Sugar Sugar

Control

2007-06-10T13:06:00.000-07:00

The Bus from Chicago. I checked that book out so many times. I knew exactly where to find it in the children's library where Mom let me hang out while she looked for her books.

I loved books, but I was also sort of terrified of libraries. They were just so enormous and intimidating--so many books on so many shelves and all you could see were all the spines. I never liked the word or idea of poky spines anyway. Not a very friendly place at all. I wanted them to lay the books all out flat, show me the covers, let me open them up, touch them. And that whole business of sliding out too far the next book to remember your place was just too tricky. What if I put it back on the wrong side of the sticking out book? The stress was just too great.

To this day I prefer bookstores, who lay things all out for you, display things for you as if to say with a kind smile, "Here! Look! Touch! Put it back any old place. We'll take care of it." I find the books I want there and then go check them out at the library--the Big Scary Library that dares, "Go ahead, take a book, if you can find it! Bwahahahaha!"

And what's with the blasted Card Catalogue and the Dewey Decimal System? I was destined never to read. Not to mention that I was eating way too much Spam, Kraft macaroni and cheese, drinking far too many bottles of Coke and living in a house pretty much devoid of any routine or organization to grasp such complex concepts as classification and categorization. Although, I'll tell you, I longed to. I wanted so badly to have order and organization in my life.

My room was my domain and, until high school when a temporary apathy took over, it was insanely organized. I had a TV tray that served as a dressing table on which I carefully arranged my purple brush, purple comb, three Avon perfume bottle dolls and a butterfly magnet mirror that played "You Light Up My Life" and made the butterfly flit around. The brush and the comb had to be parallel to each other and to the edge of the tray. The dolls had to form an arch in the right corner. The mirror balanced out the left corner at a precise angle. It had to be exact before everything was right in my world I could begin the day. This probably amounts to obsessive behavior, but nobody ever saw me do it, so it doesn't count. Oh, and the bed had to be made, tucked in without ripple or wrinkle. Then I was free to leave the room and face the day.

People ask me why I don't want to have kids. I sometimes ask myself why being married is so hard for me. I think I have my answer (one of many) right there. Because someone would be forever in my space ruining the order I try so hard to create every day.

I can see that my early obsession with order was an attempt to control what little was under my domain. There was so much criticism in that house growing up. Nothing we ever did was right. One time my dad asked me to scratch an itch on his back, then berated me for not having long enough fingernails. Didn't I know that no one would ever marry me if I didn't stop biting my fingernails? So my friend, with long fingernails and clearly of marriage material, scratched his back instead, but he screamed out, "What the hell's the matter with you? You trying to kill me with those claws?!" There was no pleasing him. I learned right away not to trust myself or my thinking. In school I was smart and did good work, but I couldn't raise my hand or speak up to save my life. What if I was wrong? And I was learning at home that I always was.

We didn't have family meetings as I've since learned some families have. My brother and I were just told things. Like, "Your father's going to live somewhere else for while...In a trailer near your grandparents...You can call him anytime you want...His number is...You can visit him every other weekend...You didn't do anything wrong." Or we were not told. Suddenly he was just back again, but that's when the fighting started--the fighting they should have been doing all along. Except it wasn't the "fighting to heal" kinds of arguments my husband and I were counseled to have to save our marriage. These went more like this, "Well, you never..." "Well, you always..." "Now look what you've done. You've made your daughter cry. Ya happy now?" "You gonna hit me? Go ahead. Just go ahead. That's all I need and I'm outta here."

In the 8th grade that I decided, just decided, to not be shy anymore. I knew it wasn't me. I wasn't shy after that. I keep discovering new ways to push through that shyness to see myself more clearly.

It wasn't until college when I had a beautifully organized roommate that I really began to learn to how to organize things. I watched how she organized her sock drawer, her notebooks with perfect tabs and labels, the clothes in her closet according to style, length and color. I knew I could never reach her standards, but I could try. Just try. Something about it made sense to me. Something in my brain locked into place like some mystical ancient puzzle and everything started to make sense. Right then, at that time in my life, something in me relaxed, loosened its grip in just the smallest way and I began to breathe a little more deeply.

The Bus From Chicago

2007-06-10T13:01:00.000-07:00

This is my first favorite book about travel from an "exotic" place. The Bus from Chicago by Annie DeCaprio, illustrated by Cal Sacks. I loved reading it over and over again. I was about six. It seemed hard to pronounce. I had a hard time getting my mouth around the words, but it was intoxicating in its rhythm and repetition.

This is the bus from Chicago.
This is Mister Gonzago,
who drives the bus from Chicago.

From the very first page I was mesmerized. The first picture shows us that the bus is headed for New York, where I was from, which made it even more exciting.

This is the grandma with boots on her feet,
getting ready so she can meet
the bus that Mister Gonzago
is driving along from Chicago.

I was living a million miles away from The City, practically on a different planet. I was no where near Woody Allen or Hannah and Her Sisters or Alan Alda and The Four Seasons. I was up in the woods along the Catskill Creek watching Little House on the Prairie and Hee Haw and Smokey and the Bandit.

This is the subway under the ground
that goes along with a loud, loud sound
to take the grandma with boots on her feet
to the bus station so she can meet
the bus that Mister Gonzago
is driving along from Chicago.

I had never ridden a bus that wasn't yellow and didn't take me to school and that had grown ups on it other than Joanne, our bus driver, who I asked one day, "Did you always wanna be a bus driver when you grew up?" I didn't understand why she thought that was funny. In fact, no, she said that she'd wanted to be a nurse. I asked her why she wasn't a nurse and she just sighed and said, "Well, you know, that's just how life is." I didn't know about how life was, but I did know that something seemed familiar about the subway under the ground and the bus from Chicago. Something good and comfortable, but that I couldn't really explain. Something in me knew what Chicago was and how far, at least that it was out there in the middle somewhere, but not that far really from NY.

This is Bill and his mother, too,
going to meet the grandma who
was in the subway under the ground
that went along with a loud, loud sound
to take the grandma with the boots on her feet
to the bus station so she could meet
the bus that Mister Gonzago
has driven all the way from Chicago.

It has a momentum that I still find exhilerating! And it ends with the cover picture of the boy and the grandma finally reunited. Very satisfying.

I remember everything

2006-10-01T01:32:00.000-07:00

I pretty much remember everything from the time I was in diapers until now, with the exception of the seventh grade, which still remains a mystery to me. I mean I remember the cubby cribs in the church nursery and being held on hips and the sing-songy voice of the pastor's sermons and the sound of pantyhose rubbing together on fat church ladies' legs. I remember spinning the squares, circles and triangles on my baby crib at home in the room I shared with my teenage aunt, before she moved out and that room became my brother's and was painted red, white and blue and plastered with Civil War wallpaper.

I remember being pre-verbal, but still thinking to the grown-ups in my life, "I wouldn't do that if I were you. You shouldn't say that. That's not very nice." And thinking to myself, "Why doesn't anyone ever ask me what I think?" Of course, no one consults infants and toddlers when making major family decisions, I understand that now, but I often look at babies and silently ask them, “Who are you? What are you thinking?”

