This morning, it was one of those utterly implausible, plausible, detailed dreams. I was shot in a mass shooting - four times. My right flank, side (right in the imaginary tattoo - though I do have one on my left), shoulder, and right below my eye. As happens in dreams, I was initially terrified of death, but my dream kept going. Something about getting to my house (the one I grew up in, but now mortgagetually "mine"; that address seems to have appeared more, through the past year, hmm), getting to my mom, protecting someone else, and failing, failing, failing, failing to get ME to a hospital. At some point I was driving myself, again through the old neighborhood, not apparently to get care.
In the dream, the medical upshot of my injuries was unclear apart from bruises rising up from each bloodless bullet hole. One wound, indeed, couldn't be seen for the bruising and the tattoo. Even in the dream, I dismissed the caliber as a small one, since I could keep moving. For what seemed like hours.
The thing is, the real impact of the dream was that first moment: that fear of death. The shock.
The stunning truth of it.
I'm not special. ANY of us is subject to dying this way, in the United States. Land that I love. Sigh.
2019 has not been the worst year, for me, in recent memory. Yes, we still endure under the increasingly authoritarian and demented regime of the puppet Drumpf. Yes, there is much still to do. But even with that, much is happening, too. HR8 passed last week, and in a time of inured sensibilities, Cohen's testimony was scathing. (His redemption narrative, I could personally live without, but perhaps the benedictions he has received are not positivities best dismissed.)
And but personally, so far this calendar year is kicking 2018's ass.
The time I have taken off (quite a bit, so early in the year) has been for VACATION, not illness and death and mourning. So far.
I have spent time with far-flung friends, and family-by-adoption, people I love, and a new puppy I don't have to train. Mom's doing better, and my house has not fallen down around my ears. Yet.
Three four-day weekends in, I have celebrated a birthday, a bar mitzvah, and a long-distance visit.
2019 ... well, to quote something I said about 2009: it's been better than it had a right to be.
Breathing is good.
Now if I can just avoid being shot.
Showing posts with label personal posts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal posts. Show all posts
Monday, March 4, 2019
Monday, February 11, 2019
Virginia
Ralph Northam didn't get my vote in the primaries, because I found his past appreciation for Dominion Virginia Power's finances problematic, but I voted for him for Governor. In January of 2017, when he appeared and marched with us at the Women's March, I was impressed, and more on board with him than before. He is a former Republican, and the voices deriding him as a present Republican, given that party's increasing lockstep behind the racist-in-chief, are perhaps hard to hear, but not 100% off base.
He has to go. Why he refuses to is bewildering in a painful way.
I don't want to bog down in a long post about all this, because frankly, the personal impact of Virginia politics right now is a fresh bruise. It's painful to live here these days.
When, in 2008, Virginia went presidentially blue for the first time, I didn't quite believe it. When we went Obama for the second time, I began to feel used to it. To tentatively own that I finally didn't live in a backward, reactionary state. And then we did it again, in 2016. There was still Dave Brat to contend with (I signed the petition to get Abigail Spanberger on the ballot at that march mentioned above), but I finally felt like Virginia was breaking away from the all too recent past of White Flight and reactionary thinking I had grown up surrounded by.
In 1982, when I entered high school, it was the Reagan years. Helped by a punk rocker in the house, who was having none of it, and the fact that I was the child of a scientist and the taunts on the schoolyard, "YOUR DADDY CAN'T BELIEVE IN GOD, HE'S A SCIENTIST!" I came to a different sort of politics than have been common here for most of my life. (My daddy, as he told me all his life to take away the sting those kids gave me, was a scientist precisely because he had such awe in the workings of a universe he believed to have been brought to us BY that God those kids underestimated so cruelly. Not an Intelligent Design guy by any means, dad's enthrallment in workings of all sorts was a major part of his faith in anything; and he did have religious faith.)
So I was extremely aware, in 1982 at the age of 14, and have been ever since, of the fact that my preppie high school was the product of White Flight, and the entitlement I saw all around me was not earned. I didn't know the phrase white privilege, but it was instantly recognizable once it appeared.
So I was extremely aware, in 1982 at the age of 14, and have been ever since, of the fact that my preppie high school was the product of White Flight, and the entitlement I saw all around me was not earned. I didn't know the phrase white privilege, but it was instantly recognizable once it appeared.
(W)e lay claim to a wisdom that people just a few years ago lacked, and accuse the recent past of deep ignorance.
I've been loath to actually look at old yearbooks this past week or so. Sure, the only thing that HAS brought me to look at them in about thirty years was the death of my best friend of 38 years, but even then my glances were pretty cursory. But now, the *apathy* of memory, thanks to a life of much greater richness after my K-12 years, has become an *agony*. From having no interest in looking back at the snobs I went to school with, I now have real fear of looking back at the well to do white kids I went to school with. Heck, the school itself.
I went to school with kids who absolutely would have donned blackface, as quickly as the Key Club (so enthusiastically) donned cheerleader outfits at every opportunity. Crappiest drag show ever. There were guys who drank, plenty who probably went on to become frat guys who sexually assaulted drunk girls, entitled asses who think they're nice guys and entitled asses who care not one bit about being good, decent, or anything else tolerable to the human race at large. They weren't my crowd (obviously), they weren't the whole of the student body, but they were crowd enough and then some.
Think I hated my school because it was so preppy? I hated my school because it embarrassed me. It embarrassed me then, and no less so now. They went with naming the place for a Massive Resistance spearhead instead of Edgar Allen Poe; this exposes the taste level - and "judgment" - of decision-makers in our community at that time.
So there doesn't even need to be blackface in my yearbook. The very name of the school said aplenty, and without a doubt some of us knew and despised what that name said. He himself was deplorable then, and I deplored him most especially on the occasion my best friend (a model student often trotted out to meet important people) was obliged to shake his hand, and I was introduced too, looking every bit as unimpressed as I was unimpressive to principal and politician alike, I'm sure.
The link above ...
The link above. I offer it without much comment, and not even necessarily endorsement, though it would be soothing for someone like me right now. There *is* a spectrum of ugliness, but for me as a privileged, relatively well-to-do white woman Of a Certain Age ... growing up where I did ... it is beyond my scope to say "this is right."
Oh, how I wish it could be knowably right, though. That would ease my liberal guilt.
Based on what I clipped for the quote highlighted, the real resonance for me is this: the sentiment accords powerfully with my general rantings about The Dirty, Stupid Past. By this, I'd love to absolve myself of all my own privileged complicity. There are stories I have debated recounting in public for years now - and, when I think about how I have aired out the most sensitive things on this blog, it's extremely plain that some of what I have held back owes to the same privilege Northam and Herring have had. So I should open that up, unpack that.
But that first link ... I'll lean OUT for a moment, lean back, not go all in. Not make anything about myself which absolutely is not. Not come up with any judgments.
I'm as fraught as the history of my state, these days. And ashamed as I was during the Reagan years, going to Beautiful Suburban White Flight High. So very ashamed, and frustrated.
Edited to add ...
Then I remembered our production of West Side Story, which I do think was in 1984. Teen after teen in brownface. Ugh.
THE CLICK BEYOND - good coverage of multiple aspects of this morass, for your analysis.
I went to school with kids who absolutely would have donned blackface, as quickly as the Key Club (so enthusiastically) donned cheerleader outfits at every opportunity. Crappiest drag show ever. There were guys who drank, plenty who probably went on to become frat guys who sexually assaulted drunk girls, entitled asses who think they're nice guys and entitled asses who care not one bit about being good, decent, or anything else tolerable to the human race at large. They weren't my crowd (obviously), they weren't the whole of the student body, but they were crowd enough and then some.
Think I hated my school because it was so preppy? I hated my school because it embarrassed me. It embarrassed me then, and no less so now. They went with naming the place for a Massive Resistance spearhead instead of Edgar Allen Poe; this exposes the taste level - and "judgment" - of decision-makers in our community at that time.
So there doesn't even need to be blackface in my yearbook. The very name of the school said aplenty, and without a doubt some of us knew and despised what that name said. He himself was deplorable then, and I deplored him most especially on the occasion my best friend (a model student often trotted out to meet important people) was obliged to shake his hand, and I was introduced too, looking every bit as unimpressed as I was unimpressive to principal and politician alike, I'm sure.
The link above ...
The link above. I offer it without much comment, and not even necessarily endorsement, though it would be soothing for someone like me right now. There *is* a spectrum of ugliness, but for me as a privileged, relatively well-to-do white woman Of a Certain Age ... growing up where I did ... it is beyond my scope to say "this is right."
Oh, how I wish it could be knowably right, though. That would ease my liberal guilt.
Based on what I clipped for the quote highlighted, the real resonance for me is this: the sentiment accords powerfully with my general rantings about The Dirty, Stupid Past. By this, I'd love to absolve myself of all my own privileged complicity. There are stories I have debated recounting in public for years now - and, when I think about how I have aired out the most sensitive things on this blog, it's extremely plain that some of what I have held back owes to the same privilege Northam and Herring have had. So I should open that up, unpack that.
But that first link ... I'll lean OUT for a moment, lean back, not go all in. Not make anything about myself which absolutely is not. Not come up with any judgments.
I'm as fraught as the history of my state, these days. And ashamed as I was during the Reagan years, going to Beautiful Suburban White Flight High. So very ashamed, and frustrated.
Edited to add ...
Then I remembered our production of West Side Story, which I do think was in 1984. Teen after teen in brownface. Ugh.
THE CLICK BEYOND - good coverage of multiple aspects of this morass, for your analysis.
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Half Life
June 26, 1993.
If I can't believe it's been just over three months since my stepfather died, or fifteen years since I saw my dad's face ... believing that (a) twenty-five years have passed since this day, and (b) twenty-five years is half my life is WELL beyond my wee and paltry brain's capacity.
Huh.
 |
| ... and this would be Beloved Ex. Posted with permission. |
If I can't believe it's been just over three months since my stepfather died, or fifteen years since I saw my dad's face ... believing that (a) twenty-five years have passed since this day, and (b) twenty-five years is half my life is WELL beyond my wee and paltry brain's capacity.
Huh.
Monday, June 4, 2018
How we KNOW
Through the past several months of #MeToo and all of the stories we all have endured, one of the less-spoken throughlines comes down to something like "how do we know not all men are like this?"
Granted, we certainly have the #NotAllMen hashtag to 'splain about these things. Ahem. And lots of us will note the guys in our lives we're sure are above it. Men themselves discuss how abhorrent certain behaviors are.
It is not a fact that the only good men are the men who live in the imaginations of others, idealized out of reality. I don't know there are Good Men just because I think my dad and my brother are good men. I know there are good men because there are men who have unequivocally demonstrated goodness in (cis and otherwise) manhood. And, yeah, it's not all binary either. But let's look at the binary that binds so many, ant look at it.
There are real STORIES, real moments in time, which prove the lie that All Men (whatever that can possibly be thought to mean) are creeps.
And, you know? I think these stories really need to be told. The unambiguously clear stories about non-predatory behavior.
***
Names, obviously, are altered to protect folks I have not seen in years, but let's start off with a couple Tales from College - and I went to a college where tales of the #MeToo sort abounded, to be certain. Hell, the earful my parents got the night before my graduation is enough to speak to the sexual entitlement of drunken frat boys.
But.
Then there was my "brother".
He and I became friends early out of the gate, freshman year (1986/87). It is not unlikely he had a bit of a crush on me, at least at some point, but he never acted upon it. Literally never - and we spent a lot of time together, at all hours and at that age when Not Acting On Things was more an anomaly than an expectation.
Then there was M.
I worked in the scene shop, and he was an associate in the drama department, I think 25 years old or so and himself scarcely past the college years (and so forth). He was wonderfully moody and intellectual, scathingly funny, and pretty well fixed up with all the things I still dig in a guy: dark, curly hair, sardonic wit, and a level of subcultural nerdliness/marginality.
I spent a lot of hours alone in the shop with M, and (as faulty memory implies) probably not without hopes that something drastically inappropriate might occur with him. Memory of any specific ideas I had about him are not clear, but I do have recollection of one particular day, when Beloved Ex and I were on the outs (I met BEx sophomore year, but worked in the scene shop for several; so by this point, I would have known M for a good year and a half - taking a class with him, working with him, making sure of course to display my intellectual cred at every opportunity). We talked a long time, and he let me go on a bit about whatever bothered me - maybe "boys" as a general caste, maybe just BEx specifically. I am fairly certain I made my vulnerability and availability for "reassurance" pretty plain.
And M didn't do a damn thing about it.
Now. Let it not be said I think I was some irresistible thing, so to resist me must be a feather in any man's cap. But I was fairly cute, making myself clear, and oh about twenty to, by then, his maybe 26 or 27. It wasn't exactly out of the question.
But M not only cared about the preservation of his job: essentially, he just was not that guy. He wasn't the guy who would mess with a student, even one he knew well, even one who wasn't "out of the question" - in circumstances other than the situation we actually did share.
Plus, I believe he had a girlfriend.
So, not only is it a dead-cert FACT that some men don't infringe upon women who might even be up for some level of infringement, but some men don't mess around on their girlfriends to do it. This is unquestionable.
There are men who do not use power - authoritarian, financial, or physical - to extort or demean a woman. There are men for whom that could never be sex (etc.) at all.
Granted, we certainly have the #NotAllMen hashtag to 'splain about these things. Ahem. And lots of us will note the guys in our lives we're sure are above it. Men themselves discuss how abhorrent certain behaviors are.
It is not a fact that the only good men are the men who live in the imaginations of others, idealized out of reality. I don't know there are Good Men just because I think my dad and my brother are good men. I know there are good men because there are men who have unequivocally demonstrated goodness in (cis and otherwise) manhood. And, yeah, it's not all binary either. But let's look at the binary that binds so many, ant look at it.
There are real STORIES, real moments in time, which prove the lie that All Men (whatever that can possibly be thought to mean) are creeps.
And, you know? I think these stories really need to be told. The unambiguously clear stories about non-predatory behavior.
***
Names, obviously, are altered to protect folks I have not seen in years, but let's start off with a couple Tales from College - and I went to a college where tales of the #MeToo sort abounded, to be certain. Hell, the earful my parents got the night before my graduation is enough to speak to the sexual entitlement of drunken frat boys.
But.
Then there was my "brother".
He and I became friends early out of the gate, freshman year (1986/87). It is not unlikely he had a bit of a crush on me, at least at some point, but he never acted upon it. Literally never - and we spent a lot of time together, at all hours and at that age when Not Acting On Things was more an anomaly than an expectation.
