On Prufrock
Cigar smoke drifts about me,
Pleasant.
Unpainted wood scratches my toes,
Restful.
The sun threatens to set,
An interruption of red
Neither of us wants.
Poetry comes my way,
Narratives fly yours.
Home waits across
Miles of barriers,
Distance trumped by our persistence.
Connected by loss,
By love’s mossy methods,
We share a glass of wine.
Hope lightens our moods,
Before we return to slip beneath
Perfectly laid linens.
(2002)
Just an old thing for testing out the audioblog.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Back and Blogging
The weekend in San Diego with my family as well as my sister’s was eventful enough, what with a couple of days’ worth of the Zoo and Sea World, bad food, herding children, taking pictures of animals and children, avoiding sunburn, squeezing in cocktails-and-a-buzz by the pool, and being deprived of quality sleep (my sister and myself due to our busy minds). There were a few insightful moments, however.
The first was learning my sister has extremely high taste in hotels even if they cost too much. She chose the hotel and I was surprised at just how high-scale the place was – I had expected that she’d choose something modest, that perhaps she’d forgotten our upbringing (my parents liked to indulge in fancy hotels and gambling in Vegas and often paired up with rich friends so we got used to nannies, hotel room service, and paging our father away from the blackjack tables). I thought perhaps she’d become frugal raising her three children in this regard. Nothing but four stars! I was reminded of the family I was once a part of, our family, and she and I laughed secretly over the “champagne taste” our parents instilled in us, taste that clearly doesn’t go away.
Next, over margaritas and tiled tables at Islands while my husband and I waited for the large order of hamburgers and fries and one order of onion rings, I asked him if he was sure he wanted to take the road trip to San Francisco with just our kids, with all the potential for misery and buyer’s remorse, and instead of hearing a tired, “Yeah, sure,” I heard that he’d lost faith in God and in the concept that if you live a modest life you’ll get to heaven (as he was taught in his Baptist home) and since he’d lost faith he’d begun to think that this round, this one round, is the only round we get and being that we don’t know whether he or I or anyone will be here next year, he’s decided there will never be another summer when J is 11 and M is 4 and A is 8 and we’ll never again be 41 and 57 and so yeah, sure, let’s spend the money and take that trip.
I licked the rim of the margarita glass to get the salt and sucked down a little more and said, “All right then, Amen, let’s go.”
Lastly, when it was late finally and the kids were settling into their spots (M in a Barbie sleeping bag, the kind you have to blow up with a little yellow plastic accordion-like pump, A next to me in the bed, J in a rollaway cot, D in the other bed), I found sweet how comfortable all five of us were to find our little spots in that small but luxurious room. Like puppies maybe, all piled around the mother, like bats maybe hanging in the cave, next to each other, tightly, with no sense of needing space because this is where “we” were at that moment, at that time, needing rest, grateful for the rest after our long day. Nobody complained, nobody bothered one another, nobody expressed any discomfort whatsoever. Our familial selves seemed in that moment to find one another and acknowledge our having been assigned (or gifted) the job of traveling through this one life together, this one round.
We’ve been back a couple of days, J is sick with a flu, D is battling teaching re-assignments (with great misery), the kids want to go swimming with the neighbors, and I’m wondering whether blogging is good for my writing or not. I think…I think…I’ll sit on the porch with my book and waste away the afternoon.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Off to San Diego
We're off on a trip to see the sights of San Diego...be back by Monday! Have a great weekend, everyone!
Monday, June 20, 2005
Officially Summer
This June morning was perfect, in that delicious, summery, Southern California way. I had dug myself deep into the blankets and listened to the birds outside our window, watched the clock shifting, minute by minute, as it approached 6:30 a.m. when I'd have to join D in the urging of J up from bed to get to his class by 7:30.
I felt kind of bad about the necessary prodding because waking him up for school did feel wrong – the sky so blue, the sun so bright, the snails easing across the dry concrete paths in front of the house, the community pool's water around the corner lapping against the brand-new tiles, the grass so green and waiting to be used as support for dreamy contemplation, the bikes and skateboards itching to be let out of the garage. The alarm went off and I heard J’s voice sharp and nasty at D’s urges.
Moments later, J was at the computer checking for messages from all his billion friends and saying to me, “Only idiots go to summer school.”
“Well, if you hadn’t failed core classes, as we said would happen by not turning in work, you’d not have to be in summer school.”
I know, I know…I shouldn’t say, “I told you so.” But I did. With my arms crossed across my chest and my mouth in a tight, crisp seal, my eyes firmly on the longish locks he’s begun to sport, as he reposted a bulletin online that said, “If you don’t send this to all your friends, your mother will have a terrible accident! Save her!”
I suspect he was throwing away the bulletin. Breaking the chain.
“It’s either college or remedial classes at junior-high,” I said. “Your choice.”
“Fine! College! You’re ruining my summer!”
“I didn’t ruin your summer. You did.”
The child didn’t stop complaining until I left him in class at the college with a teacher who was trying to negotiate with fifteen really pissed-off middle-school kids for them to be good in her study-skills course. I couldn’t help but chuckle. The faces on these poor babies! They were all mad, all so deprived (except for the one kid still wearing his back pack who had a smile plastered on his face). What’s worse is that the rooms have no windows…although I suppose it’s good because this way they cannot see what they’re missing. Right outside is the agricultural section of the campus with horses and green grass, and further on up path-covered hills can be seen.
I left thinking the whole thing was a lost cause – the kid would probably run away rather than attend.
D picked him up at 11:50 at which point he learned that J’s second class, the movie-making class (a cool blend of English and creative arts), was changed to “acting class.” Ha! A brush of unbelievable good luck! No way will J’s parents require him to stick out an acting class because he’s already a pro at drama! Hee! Ho!
Sure enough, when D found out the switcheroo, he marched to the registration office and got our 160 bucks back. From there, J and D went to lunch, ultimately ending up at his last drum lesson for the school year. J’s uncle gave him music books with which to practice. The homework? Practice drum beats created by Rush and Yes. J beamed. D was impressed. The next five weeks will consist of a cake-walk study-skills class from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. followed up with rock and roll drumming the rest of the day, interrupted with chatting online and skateboarding and bike riding and swimming, etc. etc.
Life certainly has changed. Perhaps waking in the morning won’t be so painful for J. Next stop is A’s summer school which starts on Wednesday. M will be attending her pre-school once every so often simply to break up her summer. Being 4 isn’t as much fun as being 8 or almost-12. The independence just isn’t there.
Me? My summer? I started reading an interesting book called, “The Historian.” I have plans to clean out my garage, paint the inside of the house, prepare to teach Civil Procedure in the fall, revamp the assignment for my legal analysis class, read, write, sleep, take that road trip with the family.
Off we go.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Movie Meme
I thought to participate in this one and was surprised at how hard it was to write.
Total number of films owned: I own a lot of movies, too many to count. I buy them the way I buy books, often. I don’t watch them repeatedly. I do like to keep them, glad to have them around for me to watch when I feel like it.
Last film bought: Kill Bill, Vols. 1 and 2.
Last film watched: Into the West on TNT (but perhaps made-for-television doesn’t count) in which case, the last film-film (flick released into theaters) I watched was Star Wars.
Five Favourite Films That I Watch Frequently or That Mean A Lot To Me: The Big Chill – I love the music and the characters – for the longest time, my sister and I knew lines from it and would often repeat them at fitting moments, in particular when we found ourselves using similar dialogue in our own actual conversation. Now, why the movie so captured our hearts and minds, I cannot tell you. We simply enjoy the movie every time we watch it, loving in particular the warts of the film.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – The movie with Gene Wilder is funny, lasting, fantastical. Charlie himself has never lost his appeal in all the years I’ve watched it – never do I see it as dated, or out of style. I love the shifting concept of “honesty” in the film, the fluid nature of it, how you can find it lurking in all the characters and find it just as lacking equally so. As a child, I enjoyed the antics of the children, as an adult, I love Wonka and the antics of the parents. How well both sides are captured! And they’re captured in such a way that is timeless. Other children’s movies I’ve loved and still love include Toy Story, Iron Giant, Shrek, Finding Nemo, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Wizard of Oz and the Aristocats.
Like Water for Chocolate – A beautiful movie that is both hunger-inducing and imagination-satisfying. I love the humor, the storytelling, the fantasy. I’m reminded of my own heritage in the food and the characters, I’m reminded of the passion in the stories I was told as a child about love and heartbreak. This one just…has me. I really enjoy foreign films as a whole, especially those coming from Chinese filmmakers such as Farewell My Concubine and Raise the Red Lantern.
American History X – An excellent drama that’s hard to watch and the kind that draws you into its heart with the agony of race conflict. The story’s amazing and so are the actors who created the tale. In fact, Edward Norton to this day has not matched the intensity he possessed nor the pathos in this film. Other dramas I’ve loved include Clint Eastwood’s films (spaghetti westerns and all), Requiem for a Dream (this movie gets the award as having one of the most terrifying sequences in film, that of the Ellen Burstyn’s Sarah Goldfarb’s inadvertant final and total descent into amphetamine addiction), Jesus' Son, To Kill a Mockingbird and some other "legal" films.
Young Frankenstein – My favorite comedy ever – I can watch this one repeatedly and never get tired of it nor not laugh. The kind of movie you stick in the player when you need a lift. Other comedies I’ve loved include those with Steve Martin, the Pink Panther movies, the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Albert Brooks, and Danny Kaye movies.
I’m sure as I come across other movie memes, I’ll say, “Oh yeah…that too!”
Total number of films owned: I own a lot of movies, too many to count. I buy them the way I buy books, often. I don’t watch them repeatedly. I do like to keep them, glad to have them around for me to watch when I feel like it.
Last film bought: Kill Bill, Vols. 1 and 2.
Last film watched: Into the West on TNT (but perhaps made-for-television doesn’t count) in which case, the last film-film (flick released into theaters) I watched was Star Wars.
Five Favourite Films That I Watch Frequently or That Mean A Lot To Me: The Big Chill – I love the music and the characters – for the longest time, my sister and I knew lines from it and would often repeat them at fitting moments, in particular when we found ourselves using similar dialogue in our own actual conversation. Now, why the movie so captured our hearts and minds, I cannot tell you. We simply enjoy the movie every time we watch it, loving in particular the warts of the film.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – The movie with Gene Wilder is funny, lasting, fantastical. Charlie himself has never lost his appeal in all the years I’ve watched it – never do I see it as dated, or out of style. I love the shifting concept of “honesty” in the film, the fluid nature of it, how you can find it lurking in all the characters and find it just as lacking equally so. As a child, I enjoyed the antics of the children, as an adult, I love Wonka and the antics of the parents. How well both sides are captured! And they’re captured in such a way that is timeless. Other children’s movies I’ve loved and still love include Toy Story, Iron Giant, Shrek, Finding Nemo, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Wizard of Oz and the Aristocats.
Like Water for Chocolate – A beautiful movie that is both hunger-inducing and imagination-satisfying. I love the humor, the storytelling, the fantasy. I’m reminded of my own heritage in the food and the characters, I’m reminded of the passion in the stories I was told as a child about love and heartbreak. This one just…has me. I really enjoy foreign films as a whole, especially those coming from Chinese filmmakers such as Farewell My Concubine and Raise the Red Lantern.
American History X – An excellent drama that’s hard to watch and the kind that draws you into its heart with the agony of race conflict. The story’s amazing and so are the actors who created the tale. In fact, Edward Norton to this day has not matched the intensity he possessed nor the pathos in this film. Other dramas I’ve loved include Clint Eastwood’s films (spaghetti westerns and all), Requiem for a Dream (this movie gets the award as having one of the most terrifying sequences in film, that of the Ellen Burstyn’s Sarah Goldfarb’s inadvertant final and total descent into amphetamine addiction), Jesus' Son, To Kill a Mockingbird and some other "legal" films.
Young Frankenstein – My favorite comedy ever – I can watch this one repeatedly and never get tired of it nor not laugh. The kind of movie you stick in the player when you need a lift. Other comedies I’ve loved include those with Steve Martin, the Pink Panther movies, the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Albert Brooks, and Danny Kaye movies.
I’m sure as I come across other movie memes, I’ll say, “Oh yeah…that too!”
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Myriad - Updated
I commented earlier about how "abandonment" occupies a hub of pain in my life. There is another hub, one of action, and that hub is filled with guilt. So here I am, posting, because I feel guilty of abandoment.
What's happening these days? The children are about to end their regular school year, next week beginning summer school. I will say it, I've said it before, I'm dreading getting these boys up for school for the next five weeks - I need a break from the cajoling, the nagging. They don't like waking in the morning and no matter what time they go to bed (like their mother), getting up is near-painful. But...but...I'm hoping summer school will be worth it. For A, I'm hoping it will make 3rd grade easier. For J, I'm hoping school will interest him.
I've decided to send J to our community college for two classes: study skills and movie-making. I'm hoping taking a class at a college campus might make the doldrums of sitting in a class more palatable. I'm hoping to psychologically fool him. I'm hoping he'll fare better than taking the remedial classes at his junior high that he's supposed to take because of the two "F's" he has in math and science. Yup...F. You have no idea the trauma this causes me. It's...unthinkable. It was unthinkable. He's getting these failing grades not because he doesn't know the material, but because he found it annoying to review material he already learned and on his own decided he didn't need to do various assignments. Just like that...those things were deemed extraneous.
Please know that I, with every bone in my body, wish my child for once would just CONFORM! Be a SQUARE PEG and jump into that square hole for the love of all that's holy! Individualism is bad, I say! Thinking out of the box...a major no-no! Follow the rules, you must, even rules you may refer to as "retarded"! Such as that one rule that required you to write a table of contents consisting of the titles of the assignments completed in class! Yes, it seems a preposterous waste of time, but re-writing needless information is good for you, plus it was worth 20% of your grade!
[insert heavy sigh along with a gulp of a morning-time martini]
I don't condone J's behavior. As a parent, wishing nothing but success for my child, I really DO wish he'd just do as he's asked no matter how dull and useless. No amount of punishment changes him, either. D and I have taken away everything and still he'll only listen to his own drummer. One might think, "Why, Adriana, don't you put him in the advanced classes?"
Because, I have since learned, the only difference between "Gate" classes and regular classes is that instead of having the "gifted" student do 20 long division problems, they have the student do 40. J will simply choose not to do the 40 questions instead of the 20. Hearing that, I looked into alternative middle school programs. I discovered that the only kinds of children who will get a better education, a more diverse education, the only kinds of children whose individuality are celebrated are those who live with parents who occupy the top 1% of the economic strata.
Well, great...so children of school teachers are doomed to this unimaginative educational system. No wonder California is in the bottom five of school systems across the country. No imagination.
Sure, sure, I could home-school. I could. I'll have to go into debt to buy curriculum, I'll have to go back to just teaching night school. All perfectly within the realm of possibility. J won't have it, though, because he enjoys the social world of junior high too much. And even if I were to join the home-schooling crowd and join the social activities in our area afforded to home-schoolers, that would mean J's new friends would be of the Christian-extreme brand. Not that such would be a bad thing, but as a home-schooler, I'd be looked down upon for not teaching J all about the New Testament and Creationism.
So back to independent enrichment. Nurturing of his independence. Did I mention that my daughter is very similar to J?
Calgon, take me away!
Update: I came across this link...this poor child is referring to quite the summer school program. My J would just flourish, with all those rules. Lordy. Pobrecito.
