tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-167385852024-03-07T11:05:53.091-08:00YellaLandAdventures in living, parenting, creating...
and trying to set down roots in a desert resort town...Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.comBlogger162125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-8845957340289920272014-05-30T13:16:00.002-07:002014-06-04T10:55:39.316-07:00"Nancy" - Part II<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
was almost two weeks gone past when he brought it up. There had been no
conversation about it at all, just that night’s lovemaking. They hadn’t said
anything about that either. But there seemed to be thinner air between them
despite the silence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He
reached a hand over to hers at the dinner table, while chewing spaghetti, and
looked at her. Then finally, “You could go with me, you know. Lots of wives do.
It’s good for…” The crinkle growing on her brow stopped him. He released his
grip on her, but not completely. His eyes pleaded. She must have nodded
slightly because a smile washed over his face and then he went back to eating.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He
had promised her that they wouldn’t go on a crowded night, never a weekend or a
holiday. She couldn’t handle the crush of strangers she worried aloud. What she
didn’t say was the danger she felt even talking about the possibility of
entering a strip club. She couldn’t get a handle on the exact fear. Gangs
accidentally stabbing her, or being forced into some filthy back room to take a
hallucinogenic drugs, seeing sex acts by strangers right before her very eyes?
None of it was quite logical – he dissuaded her from the worst, assuring her
that nothing bad would happen. But then she was no longer sure what his
definition of bad was.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">So,
it was a peaceful Tuesday evening, around 8:30 pm when they walked through a
wall of hanging beads. One heavy strand snagged on her hair, pulling a pin out.
She clutched her purse tightly as a large black man, the bouncer/host, led them
to a tiny table in a corner. She had a preternatural fear of being seen by
someone she knew. Of course, in the many years they had lived in Southern
California she had made few friends, the best of whom was Betsy, an 84 year old
woman who lived catty-corner from her house and was most certainly asleep by
now. She couldn’t think of anyone else she might care about, or might know her
on sight. And then there was Britney. She’d be horrified if she knew her father
visited such places. Nancy was sure she’d think they were both completely nuts
if she knew about this.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">She
kept pressing her hair, trying to avoid a trip to the ladies room to fix it,
but after Frank ordered himself a scotch and soda and her a white wine, she
couldn’t take it any longer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She grew
hot around her neck and chest. Frank sat so close his knees touched hers and
his teeth glowed eerily in black light. She excused herself to the ladies room.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
bathroom was brightly lit. She squinted as she stepped inside, it took a few
moments to adjust, even though they had been in the club only some ten minutes.
Sure enough a tuft of hair stuck up on the right side of her head. She blushed
thinking that the cocktail waitress had seen her. Women were always so cruel
about another’s looks. And this one was so young! What she must think, this
ancient woman stepping into this place. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">She
decided to use the toilet first. Each second was a torture, so sure was she
that someone would come into the bathroom at any moment. Minutes passed. More
than was normal for her to take care of business. Washing her hands she
suddenly realized no one was coming into the restroom, she was the only lady in
the place. An involuntary deep suck of air entered her lungs and she
brightened. Her hands dried she flattened her hair, repined it, and resolved to
go back to the table more cheerfully. Remembering her husband sobbing into his
hands so many weeks ago, patting his shoulder it seemed to make sense then.
There was no fear, no judgments, just understanding of his need, and…
acceptance. Nancy took a long deep breath and walked into the black lit club.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Frank
was sitting facing the stage. A long legged girl was just finishing a pole
dance and her silver mini-skirt dangled pleasantly around her rump Nancy
noticed. Something tickled inside her. Frank stood when he saw her approach and
pulled out her chair. She smiled at him and he smiled back. She released her
grip on her purse and took a sip of wine. They began to chat.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nancy
saw the legs before she realized what was happening.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Hey,
Daddy! Where you been. I’ve missed you,” Nancy heard the girl say as the legs
flung over her husband’s lap. Frank’s face flushed and he shifted slightly but
enough so that the girl looked back at Nancy. “Oh, sorry baby, didn’t realize
you were with a date. How’re you tonight, sweetie? Sorry, didn’t mean to
encroach, but he’s so delicious, isn’t he?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
ease Nancy had conjured was frozen right out of her body when she heard the
girl laugh. Frank, not looking Nancy in the eye, motioned to her and introduced
her.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Hon,
this is Ginger. Ginger, this is my wife, Nancy.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">She
was beautiful, that was true Nancy had to admit. She couldn’t stop looking at
her face. She caught a swift glimmer of shock when Ginger heard the word
‘wife’, but she reached out a cold moist hand to Nancy and shook it limply as
she dislodged herself from his lap and took a chair. Nancy couldn’t remember
the last time she had felt a woman’s hand, years? Decades? It was one of her
great and infrequent joys to hold her mother’s hand as a little girl. The touch
of Ginger’s lithe fingers prompted this memory. She couldn’t reconcile this
girl with her mother’s memory, except, she thought the only common denominator
was herself, and the pleasure in touch. Nancy pulled her hand away, though to a
small degree she didn’t wish to.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Frank
was saying something in his justifying bluster. Nancy made herself stop looking
at Ginger and listen to her husband. But the DJ put on a loud rap-ish kind of
song, she didn’t know what they called it, all she knew was that the song
seemed to be yelling at her, admonishing her. Frank kept talking, “friendship”,
“sweet girl”, “boy trouble”, on and on. Nancy gathered he was talking about
Ginger, but she didn’t care. Another girl got up on the stage and Frank stopped
talking to watch her and clap. Then excused himself to the restroom. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nancy
looked back at the stage behind her for a moment and when her head turned round
Ginger was sitting in the chair next to her, looking her right in the face. Nancy
forced-smiled at her and looked down at her hands in her lap. She started to
giggle, they looked like her mother’s hands. She tried to stop herself and then
realized she was giggling out loud and Ginger had joined in.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“What’s
got you tickled?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Nothing,”
she choked out, took a sip of wine, but she couldn’t stop. Ginger waved to
someone across the room and in an unreasonably quick time another glass of wine
appeared and her empty disappeared. She was still giggling.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I’m
just thinking, if my mother could see me…”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ginger
joined in and nodded with a “mine too”. They laughed for a moment and Ginger
asked Nancy what kind of woman her mother was, was she still around, where did
she live. Nancy took a bigger gulp of wine than she meant to as the questions
made her titter all over again.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Oh,
she was a bitch,” popped out of her mouth and she screamed with laughter.
Ginger’s forehead crinkled a bit, no doubt wondering if this woman was crazy.
“I’ve never said that! I don’t think I ever let myself even think that. She’s
dead, thank god, the bitch.” And she howled again, hugging her sides. She had
possibly never laughed so hard in her life.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“What’s
going on here?” Frank’s expression was confusion and delight and fear all at
once.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Catharsis,”
Ginger said before Nancy could respond. She was right.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Frank
looked at Ginger and nodded to her as if conspiring. Ginger grabbed both of
Nancy’s hands. Her purse dropped to the floor and Frank swept it up. She caught
his face and he looked so hopeful. She didn’t understand, but Ginger was
pulling her up and asking her to go with her. She had never felt so loose. She
felt at that moment that whatever Ginger asked her to do she would.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">They
weaved between chairs towards a little platform. More bead strings surrounded
it, like the front entrance. Ginger pulled the curtain of beads apart for her,
shielding her hairdo. “Watch your step” she said softly and placed Nancy in a
chair. A little giggle came out as she sat down, as if it got dislodged from
her belly with the motion.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I’m
just going to dance for you. Just let me know if it feels too close,” Ginger
said. Before Nancy could speak Ginger was writhing and twisting before her.
Nancy thought, I wonder how she does that? It didn’t register until several
moments later that she was being given a lap dance. A hot poker shot through
her belly and chest, but was gone in an instant. My mother, thought Nancy, and
laughed again. Ginger smiled and Nancy settled in to watching her. She was
warming up, heat spreading from her loins through her legs, up into her face.
She wanted to touch her. She wanted to touch Frank. Where was he? Watching? A
rush of fury caught her and took hold. Then panic. Sharp, rancid panic swept
over her body and lodged in her head. He wants a threesome. He’s slept with
this girl. She started to feel a grip on her chest, she couldn’t breathe.
Ginger stopped suddenly. Nancy almost knocked her down as she stood up and
furiously scampered out of the club.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
night was crisp but couldn’t break through the heat that had engulfed her. The
heat, she realized, that had smothered her from the moment she set foot in this
place. A greasy, thick heat, like hot cream soup sticking to your skin,
burning. Why was she here?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
took her minutes to find their car. She tried the door and then realized she
hadn’t driven, Frank had. She didn’t even have her purse. Suddenly Frank was
behind her. In the near distance behind him she saw Ginger, the deep concern on
her face clashing with her hot pink outfit. She looked out of place in the
parking lot. Frank was opening the back seat and laying Nancy down. She could
hear words from him but couldn’t make out what they were. He put a hand on her
forehead.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“You
feel cold.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I’m
hot. I’ve been so hot. I want a coat. I want to wear a coat. To be cold and
protected.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“You
almost passed out Ginger said.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">She
didn’t remember. She couldn’t remember anything. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
light was so bright.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She wondered why he
brought her back into the strip club. And why they had turned on all the
lights. She knew, because there was Ginger in the hallway and Frank, and a
string of light between them. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">When
she woke, Britney was near her. She was talking but Nancy wasn’t hearing. There
was other noise she had to take in first, a beep, traffic, sound of scuffling
feet, honk of horn way off somewhere in the distance passed a few buildings,
through glass and concrete, a constant, irritable honk honk honk honk honk. She
knew just what it meant.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Stoke,”
Britney said and Nancy finally heard. Stroke.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
was Frank in the hallway again. There was Ginger next to him. She didn’t wonder
why, so fascinated was she by that silver string that was strung up between
them. It hummed with light and vibration, she could see it. And it said
“comfort” as it travelled back and forth between them. She wondered if anyone
else could see it, hear its word.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Britney
slid her hand into Nancy’s. There it was again, that pleasure. Nancy felt
herself spread out wide into the universe at the soft warm hand of her child.
Peace.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
night was dark though it seemed like all the lights were still on. Dark night
of the soul. Is this that? She couldn’t muster up any feeling, any indignation,
or worry, or even any judgment. She just lay there. Britney was somewhere off
in a corner beside her. She could sense her there even though, for some reason
she hadn’t quite worked out, she couldn’t turn to look at her. But she was
there, breathing. She would know that breathing anywhere.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">One
night when Britney was 6 or 7 Nancy woke in the middle of the night in a panic.
There was a police car flashing lights down the block and the hubbub and blue
and red light leaked in through her bedroom window. He first thought was
“Britney’s gone” and she leapt out of the bed like a crazed woman and was in
her daughter’s room in less than a second. It was early in the morning and the
adrenaline rush kept her alert, so she sat on the little Winnie the Pooh step
stool by Britney’s bed and listened to her breath. She wished she had told her
about that.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Now
she was home, but not home. There were plans being made, about what she
couldn’t make out. She heard her daughter and her husband in the kitchen
talking. She didn’t know where she was. But one word jumped into her
consciousness, “Sonoma”. Then Britney was yelling and Nancy was thinning out,
disappearing. Her last thought before she travelled away was, “Britney has
taken up the mantle”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of bitterness and
judgment, but oh well, there was nothing Nancy could do now. She knew this but
she wasn’t sure why. Maybe she ought to try harder to get Britney’s attention,
but she didn’t seem to have a voice. Where had it gone?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
then it was as if she was being split into a thousand tiny little pieces, being
thrown into the wind. There was the breeze and she knew she was flying off a
cliff into the air, some of her into the ocean, some of her in the wind. Sand
and salt and water and wind and me, she thought, all together.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Love
you, mom” she heard Britney say and in that phrase was love and hate – and she
knew her daughter would never forgive her father, just as her mother had never
forgiven her sister, not really – and Nancy knew everything it seemed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would all be awful and lovely and
wonderful and weird and here she would be, on the coast of Sonoma, in the sand
and in the wind.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-57647520047025820552014-05-26T10:30:00.002-07:002014-05-26T10:56:33.367-07:00"Nancy" a Short Story by Daniela Ryan - Part I<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">NANCY</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">By Daniela Ryan</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
had been years since she’d looked deeply into this closet. But at the onset of
winter, and the first real rainy day, something moved her to tackle the
avalanche of clothes and boxes full of trinkets shoved into the crevice behind
the tails of long ignored wool coats. They had moved to Southern California
nearly 15 years earlier from Sonoma County. A position at a prominent trucking
company pulled them down. Frank loved it here. There was no way he’d move back
to the cold, windy, rainy weather up north. She knew that, because though he
never said it to her face, he’d said it time and again within earshot of her;
on the phone, handing the attendant at the car wash the ticket, talking to a
bagger at the grocery store. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anywhere
practically he would get into a conversation about “what a lovely day” and “never
live anywhere else myself”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Keeping
her own wool coat was a way of harboring her fantasy of returning to that home.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s
not that she knew anyone there anymore. She wouldn’t have a job there, or some other
particular reason that could explain her desire to go back, she just did. Years
of Frank poo-pooing her longing had set a deep seam of resentment on her spine.
He didn’t care what she thought. Sometimes, in moments of dark insecurity,
she’d allow herself to complain out loud of missing home. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’d come back way too fast and furious with
“Well, we bought this house in the middle of bumb-fuck nowhere for you didn’t
we?” Then she’d sob a little and he’d try to placate her with the idea that
Britney lived near by anyway and didn’t she only want to be close to her
daughter? It worked, mostly. So, she’d tuck away the longing and the coat of resentment,
shoving them into a crevice inside herself and stop complaining.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
rain stopped abruptly sometime after lunch, which she’d missed sitting on the
floor in front of the open closet, going through a box of her mom’s things. She’d
shoved it in the back with other miscellaneous boxes of tchotchke she couldn’t
part with. Letters between her mother and her aunt kept her spellbound for over
an hour. When a beam of light came through the window – open so she could feel
and hear the rain since it never stayed long enough for her – she looked up and
wiped a tear from her cheek.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Aunt Judy
had been estranged from her husband, Bruce, an uncle Nancy had been very fond
of as a child, and her mother hadn’t approved. Stand by your man meant about
the same thing to Nancy’s mother as stand by your church, your children, your
country. It meant one had character, loyalty. She couldn’t fathom a lack of
loyalty in anyone, and herself struggled mightily with the desire to abandon
her sister to her own devices. Actual estrangement was, of course, not an
option as it could have been mistaken as a lack of fealty. But Uncle Bruce had
cheated on Aunt Judy, or so was said in one of the letters in so many words. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nancy’s mother finally relented in one of the
last exchanges between them and gave Aunt Judy her royal acceptance of the
dissolution of their bond, some twenty years after the actual events took
place. Had her mother been so stubborn? She couldn’t remember. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then Nancy never crossed her. Nancy never
crossed anyone really, too terrified of being tromped on, emotionally squashed,
disapproved of, worse still, thought to be disloyal.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
hot beam of light hit Nancy’s back at the same time this revelation struck inside.
