Thursday, April 28, 2011

The Yard Sale

Another sort of story. I hope you enjoy it. Pass the word if you do!
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I feel cluttered up, I realize. I feel like I can’t move in my own house anymore. Things are piled up taking the air and the light from the place that I live, making me feel small and abandoned and afraid. Time to have a yard sale.

I don’t know if yard sales are popular everywhere, but here in the Deep South they are almost a tradition. We bring out our dross but also our gold for others to paw through on beautiful weekend afternoons. It is true that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I have treasures I have bought at such sales that I wouldn’t part with for a million dollars. I also have heavy decorative things that I paid way too much for that I can’t wait to get the hell out of my house.

Some yard sellers are highly organized individuals, they spend weeks going through their attics and deep dark cellars judging the value of objects carefully. They clean, they label, they affix a price. They sort by type, by size, by color and by age. They have a trash pile and a good enough for charity but not worth a quarter pile. They never ever have the I know I buried this down here out of sight but now that it is cleaned up I might just have to keep it pile.

I am at the other end of the spectrum when it comes to deciding what goes into the yard at dawn. I decide to sell things at the last minute, I sit and ponder for two days thinking where did I put so and so or I know that was a gift but gawd I want it gone! I wander through barely lit spaces dragging out boxes and peeking inside. I say ‘That’s where that went’ as often as I say ‘I knew that piece of junk was still here somewhere’. If I am not careful I go on a rampage. Haven’t touched it in two months? OUT! Haven’t noticed it’s beauty in a month or two? OUT! Do I need two things so similar even if I love them or need them totally? OUT! Just tired of this life being cluttered and yearning to be free? OUT! OUT! OUT!

I also keep things for no good reason. If something stood me well at any time in the past, I feel obligated to keep it. If I reached for it once an eon ago and it was where I had put it the eon before that, I keep it. I keep artifacts from those that have come and gone through my life both good and evil; My mother’s robe, my son’s pocket knife, my first husband’s cuff links. I take them out mad in my desire to empty the corners and come to a skidding stop. The shock is so sudden and so loud in my head I can almost hear the noise it makes it the room. I gently brush the wrinkles from the robe and bury my face in the soft terry. I know it is impossible but even after 7 years I think I can still smell her on the fabric. When my son died this robe soaked up an ocean of tears and an oil slick of anguish, substituting it cotton embrace for my mother’s touch I had wrapped myself in it night after night until the pain had lessened just enough for sleep to drop in for a moment. I refold it and tuck it back away, crying and shaming my self for even considering it for a split second. 

Because it is ritual with me I go from the robe to the knife. I hold it and laugh. My son worked at a concrete plant and the knife has been rendered unusable. A Swiss Army knife, all of the spaces between the blades and screw drivers and hooks and bottle openers and corkscrews are packed with concrete dust soaked with his sweat, resulting in an eternally preserved, concrete entombed amazing piece of engineering. One lone blade, the corkscrew hangs out teasing, taunting the viewer, forcing them to wonder what blades remain encased. I always ask myself what spared the corkscrew. My son would drink a forty but he would never open a bottle of wine. And why did he have this useless piece of metal and stone in his pocket the day he died? My husband and I had given it to him one Christmas, years before. I like to think he carried it for the same reason I kept it. To remind himself that he was loved, that people were out there who would give up their lives for him if asked. I wish he had asked.

His father’s cufflinks rest in the same bag. They are a child’s, given to him on the day of his confirmation. They are gold squares with an elaborate monogram, WYG, etched into the smooth face. For years when I saw them my stomach turned and a black, venomous anger swelled up inside me, a chant arising unbidden ‘youselfishnogoodsonofabitchhowcouldyoudothattoyourchildren’. I had thrown them away a million times, only to dig them back out from the coffee grounds and the empty milk jugs and put them away for another day, another time. 17 years have passed since he died and I can finally look at them, not with love or affection, but not with that soul eating anger either. I say ‘huh’ to myself and put them, with a bit more care, into the bag. I tie the drawstrings tightly, once more smoothing it’s contents and place it softly on the clean, well lit and airy shelf where I try to keep it. Pain is as important as love and joy in this life. I realize that.

The day of the sale dawns (or will shortly, it is 6 AM) softly and I waken early, pour a too stout cup of coffee from a pot only half through brewing. I pull on sweats and tennies and get to work. Tables are pulled out of the garage, from the back porch and out of the breakfast room. Mismatched cloths are used to cover their stained or cracked or scuffed up finishes and to showcase the items that will be sitting on them. Boxes of books (I loathe giving up books, but they bring people to these things) are lovingly lined up, spines all facing the same way, with one or two being set under the table with the longest cloth, having decided that I absolutely couldn’t part with this copy after all.

Cartons and crates with odds and ends go next; Candle sticks and salt and pepper shakers and ashtrays and banana holders and doilies and odd cutlery and old handbags lay next too a drill without a charger, barbells, framed  photos of strangers with the price tags still on the back, random children’s toys and a box of buttons. A few stunning objects take center stage, Murano glass ware, sterling silver brightly polished for the event and jewelry. These would be the money makers, but will most likely not sell. Jars for keeping odd screws sell, the cordless drill (with no battery) to tighten them sells, the Italian vase for 5 bucks will not but it will make people stop and shop.

