Last Day of Classes

Today marks the last day of classes for me. Final exams are next week and then the reporting of grades, and then...hello summer vacation. The balmy weather is a perfect signifier of the shift in the year - too hot for my black, wool blazer, or my boots, or any sort of sweater. Grey skies made summer seem impossibly far away.

The other morning as I walked from the classroom towards the car, I smiled at another professor in the outside hallway and she smiled back, chiming, "Two more weeks!" I laughed out loud because I understood her, I was a full-fledged "teacher," not being able to fathom a year where work never ends and there's only a two-week vacation to relieve the Groundhog-day-ness. We have fourteen weeks! Or something like that. I haven't worked it out. How special though to belong to that club where we are not alone in marking the days for the long summer vacation. Every year my husband (a teacher of junior-high-school) periodically tells me the number of days left of the school year, 140 days, 98 days, 60 days, the best saved for last, "Two more days!" On some level, the anticipation of the "end," is sweeter than finally getting there.

As I listen to the ticking off of days remaining, I envision a prison wall's scratched lines, or a calendar with the days violently x'd out (in red of course).

At the same time, I'm saddened a little at this ending. In the year-long classes I teach, I get to know students more personally than in one semester. I know these students' pains, their struggles, their goals for the future. Most likely I will never see them again, I may even forget their faces and names. In these last days, I try to memorize my "favorites" and wish them well. There is an awkwardness in this final separation. How does one say goodbye to someone who will disappear into the busy forever? A pretense is what happens, "Let me know when you get your first paralegal job, send me a picture of the baby, don't ever hesitate to e-mail me if you have a question about the law or school."

So summer is almost here and there is much to think about. Much to do.

1. Clean up my office, top to bottom, side to side.

2. Clean the garage.

3. Paint the inside of the house.

4. Do early preparation for classes which will start in September (hahahaha!).

5. Read all the books on my nightstand.

6. Write some short stories.

7. Play with the children.

8. Take a museum trip every week.

9. Swim in the pool several times a week.

10. Work on the children's scrapbooks.

11. Work on my novel.

12. Print out my blog.

13. Be happy.

14. Breathe.

15. Sleep.

Things to repair:

1. Two broken windows.

2. Light switch in the boys' room.

3. Dead television in the family room.

4. Heartfelt wounds.

5. An angry soul.

6. A myriad of misperceptions.

What do you covet? (updated)

Got tagged by Rodger Jacobs for an interesting meme-birthday-list this morning. He urged that we not focus on general concepts like world peace and the like. Practical things, he said. Funny, on my birthday, I thought and thought what I'd like to have and couldn't come up with anything. What I wanted was the impossible. No practical thing could satisfy me.

But certainly, there must be something?

1. A large, obcene amount of money in my checking account. Not that interested in small monthly deposits. No, there's nothing as satisfying as seeing a 5 or 6 digit balance for those on the lower economic end of things. The thrill of potential, the rush of the immediate future. All those things we've been wanting to do!

2. A new computer. I'm virus infected but don't have the time to wipe the drive right now so I'm living with that same ridiculous bug I've had since January. JANUARY? Yes. Damn Windows and Microsoft.

3. A vacation house either on a beach bluff or in the mountains. I have visions of taking weeks off to write, to recoup. A place to watch the kids search for pretty rocks on shore or pine cones in a stretch of forest. A place to study the stars at night because here in the city that is an impossibility.

4. Two extra rooms in our house so J can have his coveted own room, and another to house a library full of books.

5. A housekeeper-gourmet cook. Someone to clean up on a constant basis and cook all our dinners. I'll handle lunch, but how satisfying to have healthy, whipped-up meals without my having to get started at four in the afternoon for such a thing. How wonderful to sit down each night to something delicious. I have images of smiling faces and beautiful china and candlelight. All without my having to work at it.

Who do I tag? Lori at Lori's Place, Hurricane Shirley at Excellent Fodder, Diana at Diaphanous, Patrick at Full Blue Moon Dementia, and Carolyn at the Ginger Quill.

***

Today, I'm unsociable. As I write, the family is at a community dinner, the kids hanging out with neighbor kids, the husband listening to speakers talking about our…community. The idea of it just grated on me. So at the last minute, I decided to stay in and grade papers. I managed to get in a nap. The papers still sit. The husband is irritated at me. He called and asked, “Come over and serve the kids their food, please.” I gritted my teeth and said, “No.” I’m certain to hear about it later. I’ll let you know how it all goes down.

Last night, however, I wasn't feeling unsociable. I had the pleasure of meeting Hurricane Shirley of Excellent Fodder, and excellent she was! We enjoyed ribbing Rodger Jacobs about his mild grumpiness while surrounded by a noisy crowd at the Acapulco. The waitresses were passing out beads a la Mardi Gras or St. Patrick’s day. The three of us nodded kindly and passed on the green baubles which evoked a flash of horror on the waitress’s face.

“What do you mean you don’t want the beads?”

“No, no beads.”

“But they’re happy beads. Take the beads.”

“No beads.”

“TAKE THE BEADS YOU VILE, UNSOCIABLE CUSTOMERS!!” At which point she flung like ten strings at us, the strings breaking apart and mixing into our Fiesta Plate. A beautiful sight really.

That didn’t happen. Completely made up. Total, utter fiction. About the beads, that is. The waitress wanted that to happen though, I could tell. When we rejected her offer of plastic jewelry, she blinked, her mouth stiffened, her blond hair shook with simmering tension. She turned and left to bother others about the beads.

Our afternoon dwindled as we drank our margaritas and over all enjoyed the company of one another. The 210 freeway was amazingly open as I drove home near seven beneath a darkening sky, zipping through Eagle Rock and Pasadena, and onto home, Nelly Furtado accompanying my drive.

I’ve decided what I covet most is unscheduled free time.

***

Update: You can find Diana's thoughtful list here.

Laughing Out Loud

"Laugh-out-loud hilarious!"

"...deliriously funny comedy..."

"Sharp comic edge."

What's the movie about? A mother who's dying of cancer gathers her family and their respective loves for her last Christmas. Yes, "The Family Stone," starring Diane Keaton as the dying mother. While watching the film, DVD in my hand, I kept wondering if the writer of the ads had some serious mother-hate going on because...well...in my day and age, a person dying of breast cancer just isn't funny. There was no way anyone could see this movie and say, "deliriously funny comedy." In my day, we called this, "drama," or even a "dramedy."

Oh I'm sorry, did I just ruin the spoiler? If so, I'm sorry, but I'm just warning you for your own good. I spent my lunch watching it - a last minute rental - a desire to see the uptight Sarah Jessica Parker. Luckily, I had prior warning. I knew what it was about, but did not expect the cover of the DVD to lie so openly. Strange. Quickie review: it had funny moments, SJP did a great job as the tightly wound fiancee. That's it, folks. Not worth the time.

At least I had company: my husband.

D took a much-deserved day for himself and allowed a substitute teacher to manage the kids at school. Our lovely day started with breakfast at the Vault restaraunt in Glendora, a small cafe that has the intriguing history of once being a bank. Today, a part of the vault is still there and it serves as a fine curiousity to the local residents. After lunch, we wandered the quaint main street, hand-in-hand, peeking in windows, happy to be free of the little ones.

I'm always amazed at how easily we capture our old friendship when we separate from our chain-gang. Makes me look forward to a time when we can get more of this kind of time. There are moments when I think the friendship is strained to the point of breaking - I worry for that time in the future.

In the meantime, we celebrate together Cinco de Mayo - back when my mother was alive, I used to tease her on this day by saying, "Happy Independence DAY!!" She'd get so angry because of course, the independence day for Mexico is September 16. Today, on the other hand, is a day to celebrate the unlikely triumph of the burdened Mexican army over the arrogant French in a famous battle - they lost the war, but the battle still survives as a reminder of strength and spirit. It is a day of beating Goliath. Oh she'd get angry at me! Funny, funny, funny.

Well, happy Cinco de Mayo, everyone. Here's to independence!

Looking Forward to Summer

Summer's coming, thank God. Three weeks from today, I’ll be done with Academic Year 2005-2006. Let me tell you, I cannot wait for the day I turn in my grades. I'm chomping at the bit to get out – tired of whiny students, tired of lecturing to people who don’t give a damn about learning. My nerves are shredded. Likewise, my kids and D finish up in June.

Then what, you ask?

D and I have been asking the same question and in answering it, we're facing the decision of whether to send the boys to summer school. In hindsight, we didn't like the effect of the summer session on our household at all. The fights to get up and get to school continued through the end of July. The thought of getting no break...well, it breaks us. So this year, we're saying, "Hell no, we won't go." Instead, we're going to fill the summer with swimming, bike riding, picnics and naps in the park, beach trips, movies, television, and video games. Sure, the boys could use the extra boost of more math and reading. Sure, it's not like we've got valedictorians on our hands.

Sure, some out there might say, "But their education will suffer! They need more, more, more!"

Yeah, well, fuckit. We're gonna play. We're going to enjoy the break, sleeping in and staying up late. And all those things I mentioned hereinabove. I'm determined to grab onto some happiness before school starts again in September. This year's been tough on everybody - we deserve some free-wheeling joy for a change no matter what our society says.

My middle one, A, has been really suffering from severe irritability - he's so angry at everything, so angry at school work, so angry at nothing, it breaks my heart. There's nothing I can do to soothe him except to relieve him of all this goddamn responsibility. I have to try something other than the routine of writing up worksheet after worksheet after worksheet. He brought home some good tests this week - 90% and above - which makes me think we can forego the summer school. Not having worksheets for 12 weeks won't doom him to life in a gas station, ya’ know? And if that's where he ends up...well, I'll still be here to barbecue his favorite steak, give him a kiss on his nose, and tell him I love him.

Both of them.

All three of them if that’s their paths.

I’m so tired of the worksheets, of the demand to learn.

Learning has never been harder in my entire life than right now.

Can’t wait to wake up to a sunny morning where the biggest decision is, bacon for breakfast or eggs…or maybe chocolate ice cream cake?