Update: Here's a story for you. A child dies following a 2-G ride, so far the reason for death is undetermined. As always, I was so sad for the family - what a terrible thing to have happen while on vacation. Just an awful tragedy. While I was feeling the sadness, though, I continued reading the article. Towards the end, I read about a woman who died of mini-strokes earlier this year while riding, "The Pirates of the Carribean." Imagine, you're walking into the light, earthen darkness is descending, the world is ending for you, paradise is on the cusp of your vision, gasp, gasp, yes, yes...almost there...all to the tune of, "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me! Dah duh tah dah dah duh tah dah (repeat many times) ohhhh...Yo ho yo ho the pirates life for me!" Those of you who grew up in Los Angeles know the song, the repetitive music as you float along Disneyland's pirated caverns. I don't know, I just don't think that is the way I want to leave this plane of life.
Last thing...we had an earthquake today, on this fine Thursday, here in L.A.'s suburbs, a whopping 4.9 apparently. I now have earthquake anxiety thanks to my daughter sleeping in her chair, in front of our entertainment center, while the earth rocked. You should have seen me running like a mad woman to drag her out of danger's way. My nerves...my nerves. Criminy.
What's happening these days? The children are about to end their regular school year, next week beginning summer school. I will say it, I've said it before, I'm dreading getting these boys up for school for the next five weeks - I need a break from the cajoling, the nagging. They don't like waking in the morning and no matter what time they go to bed (like their mother), getting up is near-painful. But...but...I'm hoping summer school will be worth it. For A, I'm hoping it will make 3rd grade easier. For J, I'm hoping school will interest him.
I've decided to send J to our community college for two classes: study skills and movie-making. I'm hoping taking a class at a college campus might make the doldrums of sitting in a class more palatable. I'm hoping to psychologically fool him. I'm hoping he'll fare better than taking the remedial classes at his junior high that he's supposed to take because of the two "F's" he has in math and science. Yup...F. You have no idea the trauma this causes me. It's...unthinkable. It was unthinkable. He's getting these failing grades not because he doesn't know the material, but because he found it annoying to review material he already learned and on his own decided he didn't need to do various assignments. Just like that...those things were deemed extraneous.
Please know that I, with every bone in my body, wish my child for once would just CONFORM! Be a SQUARE PEG and jump into that square hole for the love of all that's holy! Individualism is bad, I say! Thinking out of the box...a major no-no! Follow the rules, you must, even rules you may refer to as "retarded"! Such as that one rule that required you to write a table of contents consisting of the titles of the assignments completed in class! Yes, it seems a preposterous waste of time, but re-writing needless information is good for you, plus it was worth 20% of your grade!
[insert heavy sigh along with a gulp of a morning-time martini]
I don't condone J's behavior. As a parent, wishing nothing but success for my child, I really DO wish he'd just do as he's asked no matter how dull and useless. No amount of punishment changes him, either. D and I have taken away everything and still he'll only listen to his own drummer. One might think, "Why, Adriana, don't you put him in the advanced classes?"
Because, I have since learned, the only difference between "Gate" classes and regular classes is that instead of having the "gifted" student do 20 long division problems, they have the student do 40. J will simply choose not to do the 40 questions instead of the 20. Hearing that, I looked into alternative middle school programs. I discovered that the only kinds of children who will get a better education, a more diverse education, the only kinds of children whose individuality are celebrated are those who live with parents who occupy the top 1% of the economic strata.
Well, great...so children of school teachers are doomed to this unimaginative educational system. No wonder California is in the bottom five of school systems across the country. No imagination.
Sure, sure, I could home-school. I could. I'll have to go into debt to buy curriculum, I'll have to go back to just teaching night school. All perfectly within the realm of possibility. J won't have it, though, because he enjoys the social world of junior high too much. And even if I were to join the home-schooling crowd and join the social activities in our area afforded to home-schoolers, that would mean J's new friends would be of the Christian-extreme brand. Not that such would be a bad thing, but as a home-schooler, I'd be looked down upon for not teaching J all about the New Testament and Creationism.
So back to independent enrichment. Nurturing of his independence. Did I mention that my daughter is very similar to J?
Calgon, take me away!
Update: I came across this link...this poor child is referring to quite the summer school program. My J would just flourish, with all those rules. Lordy. Pobrecito.
Update: Here's a story for you. A child dies following a 2-G ride, so far the reason for death is undetermined. As always, I was so sad for the family - what a terrible thing to have happen while on vacation. Just an awful tragedy. While I was feeling the sadness, though, I continued reading the article. Towards the end, I read about a woman who died of mini-strokes earlier this year while riding, "The Pirates of the Carribean." Imagine, you're walking into the light, earthen darkness is descending, the world is ending for you, paradise is on the cusp of your vision, gasp, gasp, yes, yes...almost there...all to the tune of, "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me! Dah duh tah dah dah duh tah dah (repeat many times) ohhhh...Yo ho yo ho the pirates life for me!" Those of you who grew up in Los Angeles know the song, the repetitive music as you float along Disneyland's pirated caverns. I don't know, I just don't think that is the way I want to leave this plane of life.
Last thing...we had an earthquake today, on this fine Thursday, here in L.A.'s suburbs, a whopping 4.9 apparently. I now have earthquake anxiety thanks to my daughter sleeping in her chair, in front of our entertainment center, while the earth rocked. You should have seen me running like a mad woman to drag her out of danger's way. My nerves...my nerves. Criminy.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Fiction: Untended
Esperanza dug her toes deep into a mud patch at the edge of her backyard and the action made me want to crawl to her, lick her toes and soles, kiss her calf then her knee, pull the print dress out from in between her pinched, closed thighs, and bury myself into that other patch that was rough and lovely and engaged my daydreams there in the bushes where I hid nearly every day at noon. I shuddered from behind the chain-link fence that separated us, wishing myself dead.
Her husband, Aaron, was from Israel, Esperanza from Mexico. He spent days and nights at the university working to complete his doctorate in physics. She spent her time at home with her two daughters. According to Aaron, they’d met when he was a delivery boy for a market in Hollywood where she cashiered, both new to America. Neither of them had any blood family in the country. He loved her the moment he saw her -- for her, it took convincing. He liked to talk about how hard a time she gave him, how he won her over with his charm, with his persistence. But things lately…well, she wanted to go home, he said, and he couldn't fathom such a thing.
“The United States have streets of gold," Aaron told me one afternoon, "opportunity shines down on everyone. Science matters!”
“But she’s not a scientist, man.”
“She is married to one, Liam -- there is no difference.”
I thought Aaron’s obliviousness to his wife's wants was funny, something to mock, until I met Esperanza at the lab, until I started to watch her. Watching was easy as they lived next door to me. She was beautiful –- could be in the movies -– physically I was reminded of Sophia Loren, but the loneliness which emanated off of her reminded me of craggy trees in a dark wood tearing at skirts and sleeves and skin and hair and hearts.
Something caught her attention at her feet and she bent way down, showing the roundness of her rump. Her blue cotton dress, a plain one, lifted and revealed the backs of her knees. A toe nail had broken. She studied the remnant a moment before flicking it away. Turning, she watched her girls swing on swings that butted up against the porch of the Pasadena house. The corner of her mouth twitched into what was perhaps a smile at the play or a smirk at something private or an ironic laugh at being stuck in this house in a Californian, 1974, suburban forest.
I tried to retreat, to go back to my chore of cutting down the dead orange tree for the owner of the cottage I lived in, but I didn’t want to leave.
“Let’s have lunch!”
Sara, the older girl, had jumped off the swings, yelling her request, and Esperanza smiled more openly from her newfound relaxed position on the grass. She didn’t seem to want to move, looking lazy, but she had no choice with her daughter tugging her hand, urging her up. Esperanza was quiet, saying little. She trudged across grass littered with weeds, especially dandelions sprouting in between white, puffy seed heads. Long-time neighbors looked down their noses at the unkempt yard –- my landlord had mentioned it in passing -– but I liked them growing wild that way. Isa, the younger girl, was playing in the sandbox now, and Esperanza stopped a moment to offer lunch. A concrete sculpture of mushrooms and shells stood in the center of the sandbox. Nonsensical. Hours of play for the girls.
When they were gone, I leaned back against the fence and closed my eyes. I had work to do, pages and pages to type, responsibilities. Esperanza had her life to lead and babies to raise and a husband to love and support and the more I thought on it, the more I knew that I had to stop.
I moved towards the tree and lifted the axe, focusing on its weight as it swung through the air and split the bark, splinters flying.
***
Liam moved away from the fence, thinking I had not seen him, thinking perhaps the poor, uneducated Mexicana was too busy or too unaware or too dumb maybe to know he watched her whenever he wandered into the backyard of his rented cottage. Sometimes I posed for my watcher, bending over or opening my blouse and shaking the front flaps to air my heavy breasts. Sometimes I ignored him by not putting on make-up, or leaving my hair a mess, or wearing a stained apron.
I hadn’t made up my mind yet as to why he did it –- whether he hid in the bushes with dirty thoughts or whether he was shy like a schoolboy. Or both. Not that it mattered. I enjoyed knowing his secret and keeping it from Aaron. Why not? Aaron kept so much from me.
With the two girls trailing me, I walked onto the cement patio of the house we rented from the university. I opened the back door, taking one last glance at the yard, at the still-swaying swings, before closing out Liam. I breathed in the coolness of the bookish air. Our house was a curious blend of furniture used by generations of students, sophisticated walnut paneling, fantastical European castle turrets, and the smallness of 1920's housing. Our personal things were stuffed onto stark, metal bookshelves, squeezed into corners, and hidden in cupboards which needed paint. The back door opened onto a living room which opened straight away into a dining room we rarely used. To the left of the dining area were the bedrooms. To the right was the kitchen connected to a round breakfast room, windows running the periphery. It was from that circular room that I often watched the street and imagined the route back home, to Tijuana, where I once lived with my mother and sisters. Where my aunt Rita still lived.
Outside, I saw Liam trudging back to school, lugging a bag full of books and papers, his head bearing a downward cast. The girls had settled at the table in this round room, coloring, patient about lunch. I looked at the seams of my dress and my bare feet. I thought about his peering eyes. Walking into the kitchen, I hummed the tune of a corrido I remembered from my teenage years, a matter-of-fact tale about a bandido stealing the heart of woman, killing the husband dead in the cobbled main street of a puebla.
The chicken I'd made sat in a skillet drowning in a sauce of fresh tomatoes, oil and herbs. I scooped up a breast onto a plate, cut it into small pieces, and divided the bits into two smaller plates.
Only when the girls started eating did I think about him again. I wondered whether I should reveal to Liam the most private part of myself: my knowledge of him. Perhaps I could reveal this by an offer of lunch, or a smile directly at him, or maybe I should simply walk to the fence and say, “What do you want? What do you have…for me?”
No, not yet. I liked my secret far too much. I liked that Liam left his work to come watch me unlike Aaron who stayed and toiled and worked, hoping to uncoil the secrets of the universe. So admirable, so brilliant, so...above me, up with the stars and endlessness and God. This thing with my watcher was of the earth, real, current, dirty. My own secret was one Aaron made no effort to study.
“Look at my picture, Mama.”
Isa pushed aside her dish and grabbed the drawing she had made earlier, pushing it back and forth, a rainbow paper, swishing it across the lace tablecloth. A fish tank gurgled and two eyes of a pinkish kissing fish met my gaze.
“I see such beautiful colors,” I said to Isa as I cut too big a piece of the chicken filet into smaller pieces for Sarah who kicked her feet back and forth, making her body pop up and down in the seat. Her black hair fell silkily about her shoulders. When I finished, I touched the top of her head and kissed the center part in her hair, so warm against my lips. Glancing at Isa, I smiled at her hungry joy of cut tomatoes with a splash of lemon.
The phone rang and it was Aaron being kind and speaking in gentle tones dirty wishes in broken Spanish. I knew he was calling to tell me he couldn’t come home right now, perhaps not at all today. I told him the right way of saying what he wanted without any humor. I touched the glass of the fish tank, watched the kissing fish adhere to each other. Outside, cars drove by too fast and an ambulance screamed in the distance. The afternoon darkened, clouds drifting across the sun. I shivered suddenly.
Aaron said, “I won’t be there for lunch today, okay?” As I had predicted.
“I have food for you as you wanted,” I said, revealing only mild impatience. “You asked for it this morning. You wanted the chicken and cooked tomatoes especially.”
“I know but I’m doing some excellent work today. I don’t want to stop, I can't. Esperanza, this work is very important to me.”
“Yes, of course. I will see you later.”
“Kiss the girls. Tell them I love them. Bye.”
I said, “Bye,” long after he hung up. Replacing the telephone on its cradle, I considered calling my aunt in Tijuana, imagining for a moment the kitchen there, the scent of mangos in a basket waiting to be splayed open and eaten, the sweet juice covering my cheeks. No -- we didn’t have the money for purposeless phone calls. There had to be reason for it. I retreated into the kitchen.
A clock ticked on the countertop and I washed the pan, staring through the window at birds of paradise which poked upwards from their green spread of tropical leaves. When I first moved to Pasadena with Aaron from our small apartment in Hollywood, I was surprised to see this flower growing like the dandelions did in the yard –- free, commonplace, and often planted without consideration –- the plant cramped tiny side yards, overstuffed the ends of planters, blocked the front windows of houses. Left wild, they grew into ugly, massive spreads. The flowers took my breath away, though, the orange and blue petals bursting out of their green sheaths, so anxious to show themselves off. They lasted, too, weeks they preened before dying, mottled and ruined.
A dish slid across the countertop and Isa ran away, the door to the porch slamming shut. Sarah took careful steps towards me. Asked, “Are we going to the park today?”
“We have to go to the market. We will walk there and we will have fun.”
She smiled with a kind of knowing in her eyes. Much like Aaron. Sometimes I felt as if I was peering into the face of an equal rather than that of my young daughter.
“I’ll tell Isa,” she said softly before leaving.
When I finished cleaning, after picking the remains off the girls’ dishes with my fingers, after scooping the chopped, cooked tomatoes out of the serving dish and eating it all, I allowed myself to think of Liam. Wondered what sort of meal I could prepare for the hiding schoolboy. Wondered if he was studying in the college laboratory or adrift in wrongful thought. Standing over the sink, grasping the edge of the countertop, I practiced saying, “Would you like to eat a lunch with me?” Three times I said it.
Taking a breath, I blew at an imaginary dandelion and turned to see my reflection in the bathroom mirror, nearby. The woman there was tall with long, dark hair pulled into a tight pony tail. Her eyes were cat-like, her cheeks high. Her curves created a perfect eight in shadows.
Like Snow White, I thought, you are lost in a forest unfamiliar, waiting for something magic to take away the fear. Perhaps it’s not a schoolboy in the bushes but a hunter waiting to tear her heart out or a Prince. I knew the story well, having read it to the girls, having gone a tour of the story at Disneyland. I had careened through the make-believe cave, holding onto little Sarah, horrified. How could such a fright be a child’s movie, a child’s entertainment?
At that moment, I thought of a menu. Yes, we’d have albondigas, soup with meatballs and vegetable, secrets out in the open, lying against an eager tongue. The kind of lunch you would want when finally reaching a cottage after a terrible panic, clean and safe and familiar.
Her husband, Aaron, was from Israel, Esperanza from Mexico. He spent days and nights at the university working to complete his doctorate in physics. She spent her time at home with her two daughters. According to Aaron, they’d met when he was a delivery boy for a market in Hollywood where she cashiered, both new to America. Neither of them had any blood family in the country. He loved her the moment he saw her -- for her, it took convincing. He liked to talk about how hard a time she gave him, how he won her over with his charm, with his persistence. But things lately…well, she wanted to go home, he said, and he couldn't fathom such a thing.