A few last-minute-thought items sit on a box half under a table. I know I need to get rid of them, they aren’t doing me any good, but I am not sure I can part with them either, so they sit, sort of displayed, sort of not, waiting for fate to make the decision for me.

The first few customers come early but don’t buy anything. They take a quick walk around, looking for items for their thrift stores or flea market booths. A man, a professional yard sale shopper, asks me off handedly if I would sell my five dollar vase for a buck. I tell him I bought it in Venice myself, I know it is worth more than a buck and he snorts, pulling out his handkerchief and making a rude, rude noise. He tells me he will be back at the end of the day to give me a dollar for it because it sure won’t sell for five and lumbers in his dirty boots and old jeans and sprung suspenders back to his filthy, creaky truck and putt putts away. I am a bit irritated but the slow and steady flow of buyers takes my mind off of him, allowing his ugly aura to dissipate with the rising sun like the last lingering wisps of morning fog.

A man jumps out of his car, looking irritated with me because he felt the need to stop. ‘Hey!’ He shouts while scanning the objects about him, everything (except my beloved books and the box containing the items I have been unsure about letting go) in plain view. ‘Hey, do you have any lamps I need a lamp!’ I look around at the tables containing even the proverbial kitchen sink, but no lamps and state the obvious. ‘Uhm, no, no lamps.’ ‘Well I need a lamp’ he wails as if expecting me to whip one out of the pocket of my sweatshirt and present it to him with a chuckle and a flourish.. I suggest WalMart, he glares at me as if I told him to go to hell and storms back to his car, gunning the engine and pealing out of the driveway like he was in Knightrider. ‘Weirdo, weirdo!’ I say to myself while smiling at the lady with four kids struggling across the yard.

‘I need a night light’ she says as her head swivels trying to keep an eye on all four of the kids swarming around the yard. ‘I haven’t got a single one, sorry’ I answer as my head swivels also trying to keep an eye on all four kids swarming around the yard. Somehow both of us miss one of them pick up stones from my garden and start tossing them at my car. I yell at the kid, because it is my rock, my car and my yard. She looks a bit miffed and snatches him by the ear, tugging sharply so that he comes up on his toes and back pedals as fast as he can to get closer and therefore reduce the pressure on his ear.

‘What’s in that box under the table?’ She asks me in a confrontational tone, as if she thinks I am hiding a whole box of night lights from her on purpose. There isn’t a night light in the box but now I wish there were several, all perfect, all exactly what she needed and none of them for sale. I try to explain to her that it is full of old items that I am not sure I need anymore, but not sure I want to sell either. She bends down and drags it out into the light. ‘What the hell…..’ she mutters as she and the herd of children start rummaging through it like so much dross. ‘These look like lights’ she hollers triumphantly as she yanks one out and holds it in my face accusingly. I am mortified. I can feel the flush start at my toes, now shooting roots into the ground so that I can not move, and race through my veins to the very top of my head where it breaks out in a cold cold sweat.

‘Ummm, that was a not so bright idea. I thought it was a great one, it burned like lightening for a few moments but then dimmed perceptively once I turned my full attention to it.’ The idea still held a little glimmer, a little glow letting me know that it wasn’t the worst idea I ever had but not much of one. Not enough to make a good night light that’s for sure. She turned it in her hands, this way and that way then asked me flat out ‘Why in heaven’s name did you think this was a good idea in the first place? Anyone can see this will only cost you more money than you have and more time than you have and the emotional investment alone, well that right there shows you it is a damn bad idea’ My arm jerked out spasmodically, grabbing my once shiny idea and shoving it into my pocket. She laughed at me and the kids sneered as she herded them up and out of my yard.  I pulled my little idea out and saw that she was right. Any glimmer of light left in it was just a reflection of the midday sun and that in the daylight it looked flawed, irregular and ugly. My heart broke a little with the realization. I turned and shouted at their collective backs ‘Your kids smell like pee!’ and I threw the bad idea after them as hard as I could, but it fell short and skittered across the pavement and away from me as her laughter wafted up into the heated air.

I feel suddenly exposed, sitting in the middle of my yard surrounded by junk and fight back the tears and the anger that threatens to stifle me. I pulled my box over and started to take out the items one by one. The idea to make my living through painting was big and heavy, still pregnant with possibility and hope but in the harsh light of shame and anger I saw that it would never bear fruit as long as I kept it in my possession. I rubbed it with the hem of my shirt until it shone like a gem, an opal in the center of a mound of crude rock, and laid it on the closest table. My idea to be a teacher was cracked, having suffered from dry rot when I realized I was D O N E with other people’s kids in general. It could be salvaged, I supposed, but my heart sure wasn’t in it anymore. A quick buffing and it too took it’s spot between the deviled egg plates and Christmas decorations. My idea for an English garden (hello, I live in the Deep South) was moldy and had no hope whatsoever of being revived, at least in my area so I tossed it into the dustbin with a satisfying thunk. As I sifted through the ideas, both big and small my mood began to lighten and my spirits to soar. Decorating ideas? Polish and price. Adoption? Dustbin for sure! The idea of a dog or similar pet? On the table the furthest from me, front and center, priced to sell. A few went back into the box to be kept and possibly resuscitated at some point in the future. The idea for an Alaskan cruise, that baby is staying here! I may never use the idea but it is so much fun to get out and play with every few years that it is worth the space it takes. The idea for opening my own restaurant? Although cumbersome, frighteningly heavy in fact, I see its possibilities and still have faith in it. I carefully put that one back, hiding it under the others. It is near and dear to my heart and I do not want the neighborhood rapscallions taking it out and questioning it’s worth.

