Owning Your Shadow

Recently, while cleaning my house I found this book, Owning Your Shadow by Robert Johnson. It was a Harper Collins book, so I figure I most have nabbed it while I did a rotation through there. They had a great benefit (if lousy pay) and that was in the basement they'd put out books that employees could nab. You'd see us all down there just waiting for new books to be put out, and I was more than happy to run any errand that would bring me past that treasure trove.

Anyway, I'm not generally one for self-help psychobabble type stuff, which even when I picked the book up again recently, I felt it was. Just the title kind of irks me. Calling the dark side 'the shadow' isn't my thing, but it's my understanding he takes this from the Jungian philosophies the book attempts to 'bring down' to proletariat level.

But, it has made it's way into my bathroom reading rotation, and I'm about two-thirds through it now. And I have to say, I'm digging parts of it, or parts of it make sense.

I've always been about the unity of self, which this book promotes. It talks about making some ceremonial gifts to the 'dark side' once in a while to feed it and keep it from rearing it's ugly head (and it uses Mass as a perfect example of ceremoniously appeasing dark forces, what with the eating of flesh and drinking of blood and worshiping capital punishment and all that).

The part that stuck out, was where it talks about OTHERS shadows and how parents who don't want to deal with the darkness inside them, split and send their 'shadows' onto their children who then have to shoulder the burden of not just their own disunity, but their parents as well.

Which made me think - before I started this book things came up that brought back old fears (part of why I haven't posted in a while). All growing up, I felt my mother had the power, and technically, physically, she did. She was huge and imposing, taller than me, could throw my brother and I around. She crowed about how strong she was (on more than one occassion she also jumped kids that bothered my brother, a notable one sent her sliding down a snowy hill). She talked about her strength of character and physical strength that could cause us pain.

But she was weak, so very weak. She couldn't handle the burden of pain that her parents put on her, she couldn't handle her own darkness, so instead, she thrust it upon her children. She crowed about her perfections and her strengths and frequently commented on the weakness of her children. But we were the stronger, for we (or at least I, I like to think my brother has succeeded in unifying our fractured selves as well) had to deal with her by ourselves, while she just shoveled burden after burden on us so she didn't have to deal with it. We were like her own emotional garbage cans.

I'm just jotting stuff down freehand here or else I know I won't, so please excuse if this sounds to self-helpy or just incomprehensible (or badly spelled) but it pisses me off to think about it now. More than the physical abuse, all the mental ills that she forced on us just prove what a *insert swear word here* whimp she was, and that as always she put her own immediate needs over the long-term ones of her children. And all this time I thought she was strong, but only because she kept saying she was. I guess that proves that no matter how many times you repeat a lie, it still doesn't make it true.

Family Reunion? No Time Soon

I'm back to no photos. I know. I'm tired, weak, and damn if my hands don't hurt more each day.

I've been thinking about my brother a lot, since even before seeing Stop-Loss. I don't know what I want from him, honestly. Somedays I think it would be great to reunite - but he was so far gone last time we talked, I think it's dangerous.

"So what do you think will happen?" my therapist asks.

"I think he might talk to my mom about me."

"And what does that matter? It's not like she has control over you."

"Yeah, but I don't even want her to know how I'm doing, to try and take pride in what I've done."

"But you won't even know."

"But I'll consider it a betrayal, another act of him running and telling mommy on me."

Basically, I want nothing to do with her, and my brother is an extension of her. Just like I'm the reflection of our history, the reason he doesn't want to see me. I'm the keeper of the memory, of the pain of our childhood.

I called my aunt and grandma today. The whole act of reconnecting. Not easy. My aunt said she wanted to come to NYC and see me. I told her I'm not ready. I haven't seen her in over 12 years and I haven't had a family since maybe age 7, maybe age 9, I can't put an exact date on when I realized how emotionally alone I was. Family is foreign to me.

"You know what?" she told me. "After every card you send, every time you call, I immediately call your dad and tell him how you are doing."

It was like the breath was sucked out of me. Betrayal. I don't want him taking any pride in what I've done. The last time I saw him, when I was nine, I climbed up the stairs to a slide, looked down on his head, just starting to bald, and realized I hated him. I spat on him. I can't help but run my finger over the scar from when he punched me and my tooth went through my lip even as I type this.

"He's very proud of you sweetie. He knew you'd be the one to make it. He doesn't care about your brother, but he loves you."

My brother, despite all that my father did, despite the 'alleged' molestation, the pornography, the violence, the horrendous gas that had my brother and I run to our rooms and put towels at the bottom of the doors, always wanted to love my dad. Just like I wanted to be loved by my mother.

"He's been married for 25 years now you know."

He told my brother, in a letter, that he had a new family, a new son, and didn't want him to contact him anymore. That he wasn't his father anymore. Yet my brother didn't learn. He cried and he cried and I could hear his heart crackle like ice on a warm summers day. But goddammit, he still tried.

"I gotta go, my foot's acting up." I said.

"We love you, you know that."

"Yeah, thanks, I think I have to ice it."

"We do, we've always loved you. It's terrible what your mom did. But she kept you from us."

"She kept me from everbody," I replied, "Not just you. Even from herself. I really have to ice it."

Monday!

Saturday was an awesome weekend, and I hope to get the pictures cropped and resized soon. I went to a farm upstate. Sunday was a 'booo, hisss' day as it was gorgeous and I had to stay inside to do homework for that class I don't like.

So, thought I'd put up a haiku I wrote a while ago while dealing with the bi-polar nature of my mother.

I reach for your hand

Between anger and remorse

And try to find love

Oh Noes! It Was All Just a Dream (Well, Mostly)

Just a quick note before I start this post - things will be hectic for the next month, so postings may be sporadic. It's budget season at ye old job, which means the boss telling me to come in early and leave late yet still she wants me to go to school two nights a week to learn what I am doing. Oh, and total score, they are paying the $180 dollars that the textbook costs. I could do posts on how the US education system gouges the students with the price of these textbooks.

Anyway, let's see how short I can keep this today, as it's my lunchbreak. I just wanted to share an interesting dream.

See, after yesterday's post, I think stuff was more on my mind. Now, in the past, when stuff was dredged up I'd have these horrid nightmares. Last night, here was my dream:

I'm in my bed sleeping, in my current apartment when my mother comes and sits on the side of the bed and gently wakes me. I tell her I want to go to sleep, but she says this is important. So I groggily stare up at her.

"I'm sorry I put the pillow over your face," she tells me. "Really, it was wrong."

"Just let me go back to sleep," I say, rolling over and closing my eyes again.

"No, really, what I've done is wrong," she replies.

Now all I want to do in my dream is go back to sleep, so finally I say, "If you realize it's wrong, you should go get some help. You need help mom, more than I can give you."

I wake up (in my dream) to pounding on my door. It's my brother, and he wants to know where our mom is. Now, in real life my brother never lived on his own, he only left my mom's house to stay with his girlfriend then wife. When his girlfriend got pissed at him, he'd go back with my mom. He can't really do much on his own except kill people (hence his lifetime in the military) so needs someone to take advant- er- take care of him.

"What the f--- did you do with mom?" he asks me incredibly angry.

"I don't know," I reply wiping sleep from my eyes.

He barges into the house and looks around.

"I know she was staying with you, what did you do?"