“The United States have streets of gold," Aaron told me one afternoon, "opportunity shines down on everyone. Science matters!”
“But she’s not a scientist, man.”
“She is married to one, Liam -- there is no difference.”
I thought Aaron’s obliviousness to his wife's wants was funny, something to mock, until I met Esperanza at the lab, until I started to watch her. Watching was easy as they lived next door to me. She was beautiful –- could be in the movies -– physically I was reminded of Sophia Loren, but the loneliness which emanated off of her reminded me of craggy trees in a dark wood tearing at skirts and sleeves and skin and hair and hearts.
Something caught her attention at her feet and she bent way down, showing the roundness of her rump. Her blue cotton dress, a plain one, lifted and revealed the backs of her knees. A toe nail had broken. She studied the remnant a moment before flicking it away. Turning, she watched her girls swing on swings that butted up against the porch of the Pasadena house. The corner of her mouth twitched into what was perhaps a smile at the play or a smirk at something private or an ironic laugh at being stuck in this house in a Californian, 1974, suburban forest.
I tried to retreat, to go back to my chore of cutting down the dead orange tree for the owner of the cottage I lived in, but I didn’t want to leave.
“Let’s have lunch!”
Sara, the older girl, had jumped off the swings, yelling her request, and Esperanza smiled more openly from her newfound relaxed position on the grass. She didn’t seem to want to move, looking lazy, but she had no choice with her daughter tugging her hand, urging her up. Esperanza was quiet, saying little. She trudged across grass littered with weeds, especially dandelions sprouting in between white, puffy seed heads. Long-time neighbors looked down their noses at the unkempt yard –- my landlord had mentioned it in passing -– but I liked them growing wild that way. Isa, the younger girl, was playing in the sandbox now, and Esperanza stopped a moment to offer lunch. A concrete sculpture of mushrooms and shells stood in the center of the sandbox. Nonsensical. Hours of play for the girls.
When they were gone, I leaned back against the fence and closed my eyes. I had work to do, pages and pages to type, responsibilities. Esperanza had her life to lead and babies to raise and a husband to love and support and the more I thought on it, the more I knew that I had to stop.
I moved towards the tree and lifted the axe, focusing on its weight as it swung through the air and split the bark, splinters flying.
***
Liam moved away from the fence, thinking I had not seen him, thinking perhaps the poor, uneducated Mexicana was too busy or too unaware or too dumb maybe to know he watched her whenever he wandered into the backyard of his rented cottage. Sometimes I posed for my watcher, bending over or opening my blouse and shaking the front flaps to air my heavy breasts. Sometimes I ignored him by not putting on make-up, or leaving my hair a mess, or wearing a stained apron.
I hadn’t made up my mind yet as to why he did it –- whether he hid in the bushes with dirty thoughts or whether he was shy like a schoolboy. Or both. Not that it mattered. I enjoyed knowing his secret and keeping it from Aaron. Why not? Aaron kept so much from me.
With the two girls trailing me, I walked onto the cement patio of the house we rented from the university. I opened the back door, taking one last glance at the yard, at the still-swaying swings, before closing out Liam. I breathed in the coolness of the bookish air. Our house was a curious blend of furniture used by generations of students, sophisticated walnut paneling, fantastical European castle turrets, and the smallness of 1920's housing. Our personal things were stuffed onto stark, metal bookshelves, squeezed into corners, and hidden in cupboards which needed paint. The back door opened onto a living room which opened straight away into a dining room we rarely used. To the left of the dining area were the bedrooms. To the right was the kitchen connected to a round breakfast room, windows running the periphery. It was from that circular room that I often watched the street and imagined the route back home, to Tijuana, where I once lived with my mother and sisters. Where my aunt Rita still lived.
Outside, I saw Liam trudging back to school, lugging a bag full of books and papers, his head bearing a downward cast. The girls had settled at the table in this round room, coloring, patient about lunch. I looked at the seams of my dress and my bare feet. I thought about his peering eyes. Walking into the kitchen, I hummed the tune of a corrido I remembered from my teenage years, a matter-of-fact tale about a bandido stealing the heart of woman, killing the husband dead in the cobbled main street of a puebla.
The chicken I'd made sat in a skillet drowning in a sauce of fresh tomatoes, oil and herbs. I scooped up a breast onto a plate, cut it into small pieces, and divided the bits into two smaller plates.
Only when the girls started eating did I think about him again. I wondered whether I should reveal to Liam the most private part of myself: my knowledge of him. Perhaps I could reveal this by an offer of lunch, or a smile directly at him, or maybe I should simply walk to the fence and say, “What do you want? What do you have…for me?”
No, not yet. I liked my secret far too much. I liked that Liam left his work to come watch me unlike Aaron who stayed and toiled and worked, hoping to uncoil the secrets of the universe. So admirable, so brilliant, so...above me, up with the stars and endlessness and God. This thing with my watcher was of the earth, real, current, dirty. My own secret was one Aaron made no effort to study.
“Look at my picture, Mama.”
Isa pushed aside her dish and grabbed the drawing she had made earlier, pushing it back and forth, a rainbow paper, swishing it across the lace tablecloth. A fish tank gurgled and two eyes of a pinkish kissing fish met my gaze.
“I see such beautiful colors,” I said to Isa as I cut too big a piece of the chicken filet into smaller pieces for Sarah who kicked her feet back and forth, making her body pop up and down in the seat. Her black hair fell silkily about her shoulders. When I finished, I touched the top of her head and kissed the center part in her hair, so warm against my lips. Glancing at Isa, I smiled at her hungry joy of cut tomatoes with a splash of lemon.
The phone rang and it was Aaron being kind and speaking in gentle tones dirty wishes in broken Spanish. I knew he was calling to tell me he couldn’t come home right now, perhaps not at all today. I told him the right way of saying what he wanted without any humor. I touched the glass of the fish tank, watched the kissing fish adhere to each other. Outside, cars drove by too fast and an ambulance screamed in the distance. The afternoon darkened, clouds drifting across the sun. I shivered suddenly.
Aaron said, “I won’t be there for lunch today, okay?” As I had predicted.
“I have food for you as you wanted,” I said, revealing only mild impatience. “You asked for it this morning. You wanted the chicken and cooked tomatoes especially.”
“I know but I’m doing some excellent work today. I don’t want to stop, I can't. Esperanza, this work is very important to me.”
“Yes, of course. I will see you later.”
“Kiss the girls. Tell them I love them. Bye.”
I said, “Bye,” long after he hung up. Replacing the telephone on its cradle, I considered calling my aunt in Tijuana, imagining for a moment the kitchen there, the scent of mangos in a basket waiting to be splayed open and eaten, the sweet juice covering my cheeks. No -- we didn’t have the money for purposeless phone calls. There had to be reason for it. I retreated into the kitchen.
A clock ticked on the countertop and I washed the pan, staring through the window at birds of paradise which poked upwards from their green spread of tropical leaves. When I first moved to Pasadena with Aaron from our small apartment in Hollywood, I was surprised to see this flower growing like the dandelions did in the yard –- free, commonplace, and often planted without consideration –- the plant cramped tiny side yards, overstuffed the ends of planters, blocked the front windows of houses. Left wild, they grew into ugly, massive spreads. The flowers took my breath away, though, the orange and blue petals bursting out of their green sheaths, so anxious to show themselves off. They lasted, too, weeks they preened before dying, mottled and ruined.
A dish slid across the countertop and Isa ran away, the door to the porch slamming shut. Sarah took careful steps towards me. Asked, “Are we going to the park today?”
“We have to go to the market. We will walk there and we will have fun.”
She smiled with a kind of knowing in her eyes. Much like Aaron. Sometimes I felt as if I was peering into the face of an equal rather than that of my young daughter.
“I’ll tell Isa,” she said softly before leaving.
When I finished cleaning, after picking the remains off the girls’ dishes with my fingers, after scooping the chopped, cooked tomatoes out of the serving dish and eating it all, I allowed myself to think of Liam. Wondered what sort of meal I could prepare for the hiding schoolboy. Wondered if he was studying in the college laboratory or adrift in wrongful thought. Standing over the sink, grasping the edge of the countertop, I practiced saying, “Would you like to eat a lunch with me?” Three times I said it.
Taking a breath, I blew at an imaginary dandelion and turned to see my reflection in the bathroom mirror, nearby. The woman there was tall with long, dark hair pulled into a tight pony tail. Her eyes were cat-like, her cheeks high. Her curves created a perfect eight in shadows.
Like Snow White, I thought, you are lost in a forest unfamiliar, waiting for something magic to take away the fear. Perhaps it’s not a schoolboy in the bushes but a hunter waiting to tear her heart out or a Prince. I knew the story well, having read it to the girls, having gone a tour of the story at Disneyland. I had careened through the make-believe cave, holding onto little Sarah, horrified. How could such a fright be a child’s movie, a child’s entertainment?
At that moment, I thought of a menu. Yes, we’d have albondigas, soup with meatballs and vegetable, secrets out in the open, lying against an eager tongue. The kind of lunch you would want when finally reaching a cottage after a terrible panic, clean and safe and familiar.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Abandonment
I’ve found abandonment to be at the crux of pain in my life, in my very own household. The children act up when I withdraw to my room, to my books or movies, because I’m too tired for much else. My husband gets grumpy and resentful at that same separation. My friends wait me out, perhaps impatiently. Back in my younger days, my romantic relationships ended in so much hurt and depression not because I felt I lost someone I loved but rather because I lost a connection, period, I felt abandoned. Younger still my fears of death and separation came from my own mother withdrawing from me to her tear-causing music, to her journals, to the darkness of her bedroom.
For the past weeks, I have been short in temper and patience and energy, even knowing consciously that to slip in this way causes the family to rebel more intensely which in turn drains me further still, leaving me to be a dust rag of a woman, crumpled and waiting.
During these days, I don’t comment to others, I don’t respond to the sweets I so adore, here, I let e-mail sit. A sin, I feel. It is as if I have been sung to and I say nothing to the soul-baring effort.
The days click by and I wait for something to change. I wait for the sense of self-abandonment to pass because that is what has happened – I have abandoned myself, the things I love, and the people who mean the most to me. So what is here, I wonder? What is here in my bedroom, a pale version of my mother’s bedroom, the stacks of books to my left, the vast space to my right, what is here behind my head, the pillows with the seams stretched and the insides cottony and spilling out, pillows being emptied, innards being slowly and deliberately plucked by my littlest one inches away from me.
“What are you doing, my dear,” I say.
“Pulling the white out.” She takes strings of it and throws the collection into the air, watching the descent.
“Please don’t do that,” I beg, the tiniest amount of whining present in my voice. This is one more bad in a series of bads, the most recent her deliberate crumbling of a chocolate cupcake onto the floor.
“Why what will happen if I take all the inside out, softly, mommy, softly and carefully?”
I remember a time when I left my puppy in my apartment, alone and abandoned, and when I returned hours and hours later, I peeked in through the window next to the front door only to find the floor covered in billowing white, the insides of my couch pillows, the insides having been spread about, madly ripped out by the puppy.
“If you take the insides out, if you keep throwing the stuffing around, the room will look like heaven.”
“Heaven is white?”
“Yes, it’s white.”
I leave her with that nonsense and she wonders the meaning and then proceeds to list all the people we say are in heaven, ending with the desire to go to heaven herself so she herself can see the insides of the pillows spread about in such a delicious, wicked way, keeping company of people she doesn’t know.
So what is here in this room, on this bed…I turn and see my daughter with her fingers in her mouth, watching a talking cat on the television, on the verge of sleepiness, determined to not feel abandoned by plopping herself next to me, hot on top of the comforter, happy next to the insides pulled out, having gotten a confirmation of what happens when the insides are out.
So, what is here in this room is but a reminder to return home, to return to myself.
Yes, yes, how do you do, I say. Why, I’m fine, Miss, I’m fine and dandy and awake and taking a ride on my bike, up, up, up the trail to the park with the trees and roads and playthings and noise. Why don’t you join me on this fine morning?
I think I will, yes, I think so.
For the past weeks, I have been short in temper and patience and energy, even knowing consciously that to slip in this way causes the family to rebel more intensely which in turn drains me further still, leaving me to be a dust rag of a woman, crumpled and waiting.
During these days, I don’t comment to others, I don’t respond to the sweets I so adore, here, I let e-mail sit. A sin, I feel. It is as if I have been sung to and I say nothing to the soul-baring effort.
The days click by and I wait for something to change. I wait for the sense of self-abandonment to pass because that is what has happened – I have abandoned myself, the things I love, and the people who mean the most to me. So what is here, I wonder? What is here in my bedroom, a pale version of my mother’s bedroom, the stacks of books to my left, the vast space to my right, what is here behind my head, the pillows with the seams stretched and the insides cottony and spilling out, pillows being emptied, innards being slowly and deliberately plucked by my littlest one inches away from me.
“What are you doing, my dear,” I say.
“Pulling the white out.” She takes strings of it and throws the collection into the air, watching the descent.
“Please don’t do that,” I beg, the tiniest amount of whining present in my voice. This is one more bad in a series of bads, the most recent her deliberate crumbling of a chocolate cupcake onto the floor.
“Why what will happen if I take all the inside out, softly, mommy, softly and carefully?”
I remember a time when I left my puppy in my apartment, alone and abandoned, and when I returned hours and hours later, I peeked in through the window next to the front door only to find the floor covered in billowing white, the insides of my couch pillows, the insides having been spread about, madly ripped out by the puppy.
“If you take the insides out, if you keep throwing the stuffing around, the room will look like heaven.”
“Heaven is white?”
“Yes, it’s white.”
I leave her with that nonsense and she wonders the meaning and then proceeds to list all the people we say are in heaven, ending with the desire to go to heaven herself so she herself can see the insides of the pillows spread about in such a delicious, wicked way, keeping company of people she doesn’t know.
So what is here in this room, on this bed…I turn and see my daughter with her fingers in her mouth, watching a talking cat on the television, on the verge of sleepiness, determined to not feel abandoned by plopping herself next to me, hot on top of the comforter, happy next to the insides pulled out, having gotten a confirmation of what happens when the insides are out.
So, what is here in this room is but a reminder to return home, to return to myself.
Yes, yes, how do you do, I say. Why, I’m fine, Miss, I’m fine and dandy and awake and taking a ride on my bike, up, up, up the trail to the park with the trees and roads and playthings and noise. Why don’t you join me on this fine morning?
I think I will, yes, I think so.
Thursday, June 02, 2005
The Last of the Hundred Things
The end...
81. I’m clumsy. I’m clumsy when it comes to face-to-face communication of any kind and when it comes to physical activity. I fall off my flat shoes in public, I drop things, I stumble over my words – the worst moment of my lawyer life happened in front of a client and my boss when I was a new lawyer, a plane flight away from home, sitting second chair in a civil trial. We were in a restaurant, a break from trial, and I ordered taquitos. I was so nervous I chose to eat them with a fork in a misguided effort to be neat, to be polite. For the uninitiated, one cannot eat taquitos with a fork because they are tortillas which are rolled tightly and fried and which are therefore quite crispy but not fall-apart-crispy, more like brick-crispy. So when I attempted to cut the roll in half, the other half flew off the dish and splashed spectacularly the front of my new, ivory-colored blouse with guacamole and red sauce. I swear to god every patron in that Mexican restaurant stopped eating, talking, breathing, while I walked the long walk to the bathroom to save some face.
