And she does.

When I was very young, my mom was single. She was in early 20s, in and out of relationships, melodramatic, and emotional. I adored her.

When we would Drive around in her baby blue Firebird, she would crank up the radio and sing--especially to Journey and to David Bowie's "Space Oddity."  I came to know the words to the songs, and wanted to sing along, too.

"Stop singing!" she would snap, sometimes with great irritation. "I can't hear the song!" 

When I got a little older, she would complain that I couldn't carry a tune and was ruining the song for her. It hurt my feelings tremendously. I remember thinking even way back then that I would let my little girl sing as much as she wanted.

32 years later I have a little girl. A mini-me. And sing she does.

She stands in the yard and sings joyfully at the top of her lungs. She sings heartfelt, original lyrics with great passion into a microphone in the middle of the living room. She sings "Skin-a-marinkey-dinky-dink" from the backseat as we are driving around town with the windows rolled down. She sings lovingly to her Blue Blankey.

Unfortunately she has my voice and can't carry a tune in a bucket, but I love complete lack of self-consciousness and pure joy when she sings.

My family on Earth is so good to me.

[From a letter to a friend nearly a year ago--reflections on relocation.]

I don't know where to begin.

For the past couple weeks, in particular, I keep looking around thinking, "What the fuck has happened to my life?"  The first two days back in WV I cried constantly.  My mother settled into a chair with a tall glass of wine (with ice) and a bunch of cats on her lap to watch some nameless legal show and ignored me.  It was like being 14 all over again.

I feel homesick, although for what or where I really can't say.  Most likely I just feel homesick for one of my grandparents' front porches in the early 80s, when I had seen or experienced very little of the world and when all I needed was an extra five minutes to play outside before dinner or to finally distract my grandpa from his baseball game so he would talk to me instead ("Papaw, have you ever had a mustache?  How old were you?  How long did you have it?  Would you ever have one again?").  Obviously, I can't go back there.

And that leaves me here.

My friend came to see me.  Judith.  She lived in an identical apartment above me when I lived at 3333 W. Grace Street in Richmond, VA.  23221.  I met her shortly after I moved in.  One weekend morning I was unpacking and cleaning and whatnot, and waiting for my landlord to come and unclog my kitchen sink so I could move on with my day.  Suddenly my upstairs neighbor drained the dishwater in HER sink and my kitchen began flooding.  I threw on my flowery bathrobe and ran upstairs to plead with her to please, PLEASE plug her sink!  Just for now.  Her large dog (a boxer mix named Jojo to whom I would later sing, "Jojo left his home in Tuscon, Arizona for some California grass...") came charging and barking to the door.  After some delay, she cautiously peered out through her cracked front door.  She seemed nice but a bit reserved and more than a little startled by my dramatic, breathless appearance at her front door on a Saturday morning.

When she wanted to visit me upon my unceremonious return to the area, I warned her that I was staying at my father's and he lived a little off the beaten bath.  She said adamantly, "I will find you."  And she did, thank god.  Spending a couple days with her and watching her play with my daughter made me feel normal--like my old self for awhile.

This morning at 6am I stood at my father's kitchen sink eating a half sandwich with last night's slow roasted pork and surveying the landscape, and it felt good.

I can't say much for the events that have taken place in between Judith's visit and that sandwich.

I had a job interview on Friday.  At [a local mental health facility] in Clarksburg, WV.  It is located just feet away from the old hospital in which I was born, and it was a completely baffling experience.  The two women who interviewed me were as sweet as could be and incredibly informal.  Mary Sue and Peggy.  They stared at my resume and then up at me and said, "What brings you here from San Francisco?"

Oh, ladies.  If only I could succinctly answer that question.

The were puzzled as to why I had a PhD in psychology but no license to practice therapy.  At one point, one of them asked the other, "Did you see on her resume that...." The other one cut her off:  "I read it," she said.  "I read every bit of it."

They seemed to want to try to fit me in SOMEwhere in the organization and promised to talk to their HR to see what they could offer me.  "Honey, you might not even want the job after you see the salary," Mary Sue warned.  Possibly as much as $40,000/year less than I made at my last position.

Oh, Mary Sue, I want it.

