Dancing

Thirty years later, I sit by the fire after a long day feeling rather alone in my battle against life's sharp arrows.  The radio plays softly from the kitchen as I finally put down the day's work and prop my feet up.  Just as my head hits the curve of the chair back, the sweet call of an old song conjures another dark evening, in another dark living room where two young, gullible lovers stood in embrace.  Roy Orbison was crying, and we were swooning.

My husband worked and attended college, I worked days and rarely saw him at night.  His schedule, ever-changing and mine immovable, we almost existed in different dimensions.  Perhaps absence made our hearts fonder.

"You're making a foolish decision!" His dad boomed at him one Sunday afternoon.  "You're too young to know whether she's the right girl for you!
Look at her family! You want to marry into that?" Red-faced, he stormed off as my future husband stared at his feet, too intimidated to talk back.  

My heart ached for him in that moment, and it ached for me, too.  Was I so unlovable and so wrong for him?  Was I right for anyone--what with my family and all.

Others implored me, "Don't you want to wait until he finishes college?"  

No.  I was sure.  More sure than I ever was of anything before or after the day I married him.  I knew we were meant to spend a lifetime together. 

I knew it on Saturday nights when we made out on my sister's couch and then felt guilty about it later.  I knew when his bumbling, awkward ways endeared him to me, pulling him ever-nearer to my heart.  

We did love one another.  We loved wildly and fiercely and yes, even foolishly.  People even told us, "You're being foolish!" while we planned our wedding and started a joint bank account to save for the honeymoon.  My parents seemed to think of my choice as sound, a "marrying up" sort of deal.  His parents, well they never lost any love for me.  

We loved as hard as we could, despite the binds of religion our church imposed upon us.  It was there we met and there that we fell for one another, sitting side by side passing notes during mind-numbingly redundant sermons, spewed from the pulpit in shouts and stomps.  We reveled in our sentimentality so much that somewhere, those notes lie, still tucked away for someone to find and read, and not understand.

Independent Baptists, that's what we were, and how we were raised.  His dad a preacher, mine a deacon.  There our fathers' similarities parted.  We didn't know it at the time, but we were a 1980's big-haired, white sneakered version of Romeo and Juliet--with a Southern drawl.  Never allowed to dance or drink alcohol or go to movies, we, even as teenagers, never tried to buck the system.  We followed the rules as closely as we could--except on Saturday nights of course.  We prayed extra hard on Sundays for the strength to endure temptation, and we loved.

We loved with abandon of all reason, with a kind of insanity that could only come from unspoiled hearts that never considered the pain of being broken.

What is love though, if not the most foolish of concepts known to man?  Yet we yield to it so easily.  We let it wrap around us, pull us close, make us believe in forever.

And so, we stood in our dark living room in Six Mile, nearly 30 years ago holding one another close, gently rocking from side to side to the sweet falsetto of Roy Orbison's  "Crying."  My husband said softly in my ear, "I wish we really knew how to dance."

"Me too." I said back, as Roy Orbison faded into the background and we remained tangled together,  obliviously still swooning to the music.

Breakfast At Tiffany's

We drove towards the beach, evening sunset giving way to gray skies around us, the radio blaring as we sang along.  "Breakfast At Tiffany's" was the song, and I sang it with such joy and abandon in that moment.  He's not around anymore, but every time I hear the song, my mind reaches for that instance of pure joy again.  For a long time, I let the poison of how things ended spoil the memory, but I try not to let it anymore.

You learn to see things differently when you live most of your life thinking you don't have much longer to live.  Every struggle and failure and triumph seems to take on deeper meaning, sometimes interpreted so inaccurately by a mind too caught up in preparing for the end to truly remain present for what comes in the middle.  Even an Oreo knows that the stuff in the middle is the sweetest, so what's wrong with me?

Yesterday I listened to music from my iPod, something I rarely do.  I even scrolled to "songs" and had it shuffle all of them.  With nearly every song, I could identify a person or a place or a time that brought the melodies to my world. Ben Harper made me think of Joey and riding in the car with no AC during the summertime with the radio turned up loud.  Uriah Heep made me think of the old high school pal who never outgrew being a hippy and a pot-head.  U2, well, some memories aren't all that great, so I skipped most of those songs.  Then there was Johnny Cash, who made me think of my dad and all the Saturday evenings we watched Hee Haw together, and especially the one episode where Johnny rode up on a horse singing a song about a traveling preacher.  My daddy said, "There's the man in black!" And I never forgot that one, brief, fleeting, seemingly meaningless second of time.  I am frozen there, and so is Johnny Cash and my dad, all of us sharing in a moment of joy.  Lady Gaga made me remember when Sylia was in middle school and thought herself  "emo-ish."  The Mamas and The Papas brought back an afternoon in the car with my girls, trying to harmonize "California Dreamin'" together.  Fiona Apple, driving around in Greer with Tony Viola, who was the only man I ever knew who liked Fiona, singing "Parting Gift," while he listened close to see if I could hit all the low notes. 