Then there was M.
I worked in the scene shop, and he was an associate in the drama department, I think 25 years old or so and himself scarcely past the college years (and so forth). He was wonderfully moody and intellectual, scathingly funny, and pretty well fixed up with all the things I still dig in a guy: dark, curly hair, sardonic wit, and a level of subcultural nerdliness/marginality.
I spent a lot of hours alone in the shop with M, and (as faulty memory implies) probably not without hopes that something drastically inappropriate might occur with him. Memory of any specific ideas I had about him are not clear, but I do have recollection of one particular day, when Beloved Ex and I were on the outs (I met BEx sophomore year, but worked in the scene shop for several; so by this point, I would have known M for a good year and a half - taking a class with him, working with him, making sure of course to display my intellectual cred at every opportunity). We talked a long time, and he let me go on a bit about whatever bothered me - maybe "boys" as a general caste, maybe just BEx specifically. I am fairly certain I made my vulnerability and availability for "reassurance" pretty plain.
And M didn't do a damn thing about it.
Now. Let it not be said I think I was some irresistible thing, so to resist me must be a feather in any man's cap. But I was fairly cute, making myself clear, and oh about twenty to, by then, his maybe 26 or 27. It wasn't exactly out of the question.
But M not only cared about the preservation of his job: essentially, he just was not that guy. He wasn't the guy who would mess with a student, even one he knew well, even one who wasn't "out of the question" - in circumstances other than the situation we actually did share.
Plus, I believe he had a girlfriend.
So, not only is it a dead-cert FACT that some men don't infringe upon women who might even be up for some level of infringement, but some men don't mess around on their girlfriends to do it. This is unquestionable.
There are men who do not use power - authoritarian, financial, or physical - to extort or demean a woman. There are men for whom that could never be sex (etc.) at all.
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
Almost my birthday, and all I want is death
This post is a barely-edited version of an email I sent this morning. It's funny how trains of thought actually seem to create their own tracks and destinations.
Forwarded message to a best friend TEO...
"When bitching about a sweater gets REALLY dup and profiend.
Sometimes, being a writer is weird."
-----Original Message-----
Original email to Mr. X
Sent: Tue, Feb 6, 2018 8:06 am
Subject: Yep nope
The quest for the right wardrobe never seems to end. I bought a sweater maybe three months ago - it was definitely "recent" - but am deciding today, it has got to go. Which is especially irritating, as it's a GAP and I usually have good luck with GAP. (One red/black damask print v-neck has lasted me like six years now, it's woooooonnnderful.) But this simple blue rib knit: I'm not into that whole Marie Kondo thing, but this sweater is NOT GIVING ME JOY.
Which, ugh. This sweater made me use THAT phrase. This sweater sucks.
The thing is - it's really comfortable, it's the length I like, and the color is great on me. It is also pill--tastick (yes, with a K - like your name, it needs the consonantal emphasis), the "inseam" tag sticks out (and no, I don't cut out care tags because lord knows I'll louse up the laundry at some point), and the front hangs really weird at the bottom. Gah.
So, though I've worn this probably not even half a dozen times: I need to get rid of this thing.
Life is too short to wear unflattering (and prematurely RATTY) sweaters.
It's just a shame I happen to be wearing the thing NOW. On my fake-Friday, and family day. And with good jewelry, too! Blah.
Tonight is steak night at mom and Stepdad's. The filets from Christmas, which we didn't eat because everyone came down with the flu.
This'll be the way to spend some family celebration time with Step, but leave Wednesday free for me and mom. He's been in bed a couple days, and says he might not eat with us (he'll almost certainly eat with us, but how he'll be feeling today overall is up in the air). Sigh. Poor S. He just can't seem to die.
Bro and I were talking about him this weekend. He said it was something of a shame we came to love him after he lost his mind - I think there's a feeling akin to guilt, for Bro - but I feel like it's a blessing. We LOVE him. Neither of us felt like that was a possibility twelve years ago, and okay, it took dementia to loosen S up and give him this sense of humor we treasure. But he's loosened up. He is funny. We love him. That is enough of a blessing, and dementia is enough a part of life, I feel like it's worth just being grateful for the love and the blessing.
This is the power of a sense of humor, really. Laughter is so elementally *human*, I think, that the bonds it creates can't be trivialized. I mean: look at the way I talk about your face, broken up with laughter. It's in no way a small thing, the way that is beautiful to me.
It's in no way a small gift: S's immense grace in his sense of humor.
They always say there's no comedy without pain. I'd have to agree; that's fair. S's wit has come at such a price. Life itself, arguably. But his funny-ness has made all our lives just that much more wonderful. And just saying that squeezes my heart, and all but breaks it.
And as much as I am grateful for the incandescence of S's impishness and his smile, G-d I wish it could be taken from us all. I wish he could die. Because as long as we have his brilliance with us, HE has to endure such hideous, unbreakable pain. It is so unjust - and I know life is not fair. But nobody should ever suffer this. I would not even wish this on a Trump.
And even with all that, to feel *guilty* about loving his humor would be to waste it, and to negate the blessing it is. I just have to pray it is some amount of blessing for S. It looks like it is. It looks like, even if only a moment at a time, it takes him out of the pain. Even as selfish as it is: he takes *us* out of it. He invites us out of the reality he can't escape himself.
I've never seen grace quite like that. S is something so special.
Forwarded message to a best friend TEO...
"When bitching about a sweater gets REALLY dup and profiend.
Sometimes, being a writer is weird."
-----Original Message-----
Original email to Mr. X
Sent: Tue, Feb 6, 2018 8:06 am
Subject: Yep nope
The quest for the right wardrobe never seems to end. I bought a sweater maybe three months ago - it was definitely "recent" - but am deciding today, it has got to go. Which is especially irritating, as it's a GAP and I usually have good luck with GAP. (One red/black damask print v-neck has lasted me like six years now, it's woooooonnnderful.) But this simple blue rib knit: I'm not into that whole Marie Kondo thing, but this sweater is NOT GIVING ME JOY.
Which, ugh. This sweater made me use THAT phrase. This sweater sucks.
The thing is - it's really comfortable, it's the length I like, and the color is great on me. It is also pill--tastick (yes, with a K - like your name, it needs the consonantal emphasis), the "inseam" tag sticks out (and no, I don't cut out care tags because lord knows I'll louse up the laundry at some point), and the front hangs really weird at the bottom. Gah.
So, though I've worn this probably not even half a dozen times: I need to get rid of this thing.
Life is too short to wear unflattering (and prematurely RATTY) sweaters.
It's just a shame I happen to be wearing the thing NOW. On my fake-Friday, and family day. And with good jewelry, too! Blah.
Tonight is steak night at mom and Stepdad's. The filets from Christmas, which we didn't eat because everyone came down with the flu.
This'll be the way to spend some family celebration time with Step, but leave Wednesday free for me and mom. He's been in bed a couple days, and says he might not eat with us (he'll almost certainly eat with us, but how he'll be feeling today overall is up in the air). Sigh. Poor S. He just can't seem to die.
Bro and I were talking about him this weekend. He said it was something of a shame we came to love him after he lost his mind - I think there's a feeling akin to guilt, for Bro - but I feel like it's a blessing. We LOVE him. Neither of us felt like that was a possibility twelve years ago, and okay, it took dementia to loosen S up and give him this sense of humor we treasure. But he's loosened up. He is funny. We love him. That is enough of a blessing, and dementia is enough a part of life, I feel like it's worth just being grateful for the love and the blessing.
This is the power of a sense of humor, really. Laughter is so elementally *human*, I think, that the bonds it creates can't be trivialized. I mean: look at the way I talk about your face, broken up with laughter. It's in no way a small thing, the way that is beautiful to me.
It's in no way a small gift: S's immense grace in his sense of humor.
They always say there's no comedy without pain. I'd have to agree; that's fair. S's wit has come at such a price. Life itself, arguably. But his funny-ness has made all our lives just that much more wonderful. And just saying that squeezes my heart, and all but breaks it.
And as much as I am grateful for the incandescence of S's impishness and his smile, G-d I wish it could be taken from us all. I wish he could die. Because as long as we have his brilliance with us, HE has to endure such hideous, unbreakable pain. It is so unjust - and I know life is not fair. But nobody should ever suffer this. I would not even wish this on a Trump.
And even with all that, to feel *guilty* about loving his humor would be to waste it, and to negate the blessing it is. I just have to pray it is some amount of blessing for S. It looks like it is. It looks like, even if only a moment at a time, it takes him out of the pain. Even as selfish as it is: he takes *us* out of it. He invites us out of the reality he can't escape himself.
I've never seen grace quite like that. S is something so special.
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
It was a day ...
... and it is an evening.
One of those days it's hard to keep yourself together. One of those days you feel like this, or this - or wish you did, because actually you are so much more fragile. One of those days you break, because of music. One of those days you are angry - and impotent. Cruelly, inhumanly, inhumanely - impotent. To help, to love, to DO.
It was a productive day. The sort of day you clear out the "pending work" folder and fill the recycling bin. You lob a few balls into other peoples courts, and check off a few things, completed, too. And even still, the sort of day you still have time to realize ... terrible, terrible things. Things you have always known, even articulated before, in different ways. But which still have the power to devastate.
Sometimes, it is a good thing to know that, when I say I am possessed of a wee and paltry brain, really it is a joke.
Sometimes, it is a burden. To understand too well. And still be powerless. And still be the little girl, who is desperate and too tender and devastatingly weak.
Sometimes, it is a good thing, having a daily routine, having discipline - it keeps us together, most of the time.
Sometimes, it is a burden - the routine, the discipline. Keeping it together. And being devastatingly weak.
It is time to feel this. Instead of maintaining, to succumb.
It is evening.
It is night. Oh, Lord.
One of those days it's hard to keep yourself together. One of those days you feel like this, or this - or wish you did, because actually you are so much more fragile. One of those days you break, because of music. One of those days you are angry - and impotent. Cruelly, inhumanly, inhumanely - impotent. To help, to love, to DO.
It was a productive day. The sort of day you clear out the "pending work" folder and fill the recycling bin. You lob a few balls into other peoples courts, and check off a few things, completed, too. And even still, the sort of day you still have time to realize ... terrible, terrible things. Things you have always known, even articulated before, in different ways. But which still have the power to devastate.
Sometimes, it is a good thing to know that, when I say I am possessed of a wee and paltry brain, really it is a joke.
Sometimes, it is a burden. To understand too well. And still be powerless. And still be the little girl, who is desperate and too tender and devastatingly weak.
Sometimes, it is a good thing, having a daily routine, having discipline - it keeps us together, most of the time.
Sometimes, it is a burden - the routine, the discipline. Keeping it together. And being devastatingly weak.
It is time to feel this. Instead of maintaining, to succumb.
It is evening.
It is night. Oh, Lord.
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
People Thought
This is what it was like in the early 80s. I was accepted to the very first class of the Governor’s School for the Arts, in the Theater program. We worked in a scene shop, with a dance master, and on an overarching production which had each of us developing a character through the weeks of the program. Graduation was our final production.
An ensemble piece being a necessity, and kids being what we were at that time, the semi-improvisational work had us as a gang. (You never saw a bunch so scary since Riff and Rita Moreno, man.) I remember a field trip we took wandering a few streets and then (why, natch) one of the oldest park cemeteries in America – in character, as our gang. I strongly associate the Peter Gunn theme with this day’s outing; presumably *someone* had a boom box and played it for us, to keep us in our personae as a bunch of street (I titter even to write it) toughs. Here we have Point the First. (Wait for it.)
Hashtag #AWW.
Thirty-plus years on, I am fascinated by the fact that I ended up as something like the romantic lead in this enterprise. I still remember my leading man, on whom I crushed very obediently both to the script and to my nature, and with whom nothing ever happened. I remember the climactic moment of the play – a gaggle of the girls, holding me back physically as I leapt toward him (why yes, he did call his character Riff, why do you ask? (mine was Josie)). I can recall the feel of arms around my belly as I fought to get toward my doomed leading boy at the moment the dooming crested and Got Real.
There were pics of us in the newspaper; I still have them somewhere. A whole piece on the Governor’s school; taking a look at the little white theater dorks playing at Scary Hoodlum Time – our process, our walk in the park too, I suppose.
One of the classes, as mentioned, was set painting. Each of us had a flat of our own, and we were to do brick walls. These were, you guessed it, used as the set for the eventual play. Mean streets of no-such-place-ever-existed.
This is pretty much the pinnacle and entire extent of my acting career. (About my earlier stint as Elvira DeSanto in The Brick and the Rose, *we do not speak*, though that went to State in the high school one-act competitions. Oh, please, Tommy. Get help. A play about hard life and drugs. Point the Second.)
And yet, I majored in Theater. Well, at my Podunk college, Theatre and Dance (sigh). Yes, I know, to all who have ever known me, virtually or in life, this has never yet surprised a soul.
It surprises pretty few that my college years are what drove me out of theater-of-any-spelling permanently. I joke sometimes majoring in theater was what made a writer of me, but truth be told that was JRW, and took quite some years.
So, Governor’s School.
Never mind that the play we were working on was a matter of well-off kids’ wish fulfillment: I was still at an age it meant a lot to me not to be privileged, though of course we hadn’t institutionalized that word for it quite yet.
One of our assignments in the scene shop was to do a flat of clouds. In 1986, to find a photo of clouds to grid and reproduce on a flat was not a mere matter of a Google search; I remember going home and tearing apart my parents’ Time magazines. We didn’t really have a lot of periodicals in the house, and using a newspaper was of course worse than pointless (though NOW, of course, I can think “that would have been edgy” – but then: the trick was to find a particular type of photograph). Pictures of, I don’t know, Reagan and Reeboks and whatever other 80s things we were immured with in what once passed for popular media. Okay, it was JOURNALISM, an thing no longer extant, but a bitch of a place to find usable color glossies of clouds.
I ended up with the plume off a factory smokestack. Of course.
The thing that’s funny about this is that people thought I was Being Edgy and Weird – making a STATEMENT – being cynical, political, in-your-face, angry about something maybe. Some perhaps delighted in the subversiveness of pollution-as-cloud.
But, really, I couldn’t find anything else! Southern Living is too deadly-closed-up focused on flowers, cakes, and oppressive décor to threaten any chance of finding a cloud anywhere. I already covered the problem with newsprint. And we didn’t have any other subscriptions.
Well, Science, but I was not ABOUT to be cutting up my dad’s Science issues – no, or National Geographic, either. Of course we had shelves loaded with those. We were Americans of A Certain Era. Duh.
