Melancholic, baby?
If you are a regular reader, you might have surmised that I am a sad sack, always focusing on events and people long gone but still present in my emotions. If you followed me around for a few days, you might be sure of it, as I break into tears here, punch at the air there, as I growl and curse. But I also dance and laugh so hard that I have to catch my breath, feel the thrill of being alive.
Life is sweet even when it feels like it isn't.
A couple of weeks ago, my son and I were doing our usual evening routine, discussing the day's events before saying goodnight. "I love you so much, I'll love you even when I'm dead," he told me. Perhaps stupidly, I responded in kind, which led to a longer discussion about death and love. It ended, of course, in tears. He wanted me to stay like I was, didn't want me to change. Maybe the pictures we've shown him of his grandparents when they were young have been sobering. They look unfamiliar with their shining hair and the tight, unlined skin of youth. He doesn't recognize them as the people they are today and he imagines what will happen to his father and me, the sagging and bulging, our faces turning into topographic maps, our bodies weakened. But I also think he's mourning the moment, who we are right now, and feels the desire to hold on. He's confronting the painful inevitability of change.
When I was eleven, I felt adulthood looming. Growing up meant a loss of self. I mourned who I was before I was gone. I had already lost so much -- would I forget the perspective of the dependent child, helpless, attached to capricious and sometimes unstable adults? Here's where I start to cry again, with surprising emotion, and I think -- what the fuck? Can't you get over it already, Jennifer? Plenty of people had it worse than you. But the emotions are still here, waiting for permission to leave.
My son has a childhood. He has his father and he has me and we will let him be a child, will protect him when he needs it and will prepare him for adulthood. These temporary moments, the joy he has in playing and being with us, the way the imaginary is real and present for him, all of this will change or disappear. This is what is supposed to happen. But we will do our best to make sure that nothing changes prematurely, that he doesn't worry about us or feel unsafe or take on larger worries. I hope that he will be able to look back at his childhood with happiness, that the preordained loss won't sting too much.
I cry, but the tears are mixed in with joy and sweetness and everything in between. This is life. I am alive.
Image: The boy at his birthday party yesterday, wielding a balloon sword.
The weight of it
If you tell, everyone will know how bad you are. And stupid. And worthless. They will reject you.
Tired of the weight, you tell anyway. No one thinks you are bad. Or stupid. Or worthless. Sometimes they treat you with empathy. Others ignore what you tell them, but you come to understand that they don't know what to do with it, that it's their problem, not yours.
You start to feel better, like maybe you didn't cause your abandonment by being bad or being too smart-assed or being too you. Your abandonment was your parent's problem and not yours, even though now you are left to deal with the lifelong aftermath.
You think of her, the other girl, your biological grandmother, sixteen and pregnant in New Castle, Delaware in 1950, how she carried also carried a baby -- your mother -- probably in secret until almost the end. You think of her secret pregnancy, the secret father, the secret baby going off to live with a new family. Your birth grandmother grew up, got married and had two additional children. She held fast to the secrets.
You are angry with her for keeping these secrets, for denying information and empathy. You identify with her, remembering what it was like to be young, alone, and terrified. You want to tell her "I understand" (as much as you can). You want to punch her in the face. The legacy of suppression is a foul one and you need to blame someone for what happened to you. Someone distant and easy. But you can't. The people to blame, your mother, your father, other adults in your life at the time . . . oh, you're afraid of the mess your anger would make and you know now how hopeless they were.
You try to write about secrets, but it just feels like an emotional morass.
That's the problem with secrets.
Image: My mother, summer 1952.
A tale of necessary sadness, in two acts
Act I
Something is going on with
me. I’m sleeping terribly, cry at nothing.
Last night at dinner my son asked for another
Dress Me Monkey story: “What else would Dress
Me Monkey do?” This is our cue to come up
with some fantastical new tale about how the
toy would spend the proceeds from treasure he
never manages to steal. I said the first
thing that came to my mind, that Dress Me
Monkey wishes he could go back in time to the
nights when he ate with his mother and father
and they told Dress Me Human stories. "His
parents are far away now, and Dress Me Monkey
misses those days. He would like to go back
for a meal or two."
The dinner had been a difficult one, with the
kid complaining about his food and telling me
how the refried beans on his homemade nachos
looked like dirt, like something worms would
eat. I'd spent a lot of the day fighting my
initial crabby responses to his normal kid
behavior. I was tired. My past has been
coming back and poking me lately, spilling
out, and meals are one of those difficult
times for me. So I came up with a Dress Me
Monkey story that fit my mood, inappropriate
though the story might have been.
"Why did Dress Me Monkey want to have dinner
with his parents again, like he was a little
monkey?" the boy asked.
“Because everybody wants that,” my husband
said and started to cry. The boy was
concerned and snuggled up close to his dad.
We explained that Daddy was crying partially
because he misses his mother, who has been
dead for twelve years, but that also
sometimes adults miss the past, the sweet
simplicity of the family table. Then it was
my turn to cry, because my childhood
mealtimes were mainly horrible. The emotional
tenor of my those dinners depended on my
mother's mood and the man she was dating. She
had only three boyfriends over the course of
my childhood, but each of them had their own
issues, would make me stand at the table or
wouldn't talk when I was there or would pull
me apart, show my every flaw. When the last
one, Kevin, came along I ended up eating
dinner alone most of the time.
So. I want my family meals to be happy. Full
of love. The food I prepare is part of that
love and I try hard not to force the boy to
eat things he doesn't like, which is why he
eats macaroni and cheese almost every night.
Last night the meal was something he has
eaten before, but it didn't appeal to him and
the whole situation got to me.
I know that his rejection of my food is not a
rejection of me, but sometimes I still have
that visceral reaction, that and "You have no
idea how good you have it, little boy." And I
get angry at myself for thinking such a
thing. He doesn't "need" to know that. He
needs to grow up secure and happy and loved,
without the burdens of my childhood thrust
upon him. But right now the past is spilling
out of me, surprising me with its emotional
abundance. It can be overwhelming.
Last night, as I was getting him to sleep, he
asked about our day. This rundown of our
daily activities is a bedtime ritual.
Sometimes I learn more about what happened at
school or we go deeper an earlier discussion.
When I got to the dinner portion of my
synopsis, I apologized for the weirdness of
it and asked if he had any questions. "Why
did you tell a sad Dress Me Monkey story?"
was the first.
The real answer was because I am sad right
now. I am processing something deep and
fetid, airing out emotions that don’t easily
surface. I’m not sure why it's happening and
while I don’t like the effects – waking up in
the middle of the night or too damn early,
occasionally scaring my child, being cranky
and sleepy all day – I think what I’m going
through is necessary. What I told him was
that when I was little mealtimes weren't
always happy times and I was feeling sad
about it during dinner. And then we moved on
to why Daddy cried at the dinner
table.
Act II
It happened again last
night, the two a.m. alarm clock. I woke up
sad, obsessed with an aborted friendship.
After a good cry -- quiet, intense -- into my
pillow, I went into the boy's room to read
and hopefully return to sleep. (He had
already migrated into our bed.) When sleep
finally snuck up on me, I had a complicated
dream. In it, my husband's family was
visiting (though, in typical dream style, an
old boyfriend of mine showed up, too, looking
very much like a middle-aged Eastern Shore
type, with a baseball cap, greying beard, and
a beer belly). It was a surprise visit. I
hadn't had a chance to clean and I was
ashamed at how the house looked and angry
with my husband for springing them on me.