Sometimes the smells and tastes and sounds around me trigger memories so deeply ingrained into who I am that I rarely take notice of them anymore.  So often as an adult, I have felt like someone watching a parade go by, never really getting to march with it;  but perhaps what I fail to accept is that the parade has run through me.  Every character who wore a mask or danced a jig or ran around in a crazy costume left something of themselves with me.  The parade composed me, with its music and laughter and even tears, it brought joy to my doorstep. 

Spoiled relationships and sad endings took my joy for too long.  As I listened to "Breakfast At Tiffany's" yesterday morning while I shopped for blouses, I decided to let go of the bitterness for a while, and instead try to hold that place of joy where a sweet memory exists.  I tried to remind myself that some people live their whole lives without a moment like that one, so instead of clenching my fists because all of life didn't give me the kind of joy that moment gave me, I should perhaps just feel grateful it happened.  That's just what I did, I stood there remembering, smiling to myself, thanking the Universe that even when life seats us beside a steaming pile of poo in the passenger seat of the Toyota Echo, it also loves us enough to create a moment we can cling to--a moment before we realized we were riding in a car with a steaming pile of poo. 

With so much change disrupting my world, and with the realization that dialysis won't work forever--eventually I will need that transplant, I get fairly gloomy these days.  Change is difficult for everyone, or at least that's what we tell ourselves when we are struggling.  The truth is, change isn't always hard, not all change.  Sometimes we lay out the welcome mats and throw parties for Change.  So I suppose the changes that come with suffering leave us feeling alone and in need of some fellow human to understand our internal turmoils. 

Human beings were made to reach forward.  From birth, we begin to reach milestones and throughout life, we keep reaching.  We reach for knowledge, for experience, for love and family and a chance to redefine home to our own broods.  We reach for empty nests and retirement parties, then long vacations and slow, steady years of just enjoying all the things we accomplished in the middle; but I feel un-tethered, for the reaching also keeps us anchored to this world, and I feel time running out.   So many things I longed for in life rest proud and full inside my chest.  My babies, my grandchildren, the friendships and even failed attempts at love, they all bear witness to my being.  I hope that somewhere, someday, I will pop up in someone's mind as they listen to a song and recall a moment or two of pure joy, shared with me. 

The Parade forever marches on.

Resurrection

Cold, damp wintertime edged its way closer and closer into the house, the wood floors beginning to feel sticky under my bare feet from the dampness.  I stood washing dishes in front of the window, my mind a million miles away.  A red bird caught my eye once and I watched it, my hands still submerged in the grimy water until it hid itself away in the big Cypress tree behind the house.

Winter's darkness almost swallows me up sometimes in this house.  Company becomes more rare with every year and I wonder, am I a bad host?  Or maybe its that people don't stay in one place very long anymore.  Or maybe, maybe I'm happy with my solitude.  I tell myself that's it.

I watch TV all day on Saturdays, take my dog out a few times.  Aside from my nine to five grind, this is my life.  TV on Saturday, laundry on Sunday and a movie just before bed, to ease my mind about starting all over again with Monday.

I go out to lunch with my coworkers and I suppose in a way they're friends, but they don't really know me well and I feel I know too much about them at times.  They talk about their husbands and children and how expensive manicures have become, "But I don't care, I'm not giving up this one little thing I do for myself." Doris says.  Ugh.  If I rolled my eyes every time she said something obtuse I'd look like a broken slot machine.

I do my job fairly well I think.  No one ever seems to complain and I get along well with people.  I even go to office parties and girls nights and I'm a member of the local Democrats group.  There are people all around me all the time when I am in that world, and I enjoy it for a while.  The hugs goodbye, the compliments and even the little jabs at my foibles.  It's all in good spirit. It makes me feel, at least while I'm there, like I belong.

It takes a long time to truly know someone.  I learned this the hard way, lying in bed beside a man who I supposed loved me in his own way.  I've never been lonelier than back in those days.  I wondered if I knew him at all, and never wondered whether he knew me.  We knew one another's likes and dislikes, one another's annoying habits.  We knew how to budget together and buy a home and even raise some kids, but even time was not enough for us.  We never had the courage to dig deeper, to truly know one another.

Three years ago he died.  I found him, slumped at his desk in the study, a Christmas letter in his hand.  He died reading about Erma Ponder's youngest son going off to community college.  I wondered what line he read last.  I even kept the letter for a long time, reading it over and over.  The more my eyes followed its lines, the more I began to wonder if he were the sort of man who even enjoyed reading Christmas letters.  Did he live his whole life following the dictates of society, just retracing his father's footsteps?  I wondered often after his death, if he felt he missed out on anything in life, or was he a simple man, easily satisfied with the most basic things.

We used to sit in separate chairs at night, reading separate books that were nothing alike.  In rhythm, we rose from those chairs at 9:00 and turned out the lamps.  He showered while I picked out my clothes for the next day, then I showered while he fell asleep in bed.  I crawled in beside him a thousand times and slept at times, with my  head on his chest, but I never knew his mind.

