Password

I hand it to her and she rolls it over in her hand and asks me what it is. I explain that my newest hobby is collecting stones and crystals and researching the metaphysical qualities and histories of each glittering rock and pebble, some rough, some polished, their genesis, their lore, their mysticism. We sit on her back deck steps, the stoop, we both call it; she, using a term from her homeland, and me from growing up in an area that was originally settled by great farmers from her homeland, many hundreds of years ago. Some of the streets still bear the names of the settlers, although my hometown is now as ethnically diverse as New York City (being so close to it) and the denizens don't know any of those people, no memories or legacy save the signposts. She rolls it around and around while I look at the stream at our feet behind the giant clay Buddha. We're both barefoot, painted toes in muted tones of green and blue for me, and cherry red for her. I look up into the sun. Where I live, an hour away, it's pouring rain, but here the ground is dry and when she arrived a bit late for our appointment, I seized the opportunity of escaping the stuffy office by suggesting we go out for some fresh air one day and she said, 'Let's do it now', and here we are.

It's a black tourmaline, called schorl. I tell her that it's hers, but she has to pass it on to someone else who needs it. It's a balancing stone, enhances energy, releases tension, removes blockages. More importantly, it removes negative attachments. I ask her to give it to a patient she might think needs it. Someone who might be in love and needs to and wants to be released, and her eyes light up with comprehension and she says, 'I have someone in mind'. I said, 'I know. I dreamed of this conversation last night. Tell them that I have the sister stone. Whether they're a man or woman, tell them I am their sister too.'

I hand her another stone and tell her that this one is for her, alone. I've already cleansed and activated it and it belongs to her. I knew it belonged to her the moment I saw it and after it was in my possession, I further researched its history and my intuition was correct that it was meant for her. She holds it up in the sparkling sunlight and asks me what it was called. I put down my water bottle and say, Hollandite, the Blessing Star and yours is extra-special because it's a Lightbrary stone, meaning that the main stone, the master, mentor or teacher is surrounded by smaller crystals that cling to it in a cluster, rather than push off in opposite directions. The smaller stones are students, disciples, acolytes, etc. The stone alone is full of the energy of joy and laughter, and balance, and as a Lightbrary, full of wisdom, like her. She tells me she's never seen one and I said, 'They're extinct. A vein of them was found in another stone mine and has never been found again. Whatever is out there is all there is, so it's pretty special, like you. It's not payment for anything, but a token of gratitude and affection.' She tells me she loves it and I can tell she does. That was in the dream too.  I told her that a long time before we ever met, I was told that an older wise woman resembling her would counsel me and someone together and although they were wrong about that person and I even said, not possible because he lives in another country, they were right about our working together and she chuckled and said, 'It's so funny the way the universe works.' I agreed and updated her on the goings-on with the latest shenanigans of the ex. 'Well, your decision is very mature. You've grown a lot.' My eyes cloud over and I watch the whirlpools in the water. The cicadas serenade us.


'Are you crazy? Really, what the hell? Are you going to do anything?' We're sitting in a pub in Port Jervis because she forgot that her favorite tiki bar is closed and she's disappointed. I'm overjoyed we're able to catch up and it's contagious because she's happy again.  I'm asking the waitress if the mussels are any good. She interrupts the server to tell me their nachos aren't so I shouldn't trust the shellfish and the woman looks at me and says quietly...hopefully, 'We sell a lot of them every night. The steamed clams and stuffed clams too.'  I take a chance and order the mussels. 'No...no....I don't intend to do anything about that. He wants me to react. I feel more sorry for her.' 'Tell me honestly, did you feel a pang of hurt when you saw a pic of them together?' 'Honestly, I felt nothing.' It was true and it felt good. The food arrives and the mussels are green New Zealand, my favorite and so pristine without a single grain of sand. The marinara sauce is full of fresh basil and garlic and I listen to her grumble as she delicately picks at a slice of bread like a piece of rich cake. I notice the window box is filled with basil and remember my grandmother's garden and how the largest plant, she had nicknamed, The Dragon. I suck down the mussels, the sauce a perfect balance of hot and sweet and I haven't had mussels in so long, it's like finding an oasis of luscious flavor. I took a chance and it paid off. 'So let me get this straight....you left the courthouse and went straight to the tattoo studio?' 'No, I left the administration building and went straight to the tattoo studio.' 'And you got a tattoo?' 'Yep'. My mouth is full of garlic bread. I grin anyway. 'Can I see it?' I twist and show her my shoulder. She pulls the fabric aside and gasps. 'Wow. I didn't expect it to be so pretty and I didn't expect you to ever get one. You just went in and got one just like that?' 'No, the week before I stopped in after I picked up a sandwich at the deli and wanted to just ask about a price but I was kind of impressed that the artist looked like Jerry Garcia and he was speaking cryptically, so I started speaking cryptically and just when the flirting got good, I turned around and told him I would be back, so I went back.' 'Did he remember you?' 'Not at first. But he remembered the word and then he remembered me. He said it sounded like a cleaning solution you use at the Vatican. He did it in ten minutes and then I went to therapy and she was more shocked than you are.' We both laugh and I dip an onion ring in ranch dressing. 'But it will always remind you of the sadness, that you were set free.' We split the bill and step outside into pouring rain and walk quickly to the parking lot nearby. 'No, we see things differently. It will always remind me of the freedom that I was able to set them free.' 'Okay, I'm going to text you tonight to look at that thing....' I make a mental note to myself to never order the Riesling there again, it was that bad. 'Okay. Love you.'

