Let’s lay here all day…

01-01-23
9:57 am PST
Location:
Central Valley, CA
Home. Bed.

My bed has the detritus of the frenzied clean up leading up to our NYE nacho bar, game playing, football- watching extravaganza aka guests are coming.

Clothes, books, clean socks and underwear straight from the dryer. Flowing over to the chest at the end of the bed to the floor, a carpet of not taken//chosen clothes strewn about from the furious packing for the week long #vittiavilachristmasvacation in the Eastern Sierras.

Adding to this are the clothes I did take but did not wear. In this mix are water bottles, mismatched shoes (their counterparts in another pile, perhaps on the other side of the bed?). Brushes, Knick knacks that no one could find a home for–why not Mom’s room? No one waited for an answer. They threw-placed-piled this and that. Everywhere.
Then there are my Xmas gifts, unwrapped, hastily bundled into leftover prime boxes as we prepared to leave for the trip. Of course, more books. The extra dog bed, an extendable fan/cobweb cleaner, and papers. Mail. Writing.

A tangle of charging cords meet my toes as I slide off the bed to survey the things that have collected in my bedroom after the power clean turned project clean that resulted in a filing cabinet being dumped in the very center of my office (down the hall) along with stacks of taxes going back 20 years piled next to the remains of the many old filing systems that have been attempted and forgotten over the years. All on my writing desk. Oh, good. More excuses for not writing.

People, I don’t have glitter and confetti and used champagne classes on this bright , blustery New Year morning. I’ve got piles of wondering–questions on happiness and where it originates and how can I contain it. There are few answers to be found in the shit flooding my office, my bedroom, my psyche.

On my bed: Ben-Kenobi, our 7 month old, 65 pound puppy. Patchy Topaz ( #3 in hierarchy of our 3 cats) who I’ve battled all night long to avoid her faster-than-lightening tongue in its quest to lick any exposed body part. My 18 year old daughter turned college know-it-all.

We’re here. Piled on top of one another as the clothes et. al. rise up like the silty waters flooding our Central Valley streets– threatening to overwhelm.

Well, me. Just me. I’m the threatened one.
No one else cares.

It’s time to get up, again. The first early, early get up was to let Ben out and feed everyone. I started a pot of coffee and a pan of lentils.

I opened the front door to survey the aftermath and the New York Times lay on my mat. Some hardworking person delivered this to my door and I feel guilty. Did they wade in? I trembled as the cold assaulted my legs, bared by the oversized Steelers t-shirt that I am wearing.

Coffee is done, lentils simmering, I read the arts and book sections, sipping my coffee in the rarefied air of a clean living room. SmokeyMagic (#1 in hierarchy of 3) , our ex-feral cat, jumps up and perches next to me. Reminding me that her wet food with fish oil has not been dished up. I advise of the dry food that is available to be had in the garage.

I tell myself: I will write. Instead I am here, in the chaos of my room, fighting the over population of my bed and a head full of the many things to do on this second to last day of my vacation.

Resolutions? No.

I do that every day and fail.

I resolve, each morning, not to flip off shitty drivers on the road. I fail.

I resolve to write morning pages at 5am. I fail.

No, I do not intend to make grandiose decisions about my intentions.

Rather, I will try to clean my room. Hang my work clothes hoping to avoid the hair that Ben sheds. (Why isn’t he bald?)

I will ask questions.
I will wonder…

Wanting…

I woke this morning and watered the garden. I nurtured the trees. I walked around the house caring for the plants in every room. Even your old room, where plants never used to grow. There is one there now. It sits bravely in the corner where you hid out for years. I have changed this room. I have brightened it, opened it up to all. I have painted bookshelves and created a semi-circle of inclusion, arraying the furniture around the family portrait taken on that long-ago day.  The very same day that our son was born.

I sat in my chair, directly across from where your chair used to be. But now, instead of facing a dark corner, I am looking at the picture that was taken by a photo journalist on Easter morning.

Somehow, I had managed to get both the girls into their Easter dresses, white gloves, and hats at 5:30am. I had put on the prettiest dress I owned and a hat, despite the ache of our son’s weight bearing down on me.

I wanted us to be something we were not. The gloves, the hats, you wearing slacks at 6am. Was that one of the signs that you loved me? The slacks at 6am?  Instead of kissing me was that what you did instead?

The photographer froze my image mid contraction.  I am looking down, breathing through it, and our oldest has placed her hand on my stomach, on her brother. You are holding our youngest daughter; both of your faces are obscured. Only the blackened bottoms of her sandals show. And your hands, holding her firmly.

I have always loved your hands. Strong and capable and secure. The wedding ring that you have not worn for a long, long time shines from the tight grip you have on our daughter.

Our faces are obscured. Our sadness is hidden from view by hats and gloves and your wedding ring.

The picture had been posted on the front page of the newspaper the next day. We had no idea that we had been photographed. It was the next day that the nurses came in laughing, the front page of that section opened to our family. We looked at it over the head of our newborn and we smiled at the nurses. I remember wanting so badly for that picture to be a symbol that things would be better. That we would be, what I wanted us to be, and not what we had become.  