After I finished the dishes I stepped out on the back porch, still without shoes.  The cold wet stones beneath my feet made me feel alive.  It was winter time and there I was, outside in my bare feet.  It felt good to be free.

Since he died, everyone seems to assume I am lonely.  Most of the time, I am not.  I occupy myself with TV and housekeeping and of course, my job.  I keep an eye out on that boy who is off at college and I talk to the girl most every day.

Solitude is highly underrated.

I slipped back inside the house, closed the back door tight.  It was supposed to be a very cold night and the wind already blew hard against the windows of my little house.  It blew like whispers, loud and strong at first like a child talking in Sunday School, then soft and sweet, like secrets between lovers.  As darkness fell I turned off my lamp and headed for the shower, but on my way through the kitchen something caught my eye.

A bright light, shining through the side window, reflecting off the shiny side of my refrigerator.  At first I thought it must have been a flashlight and I almost let myself get scared, but as I moved closer to the window, I saw more clearly.

The clouds that brought so much cold rain early in the day now stretched thin and wispy across the night sky.  They floated around a big full moon like spirits, set free from a long oppression.  I stood by the window for a moment, trying to feel the moonlight on my skin. Nothing.  I looked for a trace of light beyond my closed eyelids, but the moonlight, bright as it was, couldn't penetrate beyond them.

So I slipped off my house shoes and called the dog to follow me and I walked out beyond the porch onto a brown soggy lawn.  I sloshed my way through it past the arbor of cherry trees where the kids used to play and stood at my garden gate.  And for the longest time I watched the moon and the moon watched me, but neither of us knew what we were watching.

No Laughing Matter

We joke about it because joking makes us feel a little less worried.   We give our lapses in memory cute little terms like "senior moment" or we say things like, "I finally got it all together but I forgot where I put it."  We find humor in what scares us sometimes, or in what puts us all on par with one another as imperfect beings who occasionally forget things.  In my field of work, I hear jokes like this every day, but I also witness the devastation a blighted mind can create in the world of a person, a family, a community.  Let me tell you, it's nothing to laugh about.

Often people with dementia posture with humor when they fear others notice they might not be remembering things well.  Some laugh too much, some crack little jokes that might or might not make sense to us.  Others try to turn the tables on us and with their laughter, attempt to make the snafu seem as though it's ours.  People who work with dementia patients, either as nurses, nursing assistants, therapists or activity directors also turn to humor.  At times, laughing is the only way we keep from crying.  Coping with humor often makes the tougher things in life more palatable but using humor in the wrong ways can cause us to not take diseases that cause memory loss as seriously as we should.

What if we lived in a world where our memory lapses weren't joked away?

Every day I watch dementia take more and more away from people who were once intelligent, lively, loving, trusting and confident.  I see it destroy decades-long relationships as spouses trade in their marriage roles for caregiver and patient roles.  That's not to say that caregiver and spouse are mutually exclusive, but with Alzheimer's or any other dementia, a husband, in the end, isn't caring for the same wife he married, nor a wife caring for the same husband.  They watch that person slowly die away as their brains become ravaged by a disease that takes the very essence of who they once were:  Their memories and life-lessons.

Use this link to donate to The Alzheimer's Association today.

By the later stages, a person with dementia might not recognize a spouse to whom she's been married for thirty years or more.  A husband might not remember the home he built for his family.  A mom might call her daughter "Mother" or a father might call a daughter by his wife's name.  The caregiver's life is often chaotic, stressful, depressing and anxiety ridden.  Caregivers are faced with financial struggle as resources get stretched thin and their loved ones require more and more care.  Eventually, the person with dementia can no longer be left alone for any amount of time.  Finding affordable paid caregivers is a tremendous hurdle for most families and our current health system offers little to nothing in the way of resources for these folks.  Watching someone you love disappear behind a disease is not funny.  Watching them become strangers to you, as you become a stranger to them, no laughing matter.

It's time we stop joking about dementia and get serious.  We need to stop accepting dementia as a natural part of aging; it isn't.  We need better resources to help the families who are in the trenches now and more education to aid in early diagnosis and intervention.  We need to live healthier lives and do the things we know can decrease our chances of having Alzheimer's as we age.  We need to understand that Alzheimer's and some other types of dementia are not merely diseases of age at all.  People as young as 30 have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease.

Do you know the 10  Early Signs and Symptoms of Alzheimer's?

If you're looking for a charity this Christmas, I encourage you to donate to the Alzheimer's Association.  The Alzheimer's Association provides education, support and tangible resources to help people with Alzheimer's as well as their caregivers.  They fund research into prevention as well as finding a cure so that future generations can live without the fear of forgetting the people they love.

A Bunch of Crap

"Everything I have is crap," he said to me, sitting across the table from me at Waffle House with the iPhone in his hand that I ordered for him as a special Christmas surprise last year.  It isn't an iPhone 6 or an iPhone X or whatever.  I bought him the same version as mine--the one I bought over 6 years ago now. 