Pulling Teeth

I've been lazy about posting this week because we've been busy – sitting down and spitting out words has been as difficult as pulling teeth. Just didn’t want to do it. Had lots of papers to grade but didn’t feel like breaking out the pen and slashing away at the students’ work. Had a dentist appointment today but I didn’t want to go (hate, hate, hate the dentist!). It was a bad week for J in getting to school in the morning which made me dread waking up, too. There was a lot of homework for A which made me dread the kids coming home from school. M was great this week, though. She was a doll actually, which made me not want to ship her off to school.

The usual I suppose.

After the dentist appointment this morning, I had lunch with my grandmother and my sister. While eating, we got onto the subject of loose teeth. M has a couple of them and these teeth are really hanging on. We keep wiggling them but still they sit, rooted in.

Sister asked me, "Why don't you just pull them? Try with your fingers."

I shuddered, "I can't – can’t cause them any sort of pain that way. Can't pull teeth, can't clip fingernails, and I can't pluck eyebrows because I can't stand the sensation of plucking skin."

"I remember having a conversation about you with my friend – she and I are like monkeys, constantly grooming our children."

"But pulling teeth?"

"My kids pull their own teeth. You should see AH! Six years old and yanking the tooth out like a real Amazon woman.”

“Mine, too. The boys totally pulled their own teeth.”

“We really should use pliers,” Sister said. “Not even wait for the teeth to get loose.”

“Like Mommy did with us!”

We cackled, laughing a bit hysterically.

My grandmother chimed in, “Your mother did that because she inherited the ability to treat a human body without fear. My father used to remove bullets from the troops without blinking an eye.”

“But Mama Nana, we weren’t soldiers in the Mexican Revolution on the front line, we were her CHILDREN. She was…masochistic.”

“No, no,” I clarified, “She was a SADIST.”

“’Just hold on to the chair, mija!’” Sister mimicked herself as a child, holding the sides of the chair and screaming.

I laughed and shook my head, “What chair, she held me down in her arms and pulled those babies out with everything she had. I swear to GOD, my teeth weren’t loose.”

We laughed while my grandmother gnawed on a large roll. “I ruined my torta,” she said, her tone one of aggravation. “Shouldn’t have put it in the microwave. I could loose teeth on this.”

She didn’t want to hear us mocking our mother, shaking her head at us while we still chuckled and looked at each other in disbelief.

“But Mama Nana,” Sister said, “Our teeth weren’t loose.” She had such an expression of horror that I burst out laughing again, much to the chagrin of Mama Nana.

What can I say? It’s mostly true – the teeth she pulled those few times were somewhat loose. I have a particular memory of being in my mother’s arms on a chair in our old house on Holliston in Pasadena, tasting the metal of the pliers, and screaming like mad as she worked to get a tooth out. She pulled it out all right, smiling and waving the pliers about, “See? Not so bad, eh?”

The weird part is I cannot remember the pain. I know I felt it, why else would I be screaming? Granted, it could have been fear, the anticipation of pain that never came. Or the pain was so mild, I forgot about it. Or maybe it simply is a natural inability to recall physical pain. Have I written about this before? Sounds familiar. My mother used to say that women forget the pain of childbirth which is why they go on to have more children. If we could recreate in our head physical pain, the world would have fewer people.

Mama Nana finished her ruined torta, and we finished our remembrance of pulled teeth. I packed my bags and left to pick up A. After I shuttled A home, I turned back around and checked J out of school early in order to prevent him from slipping away after school under the guise of, “I forgot I was grounded.” I felt good about it…rather sneaky. I had warned him that if he was late again to school, he’d lose the computer and his friends for two days. I knew I surprised him and he even said, “Did you do this to stop me from going with my friends?”

“You bet your bippy, I did.”

“What’s a bippy?”

“I have no idea but you better not go looking for any.”

“I was kidding. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was just kidding.” He smiled hugely.

“Yeah, sure you were.” I smiled back at him and hugged him. “You little brat.”

You know, writing this wasn’t quite as bad as pulling teeth.

Catching Oranges and Cutting Flowers

The irises are in bloom at my grandmother’s house, as are the roses, the crocuses, the oranges, lemons, grapefruits and a variety of flowering cacti. She has a “catcher,” or fruit picker for the fruit – a narrow, plastic basket with curved metal prongs that sits at the end of a long wooden handle – and taught M how to use it yesterday when we visited for lunch. M had a wonderful time doing the “catching,” moving the tool in and out of the leaves and laden branches to get the prongs caught on the fruit so she could pull and loosen the fruit away from its tight hold onto the tree. She squealed in delight when the fruit fell into the basket. She laughed even more when the fruit missed the basket altogether and came down to the ground, narrowly missing her.

Before that, M and my grandmother walked beneath the old trees and pretended they were in a jungle chasing bears. They waved their sticks at the flowering brush around them, living in an imaginative world for a while. At age eighty-nine my grandmother can’t walk like she used to, having to be extra careful back there. Recently she said she was bent over, trying to avoid low-hanging lemon tree limbs and bumped her head against the trunk of the tree, not realizing how far she’d managed to move. While the two cavorted in the shadows, I watched to make sure Mama Nana didn’t fall.

I also took pictures of the cactus plants, the names of which I don’t know. We took pictures of M with flowers she picked and arranged into a small, woven basket with my grandmother’s help. M sat on the grass, a leg to the side, like a model. I don’t know where she learned to sit like that but the pose reminded me of my mother. We spent a long time in the backyard, doing nothing, really, beneath grey skies, in chilled air.

My grandfather was inside, fuming over recent trouble he shared with me over lunch. His driver’s license has been suspended pending a driver’s test – I’m not all that confident he’ll pass. The two drive the freeways still. They go to the Valley to visit my grandmother’s sister – they drive to Orange County to visit my aunt – they drive to Los Angeles to visit another aunt of mine. They drive a lot of places – that used to be their entertainment. Long drives to the desert, the mountains, and Tijuana. Once they drove as far as Central Mexico to visit family.

Losing his license, my grandmother said, will be like death to them.

My grandfather wasn’t worried however. “I’ve been driving for sixty years! I’ve never had an accident and in my opinion, I’m an excellent driver.”

He has no idea that we all bite our fists when we watch them leave our houses. He drives slowly, just like he walks. My mother, in her last year, had been so worried about the way he drove that she threatened me with my life if I ever let him take my kids anywhere. That was six years ago – Papa Raul hasn’t exactly improved with age.

I don’t know what to do for them – I don’t know if there is a taxi service that will be as accessible as a car at the ready. I know my sister and I will have to be more accommodating as our aunts live too far away. We’ll have to research for alternatives. The reality is sad, but necessary. I’ve heard too many stories of elderly people getting into car accidents due to poor reflexes and poor vision. I’ve heard the horror stories. They’ll have to adapt. Unfortunately, change isn’t one of their strong traits. My grandmother still refuses to get air conditioning because she believes her house will get too cold. So to this day, they suffer in their Pasadena house, cooled only by electric fans.

My grandmother shuffled around her kitchen, gathering sweets for our ride home as if we were going by horse, the way she used to travel when she was a young girl. When we were through with our hug, we looked into one another’s eyes and thanked each other for a perfect afternoon. We enjoyed the moments, the flowers, the food, and being with M.

As I drove away, they waved to me from the corner, appearing small and frail. I touched the grapefruits in the bag - yellow, blotched with dirt from the rain, smooth skin, large and bittersweet.

The Queen of the Mundane

So I opened my e-mail a few days ago to find a rejection notice of a maternal-type essay I wrote and sent in to a parenting journal. The essay talked about the stresses of being a modern mother of three extra-demanding children and was pretty much typical Adriana Bliss stuff, you know?

The notice said, “We liked your story but felt it did not move beyond the mundane enough to be right for us.”

[Blink]

The word, “mundane,” was familiar to me – an online critic once applied that particular criticism to a couple of my photographs I’d put up at a forum for review. The description incited some argument because of course the critic was like 20 years old and living in New York City and couldn’t be further disconnected from the L.A. suburbs or from a non-working, aging mother. The two perspectives were grossly skewed. The proponents of my shots argued that there was nothing mundane about my point of view, that there was beauty and excellent form and there was uniqueness to what I expressed. Perhaps. Certainly, I thought later, when the child has free access to clubs and plenty of time to compose artistic, black and white fluff…well, shots of “backyard flowers” would certainly seem...

…mundane.

Am I mundane? Have I become a lonely old woman who frets about mold growing on bread in an overheated bread box? Am I ordinary, speaking in ordinary tones, speaking of the mundane in a voice that doesn’t, cannot, go beyond unfixable limitations?

I’m reminded of a quote by Dale at the blog, Mole, that I was a little horrified by last month (brought to my attention by the inimitable Diana at Diaphanous):

I feel diminished and ordinary, though. This was what I have been protecting myself against, all these years -- against this sense of myself as just a person like any other person, subject to the same discontents, laboring under the same conditions. And that's exhausting too. I hadn't realized just how heavily I leaned on a sense that I had something special about me, something in reserve that would dazzle people if they only knew -- how much I depended on that.

The statement Dale wrote, beautiful and haunting, horrified me because it rang so true. Since I was a child I labored under the idea that I was someone unique and special and…brilliant (yes, yes, the term had been applied to me in college by beloved professors, a term I hung on to and so badly wanted to believe)…a person who would accomplish great things. As I struggled with failed goals, I kept putting new ones in front of me, different ones, each one seeming just as impossible to attain as the last, each goal getting less and less spectacular until one morning I woke up and my goals consisted of getting out of bed, making a fried egg, and showering.

“If I can do those three things, the day should work out fairly well.”

Happiness continues to elude me – depression comes and goes – hopes ebb and flow. I sigh often and droop about the house, an ordinary house in the middle of an ordinary suburb somewhere southeast of Los Angeles. Time is catching up and in some circles I am beyond hope to do much more than mother and teach a couple of classes on the side.

What if that is all I was ever meant to do? How does one let go of the extraordinary illusions? Do I try to be the "best darn mother this side of the Mississippi?"

