Eva Regine Schubert

That is the name of my mother. Today is her birthday. She was born in 1936 in a very small but historical city outside of Dresden in Germany. Her formative years were spent in bomb shelters and missing most of school because she had Lymph tuberculosis. She was a teutonic beauty....Hitler's ideal child. Her father Rudolph, was a butcher from a rich family and some thought he was related to Franz Schubert the composer....He had bi-polar illness and my mother was his favorite person and he hers. Her mother Lydia was a a loving person. I met her once when I was 12 (1972) and we lived with her for three months behind the Berlin wall because my grandfather was dying of lung cancer and wanted to see my mother before he died. She had escaped to East Germany during the midnight riots in the 50's and was not allowed to go back until the 70's

My mother wanted to be a star. Her first English words were, I want to be Marilyn Monroe... but, she got pregnant and married an American Airforce officer and had two children, my sister and I. Over the next five years, she lived in west Germany and North Africa and eventually ended up in Las Vegas in the early 60's where she and my Father divorced. She could barely speak english and got a job as a cocktail waitress to the high rollers at the Golden Nugget during the heydey of Las Vegas.....her beauty and charm opened many doors for her. She worked hard had a maid for us and saved a huge amount of money. Then she met my second father....the Polish math genius ( she loved smart men) who made a living playing poker and 21 because he knew how to count the cards ...eventually, certain houses wouldn't let him play, he was winning too much. Before he realized his gambling genius, He was a navigator in the merchant marines during WWII. They became involved and lived together in an apartment off of Desert Inn road until he went on a gambling and drinking binge and lost all of my mother's savings.....she made him marry her and move us to San Francisco where he would go back on the ships and pay her back every penny.

While living in California my mother's bi-polar illness began to surface. She would sleep all day , the house was always badly kept and then she would say and do inappropriate things. When she was in the manic phase she would stay up late, drink Martinis and paint huge flowers on bamboo mats, she was a gifted artist. I knew when she was in her up mood because she would wear her blue velvet cocktail dress and would play Glen miller records. She would wear blood red listick that was called Tabu and her white skin and almost white hair made her look like a goddess to me and I was facsinated by her. At these times my step dad was out at sea carrying cargo during the Vietnam War. So, mother was alone most of the time living in her own world belonging to nobody.

Eventually My step-dad could not keep a handle on his drinking and gambling and again he devastated our family financially and he moved us back to Vegas where he and my mother divorced. My sister and I, while in California, had become ballet dancers, trained on scholarship in the San Francisco Ballet school and got a job working in a production show at the original MGM. We basically divorced our parents too and our own adventures began. Mother went on to marry a sweet Italian guy with ties to the mafia and he died in 1987 leaving my mother quite alone and now in a rather delusional state.

She lived with my husband and I until she qualified for Senior housing before she was a senior because of her devastaing illness and lives there reclusively today, not really wanting much to do with my sister and I. The last mother's day I spent with her she thought we were driving her out to the desert to kill her and called the cops on me because she thought there was no food in the fridge and my children were not in school ( I homeschool). She never answers her phone ,she just sends my children cards for their birthday and holidays and the only way I know she is alive is by calling the landlord to see how she is.

So today is her birthday and I will send her a card that will get there late. She will never acknowledge getting it. She does not want to belong to anybody. I hope I have not been dishonorable to her in writing her story. I still love her and grieve that I have never and will never be close to her because that is what mental illness, left untreated and misunderstood does to people and their families....their dreams die along with their personality and identity and they must choose to belong to nobody.

Lord Jesus please belong to my Mother