Two weeks ago I went to Old Navy on my day off.  I searched through boy's jeans for a good hour, digging for his size, making sure the wash on each pair was different.  I remember in third grade, my mom bought me 4 pairs of the same jeans.  Same color, same pockets, same everything.  Within a few days kids started teasing me in a mean spirited way, about wearing the same jeans every day.  My mom sewed cute patches on the back pockets so they all looked different, alas, her effort came too late.  The teasing never stopped all year long.  I try to spare my kid the indignities I suffered as a child.  I buy him the REAL Nike's, not the knock offs with the upside down swoosh that my mom bought me.  He wears Wal-Mart shirts, or thrift store shirts most of the time, and never complains about them.  That day at Old Navy, I spent over a hundred bucks on jeans and a couple of long sleeved shirts.  I left there feeling like I was winning at the Mom Game.  For the last couple of weeks when I pick him up at school or watch him getting out of the car in the mornings, I think about how grown up and cool he looks in his new duds.  He's one of the best dressed kids at his school, if I do say so myself.  

In his room, he has an XBox One that he got for Christmas two years ago.  Last year he got a compound bow and a boatload of video games.  The XBox takes up most of his free time lately, although I try my best to put limits on the time he spends with it.  He enjoys it mostly because his friends get on and they can all play together.  Over the last six months I have bought 4 new sets of headphones for that thing.  Last time I bought one, I told him I was not buying another, so he better take good care of it.  Often I say to him that we are fortunate people because we have everything we need and a lot of the things we want.  I say this to him because I want to instill a spirit of gratitude in him.

Turns out, I'm not winning at this Mom Game.

At the Waffle House, tears sprung to my eyes so fast I couldn't hold them back.  The waitress put my scrambled eggs and hashbrowns down in front of me and suddenly I felt too sick to eat, so instead, I watched him devour the chocolate chip waffle and his own hashbrowns.

His words stung my heart worse than that wasp sting I got  on my thumb a few years ago when I moved an old grill out from under the deck and discovered a nest of angry bees. My mind flashed back to another moment, maybe ten years ago with Sylia.  We were walking into Wal-Mart together.  I don't remember why we were shopping, but I remember the words I heard her say as we walked past the greeter and into the front section of the store where large TVs were displayed along the side.  "Everything we have is crap anyway," she said, and I felt that same sting.  It said to me that nothing I could give my children would ever be good enough.  Nothing I worked so hard to attain, the material things, the thought I put into everything I did for them, the sacrifices I made so I could give them more than I was given as a child--it was all just crap, it would always be just crap.

Lately I think a lot about my financial situation.  I consider going back to full time work and look all the time for jobs that will pay a salary higher than what I average now between disability and my part-time job.  I contacted a mortgage broker a while back, ran my credit report and asked for his help so I can buy a home for us again--get us out of this tiny house and into a place where we can enjoy the company of a dog again.  Turns out my credit wasn't as bad as I thought, but it isn't good either.  I never heard back from that broker, which tells me that my prospects for buying a home must be grim.  Already discouraged, my child's words plunged me beneath a deep wave of defeat from which I fear I may never rise above again.

After a few minutes of watching him eat his waffle as though he were raised by cavemen, I said, "I give up."  I got my phone out and read my emails, trying to distract myself so I could stop crying.

"I'm trying to be grateful for what I have." He said to me, looking at me as though I had offended him with my tears.

"Trying?" 

"Yes, I'm trying!" He said.  "You're saying I'm wrong for trying to be grateful!"

Even this exchange digs at a familiar wound, healed over or so I believe, with thick emotional scars.  I feel the pangs of it though, the argument turned around and upside down so I'm left believing myself the offender, owing an apology.  Only now, I see this for what it is and I know better than to respond.

"Are you done?" I asked him.

"Yeah." He took one last sip of his coke as I grabbed the yellow ticket and headed for the register to pay.  

In the car I thought of things I wanted to say to him, but I said nothing.  Everything I could think of would come across as guilt tripping or self pity, or both.  We rode in silence as I drove him to his sister's house and dropped him off.  

"I love you." He said, as he got out of the car.

"Love you too." I sad back.

I drove myself to the store and wandered around for a couple of hours, not really shopping for anything.  All I could think about were those words, hurled at me for the second time from a child of mine for whom I apparently could not give enough.  An old friend used to say that if one person gave him negative feedback about himself, he took it with a grain of salt, but if he heard that same feedback from two people, he took it to heart.  I guess that stuck with me because hearing a second child tell me the life I've given them amounts to a load of crap made me see myself more clearly as the half-ass person I've always known deep down I am.  

Today I slept most of the day, then got up to watch the grandchildren for a while.  I never got dressed or showered and now it's bedtime.  I plan to crawl back under my covers tonight and welcome sleep.  I wish I could sleep for a year--let my phone battery die and close my bedroom door, draw my curtains tight and hide, hide away.  