82. One of the best moments in my lawyer life happened when I argued in court in support of a motion for summary judgment on behalf of a client. The client had come to me last second and I just stepped over the line of timely service by faxing a copy of my motion to opposing counsel minutes after the cut-off time. I was technically in violation and that gave opposing counsel an open door to get my motion thrown out. I hung my hat on the technicality and went into court confident and passionate – the technicality was just that, I said, what counted here was saving the court time and the public tax dollars by having certain issues heard on summary judgment. I responded to each and every opposing argument and answered each question thrown at me by the judge. I won. But that wasn’t my moment – my moment happened when I was trudging up the stairs of the parking lot and a fellow lawyer behind me (a man) said, “You did a great job back there – one of the best oral argumentations I’ve heard in law and motion court.”
83. Nothing matched the look on my father’s face whenever he said to me, “You’re my beautiful lawyer.” When I lost that gift of pride with my father’s death, I lost everything good about practicing law.
84. I was threatened only one time with malpractice and that was by a true-blue con artist – a real shock to me. I learned from the threat to be even more compassionate to clients on the defense side of litigation.
85. I’m glad I went to law school – if it hadn’t been for working at a small law firm in the suburbs, I’d have never met my husband. Well…on the other hand…
86. I’m kidding about my husband. Had I stayed in school for my English degree, I might have been living away from Los Angeles and I think I needed to be here all these years. I believe for so many reasons that it was my destiny to be here.
87. Four great personal moments of my life: the first times I laid eyes on the faces of each of my children and when my husband asked me to marry him.
88. The saddest moments in my life were looking at each of my parent’s faces for the last time.
89. I cannot say the words, “My amazing family.” I don’t know if I’m simply unable to see the wonder because of the challenges my children pose or if I learned a terrible trait from my mother who often said, “I’m not one of those parents who can’t see the faults in my children.”
90. I’m very tired these days.
91. I love a road trip with my colorful, lively, loud, giggly, smart-alecky, non-robotic, unique family. We’re thinking about going to San Francisco this summer, stopping over in various places overnight.
92. I love hotels, especially when I’m on a road trip and it’s that time at night when I flip on the light next to the queen-sized bed when everyone is asleep, when I settle back against a pillow to only kinda read because I’m too busy listening to my snoring husband, the gentle, dreamy breathing of the two younger kids, and the things my oldest says when he’s talking in his sleep.
93. I curse a whole hell of a fucking lot but you’d never fuckin' know it from reading my damned enjoyable blog.
94. I’m not very patient which is one reason I don’t home-school my children.
95. One of my favorite pictures of my husband is this one where he’s playing on the bed with one of the kids and he’s on his side and he’s brushing his hair back with his hand and he’s looking at me with a smile that’s only for me.
96. I’m a spur-of-the-moment person – I can wake up in the morning thinking I’m going to shop and clean and talk to my sister on the phone and do ordinary things, but then in an instant, I can be on my way to the mountains or the beach for an overnight stay someplace, anyplace, and my inner constitution is fine and dandy which is the polar opposite of my husband and my oldest child, J. The other two kids are right behind me, ready for an adventure.
97. I get very amorous when I’m drunk.
98. I need to get drunk more often than I ever do anymore.
99. When I’m tired, fiction doesn’t flow very easily.
100. I like attention from all around more than I say I do – I say I don’t want it or need it because…because…I’m profoundly insecure.
81. I’m clumsy. I’m clumsy when it comes to face-to-face communication of any kind and when it comes to physical activity. I fall off my flat shoes in public, I drop things, I stumble over my words – the worst moment of my lawyer life happened in front of a client and my boss when I was a new lawyer, a plane flight away from home, sitting second chair in a civil trial. We were in a restaurant, a break from trial, and I ordered taquitos. I was so nervous I chose to eat them with a fork in a misguided effort to be neat, to be polite. For the uninitiated, one cannot eat taquitos with a fork because they are tortillas which are rolled tightly and fried and which are therefore quite crispy but not fall-apart-crispy, more like brick-crispy. So when I attempted to cut the roll in half, the other half flew off the dish and splashed spectacularly the front of my new, ivory-colored blouse with guacamole and red sauce. I swear to god every patron in that Mexican restaurant stopped eating, talking, breathing, while I walked the long walk to the bathroom to save some face.
82. One of the best moments in my lawyer life happened when I argued in court in support of a motion for summary judgment on behalf of a client. The client had come to me last second and I just stepped over the line of timely service by faxing a copy of my motion to opposing counsel minutes after the cut-off time. I was technically in violation and that gave opposing counsel an open door to get my motion thrown out. I hung my hat on the technicality and went into court confident and passionate – the technicality was just that, I said, what counted here was saving the court time and the public tax dollars by having certain issues heard on summary judgment. I responded to each and every opposing argument and answered each question thrown at me by the judge. I won. But that wasn’t my moment – my moment happened when I was trudging up the stairs of the parking lot and a fellow lawyer behind me (a man) said, “You did a great job back there – one of the best oral argumentations I’ve heard in law and motion court.”
83. Nothing matched the look on my father’s face whenever he said to me, “You’re my beautiful lawyer.” When I lost that gift of pride with my father’s death, I lost everything good about practicing law.
84. I was threatened only one time with malpractice and that was by a true-blue con artist – a real shock to me. I learned from the threat to be even more compassionate to clients on the defense side of litigation.
85. I’m glad I went to law school – if it hadn’t been for working at a small law firm in the suburbs, I’d have never met my husband. Well…on the other hand…
86. I’m kidding about my husband. Had I stayed in school for my English degree, I might have been living away from Los Angeles and I think I needed to be here all these years. I believe for so many reasons that it was my destiny to be here.
87. Four great personal moments of my life: the first times I laid eyes on the faces of each of my children and when my husband asked me to marry him.
88. The saddest moments in my life were looking at each of my parent’s faces for the last time.
89. I cannot say the words, “My amazing family.” I don’t know if I’m simply unable to see the wonder because of the challenges my children pose or if I learned a terrible trait from my mother who often said, “I’m not one of those parents who can’t see the faults in my children.”
90. I’m very tired these days.
91. I love a road trip with my colorful, lively, loud, giggly, smart-alecky, non-robotic, unique family. We’re thinking about going to San Francisco this summer, stopping over in various places overnight.
92. I love hotels, especially when I’m on a road trip and it’s that time at night when I flip on the light next to the queen-sized bed when everyone is asleep, when I settle back against a pillow to only kinda read because I’m too busy listening to my snoring husband, the gentle, dreamy breathing of the two younger kids, and the things my oldest says when he’s talking in his sleep.
93. I curse a whole hell of a fucking lot but you’d never fuckin' know it from reading my damned enjoyable blog.
94. I’m not very patient which is one reason I don’t home-school my children.
95. One of my favorite pictures of my husband is this one where he’s playing on the bed with one of the kids and he’s on his side and he’s brushing his hair back with his hand and he’s looking at me with a smile that’s only for me.
96. I’m a spur-of-the-moment person – I can wake up in the morning thinking I’m going to shop and clean and talk to my sister on the phone and do ordinary things, but then in an instant, I can be on my way to the mountains or the beach for an overnight stay someplace, anyplace, and my inner constitution is fine and dandy which is the polar opposite of my husband and my oldest child, J. The other two kids are right behind me, ready for an adventure.
97. I get very amorous when I’m drunk.
98. I need to get drunk more often than I ever do anymore.
99. When I’m tired, fiction doesn’t flow very easily.
100. I like attention from all around more than I say I do – I say I don’t want it or need it because…because…I’m profoundly insecure.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Saturday
I'm trying to write an entry on this fine Saturday morning here in my office while J pounds away on his brand spankin'-new drum set...cymbals, snare, bass, more...the whole enchilada a mere seven feet away from me. He's been getting lessons from his uncle for several years and only this year did the thing kick in and he started banging on everything in his path, the tables, his desk, his chest, his books. Time to invest, you know?
Writing with this crashing sound behind me is amazingly impactful on my ability to make an ounce of sense. Perhaps, though, it's less the noise than my own simmering anxiety as if something's due and I haven't done it. Last night even I dreamt again about that old boss of mine, that he wanted me to mail a Christmas present to his daughter (a fried egg and a piece of chicken in a take-out box). I took it from him, egg yolk dripping down the side of the box, and went home to make a new egg, which I did and which I put into the box, setting the box aside while I went on with my life, worrying about having to get to the post office. From there a slew of interruptions prevented me from mailing the gift, days of interruptions. Stupid, I know, but the stress was real. I shouldn’t feel this way. I finished everything for school so now I'm off for the summer. Things should be like the open road, no distractions, "smooth sailing."
And yet...
I'm certain it's the stress of changing medications for A who's been really up and down with his moods, lots of crying, unable to sit and do any work for school without total meltdowns, etcetera. We're stopping the antidepressant and moving onto a mood stabilizer, a stronger medication, a different sort. It worries me, it stresses me out. The other day I dreamt about snakes being everywhere...millions of them all over the house.
Stress.
Good news was hearing that my oldest child is indeed as "smart" as we thought, testing grades higher academically and in the gifted range intellectually (we knew that...don't all parents "know" it?) which of course means that his low grades in school are fixable. I was relieved there. I have no doubts his sister is very similar as she's a lot like him, they talk the same amount (non-stop), they are very social, they're clever and funny.
Perhaps with school out of the way, I've freed myself up to stress over A. Maybe that's it, maybe school was my distraction.
Forgive me for being so self-absorbed these days. On that note, here are some more 100 things. For fun, for distraction reasons.
65. I’m actually very funny. I can write funny, I can tell funny stories…no, really. I’m funny when I’m not stressing. If I’m angry about an issue, or stirred into a passion, I can crack wise like nobody’s business. Ironically, I used to comment to my mother about her lacking a sense of humor. Now I know who I take after because stress used to bring out my father’s sense of humor.
66. I tend to hyper-focus on something I’m doing and “into,” whether it’s writing, reading, watching a program, listening to a program on the radio, conversing with someone. You’ll have to tap me to get me to turn to you if you’re trying to tell me something.
67. I’m not a girly-girl. I go for comfort as opposed to style, choosing jeans and boots/athletic shoes to wear versus fancy anything. Jeans, jeans, jeans.
68. I have pierced ears and I would love, love, love to get my nose pierced but my skin is too sensitive and for sure I’d end up with problems and I’m way too vain to take any chances with something so plain on my face as my nose which is why I’ll never do any kind of plastic surgery, ever.
69. My sister reads my blog and couple of real-life friends, but nobody else I know personally.
70. Bliss isn’t my real name but Adriana is my real middle name and my maiden name begins with B. My first name I don’t like that much but my husband loves it and gave that name to my daughter as a middle name. My son A has my father’s name as a middle name, my first son has my husband’s name as a middle name.
71. My birthday is the same as Hugh Heffner’s.
72. Speaking of which, I used to like reading Playboy’s articles. The funniest thing I ever saw in Playboy, though, was how often these posing naked women would indicate that they wanted to work with children as a career. My sister and I found that so funny that every so often, in an instant of hysteria, we’d grab ourselves, pose, and hiss, “I want to teach nursery school!”
73. I’m a few-friends type of person – I never had more than a few friends at a time, sometimes even less than that. In fact, I’m really quite unsociable. Given the choice of going to a party where there’ll be many, I far prefer to stay home and read (or play with all my friends on the internet). That’s not to say I don’t enjoy spending time with people I consider to be friends – I love to do that. But don’t throw too many people into the mix or else I’ll retreat. This makes my husband crazy because he’s the complete opposite. He loves to socialize, preferring the socializing to not be very intimate.
74. I didn’t smoke marijuana until I was 37. I liked it. A lot.
75. I like to smoke cigarettes…except I don't inhale and if I’ve imbibed more than a few beers or cocktails, I’ll take a cigarette from my sister-in-law (Trouble in a Tank Top) and puff away Clinton-style.
76. I sometimes fantasize about being a famous writer, but I find my fantasy revolves much more on money rather than on “fame” or praise for my work.
77. I’m jealous over other people’s writing successes.
78. I’m happy for other people’s writing successes.
79. I love to dance free-style to all kinds of music – especially cumbias, hip-hop, rock. I love to feel the rhythms and beats and always feel sexy when I dance.
80. I love it when I have polished toe-nails and wear sandals.
Writing with this crashing sound behind me is amazingly impactful on my ability to make an ounce of sense. Perhaps, though, it's less the noise than my own simmering anxiety as if something's due and I haven't done it. Last night even I dreamt again about that old boss of mine, that he wanted me to mail a Christmas present to his daughter (a fried egg and a piece of chicken in a take-out box). I took it from him, egg yolk dripping down the side of the box, and went home to make a new egg, which I did and which I put into the box, setting the box aside while I went on with my life, worrying about having to get to the post office. From there a slew of interruptions prevented me from mailing the gift, days of interruptions. Stupid, I know, but the stress was real. I shouldn’t feel this way. I finished everything for school so now I'm off for the summer. Things should be like the open road, no distractions, "smooth sailing."
And yet...
I'm certain it's the stress of changing medications for A who's been really up and down with his moods, lots of crying, unable to sit and do any work for school without total meltdowns, etcetera. We're stopping the antidepressant and moving onto a mood stabilizer, a stronger medication, a different sort. It worries me, it stresses me out. The other day I dreamt about snakes being everywhere...millions of them all over the house.
Stress.
Good news was hearing that my oldest child is indeed as "smart" as we thought, testing grades higher academically and in the gifted range intellectually (we knew that...don't all parents "know" it?) which of course means that his low grades in school are fixable. I was relieved there. I have no doubts his sister is very similar as she's a lot like him, they talk the same amount (non-stop), they are very social, they're clever and funny.
Perhaps with school out of the way, I've freed myself up to stress over A. Maybe that's it, maybe school was my distraction.
Forgive me for being so self-absorbed these days. On that note, here are some more 100 things. For fun, for distraction reasons.
65. I’m actually very funny. I can write funny, I can tell funny stories…no, really. I’m funny when I’m not stressing. If I’m angry about an issue, or stirred into a passion, I can crack wise like nobody’s business. Ironically, I used to comment to my mother about her lacking a sense of humor. Now I know who I take after because stress used to bring out my father’s sense of humor.
66. I tend to hyper-focus on something I’m doing and “into,” whether it’s writing, reading, watching a program, listening to a program on the radio, conversing with someone. You’ll have to tap me to get me to turn to you if you’re trying to tell me something.
67. I’m not a girly-girl. I go for comfort as opposed to style, choosing jeans and boots/athletic shoes to wear versus fancy anything. Jeans, jeans, jeans.
68. I have pierced ears and I would love, love, love to get my nose pierced but my skin is too sensitive and for sure I’d end up with problems and I’m way too vain to take any chances with something so plain on my face as my nose which is why I’ll never do any kind of plastic surgery, ever.
69. My sister reads my blog and couple of real-life friends, but nobody else I know personally.
70. Bliss isn’t my real name but Adriana is my real middle name and my maiden name begins with B. My first name I don’t like that much but my husband loves it and gave that name to my daughter as a middle name. My son A has my father’s name as a middle name, my first son has my husband’s name as a middle name.
71. My birthday is the same as Hugh Heffner’s.
72. Speaking of which, I used to like reading Playboy’s articles. The funniest thing I ever saw in Playboy, though, was how often these posing naked women would indicate that they wanted to work with children as a career. My sister and I found that so funny that every so often, in an instant of hysteria, we’d grab ourselves, pose, and hiss, “I want to teach nursery school!”