How ordinary, how mundane, that at this midlife I wonder these things.

This morning I sat in traffic on the way into Studio City to meet my dearest friend, Lori, for a breakfast at Jinky’s Cafe. A pick-up truck drove past me, a display case full of Mexican sweet bread in the bed. The pinks, the yellows, the browns…the bread to accompany café con leche on a chilly spring morning. How funny to see the bread there in the center lane, the imagined scent making its way into my car.

So ordinary, the bread.

Kicking the Pack Rat

We were lazy as usual so for dinner D ordered a pizza from Papa John’s – not the best but the kids like the dipping sauce. I volunteered to pick it up because I was in need for a few minutes quiet time, looking forward to popping in a CD and relaxing for the 20 minutes or so I’d be gone. No argument from D who was more than happy to stay seated on the couch.

In the Passat, I zipped across the city in the last of the afternoon light, passing a strutting guy (and I mean strutting), two moms walking in identical step with their babies in purple strollers, and a guy with tattoos in a wife-beater walking his four Chihuahuas (no, they were walking him). Once I had the pizza ($20.52), I climbed back into the car and zipped back home, listening to Credence Clearwater Revival all the way.

As I pulled up into the driveway, my heart sank a little. Out in front, ready for the trash, was the rocking chair my father bought me for the birth of J. It’s been sitting in the back porch for a long while because there’s no room for it anymore in the house. The kids’ rooms are full of their own needed furniture, their books. Every room in our house is filled with our necessaries.

There is no room for sentimentality.

And it’s not like the chair has great monetary value. It’s not an antique. It’s a glider that was popular back in the early 90’s and cost maybe $100. You could get them anywhere. Sears, Robinson’s, Levitz. The pillows are terribly used, dirty, even more so having been outside this past winter.

There’s no room for this chair in my house.

I rocked all three of my babies in the chair, rocked them to sleep and breast-fed them there. I would rock in the dark of their room and look at their faces and think, “My god, how could I have made something so beautiful and so perfect?” I sang familiar lullabies in that chair, I made some up. I made the new ones familiar to my babies. There in the dark of the room, I thought about stories to write, tales to tell. There in that chair, I grieved horribly the loss of my parents – so many nights after each one left, I wondered why they couldn’t have stayed. There, I said to my husband, “My god, how lucky I am to have found you.” There in that chair, I said behind the back of my husband, “Jesus…what was I thinking?”

In the chair I watched the children grow from helpless infants to capable ones with teeth who grinned and bit my nipple as a sign that they were done…they were ready to move on. I remember how difficult the separation was – I didn’t choose to stop nursing, they did. They…grew up.

If I close my eyes, I can feel the glide of the chair and the warmth of the baby (all three of them) in my arms. I can remember wondering what they’d be like when they were older, so excited for them to get older, so resistant to it happening.

In the chair I remember asking my mother about my two-week old baby, “Do you miss them at this age?”

She lied and said to me, “No, you will be too busy enjoying them at each new age.” I know she lied – she didn’t want to taint the moment I had right then, the moment with J in my arms, my first. I know she lied because right at this moment, I miss those babies. There is a certain grief that comes with each age, a shadow right alongside the joy of each new age.

The chair is done – to keep it is silly, a pack rat’s tendency. There’s no room in our house for an extra piece of furniture, but there’s plenty of room for the memory of it, for the sighs and laughs and cries and songs that it brought me.

Happy Holidays!

Happy Easter...and belated Passover wishes, to all.

Today, we're off to my Aunt's house in the OC for a fine Easter lunch tradition. Unusually, we're actually having this family get together on THE day. For a long while we've been hosting the family party the week before so there's no clashing with the myriad in-laws.

I think of my mother today. I miss a special Mexican dish she used to make called, capirotada. I encourage you to look at the link - great pictures - an almost identical view of how my mother made it except my mother used cheese in her recipe. Here's another good article about it. The dish consisted of dried fruits, fried bread, cinnamon, and the best brown sugar syrup. For us kids, the making of the dessert was much better than the actual dish itself because we loved to just dip the fried bread into the syrup. That was the best part. I'm laughing as I write this because in fact I don't think I ate more than a few bites of the completed capirotada in my entire life. Of course, the dipping and eating and hanging out in the kitchen took place the day before Easter. We'd wait patiently while she cut the bread, fried the bread, and then made the syrup. Then...eating just enough so as to leave enough for my mother. She was never sober while making the dish, but that was okay because her tipsy-ness was always a happy sort. The making of the food always brought her such joy.

Anyway, I miss her today, but in a good way. Memories that "warm the cockles of the heart." As they say.

Happy Easter, everyone...happy, happy, happy.

Fiction: Pasadena Freeway

She gripped the door handle of their twelve-year-old Jaguar when she saw the red lights of slowing cars at this midnight hour. A squeak slipped from her throat as she pressed a sandaled foot on the floorboard and he grumbled, “I see them, I see them.”

“But I always see them first.”

The Pasadena Freeway’s hairpin turns were treacherous. Stopped cars sometimes appeared to come out of nowhere, the sharp curves preventing a driver from seeing the wall of red before it was too late. A driver had to be firm on toes, anticipate the dangerous spots.

The play at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown, L.A., ended surprisingly late. The show had been enjoyable, a comedy of errors made even better because the tickets were given to them by her husband’s coworker in the bank’s real estate department. Traffic was surprisingly heavy even for a Saturday night. She’d been sweating when he honked the horn going through the Figueroa Tunnels, afraid of the cars to her left and right. The lanes were narrower than on most Southern California freeways because there was no room for expansion.

Putting her fingers on the cold glass, she craned her neck to see the old houses at Heritage Square. For years she passed by on her way to school and never learned the exit to get to the park. The insides of the Victorian houses culled from decaying Los Angeles neighborhoods were left to her imagination. There was a new one there – white siding, green shutters on two stories of windows, a black door. Moonlight lit the homes. They were ghostly in their natural states of emptiness.

“Just needs a white picket fence,” she said more to herself than to him but he heard.

“Boring.”

“Quaint and predictable can be beautiful.”

The car swished to the left and then to the right. She forgot to keep her eyes on the road and the turns made her a little ill. As old as she was, she still got car sick. The window came down with a press of a button and a whoosh of air came inside. She breathed in the chilly night. Cool for midsummer.

He chuckled, “Please, you hate predictability. It’s why you left your job. You wanted the excitement of living hand to mouth.”

“I left because my mother died and there was nobody else to take care of the kids.”

Their ten year anniversary was in two weeks. She bought him a modest Rolex watch. Can a Rolex ever be modest? She’d saved up for it, cutting a few indulgences here and there such as making sandwiches for the kids instead of having them buy at school, picking up canned coffee from Von’s instead of stopping at Starbucks, and buying clothes at Target instead of Nordstrom’s.

They passed through Highland Park and Lincoln Heights. Only one time in her life did she actually get off the 110 before hitting the end of the freeway at Arroyo Seco Parkway and that was to check out a new condo that had gone up at the entrance to Highland Park. The place was gorgeous, the price fit her first year lawyer’s salary, but the impoverished surrounding neighborhood rubbed against her Pasadena self. She bought the Jag instead and lived in an Arcadia apartment until she met her husband. The idea of a condo filled with her books, a computer, and silence, almost brought tears to her eyes. A flush of well-learned shame followed.

The car swerved around another curve, the traffic breaking up. She shut her eyes, mocking sleep, like she often did.

“I called the sitter,” he said. “She’ll be here on Saturday at the usual time. I know it’s not the actual day of the anniversary but…”

“Makes no difference to me.”

He turned on the music, zipping around stations. The easy listening came first, followed by the oldies, then the top hits, finally landing on Led Zeppelin at the rock station.

“Is that ‘Stairway to Heaven?’”

“Yeah.”

“I always think of–”

“Whoa!!” He slammed on the brakes and she put her hands out. The car’s tires screeched and a thump bumped beneath them, and she could tell they were spinning so she screamed, continuing to hold on to the dash, closing her eyes, thinking they were going to die and god damn it why didn’t she get the trust signed last week like she wanted and Jesus Christ, she wasn’t going to see her little angels again, and just before they hit, just before she was supposed to say, “I love you,” like all the movies say she is supposed to, she reached to him and said, “No such thing as fucking picket fences.”

They slammed hard against the metal railing of the center divider to amazing silence. In minutes she realized the quiet wasn’t real because traffic continued on the other side of the freeway. Cars all around were only in the process of slowing. They sat in their crunched sedan facing the wrong way. They could be seen at least. Perchance they were in a place where the curve didn’t block views. Everyone stopped. Seeing white lights coming toward her was even more frightening than red. She looked outside, out her husband’s open window, and in the middle of the freeway was a massive black animal. A dog, a deer, a wolf, a big cat from the Zoo, maybe. Who knew what it was? How could a person possibly tell now?

Tears fell and she swallowed the lump in her throat, turning to her husband, “Are you okay?”

“Yes, yes…Christ.” He turned the key in the ignition. Miraculously the car started. He was breathing hard and looking in her direction. “Are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so. I thought we were going to die.”

“Maybe we did.” He opened the window and poked his head out. “Doesn’t look like heaven. Stinks just like the city I know and love.”

He eased the car around, cars all stopped dead. There were voices. People were out, milling, poking at the dead thing in the middle lane. An act of God, someone said. Unstoppable. Came out of nowhere.

Sitting back a moment, he waited. Reached over and held her hand, “Picket fences? We’re about to die and you’re still thinking of those stupid houses?”

She laughed a little and shrugged. “An epiphany at the moment of death.”

“Stupid-ass epiphany. We’re living the picket fence life, baby. We got everything anyone could ever hope for.”

“Of course we do. It’s just what I wanted. What I dreamed about when I graduated. I don’t know what I meant.” She smiled and squeezed his hand back. People were getting back into their cars. A flare burned around the dead creature. Smoke snaked upwards.

“I’ll call the insurance company in the morning. Miracle we don’t need a tow.”