In a fire safe on the top shelf of the hall closet, a will I drew up five years ago sits.  It states that, should I meet an untimely death before my boy is 18, his sister Hannah will become his legal guardian.  He loves her so much, and I see her working so hard at life, overcoming obstacles, diving towards her dreams.  I wondered yesterday, as we drove home, whether my boy would feel happie.r and less like his life were crap had I chosen to forego my life-saving dialysis treatments five years ago?  Did I, by fighting nature, deny him a better life?  

I cannot know the answer to that.  I chose to live and to keep trying at life, this boy of mine the only motivation that keeps me tethered to that machine or to this life.  And yet, for all the effort, everything stares back at me, just a bunch of crap.

I get it.  I woefully understand his point of view.  I just don't know how to change it.  I don't know how to be more than I am or how I can give more than I do.  I hope and dream that life will throw me a bone and I'll get to see Charlie graduate from high school and go off to college.  In my farthest and most wishful dreams, I imagine someday holding his first child in my arms.  I know it's not likely to happen--that last tiny grandchild nestled in the crook of my arm, but I like to dream it anyway.  I like to think we can at least ride the tide of crap to the day he's free of me and able to make a life he feels proud to live.  Maybe he can overcome my dearth of ability to give him more than crap and maybe I'll get to witness it all.  Either way, I hope for him.

Perhaps, if nothing more, my ineptitude will show him how to do better when he is grown.  I hope it serves some purpose, because right now, looking up at the world from beneath this suffocating sea of failure, I'm not going to lie, I'm feeling pretty hopeless.  Maybe the kids are right.  Maybe this life, because of me, is nothing but a bunch of crap.  Maybe that's all I can ever manufacture from my ever-shrinking ability to even provide for myself or my kid.  

A stinking pile of crap.

Funny

Tonight I got hooked on a new Neftlix show with Jerry Seinfeld called "Celebrities in Cars getting Coffee."  Sounds about at boring as watching paint dry, I know.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear their conversations, which didn't consist of one comedy schtick after another, but actually showed the comedians engaging in some fairly deep conversations about life and the oddities of every-day living. 

I found myself laughing at Jerry's evaluation of himself as a shrink and the advice he'd give everyone--"Just get over it!" He says, and we all laugh because we know that at some point in our lives, everyone encounters that friend to whom we want to say, "Just get over it already!"  But we don't say those things, no out loud anyway.

The biggest takeaway for me were the conversations with every single...passenger??  Guest?? about the struggles of breaking into the business.  They spoke of butterflies, of shaky knees, of feeling small and insignificant.  They talked about the times they bombed on stage and their frantic efforts to save themselves before they were eaten by the hungry audience of wolves looking for laughs, not jokes that flop.  They talked of numerous rejections and bad reviews and even their deeper emotional experiences.  Ellen opened up about once wanting children, but seemed to take Jerry's advice about letting her wife get more horses instead of having children.  Apparently Portia can't abide the joyful sounds of children playing in the pool.  There's a good joke in there somewhere, Ellen.

The common denominator for all these folks?  They started poor, unknown, and some of them, unliked. But they could see the humor in every day life--the humor that escapes most of us because we only see it at face value.  Comedians can be deep thinkers sometimes.  That's why they notice things that most of us never think twice about.  They call us out on our own silly human foibles, they make us laugh at ourselves and our families and the world in general for being so incredibly screwed up!  And most of all, no matter how much they're heckled, no matter how many bad reviews they get in The Times, and no matter how many times they flop on stage, they never give up.  There's always another stage, another joke, another human incongruity to exploit and laugh about.  We are their material.

Tonight though, I started to feel as if they could serve as my example.  There's something amazing about the talent of being funny.  I used to think I had it, but the years have taught me that I am much too moribund to turn life into one big joke.  To beat all I've ever seen though, I still find myself wanting to try.  Comedy though, seems to be a gift bestowed on few--the Fools of our modern day possess and air of sophistication and intelligence that comedians of the past never had to consider. 

So though I used to fancy myself a Lucille Ball or a Carol Burnette, I realize I'm a red head of a different breed--only funny when I don't mean to be, which I think means people usually laugh AT me, not with me.

But...Because I watched that show, I will vow to keep on keeping on.  I will write my sad, heart wrenching stories anyway, and maybe somewhere, find room for a funny tale or two along the way.  It won't be Jerry Seinfeld or Ellen funny, but maybe my own brand of funny won't be so bad after all.

Wish I had a joke for y'all.  I'm all fresh out.

Gone Home

I got lost yesterday.  Not lost in  just the usual way that people get lost, but lost all the same, in some long neglected place in my past where I faintly recall an indescribable feeling.  A part of me recalled a way of being years ago, that somewhere along the way, has begun to elude me.

