Have a Bowl of Wintery Mix

      A “Wintery Mix” has descending above central New Jersey.  “Wintery Mix,” my least favorite weather term.  So misleading.  Sounds more like a delectable snack you would purchase from the supermarket rather than a weather front that makes driving around here another form of suicide.  

 

     Also would like to take this time to point out that “Doiley” is the most uncool sounding word in the English language.  Just take a moment to say it out loud.  Did it sound like something that will get you laid tonight?  Didn’t think so.

The Divided Life

     I live a divided life.  My current group of friends do no know this.  Perhaps if they paid more attention to the stories I have told them they would realize that I leave about about five years worth of content.  As far as they are concerned I never turned fifteen, I just skipped from age fourteen straight onto nineteen; which was still a shitty year but at least the type of shitty most people can relate to.  And of course, now that I am five years or more into these friendships I cannot really go out and over sushi and wine and say “Oh and by-the-way I have been institutionalized before.  On more than one occasion.  Several times in fact.  For long periods of time.”

 

     It is not so much that people will lose their appetite, it is just a hard thing to have to follow up on and I don’t want to put my friends in that position.  I mean, what really are you going to respond with?  I picture my friends staring at me with a deer-in-the-headlights expression.  They may stutter and try to find something suitable to ask.  I have probably made them uncomfortable.  They probably wonder who I really am on the inside,  the person they have been divulging their secrets to for the past few years, the person they have been asking and taking advice from now to find out it was all from a person who may or may not have severe disturbances.  And without any doubt they will think of the movie Girl Interrupted.  They always do.

 

     I have gone so long not having mention it that even I forget it all really happened, or rather, it feels like it happened but just to somebody else.  I am in the crowd watching a Broadway play about a girl who vaguely resembles me and acts like me but who in actuality is just somebody else playing a role I have written.  This happens when you deny yourself the luxury of memory.  I do it all too much.

 

     There is not a real reason for me to either because it is one of the more interesting times of my life that makes for unique stories, more so because I documented my life on a near daily basis at that time.  Journal after journal of my thoughts and day-to-day occurrences, wishes, dreams, current grievances; easily into the double digits worth of journals which I still have.  How many people manage to have that accurate of an account of a period of their lives?  Few but again when you are locked into a ward with little to do time is on your side.

 

     I am going on record to say it is nothing like Girl Interrupted except for the sassy, black nurse that I managed to run into at every facility and on every ward I was on (cue Whoopie Goldberg).  I am sorry to say we did not have a girl who ate deli rotisserie chickens and then hide the carcasses under her bed (though we did have plenty of self mutilates, drug addicts, thieves, mutes, and a few hair pullers).  No electroshock, cold water baths, or padded rooms (four-point restraints in the “quiet room”-I never had to deal with any of this as I was a more docile badass).  And sadly nobody was ever as good looking crazy as Angelina Jolie (well, one girl Christine came pretty close.  She attempted to hang herself from an air vent in her bedroom.  Just goes to show that even pretty people have problems).

 

     You can say I was in for multiple things but to sum it up it was severe Depression and Anxiety, both which just fueled the other and that resulted in my coping in awful ways (see: Self Mutilation, drugs, and sex-all the things that make Rock N Roll wonderful).  It is just less wonderful when you aren’t back stage at a Marilyn Manson concert and instead are an angry and frustrated teenager locked in her bedroom unable to see the rest of the day, let alone tomorrow.  Things always happened so fast and out of left field that I was unable to document the strings of short term lock ups but it always started with a trip to the E.R, being held in on of those godforesaken “back rooms” the only reserve for people who are considered a danger to themselves or others, and then a short stint in any number of facilities that hole you up, dose you with therapy and medication until you tell them you feel “okay,” you are hopeful for your future and no, you do not feel the urge to hurt yourself.

 

     That is the golden ticket of phrases in one of these places.  ‘You Don’t Feel the Urge to Hurt Yourself.”  Write it down and stow it away in your wallet for future reference should you ever find yourself on the tail end of a fifty-one fifty.  You’ll thank me later.

 

     I have not looked back at my journals, kept between August 2000 to somewhere in the winter of 2002 in a long time but it’s funny, when pertaining to my earlier writings, to see a seventeen year old girl struggle to understand a world that she wasn’t even allowed in and how wrong I was about everything.  These weren’t bad times necessarily.  These writings show many moments of pride, hilarity, inside jokes, and leisure activities.  I wrote about not just myself but the people I found myself surrounded with month after month.  For every new girl that showed up on the ward of the second-to-last place I was in, Good Shepherd Center, I started off each entry announcing her arrival, her behavior for the day, her back story, and what I really thought lay hidden somewhere in her soul.  I chalked every new girl up to being as lonely and confused as I was; several weeks later after having to live, eat, and brush my teeth besides the bitch it changed to “Melissa is a fucking nut bag and I hope she chokes on a bag of dicks.”  It’s hard to live with twelve or thirteen teenage females, more so when said females are eitherr from the ghetto, suffer bouts of mania and anxiety, and are prone to throwing furniture or trying to stab somebody with a spork.   But again, it wasn’t all bad.  Ten years later and I realize I love that time simply for the story.  I am a big fan of collecting stories.

