Sisters

Unsupervised kids can do anything. We cut our own hair and each others.

I once took scissors and went straight up the back of my sister’s young head, all the time telling her to trust me. The result looked like a hillside stripped wide for power lines. She didn’t speak to me for awhile.

I  used to bleach my hair with hydrogen peroxide until it turned corn silk white. When I did it again, it got brittle and turned the yellow you’d associate with bad dental care.

My sister, Kristen, (whom I named my daughter after, because I loved her so much – and because she still loved me after her hair cut)…and I used to spend money on hair dyes. Probably money lifted from the folds of my father’s pocket during his afternoon nap. We bought a dye called, Coffee, which was a drastic disappointment, since we both pictured coffee with cream and sugar. Turned out the manufacturer took his straight up black.

She and I were friends and life-lines. I had her stand on my bureau once so she could gaze down at my chest. She swore I was not developing, but I insisted that if she could only look down, the way I could, well, she’d see the budding promise of breasts so apparent to me. She saw nothing, at any height. Oh well, a pair of well placed socks would do the job until the real thing arrived.

We used to daydream, she and I, about our grown up lives. Would we still live close to each other? Still sleep together when we came to visit? Still draw an imaginary line down the center of the bed to divide her side from mine…cross over and die? What would we name our children? That’s when I promised to name my first born after her. (She didn’t keep her end of the deal.) We knew we’d have to stay in really close touch, especially if we were going to get married and do-you-know-what with a man. Gross!

Overwhelmed

Ice packs on my back. Alternating hot and cold. Stretched out in bed wishing I was being productive instead.

Something inside of me snapped, pulled, hurt, reminding me to surrender.

And so my husband carried the laundry baskets, the trash can and followed me around like a worried servant.

What can I do? What else can I do? Lie down. Stop. Do nothing.

I can’t. I am overwhelmed. I have too too much to do and there is not enough of me to go around.

Karen, Love, you have got to learn to stop and let go. You make urgency where there is none. So what? So what if you don’t show up? You can reschedule clients, be late, miss meetings. The world will not end.

Oh, but I care too much. There is so much to do and no one but me to do it.

You don’t owe anybody anything. YOU must be your first priority. Every one else, every thing else must wait.  You have got to learn two very important words. Repeat after me: fuck it !  Try it, say it, fuck it! Keep saying it until you get it right. 

Zen saying: There is so much to do, I must go very slow.

My New Car

I bought my new car thirteen years ago, a Nissan Sentra, because it was red, had a sunroof, was good on gas and reliable.

I still have this brain freeze that allows me to think of it as my new car, even though it has become an embarrassment to friends and family. 

 The roof is caved in from allowing my granddaughters to stand on it, to better reach the yellow plums that line the driveway.

My hubcaps burst free after six months of ownership. I happened to glance to my right and there they were, in tandem, making a run for it through a farmers field.

The windshield cracked coming over the mountains, a gift from a gravel truck, lengthened by a defroster on the inside, meeting ice and snow from without.

My daughter broke my sun visor, but not on purpose.

The dog chewed through my seatbelt, definitely on purpose. (He was angry at being left in the car, while the rest of us went to breakfast. I don’t blame him.)

Someone did a hit and run job on the side mirror.

Ocean air has peeled the paint.

The seats are worn, no longer a comfort to my back.

I reversed into a post, which left a dent. I decided to repair that one myself… with a hammer. You can guess the outcome.

Long story short, I’m getting pressure to replace it. My friends in new cars say they are worried about my safety, a kind way of saying they are worried about my esthetic. I will replace my new car some day, but not soon.

For now, I’m going to drive fourteen hours south to LA, so I can have Thanksgiving with my son. And it will make it, because it runs like a top, although the outside might need a little duct tape.

Brat

 I couldn’t do math to save my life, still can’t. I didn’t get those brain cells. But my mother did. She was a business woman and book-keeper, who believed that her daughter should be able to navigate the world of numbers by some miracle of genetic biology. When that failed, she hired math tutors – lots of them. They were dead-on serious people, who sat in over-lit rooms arranging columns of tiny numbers so they fit in miniscule boxes. They used rulers and charts and made up non-sense stories about a person traveling to Cleveland going twenty miles an hour – and how long did it take if they stopped for a coffee and donut on the way, and how much longer did it take, if they had to stop at their Aunt Lizzie’s house as well, who lived thirty minutes from the interstate? It seemed a lot easier to stay home or have Aunt Lizzie visit them.

In seventh grade my mother decided I should forgo the usual horseback riding, baseball games, manure fights, fort building and hiding out in the woods, so I could devote my entire summer to…you guessed it…math!

She got up each morning to drive me into the city, like I was going to the hospital to get urgent care. I tried to comply but couldn’t. Two whole days passed before busting out. I knew she wouldn’t take it well, so we continued our morning routine. I’d give her a long-faced troubled look to avoid suspicion, then wave good-bye before catching the number 10 bus to the swimming pool. That summer I perfected my skill on the high boards doing swan dives, the jack knife, half-gainer, half-gainer with a twist, double flip and the ‘look out, here she comes’ cannon ball. Work on my suntan and social skills completed the day.