My dream self went stomping off into the
night. Our oldest cat, Zoe, fifteen years old
now and a sack of bones, dotty, constantly
hungry, followed me. We wandered frenetic
city streets, joined the rush of humanity. In
one square, mimes performed acrobatic feats
and played with fire. The glow of a neon sign
drew me into a murky bar. The next thing I
remember, Zoe and I were walking home. A
rainstorm had blasted through the city and
scrubbed away the people, leaving behind damp
sidewalks and oil-slick puddles that
reflected the shimmer of streetlights. It was
spooky, the kind of emptiness where you
expect to hear an echo of footsteps behind
you. Zoe, frightened by a stray cat, fell
behind.
One minute I could see her, the next she was
gone. I screamed her name over and over
again. I used the dinnertime call:
Zo-Zo-Zo-Zo-Zo. And then I opened my eyes,
totally awake, feeling the responsibility,
feeling the loss.
But at least I was feeling something.
Image: Asher with Nick's
shadow. Zoe has asked not to be photographed
for the blog. She's an old-fashioned sort who
values her privacy, though her name
actually is
Zoe.
She also agreed
that this photo was the best fit for the
post.
Does it seem like my past is always spilling
out? Maybe here. This is different though,
like I'm working through something big. I
sometimes discount the effects of my
childhood and often think I should be over it
by now. But it's not so simple, is
it?
Where I am right now
I can hear a seagull screeching and the patter of rain against the deck, against the grass, against the faded IKEA play tent on its side in the backyard.
Sometimes I want to escape, but I don't know where I would escape to.
I've been wondering if the mailman is angry with me. This is code for something else. Maybe I'll write about it someday.
I've been thinking about turning off the comments in this blog. I'm thinking about starting a new blog. I'm thinking that if I keep on blogging, I'll never write anything of substance.
If I no longer belong to the East Coast and I haven't pledged my allegiance to the West Coast, where do I belong?
My fear of being invisible is coming to fruition.
No one can save me but myself and if I believe otherwise, I am delusional.
Lately I've been thinking that poetry, with its economy of words and strong imagery, would suit me.
And I keep on catching typos in this post, which means I have to make the changes, export the entire blog, and upload it all over again.
Tomorrow will be better, right?
Image: Neighbor cat on the fence.
Shoot him 'fore he run now
J. had a freezer full of
goose breasts riddled with shot. His family
owned property on Broad Creek with a duck
blind right against the water, where the
menfolk, clad in camouflage, would sit on
brisk fall mornings, guns poised. He showed
me the blind that first summer, took my hand
and led me through a tunnel of cornstalks
gone brown. We sat close on the austere
bench, hidden behind grass that had become
hoarse with whispering over the years. I am
sure he kissed me in that humid July air
because we did a lot of that then, sweet
lingering kisses in between fights and
sarcasm.
He’d told me that a former tenant of the
Sugar Shack, the house he and his brother
were renting from their grandmother on the
far side of the property, had keeled over one
afternoon in the back bedroom, dead from a
heart attack. By the time they found the
body, the man’s faithful dog had chewed off
half of his face. It probably started with
wake-up licks that progressed to nips and
then frantic biting. But J. was often full of
shit, and I’m not sure if he was just trying
to scare me. If so, it worked. I’d spend the
night there holding it, too nervous to walk
the ten feet to the bathroom, picturing the
gory scene, the spiritual remains of this
lonely person floating over the room.
One muddy November night, when lingering
kisses had turned into the fire of post-fight
sex, I realized I was on the edge. J. and I
had gone from chemical intensity to a kind of
in-between thing that wasn’t satisfying but
was just enough to keep me hooked. We’d spent
the evening at the bar, drinking and picking
at each other. By the time we shoveled into
the Sugar Shack driveway, my brain was
crackling. We had a fight about something
ridiculous or something deep-seated and
heavy, it doesn't really matter, and at some
point I grabbed a shotgun from the gun
cabinet.
As I write this, I can’t believe that I did
such a thing, so dramatic, so serious. Could
I be making this up? No. I was drunk and sad
and teetering on the edge of the abyss, so I
grabbed one of his (unloaded) shotguns and
pointed at my face. Maybe we struggled. All I
can remember is me stumbling in the shabby
living room of the Sugar Shack where it was
cold and damp. J. was lit from behind so that
his face was cragged in shadow. I was
hysterical with pent-up emotion, struggling
to keep hold of this unwieldy gun. Eventually
J. took it away and returned it to the
cabinet. We went to sleep. I woke up the next
morning barely able to move, felt around for
his sleeping form and remembered that he was
probably hunkered down in the duck blind with
his cousins.
I’m sure he chalked the night up to my
overgrown sense of drama, another mark
against me to go with my unfaithfulness and
love of alcohol. Thank god I've tossed aside
those crutches for the most part, though I
miss the drama sometimes. Drama sparks up the
night, shines a little light into the abyss.
Without it, you have only darkness, have to
bravely perch on the edge until the abyss
slowly creeps away. And that's where I seem
to be right now for reasons that are unclear
to me, dirging it out until the fog
lifts.
"Shoot him 'fore he run now," is a lyric to
the song "Shotgun," originally by Jr. Walker
and the All Stars. Click
here for a danceable,
levity-producing version from the
documentary Standing
in the Shadows of
Motown. It features some of
the original Motown sessions musicians and
the late Gerald Levert as singer.
Image from the Washington
College magazine.
Prognostication
In my dreams, the dead are silent. I’ve never
had a good conversation with a single one of
them, just offer my apologies, bake the
bread, pour the coffee. What is the guilt
about? The dead no longer care about my
transgressions. Isn’t it enough that I hold
them here in my subconscious, treat them as
gently as I would a freshly-laid egg?
But this dream was different. We were going
to visit Kevin, who has been gone for over
seven years now. As in real life, I was
nervous: would I react properly to him? Would
he toss the verbal slings, so subtle and
cutting, if I didn’t pick up on something, if
I reacted too slowly? Or would he sit there,
blue eyes glowing, as my mother and I circled
him like butterflies, flitting here and there
in our attempts to placate?
Kevin spoke. He used the ethereal language of
dreams, of those who are now ashes and light,
but in that nasal New Jersey accent that I
haven’t been able to replicate in my mind for
years. And he was funny, so funny, because
Kevin was
bitingly funny.
I laughed and realized how much I missed him,
how much time had gone by and then I woke up,
not remembering a word of his complicated
meta-joke.
Time flies on and I die a little every day,
lose another connection, feel the pull of a
long-ago past. Yet my grandfather still shows
up at the old house. I smell his cigarettes,
breathe in sawdust, too-sweet coffee and
turpentine. He waits in his cell of a room, a
voiceless old man in a flannel robe, unshaven
and glassy eyed. I rush past the sink filled
with dirty dishes, walk a path of slate to
get to a mailbox that hasn't been opened in
years. Sometimes we take his car for a
complicated drive to Christiana. Maybe we are
heading to the hospital, waiting for someone
to hand me a small bundle, something I've
forgotten.
The dead appear without explanation or
warning. Carolin greets me in a too-bright
dorm basement, fixes me with intense eyes.
David Anderson sits in a classroom, shoeless,
staring at the algebra equation on the board.
Frank the cat meows for food that I don't
have. And my grandmother, the one I ache to
see, is sick of my inattention and has
stopped showing up at all.