So Time was really all I had. We were not an entertainment mag family, and infotainment really was in its barest infancy in those days anyway.
Smokestack. I was MAD it was my only option, and probably still cranky even though people thought I was being meta, before meta was a thing. Heck before “a thing” was even a thing.
So … people thought this thing about me.
I’ve gotten used to it, over the years. Being presumed to be saying something I am not. Being presumed to be angry, an ogre, in-your-face, pungently personalitized, a bloody monster, you name it.
I have a pretty indelible personal presence, even online I am often mistaken for a raging maniac, or at least a bull in a china shop. I see y’all clutching your pearls when I happen by, don’t you think I don’t know.
The funny thing is, living inside my own head, even my wayward heart – it’s a pretty quiet place, really.
Not only am I not exciting, I am not an especially passionate person. It takes rather a lot to engage me, to enflame me.
But people see what they see. Think what they think. I modulate where it’s necessary, know how I come across. With age, I sense less “MONSTER!” than “blowsy lunatic lady”, but the effect still has always felt, to me, out of proportion to the catalyst.
It’s always been fun getting credit for creativity I didn’t have. And inspires me to try and have some that is real. Is my own.
An ensemble piece being a necessity, and kids being what we were at that time, the semi-improvisational work had us as a gang. (You never saw a bunch so scary since Riff and Rita Moreno, man.) I remember a field trip we took wandering a few streets and then (why, natch) one of the oldest park cemeteries in America – in character, as our gang. I strongly associate the Peter Gunn theme with this day’s outing; presumably *someone* had a boom box and played it for us, to keep us in our personae as a bunch of street (I titter even to write it) toughs. Here we have Point the First. (Wait for it.)
Hashtag #AWW.
Thirty-plus years on, I am fascinated by the fact that I ended up as something like the romantic lead in this enterprise. I still remember my leading man, on whom I crushed very obediently both to the script and to my nature, and with whom nothing ever happened. I remember the climactic moment of the play – a gaggle of the girls, holding me back physically as I leapt toward him (why yes, he did call his character Riff, why do you ask? (mine was Josie)). I can recall the feel of arms around my belly as I fought to get toward my doomed leading boy at the moment the dooming crested and Got Real.
There were pics of us in the newspaper; I still have them somewhere. A whole piece on the Governor’s school; taking a look at the little white theater dorks playing at Scary Hoodlum Time – our process, our walk in the park too, I suppose.
One of the classes, as mentioned, was set painting. Each of us had a flat of our own, and we were to do brick walls. These were, you guessed it, used as the set for the eventual play. Mean streets of no-such-place-ever-existed.
This is pretty much the pinnacle and entire extent of my acting career. (About my earlier stint as Elvira DeSanto in The Brick and the Rose, *we do not speak*, though that went to State in the high school one-act competitions. Oh, please, Tommy. Get help. A play about hard life and drugs. Point the Second.)
And yet, I majored in Theater. Well, at my Podunk college, Theatre and Dance (sigh). Yes, I know, to all who have ever known me, virtually or in life, this has never yet surprised a soul.
It surprises pretty few that my college years are what drove me out of theater-of-any-spelling permanently. I joke sometimes majoring in theater was what made a writer of me, but truth be told that was JRW, and took quite some years.
So, Governor’s School.
Never mind that the play we were working on was a matter of well-off kids’ wish fulfillment: I was still at an age it meant a lot to me not to be privileged, though of course we hadn’t institutionalized that word for it quite yet.
One of our assignments in the scene shop was to do a flat of clouds. In 1986, to find a photo of clouds to grid and reproduce on a flat was not a mere matter of a Google search; I remember going home and tearing apart my parents’ Time magazines. We didn’t really have a lot of periodicals in the house, and using a newspaper was of course worse than pointless (though NOW, of course, I can think “that would have been edgy” – but then: the trick was to find a particular type of photograph). Pictures of, I don’t know, Reagan and Reeboks and whatever other 80s things we were immured with in what once passed for popular media. Okay, it was JOURNALISM, an thing no longer extant, but a bitch of a place to find usable color glossies of clouds.
I ended up with the plume off a factory smokestack. Of course.
The thing that’s funny about this is that people thought I was Being Edgy and Weird – making a STATEMENT – being cynical, political, in-your-face, angry about something maybe. Some perhaps delighted in the subversiveness of pollution-as-cloud.
But, really, I couldn’t find anything else! Southern Living is too deadly-closed-up focused on flowers, cakes, and oppressive décor to threaten any chance of finding a cloud anywhere. I already covered the problem with newsprint. And we didn’t have any other subscriptions.
Well, Science, but I was not ABOUT to be cutting up my dad’s Science issues – no, or National Geographic, either. Of course we had shelves loaded with those. We were Americans of A Certain Era. Duh.
So Time was really all I had. We were not an entertainment mag family, and infotainment really was in its barest infancy in those days anyway.
Smokestack. I was MAD it was my only option, and probably still cranky even though people thought I was being meta, before meta was a thing. Heck before “a thing” was even a thing.
So … people thought this thing about me.
I’ve gotten used to it, over the years. Being presumed to be saying something I am not. Being presumed to be angry, an ogre, in-your-face, pungently personalitized, a bloody monster, you name it.
I have a pretty indelible personal presence, even online I am often mistaken for a raging maniac, or at least a bull in a china shop. I see y’all clutching your pearls when I happen by, don’t you think I don’t know.
The funny thing is, living inside my own head, even my wayward heart – it’s a pretty quiet place, really.
Not only am I not exciting, I am not an especially passionate person. It takes rather a lot to engage me, to enflame me.
But people see what they see. Think what they think. I modulate where it’s necessary, know how I come across. With age, I sense less “MONSTER!” than “blowsy lunatic lady”, but the effect still has always felt, to me, out of proportion to the catalyst.
It’s always been fun getting credit for creativity I didn’t have. And inspires me to try and have some that is real. Is my own.
Saturday, April 9, 2016
(Born Naked) and The Rest ...
It has been a hard, hard week, and a good one.
My stepfather didn't come into our lives until I was thirty-seven or so. Like any family, we had natural resistance to change. But, over time, he has become very dear to us. Indeed, at this point I find myself unexpectedly tender and protective toward him. I love him VERY much, and now the very fact we didn't see that coming means that loving him is very gratifying.
An astute reader will guess: it is his health which has for so long been an obliquely-referenced sadness when I blog about personal feelings.
This post is not about my stepfather.
His decline has put my mom into the position of caregiving. The difficulties and challenges don't require explaining. But the particulars, for us, are no less acute for being shared by so many others.
This week, I SLAYED IT at work. I was sick'ning. I was FEE-ACE.
The three statements above are consciously and intentionally pointed thievery, mainly from RuPaul (and a little bit from Tyra Banks).
At work, I killed a graphical map presentation. I helped give birth to an initiative which stands to save my company quite a lot of money. It felt good.
And at my mom and stepfather's house, I helped them do their taxes.
Most of the time someone we love is in difficulty, we are impotent to DO anything.
The impulse is to fix. The impulse is to give advice. The impulse is to anything but passive receipt of bad news, sadness, fear, bitterness. We can't hear a problem without wanting to respond to the problem.
The secret of my life has been in responding to the person. It is why, since I was thirteen, I have been the one friends - even family - turn to. It is that saying I don't understand is a better response than fixing, advising. Thinking we do understand.
Because, even when we've been there, we never quite understand another's heart.
And so, the opportunity TO fix - TO actually, practically and concretely help - is a rare and special opportunity.
This week, I got to help.
It doesn't change the health picture. It doesn't change the fact that the secondary help I may be able to offer - to perhaps make it possible for my mom to go somewhere else and help someone else herself - is in answer to someone else's crisis. It doesn't untangle the way death creates a spiderweb that crosses more than one stand across us at any moment.
But my mom called me yesterday morning and said, "I slept."
So. What's Ru got to do with it?
Ru is my present to myself.
Drag Race has a live show, and Cute Shoes and I will get to go together. We'll get to dress up. I will meet her Gay Best Friend; someone else I know may be there with her husband, who may himself be in drag.
There will be ooh-ing and aah-ing over shoes, over wigs, over clothes and makeup.
There was already that one moment when my BROTHER got into the drag-planning and said, "You should do that greyscale makeup" and I realized I have corrupted him, and that was awesome.
Sometimes, you need something to look forward to.
I look forward to seeing the girls in the video above. I look forward to doing Pearl's "HULK SMASH" dance and loving it. I look forward to Ginger Minj's accent and sense of humor. I look forward to just looking at Violet, who is so young and so adorable and so deadly brilliant. I cannot even DEAL, that I will get to see Alaska T********** - the only thing named or remotely to do with Alaska that I ever loved (and I adore her completely).
I'm excited, excited.
And don't we ALL need that?
My stepfather didn't come into our lives until I was thirty-seven or so. Like any family, we had natural resistance to change. But, over time, he has become very dear to us. Indeed, at this point I find myself unexpectedly tender and protective toward him. I love him VERY much, and now the very fact we didn't see that coming means that loving him is very gratifying.
An astute reader will guess: it is his health which has for so long been an obliquely-referenced sadness when I blog about personal feelings.
This post is not about my stepfather.
His decline has put my mom into the position of caregiving. The difficulties and challenges don't require explaining. But the particulars, for us, are no less acute for being shared by so many others.
This week, I SLAYED IT at work. I was sick'ning. I was FEE-ACE.
The three statements above are consciously and intentionally pointed thievery, mainly from RuPaul (and a little bit from Tyra Banks).
At work, I killed a graphical map presentation. I helped give birth to an initiative which stands to save my company quite a lot of money. It felt good.
And at my mom and stepfather's house, I helped them do their taxes.
Most of the time someone we love is in difficulty, we are impotent to DO anything.
The impulse is to fix. The impulse is to give advice. The impulse is to anything but passive receipt of bad news, sadness, fear, bitterness. We can't hear a problem without wanting to respond to the problem.
The secret of my life has been in responding to the person. It is why, since I was thirteen, I have been the one friends - even family - turn to. It is that saying I don't understand is a better response than fixing, advising. Thinking we do understand.
Because, even when we've been there, we never quite understand another's heart.
And so, the opportunity TO fix - TO actually, practically and concretely help - is a rare and special opportunity.
This week, I got to help.
It doesn't change the health picture. It doesn't change the fact that the secondary help I may be able to offer - to perhaps make it possible for my mom to go somewhere else and help someone else herself - is in answer to someone else's crisis. It doesn't untangle the way death creates a spiderweb that crosses more than one stand across us at any moment.
But my mom called me yesterday morning and said, "I slept."
So. What's Ru got to do with it?
Ru is my present to myself.
Drag Race has a live show, and Cute Shoes and I will get to go together. We'll get to dress up. I will meet her Gay Best Friend; someone else I know may be there with her husband, who may himself be in drag.
There will be ooh-ing and aah-ing over shoes, over wigs, over clothes and makeup.
There was already that one moment when my BROTHER got into the drag-planning and said, "You should do that greyscale makeup" and I realized I have corrupted him, and that was awesome.
Sometimes, you need something to look forward to.
I look forward to seeing the girls in the video above. I look forward to doing Pearl's "HULK SMASH" dance and loving it. I look forward to Ginger Minj's accent and sense of humor. I look forward to just looking at Violet, who is so young and so adorable and so deadly brilliant. I cannot even DEAL, that I will get to see Alaska T********** - the only thing named or remotely to do with Alaska that I ever loved (and I adore her completely).
I'm excited, excited.
And don't we ALL need that?
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Fractured Light
Speeding up a long afternoon freeway, winter sun glorious and low, rays strobed; daytime shattered by the shadows of ten thousand trees.
She is driving. Set mouth. Day-weary face of freckles and fatigue. Tear-glossed eyes - dry by the grace of G-d(less self-preserving control) - behind large, dark glasses. Music, loud. Very loud.
Picture it ("Sicily, 1933 ..." - no, wait) - music so pulsing the image is made a silent film; even words spoken to herself muted by the utterness of sound; even breath and heartbeat blotted out.
And so, no sound; only thinking.
Thinking of herself on a dancefloor. Imaginary self a stomping Joan Jett wannabe, a black-booted and leather-jeaned stretch of negative space around which everything in the world creates a void. Imaginary self swirling and swirling, the music all a turning, swaying to the sound of the demonic beat ...
She might have become many things.
Somewhere beneath the promise of the girl with a gold locket, she is (still and too) the result of the threat of that out-thrust lip, that early violence and anger, that thing she didn't have to be and half aspired to be, and - almost forgotten - sometimes regrets that she isn't. The bummed cigs and boys' jackets, the always-magenta lipstick, the resentment of her own privilege - ahh, the boys who weren't; the friends who weren't. The girl who hated admitting she went to the preppie school, the rich kids' domains. Could not bear to be one of *them* ...
... and yet never was successfully anything else, either ...
Sometimes ... sorrow is, in us, the most brutish, juvenile rebellion. Sometimes, it is a look into possibilities - who we might have been, when the skin of who we are is so tight that surely it must split and we break free, new and unmade and ready to take shape again.
Sometimes, you have to let the sun strobe to prove it has not died yet, and that you are not in the dark.
And sometimes, you have to listen to deathless music at top volume. And dance; even if only in your head.
She is driving. Set mouth. Day-weary face of freckles and fatigue. Tear-glossed eyes - dry by the grace of G-d(less self-preserving control) - behind large, dark glasses. Music, loud. Very loud.
Picture it ("Sicily, 1933 ..." - no, wait) - music so pulsing the image is made a silent film; even words spoken to herself muted by the utterness of sound; even breath and heartbeat blotted out.
And so, no sound; only thinking.
Thinking of herself on a dancefloor. Imaginary self a stomping Joan Jett wannabe, a black-booted and leather-jeaned stretch of negative space around which everything in the world creates a void. Imaginary self swirling and swirling, the music all a turning, swaying to the sound of the demonic beat ...
She might have become many things.
Somewhere beneath the promise of the girl with a gold locket, she is (still and too) the result of the threat of that out-thrust lip, that early violence and anger, that thing she didn't have to be and half aspired to be, and - almost forgotten - sometimes regrets that she isn't. The bummed cigs and boys' jackets, the always-magenta lipstick, the resentment of her own privilege - ahh, the boys who weren't; the friends who weren't. The girl who hated admitting she went to the preppie school, the rich kids' domains. Could not bear to be one of *them* ...
... and yet never was successfully anything else, either ...
