When I tell people that I have eleven siblings occasionally they respond by saying something like "Wow, your mom must have been crazy." My typical response when this happens is to laugh and say "Yeah. Pretty much."

In fact, she was first institutionalized when she was about fourteen. It was the death of a relative that first drove her over the edge. I forget whether it was her grandmother or her great aunt. They had been very close though and my mother couldn't handle it. My mother has a picture of herself from shortly before she first became ill. She is a very pretty, dark haired, rosy cheeked girl of about 12 or 13. She has a bit of a scowl on her face. Mom says that just before the picture was taken she had punched a boy in class in the face for teasing her.

In any case, my mother is a manic depressive. Her manic states get pretty amazing. She stops needing to sleep more than a couple of hours a night, she gets very aggressive and confrontational, and becomes delusional. During the fifteen year period when she had all twelve of her children, she only went into this state once. Maybe something to do with the hormones generated during pregnancy nullified whatever was going on in her head. During that first reoccurance we were all briefly placed in foster care because my father couldn't take care of us by himself and keep his job at the same time.

After we were all born she fell back into her usual cycle which was to go into a manic state once every two years or so. It was pretty disturbing when she got ill, and it was sort of embarassing at times when she would make a spectacle of herself in public. She was also a bit dangerous driving.

I grew up watching the development of different medications and their effects on her. Some of the more potent ones left her basically a zombie who was barely capable of taking care of herself, much less twelve children. They didn't put on those until the older ones in the family were capable of taking on more responsibility. I've always treated my sister 2 of 12 as a second mother, because much of the burden of watching over us fell on her when mom got ill.

When mom would get ill she usually needed to be hospitalized. But when she was ill, she would never voluntarily admit herself and always had to be forcibly brought in. After we were all grown up and my father had left, the burden fell on us children. Usually it was either myself, or 2 of 12 had to bring in the authorities. Not a fun task. Anyway, usually a month or two in the hospital and she would be cured.

In the late 80s they seemed to find the right combination of drugs to keep her sane. She went about seven years without becoming ill. In fact the doctors decided that she probably did not need to be on anything anymore. They were wrong though and she became ill again in the early nineties after her mother passed away. Since then it has been about once per year and a half.

Recently, she decided to completely drop the medication altogether. It always made her drowsy and her hands had started to shake. The last time she got ill we tried to get her admitted to the hospital, but they refused, despite the fact that at 69 she was having delusions that she was pregnant again. I won't tell you who she thought the father was. After thinking about a bit I guess I've decided that it was her call to make. She really isn't a threat when she is manic, just sort of disturbing and embarassing. And when she is manic she doesn't seem like she is in any pain. Her thoughts are just very disorganized and delusional. She doesn't have access to a car so that's not a problem. So once a year or so from now on I have to put up with an embarrassing parent, and that elderly parent gets to live without the effects of annoying drugs. I guess I can handle it. I'll just find a way to be an embarrassment to my daughter when I'm old and frail to make up for it.

I suppose I should explain the whole 'frightening consequences of electroshock therapy' thing. When my mother was in the hospital for the first time back in the late forties, they almost lobotomized her. I can recall her calmly telling me about it at one point. "Those people would just sit around and stare at nothing all day. I'm glad they didn't do that to me." Instead they tried electroshock therapy. And for a brief time it worked. My mother says that it gave her temporary amensia and sort of cleared the slate in her head. She was glad.

So anyway, my eleven siblings and I are 'the frightening consequences of electroshock therapy'. All twelve of us are high school graduates. We have one class valedictorian, four class salutorians, nine college graduates with my 3.3GPA being on the low end, two lawyers, two PhDs with a third on the way, and seven grandchildren with one due any day now. All due to the fact that the electroshock therapy worked and they didn't have to lobotomize my mother.

So there you go. Happy? I know I had promised to do this last week but when I ran across that Valentine's Day Card I decided I wanted that out there first. Because despite her illness my mother is a likeable person who has always made friends easily, and I didn't want this out there without showing that first. She is a really a sweet, lovable woman when she is not ill. I don't know of anyone that truly dislikes her. Being as mentally ill as she was and having twelve children was not the most responsible thing in the world, but her Catholic faith has always been her comfort, and as a devout Catholic she saw nothing wrong with having as many children as she did. And for the most part we turned out pretty decent.