The text surprises me. As usually agreed, I call her but I'm delighted and later even find an old voicemail that I somehow missed. She tells me that usually I'm always there when she looks for me and she's a bit unsettled that today I'm.....not and where the hell am I, what the hell? I laugh while listening and my father asks why I'm laughing but I shoo him off. She was looking for me, it would appear, a week ago, and I remember that I needed her and was crying. She responded but by that time I had bounced back and was proud of myself of that new ability. I can live and work and play in the same place with someone I once loved. I'm remarkably okay all things considered. I recall our conversation last night or the night before and she had asked me how I came by the nicknames I gave him and how he came by mine, if it didn't bother me to talk about it. She always wondered about the name Spooky Oats and I said it didn't bother me to talk about it but when I started talking about a pink unicorn I became quiet and she said she was sorry. I was holding a beautiful polished carnelian that Wonton had rejected in favor of a golden healer sunstone which was bought for her anyway and I thought what a clever girl she was knowing what was hers and what was mine. She rolled her stone around the floor and I admitted to myself that I'd had the carnelian for two days now and already had an affinity for it and as I looked at it, talking to my friend on the phone, I saw a unicorn with wings, a pegasus/unicorn and laughed because I didn't believe the shaman who read my animal totem wheel and told me that pegasus/unicorn was one of my totem animals, as was a dragon, come to think of it, well, four dragons, four directions, what did it mean and I burst into tears. 'I shouldn't have brought up the nickname thing' 'No..no...it seems I got my unicorn after all.' I explained and she asked me to take a pic no matter how bad it came out so I did and now it's somewhere in a Facebook album. My grandmother asked me who painted the unicorn on the rock and I tell her God, Mother Nature, the Universe. My cell phone however keeps dropping out and she asks me how I feel looking at his name, seeing his picture. She warns me to stop mentioning him, that it feeds his ego. I don't care. How fragile an ego that must be, then. I tell her I feel nothing and it's true and it feels good.

Her burr is not as thick as I'd imagined when we spoke on the phone and Yamz even went so far to say at times it's incomprehensible but I think that could be chalked up to too much conversational wine on both sides of the Atlantic ocean and besides, I grew up living with immigrant grandparents, and my siblings enjoyed being a mini United Nations, marrying people from distant lands and languages so I have the unsung talent of clearly understanding the thickest accented English but today it won't be needed in a private message. 'Do you want me to delete the fucker?' Actually, it said much worse but the point's been made. 'No..no. It's unnecessary, but I love you for caring.' 'I want to say something. I feel like I should say something, call him out or something.' I told her not to bother. If he never responded to anything I said, he won't respond to anything you say, and it's over all over, let it end here and now. I'm not a victim. He has his own demons to bear but that little turd who added him, him, I wouldn't mind you eviscerating.' She asks me again if I'm sure and I am. And I'm happy.

When I first began dating the one who I shared ten years of my life with, he would run up the side staircase, two flights and knock at the door and I would delightedly run to the door and stand there and whisper, 'What's the password?' He would say, always, 'Password' and I would say, 'Awww come on, play with me.' He never did. I think he was incapable. He didn't know how. No matter what I wanted, he couldn't be that person, didn't want to be that person, and never was that person who would play with me. I was mistaken and it would be a mistake I would make again, looking and overlooking but never quite considering what I needed and wanted and couldn't ever settle for. No matter how much love I had to give, there was something that I was forgetting in the process--myself. Everything I wanted was for them, every dream their dream and none for me.

Because the ex has someone in his life who is curious about me, and has made several overtures to at the very least, know what I'm up to, I preemptively changed my passwords, all ten revolving words, which also revolved around the men I loved, names of hometowns, nicknames, inside jokes, meaningful then, meaningless now, except as memories. Now I've picked out exactly what I should have chosen all along. Words like the one now on my shoulder, meaningful to me and not as some proxy or projection of my undying love to someone who hasn't earned it and has lost a treasure, whether they know it or not. Life is too short to shed tears on the undeserving when you can be celebrating it with those who embrace you with wide open arms.

St. Catherine's

The city on the rolling hills
Where sound will never carry
Those voices I will never hear again
But tonight I have no choice
And so I cannot tarry
And the volume is turned down 'til I don't know when
Out of respect for those who sleep at St. Catherine's

Everyone here I love
Is resting in the night
But I drive in restless silence
Until I see street lights

I'm leaving in a few days
But I must say farewell
And I don't know how to even try
But 'to try' I always will

In the dewy morning
Again I drive up the hill
Cross the entrance and get lost
But find myself (I always do)

I see two marble angels
And muse that they had class
Then down cross the tiny bridge
Near the pillows in the grass

Teddy bears and dolls 
Tucked in among the stones
Little ones remain
Who never will grow old

Then the chapel
Where I once swayed
Should have thrice
But swept away

Still, I can recall the doves in the stained glass
Make a left at the marker of a nondescript pine tree
Left I guess or was it right?
It all seems wrong to me

I slow down to examine
More angels and an obelisk or four
The fine wrought-iron work
That filigrees a lavish door

And there's the bench
And now I'm finally here
To say hello I miss you
To say goodbye and shed another tear

There are three here
But just two names
(Because there's still discussion
over who is paying)

I wish I had the money
To end the noise
But my misdeeds are many
So therefore I've no voice

It's cold here
And the ground is colder still
I wanted to bring him here
To share with you

(He ran before I could)
How could I know
That just because he wept with me
Didn't mean he had a soul


When all else fails you can rely
On sorrow to be a friend
Standing steadfast as you grieve alone and lonely
At St. Catherine's

I left Her at St. Catherine's
She's resting at St. Catherine's
He lingers at St. Catherine's
These three, they all live there

I'm the only one who ever leaves
And everyone leaves me

Whether elsewhere or at St. Catherine's
The Sun will set and rise and burn
And no, I guess I'll never learn
The peace that fills St. Catherine's

It's not as if I have a choice
There's still so much I'm forced to do
I swear, I swear that I'll return
I cannot not remember you

No matter what my legacy
Bedim in another's memory I grow
I swear, I swear that I'll return
I cannot not remember you

I cannot not remember you

88 and The Twelve Opossums

Grandma is sitting on the edge of my bed. It's 9PM, time for her nitro patch. It helps her sleep through the night. I don't think she'd mind me telling you that she's 88 and has had a double bypass but God has still not seen fit for her to 'kick da bucket' so she's going to keep talking to Him so he doesn't forget her, in case she's in the bathroom or something when He's looking to take her home. I tell her there's no chance of that, since she's closer to Heaven than any of us, but she says, she has to make sure so she's still gonna keep talking, morning, noon and night.