Sometimes ... sorrow is, in us, the most brutish, juvenile rebellion. Sometimes, it is a look into possibilities - who we might have been, when the skin of who we are is so tight that surely it must split and we break free, new and unmade and ready to take shape again.
Sometimes, you have to let the sun strobe to prove it has not died yet, and that you are not in the dark.
And sometimes, you have to listen to deathless music at top volume. And dance; even if only in your head.
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Personal Collection
It just started with a search string. Someone on AOL ended up on my blog with a set of words that intrigued me, so I looked where their search had led. It took me to some three year old posts.
And then I remembered The Sweet La's last month.
And I remembered remembering summer.
I found myself writing about Mr. X. In less than a month, I'll have known him thirteen years.
It took me to some feelossy-fizin. "Rejecting an ism, even knowing its actual face, because others find it ugly condones the perception of ugliness. "Yes, that is ugly - whoo - that's not me!""
And a nice thing Cute Shoes once did. Cute Shoes is a lovely and thoughtful friend.
And then I remembered The Sweet La's last month.
And I remembered remembering summer.
I found myself writing about Mr. X. In less than a month, I'll have known him thirteen years.
It took me to some feelossy-fizin. "Rejecting an ism, even knowing its actual face, because others find it ugly condones the perception of ugliness. "Yes, that is ugly - whoo - that's not me!""
And a nice thing Cute Shoes once did. Cute Shoes is a lovely and thoughtful friend.
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Retouched
The past several weeks have brought many reconnections (of sorts) from the past. Songs cropping up, memories with them. Today, a cousin I haven't seen in years pinged me on LinkedIn; this may be reverberations from my brother making new connections a few days ago. A few days ago, a practically-family old friend cropped up, definitely in the wake of the brotherly LinkIng. But there was also that photo of my ex husband I found online; he and I have not been *out* of touch for many years now, but I haven't actually seen him face-to-face in almost exactly thirteen years, so it was nice to see he's aging beautifully (if a little cheesily - hah - the photo was for his work, so it's a bit the corporate Olan Mills style portrait; and the angle is weird, he's looking upward at a camera too highly placed). And then, the sighting of my first love.
I've spent a lot of years losing touch with a lot of people, and the internet makes it possible to erase barriers with the click of an anonymous button. I've been fortunate, in that those I need not be in touch with have not seemed to need to be in touch with me either.
Ahh, but. "But" - the stuff of which blog posts are made.
A lot of times, the idea of first love has a bit of a nostalgic swoon about it. Remembering mine has been bringing a time in my life into a focus I've never really put on it with age. All that time spent forgetting, and an easily distracted wee and paltry little brain.
First love. When I use the term, it is not the very first boy I ever kissed, nor even the very first one I felt turbulently emotional about. I mean the boy I encountered for the first time on the terms I have met a man ever since - a certain confidence and assertiveness, a certain romantic awe, and a certain set of expectations.
Expectations, back then, were nascent things; but First was the first relationship I ever had that HAD them. We thought we'd get married, we had at least one of our kids named (First seems to have been the only guy I ever seriously imagined children with - or, perhaps, it was the very embryonic nature of this first adult romance that overlooked my lack of maternal drive).
We also went through some really adult stuff. Hard stuff. First was in rehab when we decided to be officially Going Together, and our first official date was my senior prom.
Gave my mom the vapors, all this, and reasonably so. But let it be said that the adult stuff we were dealing with, if I consider it with both pragmatism and the sentiment of my mother's perspectives, was NOT the stuff that would have worried her most. First's rehab TOOK, and well enough that I became, for the last year or two I spent time with a certain beloved crowd of my youth, rather the Go To counselor for an awful lot of people concerned with their own issues with one substance or another. I'd always been, almost conspicuously, very much a good girl in a crowd not thick with them - or, at least, not thick with girls who wanted it known they were good.
It's hard for me to believe how short the time really was, from just being two people who shared a group of hanging-out friends and acquaintances, to being seriously in love ... to being over. Back then, the space of a year seemed great. Twenty-nine years later? Almost endearingly fleeting.
Yet, dusting off the memories and giving them a real look, after so long, I find they are not silly things to smile at as if from a superior vantage. (I met the man I *did* marry only a little more than a year after all of this, and that relationship isn't a product for patronizing.)
It's sort of gratifying to exercise memory muscles long left to relax, if not really to atrophy. I recall the music vividly; the smell of smoke in a city built on tobacco, and a crowd almost adamantly addicted to it. I recall the blue plastic booths in that before-malls-even-had-food-courts burger place we'd meet, and the fake white marble-like stuff of the benches we'd hang out on; built in the 70s and stripped of cushions in the 80s; hard, angular, not much good for comfort, and meant perhaps to discourage precisely the sort of mall-rattery I loved so much and remember now seldom but with a certain mellow sweetness. I recall exactly where he was standing, and where I was standing, when I walked up to my then-flirty-friend and all but dared him to be anything more than that, without ever speaking an actual word.
I recall how giddily terrifying it was to put my interest in a guy out on the table like that. And I remember how gratifying, when the interest was returned.
I do smile indulgently now: thinking about the fact that at least four of the, well, four major relationships of my adult life have all begun the same way.
People who know me much at all, or even just have read enough on this blog, know that I am not forgiving of the person I was roughly through my twenties. I have no patience with that person's need for attention, for drama. Her vanity. Her pettiness and meanness.
But the girl of eighteen? She was something more than just a good girl hanging with the mall gang. She hadn't "discovered" she was attractive, and so was free of the need to focus everyone's undying attention upon that. She was half kid in jeans and sneaks ... and half housewife, in her mind, possessed of the guy she wanted to marry, surrounded by friends and acquaintances who came to her for advice as if she had any sort of wisdom. She was good to those she cared for. She was ... maybe something kind of pure. Not necessarily nice - in those teenage years perhaps even more than in her regrettable twenties, she took all too much pride in NOT being "nice" nor "sweet" (and yet somehow drawing people to her who trusted and turned to her).
She'd never been deeply sad nor hurt, either. She'd never *lost* - not profoundly, unnaturally ... bitterly.
She was an interesting welter of potential - some of it deathlessly squandered. Yet from the ashes of her (burned in those regrettable twenties) rose the woman I am now. Someone I am not ashamed to have become.
It has been remarkable to me how easily conjured the memories of that time really are. Fleeting images of flirting with First when we were friends, before we'd ever touched the idea that could be anything more. Evenings at the sub shop we took over as the mall drew our attention less; hanging out in the parking lot there, or inside - that smell of a sub shop, peppered salami and vinegar and bread. Riding in a car.
All these memories are literally warm ones: most of our actual relationship took place during one tiny summer, so long ago it seems fragile and impossible. T-shirts and sleeveless sweaters. Jeans and sneaks. "Labyrinth" and "Legend" and his parents' Vista Cruiser wagon, or my folks' Plymouth Fury - the Tank, the Zucchini. Our friends could pack in nine to the huge bench seats, and I bought gas two dollars at a time for a car that would barely get thirty miles on its allowance. We'd sit on the hood of it, or lie back, the engine still warm, the steel so strong, while the stars wheeled above and life seemed endless, and the air perhaps even cooled just a little.
He never did stop smoking, at least back then. With everything else he gave up, he still had that. Odd how many of our friends smoked - really, all of them, in this group, in this part of my life. So YOUNG. I think of it now and it shocks me; not least, that the adults in our lives didn't even seem to notice (my mom, though, would have skinned me alive).
I can recall the way he held his cigarette, the posture of his neck, his arm, his shoulders.
I spent months studying his face; knew it so well that seeing him thirty years later ... yes. I see him in there. That impossibly young boy, the floppy shiny hair we all had before the 80s got heavily hairsprayed. The gloss and eyes of youth, like no other age, no matter what we do to preserve it. Real youth. He seemed beautiful to me. The nervousness I see now, an old lady, only the more touching and appealing for recognizing it. For having lost it.
I can remember the coda, after our relationship was over. I remember his mother calling me. And going to him. A meeting so terribly hard I would not share it here like mere emotionally-engaging entertainment.
we went through some hard stuff, some adult stuff, First and I. I never hated him. Never lost my respect for him.
That, at least, is a legacy echoed since. I've never hated any man I ever loved. I have, perhaps, that boy and that girl a debt of thanks. It's what made me the person who can talk about "Beloved Ex" and mean it without being trite.
It's galvanized in me the heart that has been so purely devoted to Mr. X.
Dear G-d. What that girl would have thought, if she could ever have even imagined what her heart would become.
For all that has passed now; I still am sort of the girl with a cocoon of privilege. The mantle of invoilate safety about me - no man, no love, no fear has ever taken from me the core security my parents built. I worry, because I know others have not been so blessed. Beloved Ex. Maybe First. Mr. X himself, certainly. Even my mom has not, in a way, been as lucky as I; I was forged in experience she never had.
It is time, perhaps, to listen to something old. To let Penelope on the couch, and just quietly pet her. To remember that car, the wind through its windows. And "teenagering" ... the way it was. And the way, for me at least, it was meant to be.
I was so very lucky. I'm grateful for every second.
I've spent a lot of years losing touch with a lot of people, and the internet makes it possible to erase barriers with the click of an anonymous button. I've been fortunate, in that those I need not be in touch with have not seemed to need to be in touch with me either.
Ahh, but. "But" - the stuff of which blog posts are made.
A lot of times, the idea of first love has a bit of a nostalgic swoon about it. Remembering mine has been bringing a time in my life into a focus I've never really put on it with age. All that time spent forgetting, and an easily distracted wee and paltry little brain.
First love. When I use the term, it is not the very first boy I ever kissed, nor even the very first one I felt turbulently emotional about. I mean the boy I encountered for the first time on the terms I have met a man ever since - a certain confidence and assertiveness, a certain romantic awe, and a certain set of expectations.
Expectations, back then, were nascent things; but First was the first relationship I ever had that HAD them. We thought we'd get married, we had at least one of our kids named (First seems to have been the only guy I ever seriously imagined children with - or, perhaps, it was the very embryonic nature of this first adult romance that overlooked my lack of maternal drive).
We also went through some really adult stuff. Hard stuff. First was in rehab when we decided to be officially Going Together, and our first official date was my senior prom.
Gave my mom the vapors, all this, and reasonably so. But let it be said that the adult stuff we were dealing with, if I consider it with both pragmatism and the sentiment of my mother's perspectives, was NOT the stuff that would have worried her most. First's rehab TOOK, and well enough that I became, for the last year or two I spent time with a certain beloved crowd of my youth, rather the Go To counselor for an awful lot of people concerned with their own issues with one substance or another. I'd always been, almost conspicuously, very much a good girl in a crowd not thick with them - or, at least, not thick with girls who wanted it known they were good.
It's hard for me to believe how short the time really was, from just being two people who shared a group of hanging-out friends and acquaintances, to being seriously in love ... to being over. Back then, the space of a year seemed great. Twenty-nine years later? Almost endearingly fleeting.
Yet, dusting off the memories and giving them a real look, after so long, I find they are not silly things to smile at as if from a superior vantage. (I met the man I *did* marry only a little more than a year after all of this, and that relationship isn't a product for patronizing.)
It's sort of gratifying to exercise memory muscles long left to relax, if not really to atrophy. I recall the music vividly; the smell of smoke in a city built on tobacco, and a crowd almost adamantly addicted to it. I recall the blue plastic booths in that before-malls-even-had-food-courts burger place we'd meet, and the fake white marble-like stuff of the benches we'd hang out on; built in the 70s and stripped of cushions in the 80s; hard, angular, not much good for comfort, and meant perhaps to discourage precisely the sort of mall-rattery I loved so much and remember now seldom but with a certain mellow sweetness. I recall exactly where he was standing, and where I was standing, when I walked up to my then-flirty-friend and all but dared him to be anything more than that, without ever speaking an actual word.
I recall how giddily terrifying it was to put my interest in a guy out on the table like that. And I remember how gratifying, when the interest was returned.
I do smile indulgently now: thinking about the fact that at least four of the, well, four major relationships of my adult life have all begun the same way.
People who know me much at all, or even just have read enough on this blog, know that I am not forgiving of the person I was roughly through my twenties. I have no patience with that person's need for attention, for drama. Her vanity. Her pettiness and meanness.
But the girl of eighteen? She was something more than just a good girl hanging with the mall gang. She hadn't "discovered" she was attractive, and so was free of the need to focus everyone's undying attention upon that. She was half kid in jeans and sneaks ... and half housewife, in her mind, possessed of the guy she wanted to marry, surrounded by friends and acquaintances who came to her for advice as if she had any sort of wisdom. She was good to those she cared for. She was ... maybe something kind of pure. Not necessarily nice - in those teenage years perhaps even more than in her regrettable twenties, she took all too much pride in NOT being "nice" nor "sweet" (and yet somehow drawing people to her who trusted and turned to her).
She'd never been deeply sad nor hurt, either. She'd never *lost* - not profoundly, unnaturally ... bitterly.
She was an interesting welter of potential - some of it deathlessly squandered. Yet from the ashes of her (burned in those regrettable twenties) rose the woman I am now. Someone I am not ashamed to have become.
It has been remarkable to me how easily conjured the memories of that time really are. Fleeting images of flirting with First when we were friends, before we'd ever touched the idea that could be anything more. Evenings at the sub shop we took over as the mall drew our attention less; hanging out in the parking lot there, or inside - that smell of a sub shop, peppered salami and vinegar and bread. Riding in a car.
All these memories are literally warm ones: most of our actual relationship took place during one tiny summer, so long ago it seems fragile and impossible. T-shirts and sleeveless sweaters. Jeans and sneaks. "Labyrinth" and "Legend" and his parents' Vista Cruiser wagon, or my folks' Plymouth Fury - the Tank, the Zucchini. Our friends could pack in nine to the huge bench seats, and I bought gas two dollars at a time for a car that would barely get thirty miles on its allowance. We'd sit on the hood of it, or lie back, the engine still warm, the steel so strong, while the stars wheeled above and life seemed endless, and the air perhaps even cooled just a little.
He never did stop smoking, at least back then. With everything else he gave up, he still had that. Odd how many of our friends smoked - really, all of them, in this group, in this part of my life. So YOUNG. I think of it now and it shocks me; not least, that the adults in our lives didn't even seem to notice (my mom, though, would have skinned me alive).
I can recall the way he held his cigarette, the posture of his neck, his arm, his shoulders.