Under the pile of ideas lay the personas I have shrugged off throughout the years. I had honestly forgotten they lay in this box, weighted down by ideas to keep them in place and seeing them gives me a start, a quick heart beat of panic and I try to slap the cardboard flaps in place before any of them can escape.

‘Yoo Hoo!’ I snap my head up from over the box to see a little old lady come toddling across the uneven grass. Torn between the need to hide these pieces of me and the desire to help her keep her footing I sit on the box and reach out a hand to her. She is a sweet woman with nothing better to do than drive around to yard sales and talk to the people hosting them. She wants to talk about the weather, about her health, my health, her children and their health, the misguided youth of today and that thing called reality TV.. As she wanders from table to table I must stand so I put a heavy plate over the top of the box, hoping that any persona for which that would not be a deterrent is either so far down in the box or so long unused as to be dead and therefore not a worry to me. As I try to follow her progression around the yard, her baby blue cotton no wrinkle shorts and pastel colored flowered camp shirt looking cool and comfy, her white orthopedic sandals cradling her bony feet and a suitcase sized white plastic purse over her arm I am reminded of my grandmother and forget to keep an eye on the box. She finally settles on salt and pepper shakers with a chicken motif and I give them to her for a quarter. I don’t think she has even that to spare but is too proud to not buy something after talking my ears raw for an hour. I offer her the matching napkin holder for free and help her to her car, an old Cadillac that was her dead husbands.

Feeling nostalgic now, and slightly saintly for having tolerated her presence with good humor long after she ceased to be entertaining I turn toward my seat and feel terror grip me. A couple of old persona are playing soccer with an idea and are not going to be easy to get back into the box.

One of them is little, slightly chubby, and black and blue. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ I wail as I rush forward and try to grasp it by any available part. It promptly falls down, crying, gnashing it’s teeth and saying ‘I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry’ over and over again. ‘Stop fucking apologizing!’ I hiss at it ‘ I don’t do that anymore! That is why I got rid of you in the first place and it wasn’t easy, let me tell you!’ ‘I know, I know, I’m sorry, so very sorry!’ I pull back my leg and with all the frustration born of years of taking the blame for anything just to keep the peace I boot the little bastard into next week. My sultry persona watches him fly into the distance and turns towards me, a sneer in her lips and a cigarette in her mouth she thanks me for finally getting that little toad out of her life. ‘Listen missy, you are not hanging around out here either. I used you, I know. I took advantage of your coldness and ego centric thought processes but I have moved on from you too. I don’t need that, I am in a better place now.’ She slowly straightens, pushing up her breasts and evening out the hem of her blood red silk dress she glares at me. ‘How can you do that? How can you just box up the persona that got you through the hardest time of our life? Didn’t I get you laid? Didn’t I get you through school? Didn’t I allow you to just boot that little bastard into next week?’ ‘You did’ I make the exclamation without thought, my hands flying to my mouth. ‘You did’

I sink to my knees in the grass, shocked and confused. How have I dealt with life without her being a part of it? She is my strength, my heat, my drive all rolled up into a sexy package begging to be unwrapped. I look as she sits in the only chair, sniffs at my iced tea and drops her cigarette into the glass. She stretches out luxuriously, crossing one ankle over the other and turns her face to the sun. I open my mouth, an apology coming unbidden when it hits me; the little black and blue toad has sidled up on me and is ready to lay himself like a mantle on my shoulders. ‘Aw hell no’ I mutter as I flick him aside like dandruff.  I stand and turn to face her, blocking the sun and forcing her to look at me for a change. ‘You did do those things. HOWEVER you also made me put my kids second, you made me put my safety second, you made me put my dreams second. Because of you half of the ideas you were just kicking around died a needless and untimely death’ I feel myself growing tall and taking on light as I confront her with her failures. ‘You and the toad need to get back in the box or I will show you for what you truly are, no one here will want you’ I threw open the box flap with as much force as can be mustered with tired cardboard and pointed a long finger. ‘In, NOW!’ The toad covered it’s head, cowering and ran crouched to the box, diving in with relief at having escaped unscathed. The ego in the red dress muttered that she would be inside, waiting, she had decided to go home with the man with the dirty truck and the sprung suspenders if he came back for the vase. He, she told me, would appreciate her.

As the sun began to wane I took stock of my situation. The tables still help piles of stuff, but much less than they had. The few really good ideas had been purchased or purloined or just gone off on their own to find someone who would do something with them instead of keeping them in a box. My pocket held a few more dollars than it had this morning, my nose was burned and I felt newly at peace. As I packed up the remnants for Goodwill the man who wanted the lamp drove up, rolling down his window and hollering ‘No lamps yet?’ ‘No, try Walmart’ I hollered back. He drove into the cul-de-sac and in the middle of his turn stopped and opened his car door. I saw him reach down without getting out and pick up my little irregular idea from the gutter. As he held it it glowed, faintly at first and then brighter and brighter until it almost blinded us both. Well I’ll be damned I thought as he drove by yelling ‘I knew you were hiding a lamp!’

