Growing up trying to conceal
a psychotic parent is like having a blazing fire in the house but thinking that by shutting the front door, no one, not even
close neighbors, will see the leaping flames. This is how I was raised in the
1950s and 1960s in Atlanta,
Georgia, at a time in America
when many people still perceived the mentally ill as lunatics raving in asylums far away.
I wish with all my heart my father had never been shot in the head, yet since he was permanently disabled, my family
was pulled into a daily life completely ruled by his “episodes,” a way of life most people, happily, can only
imagine.
Somewhere amid
my plays and stories, I discovered that my father’s injury, although the pivotal event of our lives, was not nearly
as monumental as my mother’s battle to survive it. I wanted to open that
closed door to show what my mother struggled against to raise three children amid continual disaster. At a time when many women were stay-at-home moms, our mother could have easily collapsed into dependency.
Somehow my mother managed
not only to keep us together, but also to fight tirelessly for civil rights
while struggling with her personal burden: what to do with her victimized husband, who was destroying her family. Despite two generations of secrecy and denial -- her own father died in a mental hospital --
Mother’s absolute devotion to the battle for social justice sustained her and led her to live an exceptional life.