Perhaps we all get such familiar yet unnamed stirrings of emotion when we travel back to where home began.  I knew when I woke up, my plans for the day but my mental preparation notwithstanding, the day turned into something of a cord, stretched between then and now over which I traveled with rubber-band like tension pulling me back to the present when all I wanted was to reach for the past.

One of the surest bets in life is that none of us will make it to our graves without regrets, mistakes or losses.  The abominations of humanity, they keep us humble and give us pause when no matter how we play our cards, they remain inevitable.  For years I prided myself on my regrets and missteps.  I thought they might someday define my life as one well-lived.  Instead, I drive home from work some days with a heavy lump at the center of me, making me heavy in my seat, making my legs too feeble to even lift me out of the car when I get home.  And carry me to what?  My legs.  To a tiny kitchen, too small to turn around in, a messing living room that hasn't seen a vacuum in how long?  To a couch, three years old, already beginning to take on the shape of my ass where I sit too long, watching make-believe lives run themselves out in a few hours at most, while my own passes by like a parade just outside my door.

Thus, the spiral of thoughts begins when I travel too close to my origins and cannot, hard as I try, scrape something of the warm and kind and good together to keep for myself when I turn to walk away.

In the last four  years I've stood by the gravesides of both my parents, trying to squelch the flood of emotion that begged to escape me.  I push it away when it wells up in my eyes as I wash dishes or remember an old song.  My father used to press his lips together, hands trembling, as he tried to swallow back tears that already were escaping his eyes.  It never took much to  make him cry.  Maybe he gave that to me, that uncontrollable well of emotion that springs from my eyes, and maybe my red faced shame when I wipe my eyes of them are gifts from him as well.

I sat at a funeral yesterday, not of anyone I ever knew or loved, but a funeral nonetheless.  The deceased, the sister of my friend, I traveled there with him to show respect and to support him.  I listened to the same sermon preached at every funeral, of life and death, then life-eternal.  At one time, those ideas gave me peace; now they fill me with doubt.  "Why do we think so much of ourselves?" I wonder.  "That once we are, we cannot imagine a version of reality in which we no longer exist."  And then I wonder, if we all believed in this life as much as we want to believe in the next, how would we live it differently?

I must admit, I might change a few things, but overall I think I've landed exactly in the spot meant for me.  Over the years many paths opened themselves to me, but I chose this one or fate chose that one and I rolled with it.  Some things in this life we get to control, and others, well, we just have to accept.  Sometimes I accept without a fight and other times I wrestle with an unbeatable foe before finally surrendering, skulking away with my fists still clenched in defiant indignation.  A healthy bit of anger at life can be good for us, after all.

If you came here looking for a hopeful message, I'm afraid you might leave disappointed today.  All the words I can offer today spring from a well of my own discontent.  As I scramble to hold onto any semblance of good in myself or in my choices, or in this simple life I somehow managed to scratch together for me and my boy, all I can say to you is, find something solid and sure and love-filled in your own world and hold on tight. I plan to do the same.

Rainy Afternoon in A Small Town

I walk into the corner drug store to pick up my prescription.  Well, first I try to pull a door that's clearly marked "Push" because the doors are hung backwards and they always mess with my brain, despite that I've been to this store a million times.  Behind the back counter, which is ten steps from the door, Brenda smiles at me.  We exchange pleasantries. She invites me to the next Lion's Club event and reminds me, “We always need good new members!”  Unlike Walgreen's, when I go to the Corner Drug I never have to give my name and address or tell the cashier whether I'm picking up or dropping off.  Brenda already knows

Standing by the register, Frank Crowe leans on the counter looking at me sideways and nods a hello without speaking.  I give him my tight lipped smile--the one where I don't show my teeth, then stick my debit card into the machine which takes an incredibly long time to complete my transaction.  I stand impatiently, tapping my foot as I wait for the beep that tells me I can retrieve my card.

Behind me, I hear the door squeak open again, Betty Looper.  I swear she's always in the Corner Drug.  Always picking up some prescription or another. She’s old.  No one knows really how old, but no one remembers a time when she wasn’t around either.  She’s like a permanent fixture here, just like that statue that stands crumbling and decaying in front of the court house of some old Civil War hero on his horse.  Nobody knows when it was erected and nobody knows when it will finally finish falling apart, but we all can see that its inevitable demise is nigh. 

 How many medications can one person even tolerate, anyway, before medicine is no longer a good thing?

Finally, Brenda hands me the little white paper bag, stapled at the top, with my bottle of pills inside.  With it in my hand, I turn and head out the door.  The pills rattle as I shift the bag to my left hand and start digging for my keys in my purse. I can feel old Frank's stare at my back.  Betty, ignoring me, presses onward, Brenda now turning her focus to her. 

“Now Bettty, you ain’t give us ten minutes to get that medicine ready before you come runnin’ over here.” She says to Ms. Looper, trying to sound like she’s teasing, but I can tell she’s more than a little put out.