I heard them talking about me before I was even down the hall.  "She's so nice!" was the main thing I heard.

I am nice.

My mother was dogging San Francisco as a place to raise a child.  "I hear frogs outside every night!" she bragged, as if that fact alone were enough to sufficiently make her point.

"Yes, but I could count every person of color in my high school on one hand and I can still remember all their names!" I countered.  "Because there were so few of them."

"We have the Mexicans and the Orientals here now," she offered.

Yes, it's true.  And if they're not picking our produce, they've opened a restaurant.  My friend Shannon tells me there is a popular Chinese restaurant here that keeps a large bowl of Doritos on the food buffet.  And they're very popular.  And everyone still finds it hilarious to joke that the chicken is actually cat.

To be continued.  Sorry.  I didn't even bother to edit this for typos as I usually try to do.  Stream-of-consciousness.  My household is starting to wake up.  Send.

On self-soothing, or lack thereof

When I was growing up, occasionally I would overhear my mom giving other mothers or mothers-to-be advice. One topic that seemed to come up often was that of getting your infant to sleep independently through the night. My mom swore by the let-them-cry-it-out method. She liked to point to her experience with me as a success story.

Apparently, when I was a newborn in the hospital the ladies in the nursery would put me to sleep by rocking me. My mother felt that this was not a routine she was willing or able to continue when I came home so, from her account, our first few nights at home were difficult ones because I couldn't go to sleep.

At this point in recounting the story to her advisee, she put on her most determined face and said with a considerable amount of pride: "I had to just let her cry and cry and not go to her. I never rocked her to sleep once. Pretty soon, she learned not to expect it."

Hearing that story always made me sad, but I never said much about it over the years. Finally around age 14 or 15 I spoke up.

"But what was the big deal?" I asked. "Why wouldn't you have rocked me? I was your baby."

Her jaw tightened, and she said, "Because I wanted you to learn early how to take care of yourself. I needed to show you that someone wasn't always going to be there for you."

My house. Where difficult silverware goes to die.

When I was growing up, one of my main household duties was the nightly task of washing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen after dinner. God, I hated it.

My mother's silverware drawer was a constant annoyance to me. On one side, our spoons, forks, and knives sat neatly in their little trays. The rest of the drawer was a chaotic mess of other, less frequently used cooking- and eating-related utensils: vegetable peelers, spatulas, corn on the cob holders, and so on. I quickly termed this the "difficult silverware" because these items were hard to organize, often oversized, and seemed to require endless rooting through the drawer to find.

In my adulthood, I have tried to alleviate this problem by having a large ceramic container sitting on the counter that holds and provides easy access to all the larger items. I, too, have a mass of garlic presses, measuring spoons, fondue forks, and shish kebab sticks messily taking up space in the other half of my silverware drawer. But at least I have made some progress on the organization front. My mama didn't raise no dummy.

I have noticed that Ivan has very little interest in my personal system of silverware organization. (The same could be said for his position regarding my systems for washing dishes, arranging the medicine cabinet, cleaning the bathroom sink, and putting away groceries, but I suppose at the moment that is neither here nor there.) We share the task of washing dishes, but in recent weeks and months when I have not felt well he has cheerfully born the brunt of it (unless we played cards and placed bets on who had to wash the dishes and I lost--also neither here nor there).

Ivan's kryptonite is putting the clean dishes away. He hates it. He is brought to his knees. He will beg and plead and cajole me that he will wash the dishes if only I will put the clean dishes away. Some days this sounds like a reasonable request. Other days it does not. If left to his own devices, he will put away simple items like plates and bowls and cups. The rest he stacks randomly around the kitchen or else takes a wild guess as to where it might belong and stashes it there. On some level I find this amusing, but when I am in the middle of cooking and politely looking for an item ("Where in the hell is the mixing bowl?") it makes me crazy.

This is how the ladle and the whisk have disappeared.

Really, it could be so easy! They could be proudly sitting in the container on the counter, ready to be called to duty again. Instead, I root through drawers and cabinets complaining, "How far could the goddamned whisk have gotten?"

To which he replies, "Which one is the whisk again?"

They have both been missing for weeks, and to his annoyance I never miss an educational opportunity to remind him of their usefulness and to bemoan their unknown whereabouts whenever I can.