I remember the name of every teacher I had in school K-12 and a lot of the students' names, too. I mean, okay, sure I was kid; it's not like I had it all figured out like I do now (cough, gag, wheeze). I remember I asked my mother one day, "How do you spell grannit?" "Grannit? Use it in a sentence," she said. "Well, like, 'You always take me for grannit!'" Imagine what that must have been like for her? Generally, kids just repeat what they hear around the house and this was no exception. "You mean granted," she said. "G-R-A-N-T-E-D. To take someone for granted." "What does it mean?" I asked. What does it mean, when you're in the middle of a marriage that isn't working? And how do you explain that to your second-grader? I remember everything, sure, but not her answer.

I must have been less than five, because I wasn't in school yet, or it could have been summer. Mom and I were up real late. We'd fallen asleep watching TV, but we woke up at midnight when the national anthem was playing and the station turned to loud snow. Before we went upstairs to go to bed, she set a place at the table for Dad's breakfast (he worked nights)--a bowl, a napkin, a spoon, a coffee cup, a box of Wheaties and the sugar bowl. I asked her why she did that and she said because she loved him. I declared I would never do that when I got married. She chuckled and grinned, knowing that I would because she knew that love makes you do sweet things.

When I was six, Dad moved out for a while, not very far away, they said, and we could call him or visit him whenever we wanted to. He had a different telephone number from us and that just didn't seem right. He was about a mile away in a tiny metal trailer that smelled of moth balls and had a gas stove that I was afraid of. It seemed like forever that they were separated, but I've since learned that it was only for six months. This seems hard to believe.

Then Mom had to go to the hospital for five days for something that now might be an outpatient procedure. I remember Dad didn't know anything about how to get us ready in the morning, but he'd been in the military and knew how to follow orders, which Mom must have left. He did his best. My hair was in knots and he used his fine tooth comb on it. I screamed and cried. Mom had laid out five outfits for me to wear. She put them on the dining room table on top of the piles of other laundry that always lived there.

They said when he moved back that things were going to be okay. They were really trying to convince themselves. We knew better. When I was about eight, Dad was picking up my brother and me from our grandparents' house. Even as we were still going down the long driveway toward the road, he said to my much older brother, but not to me, "Remember that time I went to live in the trailer? Well, I'm gonna go live there again, but this time for good. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?" My brother said yeah and then they were both crying quietly. Dad thought he was speaking in code so that I wouldn't understand, so I pretended not to cry.

A few days later, or maybe later that night, I don't remember, Mom and Dad called me into their room, their gold, but not shiny room. They sat on the edge of their bed, facing me. They were very serious. They were more united in this, their final act as Mom and Dad, than I had ever seen them (aside from that night they made supper and taught me the difference between dinner and supper). I thought, "This is ridiculous. How stupid do you think I am?" I broke the tense silence and said, "You're getting divorced." They looked shocked. How did I know? "Duh? (I clucked my tongue and rolled my eyes.) I was in the truck when you told K (my brother)." "You've known since then and you didn't say anything?" I shrugged my shoulders, "You didn't say anything either." I begged them to stay together. I promised to be good. Their hearts broke and they gushed all over themselves to assure me that they weren't getting divorced because of me or my brother. There was nothing I could do to change things. They were definitely sure of their decision, which was final and which, adding insult to injury, they had made without consulting me.

3 things i remember about mom & dad's room

2006-09-30T23:34:00.000-07:00

1) they painted it this great yellow color they called "gold" even though it wasn't shiny

2) the big old box fan that was so big that it was twice as tall as me and i was instructed to never EVER climb it or stick my hand in it while the fabric covered cord was plugged in. they repeatedly walked me over to the end of the cord, showed me the prongs and laid it on the floor. they said, "if it's sleeping on the floor, like this, then you can play with the fan. if it's awake and in the wall, never EVER play with the fan." Clearly these were the days before any kind of child safety requirements. so when Mom and i went down for our naps and i'd wuffed her to sleep, i'd slide off the bed and over to the fan with its three giant mesmerizing blades. check to see if the cord is sleeping, like Mom. it is. okay. then crank hard on one of the cool metal blades and watch them spin. i liked how the words in the center became a single stripe going round and round. i liked how my voice sounded when i sang into its breeze. i liked the simple wooden box that housed the fan itself and i especially liked the two parallel circles in the front and back that allowed air to pass through, so quietly. ooh, i loved that fan.

3) one summer bees or hornets or wasps or something built their nest right up against the bedroom window, and even though Dad was allergic and therefore terrified of Things That Sting, it was allowed to stay for a little while so we could watch it. their little society was so busy and industrious and we felt rather voyeuristic watching their lives in all their little apartments like that. it was a fascinating science experiment right there in the window.

plus, this bonus memory

4) that one winter when the beehive window was broken, it started snowing before we'd gotten around to fixing it. waking up to snow is always magical, even in NY where it always snows in winter, but on that particular morning, Mom woke us up to the magic of a perfect pile of snow on the bedroom floor below the window.

oh, and this one, too

5) as an adult one time i asked my mom, "hey, whatever happened to that yellow Easter dress I used to have?" "What yellow Easter dress?" "You know, that little yellow one with the puffy sleeves and the frilly underpants?" Her eyes bugged out, "You can't possibly remember that dress. You were too little." "Well, I do. It was hanging up on the back of your bedroom door." And I gestured as if the hook on the door were impossibly high. i wore that dress when i was 1 1/2 and there are no pictures of me in it.

"Wuff Me"

2006-08-31T22:36:00.000-07:00

When I was a toddler, I used to wander around the house picking up random items, rubbing them on my arm, dropping them and moving on to the next until I found just the right thing. It was a peculiar ritual that made no sense to my mother until this one day when I finally did find Just the Right Thing, probably a playing card or even a barrette turned on edge, and I knew my search was over.

I immediately went to Mom, held the object before her and said, "Wuff me, Mommy."

Now, I was something like 2 years old and she was still learning how to speak Karin, which created a language barrier that frustrated us both.

"Wuff me!" I demanded.

"I don't know what you want, Karin!" she said.

I practically clucked my tongue and rolled my eyes, something I got very good at about ten years later. Then I demonstrated how to properly Wuff. Take the wuffer and lightly drag it across the skin of the arm in a half tickle/half scratch fashion. So she did and my whole little body went limp. For those of us who are me, it is highly satisfying. We continued this ritual until I was--oh, who am I kidding--I'm always in search of a good wuffer.

Business cards and credit cards work really well. The prongs of a fork will do in a pinch, if you're careful. The clip on a pen is good, too! A photo is okay, but a bit flimsy. A book edge will work, but in all is just too bulky. Never ever use an ordinary piece of paper. And soft or round things in general are right out.

You don't need a mommy to wuff you, but if you do have one, by all means, I highly recommend a few sweet wuffing moments with her. Life is short.

Seven Already?