Later, that night, as the hospital slept, I picked up the paper and as it always goes, I saw clearly in the dark. I could see that the edges of the photo contained the fantasy and that outside those borders, lay the reality that I couldn’t understand. So, pushed it aside, and held our newborn, brushing my lips over his beautiful head, breathing in the scent of hope.

I got up and I watered the first plant to survive in your old room.  I moved onto the others in the next room. The orchids and the vines in the front window. The ferns and the rubber plants, their vibrancy filling me with their energy. Lastly, in the corner, tall and slender, her stalk too thin to keep her upright, is the first plant you ever bought me and I think the last.

I remember your small smile when I told you that her name was Stacy and feeling your eyes on me as I placed her on top of the TV cabinet you bought for me. That little apartment, the one I could barely afford as a single mom, looked so real to me with my first ever brand-new piece of furniture, and Stacy sitting proudly on top.

Now she sits on the floor, too tall for the top of anything. Stacy reaches for the sky though she is root bound. She is 19 years old. She bends and folds when it gets windy and I am afraid that when I do find the courage to replant her, that she will not come out of the pot, her soil so hardened. She has become used to making do with what she has. Will she die if I try to change that? Even, if what I am offering her is better and healthier and new?

This morning I wanted to go upstairs and lie in bed with you. Snuggle up to your back and whisper boo on that small mole on your back that looks like a ghost. I wanted to draw silent letters on your back like I used to, my breath a whisper on your neck, my breasts pushed against your broad back. I’d whisper, guess. Your deep voice would rumble out the right answer every time.  

I miss you.

I love you.

Why?

What happened?

Why wasn’t I enough?

I can’t do that, though. And I couldn’t have done that even when you were here because you slept in your chair or on the couch in your room downstairs. The space around you growing smaller each day until finally it held just a table, a TV, your remote, and you. The wall around you let no sunlight in. Or questions. Or concerns. The TV lights flickered on your face of stone. You sat, just under the portrait, turned away, your back to what we were. What we had.

I want my family back. The hope and the promise that is contained in that portrait from so long ago. I want to feel as if things will get better. That your bitter words and their definitions of me will change and that you will come, your strong hands knocking at the door that you once had a key to…and that I would open that door to a face full of remorse and longing for me. For our family. For us.

I want that so bad that my days scroll through the hours, my tasks, my conversations are all a montage and the song playing as my life rolls by makes me yearn for you.

But, the you I want, is not the you, that you are.

You tell me that you gave me your all and I ache so bad that I feel as if I will split open like rotted fruit and ooze out all my wasted flesh. 

I want to howl. If your all was the words that you have left me, the silences, the curl of disgust on your lips when your hand or hip accidentally brushed mine. If your all, was the wall that you built around your corner in the family room, just under the portrait–if that was your all, then I built a whole life based on a dream destination and now I am left with a mirage.

Wanting your love, hoping for your love, begging for your love with each packed lunch and hot dinner. I thought, that someday would come. So, I ignored so much of our every day.

I lay on the couch that you used as a bed and your smell is gone.  I am trying to find the signs, the gestures, the lights at the horizon to find my way. But I am drowning in a sea of sorrow and regret.

I want to wake up with you next to me. The promise of the day like shafts of sunlight on my face and I want to roll over and write on your back…

Come back.

My heart doesn’t know how to let go of my hopes and dreams and goals for our future. My heart doesn’t know how to stop loving you. It never understood how to do that no matter how cruel you were. Instead, my heart stopped loving me, so it could conserve all its energy to continue loving and hoping and withstanding you.

My heart has made-do for so long that I am not sure it can survive this replanting.

Class of 2019 a.k.a It Only Took Me 30 Years.

I graduate from Come Back Kids Charter High School tonight. I started about 2 ½ years ago with an 8^th grade education. Actually, that is a little misleading. I went to college first. I took the placement tests at Modesto Junior College and attained a little under (approx.) 100 units (I went a little crazy) and transferred to California State University Stanislaus . I’ve had a few setbacks which I won’t get into here. Those are stories for another day.

If any of you have seen the movie, Night School, you will remember a scene from the beginning where Teddy, the main character, is looking into getting his GED. He meets up with the night school teacher and she hands him a text book and he looks at it astonished and tells her that he thought it would be more pamphlet in size. Well, that sums up what I thought going to high school was going to be like. Because, hey, I had already been to college. Piece of cake.

WRONG!

High School was hard. I did get some credit for my junior college courses but only the remedial courses—the ones that didn’t count as credit toward my University transfer. I had tested into Kindergarten math (not really but close),so I had quite a few units I could use. However, as I had tested into College level English I was in for the surprise of my life. I had to take 4 years of English.  And just for the record.

I.HATE. SHAKESPEARE.

It turns out, I love Marine Science and Economics. I am pretty sure I am graduating with all A’s*. Which is a first because I am a solid B student in college. That story isn’t over yet. We shall see how well I do on the rest of my academic journey as I go for my BS in Psychology with a minor in Political Science.