The empty houses had long faded into the night behind them. Up ahead was the first of several South Pasadena exits. The neighborhoods there were filled with Victorian houses, houses that had people inside, children in beds, bikes waiting to be ridden, swing sets in backyards, cars in garages, and white picket fences with their pointy tops and rusty nails.

The car took the last of the exits and disappeared to the left, white exhaust enveloping them. Their last twenty dollars in their wallets would pay for the sitter.

A Break

I’m feeling sentimental about M going to kindergarten. She will be off on her own journey and before I know it she will be in junior high and beyond. I’ve discovered this phenomenon by watching the boys. Kindergarten seemed the first defining moment of the rest of their lives. A certain independence emerges that year. Maybe it’s the reading, maybe it’s the “public” nature of public school. Might be the fact that on the playground they are lost in a crowd.

Whatever it is, kindergarten changes everything. Even thought the date is months away, I have found myself watching her, pulling her to me, indulging her make-believe games. I’m hanging onto these moments.

Every morning she awakens and comes to sleep the rest of the morning in my bed. I always awaken to her warm body next to mine and my husband always awakens to an elbow in his back. Lately, I’ve been staying awake a while to watch her sleep. There will soon be a time where she will be so big, “too big.”

So quick this passes.

***

This week is Easter Break and the children have been great. I don’t feel nearly as drained as I usually do. I’m relaxed even though I’ve got a lot of work to do for my own classes. I’ll be sorry when school starts up again. As we drove today to the candy and ice cream shop, Scoops, in Monrovia, I realized that I have this wonderful family of slackers. We LOVE not going to school or work.

We LOVE it and are happiest when we have no responsibility to anybody. We listened to the Doors on the C.D. player with windows rolled down and Sassy jumping all over us.

Lovely.

***

A got his bass guitar this week and had his first lesson tonight. We bought the guitar from the Fret House in Covina. The place is a throw-back to the 70’s – the owners are totally laid back and seem to have a real passion for the art of the guitar. What matters to these owners isn’t the money, but the guitar. Tens of them hang from the ceiling and line the walls. Books fill the aisles and amps of all ages haunt the corners. The Fret House has a basement where musicians play every weekend. Stuck to the door of the entrance to the basement were several fliers for musicians. One was looking for a bass player to play gigs and just have fun and had to be influenced by Nirvana, X, and the Misfits. The player also had to be between 17 and 19 years old.

Our future?

“Backdoor Man” is playing now and I’m glad the boys have an outlet of energy, of creativity. Hopefully their enjoyment of music will last. Hopefully, all three of them will find their ways in our complicated, responsibility-laden society.

Must go…papers to grade.

Birthday Songs (updated again)

The song was some weird variation on the usual, but the Margarita allowed me to just smile under my sombrero (a new thing at the West Covina Chevy's) despite the humiliation and clap at the end as I stared down at the cinnamon-shelled, ice-cream thingie covered with whip cream and chocolate syrup. Yummy – more calories. I can blame my brother-in-law BW for that.

I'm 42 today, sharing a birthday with Hugh Heffner and Charles-Pierre Baudelaire. Yesterday was surprisingly busy – baseball game with A in the morning (he hit a ball off a pitch and ran two bases!), getting-to-know-you pizza party with the team at a Glendora park, clothes-shopping for M at the local Target, the nice dinner. Oh yes, and opening my present. A brand new, second-generation Playstation 2 because our other one broke. In truth, my birthday was the excuse for the purchase – a conscious effort to limit our necessary purchases. We didn’t want to just go out and buy one for no reason at all or worse, to follow our instincts and get it to appease J’s recent resurgence of tics. We felt so sad for him this week because some kids started to make fun of him. He fumed because he’s too old to cry. My husband was ready to go out and buy him something to make up for it.

I lassoed him. “NO! We’re only going to teach him to buy things in order to soothe himself. We already do it enough. Please, let’s try to avoid that connection.”

We avoided it. So...Playstation for my birthday it is. Today we’ll see a movie – probably Ice Age. We have a flowery ice-cream cake (mint flavored, not my favorite, but the kids like it…are you all seeing a theme here?). At some point, I’ll have to prepare for classes this week. A terrible year it’s been for me – maybe it’s the kids draining me. Maybe the novelty of teaching as finally worn off. Whatever it is, I’d rather not be doing it.

Not surprisingly, I’m feeling a little blue today. Feeling unpretty, feeling fat, feeling that I’m not quite recognizing the girl in the mirror – remember when you wanted to be a doctor? Remember when someone called you beautiful and meant it? When did you get so gray? Why aren’t you doing more of what you love to do? On the other hand, isn’t it the passing of all these years that lets you write as freely as you do? Isn’t that a blessing?

The high point of the weekend will have been last night’s brisk walk of the dog near ten, M next to me, chatting and wearing her new clothes. The boys were on skateboards and zipping around the neighborhood in the dark of night, taking advantage of the fact that there weren’t any cars. They took different routes and we kept meeting them before they went on their way again. I wore my coat because cold runs through me so. The moon shined so whitely that we almost didn’t need the flashlight.

At one point M had walked far ahead of me and all I could see was the reflection of pink of her rain jacket when I pointed the flashlight towards her. The shadows hid her, then she was there, then she wasn’t…when I caught up to her, I held her hand and we skipped home, Sassy tugging on the leash.

And so another year begins.

Update: the near miss with the emergency room. In getting ready to go to the movies, everyone takes baths and showers. My husband decides to get really serious about the birthday grooming and begins clipping nails. Clips M's nails...a little close. So close there's blood on the finger and there are tears and screams and there's a gap the size of Mt. Vesuvius on her fingertip and we're all in a panic, thinking we should go to the emergency room, but then the Hello Kitty bandaid comes out and a spread of Neosporin and all seems to be well again. So...we're back on with the movies. J is blow-drying his hair and I'm here...buying tickets online for Ice Age. The next showing.

Ahh...a lovely birthday...a perfect one.

Post-Update: The movie was cute, but not as good as the first Ice Age. The finger is well on its way to recovery - I think we can avoid the doctor or the emergency room. The father, however, is not as recovered, now vowing to never trim nails ever again and especially not in a dimly lit den.

Fiction: Suburban Paranoia

I’m driving along Rosemead Boulevard in Arcadia, keeping pace behind a primer-grey 1970's van with rear frosted windows. A splash of red cuts across the glass on the right side and it looks like a face or blood. My stomach lurches because the more I stare at the streak, the more convinced I am that it is a child behind that glass, a stolen child. Sweat beads under my blouse and the silk sticks to my back. I press on the gas as the van picks up speed. My god, I think, I can’t see the license plate. I can’t read the letters. My god there is a child in there and he’s been kidnapped and it will be my fault if the child dies because I can’t focus on the letters and numbers.

Hell in a hand basket – this is where we’re going. I have to keep up with the van.

There were no less than five reports in our local newspaper today about local child molesters. The AP used a new term for them: seducers. The internet was the virtual alleyway where these men were caught seducing young things into watching pornography and exposing themselves using webcam. The internet is Satan’s playground and it should be shut down. Several years ago we had our very own Father Joseph arrested for fondling altar boys. He hanged himself before he got to trial. To think that a priest in our very own neighborhood was seducing young boys in front of our praying selves. On our knees we were and so were the boys.

I’m slamming on my brakes because the van has slammed on its brakes. Exhaust snakes upwards in this morning, rainy hour, wrapping itself around my car and I breathe hard with indecision. I could ram the van to open the rear doors and let the boy out. I wonder who is in there. The Smith boy? The Greenblatt boy? Maybe it’s a girl. A girl who looks like my daughter. Curly hair. Freckles across an innocent smile. Baby teeth. A beautiful, tragic package draped in a red Easter dress plastered on a photo, spread around the city.

The van turns right and I follow it, flooring it because the distance between us opened up too much. The van cuts across a lane, two lanes, and I’m right there, speeding along Foothill Boulevard and heading out of Arcadia into Monrovia. I’m missing a PTA emergency meeting on keeping children safe at the Mall. Last week’s meeting was about teenage sex. According to some parents, girls had taken to wearing short skirts, covering their laps with blankets, and letting boys touch them in class, right under the noses of teachers.

The van is stopped at a light. Following the rules. Obviously trying to avoid the police. Exhaust drifts into the traffic. I feel like honking my horn, screaming out of the window. I look at my neighbors, one putting lipstick on, another talking on a cell phone. Isn’t it obvious? The blood on the window, the child’s open mouth against the glass? They are being hauled away, torn away from mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. Young lives a wreck.

Thank god I stopped that myspace thing. Thank god I stopped my son from hanging out with that kid. Horrible parents, letting their child put his picture up on myspace. Child molesters could have gotten a hold of them. Both of them. Picked up in a van and taken away forever.

The van is driving forward. I’m driving forward. We’re all driving forward. The traffic is heavy, congested. I can’t move to the side and the van, the van is caught suddenly in front of another car. I honk the horn. The old woman gets out of my way, scowling at me as I pass. She wouldn’t mind if she knew.

I honk the horn behind the van. I honk and honk. I roll down the window and point like a mad woman. I’m pointing and screaming that there is a child in the van. People at first don’t notice but then they do. Then there are several trucks nearby. Strong men in trucks. They hear me, thank god, they hear me.

I point and scream. I honk. The van pulls over, pulls into a gas station. He climbs out and he’s a Mexican. There are men on him and they drag him away from the van. Kick him. Kick him again. I’m there, screaming, demanding the van be opened. There are people all around. They are screaming that this is why we need walls on our borders. The children, they scream, the children.

The rear doors are opened at last.

The man is beaten and curled up in a corner, bloody. He deserves it – the seducer deserves it. I’m heaving with relief at having rescued the child, the boy, the girl, the young thing in a photograph.

The doors are pried open. There is nothing in the back except a bouquet of red flowers.

Red flowers pressed against glass.

The Unreal Life

I’m done writing. I’m never going to ever write another piece for as long as I live. I’m not going to submit anything else for publication ever. I will not look to my family for stuff to write about. I will not reflect on my past.

Will not, will not, will not.