2006-07-19T00:11:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen my mom in seven years. Seven years and one week. But who's counting. I don't actually count the weeks, but I just happen to know.

I also know it's getting easier because it was only just today that I realized July 19th was coming up. That's huge progress. It used to be, "Hi, my name is Karin and my mother is dead." A big black line separating life as I had known it, from living hell. Five years ago I was actually required to go to a company picnic on July 19th and have fun, damn it. It was agony. So, for her death date to kind of sneak up on me like that; it's a big deal. A good sign.

This is the last picture of her. Everyone was gathered at her house for a party--having fun. She died about 12 hours later. Then everyone gathered there again the next day--ever so much less fun. She lived 60 years, 4 months and 15 days. But who's counting.

I miss you, Ma. I love you so much.

Happy Father's Day (a bit late)

2006-06-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

Here is a series of pictures of my dad and me over the years. In the first one I'm 1 1/2 and he's 31. The last one was taken just days after my mom died when she was 60. We didn't know it, but he would only live another four years to be 63 and this is one of the last pictures of just the two of us together. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

Happy Mother's Day (a bit late)

2006-06-27T23:19:00.000-07:00

Mother's Day is hard for me. I stay away from stores, I turn off the radio and the TV so as not to be bombarded by reminders for Mother's Day gift ideas. I used to welcome the marketing barage, but now, not so much. So this year it worked out perfectly, though I hadn't planned it this way, that on Mother's Day I arrived in Dakar, Senegal--easily one of my favorite places in the world--a place that just so happens (like most places) not to celebrate Mother's Day. [It does, however, celebrate International Women's Day, which (like most places) honors women of all ages, mothers or not.] It was quite an ordinary Sunday like all the rest. And for that I was very glad. It was extra-ordinary in many other ways, in that I was in Dakar on an adventure, visiting friends and a city I hadn't seen in eleven years, but that's another story altogether.

One Mother's Day after my first stint in Dakar (mid-90s), I was pretty broke (not unlike now) so I made my mom a card. There are two things you have to know to appreciate this card. One, when I lived with her and often when I was just hanging out at her place, I always always always walked into the bathroom just as she was putting on her make-up, in particular, her mascara. Not eyeshadow, not lipstick--mascara. Everytime. It was weird. And two, she loved the Word Jumble. She did the Word Jumble in the Living section of the Oregonian every single day since 1982. Sometimes she'd wait until I came over and we'd race to see who could do it the fastest. Yes, we were word geeks, and that's okay.

Below you'll find the card I made her, with her very own handwriting in it. And a photo of her in the bathroom, likely with fresh mascara. I love you, Ma.

Every Blade of Grass

2006-03-04T22:57:00.000-08:00

I just remembered something today. When Mom visited me in Senegal (many, many moons ago) we stayed at the house of a friend and the house had a beautiful tree in the yard. Mom would sit out on the patio, smoke her cigarettes and marvel at this tree. Some people can identify every growing thing they see by its Latin name. She knew the names of flowers she planted every year, perhaps because of their little plastic name tags stuck in the dirt they come in. Otherwise, Mom described growing things as purple and fuzzy or bushy with little yellow leaves, like I do now.

So neither of us could tell you what kind of tree this was that we admired in the yard, except to say that it was tall and broad and had flat green leaves and, "Hey, you know what? Isn't this? This is a great big version of that little plant I keep trying not to kill in the living room. You know which one I mean?" And I did. It was maybe two feet tall and scrawny and was a runner-up for the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. "I'm gonna take a picture of this tree," she said. "I want to show my little plant back home what it can become." And she did, too. She actually took a picture of the big beautiful tree, went eight thousand miles home and lovingly showed it to her dinky little nothing of a plant in the living room.

That's exactly what she did with us. She quietly believed in us, told us she loved us, told us we were smart and beautiful and funny and good. In so many words, even. You're such a good kid, she'd say. Even when we were dinky and withering away in the living room. Somewhere inside her was a picture of each of us that showed us to be tall and broad and beautiful and grounded deeply in the roots of her. And every time she looked at us, laughed at our stupid jokes, listened to our stories, watched us tap dance, endured our clarinet practices--we saw a piece of that picture she was holding up. We heard her whispering, look what you can become.

Every blade of grass has its angel which bends over it and whispers "Grow, grow." --the Talmud

Happy Birthday, Momma!

2006-03-04T10:41:00.000-08:00

If the branch is to flower, it must honor its roots.

~Titinga Frederic Pacere

My mom. Age 2. 1941.

The Wooden Spoon

2006-02-19T12:38:00.000-08:00

I don't ever remember being spanked with the wooden spoon, in fact, I don't ever remember being hit by my parents at all, ever. Nevertheless, I remember being afraid of the wooden spoon.

Some families used a belt. School principals used a paddle, the worst and therefore most effective, had holes that allowed air to pass through thereby creating a greater thwack, I'd heard, but had never seen. My mother and her sisters would tell of how, when they were kids, their parents would simply say, "Get a switch," and they'd have to go outside and find the thinnest twig that would become their weapon of punishment.

In my house, it was The Wooden Spoon.

Who knows what childhood offense I might have committed to warrant the threat of The Wooden Spoon, certainly the same as any other four-year-old--not picking up, saying no, talking back, generally asserting a will of my own.

"Oooh, you little Sugar Shit. Do you want me to get The Wooden Spoon?"

This would send me running, generally under things. In particular I remember hiding underneath the dining room table. From this vantage point I could see Mom's chubby legs storming toward the kitchen. I studied the clawed feet of the table and wiggled one of the metal claws loose as I waited in fear. All she needed to do was shake the drawer that contained The Wooden Spoon to provoke the desired apology.

One time I was sitting on the bricks in front of the wood stove in the living room, playing with my doll, who evidently had been not picking up, saying no, talking back or generally asserting a will of her own. I had anticipated this and so had The Wooden Spoon handy, but when I spanked her, the Spoon slipped, hit the bricks and broke. The round part of the spoon that makes it The Spoon, splintered off and was rendered useless. I promptly burst into tears. Life as I knew it was over. Not realizing that I had dismantled the household implement of torture and would soon be greeted by munchkins singing my praises, I instead marched sobbing, doll and spoon in hand, to Mom, and awaited certain doom.

From her place on the couch, she looked up from her book and said, "What's the matter, Sugar?"

"I baahh daa baadaaa paaaaa!" I sobbed. She tried not to laugh. I tried again. "Sally was bad, so I spanked her with the wooden spoon, but then I broke it because I was sitting on the bricks and I didn't mean to." Fresh sobs ensued as I produced The Spoon and its other half.

My mother assured me in the kindest, sweetest voice, "That's okay, honey. We have more wooden spoons."

Nurse Judy

2006-01-27T14:50:00.000-08:00

"Inside me there's a skinny woman crying to get out, but I can usually shut the bitch up with cookies." Anonymous

When Mom and I moved from NY to Oregon, I felt I was being "ripped away from the only family I'd ever known" largely because that's what my father and grandparents told me. Mom was finally returning to the only family she'd ever really loved.