I think about them sometimes even when I am not cooking. I like to imagine they are now free from servitude and pursuing other, non-functional interests and talents they might have. I suppose they will turn up eventually. Maybe when I move out of this apartment. Or, sure as shit, as soon as I decide to replace them and buy new ones.




I call this one "Sans Ladle and Whisk."

The day has come.

I have long feared the day when my female parent arrived on Facebook, and the day is here--she has been threatening to do it for years. She doesn't quite know how it works yet. Like me, my mother is a big fan of melodrama. She is also of the opinion that public proclamations are more meaningful than private ones.

These things make for a bad combination.

I logged in this morning to find that she'd attempted to send a friend request to my partner, except it was another Ivan with the same last name that she'd settled on. On her wall, she wrote this Ivan a dramatic and heartfelt message:

I so hope you love my daughter. I love her more than breath. She may never now the depth of my love for her, but she lives so far away. since both my parents r gone, i only have my children n idont think they know how much they mean to me. Maybe you can make her understand that

So embarrassing!

Small

YOU don't care because you can't remember
But I do
You don't want to hear, but
I'll fill you in on the things she can't or won't
These are the things I go back to
in my mind and
I want you to understand what it's like
to feel worthless until
he gives you permission not to.

Jealousy (cubed)

My female parent has been visiting the past few days. While we've had a surprisingly nice visit, I've come to really loathe her boyfriend. He is insecure and jealous and can be rather vicious. He calls while the two of us are hanging around in my apartment and says things like, "Who's there with you? Do you have guys there?" While we were spending Mother's Day in wine country, he would call and text constantly. She wanted to get off the phone so we could continue our day, and he assumed she was in the middle of fucking someone and wanted to finish. The rest of our day was spent getting phone calls and text messages from him saying, "What the hell's going on out there? You've been out there for days. Who are you seeing?"

She defends him at every turn: "He has a good heart." This afternoon I officially got fed up and I'm spending a couple hours in my room so I don't have to listen to her reassure him over and over that she's not fucking anyone while she's here visiting me.

On one hand, I am jealous that she has someone who seems to miss her. But that's exactly where that ends. I am exhausted from dealing with him vicariously through her, and don't know how she can stand his constant accusations. My insistence that she deserves better--someone who can trust her for more than 5 minutes at a time, at least--falls on deaf ears.

In memory of smells

AKA: A work in progress

In memory of smells

I was a nervous child.

Early on in life I was of the opinion that I had a certain quota of worrying to reach every day, and if I did not meet it bad things would happen to my family and me. Eventually my anxiety became so overwhelming that I had to develop special rituals to calm me. Many of them involved smelling my fingers.

At first, I would touch things and sniff my fingers out of curiosity: dogs, tree sap, bubblegum stuck in crevices and under tables, pizza rolls, Elmer’s glue. There was so much to smell! I would trail behind my mother at the grocery store, happily touching and smelling everything in sight. I was wide-eyed and shy, and had a rather interesting habit of peering out from behind my mom while gazing at strangers and sniffing my fingers. Soon it wasn’t enough to sniff my fingers, and I began burying my nose into everything I could.

I should clarify that I knew this was weird, and—with the exception of my immediate family—I took great pains to hide my habits from others. This resulted in a great deal of covert smelling and in careful restraint of sniffing during the school day that gave way to an uncontrollable onslaught in the evenings. Once my mother walked in on me crawling around the living room with my nose to the carpet, taking in the virtual smorgasbord of scents. “What in the hell are you doing?” she asked in bewilderment.

“Smelling,” I mumbled, continuing on with my business.

Being fixated on everything that was within a 50 foot radius of my nose, I soon became enamored with what came out of it. I designated a corner of my bedroom as “booger corner,” and used it to carefully catalogue the various fascinating shape and sizes that I produced. I meticulously lined them up in straight rows; each row consisted of an even number of boogers. The symmetry and order appealed to me, and I would rock myself back and forth while admiring the thought and care put into the corner. Not surprisingly, my mother found this habit particularly disgusting, and periodically took a scraper and scrub brush to the walls, conveniently providing me with a fresh canvas on which to recreate my masterpieces.