Someday, no one will know that I was sixteen
and angry once. They will remember an old
woman deeply lined, forgetful, with
clouded-over eyes, demanding and harmless.
Inconsequential. As though I had been born
without desire, without the power to wound.
Image: Postcard, date
unknown.
From you I get the story
Cherry tree on West Street.
I tell myself that when I am dying, leaving
the things of this world, it will no longer
matter that I paved the banks of that river,
diverted its flow, moved the humming stream
of desire to my imagination. What I want with
an ache of jealousy, with the pain of
something that was never meant to be, won’t
matter to me then. The impulse – to covet, to
pursue, to get – will be meaningless.
Self-denial will have been the obvious
course.
Don’t expect a description here, a list of
lusts. It’s not all about lust (though
sometimes, of course, it is. I am human.). It
is the pull and push of expectation, sadness
at the inevitable narrowing of life. Here I
stand on a plank in the river, steering in
the direction of what will be, trying not to
gaze back. My husband is here too, pushing us
through the water, sometimes reaching back to
touch my hair or hold my hand. I love him. He
is comforting. Real. I am free from want.
Or I’m not. What about the desire for
lyricism? Luck? A publishing contract? Some
days I just want to be left alone. I want to
eat a meal in the sunshine, with my book and
my thoughts, without guilt. I want 24
obligation-free hours. I want words that fly
out of my fingers, practically effortlessly.
I want to watch them take off and form
themselves into unstoppable narrative. I am
power-mad for deadly metaphor.
But even more strongly I want to be an image
in someone else’s head, a character real and
fully formed. I need an author, someone to
flesh out the plot of my own life, someone
who understands these redirected desires
implicitly. He (yes) sees me, knows my lurid
heart, feels the iciness of my thoughts. He
loves me anyway. This is what believers get
from God, I suppose. It’s an impossible task
for any human being, given that we are opaque
even to ourselves.
Pointless, pointless
desire. But it does propel me
forward.
My hands untied
Kevin, summer of 1984.
Enter spring–let's say April–1984, West Street, Wilmington, Delaware.
Birds are singing. The tulips and pansies in our raised beds are starting to bloom. Recent March winds have deposited the remnants of chaos, muddied papers, dead leaves and tree limbs, in the alleyway. The winds lifted deck chairs against back fences, turned over plastic flower pots, battered pedestrians. They blew Kevin the poet-carpenter, intellectual powerhouse and gin guzzler, in down the street, saluted him with a flurry of cherry blossoms.
My mother invites the new neighbor over for dinner. He seems strange, a little awkward in his old-fashioned glasses, his blue eyes intense and clear through Coke bottle lenses. Kevin speaks with a touch of New Jersey nasal and renovates and flips houses for a living. He arrives lean and tanned, armed with words of sharpened steel and a large bottle of Gordon’s, his old blue merle collie Barney by his side.
What could I do? I was fourteen. The last guy in our house didn’t even speak when I was at the table.
Here’s what I didn’t do: talk. Smile. Instead I just sat and shoveled in the food, exuded resentment, made infrequent eye contact. Maybe I smirked. And Kevin, a man I had just met, called me on it.
“What’s your problem? You’re just sitting there, sucking all the air out of the room.”
I have no memory of my response.
It wasn’t until yesterday, as I was attempting to capture this pivotal moment yet again, looking over what I’d written almost a year ago on that same dinner, that I realized: I blame myself. Reading over my early attempts is somewhat painful. I was straining to describe that night, to explain Kevin’s poetic rockstar persona and my mother’s deadly attraction to him, to explain my role in my own rejection. The end of parenting, my premature emancipation, the series of adult situations I got into before my time? Culpa. Mea culpa. I should have put on the charm, talked, given a little bit that night. I should have been someone else.
If I had won Kevin over that evening, maybe my mother would have stayed engaged in my life. She might never have started bringing dinner to him, eating in his dusty dining room every night while I ate alone. I wouldn’t have begun wandering the Wilmington streets after dark, wobbly with purloined gin, smoking unfiltered cloves and blasting the Dead Kennedys from my Walkman. The Little House would have stayed empty. The end of innocence could have been put off for another couple of years. If I were a better person, a different person, no one would have told me that I was evil, the root cause of family turmoil.
I know. I know. My brain tells my heart that it would have made absolutely no difference in the outcome if I had smiled or curtseyed or made insightful conversation about Nietzsche and Wordsworth. To be honest, until yesterday, I didn't know I felt this way. I blame myself.
Why do children take responsibility for things over which they have no control? Why do adults shift the blame to the helpless? And why, when we molt and grow and leave our child forms behind, does this sense of responsibility for our own small fates, this idea of being the masters of our abuse (if only I were nicer or less shy or stronger ...) carry on into our adult life?
The child decides that she is the cause of her mistreatment. The adult lets those early experiences dictate her behavior. We find ourselves recreating situations again and again, little kids in the guise of adulthood, sifting our lives through the rusty emotional sieve of the formerly helpless. We choose partners who fit into old scenarios, make decisions based on faulty data, try to get it right this time. With our motives hidden and our reasons obscured, the do-overs usually fail. Then? Familiar pain and reinforcement of our feelings of worthlessness.
Or maybe it's just me who's felt this way. Yes, I've done this, set up the scene, chosen guys who reject who I am, who blame me for their own shortcomings. I've blundered my way through friendships, the sullen fourteen year old in a thirty-year-old's clothing. And although I have stopped replaying the same scenes over and over again, I still have an overarching sense of responsibility for the trajectory of my childhood. My invisible scars feel completely self-imposed, my exposure of them a shameful confession. I feel rotten from the inside, capable of destroying entire worlds. Run from me before I drag you into the muck!
But I'm not that way. I'm not.
So I'm writing my path to self-acceptance, still trying to forgive myself and my family, to look at the world through clean eyes. I don't want to shift blame. I want to let go of the entire concept of it. After all, I'm here, alive, doing so much better than I ever thought I would be. It's time to let go, to untie my hands and live fully.
I figure I'm about 20% there. Maybe more. And if I can do it, you can too.
Coming up: February's blog, a return to the Maureen story (we'll skip over the guess who's coming to dinner segment), and some awards. Not necessarily in that order.
Shameless
Image from Hope4Survivors
You want instant writer's block?
Try to write about your own shame.
That's not how today started. I wanted to
write a story about a boyfriend I had in
college, the tale of my second long term
relationship. Our innocent beginnings. He was
a teller in my bank, we shared smiles and
pleasantries. Then one evening, when I was
leaving the local watering hole with one of
my male floozies, J approached me and said “I
know you’re leaving with this guy, but can I
call you sometime?” I gave him my number.
There was the little detail of my real
boyfriend and our slowly dying couplehood. I
had to put that out of its misery. It wasn’t
a clean death. And when J went on a white
water rafting trip with his family a month
into our serious dating, I might have had a
bar hookup or two. In between his return and
our demise, we shared a period of sweet
intense love. I loved him. I really did.
I was kind of crazy then. Angry.
Pathologically needy. J was sarcastic and
cruel, bitingly funny with a mean streak
brought on by his quietly twisted childhood.
After six months of total absorption, our
relationship stalled and then limped along
for another two years, with sporadic weekend
visits (the margarita-inspired sex in a
sprawling azalea near the Capitol grounds;
the drunken knock on my door after a Redskins
Super Bowl victory; my leap into the pool
with the band, fully clothed, after I
secretly followed J and Frieda
back to his
bedroom). I had a few mini-boyfriends on the
sly, including one fellow philosophy major
who totally trampled my heart and a graduate
student who was a Jew posing as an
Italian-American. Nervous about how he would
be perceived in a Catholic-tinged philosophy
program, the graduate student exploited his
olive-toned skin and love of opera to go
undercover, lived an odd temporary lie.