 

     I went into a half way house of sorts after I was released from a year long stint at Good Shepherd Center to a place who’s name escapes me.  I was by far the youngest there and kept with a hoard of social pariahs who would never be able to live the normal life I knew I was one day destined  for.  This was obvious when I encountered their first “client” Robin in the house I was assigned to.  The back porch was the designated smoking section of the house and after I put my things down in the room I was to call home for the next six months I did a bee-line through the kitchen and out the sliding glass door to fill up my lungs for the first time in over a year.  A minute into what could only be described as a smokable orgasm a woman on no concernable age came out to join me.  She stood across from me, leaning against the wooden railings of the porch and eyed me.  She lit her hand rolled cigarette with a pack of matches, drew fourth a lung full, and exhaled.  Her eyes never left me the entire time and her arms were crossed, a sneer on her face, all signs of hostility and aggression.  I wished I was one of those loud mouth females who had the balls to snap their heads and say “What the fuck are you looking at?” but I was cursed with being white, 5’2, and 100lbs dripping wet so I settled with uncomfortably looking out into the backyard, shifting my feet, and growing inwardly hot.  This continued until I finished my cigarette at which point I turned to her, extended my hand, saw how yellowed and long her toe nails curling under her faded navy blue flip-flops were, thought otherwise of touching her if even a normal gesture in society is to shake someones hand when meeting them for the first time and said “Hi, i’m Heather.”

 

     She snarled and immediately spit out “I saw you shaving heads in your bedroom!  Just stay the fuck away from  me!” before running back through the house and into her bedroom.  She didn’t even have the decency to close the sliding glass door.

 

     This summed up most of the clientele at the half way house and at the community building we were all bussed over to on the weekdays so we were just loafing around the house all day.  It did not take me long to realize my problems were no where up to par with these people’s problems and that it was in probably every ones best interest if I no longer stayed there and rejoined a much saner, cleaner world.  The type of world were people remembered to cut their toenails. 

 

     I was fairly well behaved during the year I spent at Good Shepherd Center and I would’ve been well behaved here as well if only I could believe that this was where I should be.   The ball started rolling on my downfall when I was made to attend both N.A. and A.A classes after I admitted to sometimes drinking and smoking pot.  “Sometimes” is not me sugar coating anything.  I was too broke to enjoy either of these things more than on sporadic occasions and had so few friends my junior year of high school prior to going to Good Shepherd that I had nobody to indulge me either.  But counselors are trained to see through bullshit even if the bullshit in question really isn’t bullshit at all.  So though I protested going with it being a waste of a taken seat in their transport van they weren’t having any of it.  Their reasoning’s was that most people didn’t smoke pot anyway and I obviously was doing it as some sort of escapism.  I did not bother to tell them that the pot was more recreational and that the sex and self mutilation was more for the escapism least they decided to start making me attend anonymous classes for those things too.

 

     It turned out that N.A. and A.A. meetings were good places to meet good looking men within the same age range.  You would think giving hand jobs in alley ways for crack and heroin would age a person more but it turns out that most of the twenty somethings were very good looking, lonely, needy, and damaged which was pretty much the only type of guy who would date me at this juncture of my life.  Check off the box for codependency issues.  My list was getting longer by the day. 

 

     I approached one one speaker after a meeting to tell him I liked his personal struggle and that he should write a memoir.  We exchanged phone numbers for the purpose of “lending an ear” (at least that is why he gave me his) and I went about my merry way.  However my elation was short lived, my How-Stella-Got-Her-Groove-Back moment erased when I was pulled aside by Jon, my drug counselor once we were all back at the community building.

 

     Jon was in his mid-thirties, a very good looking and put together black man who had almost no sense of humor and seemed a bit bitter with the career path he had chosen.  He spent most of his time trying to instill drug education twenty years too late to a bunch of toothless hicks, most who rarely bathed, had questionable dental hygiene, and little to no education past the tenth grade.  He would stand up after 30 minutes of lecturing on why marijuana was considered a gate way drug and the effects it had on both body and brain, only to have a 50 year old who looked like he could have fronted ZZ Tops yell “Cos it make you grow titties!” when asked if we could name any other harmful attributes.  I’d probably be a bit bitter myself.

 

     “You know, Heather,” Jon says clasping his large hands in front of him and leaning forward against the desk in his office “I’m sure that young man gave you his number because he desperately needs an ear to listen to him when he is having a hard time.  Not very nice of you to accept it with other things in mind.”

 

     I stare back at him and blink.  I didn’t really have any “intentions other than having somebody to gush over in my journal during evenings where I was awake and with nothing to do. Okay, so I did have other “intentions” but this place was getting in the way of them, dammit!  I was 18, bored, and starting to go as crazy as the other people in this place already where.

 

     He continues “Besides, with both of you new to sobriety it really isn’t conducive either one of you to try and have any type of relationship, even if it’s strictly over the phone and an emotional relationship only.”

 

     I interject at this point “I’m sorry you feel that way, Jon, but i’m not new to this sobriety thing.  I told you I don’t even have a drug problem.”

 

     He chuckles to himself and looks up toward the ceiling, shaking his head with a patronizing smile on his face.  “I thought we were past this.  The first step is to admit you have a problem.  Did you read any of the book I gave you?  It explains all of this.”