I’m reading a book called, “Digging the Vein,” about an L.A. drug addict and what’s caught my attention the most is how many typos there are. Every twenty pages or so one will pop out at me. Made me think that this was put together quickly – that someone read it and liked it but didn’t really read it, that not enough people really read it before going to press. When I’m finished I’ll throw it on top the other drug addiction books I’ve read – Permanent Midnight, Trainspotting, Candy.

I read Junky while sitting next to my mother who lay in a coma.

I read Diary of Drug Fiend while my father lay in a coma.

There I go again. Reflecting on the past.

The other night I took a late-hour trip to visit with one of my best friends. Drove the 210 to the 134 and got off at Hollywood Way. Drove to Cahuenga and pulled into the lot of the Holiday Inn Express. Waited there a bit until S came down, leaving behind the hubby and her toddler. After coffee, after some soul-warming conversation, I took her back. We chatted on couches in the lobby, “Gone in 60 Seconds” playing on the television too low for us to hear. Later, near midnight, I hugged her and said goodbye.

A young, Latino man stood outside the entrance against the wall. Just stood there, waiting for something. He watched me as I got into the car. I sat there a moment deciding how the hell I was going to get out. The lot was packed – no place to turn around. There was a set of three, skinny, bleach-blonde couples, talking and laughing, huddled near the entrance. A hand-written sign on the door said, “No Vacancies.” I decided I’d just pull forward a little, turn the wheel a tad, and drive backwards to the entrance of the lot where I could then turn around and get back on Cahuenga. It worked – got out without scraping the car.

The time was 12:30 and I took a different way home – got right onto the 101 which would eventually turn into the 10. I passed all my old exits for USC and Loyola, passed through downtown. I passed the Norris Cancer Hospital in East L.A. Passed the shut-down Sybil Brand Institute. Immediately, at seeing the hills across the freeway from Cal.State L.A., I thought about a turning point in my life – a visit to Sybil Brand, the women’s county jail, where I watched a ragged prostitute in a torn, red satin skirt get booked. I was visiting with my criminal law class from Loyola Law School. When we left her, we were treated to a throng of the most frightening women I’d ever encountered behind glass jumping up and down and mocking us. Sheer madness. The sight made me decide against becoming a public defender, a dream I’d entertained since high school. My Pasadena, privileged upbringing had rushed forth hotly and suddenly all my visions of representing the underdogs in society melted away.

I’m going the safe route, I said, I choose safety.

The rain has come again and I’m inside, feeling protected. M has just come in from outside. She wore her pink rain boots and played in the mud a little. Sassy watched from the porch, barking every so often. She has no fear, no discomfort at being wet or dirty. She’s still young, I think.

My coffee’s cold. The cereal from earlier this morning is soggy. The tests are still at my side. Showering awaits, tidying up the house awaits, and then there’s lunch, dinner…things to do…nice, safe things to do.

Fiction awaits.

Nothing Left

Last night, I spent a night out with D – we had dinner at a local steakhouse, I drank wine. Within the flow of alcoholic numbness I reflected about the situation with the boys. They have been combative lately, overly sensitive. I suggested we try to step back from our expectations because I notice that we get most upset when our goals (for them, for us) are not being met, whether it’s their being quiet or their doing their homework or meeting some other school obligations, or when they are acting in a way that is different from what we want in the moment. We have to put what we want aside in favor of bringing them some peace.

Simple, logical, you know?

The numbness slipped away as we walked in the misty night, holding hands, deciding what to do next with our free evening and in that nicety a jolt of guilt suddenly ran through me. I felt bad about writing so openly about the children on my blog – I felt bad about putting my personal expectations above those of the kids. A fellow blogger wrote about it recently and I understood his point because he wrote under his real name but I found I could not do what he did, I could not separate myself from my children, from the experiences I was having, pen name or not. The other day, I shared with a friend in similar circumstances an idea about gathering our essays, our reflections of being parents of unique children, into a collection of sorts. She shot down my idea hard, almost angrily. I felt terrible about even having the idea, sick about it.

Perhaps someone out there knows who Adriana Bliss really is…perhaps I’m exposing my kids’ personal problems to the world without their permission. Perhaps I’m violating their privacy. She thought so.

Maybe all my writing violates privacy. There isn’t a single person in my world that doesn’t enter into the fiction, the memoirs, the daily posts. They are my life – they are my inspiration, they are everything.

Maybe I am wrong in what I am doing. Maybe I’m a horrible person for exposing my life, their life. Maybe I need to keep silent about the reality – shove everything beneath covers, beneath a layer of suburban bliss. Maybe I need to learn to speak in metaphors. Maybe I need to appear more like all those happy mothers with perfect children – speak only of pink princesses and football-carrying heroes and cookies baked from scratch. Or better, pretend I don’t have any children or a husband. Pretend I’m someone else entirely. I’ll bury myself in complete fiction –science fiction, romance, the murder mystery.

Like the profanity…will I have nothing if I drop my life from my writing, if I protect everything and everybody from exposure?

***

Once upon a time a girl, a boy, no a dog, no…an ant crawled his way up a tall Calla Lilly, no a rose bush, no…a birch tree, wishing to see the world from other than the base level in which he lived. He climbed until he reached the top. He gasped at the vastness he saw. He’d have to tell the tale of his venture – everything he learned up until now was changed. New light revealed truths he never imagined. Infinity was possible.

That’s when a bird picked him off the branch and ate him.

Fuck

According to the author of this article, profanity in the U.S. is on the rise. I find this a curious fact. I mean, I don’t curse that much. I do it on occasion though, to fully express my frustrations. I believe that with rising social tensions, with rising economic costs, people are increasingly frustrated. So they use bad words in response. Especially the “F” word, or as one particularly mature mother I had a run-in with said, “F-bombs.” Personally, I don't have a problem with profanity. I love all bad words, especially the "F" word. I can’t help it, the word, fuck, just says it all, you know?

For instance:

“Honey, the bill came today from the fucking psychiatrist.”

“Oh fuck.”

“Yup. Fucking $650 we owe…again.”

“Well the kids have had pretty bad fucking weeks.”

“Fuck.”

“That’s why we have each other. I fucking love you.”

“I love you, my little fuck, my favorite fuckity fuck.”

You see? Now that’s real emotional expression.

Another example:

Fuck. I am not in the mood to go to work tonight. Don’t want to teach this fucking class – don’t feel like explaining this goddamned material I learned ages ago to people who’ll never actually do legal research at the level of this class nor will they ever write at the level the class strives to teach. I don’t want to do it, money or no, hell or high water. Shit, I’d like to just stay home and shoot the shit on e-mail, or watch a mindless program on television. Fucking bitch.

Still more:

As I write this, A is screaming. He’s having a bad day. Anyone who gets near him gets an earful. I say to myself instinctively in response to every outburst I hear, “Jesus fucking Christ.” I then can breathe and relax and deal with the situation in the most effective and calm manner possible.

My sincerest apologies to my dear Christian readers – please avert your delicate eyes.

And:

The other day I was checking on J’s myspace.com account. Yes, I allow him to have it because half the kids in his classes have one and it seemed a good way to keep him off the phone, a creative way to learn HTML, a fine social thing provided he keeps all private information OFF the profile pages and doesn’t answer e-mail from strangers. So on this myspace.com the kids can post “bulletins” to one another. The bulletins of all the 12-14 year olds on myspace.com ALWAYS have the word “fuck” in them – in the titles, in the body. Somewhere in the bulletin WILL be the “F-bomb,” whether appropriately used or not. Be advised, the spelling is atrocious.

Dearest Grammartist readers, avert your delicate eyes.

Take note of this darling posted early last week, “Anser thes questchuns orr u wil fucking dyee!” Please note the only word spelled correctly.

Or, “Aborshun is soooo fucking WRONG!” The “wrong” impressed me.

I quote directly. I take it as a learning experience for the young minds. They are testing out their management skills and delving into politics. Certainly, they are expressing themselves in a way that will horrify their parents, society, but isn’t it a known fact that the most effective expression of what’s in the common heart will horrify, essentially? Think burning flags, think banned art, think James Joyce as “obscenity.”

Fuck, those myspacers are bad spellers.

Oh god, the fucking time. I have to get to the shitty class to teach shitty material. I’m such a fucking bitch - they are depending on me and here I am pissing on their Wheaties.

In conclusion, I do think the cursing is superfluous as far as reading and written expression. As Joe Cormack of Fort Dodge, Iowa says in the article, "I mean, if I take [the bad words] out of your vocabulary, you've got nothin'!" On the other hand, it does make for a cheap laugh. I read the F-word and I laugh. Richard Pryor started that trend, may his soul rest in fucking peace. Today, any day, any time of the day, you can hear the funny profanity on the Comedy Channel to get a quick laugh. Oh, and I do think it releases tension (sort of like a good fuck does) which is why I think ultimately profanity is okay. Perhaps if more countries loosened up on the profanity laws, we’d have fewer wars. Maybe Iraq wouldn’t be in such uproar if they allowed their veiled women to roll out a few fucks and shits.

‘Cause you have to agree, war is a punk-ass bitch of thing.

Did I mention to you how goddamn sleepy I am?

Recreation

The inability to recreate the sensation of cold when in the dead of summer or heat when in the dead of winter is a curious failing of memory. Same deficiency comes into play when trying to recall physical pain in any great detail, or severe emotional pain, when living in a state of painlessness. My mother used to tell me that women forget the agony of childbirth which is why they go on to have more children.

Well, here it is, in the middle of a Los Angeles rainstorm and I’m having a hard time coming up with the words to tell about the heat over the weekend in Palm Springs. My writing it out doesn’t sound real. I’m wearing a USC sweatshirt with cozy jeans and cozy boots with the furnace blasting while trying to talk about the sun filtering through high clouds, a sun that stung my skin when the four of us women reclined by the pool with cocktails at our side. Sadly, I only lasted twenty minutes before the inevitable redness started. I ran for cover, Bloody Mary in hand, House of leaves in another. Ran to sit under the balcony of our lower level suite where I kicked back, reading in the shade, the temperature a wonderful 80 to 85 degrees or so.