Still, J and I continued in our half-love
without discussing the side relationships.
The week I headed for graduate school, he
left me a message, sang “I’m Leaving on a Jet
Plane,” to my answering machine, funny and
bittersweet as ever. In November of that
year, 1992, I found out that he’d gotten a
new, serious girlfriend. After a tearful,
confessional conversation, I mailed him a
copy of the credit card receipt for my
abortion. I’d been holding on to it for five
months, waiting for the right moment to tell
him.
Shame.
Ashamed of who I was and what I did. Ashamed
of the abortion – the abortion. You think you
can wash away shame or pain by showing it to
the world, or to a limited subset of the
sympathetic. Sorry, my good religious
friends, my lovers of life. I let one baby
happen by accident and took care of the next
by violence.
By the end of my first semester in library
school, I was in crisis, totally falling
apart. Enter my first real attempt at therapy
and my future first husband, the slow process
of life rebuilding. If you are reading this,
thank you future first husband, future
ex-husband, for being so totally solid. I
don't think I've given you enough credit for
that. There is absolution in unconditional
love.
I am starting to sift through the decade
after the stillbirth, shining light on a dark
time, preparing myself to come clean.
I have
wondered if the
blog, my self-made public confessional, is
the best way to expurgate shame. Wouldn't it
be simpler to say nothing at all? Maybe
finally get around to locating another
trusted therapist, go the traditional
recovery route? Or, if I must expose the
ugliness, couldn't I just make it quick,
compile a list, invite brief flagellation or
accolades for my honesty and then move
quickly on to self-forgiveness?
No, no, I have to transform the shame into a
narrative, examine it inside and out. I need
to dust if off, shine it up, put it in the
shop window. Later, I'll pass it along to my
fictional characters. They are waiting
backstage, eager to take on the burden, ready
to be set into motion. But before all that,
before I can pass the torch in good
conscience, I'll occasionally be picking
apart my mistakes here, aiming for tricky
self-forgiveness.
I hope you can stay with me for the ride, can
keep an open mind and an empathetic heart.
Oh, the places we’ll go!
Hello ... Columbus?
Capitol Plaza Apartments
The studio at Capitol Plaza Apartments was
cheap and within easy walking distance to
Union Station. On the first floor of an
eight-story building, it had a large window
overlooking the basement roof and a hemmed-in
view of surrounding structures. Small and
dark, with parquet floors and
“apartment-sized” appliances in the
not-even-galley kitchen, it was a cozy cave,
the right place to hide out for my final year
of college. I moved in August 1991.
To pay the bills, I took out more student
loans, got a better paying part-time job
working in a library at a high-profile law
firm. That’s where I met Chas.
Chas had recently divorced and was trying to
figure out his newly single life at 39, the
house gone, his routine changed. I was a
loner 21, a strange combination of vulnerable
and shuttered, talking more to the homeless
men who bivouacked on my street than to my
fellow college students. We were both in love
with DC, with its high crime rate and crack
wars and the insane mayor-for-life Marion
Barry. The brick rowhouses, the policy wonks,
the strange political celebrity, the feel of
it all: It was home.
Chas had left Columbus, Ohio in the early
1970s and headed straight for the District.
He would tell me stories of growing up the
city, where his large family lived in a
massive brick Victorian. It sounded exotic in
its blandness, the spread-out burg with the
solid architecture. “They just don’t make
houses here like they do in Columbus,” he
would chuckle, and I'd smile as if I knew
what he was talking about. Chas got his own
apartment at 16, a few years before he moved
to DC. Since I’d been emancipated from
parental supervision from the age of 14 or
so, he felt like a kindred spirit, another
concealed soul, self-protective and insular.
Most of our conversations took place on my
early evening library shifts where there was
no one else in the office to interrupt us. He
would discuss the pursuit of church ladies
(they were a tough bunch), explain his
theories on electromagnetic radiation, how
the destructive energy fields from power
lines were spreading cancer and causing
miscarriages. We would stare out the window
at the office building across the street,
watch the after hours workers work or not
work, watch them watching us. There was one
man who was always talking on the phone,
standing with his back to the full-length
window glass, earpiece pinned between head
and shoulder. It was a performance just for
us, the man’s hands swooping and slicing the
air as though the person on the other end
would be persuaded by gesture. On the street
below, commuters dallied or rushed, flagged
down taxis, spilled out of the Metro station
on the corner.
A lone wolf on the streets of Dupont
Circle.
I told Chas all about my former roommate
Martha, my escapes to visit her in
Chestertown, where our evenings at
Andy’s
were blurred
through multiple glasses of Dark and
Stormies, a potent mixture of Goslings Rum
and ginger beer; he’d get the details of
the Bass Ale-soaked nights we had at the
Irish Times or the Dubliner.
Sometimes I would give him sanitized versions
of barhops with Abe, an old friend from
Delaware. Abe and I usually mixed our liquor,
beer, wining and cocktailing it to the final
rounds of Long Island Ice Teas. These
evenings generally ended in an argument over
something petty. We screamed across disco
lights and crowded dance floors, tossed barbs
in the back alleys of Georgetown, only to do
it over again a month later.
In none of these conversations did I tell
Chas about my drunken flirtations, about the
Marines Martha and I dragged back from the
bar one night, about the make-out sessions
with Eastern Shore acquaintances, the
booze-fueled pursuit of contact. Alcohol
always uncovered the chasm, brought the need
for other people to the surface.
In between the pickups and the throw-ups and
the work and the studying, I’d occasionally
see my faraway half-boyfriend. But most
weekends were quiet. “Friday night drinking
night?" the corner liquor store owner asked
me during one regular visit, to which I gave
a weak nod and smile. I’d drink, study, write
papers, maybe catch the PBS Saturday night
movie on my crappy box of a television. The
Capitol Building was close to my apartment
and I would walk around its lit-up beauty at
night in all kinds of weather, braving
bracing November winds, floating through the
incredible sweetness of spring, when the
cherry trees and azaleas were in bloom. (“I
am alive, I am alive” I would think as I
walked a path of fallen pink petals, feeling
the joy rise up in me).
The week before Martha drove me out to
Illinois in a battered U-Haul truck, Chas and
I went out for one last round of beers, a
temporary goodbye. I had every intention of
returning to DC immediately after graduating
from library school. But then I met a guy who
got a job and we moved to a new town
together: Columbus, Ohio. We started to build
a life, adopted some animals, and finally
bought a house. It was a four-bedroom brick
Queen Anne in the Old Towne East
neighborhood, a steal at $125,000. When I
gave Chas the address, he was quiet for a
moment.
“That’s the same block I grew up on,” he
finally told me. Almost exactly across the
street from our new house was an empty lot,
the location of Chas’s childhood home.
Franklin Avenue house and neighbor (we never
had a flag up and the neighbor will have to
be a story for another day). Photo from
Old
Towne East Neighborhood
Association.
It was a strange coincidence. What were the
odds?
The factoid with legs
At my grandparent's house during the John The
Murderer era.