She sings too. As she gets older, she forgets herself and half speaks and sings in Polish and English and when I can't figure it out, I say, ENGLISH, ENGLISH but I try really hard to not disturb her because until tonight she didn't know that I was listening. I had to come clean that I was eavesdropping but not exactly because you could hear her through a thunderstorm, to be fair but I thought she should know. At the same time I debated because although I had no faith in God, I did have faith in HER faith and liked to listen to her and would even awaken early and sneak closer to listen.

I had lost my faith in all things good, not just spiritual. I lost my compass through a series of deaths, illness and a really painful end to a marriage, and also a sweet and meaningful friendship I thought would last for life. I lost my home and then got sick again and although since childhood, I knew better than to ever ask if it could get worse, it did anyway.

I was asked to return to my faith, and I angrily refused. Unlike Job, I did curse God. I lost more than he did, and was lost, I said to God, 'Fuck you, kill me or I will live to spite you.' I guess He chose the latter because I'm still here.

People are shocked that I say that but why? He's God; He can handle it. I laid in bed for days and I stopped eating. I developed an ulcer and I screamed at God. I was still talking to Him, you see, my belief in His existence was still intact, but His love was another story so I told Him what I basically felt about the last few people who hurt me. I don't trust you. I never will again. You're a liar. You're a fraud. You deserted me when I needed you most and I held my breath expecting lightening to hit me. Nothing. He didn't even care even to rain fire and brimstone on me. I truly was pitiful.

My doctor and therapist were trying to figure out the mind-body connection with my energy levels and chronic pain and my condition with the lumps had returned. I'd conveniently not told them I'd stopped eating, but reasoned that I was taking gummi vitamins so it wasn't technically a lie. I was only fooling myself. I lay on the couch for weeks. My eyes were dry. I wasn't even drinking enough water to make tears. I said screw you to that too.

Job had a few friends who stuck around after he lost everything but his miserable wife who told him to curse God and die, (I one-upped him on that, I didn't even have a husband anymore) but those friends didn't hesitate to tell him where he went wrong. Thing was, God Himself said Job was righteous. Now, there are some preachers who try to find some kind of loophole that he wasn't, but that's baloney. Of the 66 books of the bible, I know this one by heart, and Job was the good guy who was being shish-kebob'd in a game between God and the devil. God's personality here, I have to note, is a lot more in keeping with the Northern gods--Loki or Odin, I'm thinking and that just didn't flush with me, I didn't care who He was. What kind of loving god...blah blah blah.....never mind religion or faith--God was on my shit-list.

My gran is nearly stone deaf now so when she sings and prays, I can hear it from anywhere in the house, even outside. I hear her crying too and it breaks my heart. She has lost so much too. Who emerges unscathed from burying both her daughters, two grandchildren and a husband of over 40 years? No wonder she felt left behind. We both did, we both lost the same people, in fact and I think of this as we do this little crooked dance of trying to fit into each other's lives with love and as little damage as possible so because her fingers are so gnarled from arthritis, I offer to put on her patch and she slowly makes her way through the house to me, because she says she likes how it feels in this room and how the cats all sit around us in here.

My father grouses and grumbles that he doesn't see why HE can't put her patch on for her but she reminds him that he gives her her insulin shot, so be quiet and besides, his fingers are too chubby and I think she isn't keen on flashing him since it goes directly above her breast, but it's also because she wants to talk with me in the light and sweet smelling room, as opposed to the dark paneled pipe-smokey room.

We have a ritual. If I haven't put my laptop down, she asks me who I'm talking to. She asks me about 'that jackass in Germany' and I've stopped trying to explain she's got the wrong country but I tell her to let it go, let it go, just...please...let it go and I look down and take the packet out of her hand and rip it and pull the covering off and press it against her skin, smoothing it out so there's no bubbles because she hates bubbles. I give the packet back to her because she keeps it on her nightstand as a reminder to take the patch off in the morning. If I stay out for the night, she forgets the patch, and forgets to take off the old one, but never forgets to tell Wonton I'll be home soon and not to worry.  Neither will sleep if I say I will be home that night. If I don't, she tells me Wonton lets her baby her to a degree but in all her life has never seen an animal more devoted to someone than she is to me.

She makes a little appetizing hot snack for Wonton and puts it on a china saucer and Wonton never eats it, she says, but looks out the window for me or lays by the door, waiting, but she thinks Wonton likes the ceremony of her making her something to eat. I know she does. She also says Wonton is just.like.me. and I tell her that regardless of whether it's intended as an insult (as my ex would) or as a compliment, I'm taking that as a compliment. It's a peculiar little dance between us but I have so few dance partners now, and her years left are uncertain, so we need each other. I think this isn't accidental which is also a part of faith.