My dear husband came out to help me wrap and pack and I asked him would he like a bonfire this evening as I picked up my box from the yard.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Go West Middle Aged Woman!!

O. M. G. Ten hours of sleep!! That literally hasn’t happened in years for me. Most of the times sleep is an elusive sprite, out of reach, hovering on the edge of my exhausted consciousness, taunting me, whispering ‘nanny-nanny-boo-boo you can’t have me’ as I toss and turn in bed. The reason for this glorious somnolence is simple, I am on vacation.

Nothing beats a good vacation, and by good, I mean memorable which, in retrospect does not always equal good in the popular sense of the word.

One such vacation was a road trip out west with my two daughters, one sixteen and therefore miserable and one five months pregnant and therefore miserable, which was not good but had some truly unforgettable moments.

We had not been gone from home an hour when the griping started in earnest from the back seat. Food is an unbelievably relevant issue for teens and people that are building new people it turns out. Even though we had said at least ten times before leaving to make sure they ate something neither had and they were objects of abject sorrow by the time we passed Nashville. Torn between laughing at their constant stream of woe is me one-liners and the urge to tell them to JUST SHUT UP we stopped at fast food places, pulling in to St. Louis a grease stained, bloated, hot and wrinkled mess.

We had dropped a pretty penny to stay in one of St. Louis’ old hotels, the Drury Inn, right at the Arch. It was 4th of July weekend and the town was full of people from all over the USA. It turns out that they have the worlds longest (I can vouch for that) Independence Day parade and a magnificent fireworks show over the river with seating on the lawn under the arch. I learned that this part of St. Louis shuts down, absolutely and utterly when the sun goes down or the baseball game ends, whichever comes first. I learned who Dred Scott was. I learned that keeping Midwestern corn fed boys (and men) off of my two daughters was a full time job.  From our hotel room window we watched the meltdown of MCI Worldcom in the high rise next door, men and women in meetings with shredders and all the lights on at 2 AM, frantically waving their arms and apparently yelling into telephones.  St. Louis was a trial for us, and we were glad to wave good bye to it.

Corn, corn and more corn. You know you are in corn country when the sight of a dirt driveway or the silhouette of a single tree makes your heartbeat pick up a little! Lincoln Nebraska looked like a megalopolis after spending the day driving through tens of thousands of acres of corn. It was still early so we decided to Go West, assuming, being from a well populated state which is a pit stop on the way to Florida, that there would be hotels or motels we could stay at all along our route. Wrong. At ten PM we found a motel with a vacancy next to a horseracing track. The parking lot was full of cowboys and Indians, literally, waiting for the next day’s races and the room had a broken window and holes from gun fire in the bathroom wall but the AC worked and the sheets on the double beds were clean. This, as it turned out, could almost be called luxury accommodations.



The next day, sort of refreshed and ready to get to our destination, Crawford Nebraska,  we excitedly set out on the last leg of our western trek. We had been driving for what seemed like for-ev-er through the center of the state when my husband decided it was a good time for our 16 year old to practice her driving skills.

We were on a country road; she was doing 60, when a very slow moving farming type piece of equipment pulled into the roadway some distance ahead of us. He told her he wanted her to pass it, she argued, we all started chanting ‘Polly, Polly, Polly” as the rear end of the huge machine quickly began to fill up the windshield. She gunned the minivan and screamed as she pulled to the left of it, she screamed as she passed it, she screamed as she pulled back into the right hand lane. We all screamed with her, even though she did just fine. Her terror bred terror in us. When it was done, and she pulled over into the dust bowl that was the side of the road to switch places with my husband she was white and shaking and furious at us. We were laughing and proud but also not arguing about the change in drivers.

Our  vacation included a side trip to Mt. Rushmore (sadly disappointing), to the mammoth dig where they discovered a (SURPRISE) mammoth and have preserved the dig site, very cool and educational, to the wood working museum of some phenomenal artist who’s name I have shamefully forgotten and a drive by the still under construction Crazy Horse monument. Our Nebraska trip ended with a little rodeo, held at Fort Robinson where we were staying. How wonderful it was to watch the cowboys and girls! The children all oohed and aaahed and pointed and squealed when a bucking bronco went a little too crazy needing a cowboy hero with a lasso (really! A real lasso!) to ride out and reign him in.

We had huge bison grazing just across the two lane macadam in the mornings and hares playing in the twilit evenings on the lawn in front of our barracks. Long evenings were spent on the huge front porches in gentle and often hysterically funny conversation with family, reminiscing, boasting, sympathizing and crying while the kids rolled in the grass in front of us, as free and happy as the rabbits. It was a truly memorable vacation, even though I never knew there were so many shades of tan in nature and I feared I would never see a flowering tree or shrub again and Oh My God it was in the middle of absolutely NO WHERE and sleeping on a single cot-like bed in a renovated (yet, oddly, not air conditioned in July) barracks with 40 of your relatives is probably akin to some mind bending here-to-fore undisclosed experiment done on unsuspecting soldiers by the military of an evil empire.


It has been quite a while since we took a trip just for the sake of going somewhere. For the last several years vacations have been spent babysitting my grandchildren on spring breaks or hiding in my shuttered house while the anniversary of my son’s death drags ponderously through my life, upsetting everything, putting it all off balance and out of place. This time, this week, I have taken for me and me alone, to putter, to doze, to watch stupid TV and read and maybe, may-be make cookies if the desire hits. In short, this is my first time off in 3 years that is actually truly and completely a vacation, nothing more. How cool is that?