She was her mother, through and through. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She never meant to be. She was just trying to
stay out of trouble, but in the end she was a more mousy clone of her
open-mouthed mother who’d been too prideful to quite be bitter, but was
absolutely certain of everything she believed regardless of any evidence that
might point to the contrary. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
had taken her mother twenty years to accept that her sister had a bad marriage
and was better off without a man who hadn’t wanted her. Oh sure, Nancy didn’t
go around spouting who was right and who was wrong openly, but she thought it quietly
inside her head. Nancy had never felt close to her mother because she was
always afraid of her disapproval. She’d adopted a strategy of staying quiet,
and thus, largely unnoticed by her mother. It spilled over into her demeanor
with other people too by accident and now she was what feminists call ‘a
doormat’. She knew it. She didn’t want to be that. But she was. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
irony of how she could be so detrimentally judgmental, adopting the same
attitudes as her mother, and yet so utterly different in style flummoxed
her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suddenly, a moment in her
daughter’s life popped into her head and it was as if a memory faucet had been
turned on inside her and it wouldn’t let up. Great wracking sobs flattened her
to the floor where she remained, to cry and then drift into sleep, for the next
hour.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Britney
had been just sixteen and was wild about a boy, named Jeremy. She hadn’t
brought him home yet but had talked him up so that Nancy was practically
planning the wedding. She’d even had a congenial conversation on the phone with
his mother about “our two lovebirds” to coordinate colors for their Homecoming
Dance outfits. But the night before Jeremy was to come for dinner, Britney declared
she didn’t like him anymore. Nancy was mortified that Britney had uninvited him
to dinner at their house knowing full well that his mother would think it
utterly rude, that she’d forced Frank to coerce Britney to relent. He was a
very attractive young man, but dinner was awkward because Britney adopted an
aloof attitude. Nancy tried desperately to make up for it by being extremely hospitable,
even allowing them to go to Britney’s room alone after dinner. It lasted all of
twenty open door minutes wherein Nancy and Frank uncomfortably watched TV in
the living room but really listened to the screams and sobs of their daughter
floating down the stairs.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
might have all blown over Nancy realized only now. Except that Britney… well,
the truth was, Nancy had not let it. She was chagrined and upset by dinner, and
by Britney’s rejection of Jeremy, her foregoing of the dance, and wasting $80
on a dress she now would never wear. Nancy felt that her daughter was wrong to
reject such an attractive young man, with such potential, and such a nice
mother. She pushed and pressed Britney – not for an answer as to why, certain
that it was something frivolous and childish – but to take him back, until Britney
had finally blurt out “He hit me Mom! There, are you happy?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
Nancy had said without pause, “Oh honey, I’m sure he didn’t mean it”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Because
that is what her mother would have said. Britney never confided in her again.
Not that they were bosom buddies or anything to begin with. But Nancy always
felt that they would grow closer as Britney matured and understood more of the
realities of the world just as she and her own moth… It was a lie. Nancy’s eyes
popped open. She was even being judgmental of the memory. She’d been lying on
the floor for how long? Was she dreaming and remembering, crying, all at the
same time? She had never, ever, in her fifty plus years felt this horribly
wrong, she’d always converted her mistakes to ‘right’. Yes, she’d always made
herself right, which by default makes everyone else wrong. Just as her mother
had done. How had this gone unnoticed?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">She
lay a little longer on the dusty floor, completely out of character for Nancy.
She glanced over at the clock, 2:13 pm, and decided to call her.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Britney
was usually available for office hours the last period of the day. A high
school counselor, she had the maturity of someone twice her age. Nancy had
never acknowledged this out-loud, though she was proud of her daughter for it,
but she was reluctant to give up this piece of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>what she thought of as necessary leverage. She
winced as she sat up. Her back stiff, but mostly at the thought that she was as
stingy with approval as her mother had been. She would have to tell her
daughter this. But not now, not today. Later. First things first.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
words choked her in the back of her throat and for a moment, she wasn’t sure
she was going to be able to say it. Britney, as always, was distracted and busy
on the phone, and accused her mother of setting herself up for neglect by
insisting on calling during school hours. Nancy dismissed the accusation. But
in the back of her mind she knew it was true. She was afraid of a Britney at
peace, which she seemed to be at home in her tiny condo overlooking the ocean.
A peek-a-boo terrace was what the realtor had called it and Britney was a
different person on it, or on the beach, just as she had been as a child. Frank
always thought she would have become a marine biologist just to be near the
ocean, but she was lousy at math. Nevertheless, Frank would tell her with a big
hug and a smile she’d be the best marine biologist on the planet. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nancy
rarely disrupted Britney in her home. It felt like too much responsibility to
be the one to break her calm there.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I’m
sorry,” finally slipped from her lips but Britney missed it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Wha?
I’m sorry, Mom. What did you say? What were we talking about?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“The
boy, Jeremy. The one who…” Nancy couldn’t say the other bit. That would be too
much, maybe for another day. “Your junior year, I think. You didn’t go to the
dance. And I… I’m… I didn’t understand, and I was awful about it. So. I’m
sorry.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
kinetic energy that was always palpable on the other end of Britney’s work phone
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>suddenly silenced. It remained for so
long that Nancy parted her lips to speak but finally Britney interjected.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Oh,
yeah. That’s right.” Then another moment of silence. “Well, OK. Is there
anything else. The bell is just about to ring.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“No,
I… well, I just wanted to say that. I suddenly remembered it today. I was going
through some things, some of my mother’s things, and it seemed like it just
struck me that I’d been wrong.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Wow.”
Now Britney’s energy was back but she paused for another long moment. “I don’t
think I have ever heard you say that.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nancy
bristled and could feel defensiveness well up inside her. Her brain kicked into
high gear and spun rapidly over all the reasons why she hadn’t been wrong,
after all it is a mother’s duty to try and identify a suitable mate, and if
they’d met him earlier her father could have… but she bit her tongue, not
letting any of it come out.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Thanks,
Mom. No, really, it is amazing to hear you say that. That really hurt my
feelings for a long time. I guess I kinda squashed that one.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
just as rapidly as her brain had spun up, Britney’s calm voice seemed to
placate it back to slow speed. A fine feeling wash over her, just as it had the
day her daughter moved in to her condo and they had shared a bottle of wine in
plastic chairs on her peek-a-boo terrace and watched the sun set, and she had
driven home tipsy and alive and seduced her husband for the first time in
years. It felt like a new beginning.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Of
course, Nancy had not sustained that new beginning because her headache in the
morning told her immediately that it was Britney’s fault for pouring the second
glass, and why did Frank have to keep her up so late, didn’t they have any
concern for her well-being? But this time was different. This time Nancy saw
it. No, they weren’t perfect, but for the first time she was willing to
entertain the idea that she wasn’t either.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">After
she hung up the phone the closet called her back and she was just about ready
to shove boxes back inside. But her long wool jacket caught her eye, and
Frank’s seldom worn – even in Sonoma – trench coat. Yes, she would throw them
away, not even give them away – too easy to fish them out again and change her
mind – <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>yes, she’d toss them into the
trash and dump the breakfast refuse on top. That would teach her. No more
longing. A new commitment to where she was, right now, geologically and
emotionally, was in order. She grabbed the coats, hangers and all, and marched
herself and them straight outdoors. But even as she did a strange bulk in the
pockets of Frank’s trench coat bothered her, pushed at her gut. A wallet? No,
she’d let it go, all of it. Uncertainty, reluctance, all of it. She yanked the
plastic lid off the trash bin and tossed both in. And just according to plan
she forcibly marched herself to the kitchen, to under the sink and ripped the
bag, not nearly full of coffee grounds, cantaloupe peels, a small scrunched up
carton of used up creamer, paper towels, all of it, going right on top of those
coats that had held her back for so long.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Back
in the kitchen activity kept her mind off the itch of that pocket bulk. She’d
spilled a small amount of coffee grounds on the floor that had to be picked up,
a new trash bag had to be secured back into the can, it was almost 4:00 so why
not a cup of coffee and a swipe of the counter with a sponge as it brewed, open
the freezer and defrost some chicken for dinner.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">But
still, that bulk. What was it? It couldn’t be an old wallet. She searched her
memory to see if Frank had lost one at some point, maybe when they’d moved?
Nothing. She sat, warming her hands on the coffee cup, until it ate at her
enough that she sprung from her chair.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
was disgusting. She had purposefully not tied off the plastic kitchen bag
knowing her tendency to change her mind in such stressful situations. Disposing
of a good jacket, even if no longer appropriate, was not easy for her, let
alone disposing of two. But she dug anyway and pulled it halfway out. She was
almost ready to give it up for a mistake, maybe it was the belt buckle? Feeling
silly after trying both side pockets she remembering this coat had a good sized
breast pocket. Reaching in, she felt a wad. He wasn’t hiding money from her was
he? Her mind began to swim with fury even as her fingers sensed it was wrong.
Not money. Paper. But then she realized it was receipts, just receipts, she could
kicked herself. So stupid she’d been. But as she lifted her hand to fling the
wad angrily back into the can a heat stamped single word caught her eye: Nude.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
seemed minutes that her hand hovered in mid-air before she willed it down.
Suddenly aware that she was outside within eyesight of many neighbors and
clearly acting crazy, stomping around, going through the trash, she faked an
intentionally audible “Ahh!” as cheerfully as she could muster, replaced the lid
and went back in, wad of receipts clutched in hand at her side. At the kitchen
table she had to tell herself to set them down, not put them back in the trash.
Her miraculous powers of denial were rearing their hind legs, readying for
action, but the conversation with her daughter earlier had changed the tenor of
the day somehow. A new beginning. She dropped the wad and went over to the sink
to wash her hands. As she toweled them off she told herself, whatever is in
there I will accept, I will not judge.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">They
dated back years… and years. Not so many in a month or a year but even still
she felt <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>betrayed, embarrassed,
abandoned (what was the feeling?), shocked perhaps. Smacked in the face with a
reality she’d known all along, she’d just, what? Put it aside. She’d tucked it
away secretly just as Frank had secretly tucked away the evidence in his unused
trenchcoat pocket. She knew it was there, that he’d gone out and hadn’t said
where he was going or where he had been when he got back. But he seemed
cheerful enough and she would always be in bed by the time he got home so she’d
pretend to asleep. Then he’d go off into the bathroom for a long time. Every
once in a while she’d let him touch and rouse her from her pretend sleep. They
might even make love then. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">But
here it was. Proof. On her kitchen table.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Part
of her wanted to stomp and yell and cry just as Britney had at sixteen. To scream
“It is unconscionable!” But that new part of her that had begun to spring up
inside her this afternoon told her, no, be calm. Find out. She felt… guilt.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">When
Frank finally walked through the kitchen door at 6-something she saw his face shift
from its normally congenial greeting to one that was confused, then scared, then
pained as soon as he saw the table covered with the evidence of his
transgretions.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I
finally threw out that old trench coat.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">She
tried to smile at him but the reality of being “caught” was washing over him so
he didn’t hear her. “You never even wore it up north.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He
was suddenly in a chair, face in hands sobbing, waiting for her flail of
judgments to scorch him. He seemed to be hiding from her. She reached out a
hand and placed it on his back. The touch made his sobbing intensify and she
knew why without admitting it to herself. Because this was unlike her, to
comfort.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I
was so lonely,” was all he said as he raised his head. He did not look at her
but stood, grabbed a kitchen towel and pressed it to his face as he walked out
of the room.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">She
got dinner on the table like she was supposed to and they each picked and
shoved at chicken pieces and boxed rice mix for the appropriate amount of time
until it was acceptable to excuse oneself from the table.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She thought she’d keep feeling that awful pick
axe of guilt inside her gut forever. But once he’d left the table for the TV
room it disappeared. As she cleaned the rice pot in the sink she allowed
herself to ponder whether this was the end of her marriage. A relief washed
over her and she almost smiled. Oh, it wasn’t that she didn’t love her husband.
They had, after all, raised a child together and she had loved seeing him gush
over their daughter. Frank was what kept Britney sane she suddenly realized,
and without thinking pressed a sudsy hand against her forehead with a startled
“Oh”. It wasn’t exactly the realization that she hadn’t been a very good
parent… she wiped her forehead with a towel. It was that she felt suddenly free
of judgment. Not his, her own. She had messed up with Britney, now he had this.
The field was finally level.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He
came to bed past midnight. She tried to be asleep by then but was unsuccessful.
She wanted to spare him a scene so she quickly shut her eyes as she had done
many times before, on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">those</i> nights.
But his hot pulse throbbed next to her and she suddenly wanted him, a feeling
that was distantly familiar.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I
was lonely too,” she whispered, almost not loud enough for him to hear. He
leaned over and looked her straight in the eye. Intensely, like he used to do
many years ago when they dated. Then he pressed his mouth to hers. And it
almost hurt.</span></div>
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<![endif]-->Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-41390250139326899672014-05-19T10:41:00.000-07:002014-05-19T10:42:01.503-07:0021 HoursThis past Saturday my son had a choir festival to attend in Fullerton in the morning which would culminate in an awards ceremony at Disneyland in the evening - which meant several hours at Disneyland!!! I easily could have sent him off and wished him "break a leg" but he keenly wanted me to go, so I agreed to be a driving mom.<br />
<br />
We woke at 6am to be to school by 7am to pick up our other charges and transport them to the Festival by 9am. Thinking it was silly to load a whole pot of coffee I set up my French press instead. And while shoving breakfast into my face the whistle blew on the kettle and I turned off the burner, not realizing until seconds before we left I neglected to actually pour any of the boiling water over the coffee. Three minutes already late I notice my error and tried to make 'instant' coffee (forgetting that I actually HAVE instant coffee in my cupboard!) by pouring in some water and plunging madly for a few seconds, pour in travel mug and go. It wasn't until we were well on the road that I tried it. It was like someone gave me a cup of McDonald's coffee that'd been watered down. The worst cup of coffee ever.<br />
<br />
Surely, I thought, I would find some place nearby the Festival to get a decent cup of coffee - nope. Surely, once we get to Disneyland I'll sneak away and get a nap - nope. Or a Starbucks - nope. As things go with days like this it was a whirlwind of warm up and prep and performance and then quick lunch, get to Disney, park, find friends, run, laugh, stand in line, rush to next ride.... It wasn't until 8pm that night that my son and I realized we were desperately hungry, tired, feet hurt, sleepy, and while we started off with two kids then at the park acquired two more, then lost three, then gained three more plus a parent to hang around with, then another couple of parents, then lost them all... that we finally decided to slow down and eat something and regroup before the awards ceremony. By that time we were both cranky from hunger and snapping at each other. But finally I got my coffee!<br />
<br />
At the awards ceremony his 6th grade choir placed first in their category and his school got a few other awards as well. We were all excited, exhausted, and ready to go home when on the walk out of the auditorium we heard the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad - working! It had long lines all day, then closed, then opened again, then when we got in line closed not five minutes later. So, even though it was already 11pm, and the three sets of parents of the kids I was transporting (I acquired another kid to drive home, in case you're counting) expected us back in Palm Desert somewhere around 12:30 am, we HAD to ride it. And it was worth it. And it was worth it to make sure each kid had a treat before we left, and mama/driver had a Starbucks (the one in Downtown Disney stays open an hour after the park closes - they know their audience!), and we got a picture of them in front of the lit up castle looking happy and proud, as they should be, even though by the time we were all loaded in the car and heading down the road it was already 12:30 am...<br />
<br />
As I drove down the not nearly as deserted as I had expected highway towards home - pushing 20 hours awake by that time (with not nearly enough coffee, do I need to add that?), with four sleeping middle school kids in my charge, the thought came to me that I was once a kid just like them. And some parent took me on field trips and excursions so that I could have great, long, exciting day like this one, and then sleep in the car on the way back, knowing that I would be magically transported home safely. A wash of gratitude came over me that I could be that person for these four lovely little human beings, so they could rest, so they could dream about their day, and on Monday share how tired they had been arriving home at 2:30 in the morning on Sunday! It was an attitude that I have been chasing for years, that everything is enough, that finally caught up with me. It is the little things that matter the most. The very small big deals like getting a bunch of happy kids home in the middle of the night, and tired as you are, being glad to do it.Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-67851672483131624112014-04-29T10:39:00.002-07:002014-04-29T10:41:11.450-07:00"Makeover" Part 2<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">When
he got home the house was empty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
guys had taken him out to dinner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
more quick lesson from Ramos on camera about how to behave in public and the
cameraman had left them to the rest of their dinner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ramos never did have any advice about how to
deal with his wife but he did tell him to hang in and admitted to working for barely
more than minimum wage just a year ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“And look at me, I’m almost 50!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It did make him feel somewhat better.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">But
the Jack buzz had long since been replaced by a paler wine-at-dinner buzz and
he was lonely in the house after a week of too many people around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cath and the kids were put up in a nearby
hotel, forbidden from seeing him till tomorrow night when he’d have cocktails
and appetizers in his new studio – which had been re-keyed so even he couldn’t
get in to see what they had done – and then off to the bar where he and the
band would play a set for the cameras.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He couldn’t get to his guitars, couldn’t talk to his wife.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No comfort left but more booze.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He decided to go to the bar and have a drink
even though it would ruin the surprise for Randy, the manager.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">When
he got there it was almost empty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Randy
poured him a shot and drew him a beer as he walked in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Am I that predictable, he wondered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He sat down and took the first sip of his
beer before Randy really noticed his hair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When he did all Randy said was “Wow”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Keith wanted to ask if he thought it would affect the way people
perceived his playing in the band but then it occurred to him that that was a
pathetic question to ask.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">He
looked around and Lila was seated in a booth almost in the back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was about to look away, avoid her, when
she looked up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She didn’t recognize him
at first, unless she’d done this so many times she’d gotten good at fake
surprise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He nodded when she wide eyed
pointed to her head and mouthed ‘hair’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She
gathered up her papers and came over to him.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“My
god. That’s good, really great haircut. Can I?” and she touched his now
slightly wavy hair atop his head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I
barely recognized you”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“What
are you doing here?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Just
having a drink. Going over some stuff. We’re put up in the hotel next door”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Oh.