I told her, as I handed her the packet that I had heard her singing and praying. She was taken aback. 'From where?', she asked, 'This far from here in this bedroom?' I said, 'Yes. Grandma, you may be hard of hearing, but God isn't and neither am I.' I said, 'I hear you say that you look at the pictures on the walls and tell Him how much you miss everyone. That you see my wedding picture and you ask Him to never let my ex hurt another woman again, please, and to take good care of that stupid jackass in Germany because he must be crazy and you cry,' and I start to sob that this 88 year old woman who has had a life of great hardship, and cries for a granddaughter who too has a eerily parallel life, still thinks to pray for someone she's only heard about and probably never gave her another thought save one conversation through me on IM two years ago on Thanksgiving. I once told him that those who love me would love him because I love him which he doubted, but here was 88 year old living proof.

She tells God not to let her die until she dances at my wedding and I stop to say, 'But you did dance at my wedding,' and her eyes twinkle and she says, 'I did not dance at your wedding but I won't die until I do. I will dance with your husband when you marry again,' and I don't know whether to curse God or bless Him but I know not to mess with this little woman with gnarled hands who used to make me applesauce and butter sandwiches and crochet hats and mittens for me and made my Communion dress, and she says, 'I know I talk to God too much but I figure He has to answer me sometime just to shut me up, right?'

My legs are bare as she sits close to me and brush my hands across the bumps and scars that disfigure me and I tell her, 'I don't know who will love this scarred body, now,' and the tears fall down my face and she brushes them off and says, 'Elaine, God keeps your tears in a bottle. He knows their number and He knows what hurts you and who hurt you. He hasn't forgotten you. Someone will love you, all of you and not care about your bumps and scars. They won't matter to him. No one will reject you anymore. He will love you because you are beautiful inside and outside.

I am a humble woman with a third grade education. In Poland I was rounded up like an animal by the nazis and their slave on a German farm for three years and am lucky to be alive but I am and I am not stupid. Don't give up on love and don't give up on God. God took care of me in Germany and the farmer and his family loved me like their own. Their son was going to marry me when he came back but he never came back from the front line in Russia and I met your grandfather at a Sunday beer garden and that's the funny way life turns out.'

 Then she began to tell me the bible story about Jesus assuring his disciples that he would come back for them and if it were not so, He would have told them, so she was demonstrating that He cares about our feelings and fears too and began, 'When Jesus was in at the Last Supper with the Twelve Opossums...'....I giggled through my tears.....she said, What? I said..nothing, sorry, nothing...She said, no tell me...I said, you said 'possums...like the animals outside...She threw her head back and laughed. 'Imagine', she said, 'a painting of Jesus with all those 'possums' and we both laughed.

She apologized and said she was sorry her English wasn't so good still after all these years and I said, 'Oh grandma, it's because of your English and your accent that I love accents. Probably one of the reasons why I loved that jackass from Germany so please don't say you're sorry. I get it. I really do. And I like to hear you pray and sing. You're a little Polish canary and I don't want to think about the day that I won't hear you sing anymore so don't shut the door, okay?'

She got up and nodded in that resolute way she has when something is finalized. 'Okay, but only if you don't give up either, okay?'

Okay. 

Tiny Bees and Gigantic Whales

 I wrote this over a year ago for another great blog that I was thrilled to be part of while it lasted. I thought I'd repost it here, and although the romantic part has changed, the story is still interesting and I wanted to share.

 

 Tiny Bees and Gigantic Whales

Millions of bees are dying due to a phenomenon coined Colony Collapse Syndrome. No one is quite sure of the cause. Some scientists blame pesticides, malnutrition, genetically modified crops and climate change to name a few but one stands out starkly because it seems to be following a pattern; electromagnetic radiation or for the layman, cell phones. We are probably killing off billions of bees because of technology.

It doesn't just end with bees. One might say, well okay, so no more honey (which is for you trivia buffs, the only food that can't 'go bad'--found perfectly sweet in wrecks of Viking ships and royal Bronze Age burial plots) but thousands of plant species are dependent upon bees for pollination. And thousands of insect species, and mammals and so on are dependent on those plant species. This is why the word 'Collapse' is in there. The house of cards is facing a catastrophic typhoon, proportions of which we can't even comprehend the toll and if you ask the next person if they've ever heard of it, they'd probably shrug, 'Bees. They sting. Good riddance'.

I'm no granola crunchy hippie tree-hugger. In fact, until a few years ago I was positively disgustingly smug conservative until it dawned on me the only thing vociferous conservatives are interested in conserving are their own very specific special interests and not at all as I understood it to be which was to conserve, like the grasshopper and the ant, to work and save for the winter for everyone but now winter is here and everyone is saying 'what's in it for me' and it makes my heart hurt. Forget 'what about the children'. What about the bees because it's gonna affect the children and we have to do something now. Luckily for the bees it appears that they might be gaining in numbers so I'm hoping they all fall in love and keep making more honey and pollinating like crazy kids.

Then there are the whale strandings or what most of us know as 'beached whales'. Multiple species of whale are falling off established migratory patterns and if you do a Google search, the same reasons are given as for the bees and in this case, in the Pacific and Atlantic at least, where whales need to go North to mate and give birth--they're getting LOST. How the fuck does a whale get lost? And you read 'cruise ship noise' and you do a facepalm because we're killing them too, tiny bees and gigantic whales. Signals we need to communicate over distances to each other are affecting and threatening their existence. 

It dawns on me. Distance. It's always distance. Mixed signals like the telephone game, where the message is totally beyond comprehension at the end; funny when kids are playing it at a basement birthday party but not so funny when we're trying to communicate.

We're so far away from each other and the internet brings us so close it gives a false intimacy as if it's real and to many it is but to many it's the perfect foil to hide behind anonymity and pretend you're one thing when you're another. It's so easy to be tempted. Years ago no one would have ever dreamed of the possibility of romance with someone 1000 miles or more away and now not only is it happening but it's thriving and people are moving great distances to be together and some of them end up going off course and getting lost and never reestablishing their old patterns.