 

     “Yes, I read it,” I said defensively and I had because I had nothing else better to do since I flunked out of my first semester of community college that I had enrolled in when I first came here, “But none of it applies to me.  This guy sucked dick for drugs and he isn’t even gay.  Just because I may have smoked a few blunts in my life doesn’t make me a drug addict.  I only go because you people make me!”

 

     “I would appreciate if you changed both your tone and your language,” Jon is jotting something down on a notepad as he is speaking to me.  Just another thing to go into my personal file.   Over the years I have diminished as a person and have become nothing more than charts, written account, and a personal statement stuffed into a manila folder and faxed over from one professional to another.  I was aware that this conversation, a note on my body language and hostility would be documented and shared at a staff meeting  at some point this week.  “On second thought,” he looks back at me, “hand over the number.”

 

     We both stare at each other silently and a begrudgingly hand over the scrap of paper that a former drug addict had written his number on.  We sit in silence for a moment, broken only when I ask if I can go now?  He just nods and I exit his office, deflated and angry. 

 

     A week later I was called into Amy’s office, the main coordinator for staff and clients, where I found myself face to face with my father and stepmother.  A list of my increasing outlandish behavior is read to all parties, me smirking and laughing at certain parts, the high heels I wore with shorts that “excited the male clients” (trust me, I did them a favor), the comedy routine that was getting in the way of the drug and alcohol education classes, my crass language, the fact that I regularly disappeared anytime staff took us out for mini golf or to the movies.  She finally stopped reading and looked right at me.  “Is there something about all of this you find amusing, Miss Mauro?”

 

     “Yes,” I tell her “Your arms are so hairy you perpetually look like you are wearing a mo-hair sweater.”

 

     A week later I was back home in New Jersey at my mom’s house for the first time in five years.  My dreams of being a normal teenager were coming true though it turned out after missing the past year and a half of living in normal society.  I had lost the ability to communicate with anyone my age, was surprised when I found out that people did things like go to prom, go on senior class trips, hold down jobs, and not have anxiety attacks that made them wretch and shake on the floor.  I also found I was very bored by these people, these “Normals” who carried no extra baggage, who bitched and moaned about the most mundane things, who had little to say and no stories worth telling.  In my own way I was an outcast and unsure of how to navigate this world that I had spent so much time day dreaming about.  I muddled through life for the next year and didn’t really start living correctly until I hit twenty.  It wasn’t a great time.

 

     I rarely think back to those years and have far removed myself from that period of my life for reasons I cannot readily explain.  I feel like if I told people now they wouldn’t believe me since this life I am now in is so totally different, so “normal.”  Marriage, kids, car payment, student loans; a life most other people are living.  I look back at it and can barely believe it myself even though it was only ten years ago.  Just weird that the landscape along the path you choose can end up being so erratically different the further you travel and I feel like I may have walked quicker and further than most.

 

     So here I am, friend, and here you are and we are sitting across a table from each other having coffee.  We briefly touch on something that was painful to you and I listen with rapt attention.  I am enjoying these things most about you, friend, your painful stories, the moments of your life that hurt and where there were no light at the end of the tunnel. This makes me feel closest to you and as you finish your story, after I tell you it will be alright and you’ll pull through I take a deep breath and say “So let me tell you about my lost year and a half…”

The Year I Caught Santa

    Now that the holidays are rolling around I find myself mentally making  checklists in my head as to the many ways I want to create Christmas magic for  my four year old daughter.  I want her to anticipate Santa, the elves, his  reindeer, snowmen who magically come to life; the whole sha-bang.   The things I remember  spending Christmases with my father and his wife, Bernadette, when I was eight  and had started spending my winter holiday getting ready for, participating in  and basking in the afterglow in Malden, Ma, stay with me until this day.  They were pitifully broke at the  time and lived in a less-than-steller area in a tiny apartment building sandwiched between a  bar and an auto mechanics shop.  It was probably my favorite Christmas to date.   They had the table sized Christmas tree with built in lights, we made our own ornaments that year, strung beaded pipe cleaners beant to look like candy canes on the tiny tree, baked sugar cookies for  ourselves and of course, for Santa.  We left a carrot stick our for the reindeer  and left a little note for Santa thanking him for the presents and inviting him  to take the cookies and milk.  The next morning there was a little note back  from Santa, expressing his gratitude over the baked goods, “thank you for thinking of  the deer”, and how we were such good kids and he would be back next year.  It  made my toes tingle.

 

        I don’t remember what we got for Christmas that year.  But I distinctly  remember my brother, stepmother and I sitting around the kitchen table, glue and  glitter covering a five foot radius around us while we decorated ornaments.  20  years later and we still have most of them.  It was the best Christmas of my  life.

      Their lives changed and over the years they worked their way up from part time jobs, college, to careers and the Christmases got a  little more involved.  They got bigger trees, real trees chopped down from local famrs.  My father started a  Christmas village that he added to each ear.  The gifts got bigger and there  were more of them. They started buying ornaments and the amount of holiday doo-dads started covering most of the house.  You couldn’t sit  down without a wayward ornament hook jabbing you in the ass. However two things stayed the same; the snacks we left for Santa and the  note he left us for the morning.