I didn’t know”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Yeah,
right. Why would you?” she said without irony. “What are you doing here?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Drink.
This is where I play. This is where the…”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Right.
Duh.” She ordered another drink and offered to buy him one and though he didn’t
often turn down a free drink he turned down this one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Age had taught him at least one useful thing
and that was his limit on alcohol.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Why
weren’t you there today?” he asked after her drink arrived.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“What?
The haircut? It’s sort of the guys’ thing. I don’t like to hover too much. Plus
I had a phone interview this afternoon. I’m looking for a new job”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“You
don’t like this one?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Oh,
it’s fine. I like it. It’s actually my first producing gig. It’s just, I’m 36.
If I’m going to do anything with my life I need to get a move on.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“What
do you want to do?” he asked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Features.”
Not quite sure what she meant he nodded anyway. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I love your wife. She is so cool.” He
wondered if she was trying to get the message across that she was not trying to
hit on him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her eyes had that dreamy
look that most guys mistake for amorous but is really just drunkenness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Yeah.
I pretty much haven’t accomplished anything I set out to do. I was supposed to
have at least one Emmy by now. An Oscar would be fine, but I like television
better. And be married, two kids. But I have a great dog, so… I guess I’m not a
total loser.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Keith
couldn’t help but laugh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seemed
ironic that she called herself a loser.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It occurred to him that Joe was right, his wife and kids were the one thing
that would always have been the gage to who he was, even if he was the leader
of some mega band.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“What
would the difference be if you got this new job?” he asked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Probably good to focus on someone else for a
while.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Uh,
I’d work more probably… but it’s not reality TV so that’s good. I dunno. I
guess I just feel like I have to keep scratching at it. Keep climbing or
something. Like, that’s why they call people in Hollywood sharks. You have to
keep moving otherwise you die.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">They
talked a little more about Hollywood and Lila’s life there and how she wished
she could find a chick as cool as Cathy to settle down with but that it was
especially difficult in LA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one in
the business really approved of lesbians even though technically they didn’t
disapprove.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She asked him about his
music and was impressed by his rock ballad that had ended up being a country
hit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She thought he ought to just go
with it and write country songs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
thought about the piles of finished and partially finished songs sitting on a
bar stool in his studio. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And how, in his
current band configuration was uninterested in practicing more than a couple
hours a week, so his songs they never got tried out, arranged and played at a
gig.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why didn’t he just record them
acoustic and sell them, Lila asked, and hinting at the new recording studio
that they put into his studio.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She had
tons of friends who were songwriters in LA who’d never had a song on the radio
let alone a hit and who always seemed to have writer’s block.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She could introduce him to some managers who
she knew were always looking for songs for their clients, she said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">He
went home that night feeling filled up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Not because of the conversation with Lila at the bar so much as the
whole thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How impressed everyone had
been with his kids, his wife, his life and the small successes in the business
that he had always thought of as sure signs of what a pathetic, old wannabe
rock star he was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe he should try to
need less reassurance from everyone else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Maybe he spent way too much time worrying about himself and what he
didn’t have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seemed so stupid that he
should have such a revelation after a weeklong makeover reality show shoot and
not before in the stillness of some Fall night like this one, standing alone on
his gazebo.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The
next morning, the crew was late in arriving, well after ten.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The day went like all the others, both long
and short.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seemed like a week and an
instant both getting to 10 pm that night when he was supposed to start his
‘gig’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When they finally arrived at the
bar there the crew were lighting and his family were waiting in the lobby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, the kids couldn’t actually come
into the bar but they could listen from the lobby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Randy thought they might make an exception
for the actual shooting though, technically, it wasn’t legal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Keith was not sure what to expect or what he
would say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’d been up late playing –
Nathan’s small, kid sized guitar, the only one not in his studio – and had
written a sort of dedication as a surprise for his wife and kids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wasn’t even sure he was going to play it
until the cameras started to roll.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His
band was a little miffed, he could see out of the corner of his eye, but ten
seconds into the song he, finally, for the first time in a long time, didn’t
give a shit what anyone else thought and he didn’t need anyone to reassure
him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">When
the song was done even his band were a little misty, though they tried to hide
it with macho pats on the back and “Great song, man”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He could see Lila in the back of the room and
when he caught her eye she gave him a thumbs up.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">He
wouldn’t say that week changed his life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Change takes a lot longer than a week when it’s self inflicted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’d gotten some contacts from Lila that had
actually panned out. He flew to LA for several days, took meetings and was
commissioned to write a couple of ballads for some new pop sensation whose name
he couldn’t remember, only that she’d already been on commercials and his kids
thought she was ‘pretty good’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And a new
young rock band was recording the song he’d written for his family for their
new album… whether it actually ended up on the album, well…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wasn’t sure if he cared much about that
anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a funny way, doing the whole
makeover for the show had made him recapture his youth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not the ambition part, but that part of music
that had totally absorbed him, where he would disappear into the sensation of
just playing and writing and time would pass without needing to eat or rest or
even go take a leak.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He could play for
3, 4 hours in a row now and he hadn’t been able to do that in a long time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Part
of it was Joe and Lila and just meeting people outside of his world, and even
Ramon a little bit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And knowing that
life is random mostly and ordered sometimes, and there is fate and there is
hard work and really none of it matters one way or the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was experiencing his own world just the
way it was, he finally realized, that meant something to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when Lila left a message on their machine
telling them the show would air that weekend, and she’d gotten the job she had
wanted and they should keep in touch, though he knew they wouldn’t, Cath had <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>wanted to throw a big party for the
airing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But nope, he decided that all he
really wanted was a bowl of popcorn, Cath, Nathan and Tilda next to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’d been almost six months since the
taping.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’d forgotten a lot of what
happened and a lot of what he had said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There was some embarrassing stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But the thing that he had missed then, and the thing that made him know
now that rabid ambition would never take over and control his happiness again,
was when the camera caught his son at the bar, looking at his sister and saying
“Dad is so cool” and she nodding her head in agreement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What more was there really.</span></div>
Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-73595256615611898442014-04-22T14:10:00.000-07:002014-04-22T14:10:04.402-07:00"Makeover" - a short story by Daniela Ryan<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>He
wasn’t sure how he had let her talk him into it.<span> </span>But then he always would do just about
anything for Cathy.<span> </span>She was way prettier
than he deserved and she knew it.<span> </span>She’d
kept herself up, just as a way to maintain her leverage, he thought
sometimes.<span> </span>But no, that was a mean thing
to think.<span> </span>She did always have his best
interests in mind.<span> </span>Maybe he didn’t have
his own in mind.<span> </span>He wasn’t sure what his
best interests were anymore and maybe that is why it had been possible for her
to talk him into it.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>It
was a reality show, of course, but not that one with the gay guys.<span> </span>It was the same idea.<span> </span>Anyway, they would redo his studio too and it
really needed it.<span> </span>Winter was a
bitch.<span> </span>It’s not like it snowed or
anything but it got pretty cold in there.<span>
</span>Hard to strum when your fingers are half frozen.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>They
arrived at 6 am Monday morning.<span> </span>Why it
had to be so early he wasn’t sure but anyway Keith had taken a week of time off
from JR Trucking.<span> </span>It’s just that he was
hoping to sleep in a little bit.<span> </span>That
was the beauty of vacation wasn’t it, sleeping in?<span> </span>For the first few years after they had had
children, till Tilda was, what, he couldn’t remember anymore, about 5 or so,
they had to wake up at 7 am sharp.<span> </span>You
can’t have babies or toddlers wandering around the house by themselves, they
start fires.<span> </span>He knew that.<span> </span>Their oldest, Nathan, actually had.<span> </span>Started a fire. <span> </span>Because Cathy had gone into the office early
one morning and Keith, although he shouldn’t, went back to sleep.<span> </span>So, 7 am it was - rain, shine, school day,
weekend, vacation, whatever.<span> </span>At least
now the kids could be trusted not to destroy the house if he slept until 8 am
on the weekends or later when he was on vacation.<span> </span>Sometimes he took a personal day even when
the kids were in school and Cath was at work, just so he could sleep in till
noon, wake up, smoke some pot then practice till everyone got home that
evening.<span> </span>He loved that.<span> </span>It reminded him… But what was the point of
thinking about all that now.<span> </span>Here they
were at 6 fucking am.<span> </span>Last night he had
been excited but now… now.<span> </span>What.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>There
was a style guy, a decorator guy who was Cathy’s favorite, a manners guy
although that wasn’t what he was called.<span>
</span>He couldn’t remember what it was called.<span>
</span>Not a lot of call for manners during a gig or at his day job at the
trucking company, he thought.<span> </span>“I just
want you to be able to clean up nice, that’s all” Cathy had said on more than
one occasion.<span> </span>It was usually around the
holidays and it was her number one way of backing out of a skirmish that was
close to becoming a fight, usually over his hair.<span> </span>He couldn’t have told her why he wanted to,
no wait, needed to keep his hair long.<span>
</span>He always just used his music as an excuse.<span> </span>“But that isn’t even your real job” she’d
always say, or something like that. It didn’t take many seconds for her to read
his face and realize that that was one comment too many and to back out.<span> </span>He’d taken a job because of Cathy of
course.<span> </span>He had been doing a lot of gigs
when she got pregnant and she wanted him to have a more regular schedule.<span> </span>He’d bristled but he didn’t expect to love
the baby so much even before he was born and really he would have done anything
that was good for that boy.<span> </span>God, he
loved that little guy.<span> </span>Not so little
anymore, Nathan was going to turn ten in a few days.<span> </span>He apparently wanted Daddy to get a makeover
too, according to Cath.<span> </span>It’s not that he
didn’t want to believe her, it’s just that he knew Nathan would say just about
anything after a little gentle prodding from his mom.<span> </span>The job was alright.<span> </span>They guys were alright and the hours were
regular and the pay pretty good.<span> </span>He
could always quit if his music career took off but… well, or he could always
cut back on his overtime a bit if he needed to.<span>
</span>The mortgage was a couple years from being paid off and though they had
talked about selling and getting a bigger place, she let him convince himself
that if they didn’t have a mortgage he could go back to regular hours and then
have more time to promote his weekly gig.<span>
</span>He had never wanted to get a second mortgage or it would be paid by now,
except that his studio was in the detached garage and Cath wanted a real garage
attached to the house which they built right in front of the old one.<span> </span>But she liked it because she could bring
groceries right into the kitchen and it was better than trying to bring in
stuff when it rained.<span> </span>It’s not like she
was so in love with her car she had explained, it’s just that they needed
somewhere to store stuff too… It seemed like a slippery slope to him at the
time but he had agreed.<span> </span>At least, Cathy
wasn’t like some guys’ wives he knew.<span>
</span>She wasn’t shallow or heavily into her appearance, even though she
always took the time to look good.<span> </span>And
even though she was a little wider in the hips than when they met she was still
really attractive.<span> </span>Of course, he would never
say that to her face again.<span> </span>That had
been a miscalculated phrase during one of their ‘hair’ fights that he’d paid mightily
for. <span> </span>For a week.<span> </span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>So.<span> </span>Here they were.<span> </span>Joe – style guy, Ramos – etiquette – that’s
what it was called – guy, and Mick – decorator chap.<span> </span>He was British.<span> </span>And Lila, the producer.<span> </span>Those were all the people he was supposed to
remember.<span> </span>All the other 20 or so crew he
was just supposed to ignore, like they were flies on the wall.<span> </span>The guys were cool.<span> </span>And none of them were gay.<span> </span>He was pretty sure.<span> </span>He had good gaydar.<span> </span>It was from being raised in the San Francisco
Bay Area.<span> </span>Lila was a trip though.<span> </span>Really high strung, heavy smoker, smart and
quick, but man, she looked like she could use some sleep.<span> </span>He wondered why they didn’t make <i>her</i> over.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>Almost
as soon as they were introduced the guys disappeared.<span> </span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“You
guys have seen the show right?” Lila said. “Is there somewhere I can smoke? I
don’t want to smoke near your house.”<span>
</span>Cath led her to the gazebo and Lila explained how the week would
go.<span> </span>The crew were already loading,
dropping cable and stomping over the lawn – shit, he had just reseeded last
weekend.<span> </span>Lila must have noticed the
worry on his face.<span> </span>She snickered just a
bit at him and told him not to worry, they would repair any damage they did,
including lawns.<span> </span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“Cool.<span> </span>This is cool.<span>
</span>What a great view” Lila exhaled smoke through her nose.<span> </span>“You don’t want to go in there yet, anyway,
for a bit until they get set up.<span> </span>I always
end up getting in their way.”<span> </span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>A
skinny kid, all of twenty, lomped up to the gazebo carrying wireless mike packs
for him and Cathy.<span> </span>Keith couldn’t help
thinking, that’s the age I was when I started playing.<span> </span>It bothered him a lot now to see these young
guys in their 20s - everyone seemed younger than him.<span> </span>It didn’t seem like so long ago when he was
the young one and everyone else was older.<span>
</span>This kid with the mikes, it’s like his voice hadn’t changed yet.<span> </span>He was quiet and respectful putting Cathy’s
on and blushed when she asked if he was the one who would do this everyday.<span> </span>But with Keith he made small talk.<span> </span>Cath and Lila kept talking.<span> </span>Women could find anything in common.<span> </span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“I
swear if women ran the world there would never be any war.<span> </span>They could all relate to each other on some
level” Keith said, feeling old in front of the sound kid and regretting it even
as it spilled out of his mouth.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“I
know” the kid said, “My mom can talk to anyone. I mean, anyone.”<span> </span>He fiddled with the pack a bit and then said,
“So, you’re a musician?”</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“Yeah.”</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“What
do you play?”</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“Lead”</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“Cool.<span> </span>Do you, like, have a lot of guitars?”</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“Yeah.