Now I'm at the end of one relationship and fingers (but thankfully not oceans) crossed, may be embarking on another after a brief period of FREE FREE I'M FREE but have the dumb luck to find the most common with one least close geographically. And proceeding very very cautiously because someone once told him it wasn't real and someone once told me it wasn't real and this one was burned and that one was burned and even though BOTH of us thought it was real with the other now have to check our sonar and radar and cellphones to make sure it's not mixed-signals. And it pisses me off. 

Flying Into the Sun

During summers when I was a kid, my friends would often disappear with their families to the Jersey shore or the mountains to paddle in the lakes and I would ask my dad when we would go on vacation. He said, 'You're a kid. You're always on vacation.' and the conversation was OVER. I didn't know that it was a matter of having (or rather, never having) the money and the hours at work for him to take time off; I just accepted it as my reality that I was to eke out my own recreational endeavors, because my other choices were limited to babysitting my siblings, playing handball against our concrete stoop (while babysitting my siblings), making kites in the garage out of construction paper, Elmer's glue and Tinker Toys a la da Vinci, or submitting myself to the mercies of my grandmother who regarded me as a mini serf available to scrub every step in the house, to gut the garage and basement and to clean cobwebs from the attic and closets, to name a few. She was pretty creative with torturous household chores. If I was good, I got an applesauce and butter sandwich. I said fuck that shit and looked for a way to disappear.

Every Saturday morning, my grandmother would make a sumptuous breakfast for anyone who woke up early (and put their slippers on; bare feet was an offense worse than profanity) and then she and my mother would go out and shop. For the record, I rarely made it to her breakfasts. I was an inveterate insomniac and didn't finally fall asleep (if I did at all) until dawn. This routine of mine was always met with disdain and a prediction I would amount to nothing. I figured I could fry my own damned bacon in peace and BAREFOOT once they left.

First they'd hit every yard and garage sale on the entire eastern seaboard. Then the thrift and consignment shops, then they'd end the day with the weekly grocery shopping. Often, they would stop at the house to have the available serfs (us kids) unload the full tailgate, so they could continue shopping, and woe if one was in the house but did not answer the cruise ship horn of the Mercury Grand Marquis station wagon, which evoked as much terror in me as the sound effects of the martian space crafts in The War of the Worlds. I had been requested to join them, assimilate, be one with them, but they already had my toddler sister and I knew these were not joyful women-bonding events because they enjoyed these weekends with the grim and determined faces of ruthless consumerism. They just wanted me to run up and down aisles grabbing stuff they'd forgotten or tend to my sniveling, bored and hot sister or carry bags to and from the car and one day when I could not escape them, I stood at a bulletin board near the exit doors of Shop-Rite and saw a piece of paper that changed my life. FREE DAY CAMP.

I ripped it off the board and folded it up and shoved it in my pocket as my mother hollered for me to grab my sister's sandal as she kicked it off while sitting in that seat in the carriage, that seat I wish I could sit in and swing my little legs but I was always too big, too big but now I figured, too big for that but not too big for this so on the day noted I arrived at the day camp with the required dollar (couch cushions are veritable bank vaults) with all the other rag-tag kids in my neighborhood. I discovered quickly that there was one of these camps in every neighborhood and the city paid for everything, except a dollar, so as long as I had that covered, theoretically, I could spend every day on the bus going somewhere awesome.

 I learned to sing On Top of Spaghetti, Hello Mutha Hello Fatha, Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall plus every top-forty song because when the bus' radio wasn't working, I had my trusty Radio Shack Realistic lime green transistor radio and I absolutely without any remorse whatsoever would cannibalize every single appliance in the house that used the batteries required to make my radio sing. Oh I may not have yet become an intrepid shopper, but it appeared the ruthlessness known to the women in my family was innate in me and was in fact, sharply honed by self-preservation and a little bit of bloodthirsty desperation to never ever EVER be at that house when that fucking car showed up blaring, COME OUTSIDE, COME OUTSIDE, LET'S GO, LET'S GO. I was already long gone.

I didn't make any friendships during those trips. It wasn't a conscious decision. I guess I considered my friends on vacation were still my friends and I had no desire to play little girl games which might distract me from the claw games and carnival rides at shore towns and boardwalks up and down the Jersey shore or hiking up a mountain at a state park in Pennsylvania. My biggest concern was conning my parents into signing the permission slips until I mastered their signatures. At that age, I had not yet learned to cave to their pressure and disdain for my independence and still had disdain for their disdain for me. I put on my sandals and Snoopy shorts and walked three and a half blocks and through a park to meet the bus everyday.

 If it rained, we made crafts in a municipal building on site. I learned how to sew and made a bunny rabbit hand puppet. I also learned through another intrepid explorer, how to make a noose. I would later be thrown out of my first Girl Scouts meeting for showing another girl how to make one to hang her Barbie dolls too, because no one had the forethought to tell me it was illegal in New Jersey to teach someone how to make a noose, no matter how tiny or ornate (some of mine were delicately woven with satin rosettes and pom-poms stolen from my grandmother's sewing room) but then, I was learning how to survive and if that included eating ants or hanging upside down from the highest monkey bars in the playground to prove how tough I was, I was willing to take the risk of incarceration or my ass beat with my father's belt.

We often went to the same places which was fine with me. I got to know them inside-out and enjoyed the little corners never discovered by the usual tourists. I spent a lot of time at the Newark Museum for Children, Suntan Lake, Turtle Back Zoo, Keansburg Amusement Park (too rich for my blood, never went inside but played the games on the boardwalk) and Bertrand Island, an amusement park where it seemed all dangerous carnival rides went to fall into further disrepair and die in rusty murky obscurity. I loved Bertrand Island because it was indeed a small island worthy of Peter Pan and his Lost Boys and I'd wander the park listening to the Magic by Pilot and Afternoon Delight by Starland Vocal Band on the loudspeakers, hoping to find magical sprites and exotic birds and animals. Instead I found the Whip-It.