This went on for an entire glorious month before coming to an abrupt halt. I no longer remember if it was the lack of report card, a school visit or the fact that my teacher had no memory of any student by that name, that finally alerted her to trouble. But one day, I returned from the pool to find her standing on the front steps of the school, smoke coming out of her ears. She was so angry she couldn’t speak, and what little she must have said, I’ve thankfully repressed. I do remember those eyes in the rear view mirror as they glared at me on the way home. I sat wet and humbled in the back seat. Her eyes full of anger and disappointment, but mostly a kind of hopeless exasperation about what to do with her ‘problem child.’

Renegade Storks

This is how I figure it happened for me, and maybe for you as well.

The stork shows up for work, maybe a little hung over, definitely hating his job. He wants to quit, but there is no retirement plan in the reproductive system, so he continues on, grumbling and feeling not so quietly put out.

There are long conveyer belts of babies all wrapped in familiar blankets of pink and blue.

The foreman near the conveyer belt is smoking a cigarette.

‘Bout time you showed up. Here, take this one. You’re on the pink line today, headed to the east coast. This one is sensitive so put her down some place nice.

The stork hates the sensitive ones. They’re way too much work. He could fly around for days looking for the right drop without compensation, just a, What took you so long? look from his sweaty over-weight jerk of a boss.

Fine, he says grabbing the bundle in his beak. I’m off.

And so he starts the long trip to New York, all the time thinking about how much he hates his life, his job, and his foreman. In fact, he does nothing but think about it until his little stork brain is a mass of nasty dark negative little stork thoughts. Then he gets an idea. There is no quality control at the plant, just a roll of the eyes, a turned down mouth, or a ‘you’re a hopeless stork’ shake of the head. The light goes on. Why should he flap his wings through miles of crappy weather to please them? What’s the point? The sooner this trip is over, the sooner he can crack open a cold one, and put his feet up where they belong.

What the heck! I’m just gonna drop this sucker right now, right in the middle of nowhere, right into this……….Oops. That’ll be a rough go. Little premature drop there. Oh well, good luck kid. Not my problem.

And so I was born.

written 10-19-08

The Clasp

I never had the money my sisters had. I never chose a sensible career path or sheltered in the safety of a solid relationship. I rode the crest of a wave ~ crashing, picking myself up and getting on again. My path has been bruised and alert, never fitting the mold. The Goodwill was my Neiman Marcus, junkers my transport.

I am not a gift giver or anyone who appreciates material things. They get in my way, need tending, replacing and are cumbersome to manage from the crest of a wave. But my mother loves things that sparkle, and grace her neck and ears with beauty. She belongs in the scene of a British movie, where the husband tiptoes behind her, gently kissing her cheek as she sits at her vanity. His starched white cuff is all that shows on screen, as he flips open a velvet hinged case to release diamonds which drip from her neck and cascade from each ear. That is my mothers role. She is the feminine bird fixing her hair and fluffing her ruffles for an evening of elegance and polish.

I know this about her. I want to please, to care for her, to fill in her empty places and so I shop. I shop without knowledge, money or experience. I shop for the child in her who delights at surprise.

I always buy jewelry because she can’t have enough. I imagine she will wear my gifts for a few years, feeling my love as she fastens the clasp across her wrist, around her neck or over each lobe. What I did not account for, is that she would keep my gifts year after year, attached to each one more completely than we bonded as mother and daughter.

How shocked I was to see the gifts from my days in poverty still owned and worn, the price I paid betraying itself in the green tinge on her finger or the dull marks on her neck.

Oh mother dear, forgive me. That was the best I could do, when you deserved so much more.

written 10-16-08

The Purse

My mother is a tiny woman, fragile and small. She loves fashion and style. She loves fishing but never without lipstick, jewelry and attractive attire. My mother is an expression of opposites.

This small woman who weighs less than 100 pounds, still carries a purse that weighs 62. She has always carried this albatross like an anchor, holding her little body firmly fixed in time.

Grown men, large strong men, longshoremen-kind of men have complained about the weight of her purse, but she will not be without it; she won’t trim it down.

Her purses are custom made of imported leathers and have several zipper compartments in which you might find nail clippers, a screw driver, address book, make-up, wallet, checkbooks, hair combs, hand lotion, dental floss, car keys, extra car keys, silver hair clips, fishing line, department store receipts, pens, pencils, cell phone, stamps, calculator, paperclips, needles with thread, toothbrush and perfumes. If she is headed out for the evening, you can add white gloves and jewelry. This is only the surface, the part I might recognize from a glance.

I have offered to carry her albatross over the years, especially during periods of frail health, but tire after a few short blocks.

Mom, you can’t continue doing this. You have to carry less. Surely, you don’t need all this stuff!