I spent months studying his face; knew it so well that seeing him thirty years later ... yes. I see him in there. That impossibly young boy, the floppy shiny hair we all had before the 80s got heavily hairsprayed. The gloss and eyes of youth, like no other age, no matter what we do to preserve it. Real youth. He seemed beautiful to me. The nervousness I see now, an old lady, only the more touching and appealing for recognizing it. For having lost it.
I can remember the coda, after our relationship was over. I remember his mother calling me. And going to him. A meeting so terribly hard I would not share it here like mere emotionally-engaging entertainment.
we went through some hard stuff, some adult stuff, First and I. I never hated him. Never lost my respect for him.
That, at least, is a legacy echoed since. I've never hated any man I ever loved. I have, perhaps, that boy and that girl a debt of thanks. It's what made me the person who can talk about "Beloved Ex" and mean it without being trite.
It's galvanized in me the heart that has been so purely devoted to Mr. X.
Dear G-d. What that girl would have thought, if she could ever have even imagined what her heart would become.
For all that has passed now; I still am sort of the girl with a cocoon of privilege. The mantle of invoilate safety about me - no man, no love, no fear has ever taken from me the core security my parents built. I worry, because I know others have not been so blessed. Beloved Ex. Maybe First. Mr. X himself, certainly. Even my mom has not, in a way, been as lucky as I; I was forged in experience she never had.
It is time, perhaps, to listen to something old. To let Penelope on the couch, and just quietly pet her. To remember that car, the wind through its windows. And "teenagering" ... the way it was. And the way, for me at least, it was meant to be.
I was so very lucky. I'm grateful for every second.
Friday, June 26, 2015
22, 222 ... and 20150626
Twos have for whatever reason always dominated my addresses, phones, room or apartment numbers and so on in my life.
Today is the twenty-second anniversary of the day I married Beloved Ex, and he’s been much on my mind of late. We’ve talked a couple times in the past month or so, and I’ll call him tonight to wish him well on our day and reminisce a bit like proper oldsters.
BEx was twenty-two (hah) and I nineteen when he and I first met. He was a would-be rockstar and I was – really quite unformed. I’d been through my little hippie kid phase, and entered into a bit of a groupie rocker chick mode when he and I got into a relationship, but as to who I wanted to me, or was, there were a lot of questions unanswered – indeed, unexamined at all – back then.
We were together six years before we married, and all I knew was that I had a good man and that was valuable enough I couldn’t look beyond that point. I clutched on entirely because he was (and is) a fine person and not half bad looking.
It’s funny, but I never had a thing for blonds nor the Nordic God thing in a man, but the fella I married was all of that. His resemblance to Michael Hurst of Hercules: the Legendary Journeys has always struck me, because – though Hurst appears a good deal shorter than BEx – the humor and goodness in their smiles were alike. But for maximum recognition value: BEx resembles Rutger Hauer to an almost alarming degree – physically. His demeanor is nothing so forbidding (men Diane likes: nerdliness comes first, then good-looking), and BEx is twenty years younger than the Replicant, but feature for feature the similarity may be stronger than Aeolus’s.
A friend of mine during the years I was married to BEx once explained to a table of friends out for a drink and a nosh, about the color of BEx’s eyes. She told the story of how her dad used to take her and her brothers camping. They would climb this beautiful mountain, in fresh air in the sunshine. They would stop at the top to lay out food and eat by a beautiful lake. The water was blue, and so clear you could see to the bottom. Her story went on a good five or ten minutes. And it ended, “And THAT is the color of Diane’s ex’s eyes.”
Gee. And all I ever did was gank from Carla Tortelli, who said, when asked if a handsome man’s eyes were blue, “*Sigh* Like Windex!”
I never had a thing about blue eyes themselves, but BEx’s blue eyes truly always were beautiful to me. In addition to his Nordic looks, BEx also has a Hungarian strain, and something in the expression of his eyes always spoke of the same melancholy Mikhayil Baryshnikov always had. As bright as he seemed to be, and as slightly silly, BEx houses a melancholy spirit not uncommon in the men I have loved. He and I laughed for years about an article he once read, that men who liked small breasts (I didn’t grow mine until years after our divorce) tended to be “slightly depressed” and men who liked larger chests were into football and less educated. Hooray for reductive stereotypes of men based on reductive stereotypes of women!
So last night, spending time with a nice array of the women on my mother’s side of my family (two aunts, mom, and a cousin), I shared the photo because I knew they would love it. Aunt G. would hardly have recognized the man in the picture, but those eyes were utterly unmistakable. Mom, who always did like BEx, may have suffered some resurgence of the “why the HECK are you not with this man” even as she simultaneously does know and understand. I paint a good picture of BEx and take my responsibility for my fundamental part in our divorce, but let it not be said I see no errors nor shortcomings at all.
The fundamental issue is this – I love BEx and always have and always will. But love is no reason to share your whole LIFE with someone. My life is going reasonably well. Only if, without him, it could not, should I be committed like that to any man, even if I do respect and care for him as much as I do.
There are those for whom in fact that would be more than enough, and compelling and successful. Without regret: I just am not one of those people. What I do regret, as candid as I may be in this blog and with certain people I love, is nobody’s business but mine and BEx’s.
Twenty-two years ago in the morning, it was quiet in my parents’ home. I hadn’t expected that, somehow; thought I might be the center of attention in a hive of activity. But I had breakfast alone, I think – and had to kind of pull that together catch-as-catch-can. My dress was in the best garment bag ever – my childhood twin fitted Snoopy sheet fit it EXACTLY, and pinned shut to hold it together just right, in nice soft poly-cotton. My dad and mom were not given to maudlin hugs and Very Special Moments, and so at some point I worked my way up to my room and spent a long time getting ready. I put my hair up and did my makeup and put on my mom’s pearl jewelry, and I hope I cleaned my beautiful engagement ring so it would sparkle (my engagement ring is really beautiful, as was BEx’s band; we both still have them, which seems right for us two).
I don’t really recall getting to the church, but once there I have some memory of putting on the girdle and ivory hose and shoes, and then ceremoniously being dressed, for perhaps the only time in my life post-infancy. My dress was a marvelous thing, ill-suited to a Southern summer day (long sleeves and satin, high necked, and close to the body). When we went outside for photos of the bride …. even with dress shields, you cannot stop the river of sweat that will run down your spine on a hot noonday in the windless lee of a tall chapel, wearing so much heavy textile. Even the embroidery lace was thick and substantial. This confection had been hand made for me by a friend whose own anniversary, the day before this wedding, meant she could not be with us on the wedding day.
My dad and I convened in the vestibule of the chapel and there wasn’t a dramatic moment between us. I wanted one, but somehow the business of the pageant took us away, and we walked down the aisle (never knowing a month later he would be undergoing a sextuple bypass after a heart attack).
My grandmother wore magenta.
My mother wore baby pink, and she and my mother-in-law looked so soft and so pretty.
BEx had, at that moment in his life, basically a dutch-boy haircut. After years of long, beautiful curling warm-blond hair, in that period and after what seemed to us a drastic cut, he looked like the guy on the label of Sam Adams bottles. In a tailed and cravatted tux, he just looked handsome. And nervous as hell. I looked – I don’t really know. Manic and rapacious kind of come to mind, but I may have a bias against my old self. Maybe.
Ceremony over, we took more photos and walked to the reception, which I remember mainly for my overly self-conscious feeling I was being SUCH a successful, grown-up polite hostess. I talked with everybody, smiling and unfailingly (my idea of) gracious, which I suspect was a bit on the arch side. What became of my husband, I have no idea; I was doing my duties, which had nothing to do with him.
I changed into my going away dress (a gorgeous cut, but a black dress I now remember as a haunted, bad-omen object) and hat. We drove away in dad’s red Fiat, top down, and NOBODY shaving-creamed the beautiful finish on that car. No shoes or signs either. Just two young people in a great car.
We went back to my folks hosue for a while, where we opened presents. That night, we stayed at the Embassy Suites right in town. Before embarking on what little passed for a honeymoon, we stopped at my cousin’s farm and picked up my brother, for a day at an amusement park – bro along because (a) I rarely saw him, he lived in Hawai’i back then, and (b) he and BEx liked each other, and could ride the rides I’d get sick on. I hardly really remember the day, but I think we had a good time. Then we drove up to DC to stop in what turned out to be the hotel in which Marion Barry had been busted for drugs a few years previously. ROMANCE. It was a room on an alley or some equally ugly outlook, and I ordered ROOM SERVICE as a deranged splurge.
The next morning at breakfast in their restaurant, BEx was away for a moment when someone came to the table, and I self-consciously remember saying the word for the first time: “My husband will be right back.”
We stopped for lunch at my aunt’s house, with her and one of my cousins; a gloriously tasty gorgonzola and walnut salad I still remember to this day amongst our summer treats.
Then, on the road, back to Ohio.
We did have time alone, but our wedding and honeymoon were family-packed; a varied, busy affair indeed.
If self-condemnation is clear and stark in these memories, it’s not out of regret for the marriage nor even living resentments – against myself nor anyone else. Maybe just a way to keep myself honest. But those days themselves – this day, this anniversary (which, from glorious and sunny in 1993, is now a stormy, dark, and muggy affair indeed) … they are almost as fine as the man who gave them to me, shared them with me.
Happy anniversary, Beloved Ex.
And happy anniversary to all those couples who, today, can finally marry one another in every last one of our fifty states. Congratulations, in joy and gladness.
Today is the twenty-second anniversary of the day I married Beloved Ex, and he’s been much on my mind of late. We’ve talked a couple times in the past month or so, and I’ll call him tonight to wish him well on our day and reminisce a bit like proper oldsters.
BEx was twenty-two (hah) and I nineteen when he and I first met. He was a would-be rockstar and I was – really quite unformed. I’d been through my little hippie kid phase, and entered into a bit of a groupie rocker chick mode when he and I got into a relationship, but as to who I wanted to me, or was, there were a lot of questions unanswered – indeed, unexamined at all – back then.
We were together six years before we married, and all I knew was that I had a good man and that was valuable enough I couldn’t look beyond that point. I clutched on entirely because he was (and is) a fine person and not half bad looking.
It’s funny, but I never had a thing for blonds nor the Nordic God thing in a man, but the fella I married was all of that. His resemblance to Michael Hurst of Hercules: the Legendary Journeys has always struck me, because – though Hurst appears a good deal shorter than BEx – the humor and goodness in their smiles were alike. But for maximum recognition value: BEx resembles Rutger Hauer to an almost alarming degree – physically. His demeanor is nothing so forbidding (men Diane likes: nerdliness comes first, then good-looking), and BEx is twenty years younger than the Replicant, but feature for feature the similarity may be stronger than Aeolus’s.
A friend of mine during the years I was married to BEx once explained to a table of friends out for a drink and a nosh, about the color of BEx’s eyes. She told the story of how her dad used to take her and her brothers camping. They would climb this beautiful mountain, in fresh air in the sunshine. They would stop at the top to lay out food and eat by a beautiful lake. The water was blue, and so clear you could see to the bottom. Her story went on a good five or ten minutes. And it ended, “And THAT is the color of Diane’s ex’s eyes.”
Gee. And all I ever did was gank from Carla Tortelli, who said, when asked if a handsome man’s eyes were blue, “*Sigh* Like Windex!”
 |
| Image: Wikipedia |
I
Googled him this week – why I don’t recall, but sometimes you Google an
ex, and this is one of those “aww – Beloved Ex” weeks. This time, I got
one of those ghastly Olan-Mills-for-the-corporate-office type portraits;
weirdly taken from a high angle, so he’s looking upward and kind of
cheesy, all be-suited and too tidy and slick. His blond-ness has
subsided somewhat, but for one of your Nordic types, let it be said he
is ageing spectacularly well. Lovely crinkles at the eyes, white teeth
he doesn’t have to treat to get that way – that one crooked little
incisor I was always a little too much taken with. The overall effect of
the corporate pose is a bit “MY NAME IS HERB. TRUST ME!”, but the depth
of knowledge if you know BEx lends a “yep, that’s him”-ness that sees
that same old smile, the slight nervousness … those eyes.
I never had a thing about blue eyes themselves, but BEx’s blue eyes truly always were beautiful to me. In addition to his Nordic looks, BEx also has a Hungarian strain, and something in the expression of his eyes always spoke of the same melancholy Mikhayil Baryshnikov always had. As bright as he seemed to be, and as slightly silly, BEx houses a melancholy spirit not uncommon in the men I have loved. He and I laughed for years about an article he once read, that men who liked small breasts (I didn’t grow mine until years after our divorce) tended to be “slightly depressed” and men who liked larger chests were into football and less educated. Hooray for reductive stereotypes of men based on reductive stereotypes of women!
So last night, spending time with a nice array of the women on my mother’s side of my family (two aunts, mom, and a cousin), I shared the photo because I knew they would love it. Aunt G. would hardly have recognized the man in the picture, but those eyes were utterly unmistakable. Mom, who always did like BEx, may have suffered some resurgence of the “why the HECK are you not with this man” even as she simultaneously does know and understand. I paint a good picture of BEx and take my responsibility for my fundamental part in our divorce, but let it not be said I see no errors nor shortcomings at all.
The fundamental issue is this – I love BEx and always have and always will. But love is no reason to share your whole LIFE with someone. My life is going reasonably well. Only if, without him, it could not, should I be committed like that to any man, even if I do respect and care for him as much as I do.
There are those for whom in fact that would be more than enough, and compelling and successful. Without regret: I just am not one of those people. What I do regret, as candid as I may be in this blog and with certain people I love, is nobody’s business but mine and BEx’s.
 |
| Image: that was me |
Twenty-two years ago in the morning, it was quiet in my parents’ home. I hadn’t expected that, somehow; thought I might be the center of attention in a hive of activity. But I had breakfast alone, I think – and had to kind of pull that together catch-as-catch-can. My dress was in the best garment bag ever – my childhood twin fitted Snoopy sheet fit it EXACTLY, and pinned shut to hold it together just right, in nice soft poly-cotton. My dad and mom were not given to maudlin hugs and Very Special Moments, and so at some point I worked my way up to my room and spent a long time getting ready. I put my hair up and did my makeup and put on my mom’s pearl jewelry, and I hope I cleaned my beautiful engagement ring so it would sparkle (my engagement ring is really beautiful, as was BEx’s band; we both still have them, which seems right for us two).
