I Have a Difficult Mother

My mother was a major player in the secret part of the Communist Party (CPUSA). She was an angry abusive mother to me. I grew up during the red scare era of the 1950s. I don't know who scared me more in those days: the Communist Party with people in it like my mother or J.Edgar Hoover's FBI. It was all bad. I grew up scared.

My mother has been gone for 13 years now. But I still wake up at night afraid.

I know there is a new CP today, though I don't know much about it (nor do I want to). They probably have better things to do than perceive a powerless old woman like me as a threat to their security, the way my mother perceived me many years ago.

But it does keep me up some nights. In a way, for me, the red scare of the 1950s never ended and I am left alone late at night in the midst of my own very cold war.