Soon it became important not only WHAT I smelled, but how many times I smelled it. Even numbers—preferably 2, 4, and 8—were very important. The cat food was not appropriately taken in if I only partook in 7 sniffs. Upon my mom’s entry into the kitchen I gave a quick 8th sniff to the cat’s bowl and sat back on my haunches, pretending to innocently contemplate the butter yellow kitchen wall.

After that, my growing fascination with even numbers (except 6) generalized and then things really got out of control. I would walk from place to place an even number of steps. I tapped things an even number of times. I chanted words and sang songs and bit my fingernails and petted the ferret in multiples of four. On my fingers I counted out the number of letters in various words before I would say them. I liked to imagine that this gave me the appearance of a thoughtful, scholarly girl who chose her words carefully.

(To be continued...)

I want

E: In my own case, the feeling manifests as a call to something ancient, it feels like, in my marrow...I want to chant the saga of my fathers and their fathers before them, I want to carve my own tale on the pages of the world and shout a battle cry into a wall of enemy shields; I want to slay giants and woo the noblewomen of Faerie...I want to shout at the stars that I exist, and call on the gods to witness my deeds, and at the end of it all, I want my own people to sing of me for generations.


A: I want to tell my younger self that I will make it far away from him. I want to tell her not to wish the seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and years away. I want to tell her not to trust her mother no matter how tempting it is. I want to tell her she is worth it. I want to tell her that she deserves better and to never forget it, even when it feels like she won't get it.

Snippets

"I don't want you to hate me," he said, stifling a sob. I put my arms around him.

"I don't hate you," I replied. "I love you."

* * * * * *

"Why can't you talk to ME!?" she shouted. "What kind of crazy fuck goes to a shrink?!"

* * * * * *

"You need to fight for yourself. Fight for yourself like I know you would fight for me," she said tearfully.

* * * * * *

"Even after all those years and all those hard times, my heart still beat faster when I heard his footsteps on the stairs," she said, a far-off look in her eyes.

* * * * * *

"I'm leaving him and he knows I'm leaving him," she typed to me.

* * * * * *

"I think it would be really something to know you," she said shyly, standing at the entrance of my cubicle.

* * * * * *

"I came to see you," he corrected. "I know you're moving to San Francisco and I thought you might like someone to go with you." Hope was written on his face.

"I have someone I'm going with," I said gently. His face fell.

* * * * * *

"I know it sounds boring, but I think it's the boring things I remember most," he said wistfully.

* * * * * *

"When I'm with you I remember things better and when I look at you it feels like home," she cried desperately. "You can't go!"

Memory

As a child I used to worry a lot. I used to worry specifically about something happening to my mother. At this time in my life I was convinced that my mother was the most beautiful, intelligent, and wonderful woman in the world. I also worried that she was going to forget about me or leave me. I did everything I could to be near her.

One morning I sat on the furry orange couch in our dumpy little trailer. I faced backwards, looking out the window on the gray rainy day. I was busy thinking, “What will I do if my mother dies?” I couldn’t bear to be left alone without her. The logical answer, of course, was that we would have to die together. But what if we didn’t die at the same time? Obviously I would still have to be buried with her. The prospect of this was overwhelming.

My mother came out of her bedroom to find me with my head on my arms sobbing into the couch fuzz. “What’s wrong?” she asked in alarm.

“I don’t want to be buried alive with you!” I blubbered.

"Even though we ain't got money, I'm so in love with you honey..."

As many of you know, my grandfather passed away on Feb. 7. There was an insurance policy divided three ways that my mother, uncle, and I are supposed to receive. I got the paperwork for it today, and I was woefully unprepared for the flood of emotion that would along with the copy of the death certificate that accompanied it.

Apparently there is another insurance policy that is in dispute between my mom, uncle, and step-grandmother. Lawyers are being consulted on both sides. My mom's trying to tell me not to talk to Wanda. I want no part of any of this. I don't know who's right and wrong, but it makes me sick that they've resorted to this.

Pictures of you

My friend Susan posted this picture of our preschool class last night on Facebook. My god, it was so strange seeing this particular group of faces again. The mists of memory are hazy. I am in the 3rd row, the 3rd from the end, in a pale pink dress with pigtails. (You can click on it to make it giant.) I remember feeling incredibly beautiful in that dress, and I wore it every chance I got. I still feel a sense of annoyance when I see the kid who hogged the best tricycle every day (back row, middle, red hair and shirt: Jeremy L.).