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

The Short Story Story

Well, I did it, I submitted my first piece of fiction!! It couldn't have been published, but there is nothing about putting it out here after the submission is complete so here we go...

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I want to be a published writer. To be a writer one must write, which takes no effort on my part. I write whatever moves me, whenever it moves me. I write for myself. It is as integral to my being as breathing, almost as involuntary and occasionally is interrupted by hiccups, catches, snorts and chokes. Writing is not the issue. If I want to be a published writer I need to write for others and that, as they say, is the rub. What do others want to read? Where do I start? These are the questions I ask myself.

I love crime novels, mysteries and spy stories but know nothing about these things except for what I have read. I feel that anything I write in these genres will just be a weak imitation of all the wonderful author’s works I have enjoyed over the years. I know about mothering (too over done), cooking (too secular), house cleaning (Heloise cornered the market) and other sundry and mundane topics of little or no interest to anyone. In the act of scanning my words the reader would be thinking of their own experiences and jump ahead, like a person finishing another’s sentences, and either know what I am going to say or have a solution which they think is much better than what I am offering.


I decide to write about love, about romance, about adventure and dreams fulfilled. Since I was four I have played out a million such scenarios, scenes of such love, passion and desire that I could write a veritable anthology on these human experiences.

My protagonist will be a heroine so I have the perspective needed to make it believable. Young, early twenties certainly, even though I am well past that age, because love in the young is enviable, in the old slightly yucky, and I want to appeal to the masses. Beautiful, because love either belongs to the beautiful or makes one beautiful, I am not sure which. Either way beauty is entwined with love and must express itself through my character’s actions as well as physical characteristics. Fecundity is integral, because the more fertile one is the more believable the love. Breasts must be heaving, tresses must be flowing, legs slim and waist tiny, eyes clear, mouth pouty and skin luminous. The trick is to make this vision of fertile perfection appear to be totally oblivious to her beauty while it stops men and women alike dead in their tracks. Gabriella is a great name for a heroine. It sounds foreign, ergo sexy, lush, angelic and lusty all at once. Gabriella it is! A heroine is born.

Gabriella is on a train. Not a new bullet train, but an ancient steam engine, winding through the Alps, in spring. She sits in her seat, absently worrying her bee stung lips, while the rhythm of the wheels on the rails and the gentle swaying go unnoticed as do the vistas of a huge magnificence unfolding in front of her. Her vision is turned inward, dreaming of Adonis and the meeting which is about to take place. For months she has been corresponding with a perfect man. This will be their first face to face and, while the thought of actually being lifted up in his arms is making her weak in the knees and hot in the stomach, she knows that the outcome may not be what she hopes for. She has kept a secret from him and today it will be out in the open, between them, demanding to be dealt with, refusing to be hidden any longer. 
At first it didn’t seem important at all. An on line flirtation gives one the chance to be someone you want to be, not necessarily who you are. As their relationship grew, the truth about much was revealed. She loved to sing, he had wanted to be a professional footballer, she couldn’t cook, he had two signature dishes, she was going to be a veterinarian for large and exotic animals and was paying for that education by grooming dogs, he was an investment banker. They both loved smooth jazz and acoustic guitar, animals and children, wine and pasta, God and their country.

How she would love to say she just hadn’t thought it worth mentioning! There would be no hiding the fact that she had chosen not to tell him. Would he stick around long enough to try to find out why or would he take one look and turn away? As she pondered the questions which she could not answer the train whistle began it’s haunting song alerting the passengers that they would soon be in Verona station.  She slid off the seat and stood on shaking legs. Turning to the window, a mirror in the softly fallen night, she studied her slightly wavering reflection. The hand tailored clothing she wore hung on her frame perfectly. Her breast rose and fell with the shallow, almost painful breathing brought on by her mounting panic. She smoothed the creases from her dress, rubbed her cheeks to bring a bit of the color back, all of it seemingly drained by the stress of the last few hours. Her lips were swollen and blood red, her eyes were dewy and her hands were shaking. With a shuddering resolve drug up from the depths of her soul she straightened her shoulders and picked up her satchel.  Watching out the window as the well lit platform came into view she searched for and found her Adonis, grace embodied, head and shoulders above the masses, his eyes searching, his lovely mouth smiling. Oh why, oh why had she not told him she was only 4 feet 2 inches tall?

Well crap, that’s not good. Where did that even come from? I tuck Gabriella away for another day, too shocked and embarrassed to continue for now. Maybe I should do mystery after all.

My protagonist has to be someone apparently weak but with a heretofore unknown strength of character and razor sharp wit and unbelievable luck which will see them through in the end. I would normally choose a woman but I am still worried about my beautiful little Gabriella so I decide on a child instead. Children are afraid of monsters, the dark, and being alone.  Children can hide in small spaces…..