She'd been raised in Portland, was part of the first graduating class of David Douglas High School in 1957, went to beauty school after that and had a fabulous time discovering her independence in dance halls, on the waterfront during fleet week and with her friends. She met my dad when he was in the Air Force and chose to marry him over some Italian guy she was engaged to named Vern because Dad didn't drink (not yet, he was still trying to be a good little Christian boy).

They got married, had my brother within the first year and lived in a little house on Liebe street, which she showed me once, but I was a teenager and too self-absorbed to remember much about it. When my brother was about a year old, or maybe just a few months old, they moved to upstate NY where Dad was from, where his parents were from and where our family has been from since the late 1600s.

There she started a new life in a very small town. Even after my brother was old enough for school, she didn't work because my dad, like most husbands of the time, declared, "No wife of mine is gonna work." Evidently that would have been too big a blow to his pride, although not being a good provider was fine by him. So Mom, like most wives of the time, took up macrame, ceramics and needlepoint, and took to the couch with a book. More on that later.

These were her low years, yet she somehow mananged to make a happy childhood for me. She rarely if ever laughed with Dad, but she often laughed with her friend G and on the phone and with people who lived in Oregon, people she said were her sisters, though I'd never met them. When they called, they would talk for hours. Mom would talk on the green rotary phone, sit at the green desk in the red dining room, which we never dined in because the table was always covered with laundry and sewing projects. And she would laugh. She would laugh harder than I've ever seen anyone laugh. Laugh 'til she couldn't breathe and her face turned beet red and she couldn't speak anymore. When we moved to Portland, she was moving back to her sisters, back to laughing like that again.

She worked in a nursing home as a nurse's aide, raised me, was at least emotionally available to my college-going brother, and put herself through four years of college in her mid-forties. Another whole new life. One of her class requirements was to do a mock interview and then watch the video of it. I remember she looked beautiful in a shiny blue dress that made her eyes sparkle. When she came home her sister L who lived with us asked her how it went. She was dejected. We thought perhaps it hadn't gone well and prepared to console her.

Instead she said, "I'm fat. I can't believe how fat I am. My face is fat, my neck is fat, even my hands are fat." She was clearly disgusted with herself.

My aunt asked her, "Well, Judy. What are you going to do about it?"

Here's the part that makes Mom Mom. She said, "Well, I'm not gonna let myself be videotaped anymore."

Here's a picture of my mom when she graduated from nursing school. She was 47 and as proud as anyone could ever be and really not as fat as she thought she was.

Happy New Year!

2005-12-31T12:38:00.000-08:00

I was six in 1976, six years away from abstract thinking. My brother on the other hand was 13 going on 14 and understood quite easily the passage of time and how tonight could be 1976 and tomorrow could be 1977.

We were staying the night at the Holiday Inn up the road. Mom and Dad were downstairs celebrating with the other grown ups in the ballroom, while my brother and I watched Dick Clark on the big color TV and tried to stay awake until midnight.

As the countdown to the new year started, my brother raised his plastic glass of ginger ale to me and said in all seriousness, "Well, Karin. This is the last time I'll see you this year."

I burst into tears and wailed, "Whyyyyyyyy?!!!!"

Unsuspected Karma

2005-12-31T12:19:00.000-08:00

My mom grew up in a tiny little house in SE Portland, Oregon with her parents, three sisters and a brother. There may have been pets, I don't know. This crowded condition may have been the source of her tolerance for frequent live-in guests.

When I was about 14 or 15, after many years of live-in guests, sometimes friends, sometimes family, even if not especially, during the lean years, I asked her, "Mom? Why do we always have other people living with us? How come it's never just us?"

She said, "Well, they needed us. And someday we'll need help and someone will be there for us."

She would never have called it karma, but that's exactly what it was. What goes around, comes around--a Western phrase for an Eastern concept. Turns out everyone believes in the Golden Rule. How about that.

Food & Attitude

2005-12-31T10:16:00.000-08:00

My mom was the most resourceful cook you could imagine. Anyone else might have opened our cupboards and declared they were in the house of Old Mother Hubbard; nevertheless, my mom would still manage to make a meal worth serving to her kids and thankless husband.

For example, one day she needed to make dinner, macaroni and cheese, but didn't have quite enough macaroni. There was nothing else in the house to make. She looked in the fridge. Hmm...macaroni salad. So she rinsed the pasta from the macaroni salad and used that. Dad ate it and liked it until she told him what she did and he was pissed. Of course--not only was he thankless, he was also humorless, which is how he earned the name Mr. Personality by Mom and her best friend G.

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One time, when I was I don't know 8 or 10, Mom and I were making meatballs to put in spaghetti sauce and eating M&Ms at the same time. One of the M&Ms fell into the bowl of hamburger. So we decided to keep it in and work it into a meatball and find out at dinner who would get the meatball surprise.

So we were sitting at the table waiting, waiting. You could almost hear Final Jeopardy music counting down the seconds. Mom and I ate silently, barely suppressing our laughter, our eyes darting from Dad to me to Kendall to Mom. Each bite was a mystery. Who would be the one?

Of course it had to be Dad who got it and of course it pissed him off. "What the hell?!" Mom and I burst into hysterical laughter and tried to explain. "I don't give a damn what you were doing. I work hard to put food on this table and when I come home from a long day's work..." Blah, blah, blah. Even the sharpness of his anger couldn't cut through our laughter and amusement.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another time Dad was trying to have a conversation with Mom about something while she happened to be eating crackers. He was mad at her for talking to him with her mouth full and said, "Damn it! Empty your mouth while you're talking to me." So she did. She spit the crackers out onto the table and looked at him as if to say, "Now what was I saying?" It should come as no surprise, then, to learn that they both looked back on their marriage and admitted that communication was their biggest problem.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some time after my parents divorced, but before Mom and I moved to Oregon, Mom's best friend, G and her kids B & A, moved in with us. Now, Mom and G couldn't have been more different. They were the female version of The Odd Couple. Mom was messy Oscar and G was neat-knick Felix.

By all reports, including her own, my mother was always one to sit on her duff and let everyone else do all the work. After a big family dinner when all the other women were cleaning up, Mom would be mysteriously, yet predictably missing. Evidently the bathroom called to her precisely at clean-up time. Every time. Funny how that worked. She also had a way of getting people to do things for her--get her a glass of water that clinks (with ice), bring her a book of matches, get up and turn the channel (obviously before the remote control)--in a way that made us actually want to help her. We all fell under her spell in this regard.

One day, G had just finished cleaning the kitchen, which likely included doing every dish in the house and meant hours and hours of scrubbing, since Mom never rinsed anything. It was at this moment, this satisfied, proud-of-her handiwork, exhausted moment that Mom decided to make a cake. It was a double-layer cake with one layer chocolate, one layer yellow. She'd finished mixing the chocolate cake batter and needed another bowl for the yellow, but G refused to relinquish it, not after all her hard work and a perfectly gleaming kitchen. So Mom said, "Fine. Hold out your hands." Then she proceeded to pour the chocolate cake batter into G's hands, while she used the now empty bowl to make the yellow cake batter.