I don’t really recall getting to the church, but once there I have some memory of putting on the girdle and ivory hose and shoes, and then ceremoniously being dressed, for perhaps the only time in my life post-infancy. My dress was a marvelous thing, ill-suited to a Southern summer day (long sleeves and satin, high necked, and close to the body). When we went outside for photos of the bride …. even with dress shields, you cannot stop the river of sweat that will run down your spine on a hot noonday in the windless lee of a tall chapel, wearing so much heavy textile. Even the embroidery lace was thick and substantial. This confection had been hand made for me by a friend whose own anniversary, the day before this wedding, meant she could not be with us on the wedding day.
My dad and I convened in the vestibule of the chapel and there wasn’t a dramatic moment between us. I wanted one, but somehow the business of the pageant took us away, and we walked down the aisle (never knowing a month later he would be undergoing a sextuple bypass after a heart attack).
My grandmother wore magenta.
My mother wore baby pink, and she and my mother-in-law looked so soft and so pretty.
BEx had, at that moment in his life, basically a dutch-boy haircut. After years of long, beautiful curling warm-blond hair, in that period and after what seemed to us a drastic cut, he looked like the guy on the label of Sam Adams bottles. In a tailed and cravatted tux, he just looked handsome. And nervous as hell. I looked – I don’t really know. Manic and rapacious kind of come to mind, but I may have a bias against my old self. Maybe.
Ceremony over, we took more photos and walked to the reception, which I remember mainly for my overly self-conscious feeling I was being SUCH a successful, grown-up polite hostess. I talked with everybody, smiling and unfailingly (my idea of) gracious, which I suspect was a bit on the arch side. What became of my husband, I have no idea; I was doing my duties, which had nothing to do with him.
I changed into my going away dress (a gorgeous cut, but a black dress I now remember as a haunted, bad-omen object) and hat. We drove away in dad’s red Fiat, top down, and NOBODY shaving-creamed the beautiful finish on that car. No shoes or signs either. Just two young people in a great car.
We went back to my folks hosue for a while, where we opened presents. That night, we stayed at the Embassy Suites right in town. Before embarking on what little passed for a honeymoon, we stopped at my cousin’s farm and picked up my brother, for a day at an amusement park – bro along because (a) I rarely saw him, he lived in Hawai’i back then, and (b) he and BEx liked each other, and could ride the rides I’d get sick on. I hardly really remember the day, but I think we had a good time. Then we drove up to DC to stop in what turned out to be the hotel in which Marion Barry had been busted for drugs a few years previously. ROMANCE. It was a room on an alley or some equally ugly outlook, and I ordered ROOM SERVICE as a deranged splurge.
The next morning at breakfast in their restaurant, BEx was away for a moment when someone came to the table, and I self-consciously remember saying the word for the first time: “My husband will be right back.”
We stopped for lunch at my aunt’s house, with her and one of my cousins; a gloriously tasty gorgonzola and walnut salad I still remember to this day amongst our summer treats.
Then, on the road, back to Ohio.
We did have time alone, but our wedding and honeymoon were family-packed; a varied, busy affair indeed.
If self-condemnation is clear and stark in these memories, it’s not out of regret for the marriage nor even living resentments – against myself nor anyone else. Maybe just a way to keep myself honest. But those days themselves – this day, this anniversary (which, from glorious and sunny in 1993, is now a stormy, dark, and muggy affair indeed) … they are almost as fine as the man who gave them to me, shared them with me.
Happy anniversary, Beloved Ex.
And happy anniversary to all those couples who, today, can finally marry one another in every last one of our fifty states. Congratulations, in joy and gladness.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Effed
I emailed a voice mail message to myself at home today.
One week before my dad died, we got cell phones. I recall him, mom, and me in their room, programming the little sneaker-shaped things, laughing at how amazing they were, playing with ring tones and so on, commenting about their appearance.
Dad was in bed that day, and we got the phones because his disease was terminal. Mom wanted to be able to reach out instantly in case of emergency.
We had no idea we had so little time left.
Long after he died, I read somewhere about the Columbia shuttle disaster, and was shocked and perplexed; I had no recollection of this event, and this is not the sort of event one easily misses. It had happened the day I was over at the house, playing with the phones. It’s entirely possible – even quite likely – that we were watching news of it that day. If I claimed to remember, I’d be convincing myself though.
An event I cannot erase, unfortunately, was the epochal broadcast of the Michael Jackson interview with Martin Bashir. This aired the night before he died – and after we did know.
Dad went to the hospital on a Friday afternoon, or perhaps it was morning. I went upstairs to my boss’s boss’s office, a still and stately area of our building, and interrupted a meeting between them. Anything my own boss said was blotted out by her boss, a man I still respect, admire, and am immensely grateful to to this day. He all but insisted upon getting me a car to the hospital. But I drove. I needed that time in the empty space of the cab of my beloved, first car. I needed to have it and the freedom of movement it brought with it, and I had the strangest fear of leaving it, like my purse, at my office – and then what, and then what, was all I could think, though I recognized how kind the offer was even as I refused. I needed the drive.
I needed somewhat less the turquoise Honda or Toyota with the Icthys and “GOT CHRIST” sticker on the back that cut me off on a steeply curved part of the freeway, where I spun out and ended at a standstill, facing east in the westbound lanes, and wondering (to this day, yes) whether that Christian ever knew what they’d done to me. Even just on the practical level.
The rest of the drive was safe, and the hospital was what hospitals are. Dad was in a grey cul-de-sac of the ER, it seems cluttered in my memory, but we were alone at least. Mom left us after a little while – ostensibly to eat or go get someone or talk to people or use that cell phone … but, I think, to leave us alone. Mom doesn’t always work that way, but that day, she did.
And that day, we still didn’t know.
Before she left, the three of us were talking about my boyfriend. We’d only been seeing each other a few weeks – our first date was on my parents’ anniversary, in fact – and he was coming to visit the next day. I was thirty-four, they could see I was smitten, everything was heightened with dad being in the hospital, and this was his first visit. Mr. X.
Mom wanted him to come to the hospital (we’d learned by that point they were admitting dad, they were just waiting for a room). Dad was flat against that. Not the right place. Not the right time. “Another time, Helen.” And he would not be brooked. I was to enjoy our first visit, and a little celebration which had nothing to do with hospitals.
I wasn’t anxious for any brooking myself, not least because – good gravy, what pressure to put on a new guy. I agreed to dad’s proclamation that I would follow through with celebration, and he and Mr. X would meet some other time.
The backstory here is that dad wasn’t a big one with the I Will Not Be Brooked thing. He tended to appreciate my mom’s motivations, and if he didn’t he indulged them. She wasn’t a bad planner, it worked out most of the time. But in a hospital gown and in a poor state of health – not the way he planned to meet the new boy. No. Period. Done. No anger, and no flexing of power. Just a blank absolute, baldly laid down, no more drama than that.
Then he had an attack.
When dad had an attack, he called it the dragon. Dad hated that goddamned dragon. Hated it – and, like the brooking thing: dad was not given to hatred.
He told mom to give him an Oxycodone, and she remonstrated, and he cursed that he didn’t care about prescription guidelines, he needed it and he was going to take the pill.
He took it. Mom left. And he and I sat alone, talking about Cicero and Rome and Sulla and Marius.
And then the room was ready. I seem to have left, perhaps to go home and change clothes, because I then recall coming back to the hospital, suddenly filled with family – and we knew. We knew. We knew.
I hate that goddamned dragon.
No memory of the Challenger, but memory of Martin Bashir and spitting, icy, snowy weather. Bitter stuff. Pretty only on the skylights outside dad’s window. Memory of that long-ago neighbor, of my cousin V, of getting dad into the bed. And a morphine shot.
That was the end, then – the prosaic fussings of a man transferring into a real hospital bed out of an ER one. His abject little cotton gown, socked feet. Orderly, nurse, someone giving him the morphine once he was settled. And gone. No more chance, ever again. No return. No more conversation. Breathing, still, as hideously awful as that process had become. But gone. Irretrievable.
His flesh purple and his muscles thin.
Gold wedding band *glowing* in that twilight.
And me and mom and Mojourner. Only us.
Phone calls on that silvery sneaker, at all hours, in the hallway. I must have called Mr. X, told him. He was still going to come. He was still going to come.
We talked about the plans. Nobody else was with us, it must have been so late. No television by then. Only snow, blackness and glaring hospital parking lot lights. And us. We knew – and could not imagine.
Great Xs of snow on those domed skylights. Falling, then slipping away, occluding the light in soft-edged X shapes.
Dad’s skin so soft.
Mom made us both leave. Get some sleep, she enjoined us. I think I did go to bed, because I have this memory that through much of the next day I was wearing the pants I wore to bed. Fortunately, not obviously pajamas. But yes. That exhaustion, that emotional fume, social oblivion. Living, that day, in the sacred space-time of mourning.
Glowing.
Talking with my best friend TEO at some bitter hour of the morning, knees up, pressed against the hallway wall, sitting on the gleaming floor.
Mom spooned him all night. He died where his heart lived; wrapped up in her.
She called us at 4:30 and we came back. It was like, and unlike, the time we spent alone with him sleeping. But he was there still.
Still.
Stilled.
I held his hand, and some residual electricity spasm’d, pulsed. It didn’t feel like magic. It didn’t mean anything. Even still warm. I knew this was a body. With a wedding band glowing on it.
I did not see him after that. Some did, but I held to his wish he not be … viewed. I treasure those who needed that. Some saw him after his eyes had been harvested, head bandaged, Teiresias destined for an oven, mute, and no longer my daddy. I know why they held his hand then.
I’d held his hand already. That was finished.
And then a blur, a rush, the longest day in the world. I cannot talk to you about that day. Must not, it feels like. Too many things.
***
Some time later, my mom handed me a Valentine’s Day card without telling me. It was from dad. Opening that almost killed me.
But there was one treasure.
Dad had left a voice mail, that day – that dark Columbia day – that day we’d all been at the family house, the day he’d been in his own bed, the day we were smiling over those nifty phones. He’d left me his voice. “Hello (phone number)” that gruff, joyous voice of his.
He hadn’t known.
I lost that recording, long long ago.
I don’t need it. Any more than I needed to hold or see his body after it became the domain of orderlies and donations and morgues.
But I miss it.
***
So, today, when my mom left me a recording my email dutifully saved to a file. I sent it home.
"Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. ... Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”
--Douglas Adams
One week before my dad died, we got cell phones. I recall him, mom, and me in their room, programming the little sneaker-shaped things, laughing at how amazing they were, playing with ring tones and so on, commenting about their appearance.
Dad was in bed that day, and we got the phones because his disease was terminal. Mom wanted to be able to reach out instantly in case of emergency.
We had no idea we had so little time left.
Long after he died, I read somewhere about the Columbia shuttle disaster, and was shocked and perplexed; I had no recollection of this event, and this is not the sort of event one easily misses. It had happened the day I was over at the house, playing with the phones. It’s entirely possible – even quite likely – that we were watching news of it that day. If I claimed to remember, I’d be convincing myself though.
An event I cannot erase, unfortunately, was the epochal broadcast of the Michael Jackson interview with Martin Bashir. This aired the night before he died – and after we did know.
Dad went to the hospital on a Friday afternoon, or perhaps it was morning. I went upstairs to my boss’s boss’s office, a still and stately area of our building, and interrupted a meeting between them. Anything my own boss said was blotted out by her boss, a man I still respect, admire, and am immensely grateful to to this day. He all but insisted upon getting me a car to the hospital. But I drove. I needed that time in the empty space of the cab of my beloved, first car. I needed to have it and the freedom of movement it brought with it, and I had the strangest fear of leaving it, like my purse, at my office – and then what, and then what, was all I could think, though I recognized how kind the offer was even as I refused. I needed the drive.
I needed somewhat less the turquoise Honda or Toyota with the Icthys and “GOT CHRIST” sticker on the back that cut me off on a steeply curved part of the freeway, where I spun out and ended at a standstill, facing east in the westbound lanes, and wondering (to this day, yes) whether that Christian ever knew what they’d done to me. Even just on the practical level.
The rest of the drive was safe, and the hospital was what hospitals are. Dad was in a grey cul-de-sac of the ER, it seems cluttered in my memory, but we were alone at least. Mom left us after a little while – ostensibly to eat or go get someone or talk to people or use that cell phone … but, I think, to leave us alone. Mom doesn’t always work that way, but that day, she did.
And that day, we still didn’t know.
Before she left, the three of us were talking about my boyfriend. We’d only been seeing each other a few weeks – our first date was on my parents’ anniversary, in fact – and he was coming to visit the next day. I was thirty-four, they could see I was smitten, everything was heightened with dad being in the hospital, and this was his first visit. Mr. X.
Mom wanted him to come to the hospital (we’d learned by that point they were admitting dad, they were just waiting for a room). Dad was flat against that. Not the right place. Not the right time. “Another time, Helen.” And he would not be brooked. I was to enjoy our first visit, and a little celebration which had nothing to do with hospitals.
I wasn’t anxious for any brooking myself, not least because – good gravy, what pressure to put on a new guy. I agreed to dad’s proclamation that I would follow through with celebration, and he and Mr. X would meet some other time.
The backstory here is that dad wasn’t a big one with the I Will Not Be Brooked thing. He tended to appreciate my mom’s motivations, and if he didn’t he indulged them. She wasn’t a bad planner, it worked out most of the time. But in a hospital gown and in a poor state of health – not the way he planned to meet the new boy. No. Period. Done. No anger, and no flexing of power. Just a blank absolute, baldly laid down, no more drama than that.
Then he had an attack.
When dad had an attack, he called it the dragon. Dad hated that goddamned dragon. Hated it – and, like the brooking thing: dad was not given to hatred.
He told mom to give him an Oxycodone, and she remonstrated, and he cursed that he didn’t care about prescription guidelines, he needed it and he was going to take the pill.
He took it. Mom left. And he and I sat alone, talking about Cicero and Rome and Sulla and Marius.
And then the room was ready. I seem to have left, perhaps to go home and change clothes, because I then recall coming back to the hospital, suddenly filled with family – and we knew. We knew. We knew.
I hate that goddamned dragon.
No memory of the Challenger, but memory of Martin Bashir and spitting, icy, snowy weather. Bitter stuff. Pretty only on the skylights outside dad’s window. Memory of that long-ago neighbor, of my cousin V, of getting dad into the bed. And a morphine shot.
That was the end, then – the prosaic fussings of a man transferring into a real hospital bed out of an ER one. His abject little cotton gown, socked feet. Orderly, nurse, someone giving him the morphine once he was settled. And gone. No more chance, ever again. No return. No more conversation. Breathing, still, as hideously awful as that process had become. But gone. Irretrievable.
His flesh purple and his muscles thin.
Gold wedding band *glowing* in that twilight.