73. I’m a few-friends type of person – I never had more than a few friends at a time, sometimes even less than that. In fact, I’m really quite unsociable. Given the choice of going to a party where there’ll be many, I far prefer to stay home and read (or play with all my friends on the internet). That’s not to say I don’t enjoy spending time with people I consider to be friends – I love to do that. But don’t throw too many people into the mix or else I’ll retreat. This makes my husband crazy because he’s the complete opposite. He loves to socialize, preferring the socializing to not be very intimate.
74. I didn’t smoke marijuana until I was 37. I liked it. A lot.
75. I like to smoke cigarettes…except I don't inhale and if I’ve imbibed more than a few beers or cocktails, I’ll take a cigarette from my sister-in-law (Trouble in a Tank Top) and puff away Clinton-style.
76. I sometimes fantasize about being a famous writer, but I find my fantasy revolves much more on money rather than on “fame” or praise for my work.
77. I’m jealous over other people’s writing successes.
78. I’m happy for other people’s writing successes.
79. I love to dance free-style to all kinds of music – especially cumbias, hip-hop, rock. I love to feel the rhythms and beats and always feel sexy when I dance.
80. I love it when I have polished toe-nails and wear sandals.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Free, Free, Free
It's Wednesday and at last I'm done with the semester for the summer so now I continue my navel-gazing without an ounce of guilt.
51. I am incapable of flirting when I want to – the one time I decided to gaze at someone I desired intensely (in law school, in class), hoping my simmering stare would draw him to me, he thought I was angry at something he did. The times I do flirt, unconsciously, everyone knows and it’s embarrassing because I cannot hide my liking of the person and/or flattered feeling if the person has shown an interest in me. This, in combination with my introverted nature, makes me unapproachable.
52. I feel fat and have always felt fat even when I weighed 90 lbs at 5 foot 4 in junior high school.
53. I no longer weigh 90 lbs.
54. I prefer salty foods to sweets – my favorite snacks are pickled “stuff,” spicy stuff, salt on watermelon or jicama, or potato chips.
55. While I will never be on death row unless our justice system makes a drastic turn, my “last meal” would be barbecue pork ribs, oysters on the half shell, watermelon, plain yogurt and cucumber, Caesar salad (the real stuff with anchovies), and bread pudding or crème brulée.
56. I cannot sit still for any amount of time whatsoever without reading something. The worst situation for me, the unbearable kind of “worst,” is when I have to wait and I’ve forgotten my book at home. This habit started the instant I could read, reading the cereal boxes at breakfast, the shampoo bottles in the shower, and the dream interpretation books my mother stuffed into the blue painted drawer in the tiny downstairs bathroom that was inches away from the toilet, way, way back in the day in Pasadena.
57. I’m deathly afraid of death and dying – sometimes the reality that one day everything around me will be different, that I will die, will hit me in the middle of night, sending me to the edges of a panic attack. Those instances remind me of my father's last days in the hospital when he briefly became lucid and in a fright, breathless, told his wife that, “this is it, I think I’m going.”
58. I would love to play the piano, but I don’t have any musical abilities – I tried the recorder in fourth grade, fifth grade and sixth grade and by this third year still could not learn how the notes interrelated to finger placement, nor could I memorize simple musical pieces. I was better when I had a zither which had paper marked with notes indicating exactly where I had to pluck the strings that slid beneath the strings (sixth grade).
59. To quote Lori, I hate, hate, HATE cleaning, but I do what I have to do in between visits from our housekeeper.
60. I love being served whether it’s at a spa, hotel, or restaurant.
61. To this day, despite my stellar spelling capabilities, the word, “restaurant,” requires me to stop and think about how it’s spelled when write it.
62. I have exposed myself in public – I was at a beach in Rosarito, Baja California, wearing a bikini, wading in the surf, ducking beneath the waves. At one point I was swaying in the wonderful silvery-blue, waist-high water and facing a smiling, American man of about 30. Great view, he said, to which I agreed, responding happily, believing him to be speaking about the Mexican horizon. He kept smiling at me, me with my hands feeling the cool water and keeping my balance. Suddenly, something made me look down and voila! My bikini top’s triangles had shifted…dramatically so. I screamed and ducked into the water, swimming away…hearing the man laughing and saying he was sorry I looked down.
63. I don’t wear a bikini anymore because (1) they don’t make them for natural 40D women (as opposed to unnatural 40D which they do make bikini tops for)…and (2) I wouldn’t wear one anyway because of the c-section scar I bear that runs from an inch below my belly button on down.
63. The only reason I’ve ever been in a hospital is to deliver babies – one the regular way, the other two, c-sections.
64. My breasts have been a character in my life almost as separate from me as my hair – they began sprouting in fifth grade, evoking the taunts of my very flat-chested female classmates at the private school I was attending, evoking the unwanted mockery of a fifth-grade boy when I was in sixth (“hey, big stuff!”), attracting attention from boys in the seventh and eighth grade (“Mira…ooo…chi-chis!”), getting a grab from a drunken relative I adored which I told my mother about to her stone-faced, sad admonition (“Stay away from him when he’s drunk.”), causing heart-breaking attention when I finally got an invitation by a boy I liked in tenth grade to a party which ended up with his fondling me from behind without ever kissing me or holding my hand which killed my liking of him and made me cry for a week, learning how nice they were later when I did begin dating (“You have beautiful breasts, you’re beautiful.”), provoking the most frustrated tears during the days when I began breastfeeding my babies who seemed too small for such engorged breasts, then finally prompting tears of the purest love I’d ever known when me and each of my children fell into that blissful groove of day-in-and-day-out nurturing and admiring and adoring and engaging in the sweetest intimacy of breast-feeding. Today, I watch for cancer, think about a “lift,” think about the right bra, think about how clothes fit or don’t fit, think about whether they’re still liked or admired or perhaps…perhaps…they are at last, thankfully, ignored because I have so much to say and goddamnit I'm making the crowd gathered listen. My breasts…are an ever-changing canvas of pain, power, godliness, victimization, intimidation, and mystery.
51. I am incapable of flirting when I want to – the one time I decided to gaze at someone I desired intensely (in law school, in class), hoping my simmering stare would draw him to me, he thought I was angry at something he did. The times I do flirt, unconsciously, everyone knows and it’s embarrassing because I cannot hide my liking of the person and/or flattered feeling if the person has shown an interest in me. This, in combination with my introverted nature, makes me unapproachable.
52. I feel fat and have always felt fat even when I weighed 90 lbs at 5 foot 4 in junior high school.
53. I no longer weigh 90 lbs.
54. I prefer salty foods to sweets – my favorite snacks are pickled “stuff,” spicy stuff, salt on watermelon or jicama, or potato chips.
55. While I will never be on death row unless our justice system makes a drastic turn, my “last meal” would be barbecue pork ribs, oysters on the half shell, watermelon, plain yogurt and cucumber, Caesar salad (the real stuff with anchovies), and bread pudding or crème brulée.
56. I cannot sit still for any amount of time whatsoever without reading something. The worst situation for me, the unbearable kind of “worst,” is when I have to wait and I’ve forgotten my book at home. This habit started the instant I could read, reading the cereal boxes at breakfast, the shampoo bottles in the shower, and the dream interpretation books my mother stuffed into the blue painted drawer in the tiny downstairs bathroom that was inches away from the toilet, way, way back in the day in Pasadena.
57. I’m deathly afraid of death and dying – sometimes the reality that one day everything around me will be different, that I will die, will hit me in the middle of night, sending me to the edges of a panic attack. Those instances remind me of my father's last days in the hospital when he briefly became lucid and in a fright, breathless, told his wife that, “this is it, I think I’m going.”
58. I would love to play the piano, but I don’t have any musical abilities – I tried the recorder in fourth grade, fifth grade and sixth grade and by this third year still could not learn how the notes interrelated to finger placement, nor could I memorize simple musical pieces. I was better when I had a zither which had paper marked with notes indicating exactly where I had to pluck the strings that slid beneath the strings (sixth grade).
59. To quote Lori, I hate, hate, HATE cleaning, but I do what I have to do in between visits from our housekeeper.
60. I love being served whether it’s at a spa, hotel, or restaurant.
61. To this day, despite my stellar spelling capabilities, the word, “restaurant,” requires me to stop and think about how it’s spelled when write it.
62. I have exposed myself in public – I was at a beach in Rosarito, Baja California, wearing a bikini, wading in the surf, ducking beneath the waves. At one point I was swaying in the wonderful silvery-blue, waist-high water and facing a smiling, American man of about 30. Great view, he said, to which I agreed, responding happily, believing him to be speaking about the Mexican horizon. He kept smiling at me, me with my hands feeling the cool water and keeping my balance. Suddenly, something made me look down and voila! My bikini top’s triangles had shifted…dramatically so. I screamed and ducked into the water, swimming away…hearing the man laughing and saying he was sorry I looked down.
63. I don’t wear a bikini anymore because (1) they don’t make them for natural 40D women (as opposed to unnatural 40D which they do make bikini tops for)…and (2) I wouldn’t wear one anyway because of the c-section scar I bear that runs from an inch below my belly button on down.
63. The only reason I’ve ever been in a hospital is to deliver babies – one the regular way, the other two, c-sections.
64. My breasts have been a character in my life almost as separate from me as my hair – they began sprouting in fifth grade, evoking the taunts of my very flat-chested female classmates at the private school I was attending, evoking the unwanted mockery of a fifth-grade boy when I was in sixth (“hey, big stuff!”), attracting attention from boys in the seventh and eighth grade (“Mira…ooo…chi-chis!”), getting a grab from a drunken relative I adored which I told my mother about to her stone-faced, sad admonition (“Stay away from him when he’s drunk.”), causing heart-breaking attention when I finally got an invitation by a boy I liked in tenth grade to a party which ended up with his fondling me from behind without ever kissing me or holding my hand which killed my liking of him and made me cry for a week, learning how nice they were later when I did begin dating (“You have beautiful breasts, you’re beautiful.”), provoking the most frustrated tears during the days when I began breastfeeding my babies who seemed too small for such engorged breasts, then finally prompting tears of the purest love I’d ever known when me and each of my children fell into that blissful groove of day-in-and-day-out nurturing and admiring and adoring and engaging in the sweetest intimacy of breast-feeding. Today, I watch for cancer, think about a “lift,” think about the right bra, think about how clothes fit or don’t fit, think about whether they’re still liked or admired or perhaps…perhaps…they are at last, thankfully, ignored because I have so much to say and goddamnit I'm making the crowd gathered listen. My breasts…are an ever-changing canvas of pain, power, godliness, victimization, intimidation, and mystery.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Because I'm grading exams today...
...and procrastination is "my thing," here's more "100 Things About Me."
32. I’m very touchy about seeing obvious typographical or grammatical errors in other people’s work, even the error in the message rubbed into dust on the side window of a car which said, “Please washes me.” When I see such things, I’m overcome with a need to edit. The irony is that I cannot see my own typographical errors. It takes many rereads over several hours (and can even stretch into a couple of days) to find them all. What I need is to see my work in a different light, different color and type.
33. I prefer female singers to male singers. Whenever I have that free moment, that time in the car, that empty space in my day that I can fill with music, I will put Norah Jones on, or Alanis Morrisette, or Billie Holiday, or Etta James, or Sarah McLachlan, or ethnic music sung by women. I think it’s the fact that I can sing along – I like the freedom of singing alone in the car.
34. I hate the dentist. This stems from a pediatric dentist I had who kept our young mouths open with a strange device of rubbery-type sheeting and metal clamps. Perhaps my experience explains why I have no particular interest in latex clothing.
35. Scrapbooking is relaxing to me and a drain of financial resources – I have several drawers full of paper stuff, stickers, and empty albums, except I never get around to doing the work. My mother used to scrapbook before it became popular with the stay-at-home mother crowd – she used to cut greeting cards and glue the words/drawings next to her photographs. She stopped doing that when magnetic albums came out. I did the same thing in college, even with magnetic albums, sticking mementos next to the photos. My mother reorganized her pictures and with that, went her early scrapbook.
36. I’ve only had sex with one person (a Finnish man I met on the beach – from afar I thought he was beautiful and gay because of the hugging swimsuit he wore – but then he spoke to me in the water and I heard his accent and I turned to my sister and said, “He’s not gay, he’s Finnish!” From there, something I’d never do ever again, we spent the day, all three of us together on that beach and then I alone with the Finnish law student spent the next week touring Los Angeles among other things. He cut a lock of my black hair – I felt like a trophy, but I sort of liked it. He told me if I went to Finland, men would be crazy about me because of my curly, black hair.). The other seven men I’ve been with were repeated trysts of love-making.
37. I have little to no sense of how much things cost – if I go to the market, I just go to the nearest one to me and buy what I want or need without any thought as to whether the tomatoes are more expensive where I’m at or if I should buy them from the store across town. If I see something I want, I tend to buy it, sometimes even when I shouldn’t.
38. The only kind of exercise I enjoy is bike riding and hiking and swimming.
39. I have a feeling I’m doing this list wrong.
40. I’m afraid that when I finish this list, I’ll have nothing left to write about. Ever.
41. I forget important things unless I’ve made the effort to write the thing down in a calendar or I see notes from my husband reminding me or I’ve repeated the obligation many, many times to myself. My father was the same way – he told me once that on a particular afternoon, he’d been visiting the USC medical campus to take care of some grant business. On this day he stepped into the elevator and was facing a rather large flier posted on the wall. It announced a faculty dinner that very evening with a speaker who was to speak on a specific aspect of genetic research. He told me the name of the speaker, “looked very familiar.” After a moment or two, he realized the speaker was…none other than himself. He’d completely forgotten his obligation. He said in his special way of laughing and talking at the same time, “Had I not seen that poster, had I not gone to the medical campus that afternoon, I’d have completely missed this dinner! How embarrassing!”
42. The one time a boyfriend left me for another woman, I fell apart, wasting nearly a year mourning the relationship and in the worst depression I've ever known. And yet...I have been unfaithful to every single one of my lovers.
43. When I’m past child-raising, I’d like to volunteer my legal services to the Poverty Law Center or the ACLU or a firm that handles death-penalty appeals. With regard to death as punishment, I believe there should be next to no doubt as to guilt.
44. I’ve had a few stories of mine published in online journals, a couple of which have disappeared. I was sad when I could no longer Google them, which I’d do on occasion as a little boost of self-confidence.
45. I’ve never gotten a job without knowing someone on the inside track.
46. I don’t have a green thumb but I constantly plug away at my garden in an effort to turn that thumb green.
47. I have some sort of mental block when it comes to mathematics – I cannot add numbers quickly or subtract or multiply or divide. I never learned my times tables as a child. I managed to just know enough to maintain a “B” in my math classes throughout school, but this strange gray fog settles in when I have to do any math calculation. Forget accounting – the numbers in those columns will not match up. Ever. My sister did the accounting for my mother’s estate in a matter of days when I’d sat for months staring at the check book and the receipts and Excel and absolutely not being able to make the thing work.
48. I loved college and miss it all the time, missing the feeling of infinite possibility that lay in front of me.
49. I lived at home all throughout college and law school.
50. The fact is, I’m lazy.
32. I’m very touchy about seeing obvious typographical or grammatical errors in other people’s work, even the error in the message rubbed into dust on the side window of a car which said, “Please washes me.” When I see such things, I’m overcome with a need to edit. The irony is that I cannot see my own typographical errors. It takes many rereads over several hours (and can even stretch into a couple of days) to find them all. What I need is to see my work in a different light, different color and type.