Such a clever girl.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first few years Mom and I lived in Oregon were pretty lean years involving food stamps, which we used at the other grocery store in town where no one knew us, and government handouts of cheese, bread and milk that she made me pick up at the high school gym. As resourceful as she was, there came a day when the money and food stamps ran out before the food did. There was nothing, literally nothing, to eat. That night we had popcorn for dinner. Just popcorn. No butter. Just popcorn. We thought, wow, this is really sad. Someday we're gonna laugh about this. But the truth is, we were laughing even then.

Space Food Sticks

2005-12-05T21:14:00.000-08:00

Before I was born, when my brother was around 6 or 7, he was digging around in Mom's purse and found 2 tampons.

"Mom! Mom! What are these?"

"Uhhhh. Um. Uhhhh." I mean how much does a mother want to explain to a six year old boy?

Lucky for her, while she was still stalling, he exclaimed, "Are these Space Food Sticks?!!!!!!" He could hardly contain himself. Imagine. His very own mother with Space Food Sticks right there in her purse! He'd been watching a lot of Lost in Space and My Favorite Martian.

"Uhmm. Yyyesss." She said slowly. "They're Space Food Sticks. But don't let anyone else know we have them. It's a secret."

Ever since then we've called them Space Food Sticks. Of course.

Try

2005-10-30T11:46:00.000-08:00

My mom's favorite thing to do was nap. She spent a large part of my childhood napping. Napping on the couch, napping in bed. Napping during the day, napping during the night. It's important to note that for her, napping during the night was different than actually sleeping. She typically read romance novels and biographies from her spot on the couch until the wee hours of morning and then would lie down and take a nap until noise from our morning routines woke her up.

When she slept on her side on the couch, her body and the couch together became a fort which I climbed and explored. These were the days before I was old enough for school and before anyone in my town had heard of preschool. She was very big and I was very small. She made the perfect climbing structure--soft, warm, strong and able to catch me if I fell. So when a triangle formed in the space behind her bent legs and knees that made for the most perfectly warm napping place for me, I circled and kneaded it like a cat until I found just the right position.

I also particularly liked playing with her giant lifeless hand that was always dangling off the edge of the cushion. I would take her big pink hand with both of mine and try to make her fingers close into a fist, but I could never manage to get all her fingers closed at the same time. I was mystefied by how her hand would change shape when I pushed it back and forth. If I turned it palm up, the fingers would curl and her hand was round like a cup, but if I turned it over the other way, her hand was long and flat like a paper.

She wanted to take a nap every day and insisted that I take a nap, too. Evidently, small children are supposed to take naps, but I never ever wanted to. We'd climb the stairs to Mom & Dad's room and she'd climb into bed and fall right into a snoring nap. I however, would kick the sheet up over my head with my feet and make a fort. Forts are a big deal when you're little. Mom would interrupt her snoring to tell me to be still, but it never worked.

To occupy me she would suggest we do backs or play hair. As all girls know, doing backs means tickling each other's backs. But I would get bored so Mom would make it a learning activity. I would draw something on her back with my finger and she would have to guess what it was--a flower, a boat, a house, a letter. I took this game very seriously and was always disappointed when she couldn't guess what I'd drawn. I hadn't caught on yet that she was desperately trying to fall asleep and keep me quiet at the same time. Eventually she would suggest playing hair. She would play with my hair for all of a minute, then roll over so I could play with her hair. But I was something like three and had the attention span of gnat, so again she'd have to vary the game now and then to keep me interested.

"Braid it."

"But I don't know how to braid hair."

"Try," she'd say, nearly slipping off into sleep.

I figured if she thought I could actually braid, then I should actually be able to braid. When I couldn't quite make her hair stay in a braid, but succeeded only in making messy knots, I was sorely disappointed in myself and was sure I was letting her down, too. I didn't realize that having a toddler gently play with your hair was akin to having an angel in your room and basking in its bright warm light.

"Mommy, I can't," I'd say in a little fit.

"It's okay, Baby. Just try."

I Know Just How You Feel, Kid

2005-10-27T00:52:00.000-07:00

The other day in the store I heard a little bitty kid crying, "I want my mommy." That hot-faced, snot-faced, limp body sort of cry that four year olds do best. I cried like that a lot in the months after Mom died. And now when I'm walking in a store and I hear a little bitty kid crying, "I want my mommy," I go all woozy and achy and tired and think, "I know just how you feel, kid."

Different is good.

2005-10-27T00:26:00.000-07:00

I became obsessed with this image for a long time after my mom died. She loved chubby baby necks, especially when they belonged to her grandchildren. Every time I looked at this picture, I became that baby, held in her soft hands, kissed by her pink face. I couldn't get enough of it.

I drew it on napkins, in the margins of meeting notes, on the backs of credit card offers. I drew it all the time, even when it would behoove me not to. I tried several times to draw it on 8 1/2 x 11 drawing paper with high quality artist pencils with great detail. I got really good at Mom's closed eyes and the cowlicks on the baby's head, but I still couldn't get it just right. I don't know what I expected it to look like or what would finally satisfy me, but none of my renderings seemed to do the trick. I was still compelled to Draw This Image.

Growing up in my house, you quickly learned (primarily from my father) that different was bad. He never actually said the words, "Different is bad and don't you forget it." But he possessed an astonishing vocabulary of derogatory terms that described women in general and people who weren't WASPs and seemed to have no qualms whatsoever in using them in front of anyone at any time. The filter that keeps most of us from saying every asinine thing that comes to our minds seemed to be permanently in the off position in my father.

When I was eight years old my mother took me to my neighbor's dance recital. Something in me responded to the lights, the colors, the movement, the spectacle and I knew then I would shrivel up and die if I didn't start dancing, too. I remember hearing my father say, "Dance lessons? What does she want to take dance lessons for? She's never gonna make a living doing that!" Clearly my mother had approached him with the idea to sort of ask permission, as she didn't have any money of her own because Dad was of the generation of men who proclaimed, "No wife of mine is gonna work." I guess it didn't cause him any shame or embarrassment that I always had holes in my shoes and we could only afford to shop at Jamesway or Newberry's and even then only during sales or on layaway. But being an intelligent woman, Mom pretended to have no decision making power while somehow making him think that dance lessons were his idea in the first place. I took dance lessons for years and years and even now I ache to go back to it.

Decades later I realized that maybe he didn't care one way or the other if I took dance lessons, but instead, like any good father who wouldn't let his wife work, was concerned about money, and I began to have compassion for him and everyone like him who had never been given permission to express themselves in ways that didn't involve fixing things, building things or shooting things. Still, what he had communicated and what I had heard was, creative expression was not useful and therefore inherently bad.