It was a dark place, with a
cavernous bathroom, small squares of
mint-green tile above the white, a pedestal
sink, the tall window adjacent to the toilet
covered by a pullcord shade. Outside of the
bathroom, the rest of the old Wilmington
rowhouse loomed: shadowy rooms; marked-up
walls in need of paint; hardwood floors
scratched and worn from decades of footsteps,
the worst places covered by faded area rugs;
a raggedy couch there, a threadbare recliner
here; the folding tables with chipped veneer.
Because the windows were painted shut, the
air was stuffy, smelling of overcooked food.
I don’t remember other kids. I don’t remember
playing. I do remember lying on the floor (or
was that a cot?) for my nap, but not
sleeping. Maybe that’s why the bathroom is so
solid in this elusive memory – those that
don’t nap are made to stand in the bathroom.
Bad girl.
Tears and stubbornness. It wasn’t fair. No
one could make me sleep in this place.
The woman who ran the home-based daycare
knew John
the Murderer (click
here for more on him), my
mother’s ex-boyfriend. So when he showed up
after the breakup, after we moved out, when
he came by to pick me up during naptime, she
let me go. I was quiet and polite – this was
important, to go along, to not make him
angry, to stay safe. He took me to a store,
had me pick out a huge stuffed animal to take
home, and returned me without harm. It was a
somewhat threatening attempt to get back into
my mother’s good graces. When that didn’t
work, he pursued us to my grandparent’s
place, "kidnapped" my mother for a brief
time, another sketchy story of violence that
isn’t mine to tell.
Recently, when my little one, my sweet,
sometimes maddening almost-three-and-a-half
year old was behaving just like a preschooler
should, testing boundaries, being
frustrating, I felt the anger flame up inside
of me, the low boil going immediately to
steam. After calming down, I thought about my
life at his age and how small and defenseless
and maddening I must have been myself, a
little person in the midst of some very bad
things, trying to protect her mother, to keep
it together. The past was reaching out to
slap me in the face again, the suppressed
anger of long-ago, the abuse I both witnessed
and experienced.
I’ve asked my mother to tell me what happened
while we were living with John. Some of it I
vaguely remember (or know from past
conversations)– being made to stand at the
table for meals, his physical abuse of my
mother, his tendency to drink – but there are
gaps in my knowledge. I need to know, to
confront it, to feel the suppressed feelings.
It will be another step toward emotional
wholeness, a step toward being an aware
parent.
My mother has agreed, apologetically, guilty,
worried that I will be angry with her. There
is no cause for worry. I just need to know.
It's the next hurdle.
Everything around me remains the same
And the story is just about really, finally, complete. The final excerpt (still in draft mode) is below. For other excerpts from the work in progress as well as posts on the topic, follow the stillbirth tag.
I'm putting this experience to bed now.
Photo by PhineasX.
Gusts of words swirl around
me that week. I walk right through them. Who
needs to talk? Dad is explaining the baby’s
name to his father: “She said it was the
first thing that popped into her head.”
“Jennifer didn’t know what was going on,” my
stepmother tells the phone receiver. At an
aunt’s house for Thanksgiving, we sit and
hide behind the blast of televised football
and the scraping of forks, my paternal
grandfather’s frequent throat-clearing
sounding a note of general disapproval. Six
days after the birth I try the nightgown
trick again, tighten it over my empty
abdomen. Flat as a pancake.
On an unseasonably warm December day, wisps
of clouds pulled across a cerulean sky, Dad
drives me back to Maryland. There is clean-up
to be done. He drags the stained twin
mattress to the end of the driveway, props it
against the fence, bloodied side in. (“Very
tasteful of your father,” Mom tells me later,
with more than a hint of sarcasm.) My parents
share a laugh at the ancient pack of pilfered
Pall-Malls I’d jammed underneath it – if they
only knew about the empty beer bottles hidden
in the box spring of the other mattress. Dad
gives me an awkward hug, waves goodbye from
the car. I open the door to the Little House.
Smells become part of the background of a
place, as invisible as the color of the
ceiling or the punctuation of electrical
outlets against wallboard. You forget how a
house smells, forget it practically the
moment you close the door. The stale air of
the Little House hits me like a slap in the
face. It is the scent of bottled-up mildew,
of pressed wood and formaldehyde, the smell
of isolation. I take a canister of Lysol and
scour the room with an antiseptic rain, spray
the walls and floor until they are damp. Over
the afternoon I slowly change the feel of the
place, moving furniture and taking down
photographs.
When the familiar urge hits, I walk quietly
into the main house. From my grandfather’s
room comes the sound of MacGuyver, then the
jingle of a commercial. An ice-cream scoop
sits in the sink beside a spoon and scraped
bowl. Grabbing a large tumbler from the
dishwasher, I kneel to open the china
cabinet, reach for the Johnny Walker Red on
the bottom shelf. I walk back to the Little
House clutching my glass of whiskey and Coke
between both hands, taking careful,
deliberate steps on every slate stepping
stone, as though one misstep onto grass means
bad luck. After locking the door behind me, I
take a sip. The drink is strong and bitter,
cold and soothing. Humanizing. Some drink to
numb the pain. I drink to feel it. I begin to
cry.
On Monday morning, puffy-eyed and stoic, I
walk to my mother’s for our ride to school
and work. She is cranking up the ancient, oil
crunch era Toyota with the nonworking gas
gauge. An egg and scrapple sandwich lies on
the passenger seat, on top of the paper. I
hop in, open the Wilmington
News-Journal, take a bite of food. Mom
puts the car into gear and backs out of the
driveway.
Everything around me remains the
same.
Inner battle
Grappling with
myself. Photo by my husband, taken from the
vast Santa collection of my father and
stepmother.
The things I am supposed to
be doing and don't want to do, the shoulds,
they sometimes control me. They become
obligations body-checked by anger. Or maybe
it’s the should nots, the tamping down of
what rises up naturally: I should not be
feeling angry. I have no right to be upset.
This is not supposed to be a blog about
current angst (except for the mundane, piles
of laundry, sick kid, dog-walking variety).
Most of the anger I carry around is the
nostalgic sort, dealing with that stuff that
happened when I was a kid, the things I can’t
change and must make right in my mind in
order to live a full life. It’s been working,
for the most part. I’m letting go.
Yes, I have complained about my current
relationships with my parents, have brought
up marital discord from the not-so-distant
past, but most of this has been in the
context of grappling with painful memories,
revealing old scars to healing light.
But I haven’t talked about my stepmother.
Part of the reason I don’t talk about my
stepmother is that she is practically a
saint. She is my father’s total champion, and
if anyone needs a champion, it’s him. My
father has treatment-resistant depression, a
condition he has been grappling with from the
time he entered college. It was because of
depression that he stopped working in his
early 40s. The man has been on many different
varieties of medication; he’s been through
research studies; he’s done electroconvulsive
therapy (ECT) and lost a chunk of his memory
in the process. Eventually the drugs lose
effectiveness, the troughs get deeper, he
stops functioning.
There are physical problems, too. Diabetes.
Obesity. Arthritis. Within the last two years
my father has developed debilitating back
pain and can barely get out the door. At the
age of 57, he is practically housebound, a
predicament he and his wife have taken on
with characteristic stoicism. Throughout it
all, my stepmother has been a rock, always
supportive, never complaining, a breadwinner,
maker of meals, and vacuumer of a four
bedroom house.
Why am I angry with this woman? Why am I
carrying around this stupid useless feeling?