I notice the message on my answering machine is blinking, so I listen to it. It's "Downtown Psychiatry Hospital" to alert me that my mom has checked herself in and after evaluation, they want to keep her in longer. She went to get help.

Now, at the same time my brother starts to freak out as he tells me that his blood test came back positive, "I'm BP too" he fumes at me, "you gonna have me committed?" Then his girlfriend comes and tells me that her blood test is also positive. I tell them I'm negative, but wonder if I am because I didn't even know there was a blood test for Bi-Polar disorder (note, in real life there isn't).

I just thought it was interesting how it was a wish-fulfillment dream in terms of my mother admitting she was wrong. I think that's the dream of every child abused by their parent's - that the mother and father stop hiding behind the rationalization of parental responsibility and admit that what they did was horribly wrong. We want the abusive parties to feel guilt, remorse, and shame for their actions. And while 10:1 that won't happen in real life, in dream life it can.

I think it also shows a shift - she wasn't overpowering. She invaded my space by being in my house, yes, but she left and got help, and I was able to tell her to do so. I wasn't afraid. Granted, my anxiety over having BP was still there (I'm 30 now, I was told if I did have it it would have come out in childhood because of the stress I was under, but 30 is basically the cut-off date for diagnosis, as it shows in the late teens and twenties mostly), but I handled it well, got them out of the house, and got back to sleep. The other thing of note - I didn't try to help her. I didn't take responsibility for her actions, but tried to tend to my own needs - something I really need to do more in life. It's hard to care for yourself when you are so used to caring for someone, or something else. I was thinking of that the other day while day-dreaming about getting another cat.

"I don't have anything to love," I said aloud wistfully.

"You have yourself," that voice inside me said. "Learn to love yourself more completely."

Tales of a Possessed Marshmallow Man

David McMahon asked us this week to tell a Toy Story, well David, here ya go!

The year was 1985 (I think) and there was only one toy I wanted that year – the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. My family was a huge fan of The Ghostbusters and I even had the movie picture book. I read through that book so many times, looking at all the pictures. I think the bitterness was setting in on the family. My parents had already divorced, but we hadn’t yet moved to New York. I remember one picture, of Gozer covered in bubbles with the two demon dogs at her side. My mother said my father bought be the book because of that picture, that he probably stared at it all the time or some other such nonsense. I didn’t care. I always pictured Dan Ackroyd as the perfect dad and wanted that stuffed Stay Puft to snuggle with at night like the kid on the commercial.

And I got it! The real one too, not a knock-off. When I had wanted a Strawberry Shortcake doll my mom’s friend made me one, not the same to a kid looking for the tags. Cabbage Patch Kid? Also made from a kit with a printed out adoption certificate, doesn’t cut it. But this one was the Kenner original.

He was bigger than I expected, and had that sailors cap with a real blue ribbon. He was very soft and cuddly. And he had a huge smile one. There was one thing I didn’t know about the doll – its face glowed in the dark. That, I didn’t learn until that night.

My parents were happy that they had been able to please me, to give me a gift I really wanted. So my mother was none to happy to hear I had thrown the doll across the room screaming during the night. I woke up – and that grin was just there floating in the darkness of my room.

I had a friend that had wanted a giggling cookie monster of some sort. She broke it the first night because she rolled on it, it screeched into the silence, “ME WANT COOKIE!” and she thought for sure it was trying to eat her. Survival of the fittest, her or the doll, and she won while I laughed at the story. I thought for sure I’d never be such a wimp!

Now, here I was with a doll that wouldn’t die but just grin evilly all through the night.

I think I tried, my mother was upset. I had wanted that doll so badly and now it was scaring me. In the end, my brother got it. He had wanted it too, secretly envying my doll while outwardly making fun of the stuffed toy. We all loved Ghostbusters.

Image from Answers.com

9-11 Remembered

I figured, why be cliché and do my 9/11 memories the day of? Why not do it, the day after! Because not every NYC blog has to do a retrospective on the same day, does it?

Yes, I was working that day. It was while I was temping, trying to ‘find myself,’ so for that week was a receptionist for some firm around Grand Central. They had just installed a big screen television in the conference room, so we got to see the crash in ginormous detail. And CNN, being what it is, kept replaying pictures of the people jumping from the towers over, and over, and over again.

As luck would have it, my mother had a work related conference around the World Trade Center, so she was in town. We were going to have dinner that night. My best friend had also recently taken a job around there as well.

When I heard of the crash, I called my friend first. I was still talking to my mother, questioning why, but still wanted her to BE a mother. But I called my friend first and don’t regret it. The smoke was so thick she couldn’t see out the window. Alarms were blaring. Neither of us believed that the planes held passengers. We didn’t know what was going on.

After my friend said they were evacuating them to the roof (and she promised to call once safe) I could turn my attention to my mother. Her work didn’t know what happened, and now we were being evacuated. Some people asked if my mother was okay, I told them I wasn’t sure.

(If I’m going to be honest, part of me wanted her to be there and die. Not only would I not have the problem of what to do with my mother and struggle to completely cut her off, as I later did, but in completely mean retrospect, she could have done so much more for me had she died then in terms of monetary value, then the agony of her living. As my best friend said though, evil never dies.)

We all went to the home of one of the Senior Partners. It was somewhere in the 60s/70s on the East Side. Once there, I found out my mother was fine and in her hotel. I called her there, and she was freaking out. She didn’t feel safe (the hotel was around Penn Station) and thought for sure she’d die. She wanted to stay with me as I live uptown. Being the dutiful daughter, I walked to her hotel and got her. Then we made our way to my house (the trains were working, she was acting like a scared 5 year old and I had to bribe her with ice cream and Diet Coke). Once off the train we stopped to get her Ben & Jerry’s and soda.

All she wanted to do at my house was call all her friends (long-distance) and keep watching the footage from the attack. She told me it was her way of coping. I told her it was running up a bill I couldn’t afford to pay and that I didn’t like the constant blaring of the TV.

Should I mention now that I live in a studio? A Manhattan studio? So imagine her and I and Penny in this small an apartment when she tells me – “oh yeah honey, I didn’t bring my medication.”

There was a lot of stuff that happened but I’ll cut to the chase – after getting sick of her and going for a walk I came back to see she had put all these hair clips over (and in) Penny who was cowering in the corner. Penny was in pain. I had left her alone with my mother, and felt bad for it. I turned to my mother and asked her if it felt good hurting others, knowing that she has caused everyone around her so much pain. Her reply:

“Yes, it makes me feel powerful.”

She admitted it, she finally admitted it.

I kicked her out, got her a train ticket, and sent her home. She never paid for the long distance calls, saying I should understand, that she doesn’t have the money, excuse after excuse flowing from her mouth. I cut my long distance after that and slowly began the process of cutting her off completely.

(I'm re-reading this now, and when I rewrite this more non-blog formal, I think the title will be "How 9-11 Helped Me See The Terrorist In My Own Home")

Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/beija/243997357

Gifts

“It is better to give than to receive” I so hate that saying. It’s such a lie. It’s easy to give something, but really hard to be accepting of others gifts. That’s how I see it. “Charity begins at home” is another one of those platitudes, yet more often I hear people saying that they don’t want to be a charity case. My mother never wanted to be a charity case, that’s why we ate out of the garbage. She refused welfare, or so she said. We’d be dragged to nursing homes to speak with the elderly at Christmas time and shyly hand them gifts the church was donating, but we weren’t allowed the candy they offered. We were there to give to them.

