When I taught high school world literature my students wrote definition essays on truth by answering the question, "Is ignorance bliss? As a mother of two teenage daughters, I would now answer that question w/ a resounding, "YES!!!" Recently I learned some things about Mackenzie that I almost wish I hadn't, and it has made me stop and think about parts of my life that I kept secret from Mom. I'm discovering it's a fine-line b/w showing concern and prying. Mom never pried into my personal life perhaps out of respect for my privacy or perhaps out preference for ignorance. When I was young, I used to play school in my room using my walls as a chalkboard......w/ real chalk. I don't remember how I got rid of the chalk dust after I wiped the walls off with a rag, but Mom never said anything. Later when I was older, I used to smoke cigarettes in my room. There was a secret shelf in the top of my closet where I kept my cigarettes. I know I burned incense cones to cover the smell, but I don't remember how I got rid of the butts. There was only one time when she said something to me. It was after she found my cigarettes in my purse one morning when I had forgotten to hide them after a late night. It wasn't that she was going through my purse w/o my knowledge. She had asked me where something was, and in my sleepiness I directed her to my purse, not remembering that the cigs were still in there. I don't remember that she yelled at me or lectured me. I think she just quietly told me that smoking was bad for me.
I think I was well into my 20's before I smoked in front of her. Knowing that she died of lung cancer makes me wonder if it was some of my second-hand smoke that led to it. Should she have tried harder to get me to quit smoking when I was 17? If she had, would she still have died of lung cancer? I wasn't the only one in my family who smoked. My dad used to roll his own cigarettes, but he quit over 35 years ago. Ron still smokes, but he rarely did in front of Mom. One of her doctors once asked her if she used strong solvents when cleaning, implying that inhaling them had led to the lung cancer. She always did. You could smell the ammonia and pine-sol a block away. Another doctor implied that the Radioactive Gold that she was given to treat the ovarian cancer in 1968 had led to the leukemia 40 years later. I kinda wish the doctors had never mentioned those things and left us ignorant. Ignorance doesn't cure cancer, and apparently it doesn't cause it either.
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