33. I prefer female singers to male singers. Whenever I have that free moment, that time in the car, that empty space in my day that I can fill with music, I will put Norah Jones on, or Alanis Morrisette, or Billie Holiday, or Etta James, or Sarah McLachlan, or ethnic music sung by women. I think it’s the fact that I can sing along – I like the freedom of singing alone in the car.
34. I hate the dentist. This stems from a pediatric dentist I had who kept our young mouths open with a strange device of rubbery-type sheeting and metal clamps. Perhaps my experience explains why I have no particular interest in latex clothing.
35. Scrapbooking is relaxing to me and a drain of financial resources – I have several drawers full of paper stuff, stickers, and empty albums, except I never get around to doing the work. My mother used to scrapbook before it became popular with the stay-at-home mother crowd – she used to cut greeting cards and glue the words/drawings next to her photographs. She stopped doing that when magnetic albums came out. I did the same thing in college, even with magnetic albums, sticking mementos next to the photos. My mother reorganized her pictures and with that, went her early scrapbook.
36. I’ve only had sex with one person (a Finnish man I met on the beach – from afar I thought he was beautiful and gay because of the hugging swimsuit he wore – but then he spoke to me in the water and I heard his accent and I turned to my sister and said, “He’s not gay, he’s Finnish!” From there, something I’d never do ever again, we spent the day, all three of us together on that beach and then I alone with the Finnish law student spent the next week touring Los Angeles among other things. He cut a lock of my black hair – I felt like a trophy, but I sort of liked it. He told me if I went to Finland, men would be crazy about me because of my curly, black hair.). The other seven men I’ve been with were repeated trysts of love-making.
37. I have little to no sense of how much things cost – if I go to the market, I just go to the nearest one to me and buy what I want or need without any thought as to whether the tomatoes are more expensive where I’m at or if I should buy them from the store across town. If I see something I want, I tend to buy it, sometimes even when I shouldn’t.
38. The only kind of exercise I enjoy is bike riding and hiking and swimming.
39. I have a feeling I’m doing this list wrong.
40. I’m afraid that when I finish this list, I’ll have nothing left to write about. Ever.
41. I forget important things unless I’ve made the effort to write the thing down in a calendar or I see notes from my husband reminding me or I’ve repeated the obligation many, many times to myself. My father was the same way – he told me once that on a particular afternoon, he’d been visiting the USC medical campus to take care of some grant business. On this day he stepped into the elevator and was facing a rather large flier posted on the wall. It announced a faculty dinner that very evening with a speaker who was to speak on a specific aspect of genetic research. He told me the name of the speaker, “looked very familiar.” After a moment or two, he realized the speaker was…none other than himself. He’d completely forgotten his obligation. He said in his special way of laughing and talking at the same time, “Had I not seen that poster, had I not gone to the medical campus that afternoon, I’d have completely missed this dinner! How embarrassing!”
42. The one time a boyfriend left me for another woman, I fell apart, wasting nearly a year mourning the relationship and in the worst depression I've ever known. And yet...I have been unfaithful to every single one of my lovers.
43. When I’m past child-raising, I’d like to volunteer my legal services to the Poverty Law Center or the ACLU or a firm that handles death-penalty appeals. With regard to death as punishment, I believe there should be next to no doubt as to guilt.
44. I’ve had a few stories of mine published in online journals, a couple of which have disappeared. I was sad when I could no longer Google them, which I’d do on occasion as a little boost of self-confidence.
45. I’ve never gotten a job without knowing someone on the inside track.
46. I don’t have a green thumb but I constantly plug away at my garden in an effort to turn that thumb green.
47. I have some sort of mental block when it comes to mathematics – I cannot add numbers quickly or subtract or multiply or divide. I never learned my times tables as a child. I managed to just know enough to maintain a “B” in my math classes throughout school, but this strange gray fog settles in when I have to do any math calculation. Forget accounting – the numbers in those columns will not match up. Ever. My sister did the accounting for my mother’s estate in a matter of days when I’d sat for months staring at the check book and the receipts and Excel and absolutely not being able to make the thing work.
48. I loved college and miss it all the time, missing the feeling of infinite possibility that lay in front of me.
49. I lived at home all throughout college and law school.
50. The fact is, I’m lazy.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
More 100 Things About Me
So...I continue my self-analysis with No. 15.
15. I shoplifted once or twice and I was very slick about it - the first time I was 12 or so and I was perusing the bookshelves in our local supermarket, paying particular attention to a Sydney Sheldon book that looked to provide me with additional sex education (which I desperately needed). I had a purse. I bent. I looked at the book, glanced around, saw I was alone for the moment and shoved the thing quickly into my bag. I stayed there. Picked up another book, pretended to read. Put it back...continued to peruse. My mother passed by and motioned to me that it was time to go. Success! The third time was in Sears. I never did it again. Unless the things stolen by my kids count. You know, those things you discover after you get home?
16. I love to make quilts, even though I haven’t done one in a while. There's something wonderfully mathematical about the process that draws me in – cutting the cloth into various shapes, sewing them together into a kaleidoscope-like picture, ultimately piecing the material into something useful and pretty. Quilting is a wonderful blend of practicality, geometry and creativity. M doesn’t have one, but both boys do.
17. I tried throwing pots one summer in college, but my hands were too soft to take it. I gave it up after a week.
18. I can’t speak Spanish worth a damn despite my having grown up around it. I can understand quite a bit – I can even sit and watch Spanish soap opera and follow along. The last one I watched was with my mother in her last weeks of recognition, before I even knew there was anything wrong with her. It was about an unattractive woman who transforms into a beauty and trumps all the people who were mean to her.
19. I play video games – sometimes a shooter, sometimes an RPG (role-playing game), sometimes an adventure where you have to “find things.” I started with Mario Brothers as a distraction from law school, stopping for a very long while in between the end of law school and J turning 8, when I re-discovered it again. One time, while on a walk with the family around our neighborhood, we ran into a neighbor, a parent of a child my kids played with, and the parent said to me, “I hear that you’re super good at PlayStation.” After laughing for the appropriate amount of time to convey sufficient aww shucks to show modesty and denial, I made sure to remember that moment because it meant that one of my boys bragged about me to their friends. That probably won’t happen again until after I’m dead.
20. I wasn’t kissed for the first time until I was 17.
21. I lost my virginity at age 18 - I was wracked with guilt and would swear I'd never do it again each and every time for the duration of our relationship.
22. I always fall in love with the man who loves me.
23. I didn’t marry the love of my life.
24. I can’t sing at all, but I did have fantasies of being a rock and roll singer when I saw Annie Lennox in concert, and Berlin. I had a boyfriend once who insisted I sing for him. I did. We broke up later. I sang for all my children when they were babies - the best kind of singing - making up songs - J would sometimes hold my cheeks and say, "Don't sing, Mommy."
25. I passed the bar exam the first time I took it.
26. Photography is my other hobby.
27. I need recipes to cook anything other than scrambled or hard-boiled eggs which is very different from my mother who could whip anything from whatever was in the cabinet. I miss her food terribly especially this flank steak dish we called, “Ranchero Steak” in which she browned tortillas next to the heavily seasoned steak. My sister and I cannot duplicate that dish. We plan on trying soon.
28. My mother, my sister and I watched the marriage of Princess Diana to Prince Charles while in my mother’s room, sitting on her bed.
29. My mother, my sister, my friend and her daughter, and I stayed up all night watching the funeral of Princess Diana, sitting on the floor of my mother’s townhouse living room. We never laughed so hard in our lives, we cried as if we knew the Princess personally.
30. When my first son was born, I thought he was the most beautiful child that had ever been born – I truly believed that in the moment I met him. When my second son was born, I didn’t think that. I had to later agree with my husband who had called out from the other side of the operating room (I had a c-section because A was a transverse lie), "He looks just like my dad!" At the time, D's father was 85.
31. Turning 40 was much harder than turning 30. At 41, I’m still waiting for my new-found wisdom to pour over me like rain, the way the rain looked in Indiana (a place I’ve been to, including Chicago and South Bend and some other small towns) one summer when a storm descended and it was hot rain and J, four-years old at the time, stomped in Batman and Robin galoshes under the eaves, getting soaked from the waterfall of water, happy, happy…joyous.
15. I shoplifted once or twice and I was very slick about it - the first time I was 12 or so and I was perusing the bookshelves in our local supermarket, paying particular attention to a Sydney Sheldon book that looked to provide me with additional sex education (which I desperately needed). I had a purse. I bent. I looked at the book, glanced around, saw I was alone for the moment and shoved the thing quickly into my bag. I stayed there. Picked up another book, pretended to read. Put it back...continued to peruse. My mother passed by and motioned to me that it was time to go. Success! The third time was in Sears. I never did it again. Unless the things stolen by my kids count. You know, those things you discover after you get home?
16. I love to make quilts, even though I haven’t done one in a while. There's something wonderfully mathematical about the process that draws me in – cutting the cloth into various shapes, sewing them together into a kaleidoscope-like picture, ultimately piecing the material into something useful and pretty. Quilting is a wonderful blend of practicality, geometry and creativity. M doesn’t have one, but both boys do.
17. I tried throwing pots one summer in college, but my hands were too soft to take it. I gave it up after a week.
18. I can’t speak Spanish worth a damn despite my having grown up around it. I can understand quite a bit – I can even sit and watch Spanish soap opera and follow along. The last one I watched was with my mother in her last weeks of recognition, before I even knew there was anything wrong with her. It was about an unattractive woman who transforms into a beauty and trumps all the people who were mean to her.
19. I play video games – sometimes a shooter, sometimes an RPG (role-playing game), sometimes an adventure where you have to “find things.” I started with Mario Brothers as a distraction from law school, stopping for a very long while in between the end of law school and J turning 8, when I re-discovered it again. One time, while on a walk with the family around our neighborhood, we ran into a neighbor, a parent of a child my kids played with, and the parent said to me, “I hear that you’re super good at PlayStation.” After laughing for the appropriate amount of time to convey sufficient aww shucks to show modesty and denial, I made sure to remember that moment because it meant that one of my boys bragged about me to their friends. That probably won’t happen again until after I’m dead.
20. I wasn’t kissed for the first time until I was 17.
21. I lost my virginity at age 18 - I was wracked with guilt and would swear I'd never do it again each and every time for the duration of our relationship.
22. I always fall in love with the man who loves me.
23. I didn’t marry the love of my life.
24. I can’t sing at all, but I did have fantasies of being a rock and roll singer when I saw Annie Lennox in concert, and Berlin. I had a boyfriend once who insisted I sing for him. I did. We broke up later. I sang for all my children when they were babies - the best kind of singing - making up songs - J would sometimes hold my cheeks and say, "Don't sing, Mommy."
25. I passed the bar exam the first time I took it.
26. Photography is my other hobby.
27. I need recipes to cook anything other than scrambled or hard-boiled eggs which is very different from my mother who could whip anything from whatever was in the cabinet. I miss her food terribly especially this flank steak dish we called, “Ranchero Steak” in which she browned tortillas next to the heavily seasoned steak. My sister and I cannot duplicate that dish. We plan on trying soon.
28. My mother, my sister and I watched the marriage of Princess Diana to Prince Charles while in my mother’s room, sitting on her bed.
29. My mother, my sister, my friend and her daughter, and I stayed up all night watching the funeral of Princess Diana, sitting on the floor of my mother’s townhouse living room. We never laughed so hard in our lives, we cried as if we knew the Princess personally.
30. When my first son was born, I thought he was the most beautiful child that had ever been born – I truly believed that in the moment I met him. When my second son was born, I didn’t think that. I had to later agree with my husband who had called out from the other side of the operating room (I had a c-section because A was a transverse lie), "He looks just like my dad!" At the time, D's father was 85.
31. Turning 40 was much harder than turning 30. At 41, I’m still waiting for my new-found wisdom to pour over me like rain, the way the rain looked in Indiana (a place I’ve been to, including Chicago and South Bend and some other small towns) one summer when a storm descended and it was hot rain and J, four-years old at the time, stomped in Batman and Robin galoshes under the eaves, getting soaked from the waterfall of water, happy, happy…joyous.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Differences
I'm driving home from my sister's house yesterday afternoon, following a morning at the dentist to replace fillings from my childhood, and M is sitting right behind me in her car seat. I've rolled down the windows because the day is beautiful and letting that beautiful day into the car is a delight, sparking M to yell out the window, "So long sucker trash cans!"
Feeling the need to curb her words which she gets from her brothers, "suck" being something I'd like for them not to use because it sounds so...raw...untoward, I turn my head slightly and say, "M, don't say that. Say silly instead."
She pauses, a curve swishing us to the side and back just as our house looms into view, and then with the confidence of a cheerleader, she yells out the window, "So long silly suckers!"
Feeling the need to curb her words which she gets from her brothers, "suck" being something I'd like for them not to use because it sounds so...raw...untoward, I turn my head slightly and say, "M, don't say that. Say silly instead."
She pauses, a curve swishing us to the side and back just as our house looms into view, and then with the confidence of a cheerleader, she yells out the window, "So long silly suckers!"
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Everything
Everything...perhaps nothing...100 things about me. I've been really enjoying these lists even though they're probably mocked all across the blogosphere. Thanks Nappy40 for working on your fantastic list as well as RLC who not only did his own version but also recommended yet another variation.
So...here I go...starting with no. 1 to get no. 1 out of the way, to remove the pressure of getting to the essential "me." I'm imagining this list will reveal things that are not immediately obvious if you bumped into me in a supermarket with my half-full-of-stuff basket.
1. I am profoundly insecure. Sometimes, compliments sound like a breeze rustling a spring time tree while insults sound as if I'm the Hunchback of Notre Dame in the bell tower.
2. I believe heaven would be incomplete without a library because everything can be found in a book.
3. When I was a child, one of my favorite books to read (hours and hours of reading) was Guiness World Book of Records. I'd buy it each and every year and never failed to be amazed, amused, and horrified at each accomplishment, at each oddity the book presented. I contemplated what sorts of records were in my reach. My oldest son reads it, too, without ever being prompted by me.
4. My sex education began with a Spanish language real-life "comic book" belonging to a childhood live-in Mexican housekeeper named Nadia (whose employment was swiftly terminated the day after she got drunk and declared her love for my father to my mother). The magazines were kept in her room (which eventually became mine) on the shelf and showed pictures of people romancing one another from the first kisses through various stages of undress.
5. I procrastinate way past the point of reason, sometimes even beyond that, on occasion to the point where I've developed a near-phobia for the thing I'm supposed to do.
6. The rest of my technical sex education came from a book called, "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask," which my father kept in his study, a smallish room with one large window, a red shag carpet, a massive mahogany desk with drawers I loved to search.
7. I love to watch television.
8. Flying terrifies me and the book, "Fear of Flying" by Erica Jong didn't help me at all...with regard to flying.
9. I've been to England, France, Germany, Austria, Mexico, New York, Hawaii, Washington D.C., Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. I'm not done travelling.
10. The thing I dislike most about being a lawyer is the clientele. Makes me glad I never became a doctor because then for sure I'd have grown to hate sick people and that would just be bad.
11. I wanted to be a doctor up until the day I got a "D" in biochemistry in my junior year at USC which evoked an admonition from my father while sitting in his laboratory office at USC, with me across from him, "You're not going to medical school - choose another career."
12. I decided I wanted to be a doctor when I was 7, swinging on a swing in my best friend's backyard, after she said, "I want to be a doctor," which was said right after she sang out, "I don't like cheese."
13. I didn't eat cheese between age 7 and 8, changing my mind about disliking cheese when McDonalds wouldn't make the cheesburger without cheese.