Because I am invisible to her. Because when I
was pregnant with my second son, she talked
about it being my first baby (perhaps a
teenage stillbirth doesn't count). Because –
stupidly, since I really should let go of
this one, but couldn't they have waited a
week? – she got married to my father two days
before my fourteenth birthday. Because she
never even so much as e-mails on my birthday.
She has no idea why I might be feeling pain
and apparently doesn’t want to know. Perhaps
she feels she might be implicated in some
way. I don’t know.
My father loves me, but he has not been a
very good father. It's just the truth. Four
years of every other weekend visits does not
a good father make. Financial support for
one's child – which I do appreciate – doesn't
make one a good father either, though
certainly there are many absentee fathers out
there who don't even do that. He laid the
foundation for distrust early. A little
recognition of this past and his part in it
would make a huge difference. After he
read the blog, he acknowledged it in a
general way, though we've never talked about
it. But what about her?
I know she thinks I'm a bad daughter and in
many ways, I am. Phone calls sometimes go
unreturned for days. I'm late with birthday
and father's day greetings or send a lame
e-card. I put off making our travel plans to
see them and have been absent for multiple
surgeries. I avoid discussions of Christmas,
a holiday that is an obsession for them. The
guilt floods over me, paralyzing and cold,
and I feel a surge of preemptive, protective,
useless anger.
What am I supposed to do with this anger?
What do you do when you can’t talk to someone
about your feelings? How do I do the right
thing while honoring how I feel?
So many questions. Does anyone have answers?
(And when this particular angst is out of the
way, I have many awards and other kindnesses
to acknowledge. That's the next
post.)
Bloodhound
Image courtesy
of In Praise of
Sardines
Last year this night bled
into Sunday afternoon. Following a trail of
crushed blackberries, I traced the stains
with my fingers and watched as we went from
mud to cracked glass to bruise. Late night
notes, an errant bike ride, “drama at
Inspiration Point.”
In a year, total turnaround, but, as always,
I focus on dates.
Tonight’s bad mood explained.
Crying the rodent death blues / The beast in me
Take the case of Happy.
Happy (short for Happy Easter) was a golden hamster my grandmother gave to me for Easter 1976. He came complete with a Habitrail, one of those cages with a main unit attached to smaller annexes via clear tubes. It was just like a wild hamster warren except translucent, plastic, and above ground. Watching Happy scurry through the tubes, from wheel to main cage to tiny den was amusing. He impressed me with his ability to get through tiny spaces. I would scoop him out of the cage and cup my hands around him, leaving an opening that got smaller and smaller over time. Happy was always able to make it through.
One winter morning, hamster feed in hand, I opened the Habitrail and discovered it empty. All of that time spent squeezing through my fingers had been training for Happy’s escape. His disappearance was upsetting, but even more devastating was the discovery a few days later of his tiny corpse in the basement. It was stiffened with rigor mortis, hamster toes stuck in a permanent curl. Happy’s last meal had been rat poison.
By the age of seven, I had lived through a few pet deaths, all of the feline variety. Sheba had been hit by a car, Amber was anemic, and Regis bothered his neutering stitches until infection creeped in. Each death brought tears, but with Happy it was different. For many months after the hamster’s untimely death, I rode a wave of grief. On long rides to my grandparents’ or on the walk to school, the loss would hit me.
Dinnertime was the toughest, with all that time to think under the monotony of adult conversation. My mother, her someday husband Jim and I would be sitting at the white picnic table in the kitchen and I would feel a pang. The spinach soufflé would grow cold on my fork as I stared past Mom and out the window into the backyard. Happy was buried back there, his corpse stuffed for one final time into a toilet paper tube. I imagined him in better days, pushing his way through my open-toed shoes, doing endless laps on the wheel, escaping from my fingers. I couldn’t contain my sigh, the big exhale of emotion.
“Do you know what I’m thinking about now?” Long silence, then another sigh, “I’m thinking about Happy.”
These words of grief, repeated many times over that year, were not taken seriously.
By age eleven I was ready to try rodent stewardship again, this time with a gerbil. Perhaps it is a sign of Happy’s hold on my heart that I no longer remember the gerbil’s name. He (or she) was also cut down in the prime of life, a victim of illness. He had been listless all day, sitting in a corner of his cage, not touching his food. The gerbil refused to open his mouth whenever I presented an eyedropper full of restorative honey water. I hovered over the sickbed into evening. As night came, a summer storm rolled in. The sky flashed with lightning and my gerbil took his final breaths in an echo of thunder. After it was over, I reached out and stroked his still-warm body with an index finger. And then – an indication of my future impulses? – I immediately wrote my version of the night’s events: “Death of a Gerbil.”
My mother and Jim teased me for what they interpreted as my overemotional response to almost everything. Jim also thought I was too serious and would describe the child me as being like a 42-year-old woman (as I approach the last year of my 30s, his description makes even less sense). The labels were applied with a grain of contemptuous truth to everything from my asthmatic coughing fits that led to vomiting as well as my often-expressed desire in sixth-grade to kill myself.
Over the years I’ve learned how to regulate my external emotional responses, but I still have a flair for the melodramatic that usually comes out in my writing. For example, I started this post with some ideas about the loop of deep self-doubt that occasionally runs through my mind. The initial paragraph read very differently:
I am afraid to see a psychic, for what she may tell me about what she sees in my soul. Will she feel the energy, the darkness that is eating me from within? One look in my eyes, a quick riffling through my internal dialog, and the extent of the rottenness at my core will be clear. She’ll have to make something up, be polite, get me out of there.
This is grown-up melodrama. Like my grief for Happy, when these feelings hit, they are genuine. I acknowledge that there are times when I feel rotten and hollow. This doesn’t mean I am rotten and hollow – my feelings are not objective reality, but to deny them and their origins would be denying part of myself, part of my internal life.
I fight these moments of darkness. But I am convinced they are part of being human and will never fully go away. We don’t want to acknowledge feelings of deep inadequacy, so most of us go around trying to pep-talk ourselves into feeling better. We don’t want to face the beast within.
The good in us, the light, is powerful. It can lift us above the void. But if you feel pangs of self-doubt, why not acknowledge the reality of the feeling, trace it as far back as you can, and move on? Don’t underestimate your ability to confront the beast.
The darkness within doesn’t define us. We are far more complex than that.
For readers who are now thinking of the Nick Lowe song, here it is, as sung live by Johnny Cash, a man whose life was defined in some part by his attempts to push through the darkness. Next post: blog of the month.
I slip into the night
My first memory of the house is from the summer of 1972. I am three, walking the 20 feet from the cottage to my grandparent’s place, planting my sturdy feet in thick grass and clover. I take off in a run when the ball of my right foot meets something small and sharp. It burns. I begin to cry. Someone – my aunt? my grandmother? – whisks me into the main house, probes tender flesh with pointed tweezers to remove the bee’s stinger. Afterwards, I lie on the family room sofa in cool air conditioning, injured foot propped on a pillow, a thick paste of soothing baking soda drawing out the pain. I watch cartoons, sucking on a straw to get at the last of Coca-Cola over ice.
That was over thirteen years ago. My grandmother has been dead since 1979 and the Little House is now my home. I spend my days waiting for darkness to fall. Bring on the night, I couldn’t stand another hour of daylight.
Inside the main house at 9:30 p.m. sharp, my grandfather takes out his hearing aids and removes his prosthetic foot, trapping himself in bed for another night of muffled sleep. Four houses down the street my mother, blinded by man and money troubles, sleeps in a cocoon of sadness. My father is sixty miles away, a prisoner of debilitating depression; his kindly wife is totally focused on his well-being. Unheard, unseen, and seemingly unimportant, I slip into the night or let the night slip into me.