Casey was in the middle of a dream about hitting a home run the next day and finally getting Misty Allen’s attention. She was the cutest girl in the fourth grade and he would just die if she talked to him. He was jogging up to her, full of confidence and swagger. His wiry red hair was smooth and soft, his little boy body looked tough in the uniform, his cap at a rakish angle on his brow he lifted his gloved hand and….his eyes shot open, confused and frightened, heart pounding.  Half rising, he grabbed for his baseball bat (which he was sure he had dropped next to his bed) but came back brandishing instead a camouflage clad GI Joe doll in his white knuckled fist. Straining toward the door he cursed his heart for banging so loudly against his chest that he couldn’t hear anything but its staccato beat. He sunk back in the bed, shaking under his covers and hugging the doll as he tried in vain to return to the safety of the dream.

Casey froze as he heard the sound of what he recognized immediately as pure evil breathing, hoarse, ragged pants followed by the sound of something heavy and wet being drug across the floor outside his door. Immobilized by terror he followed its track down the hall. He heard the sound of something bumping into the hall table, his mother’s trinkets tinkling together, a harsh curse spit out into the dark (Casey imagined the breather as a sour, sulpherous  smelling, black and slimy THING). He could feel the monster stop and listen, straining as Casey was for the sound that would let him know that the other was alert and aware of him. After what seemed like an eternity the sound of the screen door opening and slapping shut on that awful wet rasping sound released him from his paralytic fear. He knew he should have risen and run to his parent’s room or tried to make it to the kitchen and dialed 911 like they were taught in school but he couldn’t leave the life boat that was his bed. Instead he burrowed deeper and deeper into the covers clutching his doll like a baby and wetting himself while he strained to listen in case the monstrous breather came back for him.

Hmmm, a hero who wets himself and hugs a doll… I might need to work on this short story a bit as well.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

They Were Marvelous, And They Were Ours

Every afternoon at 4:30 I would gather all my little chickadees around me and we would play ‘Clean Up For Daddy.’ We had a routine; I would hustle them all in from outside with hollering, cajoling, pleading, threatening, wheedling and lots and lots of just plain ordering they would straggle back home, a rag tag, dirty faced bunch of adventurers with the knees torn out of their jeans, their shoes untied, laces flopping behind them, sun kissed cheeks and tales to tell.

First things first; the littlest was stripped down right in the kitchen and plopped in the sink. Dial soap and a clean rag were applied liberally, revealing a cherubic contenance with a merry smile.  Curly hair would be sudsed down and rinsed with the kitchen sprayer resulting in gulps for air, squeals, head shakes and furious blinking. The semi permanent ring of dirt under their double chins and the crust behind their ears were banished along with the Georgia red clay stains on their knees and the grime between their toes. After many years of practice I could give a complete sink bath in about 2.5 minutes flat. When my three youngest were tiny I would run them, assembly line like, through this process, letting those that finished run naked through the kitchen until I had finished them all. One, two three, they were flipped onto the floor, diapers or Underroos which had been strategically placed were whipped out and on them before they had a chance to gripe. I ran a comb through their curls, pulled clean t-s and overalls and bam, 15 minutes and they looked and smelled like children you might want to hug. Soggy, dirty clothes were kicked into the laundry area (which happened to be in my kitchen), the sinks were rinsed out and I would put dinner on while I reciting the mother’s mantra of “Pick up your toys. What did I tell you about that? Please don’t suck your thumb Freckles are angel kisses. Well, what did you THINK would happen? Put your shoes away, DO NOT PUT THAT BEAD UP YOUR NOSE! Please quit hitting your sister. Did you do your homework? I said no TV! If I see you touch that wall with a crayon again you are going to scrub this whole house top to bottom mister! Who snuck an Oreo and left the licked cookies on the counter? NO, no Lego! Dammit, help your brother pick up the Lego. Who hit the baby? No, no Kool Ade until dinner. Don’t forget to flush! I don’t believe the baby did it! Why? Because the baby can’t walk… I think you look beautiful, I said quit hitting each other! Listen to me lovey, red hair is beautiful, truly, Mommy has red hair!”

Now and then I would actually hazard a peek around the corner to confirm a suspicion or judge how much of what I was saying was having an impact. Inevitably one child would be in mid swing at another’s head or back, one would be jumping on the furniture, one would be spinning in circles or dancing about while pretending to cry and tattling on the only kid who seemed to actually be trying to do what I was asking.

All the while they would be telling me about who said what in school, what magical game they had invented with their friends in the common yard, what injustices had been done to them and which injustices they had committed on others. Every day someone had a crisis, ran a fever, threw up, had nightmares, lost a best friend, hurt themselves, got in trouble “but it wasn’t my fault” in school, broke or lost a favorite toy. Every day someone needed my undivided attention for a math problem, an English essay, a field trip permission slip. Every day someone had a deeply personal private matter which meant life or death to them. Every day they all needed to come first.

I would cook, peeling potatoes, browning meat, tossing a salad, setting the table, making the Kool Ade, stirring, sniffing, tasting and testing for doneness with one child on my hip and one child sitting on my foot and hanging onto my leg for dear life as I drug them back and forth from stove to sink to table and back.