She smiles and takes the bag from my arms. It’s okay honey, I’ll carry it now, I’m used to it.  She shoulders her leather anchor, moving forward with ease.

At the end of her medical appointment, the doctor picks up her purse, loses his balance and stumbles from the weight. Verse, what have you got in this thing? For heaven sake!  She pays him no mind, slips it over her shoulder and walks out.

I suppose we will bury her with that purse. I can’t imagine her doing without it.

 written 10-16-08

Glasses

Falling apart under the trees.

I was searching for my former vision, my old way of seeing that got lost. I know it hides beneath a tangle of flowers against a damp richness of soil. I imagine it abandoned there, lying at an angle, surprised at the unexpected release. Dropped, lost, gone.

I searched for it today, that old way of seeing and being. It was important to find it because it took so much with it. It took the way I looked in the mirror after hours of receiving you into every cell of my body. It took my sexuality and the way I could never be in the same room with you without wanting to lie you down in our bed.

These days our bed frightens me. It has become a place of illness, of sleepless tossing against you and away. It has become a place for stories of fear and the confession of foolish past mistakes.

I couldn’t find that old way of seeing today. The will that dams my reservoir of sorrows broke open. I had to stand in the flood. Sweet that you searched me out. The trail of your journey etched in green across your white shirt. How comforted I am by the sight of you. You house a lifetime of integrity in your style, your choices, your countenance and wisdom.

I was the child who hid to mask the depth of her feelings. Today I become what I feared; another in a long line of demanding females expressing excessive emotion. My wonderings and confusion seem small next to your kindness. I am embarrassed to speak them.

The Buddha became enlightened under the bohdi tree. I sat on prickers and hard earth staring into a parking lot. My tree was cedar. Nature and your loving words cradled and enlightened me.  Thank you for accepting and loving and listening. I’m such a handful for myself, I can’t imagine what it must be like for you.

I didn’t find my old vision and I miss it, but at least I can still see. Now I must be patient to see what I will be shown through these new lenses.

written 9-23-05

Savages

There were no grown-ups in our world, except the out of breath cook, who climbed steep stairs with our food tray in hand. His was a hurry-up job. Here is your food, be good.  He carried prime rib, mashed potatoes, vegetables and homemade pies from the restaurant below. Sometimes we ate it, more often we had food fights. Dishes crashed as we climbed on the table, eager to perform on our make-shift stage. We made wide-armed gestures like the ones we’d seen on television; sang, danced, created costumes, swirled and laughed.

Look at me. Look at me. I am Cruella DeVille.

My oldest brother picked up his guitar, my youngest brother beat out rhythms on his drumset. We all shrieked with delight, often peeing our pants with laughter. We were five kids raising ourselves.

A raccoon ran up and down the hallway, a cat with new kittens nested on fallen coats, and a crow rode my sister’s shoulder like it was born there; even an occasional chicken witnessed our performance. The raccoon was a mainstay, until he bit my father’s balding head, we never saw old Coonie after that.

No one survived very long in that house, especially not housekeepers or babysitters. We constantly fought one another, but became a unified force with outsiders. Those with an idea toward reform or discipline stood no chance at all. There is one vivid memory of a babysitter cornered in the music room. She was literally backed against the wall, as five of us threatened like predators. My brother thought we should have done the – pail of cold water over her head from the second floor trick - but I wanted to give her a fighting chance. She left and never returned, one of many defeated by the Banfield savages.

A Russian woman came once a week, leaving stacks of clean clothes, folded and neatly balanced on our beds.  Put these away, she instructed. During the week the stacks were knocked to the floor and walked on, like everything else. There was no one to notice, no one to care.

The playroom was at the far end of the kitchen and housed a rarely changed cat box. I remember it being cleaned when a dance teacher arrived. We pointed our toes and slid them back and forth in the hope of learning first and second positions. Ballet did not stick, nor did tap dancing. The horses, ice skating, swimming and backyard baseball games did.

My father’s mother was trouble. She was serious about rules and best avoided. We had a small white cottage near the pond, where we escaped when she came. The cottage was safe, since she refused to venture across cornfields to further her point. Lucky for us, she didn’t visit often, or we could have been civilized.

written 9-4-08

Blue Heron

Blue Heron flew black against a changing sky, large lumbering wings making shadows across the moon. Two of them, circling, moving higher and higher on currents of evening air. They spiraled together searching for the perfect bedtime perch.

I know these birds from my walk along the library paths. They stand close to the water’s edge, lifting off on short low flights to small islands or neighboring fields.

Flying looks difficult for them, as if lifting their great bodies away from earth takes extra-ordinary effort. I imagined they slept tucked away, camouflaged near a bush or blending into sprouts of spring cane,  necks folded down, great wings tucked by their sides.

I was late walking the paths today, much later then usual. Looking skyward at the beckoning moon surprised me with more than expected.  There they were, wings spread wide, graceful and searching, climbing in constant motion toward ponderosa pines. I stopped and smiled, overcome with gratitude in sharing the moment.

written 2-27-08