      As a kid who was raised primarily Jewish until the age of seven by my  mother and grandparents I was awed by the whole North Pole concept, the guy in a red suit  sneaking intit o homes and night.  Much more so then anybody else I knew.  And  this was after I had caught my grandmother posing as the tooth fairy the year  before so you would think I would be skeptical to any mystical holiday mascot  that crossed my path.  But again, us Jews have no-frill holidays.  There is no  Hanukkah Warlock of Yom Kippor Pony.  We do little more than light some candles  and call it a day.   And after my brother accidentally set what little hair my  grandmother had on fire getting overzealous with the Menorah candles even that  got taken away from us.  So you can see what I held Santa on a sky high  pedestal.

       I mean, my yearly behavior was dependent on what Santa was thinking at  any given time.  I didn’t get grades for my future, I got good grades for  Santa!  I wasn’t sure how exactly he was all knowing.   I figured that was part  of the elves job description, reporting on the behavior of the world’s girls and  boys.  I didn’t really question anything about Santa.  I never wondered how he  could be both in the mall and ringing a bell by a donation bucket outside at the  same time.  And I didn’t know a single person with a chimney.  Parents stayed  awake to let him in through the front door obviously.

      Around the age of ten….ahem….okay I may have been half way to 12, I  started to have my doubts over how real Santa may be.  I am not really sure what  changed but it was the same year I became aware I was one of the few girls still  not wearing a bra and began kissing my bear to prepare for the day in the far,  far future (is what I told myself at the time) that I would finally kiss a boy.   Or a boy would want to kiss me.  Whatever happened first.  Puberty was starting to sneak up  to me, looking over my shoulder but ducking when I turned away.  I was stuck  between getting my first period and still reading The Babysitter Club Book  series.  So that may have had something to do with it.

       I wrote Santa my annual letter that year.   I wrote two actually.  One  that I dutifully handed to my father and the other that I wrote on the sly alone  in the attic guest room they now had after moving into an old but spacious two  family home in the nicer neighborhood of Malden.  This was the year I was finally going to test the Santa Theory.  I was not ready to fully give up on the idea that he wouldn’t be piloting a sleigh over the urban jungles and country roads.  I had become a skeptic, sure, but I could not walk away from this relationship unless I had the truth.   This second letter was straight and  to the point.

 

Dear Santa,

 

     I hope this does not make you mad but I have been hearing rumors and  stuff that you aren’t real and that my parents just pretend that you come into  the house every Christmas Eve and write me back a note.  So if you really are  real you will know that I am writing this letter and you will know where I will  be hiding it.  If you are really real then you will write me back TO THIS LETTER  ONLY!  Not just the one I am leaving by the cookies.  And if you are real I am  really really sorry I am doing this.  I just have to know so I can move  on. 

 

Love Always Heather

 

PS:  You can write on the bottom of this letter or on the back.  PSS:  This doesn’t count as me being bad.  But I like doing investigations  as you probably know from my new business, the international Ghost Hunters Club, for which I am president.

 

       I sealed the letter and lay it in front of my and gently placed my hand  on it to get “the vibe” (I did this on tests too, placed my hand over the  question to get a “vibe” on the answer.  I was convinced I was psychic but still  had to develop my powers.  It was around this time my grades started to  decline.  Why study when you had supernatural abilties.)  The Vibe told me that I was going to be pleasantly surprised by  what I would find the next day.  I hid the  letter behind a heavy curtain in the small window next to the front door of the  down stairs vestibule. Nobody ever had a reason to linger around down there so  the chances of it being found in the next 24 hours was slim.

       The next morning I awoke and ran down the stairs from the attic to the  living room level of the home.  I only stopped to take a quick peek to see what  the gift situation looked like (it looked pretty on point) and continued down to the  vestibule, where the letter still was.  This was the moment of truth.  The  letter was still sealed but that didn’t mean anything.  Maybe Santa just wanted  to keep his response secret so he re-sealed it. 

       I was confused when I pulled out my letter and saw that nothing was  written beneath my handwriting.  I flipped the letter over and the page was  blank.  This couldn’t be possible.  I flipped the letter back over and re-read  everything I had written the day before just to see if maybe I had missed something, a little  note in the margin, I simple signature, even corrections to my grammar and  spelling.  But all i saw were my own words staring back at me, the tone of the note pleading,  desperate and pathetic.  There was no Santa.  It was all a lie and it always had  been.  The past few Christmases felt slightly more meaningless.  I folded the  letter back up and tucked it back behind the window.  I walked back up the  stairs to the living room where the family was starting to gather and settle,  the adults with coffee in their hands, my one brother bouncing up and down, my  little baby brother Sean trying to eat a ribbon.

       “Santa wrote you back,” Bernadette said handing me the first letter I  had written thanking Santa in advanced for the gifts and hoping that he liked  the goodies.  I scanned the note he wrote, the same basic stuff about how I had  been good that year and thank you for the milk.  Buncha bullshit is what  this is, I thought.  “Neat,” I responded, blinking back tears.

 

     I went back to New Jersey shortly after New Years Eve, my year continued  and I forgot about the whole Santa-not-being-real debacle.  We would  be spending the summer with my dad as we did every summer but in Maryland  instead as that was where Bernadette’s job had relocated her.  They packed up  their Malden home in April and in May I got a letter in the mail.

 

      My mom walked into the kitchen and casually tossed an envelope onto the  table.  “You got a letter,” she said.

      “From who?” I was curious and excited.  I was jealous that adults got  mail on a daily basis.  I never understood how they weren’t more excited over  it.