The weekend started with shopping at Cabazon – too much for my taste. After a couple of hours, JC (our good family whom we love like a sister) and I plopped down on a bench and waved Sister and T on. “Forget about us – we’ll just sit here, watching the setting sun, wishing for some wine and dinner. Please…continue.” I did manage to pick up some nice sunglasses, a couple of t-shirts, a soft stuffed bunny rabbit for M. The boys got food – goodies from Hadley’s, a local date and nut shop.

We finally got to the hotel near 7:00 p.m. We hurried and changed and headed for dinner at the Cheesecake factory – we sat at a table having split the huge dinners and discussed Oprah, Frey (yeah, yeah, really old news), G.W. Bush, the difference between addiction, discipline and willpower when it comes to checking e-mail or the Blackberry or calling in for messages. We drank our cocktails, my sister and I making sure not to overdo it because the worst thing the following morning is being sick from alcohol. We were completely successful in our efforts. We stayed up late in the room, playing Travel Scrabble, being silly as all get out.

We avoided all talk about children, having children, and husbands. Yet in the morning, what did we find out our door? A mama duck walking with her eight chicks, walking back and forth, ignoring the flight of other ducks above her, serious about her job of watching them as they swam in a small puddle.

We had a late breakfast, we went to the pool, my lovely relaxation in the shade where I was sure I’d come home with new goals in mind (better dinners, better focus, better housecleaning), the spa in the afternoon. We came to the conclusion that we did not like seeing naked women walking around – it brought out our inherent modesty. We didn’t like the steam room although the eucalyptus was lovely and breathable, but we liked the sauna. The dry heat felt good. The massages were nice – I was grateful not to have someone chatty. I liked, always like, to just listen to the new age music only, drifting in the dim lights to the feel of being nicely touched.

The rest of the night was spent in, drinking wine, snacking, playing cards, eating a light dinner, watching the late show of “Brokeback Mountain” which made all of us cry. The desperate love, we sniffled, so beautiful. Some of us seemed to know such love and some of us wished for it. Still others of us decided we didn’t like Heath Ledger’s mumbling as proven by half-way watching “Casanova” where he mumbled with an English accent.

Sunday was for sleeping in, packing up and heading home around 1:00. My sister thought two days wasn’t enough – strangely, I was ready to get home, to get back to the routine with my newfound energy. Get through the grouchy husband routine.

Now that my big weekend is over I find I have a hard time recreating in my mind the sense of no responsibility when I’m laden again. I find it hard to find that energy.

I can’t wait for the next leap away from home.

Running Away

My mother’s favorite song to blast on Saturday mornings from the cheap Sony stereo we had in a downstairs built-in cabinet was Engelbert Humperdinck’s song, “Please Release Me.” My father told me she’d meant it as a slam against him, a not-so-veiled effort at asking for a divorce. As her children, we understood the idea of release, the idea that she wanted to leave our Pasadena house. We assumed housecleaning was the root of her desires. I believed it was her need to go home to Mexico. On occasion, we considered the possibility that we caused her to want to flee.

The real reasons were probably more elusive that that because today, often these days, I want to leave everything and I can’t pinpoint a precise why. It’s all the above, it’s less, it’s something else entirely.

My weekend has finally arrived – I’ll get into an SUV with my sister, sister-in-law, and a family friend. We’ll have our little suitcases, packed with two days worth of stuff. Casseroles will be in the freezers, instructions written on notes and left on kitchen counters. Cell phones will be on and charged (so they can be shut off). We’ll hug our children and kiss our husbands on their noses. We’ll put the CD’s in the car stereo and feel the hot breeze coming in through the windows as we drive fast down the 210 freeway. We’ll pass into the 909 area code, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Redlands. We’ll drive through Yucaipa and Banning, and then head into Palm Springs.

The vista will change radically from the dense suburbs of the San Gabriel Valley (heavy on the urban) into the clutter-free, desert basin of the San Bernardino Mountains. We will see grand, brown fields of white, working windmills and rows and rows of electrical wires. We'll see the desert brush, the freeway without guardrails. There will be heat, a change from the recent cold of Los Angeles. We will see openness before the sharp rise of the purple-green-brown mountains. I take a deep breath as I write this, a cleansing one that runs from my lungs up into my shoulders and down through my limbs. I let go of the clutter in my mind, the junk that chokes me when I write and makes me irritable when I do the humdrum activities of running a household.

I imagine a different life – one that I chose on my own terms. I’d be living in a bungalow in Monrovia, a studio apartment in South Pasadena, or an apartment on the West Side. Would I have been bitter if unmarried? Would I have been desperate at 41 for a child of my own if I were childless? Would I have pursued my writing on a professional level? Would I be an English professor somewhere else, outside Los Angeles? Would I be sorry I hadn’t chosen law school?

Who would I be today without all the steps I’ve already taken?

I’d be funnier, I say. I have a feeling my self-esteem would be just as wrapped up in having a man love me as it is today. Sounds simplistic – there’s more to it than that. I need broad-based love and admiration. Students, friends, men. That seems to be hard-wired into me. Probably a hold-over from my mother wishing to run away from me. I’d probably be even more self-absorbed than I already am – I credit having children to a development of selflessness. I’d be angrier maybe about my parents’ early deaths.

I will breathe easier this weekend. I will write on my laptop and maybe in my notebook. Write with a pen, taking the time to spell out words instead of tapping madly to get them on the screen. I will read a little. I will laugh and drink and gossip. I will embrace the sensation of not being needed for long hours at a time. Two nights of nobody asking me to do anything other than, “Sit next to me,” “You want to eat here or there,” “Your massage is scheduled for three o’clock with big-muscled, non-gay Sven,” “Are you sleepy?”

Excellent.

What am I running from? Responsibility, maybe. The children. The dirty house. The noise. The choices I made with my quickly-passing life. The abandonment of what *I* wanted as opposed to what everyone else wanted, or what my logic told me was the right thing to do. Hard-in-coming satisfaction and contentment. Disappointing love. Love that disappoints? How is that possible? The built up inability to accept love. Proverbial walls built up around me to protect me against inevitable loss because believe me that will happen so I do the cutting of ties. I push away and then cry that love has been disappointing.

What am I running from? What am I always running from? I’m running from me. Gasp! Ancient epiphany. Cliché even. “Please Release Me,” my mother said. Release her from the life she’d chosen, from who she had become. Yes, I understand that. The big joke is … we can’t really run away from ourselves. We will follow US everywhere.

Salud! Cheers! Have a good weekend. I will return on Sunday, refreshed and miserable and happy to be blogging once again.

Embracing Our Inner Lila

The medications are lined up on the window sill in our kitchen: anti-inflammatory pills for the bursitis in my shoulder, mood stabilizers, ADD medications and medication to reduce tics for the boys, antibiotics and Benedryl for the girl, three different blood pressure medications and Bayer for D, stomach and skin pills for the dog. That doesn’t include the stuff that lies all over the house: Aleve, Advil, Tylenol, Motrin, Children’s Tylenol and Children’s Motrin (chewable and liquid form), various cough syrups prescribed to me and the children over the past year, nighttime cold medicines, daytime cold medicines, children’s cold medicines (nighttime and daytime), a nose spray for D that doesn’t interfere with his prescribed medications, Prylosec, Pepcid, Mylanta, Tums, and the beloved bottle of leftover Vicodin that’s now down to the one pill. I’m saving that for a special night.

We are a medicated family – we believe in the power of modern medicine. Have an ache? Take a pill! Have a serious mental illness? Take a pill! Just enjoy the general idea of pill-popping? Take a pill!

We knew we had issues when M asked me in her little five-year-old voice, mispronouncing 'pills,' “Mama, when do I get to take the same pillows A and J take?”

“Oh honey, I’m sure when you hit third grade the bipolar will kick in and you’ll be just like everyone else in the house!”

“I can’t wait, Mama!”

“Me neither, honey!”

We grab hands and dance a jig, Sassy nipping at our ankles.

My mother was a medication fiend – for a while there she was a full-blown, live version of “Valley of the Dolls.” She had pills for everything, mostly imagined maladies. She went to several doctors, each of whom prescribed her a new medication or more medication for her latest problem. Big on the Valium. The worst experience (no, one of several drug-related incidents I recall) was when my sister and I found her laid out on her bed in just her underwear, relatively unconscious. She mumbled a few words, snored loudly, and had wet the bed. We called an ambulance. Lots of drama. My grandparents drove like mad folks to the emergency room. My father drove through horrible Los Angeles traffic from USC to Huntington Memorial. She was in a “coma.” The doctors…let me emphasize, the DOCTORS (twenty-thousand years of medical training under their belts) sat us down to inform us in the most solemn of tones that they did not know what was wrong with her, that they suspected a massive stroke.

My sister and broke out into muted laughter to the absolute horror of my grandparents (my father sort of tilted his head, nodded, in semi-agreement with us), “She hasn’t had a stroke…she’s overdosed on prescription pills and the finest tequila this side of the Rio Grande! What’s WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!”

The doctors got very uncomfortable at that point and ordered a slew of toxicology tests. And of course we were correct in our medical diagnosis. She landed in a 72-hour psych-hold where she convinced the doctors her family poisoned her and they let her go. Oh no, no evidence of psychosis there! Poor thing – I’m sorry really that no doctor ever got past her beauty and seductive ways to properly diagnose her: bipolar disorder I, the heavy duty BPD, the one where a person can move from grandiosity and euphoria to suicidal ideation all within mere hours. At the time they called it, manic-depressive disorder.

Dearest mama.

Today, whenever any of the three of us get a little loopy on alcohol or whatever other substance might be lying around, or whenever we allow ourselves to sink into dramatic misery, we say we are embracing our “inner Lila.” Lila was our mother’s nickname. To embrace that part of us is to love her, is to appreciate the part of her we thought we hated.

What do they say about looking in a mirror?