Somehow, by 6 when their father came in from work, smelling like oil and exhausted, they would all be more or less calm, dinner would be just about ready to put on the table, the toys would have been for the most part thrown in the toy box and only two or three pair of shoes would litter the living room floor. After only an hour they would still be fairly clean (excluding of course, the Oreo spit stains on the baby’s onesy and the marker dotting the older one’s faces) and still have essence of Dial (the yellow bars) wafting about them. They would surge forward, shrieking “DADDY” as if he had bee gone for a year and grab him, some high, some low, as if their very lives depended on his staying exactly where he was. That rush, that human tide of love which washed over him at the end of a long hard, dirty day is what kept him getting up in the morning. It was a glorious, a wondrous thing to watch. I always felt a pang of jealousy at these crushing homecomings. I was the mom, I was always there, I made them pick up their things and wash their hands and apologize to people they hated. I always thought this unfair until my husband pointed out that when they needed something, for school, for play, for a broken heart, they always came to me, no matter what he offered. If I wasn’t there they would wait, tell him it was okay, daddy, mommy would take care of it.

We always ate at the dining room table. (My mother told me when she was 75 that she had never not eaten at the table in her own home. I found this amazing then and I find it amazing still.) My husband and I sat at either end, everyone passing food and talking or laughing. All of the stories I had heard while I was preparing dinner were trotted out again for their daddies consumption, usually enhanced in a manner geared toward his sensibilities. The boys were bigger, stronger, braver. Where they told me how much a fall had hurt and showed me their boo-boos for smooch-aid, they told him how they hadn’t even blinked, how they, actually, had done it on purpose in pursuit of some thrill or on a dare in defense of their honor. My daughters talked about their studies, how (gloriously!) intelligent they were and how well they were doing at school, with their friends, how jealous every one was of their curly red hair. We both knew reality sat somewhere between the version they told me and the version they told him and that suited us just fine. They were marvelous and they were ours.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

The Things We Do For Money

Why do people do what they do for a living? I don’t mean the callings glamorized in books or on television and in film. Policeman, fireman, soldier, doctor, nurse, mother, father or religious leader or teacher… these career paths are idealized and presented to us as worthy callings from the time we can comprehend the concepts of honor, glory, faith and trust. … I mean the billion odd or unusual or tedious jobs that people do every day. What makes someone wake up one day and say “I want to cook fried chicken for eight hours a day, five days a week, for the rest of my life” or “I feel the need to pluck chickens, and to be the best damn chicken plucker ever!”  or “I have a knack for chicken sexing… I think my future lies there”. No offense to chicken workers of any kind. I love chicken, have had a job where I cooked fried chicken, have watched my grandmother pluck a chicken and I still can’t understand why anyone would devote their lives to any of these fowl pursuits.

I am a computer programmer. I have no deep love or fascination with computers. I found myself a widow at the ripe old age of 34. I had four children who were lost and alone and so deeply sad I could barely stand to look at them. I had bills to pay and a not-great job to try to pay them with. Being the logical, measured, rational person that I am, after going totally freaking crazy for a solid year, I called my local trade school and had the following conversation:

Me: What can I learn that will pay me the most money in the least amount of time?
Admin: What are you interested in?
Me: Making money, a lot, and soon.
Admin: I understand that but we try to help people find something that they can feel good ab…
Me: Excuse me, ma’am? I just want to make the most amount of money in the least amount of time.
Admin: May I ask why?
Me: Because I am 35 and a widow who can’t see shit with four kids to feed, clothe and care for. I have been a chicken cook, a stock clerk, a copywriter and a freight broker. I have baked cakes and done phone surveys, babysat and cut grass and NONE of these things are going to take care of their needs. So, I ask again, wha…
Admin: Ma’am, take computer programming.

When I had this conversation I was a freight broker. A freight broker spends their day on the phone calling and receiving calls from manufacturers and trucking companies, trying to arrange transport for goods across the Continental United States. Manufacturers want to pay the least while truckers want to get paid the most possible. The job is essentially being a diplomat for crappy money and no respect, no retirement, no awards and no poker games in the back room a la Sergeant Bilko.

I loved this job because it involved no nights, weekends or chicken fryers. I got to wear dresses to work, no hairnets were involved and no heavy lifting was needed. We were three women and the owner in a little office over a car stereo shop behind a Home Depot. I liked the environment, liked my boss and the ladies I worked with. .I would step out onto the teeny back porch to smoke and watch flat beds pull into the parking lot behind us and wonder if they were carrying in the roses from South Texas or the chemicals from South Georgia I had brokered two days before. 

I learned that all of the DOT yellow paint used for striping roads and painting curbs came from the same manufacturer (Texas again) and that makeup had to be irradiated and so was considered hazardous material and that people who carried produce from Florida did not want it on their trucks. I learned that trucks that carry coffins have special racks inside of them which do not allow them to carry a standard load home so often the truckers have to travel home empty (dead heading) and I learned that no one in their right mind wanted to carry chickens, ever.

I did not enjoy hearing my coworkers (all wives of truckers past or present) and my boss (a former trucker himself)  tell what they considered humorous and I considered terrifying stories of coked up truckers carrying over-loaded vans full of frozen chicken parts across country in half the time it should legally take. One of the ladies laughed uproariously as she talked about dragging a Volkswagen under the front bumper through rush hour traffic in Las Angeles and being totally unaware until a cop pulled them over. Trucks scare the bejeezes out of me now.

Before the brokerage I worked at a local newspaper as a copywriter in their ad department. I had great hope for that job. Newspaper was synonymous with career to me and the pay was $1.65 more an hour than I had been making. I begged for that job, I plead with the manager who interviewed me. When I got the call that I was hired I hung up the phone and did a jig. The ad department at a newspaper sounded so legitimate compared to stock person and sales associate (the two jobs I was holding at the time) that it made my head swim. Ah, reality, it truly does bite.