But I digress from my main point. Perhaps, I am trying to hide my fear of vulnerability with stats– the minutia protecting me from this very difficult subject. You see, I kept this a secret from almost everyone in my life. There are a few people that know I was going to high school. And up to now, no one other than this close group knew that I was slated to graduate. Because, I felt such shame. I still do to some extent. There is a voice inside me that reminds me that I should have gotten my shit together a long, long time ago. However, there is a new voice that sounds suspiciously like Brene Brown’s.  This new voice is telling that old voice to shut up and sit the fuck down.

I am being brave announcing this to the world…or for the few people that will read my blog—lol.

I went to college for me. To prove that I could do it. That I wasn’t dumb and to stop the lies. I had lied for so many years, to so many people, on so many job applications. I needed to prove to myself that I was smart. College taught me how to be consistent and to show up even on the bad days. Something you don’t learn when you are homeless and living from crisis to crisis. As I tell my kids, intelligence gets you only so far. You also need perseverance, diligence, integrity, and kindness.

If I thought College was hard, I had another thing coming.

High School was a pain in my ass. There were many, many late nights after dinners, teaching, laundry… that I considered getting my GED. But, I was never good at giving up. I AM good at procrastinating. I wish I wasn’t.

My 15-year-old daughter started calling me High School Mommy and it stuck. In fact, without Tyva, I couldn’t have done it. Our Homework Club, which included my son Constantine, would start right after they got home from school and on the weekends. We would post up in the living room, small tables under our books and devices, with the tv switched to the Hallmark Channel. Mysteries, Love Stories, Christmas Movies. We watched them all while we bent over our homework. Sometimes, we would sit out on the grass if the weather was fine. No matter, we did it together. What motivated me most was watching my daughter complete Honors courses in Middle School and this year, Pre-AP and AP courses. She had hours of homework. Hours. Yet, she pushed herself and is a straight A student. I think she is the most amazing person and when I grow up I want to be just like her. Constantine is just as diligent. His course load isn’t as strenuous as Tyva’s as of yet. In elementary school he was in GATE classes which were pretty difficult. Now that he is in junior high his has honors courses and they are no joke. Yet, he maintains good grades just like his sister. With them to look up to there was no way that I could allow myself to fail.

It took me awhile to understand that there was something else that pushed me to the starting line and that kept me going to the finish. I realized mid way through this part of my journey that it was my mother that was at the heart of what I wanted to accomplish.

Her name is Julie Anne

By the time my mother was 19 she had 3 kids. I was the first. She never went past 8^th grade either. She died on August 12, 1990. She never got the chance to reach her goals or attain her dreams. I went to high school because my mother couldn’t. I am graduating for my Mom. She was an ass kicker despite the fact that life had never stopped kicking her ass—right up to the night she died in a horrible car accident.

My last conversation with her was a phone call. She had just written a new song and was beyond excited because she had finally gotten the courage to leave the abusive marriage that she was in. She was going to sell her songs. She was going to make something of herself. The next night she died. My next phone call was the one telling me that she was gone-forever. I hold tightly to the memory of the last time I spent with her. We were flying through the foothills in the fall. A sea of green flashed by my window as she played two songs over and over and over again. IF I Could Walk On Water by Eddie Money and If I Could Turn Back Time by Cher. I had never been to the mountains. I had never seen the house she had bought in Twain Harte with the money from her day care business. I remember the wind blowing her hair across her face. Hair just like mine. She would glance at me and smile. I wasn’t really listening to the words to the songs that she kept replaying. I was just looking at her. I hadn’t seen her in a very long time. It was a magical ride.

Today, I listened to the songs and paid attention to the lyrics. I can’t stop crying. Because I can finally hear what she was trying to say that day.

Mom.  I forgive you. I love you.

 Today is for you.

The Best Intentions

It turns out that it is much harder than I thought to build a site and write my very first Finally Friday blog post…all in one day. I had wanted it to be just in time for Mother’s Day, a particularly difficult holiday for me…But.

But, there was a mix up at GoDaddy which meant that domain mapping couldn’t be completed. A fancy name for writing some numbers into 3 fields, which then points my domain name to WordPress. But pointing name servers couldn’t be done because no one could find my domain name. *Insert pretend scream.* To keep my mind off things as I waited I took deep breaths, drank water, watched stupid t.v., and scrolled through twitter reading stupid and horrifying political posts.

But, while in the middle of one of my numerous customer service phone calls, I received a very bad, no good, horrible kind of text with terrible news. Which, I will keep to myself for the moment because I am still thrashing it around my head and my heart is trying to figure out what to do with news.

But, I came down with the flu that I picked up from chaperoning a Band Trip to Disneyland. Note to self: Do not do that again.

But, the cursor is blinking on my Mother’s Day story and I have to go slice some ginger and lemon, twirl some honey onto a spoon, and drop it all into a mug to await the whistle of the kettle, because my throat hurts–from arguing with the kids about cleaning the entry way.

But, that’s another story.

I hope my intentions are up to the road blocks.