Four round cars rolled around on a giant X that whirled around and around until you were sure you'd dry heave and then it would snap and throw your car into a long cool tunnel bumping along while you screamed in the dark. The workers there were bored as hell and hardly ever took our tickets and often kept the ride running for ten minutes and it was the most exhilarating thing in the world. I have no idea how I never got whiplash and I never saw that ride at any local summer carnival but it was the one thing that my heart thumped for all summer long for at least three years.

Every now and then, if the Whip-It was down (actually, it frequently was probably due to lawsuits) I'd have to find another ride to try out. I was a pretty loyal tenacious little kid and stuck with what I liked but I had a taste for the unknown and exotic too so I found something called the Torpedo of Death. Okay, that was probably my name for it and I can't find any record of it in the history of the park (Woody Allen filmed some scenes from Purple Rose of Cairo in '83 there, which seems to be its biggest claim to fame) but it taught me one of the most profound lessons about my own character.

I was lonely. I was ten, eleven and I felt unwanted and unloved and invisible to my parents except as a servant. My father had the habit of telling me my ideas were stupid and I didn't want what I wanted, that  I wanted what he thought I wanted and I was no longer allowed to sit on his lap and watch monster movies with him, and my mother was always too busy or would give me weekly Silent Treatments over some mystical infraction and I was spending a lot of time avoiding two uncles whom my parents never seemed to notice were paying way too much attention to me, so my feeling of belonging anywhere was at an all time low. My insomnia increased with everything going on at home, and I was sleepwalking when I did drift off but still I'd wander, wander, looking for something I didn't think I had but wanted really bad.

So I stood there contemplating this ride which was pretty simple in appearance. It was a circle somewhat on its side and in the tracks were rockets that a body would lie in, while the circle would speed around and around until centrifugal force would make one flatten against the seat but nobody told me that that would indeed happen. I stepped inside my rocket, which had seen better days and probably had been part of the early Soviet space program so I imagined myself a cosmonaut. If a dog and a couple of monkeys could do it, so could I, I reasoned, although I worried that they had helmets and I'm pretty sure, seat-belts and I did not. However, it was too late to turn back. The ride began and I held on to the sides of the car.

I remember it was a really sticky hot day in August and one of the worst because it had rained in the morning and the sun was merciless. These were the days before sunblock so although I had my dad's dark Italian eyes and hair, I had my mother's Polish snow-white skin and even that day, I recall looking at my pink swollen arms and legs, knowing that I would pay for it later that night, tossing and turning and never having a cold enough side of the pillow. That was the price for being a voyager into the unknown and I took my lumps as I always had. This trek, however, would be different.

The ride began to speed up and I began to have difficulty sitting up so I attempted to lean back but that meant I would lose my grip on the sides of the car. There were no real handles, so I was literally white-knuckling bare metal in one hundred degree weather and the palms of my hands and my fingers were burning and I felt as if my muscles were tearing as I held on screaming not in joy but in terror because I was certain that at some point, like the Whip-It, my rocket would be released and I would be flung straight into the sun without a helmet, without a seat-belt, without any damned sunblock and still I hung on screaming, screaming, screaming, the tears flowing up my forehead rather than down because of the force of direction. I didn't think. I just held on. I held on and I held on and finally the ride began to slow and then stop. We all staggered off and I felt as if my arms were a foot longer than they were when I got on. The pain would last for over a week but I survived and not only that, I had beaten the ride. I did not lie back and I did not let go. I didn't question my ability to hold on, nor did I analyze the odds or my options. I held on because something inside me said I wasn't invisible, I wasn't unwanted, and I wasn't going to die. At least, not on that day.

I have done things and made decisions in my life that I'm not entirely proud of, in fact, things that shame and disgust me. I have experienced, endured and in some ways been the architect of my own wreckage but there has always, as long as I've been conscious of it, a theme in my life of rebuilding, starting over and recreating what was thought to be lost and even now, I'm rebuilding against seemingly insurmountable odds but I don't intend to just survive. I remember those carnival rides and both feared and loved them and faced them anyway and still found delight in my humble couch-cushion discoveries.  I intend to be like that little girl who nobody told what was supposed to happen, and pretty much nobody cared, and fly off into the sun, on my own terms, in my own time, with my own indomitable spirit. Hopefully with sunscreen. And maybe a helmet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iiryJwvDtc

What Are Your Qualifications For the Position?

"If you're doing something else I can let you go....."

 

'No....no...I'm sorry...you know when we're here on Yahoo chatting and that little notification comes up that you've got mail, well, not 'you've got mail' cos that's AOL but"

 

"Yeah, Lainey, I get it...your point?'

 

"Oh...panties in a twist today? Fine. You know how I get all these declarations of love and promises of devotion and fantasies of pure delicious filth on FB and that forum I talk about from people I don't know, how some are quite entertaining?'

 

"Yeah, you've posted a few gems as your FB status. In case you haven't noticed everyone in my family and most of Lubbock has friend requested you because they find me rolling on the floor in tears and want to be in on it."

 

"Ahhh...I was wondering how Bradley and I became friends....and then there are spin-offs where your friends friend my friends and my friends friend your friends and those friends friend those friends."

 

"Lainey, there's a shampoo commercial in there, I know but ffs, focus, please."

 

"Sorry, anyway.....I'm hungry. Hold on, please."

 

"You pull this shit all the time. Damn, might as well potty break myself, brb."

 

"Back"

 

"Me too. So anyway, there was a new one today from someone who isn't even a friend and the email was in Arabic but it included a pic."

 

"Oh Christ. Am I going to regret asking 'of what'?"