I remember the day Matt R. got his head stuck between two posts.

I remember the little green cots on which we took our naps.

I remember making crafts about Jesus, because it was held at a church.

I remember learning to climb to the top of the monkey bars on the playground outside.

I remember going to school in a dress without underwear, and my mom yelling at me because they had called her at work.

A change in tone

For awhile, my mom had a habit of texting me with, "What r u doing?" This irritated the hell out of me.

I made a little game out of thinking up things to say to her in response to that--stuff like, "Chewing off my arm to try to escape from this bear trap," or "Belching the alphabet," or "Trying to find out who my baby daddy is." She never acknowledged my efforts.

Lately, her texts have changed. I think that since my grandpa died she must be feeling her mortality. Now she texts things like, "I love u so very much. Never doubt that," and "I miss u every single day."

If we were close, this would be one thing. We are not. And I am speechless when she sends these texts. I am without witty comebacks.

Text message from my mother

Ok your mom is officially a biker's bitch. Lol

A conversation with my mother long ago

I am 13 years old, and it is the summer before my 8th grade year. I'm sitting on the couching reading a book when my mom comes into the room.

Mom: Go outside and play.

Me: I'm too old to go outside and "play."

Mom: Then just go outside and do something.

Me: I'm reading.

Mom: Boys don't like girls that are too smart, you know.

Me: Then I don't like boys.

Mom: What are you, some kind of lesbian?

First lines

I did a fun little writing exercise where I came up with the first lines of stories. They may or may not develop into actual stories, but I really enjoyed doing this.

Being my mother’s daughter has resulted in acquired sleuthing skills over the years. There was always a need to figure out what really happened, as her take on the most mundane of events changed dramatically on a dime.

For much of my life I’ve felt the need to have a back-up plan.

My mother saved her happiness for other things.

I was a sorry girl the day my grandpa decided to talk to me about sex.

I picked up the crumbs of advice my uncles dropped like a hungry baby bird.

When I was little I took great pleasure in counting and ordering things. This included everything from books to records to boogers.

Planning ahead, repeating: A series of vignettes

I always wanted to go to summer camp, but my family was broke, broke, broke. So I slept in the backyard and ate clover, pretending they were special wild mushrooms I'd found that would give me the power to fly away if I just ate enough. I wonder what the neighbors thought--see the wild-haired little girl in the yard with her pillow, gobbling down grass, desperately wanting it to be enough.

*************************

I used to keep a small bag packed in case our house caught on fire. I wanted my most treasured items at arm’s reach at all times in case I needed to flee fast. I remember one incarnation of my emergency kit was a little plastic suitcase that included my grandmother’s obituary, a quarter my grandpa gave me for good luck before my 4th grade spelling bee, a little red metal truck—not much bigger than one of the Hot Wheels—that came from my dead great grandfather in the event I was born a boy, a rubber mermaid with blue hair that I loved, and a piece of my mother’s lingerie because it smelled like her perfume.

Looking back I’m quite impressed with my emergency kit’s thoroughness because, at present, my emergency earthquake kit only contains a few bottles of water.

*************************

Repetition has always comforted me. As a child, one way I fulfilled this need was by pretending to sell hot dogs. It's still not clear to me why I did this because, for as long as I can remember, I've loathed hot dogs. But when I was upset and alone I would regularly gather up the raw hot-dog-making materials and pretend to sell them for hours.

The green waxy rhododendron leaves from the bush in our front yard made perfect buns. Broken sticks served as the actual "meat" (if any part of a hot dog can be called such). Freshly mown grass played the part of multiple toppings, including relish and sauerkraut. But my personal favorites were the onions. I would scrape white paint chips off our house that badly needed re-painting--and if I were ever to have been caught for this there would have been hell to pay--and break them up into bits for chopped onions. In my neighbor's yard a small dried up well with a lid made a perfect drive thru window.