I remember, when I was younger the “Speak and. . .” series were huge. They were by Tiger Electronics I think, some Eighties giant computerized portable games. My brother had Speak and Math and I loved it (luckily, he hated it. But it was bought to improve his math skills). I really wanted the Speak and Spell. Just before our trip to New York, my mother got it for me for Christmas. She said she had to sell off a couple things and then go down to the clinic and sell plasma. Now, off and on she had sold blood to help us, well, live basically. I don’t know if they do that anymore, but they did then according to her. Plasma, she said, was harder to do because they have two tubes going in and out of you.

“Merry Christmas, here’s the gift you wanted; I was in pain to earn the money to buy what you wanted.”

Admirable what she did, sticks with me what she said about it. (Yes, I felt guilty for wanting it so bad she had to suffer for it to be the good mom she told everyone she was.)

My brother didn’t do well with the holidays. He always got so worked up that he wouldn’t get what he wanted that he’d throw temper tantrums leading up to the day. One year he took these blue plastic horses my mother got as her gift (I actually think he got them for her) and, in front of her, snapped all the legs of one by one. Another year, when he was much older, he tossed the coffee grinder (this time I think I bought for my mother) down on the ground and cracked it. One Christmas my parents got so mad I got all his presents. I loved it because he always got ‘action toys’ and I got boring dolls. But, eventually, I had to give them back.

‘Giving things’ was huge in the house. And it was always a show, with the story of suffering behind it to give something so grand. Accepting, not so much. It got to such a fever pitch that at one birthday party I refused to allow anyone to give me a gift. I couldn’t handle it. We had a piñata, a Carvel Ice Cream Cake, and a lot of fun (oh yeah, and no mother or brother at that party). But no presents for me.

So here I am, writing about this, and reflecting back, and realize it’s all another great game of control and power. You are the one providing when you give a gift, and everyone in the family didn’t want to accept anything because it was some weird power over the other person. No accepting of charity, no accepting of food, of little gifts knitted by people in nursing homes. That was wrong. Always the giver, never the receptor.

That is doing such an injustice to other people. Everyone feels good when they give something of themselves, and if it’s left hanging in the air it’s a rejection of that person and their thoughtfulness. I’ve come to realize that gracious acceptors are few and far between. Hell, I have trouble even taking a compliment! “Oh, no, you look better today! The blue in your shirt really brings out your eyes! Ah, no, I just got it in the sale bin, it’s nothing special. You’re too kind, really, no, it’s all about you!”

But I see it’s not just me. Compliment someone on their clothes they’ll tell you the cost. Compliment a woman on her hair she’ll say something self-deprecating. At least, that’s been my experience.

What the world needs is more gracious acceptors. That’s what I’m working on (oh my, I have a long list of things to work on!)

Image found on www.peppersandpollywogs.com

The Trip - Part Two

My mother only beleived in camping at KOA Kampgrounds.

New Mexico was the first stop. The tent we had was white and blue, a three person pop-up tent with those ‘collapsable poles’ – the type with that elasticy bungee chord type string in the middle. They bend and twist and collapse at inopportune times. I think there were only three poles that crossed over each other on the top of the tent. Then there were the little stakes we used to pound it into the ground so that some errant breeze wouldn’t blow our new home away. Imagine, just an overgrown raincoat separated us from the elements.

All I remember about New Mexico was that it was flat, it was our first state, and I want to live there someday. Alamogordo. Albuquerque. Names Bugs Bunny loved saying. That’s New Mexico.

Tennessee was scary. My brother and I were used to the flatlands, the desert, the land of tumbleweeds and cacti and suddenly we were around towering trees. Amidst the trees on the campground my brother and I found a playground. It was damp and there was moss all around. We were convinced it was a secret playground and we were the first to find it in centuries. I think we were in such awe that we didn’t even take a trip down the slide, just ran our hands over it and ‘felt the children from the past.’

It was in Tennessee that we learned of ticks, as a neighboring camper warned us that they jump out of the trees on to animals and people. As if we weren’t scared enough watching the trees bend in the winds. Shortly after, my mother did get a tick in her head and had my brother rub butter into it, but to no avail. Finally we went back to our informative neighbors and they extracted the blood sucker. My brother and I went straight into the tent and put clothes on top of our heads. We covered every inch of our body.

Lesson: Trees can be intimidating, and dangerous.

I think it was Oklahoma that had red sand, one of the states did. I had me favorite florescent yellow socks and wore them all the time, but in Oklahoma the sand got to them. There were also mosquitos. Lots and lots of mosquitos. They were everywhere, the state ‘bird.’

There was one state where we were greeted by a group of ducks. One of them had a shriveled leg. I imagined it got caught in a fire. We called them the welcoming committee, and gave them some bread (which I’m sure was their real purpose for visiting). There was a place to fish there and my brother caught a number of them. He used some of our spoiled meat for bait, the stench drew in the fish. Then, later, when we took a boat out on the lake my brother said it was okay to swim in it. So he and I jumped in the water and grabbed on to the side of the boat. We were enjoying ourselves, until someone from administration saw us and was screaming frantically. My brother and I climbed into the boat and came ashore. The lady was furious, she had specifically told my brother we couldn’t swim in the water as it was filled with water moccasins. He just grinned.

Arkansas had clay-like dirt, I think it was Arkansas. I had ziploc bags and was collecting some dirt from each state as we drove. At first my mother tried to tell me it was illegal (first it was theft, then it was something to do with ruining ecology) but in the end relented. Really, what’s a little dirt in a baggie? It was there that my brother was attacked by some birds. Apparently they nest in the ground and he got too close. He came running to our tent screaming, “mom! I got stung! I got stung!” as he thought they were huge bees. There was a puncture wound in-between his eyes (he got lucky with that one) and in his buttocks from them attacking as he ran away. It was the manager who told us that they were small birds, not large bees that attacked. He warned us that they nest around waters edge, so stay in the designated areas.

One campground had a sign around the pool forbidding you to walk on water.

In one state the wind was so strong even with the tent tethered down it was blowing away (with the cat inside!) so we stayed in a musty cabin instead.

In another state we met a kid who was a vegetarian. We didn’t understand what it meant, my brother and I never saw vegetables, it was all hotdogs and macaroni and cheese. So he ate a hotdog with us and liked it. How could he not? It’s all nitrates and salt. His family was furious.

Texas. Amarillo, the ‘armpit of the South’ as others have since told me. There were big bugs, crickets we could tie to our shoes and uses as moon boots, roaches the size of kittens.

Let’s see, in one of the states there was Mello Yellow, the first and last time I saw that brand of soda. It was some lemony-limey type thing. Another had Giggles Potato Chips. I had never realized there was such a thing as ‘regional food’ before then. The world was what it was.

We left behind Carls Jr. For the first few states that was a huge staple of our diet, when we got sick of the hotdogs we could get a hamburger for 39 cents and I think the fries were a quarter. In my memory, their fries beat out those of any other chain restaurant. McDonald’s was too expensive at the time, although one of my mother’s first jobs in our
‘promised land’ was to make the biscuits at McDonald’s (before they were sent frozen) so we ate there every day. She prided herself on how fluffy her biscuits were compared to others.

We didn’t go straight to New York, we stopped in Pennsylvania to meet the people my mom had us call Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin. At least, for a while we did. They were camping there and we would meet them on the campground, and then follow them to our temporary home.