      My mom looked on my both the front and back of the enevolope, “No clue,” she said turning from me and rummaging around int her purse for some lost object.

       I used my grandfather’s silver letter opener to open it and pulled out  the letter that looked somewhat aged.  Opening it I saw my handwriting and  realized it was the letter that I had written to Santa and stuck behind the  curtain five months earlier.  But something was reflecting through it.  There was a  letter written on the other side in a darker, heavier ink.

 

Dear Heather,

 

     Please forgive me for not getting this to you sooner.  I actually  had read the letter you wrote me on Christmas Eve after I got done eating those  wonderful cookies and putting out your Christmas gifts but I was strapped for  time and was unable to write back.  Understand that it is a lot of work to get  presents to all the boys and girls in the world and I am but one man.  I feel  horrible that I couldn’t write you back until now but rest assured I did not  forget about you.  I am not mad either, it was very smart of you to come up with  a plan like that.  Can’t wait to come by next year.  You are turning into a  wonderful and lovely young lady and I am very proud of you.  Your dad and mom  are too, they told me personally.

 

 

 

Love Always, Santa Clause

 

     “What is it?” my mom asked.  I handed her the letter and flatley told her  Santa wrote me back.  She read it silently and snorted to herself. “Looks like  your father’s handwriting to me,” she said before handing me the letter back.   And she was right, it did.  I appreciated the effort but the damage had been  done five months earlier.

      Every year after that I  stay up late and help wrap gifts for the rest of the family.  Bernadette and I would sit side my side with rolls of tape, labels  and different rolls of wrapping paper surrounding us.  Every so often she would  look up as I was putting a label on and say “Make sure that one says ‘From  Santa’.”  I would write “Santa” carefully for a gift for one of my (now) three  brothers and set it aside.  The next morning we would open our presents and my  brothers would look up to the ceiling and say “Thank you, Santa!” rosey faced  and smiling ear from ear.  Two or three of my gifts would say “To Heather, From  Santa” too and this trend continued well into my 20’s.

      Last year was the first Christmas my daughter Sophia understood certain  things regarding Christmas Eve.  She had sat on Santa’s lap that year down at my  husband’s hall and told him what she wanted.  We made cookies and set them out with a small glass of milk and threatened her with Santa skipping over our basement apartment if  she didn’t go to sleep at a decent hour.  She went to bed seeing nothing under  our tree to waking up and seeing a small pile of colorfully wrapped gifts to her  from both myself, my husband and of course Santa.  Even my husband had a present  from Santa.

 

      Santa has a stronger hold on her this year than last.  Early in October  I found her rooting through the side table draw.

 

     “May I ask what you are looking for?” I asked Soph.

      “I’m looking for the stamps,” she was shoulder deep in this draw, “Can  you get me the stamps, Mommy?”

      “What do you need stamps for?”

      “I want to mail a letter,” she responded.

      I am dumbfounded.  This was someone who figured out how to download  Netflix onto my husband’s phone and then immediately found a season of South  Park to watch.  The concept of snail mail was too outdated for her. “You have a  letter you want to mail?  To who?”

      “Santa,” she said running out of the living room.  She disappeared for a  few minutes but then came back with one of my left over  “Thank You” cards I had  used for my wedding.  She had what loosely represented a list scrawled out in  purple crayon and had attempted to spell Santa on the small envelope.  “S” was  the only letter she had figured out.  She held it out in front of me.

      “Very nice, read it to me,” I suggest and she rattled off several items  (Dream Light, pair of slippeds, My Little Pony stuff; typical four year old girl  things.) “Well, I guess I better get you a stamp so you can mail it.  The  postman won’t pick it up if it doesn’t have postage,” I hand her a stamp from the  roll I keep in our DVD case for no reason whatsoever except that is always where  I keep it.  I show her where the stamp goes and I tuck it into my purse.  “I  will drop this off at the post office tomorrow while i’m at work,” I tell  her.

      “You will? Tomorrow?” she asks excitedly.

      “Of course, tomorrow,” I tell her,”the North Pole is far away, they  don’t have trucks that go out there.  It can only be delivered by dog sled.  So  we have to send it out ASAP,”  I explain.

      She nods in total agreement, silly child, because she is four and  believes everything I say.  Unless i am trying to get her to eat anything  green.  She doesn’t seem to believe me when I tell her certain foods are  healthy.  I wasn’t going to hold that against her.  This was the year the magic  of Santa was going to slap her upside the head.

       I dread the day she no long believes in Santa, the day I ask her what  she thinks Santa will bring her and she looks at me like i am a total asshole  and says “Mom, (because one day being called ‘Mommy’ will be out the window too)  Santa isn’t real.”  I mourn that day already.  Because I feel like no longer  believing in Santa is the day that marks when your innocence starts to  dissipate, you realize the things your parents tell you may not be 100%  truthful, and that Christmas cheer is created within and not from a guy who  could stand to eat less cookies and switch to Slim milk.  The year I stopped  believing in all of those Christmas creatures was the year I got my first  period.  And while I want my daughter to grow up, become a bright young lady,  and move out of my house; I dread her growing up, becoming a bright young lady,  and moving out of my house.  Not believing in Santa is the first sign someone is  growing up.  I live for the years of her laying in bed, wondering where Santa  must be right at this very moment, imaging him thinking that the cookie  she made him was the best of the night, what note he would leave her, what it  would say, what gifts he would leave.  It is devastating to think that one day  she will go to bed, not have these thoughts, wake up and think “My parents  better have gotten me that phone I wanted.”