On Monday, M came down with an ear infection, swimmer’s ear actually from playing mermaid one too many times in the bathtub. After the appointment (where A, M, and I played a great game of charades – another post for another time), prescription for ear medication in hand, I thought I should go ahead and fill the boys’ prescriptions too while I was at it. I picked up a couple of candy bars for my private stash in my room (where I keep other drugs: Girl Scout Cookies, real Bubble Gum, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, a symbolic amount of pot). When the pharmacist rang up all the goodies, when he put in the amounts of the co-pays (we have the best insurance this side of … Pomona), he handed me a bill of $114.00.

“One hundred and WHAT?!” The DH screamed through the cell phone (a free call, mobile-to-mobile – thank you Verizon!).

“She has an ear infection, honey.”

“You know we already owe the psychiatrist $650.”

“He’s off the plan.”

“He needs to be OFF the plan.”

When I get home, the battle of the homework begins, A’s homework the biggest problem of all. M wants to play on the computer but J is playing the drums (practicing his latest in punk rock beats – the louder, the better!). She screams at the top of her lungs to shut up (and I mean, SCREAM). A lays down on the bench at the table, claiming to have sleeping sickness. The dog has gotten into the trash. The DH arrives shortly thereafter and launches into a rousing version of, “Why the hell didn’t anyone empty the dishwasher for the next load that’s stinking up the sink?!” It’s a familiar tune and I shrug…

“I don’t know, honey. Want a beer?”

“I don’t drink, you know that.”

“Yeah, well, I do.”

I cut up a lemon, stick a wedge into the Corona, and sprinkle salt on the bottle’s rim. I pop a Pepcid because the alcohol in conjunction with the stress of the afternoon will trigger acid reflux that I’ve had since I was a kid. I wonder if I have esophageal cancer. If I have it, I’m doomed.

D takes his dosage of blood pressure pills and flips through the mail, then heads off to do laundry.

The boys drink soda and eat some chips in front of the T.V., abandoning the homework.

M gathers her makeup and purses and hair decorations to play hair salon.

The dog runs out the back door and begins digging a hole to China.

I plop myself at the computer, sip my beer, and blog. Look at retreats.

We’re all medicated.

Normal

Boys are jamming in the office – J on the drums, Friend 1 on the lead guitar, Friend 2 doing the vocals. The music is loud with a heavy-on-the-crash beat. They’re playing the Ramones. M is near me in my room and she’s trying on various boots and shoes from the closet, asking me every so often, “Am I beautiful?” I’m preparing for class – typing out an outline for Civil Procedure, a chapter on examination of physical evidence. A is playing a video game in his room, kicking back against a tiny futon couch. The DH is reading the paper as he eats a turkey sandwich, mustard only. Sassy, the dog, is sitting on the bench at the table, watching the DH’s food as it travels from the dish to his mouth.

Normal, normal as can be.

The sky is cloudy, gray-blue-yellow light breaking through the lace in the kitchen. The hours click away as I move from the outline to a short story to grading a couple of papers, back to the outline. The kids change activities – boys are outside skateboarding, A has moved to the computer, M has begun to watch a movie, and the DH is doing laundry.

My sister calls, upset at me about something insensitive I said the other day. This is a rarity – we never do this. I find myself tearful because what upset her had nothing to do with her, but was all about me – my own bitterness sneaking out. She caught the underlying hurt, but still took it as a personal attack which it hadn’t been. We resolve the problem but the disruption to our constantly smooth relationship sticks to the roof of my mouth.

The friends leave, J alone now and on a tear for permission to go to the movies with a girl. She’s in seventh grade and we don’t know her or her parents. Although we don’t suspect this is a “date,” we’re not open to the idea at all. He’s furious with us, throwing things, breaking something, saying he doesn’t like us and wishes we were normal because, you know, every other parent lets their seventh graders hang out with their friends of the opposite sex in public, darkened places in bad parts of the suburbs unsupervised.

We are abnormal.

The DH escalates the fight, beginning to rage himself, which always sends me in the opposite direction – I get hyper-calm.

J has come running into my room, hiding from his angry father, as I sit on my bed with my laptop, tapping away. I’ve been ignoring the battle in the living room. I glance up and he turns to me, his longish hair standing on end with tension, “When are you going to be normal parents?!”

“When you’re normal, dear.”

Sounds bad, sounds like I’ve said an evil thing – sounds like I’ve gone against every parenting manual out there. I throw in a soft, reassuring, “Honey, look, you’re just in a phase right now where you’re making poor decisions when outside our watch.”

“I don’t care about getting in trouble!”

“I know you don’t – which is why we’re stepping in and caring about you getting in trouble for you. We love you much too much to let anything happen to you.”

“Who cares?! It’s my life!”

“Not until you’re 18. In the meantime, any bad choice you make comes back to us. Fines, parenting classes, even jail time. Your want your parents in jail? I didn’t think so. Who’d buy you your decks, your $38 t-shirts, your Hot Cheetos? Your decisions affect us, affect our home. So we have to make sure you don’t make bad decisions. Until then, you’re home today due to your refusal to do your weekend homework and your rude talk to us.”

There is some more raging but soon the house quiets. He retreats to his room and flips on the television. The DH starts cleaning out the boys’ dresser. M and A battle over computer time. I peek in on e-mail messages, get something good, but can’t answer because “Alphabet Express” is on. I chase A off the computer – he’s had plenty of time on. M sits happily and starts to play, asking for snacks and a drink in the most princess-like manner. I serve her and go to the bedroom for continued typing of the outline on my laptop, interrupted required work with the writing of this blog post and more playing around with a short story.

Normal, normal as can be.

Johnny

Rachel lived near U.S.C. off of Western in a modest beige bungalow that hadn’t been painted since the Watts Riots. A mass of miniature palm trees, yucca trees, and camellia bushes packed the front yard. Getting to the front door was an act of ducking the green and whipping away the gnats. Tall stacks of newspapers crowded the porch and a skinny grey cat mewed at me from an old stand-alone swing.

The assignment was to talk to her for a short while, spend “quality time” with her. She was lonely – her husband had died years and years before and she had no children. The director of the Joint Educational Project told me she was nearing 88 and her health wasn’t good.

I knocked on the screen door, able to see inside the cluttered house. A billowing woman wearing a print housecoat shuffled from behind a wall-papered wall, coming to the door. She couldn’t have been more than five foot two, smiling, wearing bright-red lipstick. Her white hair was just as puffy as she was, brushed carefully into a quasi-bouffant, a pink-bow barrette to the side. Her eyes were moist and blue and she seemed so, so happy to have company.

She ushered me in and took my bag from me, laying it down next to an empty planter in the entranceway. She chattered, thinking I was from the synagogue she could no longer attend, but when I corrected her she remembered that she was approached by someone from the college.

“Oh yes,” she said, “such nice people.”

The kitchen was as ancient as her house – appliances, a table and chairs dating back to the fifties, green tiles, and plain cupboards painted yellow. She had a toaster covered by chicken-fabric. She stood at the counter on a small stool to bring down cookies. She arranged them on a plate and poured milk into two purple glasses that looked eerily similar to glasses my mother once got as a promotion from a gas station.

I asked her how long she lived in the house.

“Johnny and I bought this house in 1942. We thought it was the most beautiful house on the block. A real nice lawn in front. We loved to work in the garden. This is Johnny.”

With a serene smile on her face, she reached across the table and showed me a picture of a man in his 60’s maybe – white hair brushed to the side, wearing black-rimmed glasses. The color picture had faded as if she kept the framed shot in the sun. I took the picture into my hands and nodded appreciatively.

“He looks like a very nice person.”

“He was so smart – he was an engineer. Worked for the city. He used to take me to all the buildings he worked at. He died of pneumonia.” Her face changed a little, but then she resumed the smile again. She ate a cookie, taking small bites at a time. I ate, too, drinking some milk to wash down the basic chocolate chip.

We talked some more and then she wanted to share something with me. She shuffled away and for the first time I noticed her slippers, pink and fluffy. When she returned, she had a cassette in her hand. She sat down at her seat and put the tape into a black tape recorder. She pressed the play button, her face serious, anticipating what she’d hear.

A man’s voice crackled out of the recorder – he was singing something I didn’t recognize. Sounded like a folk song. Rachel lit up, looking at me.

“Doesn’t he have a beautiful voice?”

“Yes, he does,” I said.

The song ended and he laughed, making a comment about the machine. “Rachel what do I push? My Rachel, you can do these things better than me.”

“Oh Johnny!”

She laughed along with herself on the tape. “Johnny always made me laugh.”

“You’re my life, honey. Come and sing with me. I’m not the only one who’s going to be a fool on this machine.”

“You couldn’t be a fool, Johnny.”

“I love you, honey.”

“I love you, too.”

The two laughed together on the tape and then Rachel shut the recorder off, smiling at me. “This is the only thing I have left of my Johnny. I listen to him every day, whenever I feel like I miss him.”

She pressed a red-painted fingernail on the machine. We listened to Johnny talking about work and about his parents. How they lived in New York City in the Bronx and had died in the fifties. The tape showed a sliver of a tender and lasting relationship between two people alone in this life – she still hadn’t let go of him. I couldn’t blame her. I took a furtive glance at the living room seeing a house full of collections. Old radios lined shelves, curio cabinets overflowed with porcelain trinkets, and throw rugs draped the furniture and floors.

We talked about Rachel’s schedule which wasn’t much. Get up in the morning, shower, dress for the day. Make breakfast for herself. Clean the house a little. Not so much anymore. Not with her arthritis and heart problems. Lunch. Listen to Johnny. A girl from the synagogue brought groceries twice a week. I’m lonely, she said. I miss conversation, she said.

I checked my watch and smoothed my skirt and blouse, smiling at Rachel, telling her in turn about my schedule. I said I know love, but not like yours.

“Nobody’s like Johnny.”

“No,” I agreed, taking her hand in mine.

I glanced up at the clock on her wall, a plain one with black hands and red second hand, and the hour told me it was time to go. Our time was up. She walked me to the door and I shook her hand. I’d be back next week. This was lovely, I told her.

“Thank you,” I said, “For telling me about Johnny.”