I prided myself on the quality of my ingredients (each one hand gathered!), the value of my hot dogs (only pennies apiece!), and my unfailingly courteous service. Every once in awhile, though, a customer would get snippy with me. At my hot dog stand, the customer was not always right. When I was unable to reason with them I would take their order, throw it through the drive-thru window into their car, and tell them to go fuck themselves as I’d heard my mother do with various real and imaginary people. Then I would brush the chopped onions off my hands while muttering, "Some people are never happy," and put on a big smile for the next customer pulling up for their order.

*************************

My grandpa and I spent a lot of time together when I was very young. On weekends we often went out to breakfast. We would eat in silence, mostly looking out the window or at the other diners; occasionally we would comment on the quality of the food.

My favorite weekends were those when we went to Shoney’s. If you’re not familiar with Shoney’s, it’s a sit-down family restaurant that has breakfast, lunch, and dinner. On the weekends they were known for their breakfast bar with its endless supply of steak fingers and bacon. I enjoyed the food, but what I really loved was filling out the comment cards.

Part of my excitement was that I was even allowed to fill one out in the first place. My mother never would have allowed this, but my grandpa patiently loaned me his pen and answered my questions about the spelling and meaning of words like “accuracy” and “promptness.” If asked, he would also describe to me his own assessment of the meal.

I was also excited because it was so rare that anyone wanted to hear what I had to say, and here was a restaurant—a corporation—who wanted to know in detail about how my dining experience had been. So I told them. Over and over. I filled a card out each and every time we went to Shoney’s. I related the details of our order down to who had ranch dressing on the side. I carefully and truthfully rated our service and meal and overall dining experience. I reported on the server’s cheerfulness and the cleanliness of our table. I was convinced I was providing an important service. The Shoney’s company had a reliable source on the operations of their store in Bridgeport, WV and, because I loved Shoney’s, my comment cards were invariably glowing.

One day an official-looking letter arrived for me at my grandpa’s house. I squealed with glee when I saw that it was from Shoney’s. I just knew they were writing to thank me for all my efforts, and to encourage me to continue providing them with feedback! I ripped it open excitedly and my grandpa and I read it together:

Dear Miss Ashcraft, it began. How thrilling! How official! We at Shoney’s thank you for your business and your feedback via our comment cards. I knew they were paying attention! We value the feedback of our other customers, too, and ask that you do not complete any more comment cards. Please continue to enjoy our restaurants. Sincerely, Shoney’s

I was crushed and began to cry. I had thought they wanted to hear what I had to say, even if I ate the same meal every visit. I never did fill out any more comment cards at Shoney’s. I was filled with terror that—as soon as I picked one up—gunmen would surround my grandpa and I and haul us off to jail. He was just an old man! He wouldn't be able to handle doing time like I would. I put on my stiff upper lip and fought the urge to comment, knowing in my heart I was protecting our futures.

Loving Blankey

As a child I had a blanket that I loved.

Blankey was an off-white, fuzzy thermal blanket with a satiny outside border about two inches wide. He didn't get washed very often since our parting was so difficult for both of us, but when he did I loved burying my face in his warm, fresh softness.

It was important for me to show Blankey how much I loved him. I would hug and nuzzle him and tell him repeatedly how important he was to me.

I began to worry, though, that this wasn't enough.

While I was hugging Blankey, I would notice that the part of him that was hanging down from my arms was not being touched. What if that part didn't feel loved? I'd scoop it up into my arms, too. Then I would notice a part of Blankey poking out near my shoulder. What if that part didn't feel loved? Unable to stand the thought of any part of Blankey feeling neglected, I would adjust and shift and hug until Blankey was in a hard little compact ball with my entire body curled around him--trying to touch every single part at once--in a fetal position on the floor.

My mom would say, "What are you doing?"

"Loving Blankey," I would answer in a strained voice, with my face nearly buried in my knees.

Last night...

...I heard my grandpa's voice for the last time.

He stopped his treatments and came home from the hospital so that he could die in the house in which he and my grandmother raised their children. His doctors give him a couple more days to live without dialysis. I will still call to hear updates on him, but I wanted him to know who I was the last time I spoke with him. He has already begun hallucinating--sipping drinks and seeing sights and people only visible to him.

He is the person I love most in the world, and my last of four beloved grandparents who made me the person I am.

My mom is in the bar getting drunk, and I feel far away.