        I probably have five or six years left of Santa with her and  then I have my youngest, not even four months old, to play Santa with.  But I  can see myself ten or fifteen years from now in my living room in my house  (hopefully I will be able to afford a house in New Jersey at this point) with a  real Christmas tree by a bay window, my two teenage children crawling out of bed  at noon to open their presents.  Like my own father tradition reigns supreme and  I still would have done the things he passed down to me and that I, in turn, passed down to my own children.  I will  have already been up for hours after having to gone to bed late the night  before, wrapping presents and choosing a few to put “From Santa”.  I’d have  eaten more cookies than I should have, i’d have pour the milk into my coffee and  have left the rest on the table.  When my kids come into the room finally,  rubbing sleep out of their eyes I will have hugged them both, kissing their  cheeks and whispering “Merry Christmas” to both of them.  I’ll have pointed out  that breakfast is on the table, sit, I wil make a plate for both of you.  And as  both of them sit down to their bounty, I will pass a hand written note to one of  the two of them and say “Look, Santa wrote you guys back.”

Ode to Coffee

Oh shutup coffee, you don’t even have arms

 

 

Every morning when I wake up the first thought that enters my head is “Is that coffee I smell being brewed or is it just in my head?”  I strain my ears in hopes of  catching the soft sounds of  the coffee pot chugging and burping its liquidy goodness into the metal pot.  Sometimes I hear it, sometimes I only think I hear it and am dismayed when I realize it’s only Jimmy peeing with the door open.  Whatever it may be one thing is clear:  I am a coffee addict.

My coffee consumption schedule is as follows: 7:00 Jim pokes his head into the bedroom to wake me up.  I wipe the drool off my check and croak “Coffffeeee, my precious.”  I wait ten minutes.  If the baby is crying she waits ten minutes too.  I cannot safely handle a child or operate heavy machinery until I have a cup of coffee in my hand.  7:10 I am holding both baby, baby bottle, and coffee mug.  

7:20 am:  I am pouring the second cup, which I often do not finish as the pesky task of having to brush my teeth often interrupts my fully being to enjoy the second cup.

I am out the door by eight a.m.  Drop of Jim at work by 8:30, drop the baby off at the sitters by 8:45, and then I take the second star on the left and head straight on to Quik Check, where they offer a wide range of flavored coffee at a reasonable price (plug).  16 Ounces, three bathroom trips later and I am at work as “Afternoonitis” kicks in.

2 PM and I am dragging my ass off my office chair, locking up the office and walking to the 7-11 that is close enough to spit on from my parking lot.  There I find several hour old coffee, slightly burnt with a nice, oily sheen that old coffee gets on it if it has been sitting in the pot too long.  To me, it looks as magical as a rainbow and I get another 16 ounce coffee anyway.  I use the International Delight Creamer to mask any discrepancies the coffee may or may not have.   I sip, realizing that if I had any standard for quality or my own health I would probably not be drinking this.  But because I have a gapping whole where “High Standards” should be in my personality, I do not care.  I would drink coffee out of the gutter with a straw if I had to (which is only one step below what 7-11 gas station coffee offers to their customers.) I go back to the office, bouncing off the walls and singing parody songs to a co-worker who struggles to ignore me.  I pee another three times.  Life is good and filled with artificial flavoring.

I was not a born coffee drinker.  I thought I was because I drank coffee as a younger child.  At least, I can recall drinking something coffee colored out of tea cups my grandmother provided me while I lounged around and pretended I was as cool as an adult until my mother pointed out that what I was drinking was milk and sugar flavored with a bit of coffee.  I grew up, became a lazy teenager and rarely drank caffeine; as that ruined my need to sleep most of the day away.

It was not meant to be.  I found a job when I was 19 as a baker which required me to set my alarm to a time when bars were just closing.  God intended the body to wake up on it’s own but God did not intend for me to do so fiddling around with 500 degree ovens when I had been up for less than an hour.  Coffee irritated my stomach lining.  As a person who could live off cigarettes, dry Cheerios, and Lipton’s Noodle Soup; coffee was too abrasive.  My stomach rebelled against it anytime I attempted too drink it.  So I switched to Red Bull.  Not only did it give me wings but unlike coffee it didn’t act as a liquid laxative.  Once again, I was happy.

However, my wallet was less please.  Red Bull was not cheap and I had little to switch too since Red Bull was the only energy drink that didn’t make my eye twitch as I sipped it.  Maybe if I was only drinking one a day I would have been fine with the price but the thing is I quickly became immune it to.  I could easily drink four in a single work period.  The caffeine overload resulted in my calling everybody in my cell phone and driving 80 mph through school zones but I was awake, yes?  I would burn off the extra energy cleaning my room with a toothbrush and refolding laundry and stacking things neatly in my draw, and then pass out on the floor until I had to be awake for class.  It was for this reason I decided cocaine was a drug I should probably never do.  I mean, I couldn’t even handle a six pack of Red Bull.

I switched to coffee to save money and because I ended up getting my first cavity, which I was convinced was from the asinine amount of  aspartame I was drinking with every can of Red Bull.  I was neither thrilled with it nor disgusted with it.  It was warm, it was sweet, it prevented me from burning myself on every hot surface I encountered on the job; it did what it was suppose to.