And me and mom and Mojourner. Only us.
Phone calls on that silvery sneaker, at all hours, in the hallway. I must have called Mr. X, told him. He was still going to come. He was still going to come.
We talked about the plans. Nobody else was with us, it must have been so late. No television by then. Only snow, blackness and glaring hospital parking lot lights. And us. We knew – and could not imagine.
Great Xs of snow on those domed skylights. Falling, then slipping away, occluding the light in soft-edged X shapes.
Dad’s skin so soft.
Mom made us both leave. Get some sleep, she enjoined us. I think I did go to bed, because I have this memory that through much of the next day I was wearing the pants I wore to bed. Fortunately, not obviously pajamas. But yes. That exhaustion, that emotional fume, social oblivion. Living, that day, in the sacred space-time of mourning.
Glowing.
Talking with my best friend TEO at some bitter hour of the morning, knees up, pressed against the hallway wall, sitting on the gleaming floor.
Mom spooned him all night. He died where his heart lived; wrapped up in her.
She called us at 4:30 and we came back. It was like, and unlike, the time we spent alone with him sleeping. But he was there still.
Still.
Stilled.
I held his hand, and some residual electricity spasm’d, pulsed. It didn’t feel like magic. It didn’t mean anything. Even still warm. I knew this was a body. With a wedding band glowing on it.
I did not see him after that. Some did, but I held to his wish he not be … viewed. I treasure those who needed that. Some saw him after his eyes had been harvested, head bandaged, Teiresias destined for an oven, mute, and no longer my daddy. I know why they held his hand then.
I’d held his hand already. That was finished.
And then a blur, a rush, the longest day in the world. I cannot talk to you about that day. Must not, it feels like. Too many things.
***
Some time later, my mom handed me a Valentine’s Day card without telling me. It was from dad. Opening that almost killed me.
But there was one treasure.
Dad had left a voice mail, that day – that dark Columbia day – that day we’d all been at the family house, the day he’d been in his own bed, the day we were smiling over those nifty phones. He’d left me his voice. “Hello (phone number)” that gruff, joyous voice of his.
He hadn’t known.
I lost that recording, long long ago.
I don’t need it. Any more than I needed to hold or see his body after it became the domain of orderlies and donations and morgues.
But I miss it.
***
So, today, when my mom left me a recording my email dutifully saved to a file. I sent it home.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Oh Duck
In the words of Jinkx Monsoon, the phrase of this evening - as it must be, sometimes - is "Water off a duck's back" (to be repeated as needed, which seems to be an awful lot lately).
One of those personal problems one doesn't blog about in public (if one is a little old lady who still prizes, inordinately, the treasure and concept of privacy), which has been doing that silent looming thing so many of the more unspeakable issues in life like to do, is approaching a possible denouement I both desire and find absolutely terrifying.
People are still unemployed. People I love, and cannot help.
Other people are trapped, frustrated, angry, and hurting. Others are just hurting - and, by "just" in this instance, sadly we mean they are unfortunately self-absorbed.
This person has little to offer anyone, an unfortunate circumstance given that "may I bring satisfaction and joy" is a chief prayer in my life. It's one thing to lack satisfaction of my own; it's another thing entirely to watch the people I love most unable to grasp it.
Earlier this evening I didn't get a certain agent, and it bums me out.
I succumbed to dread, irritation, and sadness - but life doesn't offer the luxury to indulge this for long. Tomorrow is another (golden, eighty-degree) day. I'm sucking it up.
I'm soldiering on.
Thank goodness for the wisdom of a drag queen. "Water off a duck's back." They're designed to shed the stuff - even float across it. Surely I'm this ingeniously made ...
I'm off to wield a butter knife. See y'all soon, with more relevant posts.
One of those personal problems one doesn't blog about in public (if one is a little old lady who still prizes, inordinately, the treasure and concept of privacy), which has been doing that silent looming thing so many of the more unspeakable issues in life like to do, is approaching a possible denouement I both desire and find absolutely terrifying.
People are still unemployed. People I love, and cannot help.
Other people are trapped, frustrated, angry, and hurting. Others are just hurting - and, by "just" in this instance, sadly we mean they are unfortunately self-absorbed.
This person has little to offer anyone, an unfortunate circumstance given that "may I bring satisfaction and joy" is a chief prayer in my life. It's one thing to lack satisfaction of my own; it's another thing entirely to watch the people I love most unable to grasp it.
Earlier this evening I didn't get a certain agent, and it bums me out.
I succumbed to dread, irritation, and sadness - but life doesn't offer the luxury to indulge this for long. Tomorrow is another (golden, eighty-degree) day. I'm sucking it up.
I'm soldiering on.
Thank goodness for the wisdom of a drag queen. "Water off a duck's back." They're designed to shed the stuff - even float across it. Surely I'm this ingeniously made ...
I'm off to wield a butter knife. See y'all soon, with more relevant posts.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Anniversary
Housecleaning has always been a rite, a worship, for me. A thanksgiving, stewardship of what I have been given, what I always hope to earn, to deserve.
Here is a post about the people who were the vehicle by which I was given everything I have, everything I am. About an artifact I hope my nieces will love someday, too.
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of my parents' marriage, and though dad's not on this plane to share it with us, mom and I had a brief celebration of sorts, doing a crossword together on the phone this morning. We used to do them as a family, spanning the kitchen and family room, calling out clues and answers out loud; crosswords were a shared thing for us. Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the first "word cross" puzzle, too.
I seem to like anniversary markers, though through most of my life I'd probably have said that sort of thing didn't really have meaning in itself. But as I've grown a little older, time - and its observance (and marking) - means more to me, or perhaps I just recognize what it's always meant to me. Mr. X being so far away probably throws this tendency into higher relief, but that's okay.
Today is also the eleventh anniversary of our first date. I can still recall so vividly getting dressed for that date, our walking together to the restaurant - the very silly place we went - and his engaging telling of The Greatest Bike Wreck Ever Told, a story about X as a kid having what could have been a nasty wipeout and rising from it triumphantly unscathed. To this day, that memory just makes me grin at what an adorable kid he still can be from time to time. Not a lot of people other than his kids get to see that side of X. It's a nice side.
Mama gave me the wedding album when she remarried, and its images feel so close, for me - even though they all predate me by years. Padded ivory vinyl and little brass fleur-de-lys. "Wedding memories" in gold leaf. Stiff, brass-cornered pages, black and white eight-by-tens, parchment leaves in between every image, every page. Five little brass feet on the back cover of the book. A somewhat tattered box.
The photo of my parents' hands on their guestbook, mama's pretty little fingers slim and unbent by arthritis, the ring slender and unadorned - no sapphires flanking the bright diamond , commemorating two children yet unborn and un-imagined. The picture of my mom and grandma, the pastel hat grandma wore, which I have now, hanging in my dining room. The picture of mom with my aunts, her sisters, putting on her garter, her appealingly turned ankle, her beautiful little sculpted heel - the wedding crystal and the Fostoria parfaits behind her on my grandparents' mantel, in front of the mirror mama bought for them, which now lives in my own bedroom. What that mirror has seen. I remember it, hanging always over grandma's living room, angled downward so we could always see so much, hanging so high.
One of the most striking images in the album is the one of granddaddy walking her into the church. They're all black and white, and the wedding was in the evening in December. A puff of wind took up mama's veil and the composition is full of movement, excitement, joy. Granddaddy looks stoical, but mama is so young, so fresh, so pretty. The veil rises up toward a deepening winter twilight, framing the dimmer image of my aunt in the background. Mama, in white, is luminous, a shock of brightness.
My older cousins, little girls, white pinafores, white socks, and black patent maryjanes. Adorable chubby knees. Aunts and uncles. My young grandparents, all of them, together. These are the only photos I have of all of them together, and I so love these pictures. I cry a little bit, that mom gave this to me. This time capsule, this treasure.
This observation of time. Of a date, so important.
If my mom was beautiful, my daddy was so handsome. He was a furry fellow, and so dapper. His hands were warm and manly. His hair was amusingly thick, here - and yet, as he grew older, as his crowning glory grew thinner, he never looked any different to any of us. He was a good looking man, they were a beautiful couple. I had no idea of that, for so long, but once I realized it I have never been able to look back at pictures of them without seeing that anew.
Lace tablecloth, lace long sleeves, gleaming satin, a little linoleum-floored church hall. Aunt V. putting her hands over dad's eyes as he slipped the garter off of mama's pretty leg, laughter, the sweet comedy of propriety meeting promise, and a couple I know were deeply attracted to each other. Dad found mom utterly beautiful until the day he died; she always dressed and made herself up for him - until the day he died.
The bouquet, midair, the small group of smiling women - I don't know who caught it. The photo captures the penultimate moment, the instant of promise the superstition carries, of potential and possibility ... whoever catches it, marries next ...
Mama in her pretty traveling suit and hat, little black shoes on her tiny feet now, her and dad's heads bowed as the rice flies around them, coming down the evening steps. Out beside the car, the last streaks of light in the clouds above their heads - an image easily as striking, as gorgeous, as mom's entrance with my grandfather. Her open, nervous, exciting smile. Mom's smile always so wide. Mom's smile always a defining feature of her - mom's laugh is so much a part of her self. Like her, I know people identify me by my laugh. Mom's youth, mom's face in love.
And the final picture.
Daddy, in the driver's seat, arm around mama, her smile rising above an almost ridiculously large pouf of corsage, the checks of her suit the only pattern in eight by ten inches of black and white and silver.
Daddy's smile. His eyes all on her. His peaked eyebrows, his cute nose.
His everlasting, abiding love. My dad ... was beautiful.
Happy anniversary, mom and dad.
Here is a post about the people who were the vehicle by which I was given everything I have, everything I am. About an artifact I hope my nieces will love someday, too.
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of my parents' marriage, and though dad's not on this plane to share it with us, mom and I had a brief celebration of sorts, doing a crossword together on the phone this morning. We used to do them as a family, spanning the kitchen and family room, calling out clues and answers out loud; crosswords were a shared thing for us. Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the first "word cross" puzzle, too.
I seem to like anniversary markers, though through most of my life I'd probably have said that sort of thing didn't really have meaning in itself. But as I've grown a little older, time - and its observance (and marking) - means more to me, or perhaps I just recognize what it's always meant to me. Mr. X being so far away probably throws this tendency into higher relief, but that's okay.
Today is also the eleventh anniversary of our first date. I can still recall so vividly getting dressed for that date, our walking together to the restaurant - the very silly place we went - and his engaging telling of The Greatest Bike Wreck Ever Told, a story about X as a kid having what could have been a nasty wipeout and rising from it triumphantly unscathed. To this day, that memory just makes me grin at what an adorable kid he still can be from time to time. Not a lot of people other than his kids get to see that side of X. It's a nice side.
Mama gave me the wedding album when she remarried, and its images feel so close, for me - even though they all predate me by years. Padded ivory vinyl and little brass fleur-de-lys. "Wedding memories" in gold leaf. Stiff, brass-cornered pages, black and white eight-by-tens, parchment leaves in between every image, every page. Five little brass feet on the back cover of the book. A somewhat tattered box.
The photo of my parents' hands on their guestbook, mama's pretty little fingers slim and unbent by arthritis, the ring slender and unadorned - no sapphires flanking the bright diamond , commemorating two children yet unborn and un-imagined. The picture of my mom and grandma, the pastel hat grandma wore, which I have now, hanging in my dining room. The picture of mom with my aunts, her sisters, putting on her garter, her appealingly turned ankle, her beautiful little sculpted heel - the wedding crystal and the Fostoria parfaits behind her on my grandparents' mantel, in front of the mirror mama bought for them, which now lives in my own bedroom. What that mirror has seen. I remember it, hanging always over grandma's living room, angled downward so we could always see so much, hanging so high.
One of the most striking images in the album is the one of granddaddy walking her into the church. They're all black and white, and the wedding was in the evening in December. A puff of wind took up mama's veil and the composition is full of movement, excitement, joy. Granddaddy looks stoical, but mama is so young, so fresh, so pretty. The veil rises up toward a deepening winter twilight, framing the dimmer image of my aunt in the background. Mama, in white, is luminous, a shock of brightness.
My older cousins, little girls, white pinafores, white socks, and black patent maryjanes. Adorable chubby knees. Aunts and uncles. My young grandparents, all of them, together. These are the only photos I have of all of them together, and I so love these pictures. I cry a little bit, that mom gave this to me. This time capsule, this treasure.
This observation of time. Of a date, so important.
If my mom was beautiful, my daddy was so handsome. He was a furry fellow, and so dapper. His hands were warm and manly. His hair was amusingly thick, here - and yet, as he grew older, as his crowning glory grew thinner, he never looked any different to any of us. He was a good looking man, they were a beautiful couple. I had no idea of that, for so long, but once I realized it I have never been able to look back at pictures of them without seeing that anew.
Lace tablecloth, lace long sleeves, gleaming satin, a little linoleum-floored church hall. Aunt V. putting her hands over dad's eyes as he slipped the garter off of mama's pretty leg, laughter, the sweet comedy of propriety meeting promise, and a couple I know were deeply attracted to each other. Dad found mom utterly beautiful until the day he died; she always dressed and made herself up for him - until the day he died.
The bouquet, midair, the small group of smiling women - I don't know who caught it. The photo captures the penultimate moment, the instant of promise the superstition carries, of potential and possibility ... whoever catches it, marries next ...
Mama in her pretty traveling suit and hat, little black shoes on her tiny feet now, her and dad's heads bowed as the rice flies around them, coming down the evening steps. Out beside the car, the last streaks of light in the clouds above their heads - an image easily as striking, as gorgeous, as mom's entrance with my grandfather. Her open, nervous, exciting smile. Mom's smile always so wide. Mom's smile always a defining feature of her - mom's laugh is so much a part of her self. Like her, I know people identify me by my laugh. Mom's youth, mom's face in love.
And the final picture.
Daddy, in the driver's seat, arm around mama, her smile rising above an almost ridiculously large pouf of corsage, the checks of her suit the only pattern in eight by ten inches of black and white and silver.
Daddy's smile. His eyes all on her. His peaked eyebrows, his cute nose.
His everlasting, abiding love. My dad ... was beautiful.
Happy anniversary, mom and dad.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
The Reason ...
... this blog has consisted mostly of links to articles and other blogs lately isn't that I haven't anything to say, it's just that so much of what I have to say I feel it's too soon to get to. (No, I am not agented, nor have I won the lottery and need to keep it under my hat.) Sometimes in life, it's just necessary to hang on a moment before opening your yap - or, in the case of a keyboard, I suppose, going "tap tap tap".