I’ve collected a few” and added inadvertently “over the years”.<span> </span>He wondered if the wince he felt inside
showed on his face.<span> </span>It probably didn’t
because the kid had an expectant look and when Keith asked if he’d like to look
at them he actually jumped up into the air a little bit.<span> </span>Keith hoped, as they walked to his studio,
the kid wouldn’t be disappointed.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>When
he showed the kid his guitar collection he kind of got a little well of pride
over him, like he had made them or something.<span>
</span>He played them anyway.<span> </span>When he
pulled out his prize, a guitar that Cath had gotten for him for his 40<sup>th</sup>
birthday to prove that she really didn’t hate his music or his ambition, Keith
hoped the kid would know who Syd Barrett was.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“No
shit! Aw man” he said.<span> </span>So, that was
good.<span> </span>But then, “That’s the way to go,
huh?<span> </span>Just fuckin’ create the shit out of
something and then go home to the roosters.”<span>
</span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“Well,
he didn’t actually die. But yeah, he was really young when he left Pink Floyd
and sort of disappeared from music” Keith said.<span>
</span>He hadn’t really answered the kid’s question.<span> </span>He always hated it when he did that.<span> </span>But it was probably rhetorical anyway.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“Dude.<span> </span>OK, man.<span>
</span>Well, back to work” and shook Keith’s hand.<span> </span>“Thanks for showing me your collection”.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“You
play?”</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“Naw.
Just a fan. I’m a film dude. But I love music” and he lomped out of his studio
off to do more sound guy stuff somewhere inside the house.<span> </span>Keith thought to ask him to his regular gig
later in the week but then his cheeks flushed red.<span> </span>He was too young, probably wouldn’t like the
kind of rock that Keith and his band played anyway.<span> </span>Too many covers, not enough original
stuff.<span> </span>Most of their audience was around
his own age anyway.<span> </span>Fat, middle aged,
balding.<span> </span>Which brought his mind back to his
hair.<span> </span>Shit.<span> </span>They were going to want to cut it, he
knew.<span> </span>It had been so stuck in Cath’s
craw for so many years, he was sure it was the entire reason she wanted this
whole makeover thing in the first place.<span>
</span>Now he was just feeling embarrassed and shitty.<span> </span>A middle aged lo… He couldn’t even make
himself think the word.<span> </span>He decided to
hide out for a while, see if he could practice away the blues.<span> </span>He picked up the Syd Barrett.<span> </span>What the hell.<span> </span>He never really played it.<span> </span>Mostly just left it on display on the wall
for when his friends came over, to admire.<span>
</span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>The
camera people came in about an hour later with the obnoxious director.<span> </span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“Oh,
no. Don’t get up. We’re just shooting B-roll for the show.”<span> </span>The director barked.<span> </span>“That’s great that you’re playing. Just keep
it up”.<span> </span>The name for the show, they
always had some cutie name, was Modern Rocker.<span>
</span>It seemed innocuous enough, though he knew he’d get some ribbing from
his friends and all the pictures of his brief “Flock of Seagulls hair” period
would surface at the next get together.<span>
</span>He couldn’t help it if his hair styled that well.<span> </span>They’d all been jealous then.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>But,
suddenly, lit and hovered over by a camera and crew three feet away from him,
he was uncomfortable playing.<span> </span>Back in
the 80s when he’d first started they had shot a video.<span> </span>But that band broke up long before the thing
even got edited.<span> </span>He had an impulse to
tell the obnoxious director this for some reason, but he squashed it.<span> </span>Maybe he was trying to validate his
discomfort.<span> </span>He was a live performer, not
some TV actor.<span> </span>How do you concentrate
with all these people right in your face?<span>
</span>That had been one of the first things Cathy asked him when they met
backstage.<span> </span>“How do you play with all those
people staring at you?”<span> </span>It was his first,
and as it turned out, only tour.<span> </span>He was
28, 29, something like that and had finally – in between bands – gotten a gig
as an additional musician on a ZZ Top tour.<span>
</span>As it happened the opening act’s lead guitar had OD’d that afternoon and
was still in the hospital on the night Cathy came to the show though she
assured him she would have noticed him anyway.<span>
</span>So, she actually got to see him perform, whereas on most nights he just
huffed guitars on and off stage, tuned them and waited to be needed.<span> </span>It’s sort of the way his whole life felt at
this moment.<span> </span>He was needed for a few
moments here and there and then off to the corner again.<span> </span>He thought this just as the obnoxious
director booted him out of his own studio for more B-roll, told him they would
let him know when he was needed again.<span>
</span>He put the Syd Barrett back on the wall.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>He
had felt the same way with his children.<span>
</span>They needed Cath and rarely wanted him.<span>
</span>He tried to be nurturing and a good dad but he couldn’t help feeling
unnecessary sometimes.<span> </span>Until they got
older, of course, but even still it was always “Mom, where are my socks” and
“Mom, can I go to Rick’s after school”, never Dad.<span> </span>Cath assured him that he did have an
influence and was important.<span> </span>He wondered
if this was why men disappeared from their families so readily.<span> </span>He couldn’t think of one friend who’d had a
good relationship with his dad.<span> </span>Except
Cathy’s brother Edward, Jr.<span> </span>Ed, Cathy’s
dad, was the coolest old guy Keith knew and when Ed assured him that men are
meant to be the providers and would be called upon when needed and in the
meantime they should just go golfing he’d felt better.<span> </span>Ed had taken Ed, Jr. fishing a lot and this
accounted for their close relationship Keith was sure.<span> </span>He tried to take Nathan and Tilda fishing but
they had both been grossed out.<span> </span>They
took up hiking instead.<span> </span>Keith didn’t
know if it made the kids feel any closer to him.<span> </span>His own father hadn’t been around much and
spent a lot of time bowling and drinking.<span>
</span>But it sure did a lot for him.<span>
</span>Cath told him to be patient, that someday they would remember those
hikes as their fondest memories.<span> </span>Seemed
like someone was always having to reassure him.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>The
week clipped along.<span> </span>Twelve hours seemed
like just a few.<span> </span>The crew would arrive
in the morning, set up.<span> </span>Spend about an
hour talking and eating bagels and coffee and then Keith would be whisked off
somewhere.<span> </span>With Joe, there were new
clothes.<span> </span>A whole new wardrobe, in
fact.<span> </span>With Mick, there were new
furnishings for his studio – mostly stuff he didn’t think he’d actually use,
stools, chairs, ottomans, stuff like that.<span>
</span>Did they think he just hung out and read Rolling Stone or what?<span> </span>He didn’t spend much time with Ramos who
seemed to have some other agenda.<span> </span>Ramos
gave him a few pointers one day for a couple hours on how to hold a fork, order
wine, pull a chair out for a lady.<span> </span>Shit
like that would only be useful on Valentine’s Day and anniversaries.<span> </span>How about some pointers on how to tell your
wife that you’d really like to have another baby or that you want to book a
three week tour of California to see if you still have it?<span> </span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>He
liked Joe the best.<span> </span>He seemed the most ‘there’
of the three.<span> </span>And it was Joe that he was
able to talk to.<span> </span>It was the day of the
haircut.<span> </span>Thursday morning.<span> </span>The whole week seemed to go fast but slow
too, like one week was really three and he couldn’t believe that ‘the day’ was
here already.<span> </span>Joe could tell that he was
on the fence when they had shot a conversation about ‘the hair’ the day
before.<span> </span>The conversation had suddenly
gone south when Joe brought it up and all Keith could do was hem and haw and um
and oh.<span> </span>It was pathetic.<span> </span>Lila had called cut, something he hadn’t
heard her say all week.<span> </span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“Look,
I know this is probably the heavy part for you.<span>
</span>It is for women too.<span> </span>But we have
to keep this upbeat” was all she said.<span>
</span>Joe took him aside in the bathroom and assured him he wouldn’t look like
a fool.<span> </span>They were shooting wardrobe
stuff in the bedroom but looking like a fool wasn’t his worry.<span> </span>When they came back, turned on the cameras,
Joe changed the subject and that was that.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>Keith
was strumming his nerves away when the sound kid came to get him.<span> </span>They chitchatted about rock a bit as he miked
Keith up and then it was into the SUV and off to the salon.<span> </span>Ramos and Mick were there too along with a
camera guy in the passenger seat.<span> </span>It was
all upbeat and jokes and “Are you nervous?” type questions until they got to
the salon.<span> </span>After his hair was washed and
put in a tight polytail the stylist made some excuse about sharpening scissors
or gel or something and suddenly he and Joe were sitting alone in front of the
mirror.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>He
was, for the first time, uncomfortable with Joe.<span> </span>And he all of a sudden realized too that Joe
was gay.<span> </span>But that didn’t bother
Keith.<span> </span>It was the intensity with which Joe
looked at his reflection in the mirror.<span>
</span>He didn’t say anything at first and then he stood up, walked behind him
and picked up Keith’s hair.<span> </span>Keith
flinched, Joe saw it but didn’t say anything.<span>
</span>Joe sensed it wasn’t personal. <span> </span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“What
does this mean?” Joe asked as he dropped the ponytail Keith so often held his
hair in, especially at work or around the house.<span> </span>He only ever really let it down on stage.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“Well,
it’s my image on stage.”<span> </span>Joe let him go
on.<span> </span>“I don’t know.<span> </span>I’m just so used to it, I guess”.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“Dude,
that’s the answer for the cameras.<span> </span>Come
on.<span> </span>What is it?”</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>Keith
couldn’t think of any words.<span> </span>It wasn’t
really something that could be put into words anyway.<span> </span>He felt like he was going to cry.<span> </span>Joe sat down and for a moment Keith thought
he was going to hold his hand, but didn’t.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“I
came into this business late you know?<span> </span>I
was twenty before I ever picked up a guitar.<span>
</span>Before that I was… I dunno, just wandering around my life.<span> </span>But I picked this up and just… something
clicked.<span> </span>It’s all I wanted to do from
then on.”<span> </span>Joe measured his face, looked
and waited for an uncomfortable length of time.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>Finally,
Keith couldn’t hold it back.<span> </span>It came,
just one tear, but humiliating nonetheless.<span>
</span>But considering the entire length of his adulthood so far this was
pittance to pay, one small tear for twenty plus years of embarrassment and
failure and unfulfilled expectations.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“It’s
the one thing that makes me feel like there might still be a chance that I’m
not… a loser.”</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>Joe
looked at him for a long moment and then couldn’t help himself, he hugged
Keith.<span> </span>Keith was really glad the cameras
weren’t around but he was glad for the hug too.<span>
</span>When he released him, Joe was crying too.<span> </span>He patted Keith firmly on the back and then sat
back down.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“Well,
you got to stop thinking that any of this has any real meaning.<span> </span>Your wife and your kids are, and always would
have been, the only thing to prove that you aren’t a loser.”<span> </span>Joe went on to say that it was all a fluke
anyway, that hard work meant nothing.<span>
</span>Keith desperately wanted to complain, to tell him how he’d had a string
of bands where one or other of the members would be lazy or an alcoholic or
have girlfriend problems and how everything would just fall apart.<span> </span>How he’d only ever been picked up for that
one tour he met Cath on, even though guys emailed him and came up to him in the
bar all the time telling him how much they admired his playing.<span> </span>Maybe he’d picked a field too packed.<span> </span>Who wants to be anything but the pitcher? <span> </span>Why hadn’t he learned to play bass too.<span> </span>And he wanted to point out how he was really
dedicated and despite all the years of rejection he was still at it, still
hammering away trying to make something of himself.<span> </span>He wanted to tell Joe how he’d had one hit
that actually was played on the radio and had caught on, on country stations
across the U.S. despite the fact that it was a rock ballad. <span> </span>And some people had told him that song had
influenced country in a way no other rock ballad had before.<span> </span>But it all seemed such nonsense now.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>Ramos
broke the silence by thrusting a shot glass under Keith’s nose.<span> </span>The familiar and welcome sting of Jack
Daniels reached his nostrils before his eyes even registered the hand and
glass.<span> </span>After he drunk it down another
appeared and another before Keith could get himself to look up.<span> </span>When he did Mick, Joe and Ramos each had a
shot in hand as well and sympathetic expressions.<span> </span>They drank to life sucking and living it to
the fullest anyway.<span> </span>Finally he was
ready.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>“Fuck
it. Cut it off!” he said, the Jack starting to take hold.<span> </span>He was thankful the stylist hadn’t had any.</span></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>TO BE CONTINUED </span></span></span></div>
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<![endif]-->Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-72943638808511991022014-03-17T15:46:00.001-07:002014-03-17T15:46:17.085-07:00Binge Watching The DoctorOn New Year's Eve this past December the kids and I figured we'd see what this Doctor Who fella was all about. My son's friends in middle school had been discussing it and he felt out of the loop. We'd just subscribed to Amazon Prime and I had looked it up so....<br />
<br />
Three o'clock in the morning and four episodes later we finally went to sleep. By the time the kids went back to school we'd watched the entire first year of the revised Doctor Who. Never having seen a Doctor Who before (although having been a drama geek in school I don't know how on earth I dodged that bullet) we had no idea about regeneration, or how sad we would be to see Christopher Eccelston go... we spent at least a week researching why he'd left the show after only one season in vain hopes that somehow he might be back. Both thrilled and dismayed we welcomed David Tennant into our household by the second week of January. Then by February we were saying goodbye to our (OK, <i>my</i>) favorite Doctor and welcoming Matt Smith. <br />
<br />
Then we were done with him. Just like that. Thanks BBC for making short seasons. This is just one of those times I wish for the interminable American style 22 episode season! Luckily, my son kept making mention of "the snowman" until I said him "Who is this snowman you speak of, I don't remember it." What! We missed a Christmas special! We still have one to watch! I almost didn't want to watch it right away. Like saving the last candy till tomorrow because you have no idea when you'll next get another.<br />
<br />
We have begun to dip back into the past into Classic Doctor Who - although not all episodes are available we are making do. Having a theatre and film background I try to explain to the kids about acting styles changing and production values improving since the series began, but we all do other things while we watch. I sometimes wish I'd started watching in high school so that I could better appreciate those earlier Doctors without the absence of greenscreen and CGI weighing down on my suspension of disbelief. But then, I think, I skipped the double edged sword of depression and thrill that would have been had when they stopped production in 1996 and then started up again in 2005. We are now half way through what is available. Don't get me wrong, we WILL watch every Doctor Who that becomes available to our little greedy minds. As drugs go contemplating time, humanity, history, science, space, and aliens is not so bad. So even if we get some bad shit from the first iteration of the Doctor, say, where you can practically see the string holding up the set and the spray painted bubble wrap costumes, we'll watch. Oh yeah, we'll watch. We want it just that bad.<br />
<br />
Now we eagerly and
somewhat trepidatiously anticipate August when a new Doctor will step
out of the Tardis. My daughter said to me from the backseat on the way
to school one morning recently, "Mama, I feel empty inside." I'm
thinking, oh shit I forgot to feed her breakfast! "Why, sweet?" I say.