Soon though, I began to anticipate certain evens with coffee.  My friend Kristen always got a Caramel Iced Latte from Dunkin Donuts before every club crawl, car cruise, or trip to the beach.  I started too as well just because.  We knew which Dunkin Donuts in a 20 mile radius made them with so much sugar, you would choke on a congealed sugar as you sucked it out the straw and which Dunkin Donuts stiffed you on the caramel.  Any late night ended with us sitting in a Dunkin Donuts, drinking coffee as I night cap of sorts.  It no longer made me wired anymore.  I could easily go to bed at four in the morning after drink a double shot espresso. 

Then I briefly dated an avid coffee drinker and it was all down hill from there.

If there was a way to free base coffee, I would.  If it was safe or ethical to intravenously take coffee via needle, tube, and an IV bag taped to my back I would welcome that change.  If a coffee enema existed…(taking it too far?  You get the idea.)  I can not function with at least half a gallon coursing through my blood system.  As the weeks drag on, I find myself requiring an extra cup into my already full coffee swigging schedule, something that shows the extend of how far I can take an addiction and run with it. 

I imagine myself  opening my apartment door to see my family, friends, co-workers and a drug counselor looking somber and crestfallen.  I see them standing up to hug me and convey their love and concern for my well being.  One-by one they will read letters that they have toiled and cried over, confessing what my addiction has done not only to myself but to those around me.  They will threaten to no longer allow me access to mugs or Styrofoam cups, throw out all sugar, spoons, and coffee filters from my cupboards, and cut up my ATM card.  I will  get angry, tell everybody to fuck off, and then break down in tears and admit that I know my addiction has gotten the best of me and that I need help.

Until then, I will continue to indulge in my java goodness until the good Lord strikes me down with stomach ulcers, heart palpations, or caffeine induced migraines.

Dead Snake in a Pencil Case

 

I was named Heather after the first girl my father ever kissed which, in retrospect is a little creepy and probably inappropriate.  “It wasn’t the girl I named you after,” my father explained to me,”I just really liked the name.  It just happened to be attached to the first girl I ever kissed.  Still though, please don’t tell your mom.”

 

I was a surprise in that I was neither planned nor was my sex determined until I popped out to little fanfare, which tends to happen after a Demoral induced 18 hour labor.  My grandfather was convinced one of us wasn’t making it out alive, pictures of my father show a man who was only half there due to sleep deprivation, and my mom remembers almost nothing of the labor other than the Demoral made me groggy for weeks and that was why I was unable to breastfeed.  A little unfair to blame the infant in the situation if you ask me but nobody ever has and I decided to never split hairs over it. 

 

My mother had wanted a boy and my father had wanted a girl.  I’d have been named Nicholas has a been born with a scrotum.  Either way I am sure all parties were excited, no doubt my father and mother making big plans for me in their heads as they started at my angelic face sleeping, lips parted, long lashes casting shadows over my cheeks; as I did when I brought my own daughter home from the hospital (16 hours of labor, completely doped up from the epidural, and also remembering none of it should you want to know my birthing stats.)  And while I am not really sure the details of what their plans for me were, their fantasies and daydreams, early photos and memories indicated my mother definitely wanted to raise a prim and proper girly-girl.

 

I know this based on the dresses, the hair cut, the enrollment in ballet, tap, and then later jazz dance classes.  The piano lessons, dollhouses, pink and white bedroom furniture with delicate flowers and ivy adorning it.  The princess, kitty cat, gypsy, bride Halloween costumes she painstakingly made herself.  The little bottles of glitter nail polish that peeled away without the need for harsh polish removers.

 

What she got instead was me.  And my brother Nick, two years younger, who seemed to embody the version of the daughter she wanted. 

 

Nick had a way of doing things with flair and flourish.  He was scripted almost, like the perfect 1980’s sitcom kid.  He even had the wheat blond bowl cut, the blue eyes, the dimples, the two missing front teeth.  All was missing was a pair of overalls, and dog named Spot and canned laughter in the background.  My mother would introduce him to work friends at the annual Christmas party the Home News held every year and he would wrap himself around the waist or leg of whoever he was meeting, a smile on his face, declaring his love five minutes into the party for every staff member that just happened to look somewhere within his direction.  I would hang back behind my mother, alternating between staring at the ground and staring at the knee caps of whoever she was introducing me to.  Within half an hour Nick was sitting on his 10th lap and I was declared lost, hanging underneath a desk crammed into a cubical Macgyvering up whatever contraption I could with a pen, a paper weight and a roll of scotch tap.  Nick was the workplace golden child and I was the reason the always had to place shipments for office supplies a week after the party.  Who knew they made post it notes in so many different colors?

