The Life of Mitch Mayborn

Not only was Monday worldwide Suicide Prevention Day, this whole week is National Suicide Prevention Week. In that vein, I wanted to go a little more in depth about the life and times of Curtis Mitchell Mayborn, my dad, since he did do a lot of living in the 54 years before he pulled the trigger. For the record, he didn't go by Curtis, as that was his mom (the one with the raccoon). He went by Mitch. Or Dad.

First and foremost, he was a lover of all things aeronautical.

I think his greatest dream was to be an Air Force fighter pilot, though it was a dream unfulfilled. He was a pilot, and was a corporate pilot for Dresser Industries in the late 60s, possibly into the early 70s. In the 1980s, he flew the Virgin Island Seaplane Shuttle. Other airplane activities included painting pictures of them, photographing them, and dragging his family from hot tarmac to hot tarmac to see airshows around Texas. I'm told that at one time he had one of the largest collections of airplane photographs in the country. Photographs that he personally had taken.

He also wrote and edited guidebooks, not just about planes, but also about historical automobiles.

For many years, between flying gigs, he worked for his dad, Ted W. Mayborn, at Associated Publishers, where they published Drillinq-DCW, an oilfield trade journal. This was often a fallback job, and in hindsight, it was probably that for most of his adult life he suffered from bipolar I disorder. Looking back on my childhood, it did seem that he always had so many projects going, and the life that he dreamed of living always seemed just out of reach.

While in hindsight, my childhood was quite dysfunctional, I don't remember it being horrible. On the contrary, I think we had fun, for the most part. Dad was kind of like a big kid, which, of course, must have been hard for my mom. And, yes, I was a "Daddy's Girl."

 That is an awesome white belt, is it not?!!

Sadly, in the mid to late 1970s, he turned to alcohol for his psychiatric medication because not as much was known about mental illness, and it certainly wasn't talked about in polite company. Or even not so polite company. I'm pretty sure the #1 rule in our dysfunctional family was do not talk about the bad stuff. To anyone. Anywhere. Anytime. Perhaps if we didn't talk about it, it wasn't happening. At any rate, Dad was never formally diagnosed, but since one often, post-suicide, tries to figure out what happened, that all the events of his life were put together and analyzed.

Could his suicide have been prevented? Boy, people agonize over this question about every suicide, I imagine. They ask themselves what they could have done. Specifically, I believe he was on a suicidal trajectory at least most of his adult life, spiraling faster and faster downward (not unlike an airplane shot out of the sky). One of his heroes, after all, was Ernest Hemingway. When I got the call from my aunt, I was understandably shocked and devastated, but not actually surprised. Well, after I got over the shock, I was not surprised.

So the big question... could it have been prevented? It was not pre-meditated or planned. He was backed into a corner, so to speak, and apparently saw no way out. It's my belief that had he gotten help decades before, perhaps he would not have met with such a violent end. And that's why I have such hope today.

The more people talk about it, share their stories and struggles, both for themselves and their loved ones, perhaps the stigma of mental illness can be chipped away at and lives can be saved.

Help is out there.

My Grandmother had a Pet Raccoon

Have you ever played the party game where you're having a conversation with someone you've just met and you're comparing crazy families? I call it the "My Family is Crazier than Your Family." And I pretty much always win, unless they are lying.

But then in March, my daughter, Laura, introduced me to The Bloggess. I was hooked! I love Jenny Lawson! And when her book, Let's Pretend The Never Happened, came out, I had to have it. I read it out loud to Roland. He even chuckled now and then. Even when I couldn't read because I was laughing so hard. (Note: there are some serious and sad parts, too... not everyone's life is funny ALL the time).

Jenny and me at the Barnes & Noble, Atlanta

The reason I'm tellling you about the Bloggess, is that hands down, she wins the game. She explains why in the 2nd chapter where she lays out "the 11 things most people have never experienced...". Of course, she grew up in rural west Texas, and I grew up in urban, Dallas, Texas, so I did have non-poisonous running tap water. And, while I do know what a cistern is, we didn't have one.

But I'm reading out loud to Roland on our way to a folk art auction in Buford, Georgia and I get to #5. Quoting directly from the book: "Most People don't have live raccoons in the house." Well, I'm here to tell you that my dad's mom, my grandmother, Curtis, had a pet raccoon named Ringo. It was in the 60s, so I'm not sure if he's named after that famous Beatle, Ringo Starr, or just because he had rings around his tail. Honestly, my bet is on the rings around the tail.

A few of the differences (I won't give away all the funny parts of her story):

• Jenny's family had multiple raccoons living in the house that she, herself lived in. Curtis (I'll tell you the story of her name in another post) just had the one. And I didn't live with Curtis, but we all lived in Dallas, and got together frequently for family, um, get-togethers. Anyway, we saw them a lot.
• Jenny's mom sewed tiny clothes for them (jams, specifically). The jury is out on whether or not Ringo wore clothes, but given how Curtis loved to dress her little chihuahua, Quincy, in outfits many years later, there is a definite possibility that Ringo didn't go around naked every day.
• Jenny's family culled the crowd down to just one by letting some of them go, but it appears that raccoon ran around the house a lot, until he got banished outside to a chicken cage. Ringo lived in my grandmother's spacious pink bathroom, and ultimately in a screened-in porch that legend (my memory) has it was built just for him. Complete with small pool and tree. Do raccoons like trees?

I'm not really sure what ever happened to Ringo. Like I said, it was the 60s, and I was just a kid. Ringo came out at all the family functions, and I seem to remember being allowed to pet him (carefully), and admire the uniqueness of having a pet raccoon.

 Hard to tell from the poor quality of a 40+ year old polaroid, but I think they were inside in the room commonly known to the family as the "game room."

 Buddy was the family collie that was apparently a playmate for Ringo. Or was it the other way around. Not pictured: the 15 or 20 cats that were also family pets.