The Trip - Part One

Taken by Wing-Chi Poon on 19th December 2004

I think I mentioned that as my brother and I were spending our days selling everything we owned at the Park and Swap we really didn’t realize the truth behind what was happening. We were young, and we were spending time with our mother, and we were ingesting a hell of a lot of sugar.

The sad part was our animals. I had a rabbit still (my brother’s had died earlier) and she went to a neighbor I think. I liked her, she was big and fluffy. When we first got her we were warned she was a cat killer, but we kept her (mostly) in her hutch. I think my father made the hutch. I remember this one thunderstorm where we had to take the rabbits into our rooms. My brother’s rabbit left so many ‘presents’ all around the room, and mine (Snuffy, named after my favorite Sesame Street character) left only one. She was a good rabbit.

The turtles went to someone, I don’t remember. We also had fish. The birds had died long ago, as had the dog (another case of my mom taking an animal to the pound for some reason of the other). The only animal we were going to take was Georgie. One bi-polar mother, two kids, and a cat in a car for two weeks as they traveled across the United States. Such a recipe for excitement.

My brother had this giant stuffed pink snake, I still remember it. I used to sit in the center of its coils. My brother offered to trade it to me for batteries, and I agreed imagining myself sitting safe in its coils in the back seat of the car. Of course that night my mother tossed it out, and my brother stood by laughing. It was too big to bring in the car, and he had been warned earlier. Cheeky bugger just got free batteries.

A lot of stuff was tossed. The day we left, I clung to my closet door looking around my empty yellow room and cried so hard. My mother told me it was too late, I had agreed. She told me not to cry, I had even helped sell off everything. I don’t think she had the capacity to understand that I didn’t really know what forever meant, what leaving meant. I would never see my friends again, they were moving soon and we didn’t have a house or address at all, just the car cruising on the highways.

The car was once a burgundy red, but the Arizona sun had faded it. It had a pretty big trunk. The cat was in the back seat, I think I spent most of the time sleeping in the back seat too. I remember there were somethings we forgot:

My mothers new swimsuit, and it was the first one she bought that fit her in years.

The porta potty that consisted of some metal contraption and blue bags.

So Much To Say, So Little Focus

Photo by Anthony M. from Rome, Italy

I haven’t answered my doorbell (actually, more like a buzzer. Or, more appropriately, like that part in Dumb and Dumber when Jim Carey makes the most annoying sound in the world, that’s my doorbell) in maybe a month. It could be longer, or a little less.

At first I was just tired. I was in school two nights a week, working 6 days a week, and dealing with an elderly neighbor who didn’t understand what ‘no’ meant. She kept calling and ringing my bell because of computer issues. Like, she didn’t know how to turn it on, turn it off, plug it in. I hooked her up, helped her fill out rebate forms, taught her how to open Word, etc., then told her I was really busy. But alas, in the end I just stopped answering my door.

For about two weeks every day there’d be the buzz. I really do hate that sound. Still, I left it unanswered. Then, another elderly neighbor ran into me in the hallway – she was the one who had been buzzing my doorbell. She had a gift she wanted to give me for helping her out while she was in the hospital. I felt bad that I’d been ignoring her rings for the past couple weeks.

But still, I’m not answering it. I haven’t talked to my therapist about this, but I talked to Xiomara. She summed it up easily.

“I don’t answer it either,” she said. “Because it’s quiet, and then, it’s just not.”

It’s the ‘just not’ that I don’t like.

When the buzzer sounds, lately, I’ve been jumpy. So whatever I’m doing in my nice quiet apartment is disturbed, and I leap, and my heart races. Then, I get mad at the person on the other side of the buzzer and just refuse to answer because of that. Plus, I’m not expecting anyone, so figure there’s no reason for anyone to ring my bell. If I had ordered a pizza or something, I’d answer. But I’m not. Instead, my silence is being disturbed.

Anyway, so after my grandmother post I started thinking about her so sent her a little note. A really little note, tiny in fact. Co-workers weren’t sure the post office would mail something that small. It was just a little ‘thinking of you’ note to let them know I care.

I received back a three page letter, very sweet, very affirming. Very interesting, in that she mentioned my mother went to their house a couple times asking about me. She lives about three hours away from them last I knew. She was thrown out of their property, and they didn’t say anything. But it’s interesting that she even went there in the first place. . .

At least it didn’t lead to as many nightmares as I thought it might. I did have a dream that she came to my door and was banging on it, I screamed at her to leave me alone and then called 911. There was another dream, unsettling, but mainly just another ‘trapped with her’ dream. But, I was still able to sleep (without the aid of Ambien) so – improvement!

Dreams of Angels and Demons

Carlos Schwabe's "Death and the Gravedigger"

I think I have mentioned a couple dreams here. It’s funny how they’ve always been my indicator that something is wrong.

There was one recurring dream I had when I was younger, while I may not have many concrete images of the life lived, I do remember the one dreamed.

I think I was five the first time I had the dream, in the dream I am around age five. Then it came back a couple more times by age seven, and then again when I was a pre-teen, enough times for me to remember.

I was asleep in bed when I get woken by a storm outside. I go to my parent’s room because I’m afraid and my mother is sound asleep. I peer through the door and see my father. He is sitting on the side of the bed and there is a glass of water and a bottle of red pills. He swallows one and suddenly horns sprout out of his head, a tail grows. He turns to me as his skin is becoming ruddy and his eyes glow. He sees me and begins to chase me. I scream and run from the doorway.

My mother, hearing my cries, wakes up. She opens up the drawer and takes out a jar of white pills. She swallows one and her hair turns white and grows out long, a white gown forms around her, she runs out to help.

I am outside running in the rain and it’s very damp. I’m slipping on the grass as my father chases me throwing out curses, flames shooting from his mouth. My mother begins to chase him, yelling for him to leave us alone. I run toward a pine tree and am running around it slipping and sliding with my father/demon behind me and my mother/angel behind him. Then I slip and fall and he towers over me – and I wake up sweating.

Like I said – the first time was at age five. The dynamics were already there. Although I don’t remember much about my father – I know from this dream he wasn’t someone I felt safe around. There were times when I loved nothing more than using his arm as a pillow (in fact, one of my scarier “I can’t believe I dreamed it” dreams involved me cutting of his arm to use as my pillow, the rest of him living at another house. It was bloody, but comfortable).

I was five. Five years old and my father is a demon my mother an angel. I have a scar under my lip. My mother always said it was from when I was age five and she and my father were in their bedroom. My brother and I were peering through the door, when my brother pushed me. My father came barreling out of the room and hit me – sending my tooth through my lip. This is my mother’s story of the scar; I have no memory of the real event. But parts of it make sense for the timing of the dream which I do remember.

Dreams have always been more real to me than my past, maybe that’s why I remember some of dreams so much more clearly than I do other events in my life. They are the way my mind worked through so many happenings, told me in ways I could understand what was going on in my life.

I wanted my mother to be my angel, but even in the dream, no matter how many times I dreamt it she never saved me. It’s also kind of interesting to me, looking back, that she had to take a pill to help me. This kind of goes with the running bi-polar theory. When she was medicated, she was normal. When she was on her pills, whatever they were (she never really told us) she was ‘our mother.’