Standing by the door, thumbing through some dusty old greeting cards, Estelle Cantrell looks up as I pass.  Her gaze is quick, but measuring.  She looks me up and down, making her judgment fast and sharp.  I don’t know what she thinks of my outfit or my hairstyle today and that’s probably a good thing.  I wonder what she’ll tell people about me?  I can just hear her now.  “She was in that store and out of it like she was on her way to a fire or something.  Ain’t no sense in anybody being in that big of a hurry.  If she put near as much time into ironing her clothes and fixing her hair she might not still be single.”

Honestly, I feel violated, like the simple act of refilling my blood pressure medication should come with some degree of anonymity or at least without judgment. But then in a small town, you tend to get the illusion that everyone knows too much about you.

You come to accept it, expect it after a time.  At first I found some comfort in being recognized, and in knowinmost every face I see.  It was almost like the feeling of home--like walking in every door to find family and a big casserole dish full of mac and cheese that everyone intends to share. Fresh gossip, thinly veiled as concern would fill the air with a familiar chatter that almost made you feel like you’d gone home for Sunday dinner.  I felt I sat among my own, adopted into this motley crowd of small town folks--hometown folks, only it's not my hometown.

They all seem to eye me in a sidelong way, even the ones who've adopted me.  They seem to accept me, even care about me, but then I remember the thin veil that covers most everything here. I’m recognized but not truly known and that confuses me more than the backward-hung doors at the Corner Drug.  

If I speak up too often or too loudly, I feel their eyes narrow and their lips purse with disapproval. 

"You're not from here." They're thinking.  

They say to each other, "She's not from here. She has no clue what she's talking about."

As if one small town in the South is so different from any other. 

 There's a kind of Southern pride, a false sense of originality that every little tucked down here below the Mason-Dixon wants to claim as theirs.  Like the way we all drink sweet tea, or the way most of us think grits are breakfast food only. 

"If you ain't from 'round here, you caint understand our way o’ life." They all say.  "We don't need no outsiders a comin' in, tellin' us how to do things."

Sometimes I think if it were up to Southerners we’d all still be using privies and drawing our water from backyard wells.  We’d be sending our womenfolk down to the river to wash clothes and making them cook on one of those old wood cook stoves.  To the chagrin of many, the Yankees somehow succeeded in modernizing the good ole South—even the small towns out in the middle of nowhere, like this one.

Progress is still a dirty word in the South and in small-town Southern America in particular.  If you speak the language of change, you are marked.  In the old days, you'd have been run out of town on a rail. Nowadays, you just get gnawed to pieces by gossip.

Along with the overblown sense of pride and originality you'll find in every tiny town, you'll find at least a fair amount of poverty.  On hillsides and hidden behind thick stands of pines, trailer parks stand like ancient ruins, their roofs tarred over, the windows held together by duct tape and a Sunday morning prayer.  They, and the people who occupy them are the landmarks of true Southern living.  Dirt driveways with deep ruts dug out by rain.  Clunker cars that just barely get folks to their jobs and back every day and  kids that spend too much time home alone...this is the reality of life in the Ruins.  

It wasn't always so.  Many years past, there was commerce here.  Factory jobs, hardware stores and green grocers, a post office and a cafe.  Now, shuttered and crumbling store-fronts sit empty, save for the ghosts of the past that dart with quick shadows across the sidewalks, specters of a place that used to exist.

Change came here, but it came like a thief in the night.  No one discussed or planned it.  It just came.  When the shoe store closed, everyone just drove on to the next town, to Wal-Mart or to Sears, where they could buy shoes and a dress in one place.  When the post office closed, a church moved in.  Slowly, change crept up each street, boarding up windows, every boutique, every beauty shop and every hardware store's sign permanently turned to read "Sorry, We're Closed."  That kind of change came easy.  It was gradual and since no one talked about it, no one had to actually see it happening.

Thing about change is, it's always happening.  

I drive across the street to pick up some Cokes and a frozen pizza for dinner from the local grocer.  The gals at the register say hello as I choose a buggy and go browsing through the aisles, picking up things I never intended to buy.  This store is old, too.  It's dingy and the floors have a peculiar hollow sound under the clomp of my heels.  The produce is limp, spotted bananas, potatoes growing eyes, mold on the blueberries, I decide I'll stop at the farm for fruit.  

I grab my milk and eggs and head to the register, where in line ahead of me a woman I recognize is already waiting.  I'm trying to remember her name when she speaks to me.

"Good to see you again.” She says kindly.  

"You too!" I say enthusiastically.  I'm probably smiling too big as I grapple for her name, or where I know her from.  

I'm relieved when she turns back to her groceries, laying them on the belt that doesn't work anymore.

I too, start to set my purchases on the belt, separating mine from my stranger-friend's with a yellow ruler someone left at the counter for that purpose.  When it's my turn, I use my arm to push everything closer to the cashier.  We make small talk as she rings up my milk and eggs, and I realize I forgot the Cokes.  Too lazy to bother with going back to get them, I tell myself I need to cut back anyway.

"Have a good weekend now!" The girl behind the register whose face but not name I know,  says.  