 

"A pic of me."

 

"So? Remember that stalker you had that did collages of you and him and photoshopped hearts and did morphs of your future babies together...he was from Zyzaroplokikistan or something wasn't he? He was harmless....."

 

"A pic of me with what I thought was soft focus and there was an indecipherable caption underneath so I put it through Google Translate."

 

"What did it say?"

 

"I splooged all over your pic and my keyboard, sorry you are my angle. Can we be friends."

 

"Angle?"

 

"THAT gets you but the splooging part doesn't?"

 

"Was there a glitch in Google Translate? Angle, huh?"

 

*sigh*

 

"Well, much as I like to hear about your gazillion conquests here and internationally, why don't you just change your security settings so you don't get unwanted messages anymore?"

 

"Because people who I *do* want to contact me that I've lost touch with wouldn't be able to contact me then."

 

"True, rabbit, true. You also have four thousand fucking friends. I think everyone you know has found you, Lainey."

"Oooooh, Racketeer Rabbit....oldie but a goodie. Oh and he sent me a pic of his junk."

 

"Wait...WHAT? Why do YOU get all the good pics. Was it a good one?"

 

" It was respectable.  I miss the good old days when people just sent greeting cards, valentines, roses, chocolate..mmm chocolate."

 

"Maybe in his country it was a culturally acceptable form of interest."

"I asked him if he'd show his mother or sister that pic."

 

"What'd he say?"

 

"I don't think he's figured out Google Translate. I *do* think that might work in my favor. Meanwhile, I'm blocking him."

 

"Send me the pic of his pecker?"

 

"Sure......"

 

"What's wrong?"

 

"I got a love letter, a poem no less, in French from a lesbian German porn star. It rhymes in English."

 

"Wow. All hail Google Translate."

 

"No, I asked the guy I liked if he knew any French and he figured it out for me."

 

"Which one? Not...?"

 

"NO. And anyway, he's pissed off at me, now."

 

"Oh God. What now?"

 

"Well, this other woman he was crushing on, friend requested him and he was thrilled and then she friend requested me and he mentioned it to me and I said, relax that's just a coincidence but turns out it isn't."

 

"Why? Is she trying to keep tabs on you or something, like you're competition?'

 

"No. Evidently she used him to get to me. She likes me likes me."

 

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA. He thought you were cockblocking but he's vagblocking. Oh God."

 

"Maybe I should figure out and post an application form on 'gettin' wit me' to cut out the riff-raff."

 

"I could only imagine the interview process."

 

"Yeah. What are your expectations for the job? What did you like best about your last position? What have you been doing since you resigned? Work history: What were your starting and final levels of compensation? What did you like best and least about your last boss....hey this could work."

 

"Don't get carried away Miss Ego. Remember, there is no "I" in 'team'"

 

"No, but there is a 'M' and an 'E'.

"You're fired."

Hold My Hand

In the space of a few months, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I got engaged, we got married, my mother died and we bought a house, every last one of these I was ill-prepared for. It's all a blur now but I remember that Mom did get to actually see the house but was only able to peer in through the patio door because we had yet to close and there were problems with liens against the title and my entire existence during this time was one of anxiety and dread. 

Even on my wedding day when I was supposed to step out of the limo to camera flashes,  I instead begged the driver to take me to a bar and drive around a little because something was wrong so very wrong, I felt lost and without direction but I chalked it up to cold feet and eventually walked up the steps and down the aisle, nearly two hours late to a very visibly relieved groom. (photographic evidence can be provided upon demand) and then spent the reception worried about my mother whose side I was reluctant to leave. It would be her last public outing and I knew that it took every last bit of strength in her being to even attend my wedding, the last of her children's wedding, the wedding of her first child. Although the wedding album belies a face beaming with joy it was pure adrenaline and Xanax and a few gin and tonics that got me through until the last guest was gone.  We honeymooned for a weekend at a local lover's resort that specialized in champagne glass jacuzzis so we could be within driving distance should there be a sudden change in my mother's condition and I don't recall for a moment in all those months ever exhaling.

My mother died on November 10th and we closed on the house on December 19th and moved on December 21st to an icy hill we didn't know existed because we last saw the house in August. Not only did we NOT observe Christmas in ANY way but because of a realtor goof, the boiler had accidentally been turned off and the hot water baseboard heaters in the living room exploded and geysered all over the ivory wool wall to wall berber which had to be removed by Serve-Pro on the day of the walk-thru and then giant dehumidifiers were stationed throughout the first floor to combat any mildew that might develop on the sub-flooring so I couldn't even bring my furkids to their new home and I was utterly miserable. I was inconsolable. Not the weeping and gnashing of teeth kind but more like Ophelia headed for a short walk to the lake to 'clear her mind'. 

No one in the neighborhood told us that the hill was the type that tried men's souls and fortitude and unless one had a four wheel or all wheel drive vehicle or snowshoes, or a magic carpet there was no way in hell you were getting up that hill for most of the winter because it was illegally graded, the township wouldn't adopt it to clean and maintain it and we were shit out of luck and no less than two days after we moved in, my car got stuck in a ditch about ten feet up. Every time I tried to pull out I would drift in deeper and deeper and as determined as I was even I couldn't bend it to my will so I sat in my car on that dark country hill and cried and beat the dashboard.

Then a light went on and I saw a house to my right and two snowsuit wearing figures trudging toward me with shovels. They helped me get out of the car and pointed to the house something about going inside and as I knocked tentatively on the door, I looked back to see my husband pull up behind my car (his now also stuck) jump out of his car and help the others. I was swept into the house and a blanket was wrapped around my shoulders and a woman said, 'Oh God you poor thing and here have some hot cider' and I stood in her foyer shivering in shock. She took my arm and pulled me physically inside the kitchen and sat me down and made me talk and I poured out everything in a torrent like a relentless waterfall, my mother, the wedding, the move, the house, the commute and she put her arms around me and just held me. Her name was Beth.