"Because there are no more Doctor Who episodes to watch." Leave it to
the nine year old to say what we had all been thinking. So do I, baby
gal, so do I.<br />
<br />
Peter Capaldi, no pressure man, but this one is all on you. Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-78986249138639917312013-10-08T12:02:00.000-07:002013-10-08T12:02:51.907-07:00Little LadyI was watching the mothers walk their daughters into school this morning, noticing their similarities in style and demeanor. My daughter has long gotten over me walking her to the gate and onto campus. Drop off is fine, thank you.<br />
<br />
It popped into my head that those little girls are just like their moms - pretty, confident moms = pretty, confident girls. But then why, I wondered, didn't that work for me? My mom was, and is, beautiful. Imagine, slim, blonde hair, blue eyes and a beautiful smile - none of which I inherited. Nor did my mother walk me into school and, in fact, she was a working mom, so my sister and I, we walked ourselves to school. Unthinkable now. But even then when there would be some family activity at the school where the parents came, you could always tell which were the moms of the pretty girls. <br />
<br />
I just remember growing up that I was not pretty, or cute... I was the fat one. It started funny, of course, little jabs about my protruded belly (why that was considered funny I'm not sure, but then again consider sitcom humor), then it became 'fat tummy', then just 'fat', then chunky all around. So this is the identity I grew up with. I wasn't allowed to be like my mom, my mom was pretty and everyone knows that fat girls can't be pretty. I couldn't be smart because my sister was smart. And they always said 'smart one', not two. So I was... creative. That was acceptable. I landed on acting because that of all the other creative things I tried, acting I had the most aptitude for, and it made me happy. But then when you get to be a slightly older child you realize that fat, not pretty, not particularly smart girls can't be actresses. But then everyone tells you to follow your dream, all the while worrying that it'll never come to pass for your because you are afterall, fat.<br />
<br />
These are the things that go through an adolescent mind, the things that went through MY adolescent mind. And it is no use protesting the verity of any of these particular assumptions. They were my assumptions, and perception equals your reality. And like the tiny rock thrown into the still water, the ripples of those beliefs still reverberate in my life, in my choices, in how I do and do not allow myself to be treated.<br />
<br />
And it got me to wondering, what is going through my daughter's mind about herself? What perceptions is she picking up on that I am not aware of? That I am not aware I am contributing to and will someday limit her life?<br />
<br />
If it is not impossible to undo the perceptions of our childhood it certainly is a colossal feat, a battle I have spent decades waging with... inches of success. Intellectually, I can look back on those beliefs and balk and call them ridiculous. But in some ways I still feel like that little fat girl with the impossible dream. What is my daughter up against that I can not see? How I wish I could peer into her mind and place in there the belief that while maybe not ALL things are possible (the little lies we tell our children!) but a lot is possible for her, certainly many, many things she wants in life. <br />
<br />
But since we lead by example, I wish I could put aside the little fat girl inside of me when I am with my daughter. But she's always there - worried, knowing she isn't enough to be what she really wants to be - I want to shut her up, push her aside, deny her. But that won't work, then she's just the unspoken truth hovering that everyone refuses to see. I try to bolster my confidence and be assured with my daughter. But that is its own lie in a way. The truth is, I am not that little girl anymore, but she still needs to be seen, to be reassured. I am, in many ways, now a confident woman but sometimes even she needs to crawl under a rock and hide. And sometimes there is even a woman in between. The only solution I think is to coexist - and to approve wholeheartedly of them all, equally.Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-44814850928431851622013-09-28T00:17:00.001-07:002013-09-28T00:18:10.963-07:00Slug(ish) Fest<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The first clue was when my daughter asked me if I
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I chose the 5K for a number of reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, I’ve done them… In a time BC (before
children) though, but nonetheless I am familiar with the whole deal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Second, it was the latest event in the school
year that didn’t have a chair yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lame,
yes, but I figured it’d give me time to get my sea-legs at the school.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Then my son mentioned my actual legs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t recall what he said exactly or the
context but the gist was I needed to be able to actually <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">run</i> a 5K if I was going to organize one…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ummm….<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He is right of course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And time
is not slowing down waiting for me to get motivated.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So I started with a cleanse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tried to do 28 days, made it three
weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wasn’t perfect but I was
already starting to feel lighter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
problem of course is my (*gulp* 50lbs? overweight) body is out of shape and
sluggish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a number of reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I broke my arm in January 2012, pretty badly,
and then rebroke it in May of that year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Gravity was not my friend for many months but painkillers were (I don’t
mean it like that! Seriously…), and I ended up taking prescribed and then over
the counter ones for about 5 months, which it turns out, is a very long time
and a very lot of pain killers for a poor little body to process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then physical therapy, focused on my arm and
so the legs were a little neglected…. Flash forward to 18+ months later and the
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and a little pain when it’s overworked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But I can’t blame it entirely on the broken
arm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d been living in the lap of
relative sedentary living since I had children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ironically, when they were smaller and needed more care it was easier to
get to the gym more regularly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s nice
when the gym is entertaining for the kids to go to so you can avoid the fuss
and subsequent guilt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then our gym
closed down, then we went to another and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i>
one closed down!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But honestly, even with
a place to work out running hadn’t been on my menu for a while.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just have felt heavy and sluggish for years
(thus the cleanse) and running has never been easy for me or readily enjoyable
no matter what the long term benefits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That said, before my son was born I actually was just starting to get
into triathlon and thought I’d continue it on a few months after the kids were
born… well…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Turns out what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i> on my menu was kid food.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is that anxiety that is born of a sense of
lack, that preternatural inability to waste food.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So what hopped on to my menu were things kids
didn’t finish, the three goldfish left in the cup, the other 10 cookies the
kids and I baked and ate exactly one each and refused any more, the leftovers
everyone else in the household declined to eat, the grapes that were about
ready to become raisins that then went into my already full lunch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a problem, one I have been
addressing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But still, I feel sluggish.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And yet, here it is almost October.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know me and how long it took me to get
ready to run my first 5K and I am seriously pushing it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, today, with afternoon temperatures
finally in the heavenly 90s (I know that sounds weird but I live in the
Coachella Valley where for almost 5 months it doesn’t dip into the 90s till
midnight) and a cool breeze, I thought I’d get me and the dog off our fat asses
and run around the soccer park.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>OK, yes,
I hear ya, that’s funny… hahaha, run!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>OK, let’s call it a fast schooch – with pain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Buttercup did not understand why she didn’t
get her nice leisurely sniffy-fantastic tool around, and I most certainly
looked silly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I got it done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The start.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Phew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many more portions of miles
to go!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-88152726721416066502013-09-19T22:35:00.000-07:002013-09-19T22:36:03.709-07:00Bl-itter-ing idiot<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">bl·itter</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">noun,
bl-itter-ing, bl-itter-verse, </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Not quite as tedious as a whole blog
post, not quite as cryptic and requiring of a click here escapade as a tweet. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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An employer of mine died recently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More than an employer, a friend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, like a wonderful aunt you get to visit
once a week and you really don’t mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
wasn’t related to her and I’d worked for her once a week, half a day, for six
years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We knew she was going to
die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But even when it is expected it is
unexpected.</div>
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She died over a week ago but today really sucked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you aren’t related or terribly close
to, but just terribly fond of, someone you don’t get <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> the stages of grief.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You
get just a couple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have to pass over
anger because afterall what is it to you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You can’t in all seriousness do denial because no one would believe
you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And bargaining is out because you
have no leverage with the universe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
what you are left with is depression and acceptance…and who is really going to believe you are really depressed?</div>
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And yet there it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is depressing
because it means the order of the universe has changed in a favor of which you
are not quite sure of yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have to
accept way before everyone else so you can steady on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that is all OK, but it still sucks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because you end up in a place that is not
really fair to be in, you don’t get to ride on the boat with all the other
passengers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have to wade in
depression till everyone else catches up and meets you at the docks of acceptance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I think this is what happens when we
learn of someone dying that we don’t know well, or hear of someone passing before their time, or when someone you
know’s father dies, which also happened last week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have to bypass stages 1 through 3 and
hang in the edge of 4, in this mild to icky funk knowing the only thing to do shortly is to
accept something you are really not happy about but there is no other choice.</div>
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But as I like to say, white wine fixes everything… or at
least is a moderately good way to pass the time till you get to stage 5.</div>
Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-81356006125006447162013-01-15T10:39:00.001-08:002013-01-15T10:40:30.638-08:00Weather Telling BunionAnyone remember the cartoon Bullwinkle? Who was it that had a weather telling bunion?<br />
<br />
Today is January 15th. Exactly one year since, in a freak kitchen accident, I broke my arm at the shoulder. I got several fractures, which gave the lie to my thinking I was indestructible - me big strong gal! I had a horizontal fracture just under the shoulder joint and several pieces of the greater tuberocity (that sounds so technical! - actually it is the ball of the joint) popped off with the tendons when my shoulder dislocated, and a crack in the greater tuberocity as well. One of my favorite moments of the experience is when I asked my orthopedist if I needed to have surgery. He responded by saying "No! Oh no. No. Nobody would want to get in there and muck around. That's a mess."<br />
<br />
Confidence inspiring.<br />
<br />
But turns out he did just the right thing, which was to just make me hold still for many months. Easier than I thought it would be. Apart from a few squirrely moments on a couple nights where I felt like a caged animal, like I was going to chew through my sling if I wasn't allowed to move my arm!, it was not so hard and not very painful. Pain killers work well if you have the right one for the job. I was lucky in that the ones that were too powerful for the pain I was experiencing, i.e. the addictive ones, made me feel kinda sick so I had no incentive to misuse them. And as soon as it was bearable I stopped taking them altogether. <br />
<br />
And then physical therapy, and oopsy where I reinjured the arm, popped off one of those pieces again in a fall (I have never fallen so much as when I had a reason NOT to!), minor setback, a plateau where for many weeks I was worried I'd never be able to hook a bra by myself again. Then viola! I can do nearly anything I want again... except for a few yoga poses with hands praying behind back et al which will take maybe a longer while of working on.<br />
<br />
So, there you have it. Injured and recovered, just like that! Except now I have that annoying weather telling pain in my shoulder. Just like Bullwinkle. I am told it will probably never go away... but then I was told I'd never be able to lift my children again or strap my bra so...Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-64485169654017388692012-11-21T15:45:00.002-08:002012-11-21T15:45:58.515-08:00Lessons of Little HouseMy husband won't like this certainly, but I just added the Season 3 disks of Little House on the Prairie to our Netflix cue.<br />
<br />
Why, you may wonder, would I do such a thing. I know, I know. For those of you old enough to have watched some or all of the series you are wondering 1) why I would want to watch it again, and 2) why, as I am doing, would I inflict such a thing on my children.<br />
<br />
Well, here is the deal. When the kids were much younger and the reading of books at bedtime was de rigour, I had a notion that I should be reading them story books, not just picture books. You know, in order to get them used to the eventual reading of chapter and long form books. Although I hadn't read the original Little House books by Laura Ingels Wilder myself as a child, I picked one up one day at the library and attempted to read it to them that night. It fell with a big thud.<br />
<br />
Cut to several years later - this year some time after I broke my arm - it happened to be my turn to pick for Movie Night (our Friday night ritual) and we were at the library in the kids' video section. There it was, the pilot of Little House on the Prairie. Oh sure, there was much moaning, and declarations of intent to leave the room if it proved boring (by mostly my husband, but kids too). But low and behold, about 20 minutes in (I chain them to the sofa for at least 30 minutes when viewing anything new) they were hooked. When I told them it was a series and we could get it on Netflix there was much enthusiastic cheering of "get it, get it".<br />
<br />
We just finished Season 2 and I was ready to slip the DVD into its red envelope and send it off when I said to the kids that we had to decide whether we wanted to commit to watching the next season of the show, because it was severely cramping Daddy's DVD watching style. Ang looks at me with this impertinent look and says, "What!". Oh my, I thought, here we go. Now I get to hear about how smarmy and stupid it is and of course we don't care about watching it anymore. But he surprised me with the follow up to his shocked outburst with, "Of course we're gonna watch it! If there's more, we're gonna watch it. Sheesh" Oh. Of course, how dumb of me, mama!<br />
<br />
So, Lesson One. Sometimes it pays to ask, and sometimes it doesn't. Meaning, if I had been swayed by the shocked and despairing looks when I first picked up that pilot DVD, we never would have gotten this far. And if I hadn't asked whether we should continue, I might have assumed they had no interest and let it go.<br />
<br />
Lesson Two. I have been vaguely assessing why the kids are so enthusiastic about watching the show. Now interest in watching an episode is indicated by the humming of the theme song, wherein everyone else comes running. I get asked, often on school nights, if there is time to watch an episode, but also, I rarely get put off when I suggest a viewing. I am probably the one who pays the least attention and not because I've seen most of the episodes before (we were viewers, but certainly not devout, and even if I'd seen it my memory is slim on the details). But having watched now two seasons, some 46 episodes plus the pilot, I have come to realize that it is probably the aspirational quality that we all respond to.<br />
<br />
It is smarmy, and probably, even in 1974 terms, and idealistic vision of another time. But to be overly cynical and to say, oh everyone is so good and everything turns out so well, would be wholly unfair. I was somewhat surprised at some of the storylines which include such themes as the loss of faith, war, drug use, usury, theft, desperate poverty, loss of a child, desertion, financial devastation and natural and man-made disasters, among others. They didn't shy away from portraying ugliness, which is often one of those sarcastic assessments of the series - that everything is good and people were wonderful. One might make a case that the episodes which focus primarily on the girls - Laura and Mary - do tend on the all is well that ends well side. And punishments metted out to them in the series are, arguably by today's standards, mild. Can you imagine today's audiences allowing for a "good talking to and embarrassment of exposure" as adequate retribution for the crime of stealing church money?<br />
<br />
Yes, what is portrayed in Little House on the Prairie is a kinder, gentler, simpler time. And maybe that is what we like. But also what I like is that while the series itself may be aspirational, the writers allowed for their characters to be entirely human, and thus fallible, and even surprising. It's nice to watch a show where the good people are good and the bad people are only human, and sometimes they are having an off day and do the opposite. Just like the rest of us.Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-80695889900079558822012-07-17T14:33:00.002-07:002014-06-04T10:42:46.641-07:00And Then For Something That Really SuckedI spent much of my 2011 blogging time (such as it was) trying to look on the bright side, for the most part, unsuccessfully. Oh, of course, I tried to fool myself into believing that I actually did feel better about lousy things... 2011 ended and I put learning to love things that suck to bed for good.
And then something that really sucked happened.<br />
<br />
On January 15, I was in my kitchen, with my 7 year old daughter standing on my feet, wiggling to be fed, saying goodbye to my little sister on the phone. As I reached out my arm to put my phone down my daughter pulled me one way, I went the other. Our weight shifted such that we went down in a sudden and great smack against the counter, a la a roll of Pop 'n Fresh biscuits - with almost the same sound too, only louder. As we went down my brain made that motherly nano-second calculation -- daughter's head aiming straight toward hard corner of oven handle, own arm stretched out precariously, bad news, push daughter, lose all balance, underarm smack on counter top, arm flop unnaturally over back of head and dislocate. Daughter fine, ambulance coming for me.<br />
<br />
Before the ER doctor came into the room - for literally 3 seconds - to report the results of the x-ray, I knew I would have to miss some work. At least that coming week. And with husband unemployed that was indeed bad news. Ugh. So when we got the results "It's broken. See an orthopedist on Monday", I was already anticipating the deep frugality impact.
But what is funny is, I didn't panic. Not even on the inside. I managed to stay calm, and remain calm, throughout this whole ordeal with a kind of acceptance previously unbeknownst to myself. "Yep, this happened, movin' on", has been my de facto motto. Take care of arm and also whatever else I can take care of, what I can't can't be done now or has to be done by someone else.<br />
<br />
Let me just make this clear, I did <b>not </b>stress. I'm not talking, I pretended not to stress but really on the inside I'm screaming. No, I just didn't sweat it. Uh... weird.