When talking with my therapist about this we discussed the main points - how I saw my mother and father- which is quite obvious by the whole demon/angel imagery. However, the most interesting to her was that my mother never saved me. In all of my dreams, in all of my stories, no one saves me. I want her to, but in the end I save myself, be it by waking myself up or through getting on with my life and just standing up against all odds. There was no white knight for me, not even an angel.

The Wedding

Edmund Blair Leighton's "Till Death Do Us Part," 1878

I was working in the buying offices of a major NY retail fixture when I found out my brother was getting married. My mother informed me of the bridal shower and such, I don’t remember if I was invited or not. I do remember I sent her a gift. Being in the buying offices meant free goodies sometimes, so I walked over to the wedding buyer and got some big white chocolates in the shape of gorgeous wedding cakes and shoes and a book about the history behind all the wedding myths. It was really interesting, it talked about why the best man and maid-of-honor was started (so demons would mistake them for the bride and groom and possess them instead, leaving the happy couple to remain so. Remember that if you are ever asked to be in a bridal party – you are sacrificing your soul for your friend’s.)

I put them all together with a card and my mother convinced me to send it to her to give out at the bridal shower.

Later my brother called and I found out my mother had tossed the card I had included and added one wherein she wrote “To my favorite brother, despite everything I love you and you will always be my big brother, I miss you” or something really corny (and personal and not for her to write) along those lines. I did explain that that was NOT the card I sent, which was more of a wedding one. I think she also changed the wrapping paper as she didn’t think mine was ‘festive’ enough. However, his future wife had loved the chocolates and they were both perusing the book with great interest.

I got an invitation for the wedding and was planning on going. Then my mother called me.

“Honey, don’t be upset,” she said, “but I talked to your brother and he said he only sent the invitation out of politeness. He’d rather you don’t go. Actually, he is afraid you’ll ruin the whole thing so doesn’t want you there. He just didn’t want to talk to you, so asked I tell you.”

Well, if that wasn’t the be all. After all we’d been through, he didn’t want me at the wedding?

I had the chance shortly after that to really affect his wedding, be it in a good or bad way. I live in the land of MTV and received a call from them. I was in a high profile retail chain after all. They were casting for a makeover show. If there was an event I was to go to, and wanted a complete makeover, they would pay for it and then film the event. “This is my chance!” I thought. “I can show them I am somebody, I can show them that others want me even if my family doesn’t!” MTV casting liked the idea of me going to a wedding of estranged family members with camera crew and new designer clothes in my back pocket. Drama! Intrigue!

For a moment I seriously fantasized about accepting, how often do you get to be on camera? To have people cater to you? But then I thought rationally and outside the realm of revenge. This was my brother’s day, his future wife’s day. I would be trumping a bride on her wedding day, and didn’t think that was right. If they wanted a quiet peaceful day and thought that meant no me whatsoever, then let them have it.

The day of his wedding my best friend invited me to see Tony and Tina’s Wedding, an interactive off-Broadway play. She had some free tickets. I ended up leaving the ‘reception’ in tears, sad that my own brother didn’t want me at his and here the actors were making everyone feel so welcome. My friend was mad that I left her (the reception had free food, no one straight out of college would have left that!) but I think in the end understood.

A while later either I called my brother or he called me, the end of it is we talked. It turns out that my mother told him I refused to come to the wedding if I couldn’t sing at it, and that’s why I wasn’t there. In the end, we were both listening to my mother and believing her, and she lied to both. My brother said he had wanted his little sister there and never told our mother he didn’t want me there. She had once again lied to us both to keep my brother and I apart and her in power, even if it meant hurting us on what was to be a happy occasion.

Vague Recollections

There was a time when my brother and I were close friends. We would go down to a field near our house in Arizona and chase the jackrabbits around the brush. He was a cactus magnet. There is one species – Choia- the jumping cactus that would always attack his little legs as he ran by. The only time I got a cactus prickles in me is when I pet a Prickly Pear because the needles looked so fine. I remember school teaching us that even though Teddy Bear cacti have such an inviting name, we aren’t to touch them.

My father told us tales of the jackelope, a jack rabbit with antlers. We wanted to meet him and go to his home and talk to him. I think we believed him able to grant our wishes or something. I don’t know what we would wish for – I think to have some money, to have food. My brother loved bacon; he dreamed of bacon and begged for bacon. He knew many folk tales involving bacon. One of them involved the reason why the sea is salty, although I forget the rest.

There was a Mexican place that my mother loved to take us to when she had the money. I only remember getting the American platter or cheese crisp (cheese melted on top of a crispy tortilla). On your birthday they gave the kids a free piñata. For some reason, I enjoyed tearing off all the brightly colored paper to make it bare. My brother said I was the fastest at taking off the crepe paper. I have such a vague recollection of me choosing an elephant one. They would put a sombrero on you and take a picture to hang on the wall of the happy children. I have this image of a young me smiling with my elephant (to be de-frocked later) surrounded by that thick white border of Polaroid film embedded in some recess of my memory.

I remember my mother saying I always had the cleanest bedroom. It was yellow, I liked yellow. She said it was bright and a nice retreat for her, to come and sit on my bed while I was at school and enjoy the only clean spot in the house, the one that was so bright and cheery.

I also remember her commenting on it being so messy, years later, and lamenting what happened. She wondered where things changed that I went from the neat freak to total slob. I think she was trying to put two and two together, but by leaving herself out of the equation there was never an answer.

There was Owen who threw peaches at the chickens in his backyard.

There was me walking to the backyard of family friends where they were draining a chicken. The bucket held so much blood. I learned it’s easier to defeather a chicken when it’s still warm.

Juanita sometimes ate play dough, she said it was salty. It was; it was the homemade play dough of flour and salt and coloring.

My mother made a rule, “if you accuse your brother of stealing something, then find it later in your room, he gets to keep it.”

My mother said I was a brat a lot. Later, she said I was a bitch a lot. I remember my father calling me a dirty little ragamuffin. I’ve forgotten the context for most of this. The words do remain.

Of the few letters my father sent after the divorce, I just remember one where he wrote that it was so hot he bought a kiddie pool to sit in. He was wearing his shorts and the zipper rusted. I remember this because my mother said the letter was inappropriate. I don’t know if there is more to the letter that I don’t remember or not.

When old enough (and in a safe enough neighborhood) to trick or treat I had to hide my candy inside stuffed animals in my room if I didn’t want my brother to steal it. My mother usually got a good portion of our chocolate. One year, back in Arizona, she said she would make me my costume for school. I think I was in second grade. I wanted to go as a quarter. The coin, not a quarter-horse, but an actual quarter. She made me one out of cardboard, duct tape, and a lot of the silver crayon.

One year my brother was a chicken in the school play, or a turkey, something that had to hatch out of an egg. He couldn’t get out of the egg, it got stuck together.

I don’t know why all this just flitted through my head. I wonder if it means something? Does it have to or can it just be what it is, vague recollections of a life once lived, one so far removed now?


Note: I did bring these up in therapy and my doctor was happy to note that it is a picture of happy, sad, and just kind of there memories. There is no need to analyze them – they are what they are. But she did laugh, a lot, about me wanting to be a quarter. I think it served as a warning to her to not promise her kids she will get them whatever costumes they want because, who knows what a kid will say?

My Mother's Stories

Painting by Segantini, Giovanni, 1894

I know my mother’s story. Many of her stories, actually. Sometimes they changed, some remained constant.

