cholesterol meds. I know it's only a matter of time before we'll have to help her out with everything, and for her to accept her own elderly state, but as far as now goes, she just brought a brand new car for her 78th birthday and says to us, "I ain't old; I just been here a while."