But upon many months of reflection, I have to say, I think a year of trying to learn to love things that sucked might have had some impact, once I stopped trying.<br />
<br />
And though it sounds odd to say, I have loved the experience of breaking my arm. I have learned a bunch of stuff about myself and my family, not all of it awesome, but what can ya do? I got a previously impossible and unprecedented amount of time to sit around the house and read - those six weeks of disability went by too fast though. I learned to write with my left hand (I broke my right arm and any movement was verboten). I got to meet and interact with a group of people I otherwise would probably would never have had a chance to meet, those lovely and amazing folk of the physical therapist ilk. And I was forced, during physical therapy, to spend an hour and a quarter, twice a week working on only myself. How often is a mom gonna do that!<br />
<br />
So maybe the moral of the story is that within things that suck lie more things that suck, but also many things that undoubtedly do not suck.Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-49736492722954949962011-12-21T10:30:00.000-08:002011-12-21T10:30:32.175-08:00How We Learned to Love The Things That Suck: Aha MomentsYou never know when an aha moment will arrive, or what will cause it to come about. Sandwiched in between two weekends of Dezart Performs' - the theatre company I co-founded in Palm Springs and continue to shepherd - biggest production to date, a powerful aha moment struck.<br />
<br />
I have never thought of myself as much of a people pleaser. I don't have many of the typical symptoms - I don't care awfully much how I look, I have no problem saying no, I feel no guilt about sneaking away for an hour of me time, or feeding my children breakfast for dinner instead of taking the time to concoct something more nutritious.<br />
<br />
But on Wednesday afternoon I experienced a hit by a truck realization of this complicated triangulation of my, not people pleasing exactly, but approval seeking behavior that has railroaded me to exactly right here.<br />
<br />
It is easier to talk about these kinds of realizations when you can think, "If I had it to do all over again I would..." I have been stubbornly adhering to a no-regrets policy. The early iterations were "Everything happens for a reason" all the way to "It's in the universe's hands". But in recent years, and particularly this year I have been growing skeptical that the universe actually KNOWS what it is I want in the first place. I can actually finish the sentence now with no compunction or fear of hurting other peoples feelings. I really now know what I would do if I had to do it all over again.<br />
<br />
Well, maybe the universe wasn't the only one who didn't know what I wanted. See, I grew up in a family of semi-stoics. They could laugh, but there weren't exactly heartfelt conversations around the dinner table discussing the college prospects of the children, or reminisces of the adults' past missteps. Everything I knew about what my family, (and I include my grandparents in that category, though we didn't spend regular time with them, only holiday time, their influence was prevalent) I had to ascertain from unspoken messages. No one ever said to me directly "You must go to college", although my mother did say when I graduated high school that I did have to either get a job or go to school full time (I did both). No one ever tried to dissuade me - and I am grateful for that - from pursuing acting as a career. But on the other hand, neither did they seek out ways to support me, or take it all that very seriously. I suspect the family-wide attitude about it was that I would grow out of it.<br />
<br />
So throughout my adult life I have been running in parallel tracks. One down the road of the kind of life I have always wanted to have, a creative life. The other track I have been running on is more like a treadmill, trying to prove to my family and the world at large that I am smart, not ridiculous, and an all around hard worker, not the obviously lazy clod that someone who wants to be an 'actor' must be. Clearly, it is not the fault of my family that I chose these paths. It was my interpretation of the unspoken rules and mores of my family, which I often ran afoul of in childhood and certainly put way too much stock in as I got older. But I was just never a 'go it alone' kind of gal. I couldn't have pulled a Demi Moore and rejected my family of origin to pursue my dreams. I would have been a puddle of emotional baggage, some sort of addiction just waiting to happen. What I just could not fathom, and thought I could not possibly tolerate, was the rejection of my family. <br />
<br />
And how I came to finally realize all this was in a few short hours when that aforementioned truck hit me. I've been helping out the PS High Theatre teacher, helping some students get ready for festival performances next year. On that particular day, a visiting lecturer from UCLA was in to speak with the kids and help them with their August Wilson monologues. She is roughly the same age as I, but way, way ahead of the acting curve, not just in career success but also knowledge as well, and as she spoke this dread crept over me, the dread of realizing how exactly it is you have come to waste large chunks of your life. I'd always <i>thought </i>that I was pursuing my dreams, but in fact I'd been on those two tracks and the one I'd most often jump to when the gap between them got too wide was the "impress the world" track, leaving the acting track to go around the mountain without me. Here and there I have been able to pick it back up but the need to convince my family that I was smart in a way that THEY would be impressed with always won.<br />
<br />
Wow.<br />
<br />
And now what?<br />
<br />
This is a fairly good place to end the year though, and this series of blogs. I don't think I have learned how to LOVE the things that suck so much as to tolerate them without having a heart attack. And there have been some mightily sucky moments this year, which is why there are so few blogs from me in large chunks of the year. I have a high tolerance for pain, and not getting what I want. But as I get older I am less impressed with the ability to be patient and reasonable. The more so as those around me seem to feel free to be disagreeable while <i>I </i>am expected to be patient and reasonable. I just might try being selfish and unreasonable in 2012. Yeah, that would be good. Everyone is always making "good" resolutions for the new year. I might just make mine bad.Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-35426770610503903592011-09-21T15:58:00.000-07:002011-09-21T15:58:18.160-07:00How We Learned to Love The Things That Suck: Age Over BeautyWhen I was young I assumed I would enter into my middle age with resources - for creams, and powders, procedures, and whatnot. So I didn't sweat the load about aging per se - the whole sagging, puffing, plumping business, I mean. Well, none of those goods and services I'd banked on have come to pass. And yet, though I find myself looking hard upon the border between the beginning side and the other - peeking over top of the bell curve of life - I feel... better. I figure 90 for a conservative life span for this day and age, although I keep telling my kids I am going to live to 135 - just to annoy them.<br />
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I'm less insecure than I used to be for no apparent reason. I'm certainly not as thin as I used to be. In those days I didn't feel it though. I look at pictures of my younger, svelter self and think, "Stupid git! She didn't even notice!" I'm less fit than I was before I had children, less gainfully employed, less free. But also less anxiety-ridden. I've learned, counter-intuitively, that if I slow down I actually get more done. I've learned, rather imperfectly let me point out, to shut up and listen more. I rarely have too little to say and generally in the opening of one's mouth less really is more!<br />
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I'm less hard on myself and other people - and by that I don't mean to say I thought so much ill of others as I'd assumed they'd think ill of me, which is an accusation of bad-behavior if you think about it. I've learned that self-loathing and self-pity, while they may illicit sympathy for someone young and pretty, at middle age and above just make you look like an asshole. I'm certainly years past the powdery buff of beauty intrinsic to youth. But I've learned that outer beauty is for catching partners, inner beauty is for keeping them.<br />
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I don't claim to be wiser though I am older than I used to be - but aren't we all?! I didn't come by any of this through smarts, or searching, or spirituality. I think I just got bored. How long <i>can </i>one keep up the self-deprecating? And since my standup comedian career never materialized it wasn't really doing me any good anyway. So, at some point I just figured, eh, why bother. I'm fine. Or in the infinite wisdom of Popeye, "I y'am what I y'am". <br />
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If I had a porch and a rocking chair you'd probably find me in it, hand tucked in waist band, watching cars go by. Certainly much more fascinating than picking on myself.Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-52250379558636088762011-08-11T21:38:00.000-07:002011-08-11T21:38:10.293-07:00How We Learned to Love The Things That Suck: Mild Scrapes and Minor HumiliationsSo Monday, I'm walking to the bus stop after work and just thinking to myself, "Gee, (I do say that to myself actually)I'm managing to maintain my dignity about having to ride the bus pretty well!" Despite the heat (over 100 degrees every day now) and the inevitable and unsightly sweating that goes along with, despite my odd foot virus that makes it difficult to walk comfortably, despite the waiting and what could be, wasted time. Earlier that day, the street on which I catch my first bus in the morning was under repaving. The flagman assured me that the bus would stop in the middle of the street for me, after all there was no sign from the bus system saying the bus stop was closed for the day. All stops within walking distance on that line were coned off, so the construction and bus system must have coordinated this... surely.<br />
<br />
At 8:24 on the nose here comes the bus and there goes the bus. Not even a wave, or a point, from the driver! I had to call for a ride to the next stop. That afternoon when I was feeling proud of myself you see I had good reason. I hadn't been incensed or sorry for myself, I just handled it, found a solution, got on with the day.<br />
<br />
As I turned the corner to the stop that Monday afternoon, I thought briefly, "What's up with my left ankle, hurts a little" then I noticed the early bus, I am never in time for, sitting there! I started walking faster, could I possibly catch it? I waved at the driver when I was within sight and shockingly he pulled away from the curb! I started running and waving at him thinking he must not have seen me, but I'm so close now I have to try. Then, just as he pulls back toward the curb - SPLAT! Down I go, flat on the ground, my right foot having hit the concrete edge between sidewalk and landscaping. I lay there briefly, swallowed in a puff of dust. I pick myself up, don't even bother to dust myself off, and get on the bus. I realize my right knee is bleeding through my pants, my left ankle twisted and throbbing - see, somehow it knew.<br />
<br />
Then the driver says to me, irritated, "You didn't have to run, I was pulling back to the curb. You're alright I take it".<br />
<br />
Yeah, sure, all except my dignity.Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-58180320821142402062011-08-01T10:18:00.000-07:002011-08-01T10:19:41.718-07:00How We Learned to Love The Things That Suck: I Am OneSometimes the only way to deal with things that suck is to be one with them.<br />
<br />
Yeah, there are things that suck. Everyone has some (at least one) thing that sucks in their life. But sometimes the suckiest of the sucky thing is the way you look at it. So, if you can just relax your mind and let things that suck, suck, well then at the very least you can get perspective.<br />
<br />
The difficulty is in not letting the "this is" attitude bleed into a "this is and that's not fair!" attitude. Not an easy task. I think if one could accomplish it for more than, say, a few minutes, that would be a colossal achievement.<br />
<br />
I think of all this because I watched 60 Minutes last night wherein they replayed their interview with Mark Wahlberg. Now, that is a guy for whom things could have sucked for a lifetime. And though he may be more talented and/or determined than the average bear, he certainly is not more deserving. Herein lies the rub. Deserving. Oooooo. It is the elephant in society, at least since the 80s (good job by the way baby boomers on changing the tone of the nation - I'm assuming its all your fault - see, I'm laying blame, a sure sign I have not yet grappled with things that suck in my life, I'm trying...). This idea that if you are wealthy, have a good job, married a pretty person, have well behaved children, that somehow you have been divinely touched. Or maybe you went to the right college, made the right connections, have "talent". Maybe you said all the right affirmations or were able to unleash the <i>awesome</i> power of the law of attraction on your ass! That, if you have all these things, you somehow (in a way unknowable to us mortals and thus inarguable) <i>DESERVE </i>it. The implied and ancillary meaning, that if you <i>don't</i> have all those things (i.e. if your life sucks) that you do not, in fact, deserve it.<br />
<br />
OK. There, I said it out loud. Almost as hard as saying pretty women have better lives... oops, didn't mean that to slip out. What I am trying to get at is that this idea of 'fairness' is entirely erroneous. In fact, any explanation you try to lob at any life situation comes up short, because there are ever exceptions to every rule and platitude you may step on.<br />
<br />
So, here is what I think. My husband is unemployed. That sucks. I have a crappy, underpaid job to no where, my talents sorely underutilized and non-appreciated (see, not even 'under', that really sucks). That sucks. My daughter has ADD and struggles with school work and behavior. That sucks. Because my daughter gets so much attention due to her ADD my son feels neglected. That sucks.<br />
<br />
Now, in the very next breath, you would expect me to start spouting all the unexpected but wonderful side effects of the above chock full 'o suck situation. But then we would be getting on the boat for a trip down denial. Trying to look at the bright side of a lousy situation is one normal human response, which could be characterized as either healthy optimism or delusional, depending on your particular perspective of the moment. Wanting to <i>doooooo </i>something to better a crappy situation, also normal and questionably good, again depending on your particular philosophy at the time. Ignoring said suck-o-rama, also normal, could be defined by the self-medicating and more lazy among us as healthy, or, easier. But none of these is what I am talking about. What I am talking about is that awful aphorism I have avoided till now, "It is what it is" (usually used by the lazy, I am aware of that).<br />
<br />
One with the things that suck. Really, just allowing things to be the way they are without mentally changing or judging. Not so easy, but if you can achieve it, even for a moment, it can be relaxing and even, dare I say it, enlightening. Things that suck, still suck, of course. But without the judgement or need to do anything beyond observe, a little bit of stress and tension may fall away. <br />
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Now, of course, you can't do this forever. Only Eckhart Tolle can make a living just 'being'. But maybe, if at least for a few moments, we can look at the things that suck as 'what is' at the moment, we can really connect with life, our own life. Instead of always trying to get distance from it...Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-86166018850699822392011-06-27T10:15:00.000-07:002011-06-27T13:37:15.282-07:00How We Learned to Love The Things That Suck: Slow RideYou know what I used to love, and what now sucks? Taking the bus. For a number of reasons and not just the obvious.<br />
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Where I grew up in the Bay Area if you were a kid you actually COULD take the bus to the movies or to the mall or an audition or rehearsal as I used to. I doubt if that would be possible now. I don't know that I would let my own kids ride the bus, even in the relative safety of my current community. But it was a different time (and there hadn't been a 24 hour news cycle to make it seem like hundreds of thousands of children were being kidnapped each year) and so we felt it to be a bit of freedom to hop on the bus and take the nearly one hour ride+walk to our town's nearest movie theater or wherever. Inevitably we'd see two or three, get out of the theater after dark and someone would have to call a mom to come pick us up. Mom's couldn't be bothered to drive their kids places, even on weekends, when I grew up, when they could just as easily shove a couple bucks in your hand and tell you to take the bus. <br />
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But even beyond freedom it was a great learning ground. Since the Bay Area is a large and diverse population one could always count on great people watching. My friends and I engaged in something you might call people speculating. Convinced we can know a lot about a person by the way they look, human beings have always made lots of decisions about the value and interest of a person on that basis. We just did it out loud (not loud enough so they could hear of course) to each other on the back of the bus. Not satisfied with the realistic for long, our speculations soon diverged into the wild and implausible. Consequently, my childhood bus rides were populated with Russian spies, embezzlers on the lamb, and any manner of wealthy and/or mentally impaired eccentrics. <br />
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In my later teen and college years I too often reverted to "someday I'll have a car" thoughts to have much fun on those rides. But I always observed people. Everyone does the visual sweep upon stepping on the platform - see who's on, who to avoid, who to sit next to. In the Bay Area, generally people were too occupied talking to companions, or tired from work, or sleeping, to notice or care who came on. I would make mental commentary on who looked weary, or sad, or happy and wonder intensely what had just happened in their life to make them so.<br />
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In those years, particularly in college, I would even venture to take the bus (and BART) home late at night. A whole 'nother drunk and/or high, on for the night homeless, just going to or coming from an underpaying hard scrabble late shift would be on board. Occasionally there was a scuffle, some "what you lookin' at" would erupt but I had the young-with-my-whole-life-ahead-of-me-and-nothing-could-go-wrong bravado propping me up. I felt like one of them in a way and yet not. Always conscientious of being a white girl in a minority world, I didn't swish or flaunt or try to appear too affluent or happy - sometimes I would adopt a sad countenance to ward off potential advances of any sort if the compartment had just that right mood where it felt slightly dangerous. I rode with the confidence and air of someone who was not so different from everyone else deep down inside but sure that I was destined for greatness, to succeed, to make things happen.<br />
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Flash forward some 20 years and taking the bus is a whole different experience. When my husband lost his job in February we also lost our second car - a company car. We'd been juggling kid drop offs to school with my work and errands pretty successfully until gas prices started rising. I realized that the 10 mile drop off and pick up to my work was costing us nearly $10 to accomplish. We were filling up the tank twice a week - unheard of previously - and with prices over $4 and one less job in our pockets, it was painful. So it is not like I made the decision unwillingly.<br />
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But it is a whole different time, and place. After all, the me-me-me 80s and earn-earn-earn 90s and spend-spend-spend aughts have passed us by, leaving in their wake a recession, but also a general attitude about ourselves as a society that now no longer squares. "We're number one" does not resonate exactly the same way with the unemployed or underemployed as it used to. Economic factors do have an influence on attitude and on how we perceive ourselves and others. And in Southern California as well, there is a force of opinion that blasts "You don't have a car!!!" when one steps on the bus. <br />