So when I was completely overtaken by this pressing need to Draw This Image of my mother kissing my baby nephew, but who could have been baby me, I realized I could never be completely satisfied with my efforts to make a pencil drawing that exactly resembled the photograph. I longed for color in my forbidden art, but was terrified of it. Eventually, when I had covered every scrap of paper in the house, chewed my fingernails until they bled and had nearly torn my hair out, I finally drew the picture in abstract. I still drew what could be mistaken for a woman kissing a baby if you stood way back and squinted, but the colors were all off. Purple hair, green skin, yellow eyelids, red background. Not everyone can look at it and figure it out right off. It's really rough and only took me a few minutes to make, but something changed in me that day, in those few minutes. Something inside of me had finally made its way out and I was free of it.

That's what making art--any kind of art--is like sometimes. You've got to get something out and who cares if you make a living at it. This tiny step away from black and white realism in my timid art life, which had previously consisted of drawing tiny nudes from postcard photos, then stuffing them inside a notebook in a box in a closet, became slowly, painfully slowly, work that is completely abstract and nothing if not color. What I've discovered is that, for me, abstract work is a way to avoid my father's criticism. He can't look at my stuff and say, "That's a flower? If you say so."

The sad part is, he never me saw me dance or sing or act nor saw any of my drawings at all. I took in all his criticisms, those meant for Mom, those meant for all those good-for-nothing [non-WASPs] and those meant for me and now they are my own internal dialogue that I fight against every day. More often than not I think I am a fat, ugly, lazy, stupid, dim-witted, thick-skulled good-for-nothing who shouldn't dance, sing, act, write or paint because I'll never make a living at it.

Some days this overwhelms me so much that I think the world would be better off without me and I should just stay home, but I'm the breadwinner right now, which is okay with me. So I get out of bed and go to work and I'm completely surprised when normal nice people interact with me like I'm a normal nice person too and I begin to wonder if this nasty inner dialogue isn't true at all.

Sometime during my first year out of college, Arby's came out with a slogan, "Different is good," which they plastered all over their packaging. I bought a soda, saved my cup and hung it from my rearview mirror. That was huge for me. It was a huge act of defiance of all that I had been told. Fifteen years later I'm starting to get it. Different is good.

This is My Favorite

2005-09-12T23:05:00.000-07:00

This is my favorite picture of Mom. I don't care that it shows her tri-color, home-permed hair, big pores, yellow tooth or goofy glasses. In this picture I can see how much she loves me and that she's about to laugh. I can almost hear her voice, which to my horror, I'm starting to forget. She's probably about to say, "Ooh, you little Sugar Shit." But she doesn't mean it. She means I love you.

The Sneeze

2005-09-04T19:50:00.000-07:00

My mother used to stifle her sneezes, much to the chagrin of my father’s mother who was unable to. In fact, her sneezes derailed entire conversations, never mind trains of thought. And not just her conversations, but the conversations of those around her. From what I’ve been told her sneezes have always been exactly the same—a dozen or so tiny sneezes one on top of the other, a brief pause, followed immediately by half a dozen earth-shaking, bone-rattling, turn-you-inside-out wrenches. These are so loud and long you can’t believe she would have any voice left with which to say, “Oh, I beg your pardon,” into her tissue which she kept in a neat wad just under her sleeve, long or short. I’m guessing that, while these fits would embarrass her, she had become quite used to them and took some kind of pride in her ability to really let loose and let her body do its thing, probably the only circumstance in which this was true.

So whenever my mother would completely stifle her infrequent pairs of sneezes by pinching her nose as if she were about to jump into the deep end, you could actually hear a little squeak from inside her head somewhere. She would take her hand away from her now nearly purple face and you were certain that her eyes were just a bit further out of their sockets than they had been a moment ago.

My grandmother seemed to take great pride in following up her requisite, “Bless you,” with, “You really shouldn’t stifle your sneezes, Judy. Someday you’re going to blow out the back of your head.” She actually found a cartoon frame of this and included it in a letter to me to give to Mom. As though she were warning a child not to make faces or they would freeze that way forever. But it was also as if she were sharing a private insight about the joys of masturbation. Her little secret that was her duty to impart on her daughter-in-law. Good news for the long lonely years of marriage ahead.

@2002

Reasons to Quit

2005-08-30T21:53:00.000-07:00

Here's another sample of her handwriting that I found in her things after she died.

A short list of reasons she wanted to quit smoking.

Did you get that ugly skirt?

2005-08-30T21:42:00.000-07:00

Mom and I never agreed on clothes. In most other ways I was basically, "Momma's little miniature." But when it came to clothes or decorating the house, we disagreed on everything. She was all dusty rose and country blue. I was all brown and forest green and burgandy.

So on my first Christmas in Senegal, I opened up my package from Mom. One of the presents in it was this gorgeous rayon broomstick skirt, which was all the rage among American expats in Dakar who were trying to stay covered to their ankles so as not to offend the locals, yet keep from melting in the intense tropical sun. The skirt was long and black with a few deep red flowers on the bottom hem and a drawstring with a tiny bell on the end. I loved it.

Then I called Mom at the appointed hour and the call went just like this, the same as every week:

"Hi, Mom. It's me. Call me back."

"Hi, Punkin Head. How are you? Did you get your package?"

"Yes, I did. Now call me back."

"Okay. I miss you so much. I wish you were here."

"Me, too, Mom. I've just spent $18 on this call please call me BACK!"

"Oh, right. Okay, okay."

-----------------------------

"Did you get that ugly skirt?"

"Yes, I did and I LOVE it!"

"I knew you would. I just picked the ugliest one I could find."

I got it free

2005-08-30T21:24:00.000-07:00

She didn't just love this card. She was being facetious. If it had birds or flowers or butterflies on it, she pretty much hated it. So I was surprised to find it in my mailbox one day. Once I read it, I cracked up.

And that little drawing under "Mom" has a story of its own. One day when I was in high school I got home and she pushed a piece of paper across the table to me. A corner of it was covered with these little drawings. One or two, her favorites, were circled.

"Guess what it is?"

So we played a never-ending game of twenty-questions until she finally said, "Okay, I'll just tell you. It's half a tuna salad sandwich with lettuce and a frilly toothpick."

It didn't mean anything. It's just what she'd had for lunch. But it struck her funny and she decided that this was going to be her symbol. My best friend and I signed our notes : ) and = ) and Mom wanted to have something, too. So hers became that--a half a tuna salad sandwich with lettuce and a frilly toothpick.

It's one of the few samples of her handwriting I have. It's kind of like hearing her voice.

Karin Leak

2005-08-23T12:52:00.000-07:00

My parents and my brother called me Karin Leak ever since I can remember. Several reasons float around in my mind as to why--it's a variation on my middle name, Lee; something about leaky diapers as a baby. Who knows really. But my favorite story comes from my brother.

He's seven years older than me and to him I was sort of like a little doll or toy brought home to entertain him. He called me Karin Leak like my parents did, but he also sometimes called me Drip. The two monikers were related, you see, leak...drip. But it was likely an indication of his summation of my intelligence.

So one day when I was 4 and he was 11, I asked him why he called me Drip and Karin Leak, he told me this story with great flowery gestures.