Life is ON tap. Sometimes, you have to let it come to a head and settle. So that's what's up with me not yammering quite as I normally do.
Life is ON tap. Sometimes, you have to let it come to a head and settle. So that's what's up with me not yammering quite as I normally do.
Monday, September 2, 2013
Literalism versus Favoritism
Growing up in my family, it didn't do to be reductive. Superlatives and absolutes tended to be greeted with deconstructive comments (not un-constructive, but rather debunkingly analytical), and so I learned early to avoid stating many extremes.
Well, I didn't learn not to state them. But I did learn that if I took anything to a descriptive limit, there would always be someone standing by that boundary to prove it was far more distant than anything I could quantify, or that the very boundary itself was imaginary.
So I began at a young age to take the concept of "favorite", for instance, to its illogical conclusion, and to avoid the idea assiduously. I can actually recall taking my idea, that green was my favorite color, and lying in the backseat of my parents' very green indeed Plymouth Fury station wagon, peering at the physical greenness of my surroundings, and imagining green as the ONLY color I could ever have, and being disappointed.
It's one of the million ways we affect one another as humans, this sort of tiny influencing commentary of a family, which becomes a very silly part of someone's being, far far beyond any real intention or even expectation. My parents and brother might have wanted me to become a critical thinker, but to provide me a mild neurosis about favorite things could hardly have been their point. It means (per my blog's very headline) that I contain multitudes, but it also means I make a rotten interview, because I snark on about how reductive questions are instead of answering them.
And so I am aware that people are capable of feeling that one color is best, or one food is peerless, but the idea of choosing gives me the distantest echo of Sophie's dilemma, in that I despise to pick one superlative because everything apart from "the best" still creates the richness and variety and context that makes anything truly shine. Intellectually, I can know that loving one thing most doesn't doom all else to destruction - and yet, the only context in this world in which I can honestly say I have a favorite is in Mr. X, who is my most favorite person in the world with whom I don't share DNA. I peek around from time to time, just to be sure, but at almost eleven years knowing him, it seems reasonable to state he really did ruin me for all the other boys.
It can be bewildering, though, to run across other people's favorite things, because there can be hard lines in this world it's trickier to negotiate if you don't draw your own. Other people can put you on a path or hem you in with their ability to hold absolutes - in religion and politics, of course, this can get dangerous. And, at times, it can be more comfortable to be persuasable ("where do you want to eat?"), but of course there are those who see a certain type of flexibility as waffling.
I have my convictions, but I keep them pretty close and refuse to hand them out to anyone I am not pretty intimate with. Most of my own hard lines took me decades to draw - and, as I have grown older, I have discarded some of those things I thought were non-negotiable when I was a younger person. Few of my deepest ... expectations (beliefs can be a different thing) ... have ever actually changed - and yet, I have seen my methods of managing their presence adapt in amazing ways over my lifetime.
This calendar year has seen some of the profoundest philosophical changes in me - without compromise, and yet without radical outward alterations. It is at the deepest level I've let go of certain boundaries, and in the quietest solitude of my soul I have found liberty it astonishes me to have given myself and my heart.
Relinquishing certain expectations has only solidified the power of what drives and matters to me most. Letting go of certain ideas of practical living, of faith, and even love, has only deepened these things by providing clarity. There is great peace in the understanding this can give, and such emotional power, and all over again I find myself grateful with the blessings that seem to provide themselves to me, all undeserving. Paths are easier to follow, fears are fewer.
I don't know a lot of people who can claim the assurance I feel, simply by letting go of certain ideas about conviction, by questioning those things which are supposed to be "given" for us as human beings.
Question something you hate, or love, or fear. Really let yourself be wrong ... or, more terrifyingly, right. There's almost no liberty like it. Almost no power at all. It is joyous.
Well, I didn't learn not to state them. But I did learn that if I took anything to a descriptive limit, there would always be someone standing by that boundary to prove it was far more distant than anything I could quantify, or that the very boundary itself was imaginary.
So I began at a young age to take the concept of "favorite", for instance, to its illogical conclusion, and to avoid the idea assiduously. I can actually recall taking my idea, that green was my favorite color, and lying in the backseat of my parents' very green indeed Plymouth Fury station wagon, peering at the physical greenness of my surroundings, and imagining green as the ONLY color I could ever have, and being disappointed.
It's one of the million ways we affect one another as humans, this sort of tiny influencing commentary of a family, which becomes a very silly part of someone's being, far far beyond any real intention or even expectation. My parents and brother might have wanted me to become a critical thinker, but to provide me a mild neurosis about favorite things could hardly have been their point. It means (per my blog's very headline) that I contain multitudes, but it also means I make a rotten interview, because I snark on about how reductive questions are instead of answering them.
And so I am aware that people are capable of feeling that one color is best, or one food is peerless, but the idea of choosing gives me the distantest echo of Sophie's dilemma, in that I despise to pick one superlative because everything apart from "the best" still creates the richness and variety and context that makes anything truly shine. Intellectually, I can know that loving one thing most doesn't doom all else to destruction - and yet, the only context in this world in which I can honestly say I have a favorite is in Mr. X, who is my most favorite person in the world with whom I don't share DNA. I peek around from time to time, just to be sure, but at almost eleven years knowing him, it seems reasonable to state he really did ruin me for all the other boys.
It can be bewildering, though, to run across other people's favorite things, because there can be hard lines in this world it's trickier to negotiate if you don't draw your own. Other people can put you on a path or hem you in with their ability to hold absolutes - in religion and politics, of course, this can get dangerous. And, at times, it can be more comfortable to be persuasable ("where do you want to eat?"), but of course there are those who see a certain type of flexibility as waffling.
I have my convictions, but I keep them pretty close and refuse to hand them out to anyone I am not pretty intimate with. Most of my own hard lines took me decades to draw - and, as I have grown older, I have discarded some of those things I thought were non-negotiable when I was a younger person. Few of my deepest ... expectations (beliefs can be a different thing) ... have ever actually changed - and yet, I have seen my methods of managing their presence adapt in amazing ways over my lifetime.
This calendar year has seen some of the profoundest philosophical changes in me - without compromise, and yet without radical outward alterations. It is at the deepest level I've let go of certain boundaries, and in the quietest solitude of my soul I have found liberty it astonishes me to have given myself and my heart.
Relinquishing certain expectations has only solidified the power of what drives and matters to me most. Letting go of certain ideas of practical living, of faith, and even love, has only deepened these things by providing clarity. There is great peace in the understanding this can give, and such emotional power, and all over again I find myself grateful with the blessings that seem to provide themselves to me, all undeserving. Paths are easier to follow, fears are fewer.
I don't know a lot of people who can claim the assurance I feel, simply by letting go of certain ideas about conviction, by questioning those things which are supposed to be "given" for us as human beings.
Question something you hate, or love, or fear. Really let yourself be wrong ... or, more terrifyingly, right. There's almost no liberty like it. Almost no power at all. It is joyous.
Friday, August 2, 2013
Prey About It - Again and Again and Again ...
Most of the men I know who read my blog, or at least these posts about what it is like to be a woman, have asked me what exactly triggered what essentially appears to them to be an outburst. Triggered is an interesting word choice, given its increasing association with the post traumatic stimuli of violative assault (I repudiate the term "sexual" assault, as rape is not and never has been about SEX - which is a sacred and blessed part of our humanity), and - yes - there was an incident recently that got me thinking about just how little most men understand the experience of womanhood - and, sadly, of girlhood.
The trigger, for me, was not something to get upset about.
And, the more I have let it sit and the more I have thought about it, THAT is precisely what upsets me so much and has got me talking. The fact that an incident of personal violation, because it's "just" verbal, is not "worth" getting upset about in our world.
If it were a man, or a boy, people would smack foreheads and freak out. But the thought of a woman's being inappropriately approached, in public, is quite literally "nothing" to us. To men, *and* to women.
Which is simply an outrage.
There are a lot of other things going on in the world, too, which are worthy - indeed, demand - upset. The boys club of the Texas legislature. The depravity and intimate brutality to which a woman must be subjected by strangers because she has the temerity to create a professional career in sex education (this link is the story of a woman first verbally assaulted with vulgarity and insuperable presumption by a stranger with sexual advice for her to take with her own husband, and it is perhaps the finest written piece of meticulously reasoned, and REASONABLE, outrage I've read in months). And it's not all sensational stories about ass-grabbing, either. Sometimes it's disguised in terms like "gravitas" as we dismiss the (imaginary - and faultily reasoned) specter of the "gender backed" "female dollar."
We live in an excessively screwed-up (terminology and entendres quite entirely intentional, yes) world, society, and culture, and the rapidly increasing control exerted by every aspect of it upon women is frightening and angering an awful lot of us.
But, yeah - I began talking, began my personal version of "activism" by airing out the things I have to say and participating, well, actively in this "conversation" because of those things - and because of the recent thing - which have happened to me. These things MUST be exposed to the light of day. The intrusive consequences of simply being a woman are immoral, and these things must be said. Again and again and again.
I regret, to an extremely small and not particularly uncomfortable degree, minimizing what has triggered me most recently - and yet, I also feel that, as Jill McDevitt points out, there's an awful lot about the experience of my gender and my body which are flat-out nobody's business but my own. I may privately backtrack somewhat and explain what I am discussing here, for those extremely few men whose concern I actually give a rat's behind about managing - because I care about them and The Unknown, particularly when so archly published on the internet (after discussions dismissively saying "nothing happened") is sort of a wench move. It may lead to clinical and substantive conversations which aren't all about me, and for those men I care about who have daughters, it could be worthwhile to take the instructive posts I've already written and contextualize them in the current events of a woman they care for in return.
As for the rest of you - given the disturbing and intimate personal information I've already shared, I don't feel it's appropriate nor necessary to go on about more. This doesn't bear further actual explanation, no matter how strongly I feel that "these things" need to be said again and again and again. Please understand that no new sexual (again there's that inappropriate terminology) harassment at work has occurred. That physically I am intact and untouched. That, depressing as it is, "It's really no big deal" is all it deserves, in terms of public discourse.
That my privacy is as much my own as my body.
Sometimes, I look at the extent to which my parents emphasized for me my bodily and spiritual autonomy, beginning way back in the wee hours of the 1970s, is almost miraculous. That is the people who raised me - human beings of such dignity. Who put a premium on their children. Whose ultimate goal, whether it was religion or politics or personal experience of violation, was to protect and preserve and always to VALUE their daughter.
My sense of self wasn't something they taught me with tedious explicitness, by rote, even by words. It was their inimitable example.
I am incalculably grateful for their lesson.
The trigger, for me, was not something to get upset about.
And, the more I have let it sit and the more I have thought about it, THAT is precisely what upsets me so much and has got me talking. The fact that an incident of personal violation, because it's "just" verbal, is not "worth" getting upset about in our world.
If it were a man, or a boy, people would smack foreheads and freak out. But the thought of a woman's being inappropriately approached, in public, is quite literally "nothing" to us. To men, *and* to women.
Which is simply an outrage.
There are a lot of other things going on in the world, too, which are worthy - indeed, demand - upset. The boys club of the Texas legislature. The depravity and intimate brutality to which a woman must be subjected by strangers because she has the temerity to create a professional career in sex education (this link is the story of a woman first verbally assaulted with vulgarity and insuperable presumption by a stranger with sexual advice for her to take with her own husband, and it is perhaps the finest written piece of meticulously reasoned, and REASONABLE, outrage I've read in months). And it's not all sensational stories about ass-grabbing, either. Sometimes it's disguised in terms like "gravitas" as we dismiss the (imaginary - and faultily reasoned) specter of the "gender backed" "female dollar."
We live in an excessively screwed-up (terminology and entendres quite entirely intentional, yes) world, society, and culture, and the rapidly increasing control exerted by every aspect of it upon women is frightening and angering an awful lot of us.
But, yeah - I began talking, began my personal version of "activism" by airing out the things I have to say and participating, well, actively in this "conversation" because of those things - and because of the recent thing - which have happened to me. These things MUST be exposed to the light of day. The intrusive consequences of simply being a woman are immoral, and these things must be said. Again and again and again.
I regret, to an extremely small and not particularly uncomfortable degree, minimizing what has triggered me most recently - and yet, I also feel that, as Jill McDevitt points out, there's an awful lot about the experience of my gender and my body which are flat-out nobody's business but my own. I may privately backtrack somewhat and explain what I am discussing here, for those extremely few men whose concern I actually give a rat's behind about managing - because I care about them and The Unknown, particularly when so archly published on the internet (after discussions dismissively saying "nothing happened") is sort of a wench move. It may lead to clinical and substantive conversations which aren't all about me, and for those men I care about who have daughters, it could be worthwhile to take the instructive posts I've already written and contextualize them in the current events of a woman they care for in return.
As for the rest of you - given the disturbing and intimate personal information I've already shared, I don't feel it's appropriate nor necessary to go on about more. This doesn't bear further actual explanation, no matter how strongly I feel that "these things" need to be said again and again and again. Please understand that no new sexual (again there's that inappropriate terminology) harassment at work has occurred. That physically I am intact and untouched. That, depressing as it is, "It's really no big deal" is all it deserves, in terms of public discourse.
That my privacy is as much my own as my body.
Sometimes, I look at the extent to which my parents emphasized for me my bodily and spiritual autonomy, beginning way back in the wee hours of the 1970s, is almost miraculous. That is the people who raised me - human beings of such dignity. Who put a premium on their children. Whose ultimate goal, whether it was religion or politics or personal experience of violation, was to protect and preserve and always to VALUE their daughter.
My sense of self wasn't something they taught me with tedious explicitness, by rote, even by words. It was their inimitable example.
I am incalculably grateful for their lesson.
Monday, July 22, 2013
I Never ...
Apropos of PRECISELY nothing appropriate nor relevant ... In my life, I have never said the words, "Kiss me." You see that, sometimes - books, movies. When the moment calls for it, if it's not happening, I guess I've always just done the kissing.
That is all.
That is all.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Thoughts from Someone Else's Bad Day ...
There is a place, somewhere between masochism and denying, where we dare exactly the worst things to come for us. Things we already know are the worst things. Things we should never, ever court.
Someone I love is going into that dangerous and seductive shadow. That place where we start to taunt the universe, “just you do it again” and pick at the fear like a scab.
Prayers welcome.
Someone I love is going into that dangerous and seductive shadow. That place where we start to taunt the universe, “just you do it again” and pick at the fear like a scab.
Prayers welcome.
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