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What is similar is that I am, generally, though the numbers are smaller, still one of the only white faces on the bus. What is new are cellphones and mobile devices, and the solitariness that comes with them. If no one looks up to see who is coming on the bus it is probably because of the despair of the long slog (our valley is geographically huge with few and far between bus routes which means lots of transfers, waiting, and walking in high heat and wind) but just as likely that they have their face stuck in their cellphone or are talking (way too loudly) on it. One tries not to seep to that place but I often find myself, face stuck in Kindle, just as bad. No more the long sweep to see who's conversation I might overhear - there are rarely people traveling together and when they are they are usually silent - nor do I search for a place in the back so I can watch people unperceived as I used to. Now I just quickly find the nearest place in the front, put my head down, enjoy the airconditioning because it will be soon time to get out and walk the 1/4 mile to work in the heat. There were always the people who couldn't afford a car, or the car in the shop people, on the bus in the Bay Area. But there were also the "I'm doing this for the environment" people too. But So Cal does not so readily cotton to idealism.<br />
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I am just like everyone else too, still. I am underemployed, struggling to get by, deeply debt leveraged (though mine is student loan debt primarily) with little chance of ever getting out. My prospects of better employment seem just as dire as my companions on public transportation even though I am highly educated. The difference 20 years has afforded me is experience. My experience of the feeling "this year things will happen for me" in my 20s not really being true then, or my 30s, and now half way through my 40s. Though I still remain hopeful, and believe in possibilities, and my own abilities, I am no longer under the misapprehension that that is enough for "things to happen". I now know that sometimes life, the world, the universe, for a reason you may never know, just doesn't notice you or your talents or potential or rewards you for it. That even when you know for sure and follow your passion, you still can be just another rider on the bus.Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-49489174591045389972011-05-25T23:27:00.000-07:002011-05-25T23:27:34.976-07:00How We Learned To Love The Things That Suck: The Age of ReasonWe all know the age of reason hits a child at around their 7th birthday. That moment in time where they really begin to understand that they are an individual apart from their parents and family, and moreover that others are individuals too. It is a beautiful thing seeing your child develop their very own sense of compassion. Less so, and a little bit painful, to see them gleefully make conscious separations from you! But as the child passes into this phase there is a corresponding enlightenment that happens for the parent as well.<br />
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If we are really paying attention, it is at around this age when we begin to relax a little bit about what our kid is up to. As they begin to make the separation between themselves and their parents so too do you, as parent, begin to get more comfortable with the idea that your children are not necessarily little extensions of yourself. And if this doesn't happen naturally there just might be something to knock it into you.<br />
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My daughter has just recently turned 7, and been diagnosed with ADD, and been recommended by the school to repeat first grade. That's a kick in the head for ya! Any one of these things alone might be enough to send a momma into a "my baby!" spiral. But three! Come on! Of course, the difficulty in school follows hard on the heels of, and logically, the ADD diagnosis.<br />
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We noticed that she was struggling with behavior and attention, aka following directions, even in preschool. Not a squeaky wheel nor a severe ADD case, educators and doctors gave us the "oh, she's fine, probably developmental, let's see how she does next year" through preschool, then kindergarten, then most of first grade. A(quiet) squeaky wheel was turning inside my head however. How I wish that in this post I could wax triumphant about a mother's knowledge of her child over the reluctant authorities. But alas, I cannot. "OK", I said, accepting their assessments instead of insist that there was something abnormal.<br />
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See, now there is the icky bit, "abnormal". Frankly, it took my husband, who himself has ADD, much less time to come to terms with the obvious (to us) fact that she had ADD. Because, of course, he could relate. But also because she looked a lot more like an extension of him than me in that regard. He didn't have my problem - the "I don't recognize that in myself" problem - the problem that is essentially an ego problem. That's right, I said it. I essentially did not have my child diagnosed sooner because of my ego. My husband didn't push the issue either, but then he probably forgot (That's an ADD joke. For the uninitiated and uncomfortable, it's OK to snicker).<br />
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And it is so easy - before the age of reason hits - to buy into the 'developmental' and 'she'll probably grow out of it' and 'all kids are distracted at this age' deflections. Because, well, you sincerely hope that your child will not be *gulp* abnormal. Who wants to jump the gun and slap a label, a potentially debilitating one, on your own child? Who wants to force the issue or speed to call your child 'different'? It's not of any obvious benefit, barring Munchhausen by Proxy syndrome of course, if there is no ensuing treatment. <br />
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Do I sound like I'm justifying here? You may be right. And it could be a little bit of both. Nothing like "repeat first grade" though to make you self reflective of your motives. We pushed her as we could without causing conflict (because children with ADD are experts at causing it) and sometimes caused it anyway, on a number of things ripe for it - homework, extra reading, keeping up with the class. I admit to feeling panicked when it was clear that she was far behind her cohorts in reading and recognition of high frequency words. But my panic and guilt at not finding a way to push her harder only added to her already just below the surface stress. At one point, early in the school year, I even attempted to bribe her with a Nintendo DSi. But, as we now know for sure, long term rewards do not work for people who can't really remember what day it is.<br />
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And, being an attention hound already, I didn't want to inadvertently (or vertantly, arh arh) create in her a taste for or create a lifelong pattern of garnering attention for bad behavior/illness/incompetence... Even now, having a brain doctor of her own (Daddy already has one so the concept not unfamiliar) is enough to make her feel special in a way that makes me cringe. Too much of that pull self up by boot straps, keep nose out of air upbringing I'm afraid seeping through. But stiff upper lip away her very real challenges I cannot. And so I head full on into the age of reason, right along side her. She is not me, and I not her. You know, on an intellectual level, that your children will not be exactly like yourself. But on some deep instinctual plane you just cannot help harboring hope that they will be. Reason says, do what you can to make it easier for her, make sure she's not falling behind, or not being noticed, or being misinterpreted. Reason does not say bury head in sand, ignore what might work, just because ego says so. Her life and little self doesn't get to be the way I imagined it just because that's the way my ego pitched it in my head. Shut up ego, deal.<br />
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After all, they don't call it the age of unreasonable - I guess that would be the teen years.Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-50669647828227019882011-05-13T17:03:00.000-07:002011-05-18T12:12:31.521-07:00How We Learned to Love The Things That Suck: Time and GravityI was never one of those obnoxious twenty-somethings that was loud and pretty and attracted a lot of attention with my antics (sober anyway). So by the time I started graduate school at 27, even I was irritated with the perky little things that lackadaisically swarmed the campus of SDSU. "Time and gravity, girls. Time and gravity, happens to us all" I used to think as I did my Bay Area-I-have-somewhere-to-go-walk across campus and the be-booted shorty shorts clad late teen/twenty chicks ambled around as if they had all the time in the world. I understood even then, being myself only slightly less pert and perky than my school peers, that we would all grow old and fighting it was a fool's mission.<br />
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Fast forward some mfehmmummblemum... years later (see, vanity) and I get it. I eat my own words. I really get it. On the inside. I mean that quite literally too. I now understand that one cannot eat 5 pieces of birthday cake in a week's time and skate into the end of the week un-internally-scathed. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1Q7v0kUo7HKxgIxrUxFXyIaA4OdfxLeg44ulJYBdQvV_EuzaZS4tNm6yHA6RPjkgTvIK8PbOX7Rgr2YibSPAnlHM4NeNWSmMmJ-wlsjm_YzcLb2domtiPusFeYppaecSqxSuKeQ/s1600/birthday-cake.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="312" width="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1Q7v0kUo7HKxgIxrUxFXyIaA4OdfxLeg44ulJYBdQvV_EuzaZS4tNm6yHA6RPjkgTvIK8PbOX7Rgr2YibSPAnlHM4NeNWSmMmJ-wlsjm_YzcLb2domtiPusFeYppaecSqxSuKeQ/s320/birthday-cake.png" /></a></div><br />
When one is no longer twenty-something, (thirty-something might be pushing it) some foods are just no longer an option. Never one to have much in the way of digestive issues, it has always been a big red flag for me to not eat any more of <i>that </i>(that which just went in the gullet) when the tum goes rumble, I have benefited, clearly, from the instant effect of being in touch with one's body. The cumulative effect however I am just now noticing.<br />
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Woke up feeling quite hungover and blech. But I had drunk only one glass of wine - how is that possible? Frosting. Lovely, fluffy marshmallow frosting from my daughter's birthday cake of last Saturday. That, plus one on Tuesday evening (Tuesdays and Thursdays are dessert night, they are designated, that's right. I have children, if you don't designate these things they get quickly out of control), one at her actual party, one chocolate one at a friend's birthday that same day, and one later that evening. It was one of those "darn it, it won't all fit in the container" pieces. You have no choice really, you have to eat it. The Chinese children of my youth would cry if they knew I had let food go to waste.<br />
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Funnily enough, for us mfehmmummblemum-somethings (vanity, again) sugar is just like booze. Easy going down, queazy in the processing. Who knew...Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-62157380978202437932011-05-04T16:06:00.000-07:002011-05-18T12:13:14.127-07:00How We Learned to Love The Things That Suck: Or Rather, Things That AcheAh Spring! You may all say. But I say, "No not yet!" I know it is here because my head starts to ache. Something about the heat changing the pressure or the sun or the brightness of the... who knows. It's ouchy. I'm grouchy.<br />
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See, Spring here in the land of 363 days of sunny-sun-sunshiny days (pinch me!), is what the rest of you, across the country, call Summer. And it never seems to fail: Family will be descending, or rather ascending up to us from that Mediterranean climate/heaven that is San Diego, this weekend because of a little girlie's birthday party. And in typical fashion <i>last </i>weekend was lovely, moderate, cool breeze... <i>this </i>weekend will be 90s, no cool breeze in sight. From Spring to Summer in one short two hour drive.<br />
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Spring to me, marks the time of year when I must steel myself against Summer. Summer here is like everyone else's Winter. Except you can only take off so many clothes, before you get arrested. And even still, hot sun on bare skin is ouchy, make me grouchy. Maybe this year I will purchase a pair of sunglasses though. Seriously, I don't own any. It's sooooo sunny here all the time - relentlessly so (have I mentioned that before?). I just figure, what's the point? You'd have to wear them every single freaking sunny-sun sunshiny day. And frankly, I've never been that cool.<br />
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In other news: check out my new blogger digs. Eh? Eh? Nice, eh? <br />
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The reason for the change (my old template was so aughts) is that I am prepping for (read: trying to learn how the hell to do it!) self-publishing my novel, <i>Pernicious Pill</i>. I will be offering some short stories I've written on this site. So follow me here, or at Twitter, or Facebook, and I will let you know when I post a story and when the novel will become available.<br />
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Your comments here are welcome. I would love to know who my readers are and what you're reading these days.Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-88333709467191433042011-03-29T15:17:00.000-07:002011-05-18T12:13:32.205-07:00How We Learned to Love The Things That Suck: Mama's Trying Week or The Can, The Bug, and The EggI think I am done now with Life in Exile blogging, as it were. Ready to put that beat bit of prose to bed. I cynically/optimistically now begin a new series perhaps called, "How We Learned to Love the Things That Suck". Past tense, because, of course, we haven't actually learned yet how... If I was learning as I went along it might be called "...Am Learning To..." But I like the irony so... here we go...<br />
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So Friday, the 18th my lovey and I are sitting at lunch, just about finished, and somewhat relaxed, considering. Just a couple of weeks earlier he had been let go from his job. It was a stressful, difficult to learn job and he'd been feeling the pressure. Reassured one week that he had time to learn (he'd been doing investigations on his own for only 7 months) and would not be allowed to fail, (in fact, they had just implemented the ironically named "No Investigator Left Behind" program) only to be let go another. In the letting go process the company had made a number of, one could argue, cruel mistakes. Being reassured that you won't lose your job and then being let go shortly thereafter is bad enough. But they had let AMX know he was being un-employed long before they let him know. So the letter canceling his company card arrived before the canning did. They also called on a Monday to schedule a "we've got to talk to you" meeting on a <i>Friday</i>. ??? "Honey, I'll be home from Paris in a month. Can we have a sit down and talk about the continuation of our relationship then? No, we'll talk about it then... buh bye" - like that, only more vague and evasive when asked a direct question.<br />
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So during the "we've got to talk to you meeting" they make some noises about stats and not being up to par and "should be farther along"s and whatnot - and hem and haw when shown the reassuring "don't worry we won't let you fail" letter. So they make it look like a firing for cause, but really it is more like a layoff. A number of weeks earlier supervisors had requested a volunteer to go "independent contractor" status, and no takers. Weeks after being let go, his job is still not posted on their website - they never had any intention of replacing him, only getting rid of low hanging fruit. So much for No Investigator Left Behind - probably modeled on Bush's No Child Left Behind, which should probably be renamed, Failing, Well Screw You! (Either or, take your pick)<br />
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The company also did the not so nice, and a violation of state labor statutes, thing called delay in getting final pay stub to former employee. When you let someone go, 24 hours baby. That's all you get... a week or so later, lovey's finally arrives so NOW he can file for unemployment... and with a high unemployment rate in our county, that nerve wracking phone call is delayed by a further week.<br />
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So by the time we find ourselves at lunch on a sunny Friday afternoon, after a morning of us both volunteering at our kids' school, we are finally feeling some sort of equilibrium come back into our limbs when... the phone rings and it's the school - come pick up your kids, they have head lice.<br />
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Ugh.<br />
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This is not a phone call one welcomes. But spring into action we did. So 12 hours later - after treatments and nit picking hair and spraying and washing and changing of sheets and towels, etc. - the last load of laundry goes into a hot hot hot load to wash out any potential critters at 1am. Oh no, but that is not the end, my friend. If you, or some small one you love, has ever had this affliction you know, our party was not over. It seemed like (though this is not literally true) I spent my entire weekend with my face in children's hair, combing out lice eggs (nits) and squashing live ones between my fingernails. I now have a new appreciation for and deeper understanding of some parts of the English language, such as "nit picking" and "louse" and "bug eyed".<br />
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Come Monday morning our daughter was still not ready to go back to school. No live ones allowed in school! But thank goodness for the leniency of NOT having a No Nit Policy. That would just be maddening, and detrimental to a little girl who is already behind in her studies. Finally, she gets the go ahead on Thursday. I relax, just a little too soon because...<br />
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When the kids and lovey came to pick me up from work that afternoon I noticed a red spot on her forehead. She had bumped her head on a metal pole at school and a giant egg had grown there. I asked her a few questions and she seemed to be fine. But as we made our way home and I began to make dinner (breaking a glass sending me into a stress-tizzy for a moment), Natasha Richardson kept creeping into my head. I was worried. But I couldn't exactly point to anything to be worried about. After dinner (Thursday is dessert night, don't you know), having no treats, we headed to Dairy Queen. When girlie started complaining her egg hurt we were close enough to the Urgent Care to swing by, so we did. As the physician asked the girlie questions her face changed. Seems she lost consciousness for a couple of seconds - and any loss counts. Off to the ER we go. <br />
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You learn things, being in the ER, for 6 hours on a Thursday night. <br />
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Number one) If you land yourself in the ER everyone will show up. If they are within driving distance they will arrive, if only to wait and worry-ish in the lobby (there will be a good amount of giggling, though I don't think at the inflicted's expense). So be heartened if no one shows up in your actual room they are probably all in the lobby. Making noise.<br />
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Number two) It's scary when the ER goes on lock-down because 'something' is happening or criminals or suspected criminals or some unknown something is happening 'back there'. As subtle as the staff try to make it, being a mom alone with a 6 year old daughter in the middle of the night in the ER, when it goes on lock-down, is not the most comforting place to be. Trust me, I experienced it, three times.<br />
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Number three) If you must go to the ER on a Thursday night and you are in Palm Springs, make the hike to Indio to JFK. Thursday night Street Fair apparently attracts trouble and the ER ends up busy. Who knew?<br />