One day we were taking a walk and there appeared in the sky a huge water faucet.
We were so amazed. Then a drop of water began to form, growing larger and larger, and it fell to the earth. And it was you. A big drip.

Sleeping with the Enemy: I am the Enemy

2005-08-22T22:50:00.000-07:00

I used to think that all my good traits came from Mom and all my bad traits came from Dad. I was compassionate and patient, smart, witty and funny like my mother. I was a short-tempered, critical, tactless, over-sensitive control freak like my father. It was a very convenient way to deify and vilify them in turn. That worked for me for a very long time.

Then I got married.

One thing most people don't tell you in your pre-marital mad rush to plan the perfect wedding that pleases everyone is that actually being married is like being in a 360 mirror--there's no way to avoid your short comings. Suddenly you realize that you have idiosyncracies, which go unnocticed when you live alone. When you live alone you think you're perfect. Okay, when I lived alone, I thought I was perfect.

Everything was where I wanted it to be and it stayed there until I moved it. I had a whole set of dishes, glasses and silverware, but I only ever used one of anything and just kept washing it, putting it in the rack to dry where it'd be waiting for me when I needed it again. Who needs cupboards? A fork, a knife and a spoon, a bowl, a plate, a glass and a skillet are all you really need. This was a life I loved so much that I was looking for happiness outside my perfect little apartment by myself.

So when I found the future Mr. Karin Stanley, I didn't quite realize that he'd actually have to live with me. That's been the hard part. Sharing sinks that I think should be dry to be considered clean and toothpaste tubes that I think should never have toothpaste on the outside of them. And towel racks that are hung level so that the towels will actually hang straight rather than at odd angles.

I could go on. I mean I could really really go on and on, but then I realize how lucky I am because--no wait, I mean what is it with putting away the groceries. He's like, "I don't know where this goes." And I say, "Here's an idea--how about next to the other things that are just like it." Sometimes I'll get really pedantic and say, "Hey look, I'm putting the beans with the beans and the tomatoes with the--tomatoes. It's a revolutionary system I like to call organization." This is never appreciated the way I think it will be.

I have to give him this though, it takes a lot of courage to put away groceries in the house of a control freak, because he knows as soon as he's done and leaves the room, I'm going to go back in there and rearrange everything and bitch and moan about it the whole time. Oh, who am I kidding, I'll see he's doing it wrong and elbow my way in there before he screws it up even further. I suppose it would be one thing if I thought it was good enough to put beans with beans, tomatoes with tomatoes, but no. I've got to complain about red beans with red beans, black beans with black beans, diced tomatoes with diced tomatoes, stewed with stewed. All the while making sure all the labels are facing front like that creepy scary husband in Sleeping with the Enemy.

But, honestly, it makes so much sense to me. It's so obvious that this is the way it should be. I get so frustrated with all these stupid little things, and they are never ending, that I even heard myself think, "I love him, but I just can't live with him." And then I knew. I knew I had just turned into my father, who had said nearly word for word the same thing about my mother.

Within the first year or two of our marriage, which could easily be classified as the worst, I discovered that my mother told my brother that I had married someone just like my dad, which was not a compliment but an exasperated sigh of incredulity. I can see her point a bit, my husband and my father were both made constantly wrong throughout their childhoods and daily ill-parented and therefore carried around with them this huge, crippling fear of making mistakes that didn't manifest itself as perfectionism, as in some, but as paralyzing self-doubt and an inability make friends or be easily liked. Okay, I can see that.

But what they didn't see, of course couldn't see, was how completely in love with me my husband was, and still is. How well he treats me, how he tells me every day that he loves me, and that I'm beautiful no matter how much I scoff at the idea, and how much he respects me and all women, clearly unlike my father. And that on the really big issues--money, kids, politics, religion and wall color, we agree.

As it turns out, I prefer to sit on the couch and watch TV all night, waiting for my husband to walk by on his way to anywhere so I can ask him to get me a glass of water or turn on the fan or shut the blinds because I'm too damn lazy to get up and do it myself. I'd ask him to pee for me if I thought it would work. "Hey, while you're in there, pee for me, too, would ya. I don't wanna miss this Trading Spaces reveal."

Yup, I am my mother's daughter. And my father's. Like it or not.

I love your hair!

2005-08-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

A poem by Alison Luterman that I wish I'd written:

I stalked her
in the grocery store: her crown
of snowy braids held in place by a
great silver clip,
her erect bearing radiating tenderness,
the way she placed yogurt and avocadoes
in her basket,
beaming peace like the North Star.
I wanted to ask "what aisle did you
find your serenity in, do you know
how to be married for fifty years,
or how to live alone,
excuse me for interrupting, but
you seem to possess
some knowledge that makes the
earth burn and turn on its axis" -
but we don't request such things
from strangers
nowadays. So I said
"I love your hair!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I lived in my mom's house, in my mom's town, just after she died, I used to see this woman at what would have been my mom's Fred Meyer, had she lived long enough to have seen it open and long enough to have seen Roth's close, where she had shopped every week since we moved here in 1982 and where she and one other woman in town bought L&M cigarettes, which is the only reason Roth's still carried them. So this woman at Fred Meyer, who I saw every Sunday evening when I did my shopping, looked exactly like my mother with her long grey hair pinned up with a clip, with her broad sloping shoulders, big butt and labored walk, made difficult by the probably 200 extra pounds she carried on her bones.

I asked my mother once--when I was little and she was probably only about a 100 pounds overweight, but it seemed like more because of the way Dad called her a fat, lazy slob all the time--"Mom? Are fat people really, really strong because they hafta carry around all that fat? Or...?" She said that no, fat people were not strong, they were tired.

So here was this woman who looked just like my mom that I saw every Sunday night at Fred Meyer. And every week I'd forget and be shocked to see my mom shopping. I wanted my mom to be alive so much that I imagined that she hadn't really died, but had just needed a break from her life and so had faked her death and was really living in Arizona somewhere, but came up to Canby, Oregon to buy groceries late on Sunday nights and somehow didn't think that I'd see her. I'd walk up to this woman every week to tell her that it was okay, that it was hard, unbelievably hard to lose her, but that it was okay if she just needed a break and that I was not mad, that she could come back. But then she'd turn toward me just enough and I'd see that this wasn't my mother after all and I'd have to pretend I'd mistaken her for someone else or was looking beyond her at a sale sign or something.

For a couple of years, actually, and even now sometimes, I fantasize that she's really not dead but living in Arizona somewhere, taking a break. But then I remember her cold body on her bedroom floor, which I insisted was cold from the air conditioner, and how I cried to Todd, "She's not here. Whatever made her her isn't here anymore." And that I have a box of ashes in the basement that used to be her pink, fat, warm body that meant Mom to me and I realize that there's no way around it. My mom is dead and she's not coming back and I hate that.

Mom used to read aloud to me

2005-08-21T14:00:00.000-07:00

Mom used to read aloud to me, as a good mom should.