Eventually the cars made it up the hill but it was decided that I would spend the night in the Murphy's home because I was too worn out and in the middle of the night there I got a phone call that my father had suffered a heart attack and I was needed immediately. I woke up Beth and dressed numbly and she stood in the doorway and made me eat the most delicious Eggo waffle ever toasted. Then my husband arrived with a packed bag and picked me up, we drove to my dad's and I began to take control of the situation as I always had done, as I was taught to do out of love and duty but perhaps not desire. I longed more than anything to be held and taken care of and with my mother dead and my father's health in peril and my husband.....distracted.....my needs would have to take a backseat to others. And so they did.

When I was able I made a large eggplant parmigiana (a specialty) and Spouse delivered it to the Murphy's who proclaimed it the best they ever had. This would be the first of many exchanges of neighborly help for yummy dishes as Spouse and I were totally ill-equipped as new homeowners in the country but I was an awesome cook and everyone likes to eat. Beth and I struck a warm friendship.

She tended to be a bit bossy at times but I was accustomed to the ministrations of the capo di tutti capi or boss of all bosses, my late mother, so in comparison she was small potatoes and in fact at times comfortably familiar but every now and then I had to put my hand up and ask her to cease and desist. Once we were sitting outside on a warmer spring day watching koi in her pond gulp at the surface and she brushed a strand of hair out of my eyes and I asked, 'Why do you treat me like I need a mother?" and she said, 'Because you do."  I insisted I didn't but could use a sister or friend and she agreed to it and we drank our wine. 

We didn't see each other every day although we passed each other's house (they at the bottom of the hill, we at the top) either driving up or down or they walking their poodles and yellow lab and sometimes she'd call me and I'd accompany them for a part of the way around the circle but sometimes I avoided her because her love demanded something I couldn't or wouldn't give, perhaps it was a loyalty reserved for someone who would never leave my heart, someone under who's heart I grew. 

I was so very sick and she would arrive at the house with meals for Spouse and trinkets to amuse me and stacks of books and told me she believed in me. She told me there was a book in me, no, many books and I had to stop shining my light under a bushel. She would leave with a kiss on my forehead and tuck her copy of the key to my front door tied to a gorgeous silk ribbon, into her threadbare pocket. They had little money but were lavish with love and service to others.

When I had to be rushed to the hospital for a blood transfusion it was she who held me and rocked me and sang songs to me while I wept deliriously. I have no memory of these things but others have told me.

One day I sat on my porch as the sun was beginning to go down but still sparkling in the air and I held a glass of wine in one hand and a bottle of Percocet in the other and didn't hear her walk up behind me with her three dogs and husband and she wordlessly handed the leashes to her husband and told him to go on without her and sat down next to me and asked me what I thought I was doing. I told her I wanted a divorce and she put her arms around me and said, 'I know.' and it was the first time anyone had touched me in six months. Her husband came 'round the circle again and she asked him to take the dogs down the hill and bring up the car and he did without a question and she called out to Spouse that she was taking me to her house for a little bit and she poured me a glass of wine and we sat and watched large birds try to fish in the pond, no words spoken, just company and when I was ready she drove me home.

In the nine years we've been friends we've seen each other at our best and worst and while still friends in some ways remain strangers because while my love and grief are deep running rivers always flowing, never resting, relentlessly searching and longing for belonging, Beth does not operate the same way. It's almost as if we are pen pals needing Google Translate to decipher each others heartfelt missives. Mine are dramatic and exhaustive. Hers are cryptic and require a secret decoder ring and a sundial.

However one day her husband appeared with some lame excuse to drop something off and something felt 'not right' and I followed him down the hill. I showed up out of the blue (not my thing) and they were delighted to have me and shared some stuffed clams they'd made and a nice discount merlot they'd found and then he disappeared into the depths of the house and she and I sat in silence as the sun disappeared behind the pines and blue spruces surrounding the property and she got up and stood at the slider door and I stood next to her and searched her face and asked her what she was thinking. 

She told me she was thinking which tree out there could she easily tie a rope to and hang herself and I gasped and she rolled her eyes and said, 'Oh Elaine, people would get over it.' and I said hysterically, 'NO NO I WOULDN'T GET OVER IT HOW MANY MORE PEOPLE I LOVE DO I HAVE TO LOSE??.' and I grabbed her around her waist shocking her out of her reverie and said, 'What's going on? What's happening? What aren't you telling me?' And she told me. Her mother was dying. The mother she had no relationship with. She envied mine and my love for my lost mother and she envied that I'd said I'd been thoroughly loved by my mother and was able to tell her everything before she slipped away because her mother slipped away into dementia without any chance for absolution. She had told her husband because he found her standing there earlier that day and asked her the same thing and she said before she knew it, he'd left and I'd come following. He had come for me and I hadn't even know I'd been summoned.

I remembered the times Beth sat and listened to me and held my hand and kissed my forehead. I remembered when she rocked me in my delirium and when she was a stranger and she took me into her house and her arms and fed and clothed me. When she mothered me when I didn't want mothering and needed it desperately.

Too, I remembered all that I did out of duty and love, sincerely but because I was commanded to, whether raised or by some imperative or instinct to care for my own, but this time it was one of desire and gratitude for someone who reached out and patiently peeled through the layers and layers of cheerfulness and stoicism, the 'I'm just peachy's', 'no really I'm fine's' to peer inside the little girl who just wanted to be loved and was very lost.  I reached out and took her hand. I did need mothering in spite of my protestations. She needed to mother and she needed a mother. She needed a daughter and absolution. So we began.