This is where my power of
description seizes up.
Really, I’m on the road to forgiveness, and I
don’t want to rehash the past in angry
diatribes here.
But – the inevitable but – I am in the midst
of the never-ending stillbirth story,
attempting to write about my time in the
Little House, a companion piece to my
biological grandmother’s experiences and as I
try to get my mind around it I find myself
asking: WHAT IN THE HELL WERE MY PARENTS
THINKING?
When reality broke through, when my pregnancy
became apparent and ended a month later in a
stillbirth, in dramatic labor occurring in
the Little House, when it became clear that I
needed parenting, WHY DID NOTHING CHANGE?
These are not new thoughts, but the
underlying feelings have changed. My anger
before was mainly self-directed, anger at my
family turned inward: what evil in me brought
on their rejection? But now I am reaching a
different conclusion: my mother and father
had so little respect for themselves, for
their power as parents, that they gave up,
figured I was fine on my own, or maybe even
assumed that they would only make things
worse. My mother stopped parenting; my father
never even started. They deserve my
compassion. It's no use getting angry at
those who don't see their own worth.
Now I have to work through the feelings,
unpack the meaning of the Little House, dense
with suppressed emotion, so much a part of
who I am. I’ve left it almost completely out
of most other versions of the stillbirth
story because it feels like an emotional
bomb. As I try to get back into that time of
isolation, loneliness, self-hatred and anger,
my self-protection (or something) kicks in.
It is time to control the explosion through
language, to capture the shards of the
experience on the page.
I'm scared. But if I don't go back, the
experience controls me.
From the inside
Part of what unsettled me was the link back to my own words (which I’ve changed to better reflect my feelings). The “why” of writing to survive was initially a rather bleak description of what life was like for me for the first two years of my son’s existence. This was a difficult time with many struggles to maintain eveness. I lost a lot of myself, my marriage changed, and I’d have to say there was some depression tossed into the mix, too, though I was never treated.
So. I love my son. I am lucky to stay home with him. He makes me laugh. We dance and sing and talk and read together. He has also been an impetus for change, a reminder to slow down and enjoy. With him I am able to remake my own childhood, borrowing the good bits and discarding the bad. I am lucky to be able to do this AND write.
Which brings me to my husband, an amazing man who is my biggest supporter. When I need reassuring about my parenting skills, he is quick to soothe. He loves to read my work. He gets take-out when I am tired of cooking. He understands when I use naptime (when naptime happens) to write instead of clean. We are truly a team. I love you, H.
There are nuances to this angst, and as I’ve been writing here and privately, the angst shifts and dissipates. The words have saved me.
This is writing to survive.
The dammed
And I’ve been trying to figure it out: why?
I am filled with untapped ideas and complex emotions. They are waiting in my mind, rapping at the walls of my skull, tugging at my brain: Give us life! Make us real! They are desperate for description, for a life on the page.
But I don’t have the language. The words aren’t coming. My subconscious is hog-tied.
If I knew the why of it all, then maybe I could fix it. So I try to feel whatever it is that I’m feeling, try not to beat myself up with what I should be doing or how I should be spending my precious moments of free time. What is the emotional component to this word clog? Which key will open the box?
One clue: I’ve been struggling with the never-ending stillbirth story. What felt complete looks like it will need a rethink, mainly based on the suggestions of a couple of shrewd readers. Their comments weren’t critical, but instead showed other paths I could take, the way it could expand even within its strict confines of time and place.
Aha. The key. My subconscious isn’t hog-tied. It’s working.
I was sixteen and living in an unheated two-room summer cottage adjacent to my grandfather's house when I became pregnant. We called the cottage the "Little House," or the "Upper Room," names taken from a children's story and the bible, symbols before the fact, names repeated in an irony-free world. This was where I lost my virginity, where I got pregnant, and where I later gave birth to a preterm baby who never took a breath.
My life in the Little House was free from supervision. It was full of lies and neglect, tears and isolation. The events leading up to and directly after the stillbirth, combined with other emotional scars from childhood, have defined how I feel about myself, have colored my interactions. I know how to keep a safe distance.
As I keep on writing that particular story, it changes. Not the facts, but the feelings. I find other ways of telling, understand how the experience that separated me can also connect. The distance falls away, I uncross my arms, open my heart and mind.
I sometimes, however, ignore the darker emotions of neglect and anger associated with that event, wash them away in a wave of sympathy for my under-equipped parents. I don't know how to feel the feelings, to give them voice, without directing blame. Is it possible to forgive but still be angry? My writing turns into a mincing dance around the unspeakable.
The story is worth the work. But I also want it out of my head, done.
The feelings need time. They will out.
The harvest
Now we’re clutched close, lost in a kiss, tender lip to darting tongue. His calloused carpenter’s hands stroke my hair, wrap me tighter. I think over and over: “This is what is happening right now, this is what is happening right now.”
Then, a fast drive through shuddering cornfields, car windows open, my hair whipping around in a pre-knot frenzy. The stalks are taller than I am, still green, with the threat of decay around the edges.
One morning, the fields will be brown. The next week, empty.
I won’t be seventeen forever.
A talisman against loss
Some children sleep though high fevers, resting up as their bodies fight off the germs. Not our little one. The heat disturbs his sleep. For several nights he woke up in the 2 - 3 a.m. time slot, asking "Is it wake-up time?" Well, no, but we didn't have much say in the matter. Time for a drink of water, maybe for another dose of Motrin, and then we'd settle in for cuddling and long attempts at getting back to sleep. Two hours later, once he was out, I would be able to sleep myself.
The combination of being sick and not getting enough sleep put me in a strange frame of mind. Everything seemed fraught with premature nostalgia. The Duplo block set he got for his birthday, with a castle and the toy knights? A relic of a childhood soon to be over, the toys destined to languish in an attic. The recent photographs of our growing boy? Documentation of a time we won't be be able to remember a year from now. My cuddly 3-year-old will change into a different person, perhaps several times over, and each stage will be as fuzzy in my mind as his first weeks of life. It cut, this realization of the slipperiness of time and memory.
Along with an ache for what has not yet passed, I started to see danger in almost every moment, as though I was preparing myself for an inevitable loss. The bee I saw crawling on our grass -- would it deliver a fatal sting to my son, sink its poison into his chubby bare foot? (Never mind that we have no idea if he is allergic. It is a genetic possiblity). Would this be the dog walk where I would lose my balance and fall backwards, landing on my son, strapped to my back in an Ergo carrier? (Oh, for those days when he insisted on wearing his bike helmet at all times!)
And what about me? Was I paying enough attention to the dangers that I faced? Is the morning coming when, groggy and uncaffeinated, I will accidentally dip my low-hanging robe sleeve into the burner flame, stare in shock as the sleeve is consumed? Would I finally miss that step and go tumbling into a crumpled heap of bone and flesh on the floor below?
Maybe if I tried to keep the dangers in mind, tried to remind myself that what we love can be taken away, that no moment is innocent, I would have a mental talisman against loss.
That was a few days ago. Sleep is improving and my outlook is returning to normal. Neurotic worrying is not what protects us from danger. I am lucky to live in an incredibly safe part of the world, with access to clean water, plentiful food, and good medical care. I don't have to dodge bombs or gunfire. I don't need a talisman.