When I was little, of course I loved it--the sound of her voice, the warmth of her body, the sweet time together. As a teenager, trying to individuate, trying to find out who I was separate from my mother, I began to hate her reading voice. But we still read a lot to each other, a lot more than other parents and adult children. We read stories from the newspaper to each other, stories from the Reader’s Digest. Occasionally I read my lines to her or from my own writing. She would always be astonished and say, “You wrote that? You thought that up right out of your own head? I don’t know how you do it.”

Sitting at the dining room table, Norman Rockwell pictures hung crookedly on nicotine stained mauve wallpaper. The door to the garage, which never shut quite right because it didn’t hang square, would slam shut, jarring the wall and making the mini pitchers fall off their tiny country shelf under the Norman Rockwell pictures. A dirty lace table runner on a heavy wood table that would look better in another kind of house. Dusty plastic flowers in a clear glass vase anchored by glass pebbles. A full crystal ashtray. My feet up on the plank of wood that ran under the length of the table. “You still like to have your feet up? You used to always put your feet up when you were a kid, one foot on my leg, the other on your father’s.”

I don’t know why I didn’t like her voice when she read. She sounded too sweet, too June Cleaver. I’m not sure.

What I wouldn’t give to hear her voice right now.

I have stories, too.

2005-08-21T13:57:00.000-07:00

It just occurred to me that I have stories, now, too. I used to love to listen to my mother tell stories about the people at her work. The residents and her co-workers alike—and they weren’t always easy to tell apart. Her co-workers were sometimes just as crazy as the residents with alzheimer’s and schizophrenia. She loved them all. She loved us all. And as we sat around the kitchen table after dinner doing the Word Power and the Jumble, she’d tell me stories about her people.

I always ran off at the mouth about my day and my dramas and she loved to listen. But now—just now—I’ve realized that I have people, too. Students and co-workers and stories to go with them. But she’s not here to tell them to. So I’ll have to write them down before I die and take them with me.

Like the way Alex and I pretend to flirt in front of his wife of 35 years who is never listening, which is perhaps a natural consequence of 35 years of marriage to a flirt. And how easily I confuse tall, thick-waisted Cuban men in their 40s like Dario and Lazaro. And Osmani, the chrystal-eyed mime and actor who could tell right away that I am a performer, too. And Tatiana & Valeriy K with their smooth kind faces, broad smiles and four beautiful daughters. And Andrei, also with dazzling blue eyes that used to be so thrilled as he awaited fatherhood, now vacant and sad since the miscarriage after the first trimester.

And Daysy who wept wordlessly at my desk during a break. I consoled her the way a woman consoles a woman—a touch on her arm, small murmurs from my throat and an open face that says, “It’s okay to cry. You just go ahead.” For 15 minutes we connected just as women, like friends, dropping the pretense of teacher-student, American-Cuban. Just women. And Vasyl, with three short fingers on one hand. He told me how it happened once and I hate it that I forgot. Something about fixing a machine in Siberia. And Nereyda who is 24, the same age as I was when I lived in Senegal. She’s so tall and chestnutty brown with gorgeous almond eyes. She has an enormous butt, which I hope every day is bigger than mine, that she somehow squeezes into stretchy pants—usually white. It looks less like she’s wearing pants and more like she’s been dipped into white chocolate.

And Nelea who blushes almost constantly, who I thought was 21, but is really 30. I was disappointed in myself when I realized that I treated her with more respect after I learned her age. Imagine—me—doling out agism despite perpetually feeling I’m at the receiving end of it. Since infancy I’ve been furious that no one would listen to me or ask me what my pre-verbal self thought! Of all the nerve!!!

These are my people. These are my stories. And I’m gonna tell them.

11/21/04

Bridge to Heaven

2005-08-21T11:46:00.000-07:00

I read Broken Music, Sting's memoir of his childhood until the Police. I highly recommend it, but have a dictionary handy; he's got quite a vocabulary.

When he was in his mid-30s both his parents died of cancer a few months apart. He said he didn't really deal with it for a long time, just kept himself busy. So I was reading through the song sheet from his "Soul Cages" CD which came out in '91, about five years after his parents died, and found lots of tiny references to them and his loss of them including this one:

If a prayer today is spoken
Please offer it for me
When the bridge to heaven is broken
And you're lost on the wild wild sea
Lost on the wild wild sea...

And for the first time in the fourteen years I've been listening to that song, I finally understand that part. It's unfortunate that I finally get it, but I'm grateful for even a single line that puts it into words for me.

Our parents are our "bridge to heaven", that buffer between the life we think we know now and the life that comes next, which is always a mystery. But how much do we really know now? We think we know what's coming, but we have no idea really.

You can be chatting with co-workers at a completely micro-managed job when someone coaxes you into the restroom to tell you your mother has died. Then, instead of complaining about managers and slow computers, the room starts spinning and the floor drops out and you're on the phone with your brother who , like you, can only say in the saddest worst voice ever, "Oh NO. Oh, God, no!" And suddenly you begin to understand those pictures of old babushkas wailing over rumpled bodies that used to house their children.

You can be driving back from a weekend of meditation, feeling centered, peaceful and calm and that you really felt the prescence of God that evening at 5:30. But then you walk into the house and find your husband in the silent living room with that look, a look you've never seen on him before, but nevertheless you know.

"Who died?" you ask. "Someone died, didn't they?" He says, "Yes, someone died. I don't know who. You need to call your brother." So you call your brother and brace yourself. His wife answers and tells you to call your brother's cell phone right away. She won't say more. So it's not one of the kids, or she wouldn't be able to speak. It's likely to be one of your grandparents, they're in good health, but old. But if it had been them, she would have told you, probably.

It's Dad. It's probably Dad. And it was. You call your brother who's driving back from the hospital where Dad's body had been taken, but not allowed to be seen--just as well. You're still calm from your weekend and ask, "How are you doing?" Your brother says with a sigh, "Well, you know. We just did this," referring to when your mother died three years earlier. You begin to wonder if your calmness is a result of all the meditation you've been doing this year or the relief you're not surprised you feel. And should you feel bad about that?

And a few days later at your brother's house in NY you learn that your father died right before you felt that strong connection to God. You don't know what that means, but it feels like a sign. A sign of what? That you're being cared for in some way? Maybe, except that now that you truly are an orphan at the age of 33, you feel completely untethered, definitely at risk of floating off into space to slowly die of heat or cold or starvation or suffocation and certainly isolation. And maybe no one will notice.

When the bridge to heaven is broken
And you're lost on the wild wild sea
Lost on the wild wild sea...

And then he doesn't even finish his sentence...he's just lost on a wild wild sea.

That makes sense to me now.

Sugar Sugar

2005-08-21T11:18:00.000-07:00

My mom often called me Sugar.

"Hey, Sug, come here and help me with this."

"I sure do you love you, Sugar."

But here's how it really went.

She said, "When you're really good, I call you Sugar Sugar. When you're just good, I call you Sugar. And when you're bad, I call you Sugar Shit."

As in, "Ooh, you little Sugar Shit," said through clenched teeth after I'd done something to annoy her. Like take this picture of her napping.

Late 1970's in NY.