14. The number 13 doesn't make me nervous in any way - I'm not superstitious.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Wednesday
This year, Wednesday has been the restful sigh in the marathon jog of my life. The house is always silent, I always have my cup of coffee at my side, it's a day I can read blogs uninterrupted. On Wednesdays, I might even create an entry myself.
On my mind today...
Summer isn't looking quite as blissful as last summer. The children will be in summer school meaning we'll have to fight with them every morning to get up and ready and be on time and every night to get them in bed at a reasonable hour because at 8:00 p.m. the sky is still blue and blue doesn't signify, to them, sleep. I'm not thrilled about the prospect. The summer will be interminably long in that regard. On the other hand, it will fly by freakishly fast because in the fall I'll be teaching three classes which is, well, beginning to freak me out. It's not that I don't like to work (although there's some element of that there), rather it's that the children are so demanding that additional responsibility seems like a mountain's worth. What is that saying, don't make a mountain of a mole-hill? Well in this case, my mole-hill really does become a mountain. So today, at this moment, I'm suddenly dreading summer, fall, winter and spring.
God bless the Trader Joe's employee who called me, "Miss," yesterday. I'm not saying I passed for twenty, I'm saying that someone finally got wise and learned that it's best to hold "m'am" for a woman who's well into her seventies, at least.
The murder of the two girls in the midwest. I'm left once again wondering whether there's a seige against women and girls (or whether it's just the media's focus on such events), diving further into the question of why bad, senseless things happen, whether those bad things are just more proof of Godlessness. I end up sighing heavily, hiding my hide-a-key, locking the doors, watching my kids like the proverbial hawk today's modern parent must be. Funny how when I'm envisioning my own fears, I'm very alone in the picture. I see me, by myself, locking doors, putting extra keys away, closing drapes...but instead of my children and husband being with me, they are nowhere, it's just me.
A six-pack of Corona beer sits in our garage refrigerator. D is a teetotaler having been raised Baptist, having never developed a taste for any kind of alcohol. He buys this beer for me, going against all his instincts, his wishes, etc., so I can have a beer with dinner every two weeks or so. I see the beer in the refrigerator and I'm reminded of every little thing he does around the house just for me. Making coffee in the morning, doing the laundry. I'll be sure to do some little things in return. Just for him.
I really loved The Motorcycle Diaries which I rented the other day. A movie about a road trip which leaves me wanting to take my own road trip. Last week, as D and I were driving home from a dinner with the children, as they were alternating between fighting and laughing hysterically, he asked me if I'd like to drive across the country. Like that. With them. I say, yes. He reminds me this morning to cancel our reservations for a week long trip to San Diego due to summer school. I'm wondering what August will bring us.
Mother's Day was decidedly uneventful, but sweet. Cards in the morning, a special box for cards from everybody. A lovely box with a cream-colored velvety covering, with lots of space and ribbons. Late on Sunday, I noticed two orange fingerprints from Cheetos on the top cover of the box. My son A had been feeling it up. I thought those little marks couldn't be a more appropriate mark of Mother's Day.
Mexican Mother's Day took place on Tuesday and my sister and I celebrated that day by taking our grandmother to lunch at our local Japanese restaurant where the chefs cook in front of you. The kids had a great time. Afterwards, my sister went back home to put her baby, I, to bed and M and I took my grandmother to visit my mother's grave. I told her, "No llores, Mama." Of course, not crying isn't possible. She did. When we got to the spot, a serene spot marked by a boulder next to a pine tree, she laughed because the plant that had taken over the site was a Wandering Jew...she thought of my father.
Wednesday...another day, another week.
On my mind today...
Summer isn't looking quite as blissful as last summer. The children will be in summer school meaning we'll have to fight with them every morning to get up and ready and be on time and every night to get them in bed at a reasonable hour because at 8:00 p.m. the sky is still blue and blue doesn't signify, to them, sleep. I'm not thrilled about the prospect. The summer will be interminably long in that regard. On the other hand, it will fly by freakishly fast because in the fall I'll be teaching three classes which is, well, beginning to freak me out. It's not that I don't like to work (although there's some element of that there), rather it's that the children are so demanding that additional responsibility seems like a mountain's worth. What is that saying, don't make a mountain of a mole-hill? Well in this case, my mole-hill really does become a mountain. So today, at this moment, I'm suddenly dreading summer, fall, winter and spring.
God bless the Trader Joe's employee who called me, "Miss," yesterday. I'm not saying I passed for twenty, I'm saying that someone finally got wise and learned that it's best to hold "m'am" for a woman who's well into her seventies, at least.
The murder of the two girls in the midwest. I'm left once again wondering whether there's a seige against women and girls (or whether it's just the media's focus on such events), diving further into the question of why bad, senseless things happen, whether those bad things are just more proof of Godlessness. I end up sighing heavily, hiding my hide-a-key, locking the doors, watching my kids like the proverbial hawk today's modern parent must be. Funny how when I'm envisioning my own fears, I'm very alone in the picture. I see me, by myself, locking doors, putting extra keys away, closing drapes...but instead of my children and husband being with me, they are nowhere, it's just me.
A six-pack of Corona beer sits in our garage refrigerator. D is a teetotaler having been raised Baptist, having never developed a taste for any kind of alcohol. He buys this beer for me, going against all his instincts, his wishes, etc., so I can have a beer with dinner every two weeks or so. I see the beer in the refrigerator and I'm reminded of every little thing he does around the house just for me. Making coffee in the morning, doing the laundry. I'll be sure to do some little things in return. Just for him.
I really loved The Motorcycle Diaries which I rented the other day. A movie about a road trip which leaves me wanting to take my own road trip. Last week, as D and I were driving home from a dinner with the children, as they were alternating between fighting and laughing hysterically, he asked me if I'd like to drive across the country. Like that. With them. I say, yes. He reminds me this morning to cancel our reservations for a week long trip to San Diego due to summer school. I'm wondering what August will bring us.
Mother's Day was decidedly uneventful, but sweet. Cards in the morning, a special box for cards from everybody. A lovely box with a cream-colored velvety covering, with lots of space and ribbons. Late on Sunday, I noticed two orange fingerprints from Cheetos on the top cover of the box. My son A had been feeling it up. I thought those little marks couldn't be a more appropriate mark of Mother's Day.
Mexican Mother's Day took place on Tuesday and my sister and I celebrated that day by taking our grandmother to lunch at our local Japanese restaurant where the chefs cook in front of you. The kids had a great time. Afterwards, my sister went back home to put her baby, I, to bed and M and I took my grandmother to visit my mother's grave. I told her, "No llores, Mama." Of course, not crying isn't possible. She did. When we got to the spot, a serene spot marked by a boulder next to a pine tree, she laughed because the plant that had taken over the site was a Wandering Jew...she thought of my father.
Wednesday...another day, another week.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Friday, May 06, 2005
Finally...the Reading Meme
At last, I took the time to walk around the house, peruse bookshelves and came to the following...for now. Like religion, my recall of books that are important to me is rather fluid...it changes...I forget...am easily reminded...but for today, right now, these are my answers to RLC's kind request of me.
1. You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?
I’m torn between James Joyce’s Ulysses and the Torah. With the first, Joyce included all sort of different writing styles that I grew to love. His language, use of stream of consciousness, and story enthralled me in college and ever since. I think it’s one of most fascinating books I’ve ever read and would love to have his words at my fingertips at all times. For me, the book endlessly captivates. The Torah on the other hand is about life – doesn’t matter my atheistic tendencies, what’s there is applicable and intriguing and fodder for thought and argument. There is no lack of story there, there is no uselessness there. Oh and now that I'm thinking about it, another possibility would be Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. He outlines all the major philosophies in the world into a very interesting fictional story. I'd love to have handy that information, quotes and ins and outs, as I move along in my day-to-day activities.
2. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
For those who really and truly know me…LOL! Um, but we’re talking books. I’d probably have to say, no. I’ve loved the writers, though, I developed hard crushes on the authors themselves, eating up their biographies (some of them were positively crazy), becoming hungry for their work. Perhaps the closest fictional crush I came to was on Stephen Dedalus. I loved his torment, his beautiful misery ever since Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man through Ulysses. A note on crushes – I was in love with Houdini and Charles Lindbergh as a teenager. I fell in love with them through their biographies.
3. The last book you bought was...?
The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Che Guevara, Cintio Vitier, and Aleida Guevara.
4. The last book you read was...?
Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey – an engrossing, twisted, story written in a unique style about twisted characters, people who hadn’t always been so strange. It’s a journey to wholeness, closure, hope, my favorite sort of story.
5. What are you currently reading?
Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde; The Little Friend by Donna Tartt, Good Poems, edited by Garrison Keillor, 2005 O’Henry Prize Stories, several literary journals, Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clark, The Republic of East L.A. by Luis Rodriquez and Sunday Jews by Hortense Calisher (I read slowly, I drift in an out of many books, one at a time, on any single day or single week).
6. Five books you would take to a desert island...
Impossible to answer, I suppose it would be Ulysses, the Torah, Norton’s Anthology of Poetry, Norton’s Anthology of English Literature and of American Literature, and I’d have to sneak onto the island a really big Dictionary.
7. Who are you passing this stick on to and why?
Well, taking into account the various types of blogs and the kinds of answers we might get…I’d like to pass the stick to Lori because she needs to be distracted from her little Susie, Matzanacho because her interest in books is so very different than mine, Brenda because I'd like to know what a wonderful artist reads, the narrator because although his blog doesn’t really accommodate a meme, I'm still quite intrigued what such a good published author reads, and hokkaidoabbey because if I name any more, I'll just be obnoxious.
One last notation - a book I just picked up off the internet: Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth, a satire about Christian and religion as a whole. I read this back in high school and had been immediately struck by its relevance to my own beliefs. The book is quite funny and quite interesting. I remember coming home and reading bits of it to my mother.
1. You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?
I’m torn between James Joyce’s Ulysses and the Torah. With the first, Joyce included all sort of different writing styles that I grew to love. His language, use of stream of consciousness, and story enthralled me in college and ever since. I think it’s one of most fascinating books I’ve ever read and would love to have his words at my fingertips at all times. For me, the book endlessly captivates. The Torah on the other hand is about life – doesn’t matter my atheistic tendencies, what’s there is applicable and intriguing and fodder for thought and argument. There is no lack of story there, there is no uselessness there. Oh and now that I'm thinking about it, another possibility would be Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. He outlines all the major philosophies in the world into a very interesting fictional story. I'd love to have handy that information, quotes and ins and outs, as I move along in my day-to-day activities.
2. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
For those who really and truly know me…LOL! Um, but we’re talking books. I’d probably have to say, no. I’ve loved the writers, though, I developed hard crushes on the authors themselves, eating up their biographies (some of them were positively crazy), becoming hungry for their work. Perhaps the closest fictional crush I came to was on Stephen Dedalus. I loved his torment, his beautiful misery ever since Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man through Ulysses. A note on crushes – I was in love with Houdini and Charles Lindbergh as a teenager. I fell in love with them through their biographies.
3. The last book you bought was...?
The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Che Guevara, Cintio Vitier, and Aleida Guevara.
4. The last book you read was...?
Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey – an engrossing, twisted, story written in a unique style about twisted characters, people who hadn’t always been so strange. It’s a journey to wholeness, closure, hope, my favorite sort of story.
5. What are you currently reading?
Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde; The Little Friend by Donna Tartt, Good Poems, edited by Garrison Keillor, 2005 O’Henry Prize Stories, several literary journals, Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clark, The Republic of East L.A. by Luis Rodriquez and Sunday Jews by Hortense Calisher (I read slowly, I drift in an out of many books, one at a time, on any single day or single week).
6. Five books you would take to a desert island...
Impossible to answer, I suppose it would be Ulysses, the Torah, Norton’s Anthology of Poetry, Norton’s Anthology of English Literature and of American Literature, and I’d have to sneak onto the island a really big Dictionary.
7. Who are you passing this stick on to and why?
Well, taking into account the various types of blogs and the kinds of answers we might get…I’d like to pass the stick to Lori because she needs to be distracted from her little Susie, Matzanacho because her interest in books is so very different than mine, Brenda because I'd like to know what a wonderful artist reads, the narrator because although his blog doesn’t really accommodate a meme, I'm still quite intrigued what such a good published author reads, and hokkaidoabbey because if I name any more, I'll just be obnoxious.
One last notation - a book I just picked up off the internet: Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth, a satire about Christian and religion as a whole. I read this back in high school and had been immediately struck by its relevance to my own beliefs. The book is quite funny and quite interesting. I remember coming home and reading bits of it to my mother.
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Navel Gazing and Foot Fighting
This post by Tamar, the links there, and the discussion in the comments has been an amazing read. I thought to blog about it a little since I’m meming today (look! I’ve made up my own word), to come out of my own spiritual closet. And what a place the closet is, a place where I spend a lot of time contemplating, considering. The colors, the darkness, the quiet, and the light seeping in from a glittery window above the purple umbrella next to the board games, make a perfect place within which to navel-gaze.
Tamar quoted an e-mail to her that said, "As soon as I see the word ‘God’ in any news report, as in ‘my commitment before God to her was the day I bought that ring and put it on her finger, and I'm not backing down from that, Mason said,’ I go SOUTH!"
I understand the feeling and it’s borne out of recent American politics, from observing a growing desire of some people in these United States to blur the line of separation between state and religion. My problem is…what religion should take over?
This is where I stumble. I have no religion. My spiritual journey has been bumpy to say the least. For all the twists and turns (roller coaster like), the funny thing is that I’ve ended up in the same place I started. My journey has turned into a merry-go-round.
I was raised in a religious smorgasbord of a family. My father had been raised as an Orthodox Jew in Iraq, his family becoming conservative in Israel, eventually settling in the United States where my father abandoned all religious practice in favor of Zionism. "Judaism" to me had been all about Israeli politics, interrupted every so often by Hanukkah and Passover. My mother was raised Methodist, eventually choosing Catholicism as her base religion (the Mexican version, i.e. like my father, her focus was less on dogma and more on cultural practices) with a smattering of Wicca and other such spiritual diversions. My brother, sister and I floated along behind them, our religious beliefs shaped by theirs. On the sidelines, our extended family consisted of Mormons, Muslims, the occasional Buddhist, and a healthy variety of Christians.
My brother tends to atheism, my sister tends towards general spiritualism, and I’m the avowed agnostic, right where I started as a child.
My first major turn was during college when I joined the Hillel at USC, a great place – I made friends, I prayed on Friday nights, I learned songs, I learned about the faith, I hooked up with a boyfriend (well…duh!). I traveled along that route until law school where I turned once again into an agnostic, a questioner with no home.
I reached my second major turn when my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer...turning point isn't quite the word, "cataclysmic break-down of everything spiritual" is more like it. My father was devastated and his true atheism came out - he believed death sent him into a black hole of nothingness. All his science, all his brilliance, shattered with his impending death. It broke my heart in just as many millions of pieces to see the man who held up my world like Atlas…absolutely break. I became a "Christian" to heal him. I had prayer groups going, I read the New Testament, I talked to Christian friends, I prayed and prayed… Then he died. As did my Christianity. In the months following my father’s death, I explored feverishly the “afterlife.” I read every grieving book, every book that suggested there was life after death, in order to prove my father wrong. During that time, my sister and I began to notice that she dreamed what I saw during the day – so specific there was no way it was coincidence.