When people try and explain away behavior they go to the back story – the past affects the future. But beware of using history as an excuse for present actions; we’re supposed to learn from it not repeat it.

She was abandoned. She was given away to a friend down the hall. She never knew her mother lived two doors down.

She was beaten, suffocated, and molested by a drunken grandfather who pinned her to the wall and stuck his tongue down her throat. She had to sleep in the same bed as her “sister” who always peed the bed. Her younger “brother” ripped up her comics and used her coin collection to buy candy.

She was in love with a boy in high school and they decided to skip the prom and get married instead. But then her younger sister got pregnant (at 14) and ‘stole her thunder.’

That first husband beat her and forced her to move furniture while she was pregnant and then after a particularly brutal ‘session’ my possible older brother (She knew it was a boy since conception) was flushed away. His name was Christopher (the child).

They divorced and she threw rocks at his car but had already gotten him a good job with the city that he still has today. She went on to have a fling or two and met my father on the ski slopes.

My father lied to her and stole her violin and told her he was with the CIA. He kept her apart from all her friends and family. He never beat her, but after my brother was born he never touched her either. She knew something was wrong but wasn’t sure what and wanted to stay together for us kids until she realized he was bad for us.

She died on the table giving birth to me. Her soul flew up to the humming fluorescent light and she looked down as the doctor pulled me from her.

She found her real family late in life and she had a real brother and real sister and real nephews (who I found later through the SSDI – dead while his father was in jail). After the divorce from my father she found what she believed to be her real name and took it as her own. She looked through obituaries for family members and went to the funerals when one was mentioned.

She cried when the obituary didn’t include her among the ‘survived by.’

I can’t imagine what the funeral was like – her going in and saying she’s the daughter given away, be my family. But her maybe sister was there and they became friends off and on and my mother introduced her to us as our Aunt but by then I didn’t want any more of her family that she’d present to us then take away as not real family.

When the maybe brother got out of jail he visited and gave her a painting he made.

She was bad at math in school. She once brought home a friend of hers named ‘Pearl’ and her given-to-mama wouldn’t let them in because she was black.

She owned the original Spider-man comic.

She married to get away from the abuse.

She had to put down her favorite dog because it became too protective of her.

She once painted a house with barn paint and it soaked into the wood and became splotchy.

She once owned a craft store and would get paid up to 1000$ for her handicrafts.

I recognize some similarities between her and I. We both yearn for family, but I know I can’t find one in the past only the future, one I actively create. She didn’t learn this. I also know not to repeat the cycle of my childhood.

We’re both creative.

I’m not giving her the time or energy to ‘pretty up’ her stories with fancy rhetoric. They are what they are. Many sounded more like excuses as she told us of the abuse she suffered as a child. Many would come before she went on a rampage – the line “this is nothing like what I got; you want to know about abuse?” was frequent.

I’ll never know the truth, but I know the pain. I know she was pained. She wasn’t in a state to have children, but couldn’t relinquish the power she had over us – maybe the only power she had every known.

Ruminations

Anchise Picchi's "The Mother"

Was there a conscious point, a revelation, a moment when I realized that my mother’s kisses couldn’t heal me anymore? And worse, when did I realize she was the main aggressor?

I wonder these things.

For so long it was believed that the mother’s kiss would make things better. “Come here baby, peroxide and iodine will burn but not mommy.”

But it was mommy.

When did I stop loving her, if I ever did? I did, I tried.

Once she told me she loved me, but didn’t like me, that there was a difference. She begged, pleaded that I tell her that I love her and got mad when I told her I couldn’t recite it on command, I didn’t want it to become meaningless. It was her argument that if I truly loved her I could say it whenever she asks. Somehow, I knew it to be wrong to make that routine.

I remember my brother asked me many times if I loved our mother. Is that an odd thing for one child to ask their sibling? Not the “I love her more” thing but, “do you even love her? Can you love her?”

I think he fought really hard to love her, much harder than I ever did, much harder than I wanted to. Sometimes I question my commitment. But the final time he asked, before he even finished the question I had said ‘No.’ He looked at me like I was a foreign creature.

“You answered so quickly,” he said.

But I already knew the question was coming.

My brother treated my mother with such disdain. He screamed and yelled at her, forgot every birthday, made every excuse to leave her company, came home only to ask for money or scream at someone some more. My mother bought him everything he asked for – numerous cars, college tuition, clothes. The money we had went to him, the money we didn’t have. But when my mother asked –

“Of course I do!” he’d say as he hugged her.

The money I had went to make her happy. There was one time a friend and I went out to see a movie, my mother had been sad (again). I bought her some chocolates and a Bat Mitzvah card (as I figured it was one she had never received). I came home to pitch black. I didn’t know what had happened. I didn’t recall it ever being that dark. I called for her; she was in the back room. I felt my way back there.

“What happened,” I asked.

“There was a power outage.”

“Why didn’t you get a flashlight, light some candles?”

“I didn’t feel like moving.”

“Did you check the circuit breaker?”

“I’m tired honey.”

“How long have you been sitting here?”

“I don’t know, a couple hours maybe.”

For two hours, while I was in the movie theater, she sat in the dark staring at an empty television screen all alone. It scared me. I think I either lit candles or got the flashlight or flipped that circuit breaker switch. I read her the card, showed her it. I don’t remember if she ate the candies then or not. She thanked me, the card made her laugh. She thought it was pretty; there were gold swirls on it.

I couldn’t say I loved her, but I can say I tried. Words end up meaningless, strewn all over the floor and walked on. They just fall from the lips and an errant breeze can blow them into the gutter. But actions – the cleaning, the cooking, the birthdays and cakes and teddy bears and everything my little child’s mind could come up with- they said something that she couldn’t hear. Yet, it echos in my mind, reminds me of how much I prayed one day to have a mother who could understand me when I spoke in my own way.

Identity Revisited

Image taken from www.militaryhq.com

This dialogue of race has come up again in one of my newsgroups. I do wonder how many people realize that the notion of race does not exist. Cultures, yes, but a biological race? Nope. That has been disproved many times. I think of it like squirrels – there are black and gray squirrels in my parks, and even white ones out there. Flying squirrels live in certain regions too. They just adapted for their regions, but all are squirrels. Just like we’re all people. So what’s the deal with focusing on skin color?

I think as much as America may try and deny it, it is still very much a black and white world. Yes, I hear people lament about good black men marrying white demon women and other such nonsense. As much as my mother lamented about relatives that were slaves she also told me never to marry a black man because he could never support a family. Thanks ma.

I have been broken down to body parts before by people seeking to identify me but on a visual level of perceived race. Since my ears are small but my lips big this one man determined I was black enough to date him. Uhmm, not after that, no. Then there are my Turkish (or Irish apparently, it’s a double row of eyelashes thing) eyes, my Dutch hair, My Native cheekbones. It’s like I’ve become an ethnic jigsaw puzzle to people.

Well, stop it. Stop being so darn preoccupied with it all. Plus, as most discussions in the news and print still seem to be about the whole black/white issue stop that too – it makes it seem like others aren’t as important and worse, what happens to those of us who are just big old mutts?

The ‘other’ category, that’s what. We get the choice of white, black, Hispanic, other non-Hispanic, native American/Alaskan/pacific islander and I think just plain other.

So what does that make me? Hasn’t it always been human nature to fear the unknown ‘other’?