The work itself was interesting. I got to paste together ads with teeny pictures and lines of text. I learned how to use the giant machine that melted the wax and spread it on the backs of the mock ups as they were rolled through. The ads were then stuck to large pieces of newsprint sized board and photographed for the computerized presses. I also learned that typing out lunch menus every week for each school in a large county was mind numbing, that any rounded letter in type smaller than 10 point was a mystery to me, that newsprint does not come off your finger tips when you handle it for hours every day and that a lot of people who work for newspapers are hardly the icons of truth and integrity that they would have us believe.

As annoying as this job became it was still better than the two I had held before it. I worked at a venerable department store as a sales associate. I was there at 6:45 every morning, stocking the floor, re-arranging the merchandise as directed by the corporate office and preparing for the onslaught of bored housewives, retired men, home-bound mothers desperate for an hour out with their screaming tots, teenagers skipping school, shoplifters and psychopaths, all of this while my brain rotted away due to the incessant and  insidious muzak boring into it and the annual three-month-long replay of the same twelve Christmas carols. In case you wondered how someone who can’t see anything handled a job like this, the answer is not very well. I yearned to make a t-shirt with the saying ‘Blind But Not Stupid’ on it but I didn’t think they would let me wear it. Okay, so I couldn’t see someone carrying ten pairs of Levi’s out under their skimpy T and I couldn’t see someone gesturing to me for help as the ancient racks loaded with winter coats toppled over onto darling junior (who shouldn’t have been playing under them anyway, am I right?) and I couldn’t tell if something was blue, black or green, matched or clashed, but my area was always neat and if I could help you at all I did.

I would leave at 3, always dirty and depressed, go to the drug store next door and order a grill cheese and a cup of joe. I would sit at the counter listening to the regulars flirt with the rayon clad waitress for 45 minutes and then go three doors down to my next job.

My title was Stock Clerk (what clerking had to do with it is a mystery). I would walk into the back room and be confronted by a wall of boxes and a giant cart of hangers and ‘theft prevention devices’. The best thing about this job was that I was alone. After spending the day dealing with the public I could turn on the radio, take off my shoes and get to hanging. At that time I could not have afforded the clothes I was preparing. I would take them out and ooh and ahh as I clipped on the plastic devices used to deter shoplifters. I lived in terror of breaking one of the glass ampoules with ink inside, knowing that if I did so I would have to pay for the merchandise it might stain.

The formaldehyde in the clothes (used as a stabilizing agent for dyes) would start to make me loopy after a while and I would step out into the alley and breathe in cool crisp air while the blues followed me out the door and blended with the stars decorating the night. I usually finished up by 9, later on Thursdays as the store geared up for the weekend and would call my husband to please come get me.

Before the stores, and after the phone surveys and babysitting gigs, I was, you guessed it, a chicken cook. While the restaurant’s mascots might urge you to ‘eat more chiken’ after my first week there I can assure I did not!

For two years I worked alongside fresh faced missionary students and pastors of small churches chopping cabbage, slicing tomatoes, peeling eggs, making lemon meringue pies and breading tons and tons and tons of chicken one breast at a time. I have always felt at home in a kitchen so my eyesight did not make so big a difference there. I lusted after the giant mixers, the fabulous fryers and the glorious stainless cookware and surfaces. I couldn’t help but think how easy it would be to bathe two or even three kids at once in the huge, deep welled kitchen sinks.

While the constant preaching made me slightly nuts (I became their cause célèbre, being Catholic and all) and walking on the grease slicked tile floor was akin to skating on oil coated ice all in all the job suited me. Having cooked for what seemed an army of kids for years, frying three grand worth of chicken over the lunch shift was no big deal. The two big drawbacks as I saw it were the smell and the knives. The smell of chicken never left me. I would shower for what seemed an hour and still smell the chicken, raw and breaded on my hands and in my hair.  When I walked into the grocery store, the smell of the chicken in the meat case made me gag before I had gotten five feet in. Add to that the multitude of slices, cuts, nicks and gashes I had gotten while prepping food and the job started to lose it’s allure. One morning, cleaning cabbage (for coleslaw) which had been in an ice bath I watched as the butcher knife I was wielding took off the very end of my thumb. I couldn’t feel a thing since my hands were frozen solid, but I just knew when I could it was going to hurt like a summabitch. My manager took one look at my white and terrified face, yelled ‘Oh shit, now she’s gone and done it’ (evidently Christian goodness gets put in the back seat when spurting blood is immanent), grabbed me, snatching up her keys while wrapping my hand in a towel and shouting out position changes to everyone and hustled me out the door and to the ER.

As I watched the doctor sew my thumb tip back on I thought of all the other injuries and decided my flesh was pretty darn necessary to my future plans so I should probably find a new career.

This is just a little aside, A bit of information for those of you who I may have offended while working any of the above jobs which required name tags. When an almost blind  person leans down and put their nose in your cleavage they are not sniffing you up or trying to look down your shirt, they are merely trying to see who the hell you are.

I have had a lot of jobs. I try to do them all as well as I can and to find and try to concentrate on the good in each and every one of them. I am still waiting for that moment though, the one where you think ‘I want to do this for the rest of my life.’  To all of the chicken sexers and fry cooks out there who have had that moment, I salute you. You are a luckier person than I.