One evening, for example, I watched a movie called “Fearless” where a young mother lost her child in an airplane crash. The film focused on the mother holding tightly to her child as the plane landed – this was her torment as she thought she let go of her child, the child dying in the crash landing. I watched the film late at night. The next morning my sister called saying she had the strangest dream, so real. She dreamt she was holding onto my toddler (the only one I had at the time, she had none) at the edge a cliff, to prevent him from falling. Her main focus was holding onto him. Countless times followed. Even recently, my grandmother told me a cousin-in-law was ill with an eye condition that if not treated could lead to blindness – the family was worried. When I told my sister about the situation the next day, she told me she’d dreamt several times in the night about being blind. There was no way in our minds this could be coincidence, not at that level of specificity. For a while we “believed.” This was proof.
I slipped back a while later into agnosticism again. When my mother died several years later, I believed for a while in the spirituality of death…that there was definitely “something.” After months…I slipped and here is where I stay. An agnostic…ever questioning, ever disbelieving and believing…and never settling.
I reject fundamentalist Christianity and the like, I resent the shift of my country to the extreme right. I'm more open to Judaism, but I have trouble with the often-lesser role of women. Ultimately, I have trouble with the idea of "God" and the ensuing fantastical concepts that come out of a belief thereof. However, the idea that we live this life only is just as unfathomable to me. How do you explain human relationships? The concept of humor arising out of literal human ashes? The transcendence of the human condition is evident in photographs, their eyes telling you their story, carrying over from the years of the first photograph. What about our amazing ability to survive unbelievable odds...the fact that you drive in your car and glance at someone...and from many feet away, the two of you connect via your eyes, the windows to your soul...it's beyond evolution, beyond "survival of the fittest." I agree, “I think, therefore I am.” We people are evidence of the Divine.
But...what IS that? What does it mean? Where do we go? Why am I allowed to sense this? My sister dreams what I see – this is true.
The questions fascinate me. I don’t see an end to the Merry-go-round anytime soon. Or the navel-gazing. Or the foot-fighting.
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Fiction: Tijuana
The balcony at the front of my aunt’s apartment will always be unfinished and her home will always smell like the permeating sweet of the golden-green Mexican mango.
I climbed the concrete steps to the screen door of her apartment and rang the bell. The air was dry and the street quiet, the dirt road absorbing the city sounds mere blocks away. The ring seems disproportionately loud. The noontime heat wasn’t enough to make me sweat, but the black vinyl of my 1975 Buick was, the traffic crossing the border into Tijuana, Mexico, was. While I waited on the balcony with no handrail, avoiding the trecherous ledge, I glanced across the street at the other duplexes, their heavily adorned iron gates painted a variety of whites and blacks, their front gardens untamed masses of green, freckled with sunflowers and hibiscus flowers.
A deep breath soothed me a little, the knowledge of the panaderia a few houses down tempting me to take a walk to see the young girls who worked behind the counter selling pan dulce. They were as much a part of Tijuana culture as anything else. A dog’s relentless bark however really told me I was home one more time.
Tía Rita reached the door and opened it. She was a whirlwind of chirping Spanish and soulful laughter and like the storm she seemed, she swept me easily into her arms, squeezing tightly and making me feel small and insignificant. She released me, cupping my cheeks in her warm onion-smelling hands and narrowing her eyes, her face full of curiosity or suspicion or questions, because I’d surprised her.
“What are you doing here so far from Los Angeles, my daughter?”
Although I wasn’t her child, she called me that because she loved me like one. She practically raised me. Perhaps it felt that way more than it was actually so – perhaps she simply knew me in a way only a mother knows a daughter.
“Who is the bastard and what did he do?”
I opened my mouth to speak, to deny it, to say I just wanted to see her. Nothing came out other than a broken sound, an audible crumpling of my heart. I adjusted my sunglasses and shut my eyes, shaking my head and pursing my lips, pressing them tightly to keep everything inside. It had never been my intention to tell tales of agony. I’d planned on simply enjoying my aunt, absorbing her bravery and impenetrability. I needed it.
“No, no, no,” she said, “Stop it. Enough.”
She held me again in her arms, her clothes the scent of a flowery perfume, one she’d worn forever, a repeating gift from her unofficial lover, Señor Salvador.
“Men are peanuts to be shelled,” she whispered. “Salted, eaten.”
The walls of her place were adorned with portraits of Jesus and Mary and her mother, the three occupying spots on the wall, equidistant from one another, all at the same level. The coffee table and couches were covered with handmade lace. The colors of her apartment were muted, subtle. The complete opposite of my Tía. She was over 60 and she’d never been married. She never let that moral barrier stop her from enjoying her life in every way a woman can enjoy her life. So contagious was her goodness and daring everyone who was important in Tijuana knew her. She needed a permit to add a room to her apartment building? The mayor of the city pushed it through, high priority. She had a friend who had a run-in with law enforcement? The Chief of Police clarified the trouble, arranged the District Attorney see things more in favor of the law-breaker. She had problems with thugs on the street? Señor Jesus De Moreno, a person of questionable papers, saw to the clean-up.
My aunt put a pot on the stove to make percolated coffee and took two bowls from her cupboard, placing them on the green-flowered tile counter. Using a large stainless-steel spoon, she filled the bowls with albondiga soup. I didn’t want to tell her she was wasting her time. I could not eat the wonderful rice meatballs in chicken and vegetable broth – my hurts would not let me speak, much less eat.
While she had her lunch, while she drank from her coffee cup, she saw my untouched meal, my hands folded on my lap, my sunglasses still covering up my weeping. She wiped her hands on her apron and lay her hand gently on my arm, repeating an old Mexican saying, “They say the devil knows everything not from being the devil, but because he’s old.” She’s telling me she knows it all, that there is no story unfamiliar.
She smiled at me and took more sips from the coffee. I sniffled and planned my days ahead in my mind. I would sleep in her bed. I’d be treated to music at night coming from her record player. I’d hear her talking on the telephone or to a neighbor through her window. I’d hear the city late at night. I’d remember my years of living here.
“Your Tío Nestor has moved to Mexico City like he always wanted. The good thing is he’ll be living near Lela so he can take care of her. She has not recovered from the accident. He’ll get her on her feet again.”
Lela, my cousin, had lost her home to a fire started by faulty electrical work. She survived the fire with only minor burns, but the building completely collapsed. When she went back to retrieve what was left of her belongings, she fell in the wreckage and broke her leg, severely. The place had been rebuilt – whether it was safe now was not guaranteed. People were contacted, contracts were made, and bribes were paid. Work was done but again, there was no telling. A tremor or another fire would reveal the sanctity of the construction. Nobody really worried about another catastrophe. What happened was in the past. Who’s to say about tomorrow? We were born to die.
“Do you remember my telling you about Señor Jimenez?” She turned momentarily to listen as someone came up the stairs. If the noise stopped after the first flight, the visitor was for the neighbor. The footsteps ceased and so my aunt went on with her recollection.
“He used to serenade me under the moon, at my mother’s house. I pretended to sleep, not getting up, not acknowledging him. She would come out to chase him away, threatening to throw the molcajete at him. And she was strong enough to do it. To not miss. Later, when the night was darker and the coyotes were singing, he would bring a ladder and sneak into my room and we’d make love. Afterwards, he would walk out of my bedroom naked, his clothes in his hands, whistling. Right as the sun was coming up. Right past my mother's room. I think he wanted to get caught. We wanted to get caught. Mamá would have killed him.” She laughed. “We were chickens, my daughter, strutting in front of the farmer who stood there swinging his knife, ready to cut our necks. I don’t know what we were expecting.”
She laughed and sipped more coffee, her gaze dreamy.
“Whatever I wanted, I took,” she said. “What do you want, mi chiquita? Who has slapped your reaching hand?”
I glanced down at my soup, at the rice floating along with cilantro leaves. God has slapped my hand, I think. I tried to pocket more love than what I was entitled to, I tried to keep it, but I got caught like a common thief. My lover had left me with no explanation. My husband had no idea of my pain. My children were shining displays of guilt in the form of innocent neediness. They were little birds in a nest, their mouths open and calling and calling me. And there I was, lying on the ground, still…still. Through my tinted lenses, I looked at my aunt, a woman who went through life wielding a sword rather than hiding behind a shield. She was unapologetic.
“I know what you’re going to say, that I didn’t get hurt.”
Shrugging, I let my voice stir a bit, shudder into motion, “That would not be realistic.”
“Correct. Men have hurt me. I have loved and I have lost, my heart torn to shreds. I have lost love to death.” She paused and I licked my lips and sniffled and adjusted my glasses. I rubbed my arms, feeling the sweater beneath my fingertips. Feeling cold. “I accepted the pain as a part of my life, I saw my pain as nothing in comparison to what my mother experienced, as even less than what my grandmother experienced. I rode a sea of ancient sadness and floated on their tears.”
At that, I lifted my head and took my sunglasses off. With an empathetic chuckle coming from deep inside of her, she rubbed the wetness across my cheeks. She said, “The salt, my daughter, is good for your skin.”
I climbed the concrete steps to the screen door of her apartment and rang the bell. The air was dry and the street quiet, the dirt road absorbing the city sounds mere blocks away. The ring seems disproportionately loud. The noontime heat wasn’t enough to make me sweat, but the black vinyl of my 1975 Buick was, the traffic crossing the border into Tijuana, Mexico, was. While I waited on the balcony with no handrail, avoiding the trecherous ledge, I glanced across the street at the other duplexes, their heavily adorned iron gates painted a variety of whites and blacks, their front gardens untamed masses of green, freckled with sunflowers and hibiscus flowers.
A deep breath soothed me a little, the knowledge of the panaderia a few houses down tempting me to take a walk to see the young girls who worked behind the counter selling pan dulce. They were as much a part of Tijuana culture as anything else. A dog’s relentless bark however really told me I was home one more time.
Tía Rita reached the door and opened it. She was a whirlwind of chirping Spanish and soulful laughter and like the storm she seemed, she swept me easily into her arms, squeezing tightly and making me feel small and insignificant. She released me, cupping my cheeks in her warm onion-smelling hands and narrowing her eyes, her face full of curiosity or suspicion or questions, because I’d surprised her.
“What are you doing here so far from Los Angeles, my daughter?”
Although I wasn’t her child, she called me that because she loved me like one. She practically raised me. Perhaps it felt that way more than it was actually so – perhaps she simply knew me in a way only a mother knows a daughter.
“Who is the bastard and what did he do?”
I opened my mouth to speak, to deny it, to say I just wanted to see her. Nothing came out other than a broken sound, an audible crumpling of my heart. I adjusted my sunglasses and shut my eyes, shaking my head and pursing my lips, pressing them tightly to keep everything inside. It had never been my intention to tell tales of agony. I’d planned on simply enjoying my aunt, absorbing her bravery and impenetrability. I needed it.
“No, no, no,” she said, “Stop it. Enough.”
She held me again in her arms, her clothes the scent of a flowery perfume, one she’d worn forever, a repeating gift from her unofficial lover, Señor Salvador.
“Men are peanuts to be shelled,” she whispered. “Salted, eaten.”
The walls of her place were adorned with portraits of Jesus and Mary and her mother, the three occupying spots on the wall, equidistant from one another, all at the same level. The coffee table and couches were covered with handmade lace. The colors of her apartment were muted, subtle. The complete opposite of my Tía. She was over 60 and she’d never been married. She never let that moral barrier stop her from enjoying her life in every way a woman can enjoy her life. So contagious was her goodness and daring everyone who was important in Tijuana knew her. She needed a permit to add a room to her apartment building? The mayor of the city pushed it through, high priority. She had a friend who had a run-in with law enforcement? The Chief of Police clarified the trouble, arranged the District Attorney see things more in favor of the law-breaker. She had problems with thugs on the street? Señor Jesus De Moreno, a person of questionable papers, saw to the clean-up.
My aunt put a pot on the stove to make percolated coffee and took two bowls from her cupboard, placing them on the green-flowered tile counter. Using a large stainless-steel spoon, she filled the bowls with albondiga soup. I didn’t want to tell her she was wasting her time. I could not eat the wonderful rice meatballs in chicken and vegetable broth – my hurts would not let me speak, much less eat.
While she had her lunch, while she drank from her coffee cup, she saw my untouched meal, my hands folded on my lap, my sunglasses still covering up my weeping. She wiped her hands on her apron and lay her hand gently on my arm, repeating an old Mexican saying, “They say the devil knows everything not from being the devil, but because he’s old.” She’s telling me she knows it all, that there is no story unfamiliar.
She smiled at me and took more sips from the coffee. I sniffled and planned my days ahead in my mind. I would sleep in her bed. I’d be treated to music at night coming from her record player. I’d hear her talking on the telephone or to a neighbor through her window. I’d hear the city late at night. I’d remember my years of living here.
“Your Tío Nestor has moved to Mexico City like he always wanted. The good thing is he’ll be living near Lela so he can take care of her. She has not recovered from the accident. He’ll get her on her feet again.”
Lela, my cousin, had lost her home to a fire started by faulty electrical work. She survived the fire with only minor burns, but the building completely collapsed. When she went back to retrieve what was left of her belongings, she fell in the wreckage and broke her leg, severely. The place had been rebuilt – whether it was safe now was not guaranteed. People were contacted, contracts were made, and bribes were paid. Work was done but again, there was no telling. A tremor or another fire would reveal the sanctity of the construction. Nobody really worried about another catastrophe. What happened was in the past. Who’s to say about tomorrow? We were born to die.
“Do you remember my telling you about Señor Jimenez?” She turned momentarily to listen as someone came up the stairs. If the noise stopped after the first flight, the visitor was for the neighbor. The footsteps ceased and so my aunt went on with her recollection.
“He used to serenade me under the moon, at my mother’s house. I pretended to sleep, not getting up, not acknowledging him. She would come out to chase him away, threatening to throw the molcajete at him. And she was strong enough to do it. To not miss. Later, when the night was darker and the coyotes were singing, he would bring a ladder and sneak into my room and we’d make love. Afterwards, he would walk out of my bedroom naked, his clothes in his hands, whistling. Right as the sun was coming up. Right past my mother's room. I think he wanted to get caught. We wanted to get caught. Mamá would have killed him.” She laughed. “We were chickens, my daughter, strutting in front of the farmer who stood there swinging his knife, ready to cut our necks. I don’t know what we were expecting.”
She laughed and sipped more coffee, her gaze dreamy.
“Whatever I wanted, I took,” she said. “What do you want, mi chiquita? Who has slapped your reaching hand?”
I glanced down at my soup, at the rice floating along with cilantro leaves. God has slapped my hand, I think. I tried to pocket more love than what I was entitled to, I tried to keep it, but I got caught like a common thief. My lover had left me with no explanation. My husband had no idea of my pain. My children were shining displays of guilt in the form of innocent neediness. They were little birds in a nest, their mouths open and calling and calling me. And there I was, lying on the ground, still…still. Through my tinted lenses, I looked at my aunt, a woman who went through life wielding a sword rather than hiding behind a shield. She was unapologetic.
“I know what you’re going to say, that I didn’t get hurt.”
Shrugging, I let my voice stir a bit, shudder into motion, “That would not be realistic.”
“Correct. Men have hurt me. I have loved and I have lost, my heart torn to shreds. I have lost love to death.” She paused and I licked my lips and sniffled and adjusted my glasses. I rubbed my arms, feeling the sweater beneath my fingertips. Feeling cold. “I accepted the pain as a part of my life, I saw my pain as nothing in comparison to what my mother experienced, as even less than what my grandmother experienced. I rode a sea of ancient sadness and floated on their tears.”
At that, I lifted my head and took my sunglasses off. With an empathetic chuckle coming from deep inside of her, she rubbed the wetness across my cheeks. She said, “The salt, my daughter, is good for your skin.”
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