As much as I have always believed I have no ethnicity and that’s fine, it means I can take from all of them, it does bug me at times as it makes me feel like I have no voice or worth in a society that prides itself on diversity – as long as the diversity is easy to categorize and place into little boxes. This leaves me out on the rug, so to speak, to be trampled on by others.

Which is why I’m sorely tempted to participate in the National Geographic Genomic Project to see at least my maternal line. To at least get an idea of the migration patterns of my ancestors and thus, have more to contribute to society on that side. It’s pricey for sure, but will it be worth it to have one less question to ask?

I did talk to my therapist about this and she asked why I do associate myself more with the ‘non-white’ other. In highschool I was in the Black and Latino Student Union. I even helped get the banner made and held up one end during the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. parades. A friend and I were both supposed to join, but when she walked into the room she walked right back out and said she felt too uncomfortable. Admittedly, just walking in was a big step for her as she still referred to people as ‘coloreds.’ In college when I asked about the Black Women’s group I was told I couldn’t join because I wasn’t black enough. This really hurt me as it was a big part of my highschool social life, and how did my blackness change from one year to the next? But my skin tone tends toward a more ivory of shades, and that was apparently the deciding factor.

So in college I ended up in the Native American Coalition. It was great- there were a lot of elders and storytellers that came to talk to us over dinners. This introduced me to the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian where I volunteered for many years afterwards.

When my therapist asked the question though, I had to think back farther, and I think the answer lies in the poverty of my youth. It’s true that ethnically, those in poverty are generally regarded as ‘minority’ status in America. I lived in Arizona, so we teamed up with Mexican immigrants as we went on searches for food. That is where I belonged. That is what the schools were comprised of. I remember once a richer neighborhood decided to bus some of us poorer students in, to provide diversity. I didn’t like the new school where I was an outcast or an oddity – a bused student on the free lunch program. When you have no money or a lot it seems race doesn’t matter, it’s only in the middle class where it does.

So I went from this land of poverty where others DID share and work together, even if my family was falling apart, to an upper echelon in college where that togetherness wasn’t really there as everyone was fighting for an identity, and physical ethnicity just seems to be the easiest one to grab on to.

Of course, I don’t have that ability to take the easy way out.

The ending of that therapy session was to get out and join some clubs and just start meeting people. Maybe join a walking group, or volleyball, or fern lovers, or whatever is out there just to start meeting people and seeing what I like. I can’t identify with any one ethnic group, and I’m not horribly poor so don’t have that, I’ve got my name. And I’m beginning to think that might be enough.

The Cats Of My Life: Yentl

Picture from commons.wikimedia.org

After Georgie died my mother was adrift without an anchor. She had had that cat for so much of her life. It was a devastating blow. But, we were in touch with a woman my mother at one time said was her sister, then later said wasn’t. That woman had seven outdoor cats and all gave birth at the same time. Suddenly, her house was my dream, a house filled with cute little fuzzballs.

My brother and I begged our mother to bring us there as often as possible. We helped name them all and loved watching feeding time when the floor of the kitchen became a writhing mass of kittens. My brother and I were very protective of the kittens and when potential adopters came made sure they weren’t researchers (yes, one admitted to wanting the kitten for a research project.) From the litter my mother picked one curious black cat to be her next companion. This is why she said she liked him:

“He was on my lap playing, and then suddenly he just shot off! I didn’t know where he went but found him in the litter box. He’s very clean and held it in until the last possible minute because he wanted to be with me.”

At the time, my mother thought Barbara Streisand was the best thing ever, hence the name.

That cat did love my mother with absolute blind devotion. And he didn’t continue running to the bathroom as he had when he was a kitten. Often times my mother complained of waking up with the cat still nestled in her armpit, and poop extruding from his behind. On multiple occasions he chose her warmth over the litter box. But I think she adored it. What more could she want then such love? Her children couldn’t give her that. As much as we tried we still had free will and she still saw us as hiding things from her, as not trusting or loving her as much as she deserved. After all, we wouldn’t soil ourselves just to remain in her presence.

My mother had gotten a leash to try and train him – as he was an outdoors cat – but it never worked. However, if she flicked the leash back and forth across the rug in an arc, he would jump after it often doing backflips in the process. Oh how her laughter would echo through the apartment as she flipped the leash across the floor. She did this until tears streamed down her face and Yentl, tired, curled up in her lap and fell asleep.

Yentl was a sleek black cat with sunflower yellow eyes. My brother and I joked about him seeing his ‘girlfriends’ around the block. There was the sweet tabby across the street and a calico a few doors down.

At the time we lived on a hill on the second floor of a two story building. Our landlord was old world Italian and kept a key to the place. On more than one occasion we came home to find evidence that she’d been there – and usually the evidence was the cat was let out. I don’t think she was a fan of black cats.

Our downstairs neighbor, well, I only remember my mother calling them ‘white trash’ as they constantly had cars up on cement blocks. They weren’t too fond of us, but my mother was known for insulting people loudly. Not the smartest thing to do.

The thing my brother seemed most fascinated about with Yentl was that despite the deep midnight black of his coat, he had the pinkest little behind. My brother always joked that Yentl had hemorrhoids. It was such a pervading joke, that when I attempted to sew as my grandmother did (but without patterns or a sewing machine) I made a little Yentl doll. It was simple, just cat shaped pieces sewn together. But on the back was a bright pink piece of fabric and when you pulled a thread, it wrinkled and bunched together and made my brother laugh as he repeated, ‘hemorrhoid’ over and over.

As Yentl was an outdoors cat he did get fleas. I remember watching my mother give him flea dip. I was horrified as the fleas ran to his eyes and ears to get away from the water and chemicals.

Yentl always knew when my mother was coming home from work and would run to the door meowing. Thus, when he wasn’t at the door as my mom pulled out of the driveway one night we were worried. I don’t even remember how we found him, just that he was bloody. Very bloody. In searching for something to wrap him in my mother grabbed my coat. My pink coat. My only coat. A coat that we couldn’t afford to replace. There is still some anger over the fact that I had to go to school in a coat with his blood stains on them after this.

But at that time, it was extreme emergency. We wrapped him and held him in the back of the car as my mother somehow drove to the vets amid tears. While driving she concocted the story of what happened to Yentl. “It was those white trash neighbors of ours,” she seethed, “they knew he was our cat and that’s why they hit him with the car.” I forget where she got that idea, but it’s what we believed.

Yentl was rushed into surgery and within a few hours we were told that his jaw was broken and would be wired. The vet went over instructions with my mother and sent us all home. We could not visit him as he still had a lot of work to be done.

The next morning came the call. It was believed that a blood clot moved into his lungs. Either way, he was dead. There would be no more little black cat to poop in my mother’s bed, or make her laugh as he jumped after a leash, or run to greet her when she came home. All that remained was the blood on my jacket.

Yentl was buried in our ‘aunts’ backyard. Or maybe it was our backyard. I think it was ours. Shortly afterwards my brother began burying animal after animal in the yard. He made crosses from sticks and branches and, for Yentl, out of bricks he found. Although he insisted he found the animals already dead, we weren’t entirely sure if that was true.

Slice of My Past - Living in a Garage

For a while when I was younger we lived in a camper inside a garage. When I started to remember that time period, I wanted to verify if it was true or not. I spent a few minutes online and found an address and name that matched the area and person I recall. My mother had told us at first that it was our uncle we were staying with, but later said he wasn’t really. There are a lot of memories swimming around from that period. I was allowed inside to sleep on occasions because the owner of the house had a daughter around my age. I slept on her floor.