But I am going to watch my step when I go down the stairs.
So. What would I write if ...
This has been a hard week of slog and attempts to think my way through a muddled, sad brain.
There could be at least one reason I am struggling -- the end of July marks an anniversary of sorts (some might call it an antiversary). This, coupled with an overnight work retreat for my husband next week, a true triggering event, is bringing me down. These dates will lose their meaning over time, but the first go-round stinks.
So. Maybe that's it.
(Ever since my mother sent me this quote from Seamus Heaney on the use of 'So.' as prelude, a call for attention, I've been using it as a sentence all on its own. The quote is below, Famous Seamus on translating Beowulf and using the term 'So.'
There you have it -- a little esoterica to balance out the angst, to confuse the crowd. Oh, for courage and greatness.)
"And when I came to ask myself how I wanted Beowulf to sound in my version, I realized I wanted it to be speakable by one of [my big-voiced Scullion] relatives, [who had a kind of Native American solemnity of utterance, as if they were announcing verdicts rather than making small talk. ] I therefore tried to frame the famous opening lines in cadences that would have suited their voices, but that still echoed with the sound and sense of the Anglo-Saxon:
Hwaet we Gar-Dena in gear-dagum
peod-cyninga prym gefrunon,
Conventional renderings of "hwaet," the first word of the poem, tend towards the archaic literary, with "lo" and "hark" and "behold" and "attend" and—more colloquially—"listen" being some of the solutions offered previously. But in Hiberno-English Scullionspeak, the particle "so" came naturally to the rescue because in that idiom "so" operates as an expression which obliterates all previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention. So, "so" it was:
So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness."
The smog
Maybe it was the week of haze, the sun a bright disk behind clouds of diffuse smoke, the smell of fire hanging in the air. Or I could be homesick, tired of a landscape of bungalows, thirsty for brick and marble.
That's it. I want to go home. Not to DC (though I wouldn't mind just a taste of that city), but back to my grandparents' house in Hollywood Beach, before it was ruined by death, back to some sweet summer when my grandmother was alive.
We'd drink sugary Coca-Cola over ice, hang out in her freezing bedroom. She had a perpetual supply of Cheez-Its (it was a land of hyphenated foods, tasty concoctions of flavored chemicals with catchy, meaningless names), and I'd jam handfuls into my mouth while we watched The Price is RIght. Sometimes I would listen to the sound of her sewing machine humming along as she worked on another outfit or colorful muumuu.
After lunch, I would walk down to the river, step in the soft tar by the side of the road, sink into its soothing warmth. Somebody's grandparent was always sitting on one of the benches overlooking the beach, smoking a cigarette, keeping an eye on the young swimmers. With a running leap, I'd arc into the water, trying to avoid the muddy river bottom, several inches of sludge and leaves. I was heading for the raft or for water deep enough for an underwater handstand, ready to emerge with handfuls of muck and dirty fingernails. When a container ship came through the channel on its way to or from the C & D Canal, swimmers fought the pull of its engines and treaded water until the ship passed.
I'd swim until the skin on my fingers and toes wrinkled in protest, until I was covered in a thin film of mud, sometimes until I was shivering. Then it was time for the walk up the road, a towel wrapped around my waist, looking forward to farm-fresh corn on the cob and summer tomatoes.
Nostalgic memories are free of pain. They do come with an ache, however, a longing for simplicity. I'm sure it wasn't so simple, but my grandmother's house was a safe place, a place where I could be a kid. As I've been working on the stillbirth story again, I've been thinking of the dramatic event as the final nail in the coffin of childhood. That it happened in the one place where I had truly been able to be a child, where I was safe for a short time, seems especially sad to me. The happy memories will always be tinged with loss.
So maybe this funk has been a little burst of mourning, more grief experienced years after the fact. Let's hope that getting it out will allow me to let it go. I'm tired of the mental smog. I want to enjoy the sun, revel in the blue sky freed after a week behind smoke.
Depression's child
Stepfather shuffle
If you've read the West Street Sequence (so
far) of A Prolonged Illness
(note: no longer on the
web site), you will know about Tim,
my mother's ex-husband. Jim, the Philadelphia
Flyers lover. Tim, the man who wouldn't talk
when I was at the dinner table, unless it was
to harangue me. Tim, the Big Mean
Step-Father.
After Mom kicked him out and life became
simultaneously freer and crazier, Jim did
some soul-searching. Went to therapy. Joined
a church. Eventually remarried. And would
take me out to dinner about once a year. The
last time I saw him also was the most
bizarre. Tim, his wife, and his sister (Joy),
came to DC to have dinner with me before I
left for graduate school. I hadn't seem Joy
in almost ten years. She just couldn't stop
with the remarks: "You talk just like Chris
[my mother]! You have mannerisms just like
Chris! You move your hands just like Chris!
That's exactly what Chris would do!" Since
she hated Chris for hurting "Timmy," these
comments were not meant kindly. I eventually
burst into tears. Joy gave a petulant
apology. I swear she even stuck out her lower
lip.
These dinners were never comfortable for me.
What was his agenda? Did he feel guilty? Did
he want to make it right? Who knows, maybe he
was fond of me. Hewas in our lives for 7-8
years, for a large chunk of my childhood.
We lost touch after he and family moved to
Idaho, about a decade ago. I tracked him down
late last year (yeah, I know, I know) and
he's been sending cards and presents for C
for holidays ever since. So here I am in the
middle of a Tim flashback, hating the man for
being a prick, when we get this Easter
package from him with toys for C.
I'm feeling a bizarre mix of feelings right
now, mainly anger and guilt, the usual
partners in crime, though there has to be
some sadness, too. Do I have to forgive
everyone, see the human in every single
fucked up bastard I've come
across?
Nubbin brain
I'm 38 years old and I haven't written a creative word since I was an undergraduate. I don't expect it to come easily. The Mom and K project has an emotional heft that makes it difficult, too. And I seem to suffer from a twisted nostalgia, a real desire to inhabit the past, at least so I can write about it about it with some veracity. I'm trying to let go of my obsession with uber-accuracy, which helps when my literal mind gets caught up in the details.
Mark Doty has a good essay about memoir and truth in the latest Poets and Writers -- but now that I have H and C beside me reading a book, the nubbin brain is shrinking even more and I have a hard time bringing it to mind. Check it out if you can, though you'll probably have to get your hands on a physical copy.
Existential angst, Part 2
I had some doubts about whether I should post this -- nothing about writing here, nothing positive and chirrupy either.
Well, this is me. I can't make up what I am not. When I'm feeling better, it will be about writing. When life feels like a cruel joke to be endured until my extinction via death, that's what I'll write about. At least I'm still writing.
So, today: The dream hangover -- usually a nap thing, or middle of the night phenomenon for me. I don't always remember the dream, but I wake up with a sense of dread, or a feeling of failure that cannot be recovered from, or with the gnawing ache of permanent loss. Today I had a napless nap attempt in an empty house ideal for sweet sleep. I emerged from bed still tired, thoughts tangled and knotted.
I felt old and sad and crazy for thinking I could transcend anything with writing or thinking or interacting with others.
Life is a blind march towards death. When I emerged from bed, I knew my life was irrationally -- crazily -- lucky, and undeserved. I was sure my feeling of dread was because H and C must have been in a fatal car accident while I was not sleeping. The cheese stands alone.
They came home untouched, alive.
No K & Mom story writing today. Definitely tomorrow, though. I'm not that bad off.