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Number four) After midnight hysterical single women will visit the ER. That's not entirely fair, I don't know, they might have been married. But three of them, really. I think they just wanted to talk. I know how that is, I've woken up in the middle of the night too all stressed and worried that my life isn't going the way its supposed to. I suppose that is the prophylactic effect of children - they (mostly) keep you from going off half-cocked in the middle of the night. (Bet you never thought you'd read that sentence in your whole entire life.)<br />
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So, there you have it. It is now Tuesday and I am still tired. I feel something like someone has taken a cheese grater to my psyche. And yes, still nit picking, thanks for asking! Every night. Twenty one days. Go on, I know you're jealous <i>you </i>don't get to make <i>your </i>children hold still for you for twenty one days. <br />
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Note to self: some day this will all be funny, some day this will all be funny, some day this will all be funny...Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-77090057083934805552011-01-04T16:58:00.000-08:002011-01-04T16:58:50.982-08:00Life in Exile: No New Year's Reso-bleeping-lutionsAs the new year begins I think back, not on all the great things that happened in the previous year as many do (though I know there were some pretty great things that happened, namely making a new acquaintance and starting a new job with a lovely lady, meeting a new great friend, starting a credential program so that I can validly apply for teaching positions, theatre things all well and revving forward) but rather thinking about all the mistakes I've made. Not just in the course of the last year. Why limit myself! But mistakes or should I say missed opportunities, and wondering whether I would be sitting here, in the desert, in a lonely office working a parttime hourly wage job, needing to supplement it with two other parttime jobs the sum of which does not even amount to one decent job wage wise or anything that could remotely be called a career. Or do all roads lead to the same destiny and I just need to breathe and learn to love the things that suck?<br />
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I go way back to when I was young and pretty and wasting my youth auditioning (when I could get them), waitressing and bartending at midling chain restaurants, married to an alcoholic. It was December one of those years and I coincidentally had an audition on the same day as my husband's Christmas party. He worked at a small company in SF and they were having their party at a restaurant in downtown, my audition was some blocks away at a new theatre company. I said I would meet him at the restaurant and all was agreed, but he got home early from work or didn't work that day (I can't quite remember) and decided to go into the city with me. We got off at the stop for his party, not my audition, and I was just going to say hi to the guys then get right back on the BART train. But when we got there, no one else was there. He said he would just wait at the bar. Doing the hours till party starts to possible consumption of alcoholic beverages (of an avid alcoholic husband in a party mode) quickly in my head, I decided to blow off the audition to stay with him, go for a walk around the block and hopefully reduce the cocktail intake. I was not successful and I remember his boss saying something along the lines (in all somewhat levity, of course) of "He's crazy, you should try to control him" meaning, "don't let him drink so much"... which of course I had tried, but his disease got the better of him and me as it usually did and made him look a fool and me even more foolish for being with him.<br />
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Missing that audition still haunts me. I try mightily not to engage in what ifs as I do not believe they have any inherent value per se, but sometimes that McClelland melancholy I inherited gets the better of me. That was the only audition I have ever missed.<br />
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Then we move to several years later when taking classes to qualify me to get into graduate school I turned down an opportunity to become a TV news reporter. Granted, there was no guaranty of a job but there was the implicit indication of help in that direction in the "Ryan, you've got talent, you're going places kid" support and encouragement. I turned it down because my classes in electronic journalism I found depressing. I didn't want to spend my life investigating bad news though I apparently would have been good at it. I just thought it would make me drink more than I already did (if you can imagine what that was, being married to an alcoholic and all you might see the validity in my worry).<br />
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But I often wonder if that wasn't a mistake. Would I have been successful? <br />
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Then shortly before the end of graduate school I got yet another one of those "You're going places kid" offers of support from a professor I had an internship with. "What about working at Qualcomm, or something like that? They start at $65K" Nope, I said, I'm goin' to Hollywood to make movies! This proves at least that I am not greedy, lest anyone was wondering. But scary to think that I might have been better off. The idea that I make just about the same as I made in graduate school is frightening, not to mention wrist-slashingly-depressing... thank goodness I have children to keep me sane. The only upside to that career track not taken is that some years after I moved to Hollywood and was gainfully and happily employed working for a producer and 'going places', Qualcomm laid off some 60,000 newly hired workers in the tech bust.<br />
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Then there was my break with above mentioned producer. I had worked for him for four years and needed to have some bigger role in the company or learn something new. Only so much can be learned in Hollywood behind a desk and I had reached that limit. While looking for a job I was offered one with a foreign sales company. It was, however, shockingly similar to the one I had just sat in for four years. Alone in an office, making just about the same money but not doing much different than what I had been doing. I laugh now at the 'career assistant panic' that made me turn the job down (as well as the $ offer being reneged on just as I was to step through the door). What I was worried about then I wallow in now, but not even as good as I could have had it there... because I am here.<br />
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The only upside to that missed opportunity is that 9/11 happened shortly afterward and the job would have entailed traveling that October to MIPCOM. Having not done much for work travel I didn't have the kind of familiarity comfort that would have been needed to stave off the post-9/11 traveling by air fear that took over almost everyone. Plus by that October I was pregnant and sick sick sick.<br />
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Then there was the Israeli film festival which hired me for a day, "just to see". I can understand why they did this. They had a panic exit, in case of bombing you know. But with a 10 month old baby, and lactating like crazy, it was uncomfortable being away. Who knows if I would have done well or not. It was essentially a sales job and I is no salesman! When later that day my husband got the job in Palm Springs he'd been hoping to get - to restore his place as breadwinner and bolster his self worth after over 10 long months of unemployment - I willingly gave up the film festival job. But what I also gave up in one fell swoop was my career in all total, such as it was, living in LA for good, such as it seems, and the building of relationships that comes with raising children alongside your friends in the same area. <br />
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Already far away from any family in LA, in the desert we were now far also from friends. I didn't realize the isolation that would grip me or how difficult it would be to shake off. The wrongfully imprisoned inmate still sees himself as a prisoner, and can't help but comport himself so. Even still, visiting friends in LA (even if rarely) I feel as though I have snuck temporarily back into the fold and will be kicked out if discovered at any moment. I have to learn to navigate all over again the outside world, so cloistered and dim is this one.<br />
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I was even offered a job with the film festival here but I had very small children at that time and a husband who worked odd hours. The income and hours I would have put in would have put me in the red in the final analysis after all the various babysitters had been paid. It just didn't make sense, as much as I would have liked to have been out of this office once and for all.<br />
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But here I sit, welcoming a new year, wondering if I could have done better. If I had been more selfish?, more hungry?, more ruthlessly driven? I don't suppose this is a calculation men really ever have to make, or do, but I wonder if I had just not considered the effect of my actions on my spouses and done what the hell I wanted, if I'd be any better off. Or maybe in some strange sci-fi like fate driven process I'd be here now anyway.<br />
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Anyway, happy new year... my non-resolution (because I do it now anyway) is to take my fate cheerfully, like so much medicine... maybe I will try harder this year to learn to love the things that suck.Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-36339769446199799502010-12-21T14:48:00.000-08:002011-01-04T16:03:35.945-08:00Life in Exile: A Little Muse on That Thing We Call… FrustrationI have heard it said that unhappiness is when your expectations do not match up with reality. OK, fair enough. If that is so then frustration is when reality does not match up with reality. What I mean to say is, generally when we are frustrated it is with something/one (OK, let’s face it, usually it’s a ‘one’) outside of ourselves. If we are to get to the crux of true frustration, as opposed to say, a temper tantrum, it would be when your reality does not match up with the reality of that thing with which you are frustrated.<br />
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A phrase sprung to my mind upon hearing of the demise of Elizabeth Edwards, the much suffering-with-grace-and-a-good-publisher wife of former VP candidate John Edwards: Don’t be too OK with things, it might not actually do you any good.<br />
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In the <i>long </i>run, I was meaning, you know with the cancer and all. So in the long run, squashing your feelings and taking that trip down denial you’ve been dreaming of may not be such a good plan. But I wish to posit here that faced with untenable frustration, a little jaunt on a cruise boat down denial – weather permitting – could be just what the doctor ordered. Just make sure you get off at the next stop. <i>Not </i>getting off is what I suspect leads to high valium and other recreational/FLIPPING NECESSARY drug and alcohol use by wives, harried parents, harried assistants, etc.<br />
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Such as not enough time. Your reality is that you need to get X done, but the T available is not adequate to complete X, ergo X/T – T = F. You follow?<br />
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Or when you need a youngster to do her homework. Said youngster does not want to do her homework, did not read the cost/benefit analysis memo you put together for her, and can’t envision being held back in 1st grade and is therefore not freaking out as adequately, as say, a harried parent might.<br />
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There is also the usual partner frustration. You have relationship need, let’s call it R, and partner doesn’t care/notice/see what’s the big deal/is incapable of providing. You try to reason with partner, “I really need R!” P agrees to ‘get right on it’, forgets. So see, Self as reliant on Partner for Relationship success often leads to the dreaded Frustration. Or this equation can be expressed as: S + P/R = F<br />
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Or just go to work, oh anywhere really, and find a numbskull, add a task that needs to be accomplished alongside said numbskull and there you go. Instant frustration!<br />
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Or the frustration of exile let’s say. Want career. No career to be had in area of your exile. OK, settle for decent job. No decent job to be had in area of your exile. OK, don’t have to tell me twice, change tack, head Self on different career path. No, different career also not available in area of your exile. Alright bloody fine! Learn to be OK with family life. Family life rife with above frustrations.<br />
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Shit.<br />
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“Someone hand mama her pills!”… repeat mantra of “At least the kids are in a good school, at least the kids are in a good school…” as often as needed, take two glasses of wine, and try not to be OK with it in the morning.Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-69600188259929799702010-12-06T13:31:00.000-08:002010-12-06T13:31:11.725-08:00Life in Exile: Things Fall ApartI was reminiscing about a moment in time a few years back when my life in exilehood did not seem so bad. Things… came together. I had been performing my solo-performance play at the gallery, and by all audience feedback, moving people. I had randomly answered ads for various services like writers and artists and such the like, and suddenly there came offers. I was a Teaching Artist at the McCallum Theatre Institute! I was a contributing writer to Dune Magazine! I was writing apace on my novel! It felt good. I was busy but I was happy. And in the way of such moments I got more done. Ironically my house was cleaner, I made it to the gym several times a week. My toddlers were relatively clean and well dressed, and supremely happy. <i>I</i> was happy damnit!<br />
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Then, as they do, things fell apart. My husband lost his job. The magazine folded. I got let go from the Teaching Artist position for reasons I am still not clear on (too emotional I suspect though I have no overt evidence. If they had wanted unemotional people they should have put a call out for Quaker Artists!) And, as these things have a way of infiltrating all nooks and crannies of life, my husband and I entered a protracted and supercilious period of battle… to be right… as all battles of marriage seem to be. Which of course led to child behavioral issues which led to, wait for it… iCarly permeating our house, what seems like 24/7.<br />
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As all parents know you have to make concessions sometimes to keep the peace. And if you don’t, well then you are a dictator, or a member of the Greatest Generation. It started as “just iCarly, nothing else”. Said concession stemmed from some serious and persistent fuss/misbehavior and downright stubbornness and refusal to change the channel, which stemmed from little sister’s intense neediness, which stemmed from the long battle which… well, as above. It has grown to Big Time Rush, Victorious, and various other teen laugh track comedies, and a venomous need to see <i>every single special every single time</i> it airs. The justification to which is “but it’s the Special!” Duh-uh!<br />
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It is impossible, for me at least, to separate achievements from how I feel about everything else about life, including my kids’ childhoods on which I am a contributing editor. One could distill it all down to enthusiasm I suppose, but you would lose the subtleties. As I was enthusiastically going about my creative life in that time before things fell apart and after the long, lonely-time in the beginning of my exile, I could WOW them with my passion, my enthusiasm for life and them. Who needed TV! We had activity instead. They were also a great deal younger, a great deal less jaded by the long battle, and we were all still in that period of hope – that point in time of very early familydom where there is still the possibility of more – maybe more children, a dog, maybe a move to a new and better (or old and better) place. Children themselves being still so incompletely formed, as toddlers, seem to embody possibility. We had not yet hit the grooves of family life. Those grooves which are children’s particular personalities and proclivities. The grooves of daily life. The grooves of holidays, celebrations, school. The grooves of how you treat each other. There still seemed time to enlarge our family (which I wanted but the husband decidedly DID NOT!) or change its rhythms to something slightly more coordinated and soft, not the hard jerky inconsistent syncopation groove we now live in. <br />
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And when that something that swooped underneath the knees of me and washed away all that hope, I grew more cynical (if that is possible), and tiresome, no doubt. And tired. So I caved. And now we are in some sort of horrible TV groove. As I was trying to imagine how we could get some iCarly out of our lives, and remembering fondly the relative calm of shows on Noggin, like Oobi and Franklin, Little Bear, even the craziness of The UpSideDown Show, I realized all that had led up to that moment of weakness.<br />
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I have a congenital inability to hold on to and recount for all within earshot my achievements. I don’t want to think about what I did once. I actually flush with embarrassment when I think about or talk about my various accomplishments. “Stuck up” comes to mind – obviously a song I heard so often in childhood it is permanently etched in my psyche and rears up on hind legs when even the <i>thought </i>of tooting my own horn emerges. I don’t want to rest on my laurels but new ones are so hard to grow out in this desert, my beautiful prison, though I keep trying. I want to <i>do</i>. <br />
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I wonder though, had I a little more reminisce and a little less angst to accomplish, if I might have been able to hold it all a little more together, not caved, not lost my enthusiasm for life, not gotten weary of the harrowingness of it all… maybe I would now live in a land less populated by teen idols… maybe.Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16738585.post-12295159239077867852010-11-16T11:55:00.000-08:002010-11-16T15:51:10.826-08:00Life in Exile: Cloudy, With Absolutely Not A Goddamned Chance of RainOr, I was gonna call it, "Black Mood Faded Irrevocably Grey By The Sun"<br /><br />My capacity to tolerate tedious work sanguinely is stretched today. Not because of the particular tedium of the task... just... sigh...<br /><br />You know when you are doing something mindless because it just needs to be done? (I'm actually good at stuff like that - which goes to my favorite piece of wisdom imparted to me by my grandmother that I have never been able to follow - "Don't get good at anything you don't want to do for a living") But it ends up feeling like biding time. It's painful, that realization, of how much time you have actually bode. Despite all New Year's affirmations that "this year things will finally change" here we are in November, and nothing actually has. (Ironically, I have lost weight this year.)<br /><br />Well, that is not strictly true. Change happens, although seemingly glacially (not in a global warming sense, in the building a glacier sense). There are the normal increments of child growth spurts, dog adoptions, relational truces, good grades easily won in school (mine and Angus') and slow, hard earned progress (Violet's and Matt's) in school and work... you know, like, normal stuff. But I so never wanted to be normal. That sounds really shitty doesn't it? Poor little middle class white woman complaining that her job is tedious and she doesn't have time to work on a new novel and that new play that's been floating around in her head for years aching to get out let alone clean the bathroom. And did I mention I just got a new car on Sunday.... ahhhhh... excuse my while I just go slap myself.Yellahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177322637079005617noreply@blogger.com0