I had very few toys at that time, one of which was a Speak and Spell. My mother told me that she had sold plasma to get that for me one Christmas as it was the only toy I wanted. She sold blood and plasma on more than one occasion when we were younger. Then, after staying in the trailer and in the house, it was missing. The daughter had all the ‘Speak and’ series (math, reading) and now had the Spelling one too. My mother insists she stole it, and brought it up over and over for a long time. I don’t know what to believe.

My brother was jealous that I got to spend more time indoors than he did. But he was already getting a reputation for acting out a lot. I remember one morning when he slept in late and I heard a lot of cursing. He was swearing in his sleep. Just loud, angry curses. It’s sad to think of an 11-year old boy so disturbed he’s doing that in his sleep. He wasn’t much better when he was awake.

After finding the name and phone number, I wrote this man. It’s funny, I know I’ll never reconnect with my mother, don’t want to. I don’t want to talk to my brother either, not really, as I mentioned before. At least, not now. But this man – I decided that if he was real, than my childhood was validated. Then I really did live in the garage of a house owned by a man who may or may not be related.

I spoke to my friend Xiomara about the letter. The main thing was to not mention the living in a garage while he had a house but to be kind and thankful for having shelter at all. I then asked if he was related, and what he remembered about me during that time and my mother. Once it passed Xiomara’s inspection in terms of not sounding angry or depressed or needy, I mailed it.

Very soon after I got a letter back. It was short, and riddled with misspellings. Yes, the letter said, I am your uncle. Yes, it continued, you lived with us. Yes, I have a daughter and you used to play together. Yes, Yes, Yes. It was real.

As for the questions about myself and my mother? “I don’t feel comfortable talking about her,” was the reply.

But that was enough. It was all real. I really lived in a garage with a bi-polar mother and brother who cussed in his sleep and was beginning to hate the world. This meant there really was a place that had ‘fried fish Friday’s’ that my mom would spit as she said. There was a neat-freak aunt and another aunt that had 21 cats and used to paint my nails and tried to allow me to be a little girl. There was just so much that happened – and it was real.

I look back now and is it any wonder it seems like a movie? I’m doing well living in Manhattan, working 6 days a week, and have constant access to food and shelter and clothes and things that I need. Then I see the past and the dumpster diving and living in garages and cars and hunger pangs and just so much anger and utter confusion and I’m really amazed that that is all part of me.

Picture from http://www.greenleafdollhouses.com/ found via google.

The Last Word

Photo from http://commons.wikimedia.org

Ah, the things in childhood you never forget. The power of the last word was such a pain in the ass my entire life. It was insisted that only ‘the mother’ get the last word in any conversation as she was the one who was most important. After her, my brother.

I still remember the way these conversations, arguments, even greeting could go.

Me - “Welcome home ma, how was work.”

Her - “That guy was being such a shit again. Insists because he went to college he’s better than me.”

Me - “But who has more responsibility? You do, right?”

Her - “Yeah, I do all the work in that f*cking place anyway.”

Me - “Well, I’m off to R.s now to do some homework. I’ll have dinner there.”

Her - “Wait”

Me - “Why, you told me over the phone this would be fine?”

Her - “You can’t just leave until I say you can.”

Me - “Fine, may I please go to R’s house.”

Her - “Did you do your homework?”

Me - “I’m doing it there.”

Her - “Did you do your chores?”

Me - “Yes, and your dinner is in the fridge.”

Her - “Then you may go.”

Me - “Thank you.”

Her - “Your welcome.”

Me - “Do you want me to pick you up anything from the store on the way back?”

Her – “Why do you do that. I said you can leave now go, just leave. Don’t say another word.”

Me – “Why?”

Her – “You little bitch, I see your game. You’re just trying to get the last word again.”

Me – “What do you mean the last word? I asked if you wanted me to pick you up something from the store!”

Her – “Right. You know exactly what you’re doing. I get the last word. I’m the mother.”

Me – “Fine, then say the last word and let me go.”

Her – “Good, as long as you realize that.”

I roll my eyes as I turned around.

Her (grabs my bag) – “Oh no you don’t missy. That’s the same as saying something. I get the last word, got it?”

Now I’d get confused because if I said something, she wouldn’t get the last word!

These types of ‘conversations’ happened with enough frequency for me to remember them. Sometimes I would say ‘fine, I understand, you got the last word’ just to piss her off further because it would get absolutely ridiculous. Does having the last word mean anything? Not in my book – just means you are power hungry if you won’t let anyone else be the last to say something. With her it was very much “I am the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega” she wasn’t just the top dog, she was every dog and we, her children, were there merely to put her shit in little plastic bags and dispose of them in a sanitary manner.

I still don’t understand it though. Does the last word mean anything? Does it mean you won the argument, or are worth more than the other person? Obviously she thought so, but what about others? Someone else have the last word here :)

Letter to My Brother

I went to bed last night with every intention of finally cleaning up the blog a bit and putting up the Memes/Awards I've gotten. I love the support I've received from people such as Amel and Michelle who have tagged me. Time is just flying so fast right now.

So I sat down, wrote out my sentence to motivate me, and put on some music.

The music is the Prince of Egypt soundtrack. I got it at a dollar store. Brian Stokes Mitchell just has an amazing voice.

Then the lyric comes on, "Once I called you brother. Once I thought the chance to make you laugh, was all I ever wanted."

And it totally changed my writing focus, so I wrote a letter instead. But I won't mail it, can't mail it. I'll explain why at the end.

***

Dear Brother,

I’ve been thinking of you lately, but don’t know how to anymore. Does it mean anything that we are related or is it time to just think of us as people forced to live in a situation that was sometimes good but more times than not the most opposite of ‘good’? We’ve both had to overcome a lot to get to where we are today, wherever that may be. I don’t know if I want to hear you are doing well or not. I wish most people well, but the past sometimes overpowers me as much as I try to rationalize behaviors away. From both of us. I don’t like thinking how angry I was during that time, how much I hated you. I hated you because you betrayed me at every chance to our ‘mother’ – in quotes because it’s by birth only, not nurturing.

You told me you loved her. That is something I can’t understand. How you can love someone like her.

Is there a chance for us to ever have a relationship after ‘the war has ended.’ That’s how I feel – like our childhood was a battlefield. Now that we’re far away, is it time to clear the mines or just stay away from the area completely?

I wish I had an answer. I wish I had the strength to deal with everything. I wish I didn’t fear that you would immediately call up ‘mother’ and tell her I contacted you. Tell her that I don’t love her. I try to understand why you used to do that – was it to hurt her by telling her that her only daughter didn’t love her or to hurt me because you knew she’d come after me when she heard? Was it to bolster yourself as you continually confessed your love for her though you never showed it?

In the end I do wish you peace, whatever your definition of that word may be. Peace, quiet, a chance to get away from the storm and reflect and learn and grow. Or, if your peace is to forget, I wish that as well. Maybe I’m forgotten already.

***

The reason I won't mail it is because I don't know what he feels, if he wants to remember. If he doesn't want to go back there, I would be intruding. I also don't know if he is still close to our 'mother' - and what he would do. I don't want to be dragged into anything with her again. I don't want her to think I care or to try and contact me again.