"You too!" I reply pleasantly.  I can't wait to get my things into the car and head home.  

As I make my way out the door, pushing the buggy with one hand, shoving my debit card back into my wallet with the other, it starts to rain.

Big, warm drops of water fall heavy on my back, soaking my silk blouse until it becomes my epidermis. It sticks tome, a purple skin, translucent enough so my bra shows through it, and every bump and curve of my upper body to boot.

I stand in the open, loading my food into the car, the deluge causing my hair to drip into my face. Now my skirt is soaked as well, the thin white linen like wet paper against my skin becoming cold and uncomfortably heavy. 

By the time I'm done I'm thoroughly wet and exposed. My light summer outfit gives me little in the way of modesty now that it's drenched.  I walk anyway to the buggy stall, with my head held high, dripping hair and running mascara notwithstanding.  Out the corner of my eye I see two men I recognize sitting in an old Buick, watching me.  When I look their way, they do not avert their gaze.  Behind the windshield they must feel like invisible voyeurs.

Sopping wet, I finally open the driver's side door of my car and try to quickly get in, my wet skirt restricting my movement. I immediately steam up the windows with my body heat and warm breath. 

I take a minute to shake out my hair, wipe the water and makeup off my face with a fast food napkin, take a deep breath.  I turn the key, flip on the defrost and the wipers, put the car in reverse.  As I start to back up, I look over my shoulder and see him there, just sitting in his truck, waiting, watching.

The thing about small towns is, you sometimes run into people you used to know.  You see them hiding behind end-caps at the gas station, and in their pickup trucks sometimes.  You should learn to be on the lookout for them, but sometimes you forget.  

I drive home, amused a little that those two guys in the Buick thought they were so hidden as they watched my practically nude body walk across the parking lot.  I feel that sick sensation, deep in my stomach, or in my uterus, or maybe my heart even, when I picture him waiting in his truck like a little kid thinking he’s hidden behind a sapling.

On my drive home I think over the past.  I recall times when I felt less of a stranger, but orbited a much bigger world.  I realize how, as I’ve shut myself off from people, my new world seems increasingly, painfully small.

Maybe I’m merely the shadow of something now. A dream that once was, or a place that used to be alive with movement and color.  Now I am that foreigner--not from 'round here.  Constantly seen, always recognized, but never, ever really known.

By the time I’m home the rain has stopped.  The sun threatens to pop back through the clouds as I unload the groceries and haul them inside.  I try to put them all away before I go change, but the air conditioning chills me to the bone as it permeates my wet clothes.  Home, no mac and cheese, no fresh gossip. No prying eyes or judgmental stares. Just me, in my wet clothes, a pile of groceries at my feet that I probably will never eat.    

Home Sweet Home...Or Not

My Boy. 

My challenge.  To lure him from the comfort of home takes a kind of skill at which I must constantly evolve as his parent.  In an announcement the night before, "We are spending the day out tomorrow."' I tell him so he won't get up and immediately engage in combat on Fortnite, then give me grief about leaving the house.  

Inevitably, while I shower, he connects with his friends and the match begins. 

"Fifteen minute warning," I tell him as I throw open the bathroom door, my hair still dripping.  I know I'll take longer than fifteen minutes to get ready, but still...

"Are you dressed?" I call to him as I load up the car.

"Yes mom!" He answers, the eye-rolling coming through in the tone of his voice.

"Shoes?" I ask. 

"Not yet." He sighs, realizing we really are about to leave home for the day.

In the car we make jokes and listen to history podcasts.  Once in a while he gets animated, telling me about something that happened at camp, or about some element of Fortnite that's similar to the podcast story.

We eat French fries, wiping salt on our pant-legs.  

He is fascinated by the long straight hills on highway 11, leading to the lakes.  When we finally get to the 

swimming hole, he's hesitant to get in.

"Let's just sit on the edge and put our toes in." I suggest. 

"Okay." He reluctantly agrees.  But before I know it, he's climbing on the rocks, out to his waist in his regular shorts after refusing to change into his swimming trunks. 

Whatever makes him happy.

I'm happy.  The cool water on my feet convinces me to change into my new red swimsuit and jump in.  

The rocks challenge me, but once I make it past them I'm swimming in water far deeper than I even want to know.  I remember this, or rather, my body remembers.  It remembers how to tread water,how the lake doesn't burn your eyes like a swimming pool.  My feet remember how to reach themselves toward the deep water beneath me, to find the coolness in its depths   My arms remember to stretch out like wings as I lie back and let the lake  catch me, and I float like a forgotten piece of driftwood for a while.  

My boy.  I have to encourage him to come to me in the deeper water.  On our blowup float we kick around the edge of the shoreline, his confidence growing with every minute we spend in the blue-green waters.  

When we start to pack up to leave he wants to know when we can come back again.  

"Soon," I said.  "Maybe even Tuesday."

"Ugh!" He eye rolls at me. "I really wanted to stay home on Tuesday!"