“I miss him so much.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

She smiled and I stepped out the door into the wild brush along the walkway, hearing the door slam gently against the frame. I turned and waved and she waved back, her form shadowed behind the screen.

We met only a few times more, each time, Johnny’s crooning accompanying our conversation. The last time I saw her was a rare rainy day in Los Angeles, water pouring onto her porch due to clogged drain pipes, the cat nowhere to be seen. Rachel was in tears when she opened the door for me. Someone had broken into her house when she was at a doctor’s appointment and had taken her tape recorder with the tape still inside.

There was nothing I could do or say to console her. I held her hand as she cried and cried. She’d lost Johnny.

My assignment had ended. The next person I was given was a brisk ninety-five year old woman who used the students from U.S.C. to shuttle her around like a taxi service – against the rules due to liability issues. The director warned me not to let her suck me into her schedule. I got sucked in, taking her to a doctor or two, to the store once or twice. The next job, the last one before I abandoned the idea of being a social worker, had been to volunteer at St. John of God’s convalescent hospital on West Adams Boulevard with Alzheimer patients who often had forgotten love, along with everything else that mattered in a daily life. I pushed the patients around in their wheel chairs in the garden or fed them their lunches.

I thought for a long while after that perhaps forgetting was better than remembering.

Impingement

Snow laces the San Gabriel Mountains and is a pleasant shock as I drive up out of the sunken road that leads away from my neighborhood. My two younger kids, M and A, say, “Ooooo…can we go see snow?” as we push on through the traffic to school. One by one I drop them off, my coffee warming in the electric mug the husband bought for me. A cool little device – it hooks up to the cigarette lighter connecting mug to electric juice. Perfect for school days when I have to drop off kids and then head off to the college to teach my morning classes. Normally by the time I get there, coffee’s gone cold. Problem solved by cool gadget.

The college is on spring break this week – I was really looking forward to quiet days in the house with all the children gone. Today, my first day of freedom (relatively speaking of course), my eldest announces he’s far too sick to attend classes. I gave into his pleas because I wasn’t interested in fighting him, because he did have a runny nose according to the husband, and because I was going to be home anyway meaning I wouldn’t have to worry about him being unsupervised.

So he’s home. So I’m writing in the office with Discovery Kids playing in the background. I’d been hoping for my música but it clashes with the T.V. so the ghostly narration of a show about…ghosts…will have to do.

Admittedly, I do have a mild headache which perhaps is impinging on my writing today in addition to the haunted house narratives. The headache I think comes from the two Lemon Drops I had at last night’s small gathering at the Tam O’Shanter to celebrate Rodger Jacob’s birthday. I was pleased to meet for the first time writer John Shannon, Will Campbell (who is also a contributor for Blogging.LA), and Joseph Mailander, editor of the Martini Republic, as well as the honoree himself. I was a nervous wreck at first because…well…I’m completely introverted and unsociable when it comes to meeting people for the first time which is why I generally do not enjoy attending schoolchum-kid's birthday parties, PTA meetings, networking groups, or the anything such as. However, everyone was so entertaining and offering such wonderful insight into L.A. living and the lives of writers and bloggers that I had no choice but to shed my comfortable “suit of armor” and engage.

I did not dance on a table nor grab a lampshade. The Lemon Drops were just…strong.

Hyperbole and personal hang-ups aside, it really was fun to meet people I only know through e-mail and the blogosphere.

So…here I am willing my child to pretend he’s not here which is impossible. He cannot bear to be in a space and not announce his presence. I know in my heart that will be a wonderful quality as an adult – he’s been doing this since birth. He just gets louder and more assured with age. I’m writing away and he’s in here asking me to take him to lunch. “Can we go to the mall? Can I buy a Ramones t-shirt?”

“Pretend you’re not here.”

“Can I play a few beats on the drums? Just one before I shower? Huh?”

“Pretend you’re not here.”

“How can I not be here, I AM here!”

“God grant me the serenity I need.”

“Mom…I love you.”

“I love you, too, honey. Get showered and dressed.”

Sick, my ass.

Me, me, I’m the sick one. I have a headache. My story that I’ve been writing is floundering. My novels are sitting here undone. My blogging is getting desperate. I have to put the blanket on the bed that’s been washed to remove dog hair, have to take off the comforter first, tuck in that blanket. Cleaning the kitchen comes next followed up with paper-grading, preparing for classes, vacuum cleaning. Then I’ll get A and M, do homework, make dinner, get kids to bed, finally watching 24 at 9:00. Then…then…

I think I’ll just stay at the computer and pretend I’m not here.

Saturday

The rain is coming down despite a blue sky peeking through the gray-black clouds. From my place in the office, I can hear the constant watery noise, I can see the blue. D isn't home at all today as he's gone on a quick trip to State Line with his buddies for some gambling. Makes me laugh because he doesn't really gamble or drink. He loves to ride the wave of energy his friends give off and laugh at their antics. He'll play video poker and maybe, maybe, if he's brave, try a hand or two of Texas Hold'em.

In the meantime, I'm sneaking on the computer every so often to read blogs, to check messages, to write an entry here. I'm working on a story that I can't quite bring to the place I want it to be and it's so frustrating. The idea teeters on the tip of my tongue, I review it for the strain of a message, or a story, about me and my siblings, trying to understand that period of time. The story just stares at me, incomplete. Maybe it's incomplete because the story isn't finished, i.e. my life is still on the gallop, getting to wherever I'm going.

Today, I'll be taking my daughter to a birthday party but I'm pretty confident I won't be hearing any stories of crimes taking place in the suburbs. Once again, I find myself cringing with a desire NOT to go. Three hours with other parents and their darlings. Is this a horrible thing for me to think? Am I really that sort of distanced mother? I don't think I am...and yet...

Lately, I've been on a roll of self-criticism. I'm not prepping well enough for classes, I'm not explaining the material well-enough, I'm not attentive and adoring enough of a parent, I'm a lousy, lazy wife, I don't appreciate my husband enough. I'd rather the kids go play...someplace else, someplace I'm not. I'm having wishes again to pack up my car and drive far away for about two weeks.

Ahhh...although...I will be soon getting a little break, the break I mentioned to Palm Springs with the girls in my family. Should be fun, I'm really looking forward to it. The funny thing is that I'll miss blogging, I'll miss my computer time. I'm thinking though it will be the time I can read and do nothing. Plenty time for writing and chatting at home when I'm trying to escape...

...them.

M is at my side as I type, whining about going to the party which starts in about 45 minutes. I have to wrap the present, I have to get dressed. I have to breathe deeply to overcome those intense desires to call and cancel. Can you imagine the chaos then? It's almost tempting to see the house in an uproar, the crying, the screaming, the dramatic pronouncement that she hates me.

Of course, I'd never do that.

I would never do that to the sweet girl who takes a shower with me, who asks me to bend down so she can pour water over my hair, who always arranges the bottles on the shelf and stands with her feet pointed like such a lady even though nobody has ever taught her to stand that way. She's patient now at her age to have her hair washed, to tip her head back in the water and close her eyes tightly so the soap won't sting her eyes.

No, I'd never do such disappointing acts to indulge my own flaws and cracks in the self.

Catching a Virus

My computer has a virus – there’s no other explanation for the slow loading of internet pages, the slow loading of Windows operations. I spent the day scanning the computer, running tests, reloading, reloading again, defragging in desperation, all to no avail. I found one virus known as “NavBar,” called a “security risk” by Symnatec…this is such a pisser. I’m all out of options, short of tossing the computer and starting over.

But that would be too tiring. The thought of it makes me want to curl up in bed and go to sleep.

***

The special education team met yesterday to review A’s progress in school with the classroom modifications in place. As I had been complaining about, they too came to the conclusion that the modifications were not helping him in the classroom. His performance in math and writing there is way below his capability. On top of that, the psychologist believes A is depressed based on the way he writes – almost scribbling, not paying any attention to the lines on the page, and writing really hard, making the no. 2 pencil chicken scratches almost black. He’s now in the full special education program for math and writing – really excellent goals over the next year. They won’t hold him back because he’s actually testing at grade level except in math and writing. And he only scores low on those under certain circumstances.

So…they now rule he has a learning disability. I’m relieved. This way, the homework will be adjusted, he’ll get special pull-out time with a special education teacher, I’m hoping we’ll see great improvement over the next year.

I have a headache and wish to sleep for three days.

***

The other night I had a dream about being sleepy – I was in an unknown parking lot somewhere during the day and I was being accosted by violent persons unknown. The problem was I couldn’t run because I was so, so sleepy. The kind of sleepiness where you struggle to keep your eyes open, where if you don’t lie down you’re going to drop like a ton of bricks right then and there, only I couldn’t do it because I was on the verge of being horrifically violated.

The next scene of sleepiness took place on the sidewalk where I was pushing a stroller that held J when he was only months old. I was talking to my sister when suddenly we noticed our aged grandmother in the street, babbling. We were so sad because she was clearly in a state of dementia.

I finally woke up. After taking the kids (all the kids, thank the gods of all that is holy in this universe) to school, I sat down at the computer to wade through the virus-laden menus and windows to get to e-mail and there was a note from a friend that said in the subject line, “WAKE UP!”

She was inviting me to participate in a group writing exercise. Loads of fun, I know.

The thought of writing detailed, funny, silliness made me tired. I grabbed my cup of coffee, trudged to my room, put the coffee cup on my dresser, and crawled into my bed, fully dressed. I lay under the fluffy, flowery comforter and thought…hell with waking up. Who wants to clean the floors, do laundry, work on class outlines, grade papers or locate the smell of urine that’s going on in the den by the T.V. when I can sleep instead? Ahhh…sleep…the perfect escape for the stay-at-home mother.

I didn’t sleep.

Instead I got up, flipped on the tube and watched the full two hours of 24. More escapism. Tonight I made tacos for the family. D cut up the tomatoes and cheese. I doled out the sour cream and hot sauce. I found the urine.

Tonight, I’ll continue my search for a virus. I’ll have a shot of vodka when I toss the children into their beds. I’ll pretend to be writing something significant.

Forget it, I’m sleepy and am going to bed.