 

It wasn’t so much that I was a tomboy that I think bothered my mother.  It was just that I was strange, elusive, a bit standoffish.  She envisioned an outgoing little girl who made friends easily, said cute things,  enjoyed being the life of the party.  Instead she got somebody who preferred isolation, was suspicious of other people, and who kind of floated around the house like parchment paper caught in a fan.  “Nick aways needs to be entertained,” i recall her saying to a friend once, laughing.”Heather, well, you can pretty much leave her in the room for hours and come back to find her in the same place.” This was true, I entertained myself better than anyone else could entertain me.  Nick, on the other hand, wasn’t satisfied without constant attention.  He was mouthy and pouted when he didn’t get it.  He definitely could not be left alone in a room for hours if the fact that cops had to be called to locate his whereabouts twice before the age of 5 (once at a bbq by a lake, my mother admits she wasn’t watching us as well as she should have; and once when he let himself out of the house and disappeared in the neighborhood to try to find my mother who was out with me at the time.  While my grandmother swears she was watching him this may have been a good time for her to invest in glasses and a hearing aid) tell you anything.

 

My strangeness, my fascination with weird things is what concerned my mother; if not concerned than irked the shit out of her.  One day on the quarter mile walk to school I came across a dead garden snake lying on the sidewalk.  I kneeled down to get a better look, had it not been for the way he was laying, on his back, his closed eyes and serpent smile would have indicated that he was merely sleeping.  I had never seen a snake live in the wild, even if this one was dead.  My only snake run-in was at a circus my mother had taken my brother and I too a year or so before, where we got our picture taken with this 6 foot python wrapped around our shoulders and only the handlers gloved hands and arms aiding us.  Nick has a large smile on his face and I am taking this task very seriously, chewing on a strand of my hair.  The picture is still framed and at my grandmother’s house to this day.  It’s obvious I had insisted and dressing myself-purple sweatpants and a purple sweatshirt.  I opened up my backpack and removed a The Little Mermaid pencil case, plastic, made in Chine, and probably covered in lead.  I scooped the snake up and drop it in the pencil case.  I place him back in the backpack.  For the rest of the school day I periodically open the pencil case, gaze at the dead snake, zip the case back up and place him back into the desk.  I don’t tell anybody about the snake other than my best friend Kathleen, who is just as impressed as I am.  I take him home and bring him up to my girly-girl room.  I do my homework, watch cartoons, and wait for my mother to come home.

 

When I hear her mid-high chunky heels come through the foyer I spring up and run to my room.  I fly back down the stairs where she is putting down her briefcase, removing her light, spring jacket and floral scarf. “Hey girlie,” she says to me as I come over to give her a hug and kiss.

I am excited, i am dancing around.  Wordlessly I open the case and hold it open for her.  She bends over “What do you have there?”  She is smiling, but it suddenly turns to shock, than horror, than disgust.  “Is that a real snake?  Is that real?” she demands.

Of course it’s real. Really really dead. “Yes, he’s dead.  I found him this morning,” I explain.

“You found him this morning? Found him? You have been touching a dead snake all day?” she is angry and with every question her voice rises an octave.  She is furious and confused.

“Yes?” I stammer.  I sense that i have messed up here.  She grabs me by the elbow, deliberately avoiding contact with my hands, and drags me into the bathroom where she holds my hands under steaming water and lathers a nail scrubber with the hand soap that is on the counter.  I am jerking back and forth as she scrubs the first layer of skin off my hands.  “What the hell is wrong with you?  Why would you…?”I watch her in the mirror,”I just…God that thing is teeming with germs. ” She roughly is drying me with a towel. 

“I wanted to bury it,” I said meekly.  And I did.  All of my goldfish who had crossed over had proper burials, no watery toilet bowls for my pets. Why should the snake be any exception?

“No, that’s just, no,” she grabs the pencil case with a tissue and marches outside to throw the whole thing out as the pencil case is now unclean, dirty, probably covered with E.Coli and anything else dead snakes produce.  I am heartbroken over the prospect of the snake being brought to the city dump, unsure of where that was or if Somerset had it’s own, but still.  It was the prospect of the situation. 

My mother spent a lot of time asking me what the hell I was doing.  She found me crouched in the basement, notebook on hand knocking on the walls. “Looking for secret passageways,” I explained, jotting a note down in my sprial Lisa Frank flip notebook.

“Looking for UFO’s,” I answered her when she found me in the driveway one night, peering at the sky and clicking a flashlight on and off, on and off  s that this was how aliens communicated.  She cocks her head and looks at me. “Get back in the house please.”

She finds me crying in my room one night, holding a coloring book about the signing of the Constitution, sobbing my heart out. “What’s wrong, bunny?” she asks me.  I thrust the book at her and try to catch my breath. “These men are all old!” I wail as another round of sobs overtake me.

“Of course they are old, people get old honey,” she sooths my hair.

“That means they are dead!” and I put my head on her lap and cry.  Time goes by and I calm down until there is little more than a hiccup here and there.  I pop up, a smile on my face,”Do you think they are ghosts now?” I ask eagerly.

 

I ask my mom about these things as an adult, if she ever regretted having such a weird daughter.  “You were very sweet and sensitive, and not in an over dramatic way,” she said.

“Okay, but the ghost thing,” I press.

“Well, I figured that was something you would’ve grown out of.  It’s a little weird now that your an adult,” she is referring to my telling of friends that her house is haunted and all the Weird NJ road trips I take. “But you were always very sweet and sincere.  And you still are,” she pauses a moment,” I could do without all the cynicism though.” We don’t say anything though we both know that is a trait I received from my father.

My mother and I get along very well though it is glaringly apparent we still are on different wavelengths and don’t really understand each other.  She is very clinical, cold, calculating, the meaning of life developing a portfolio and 401K where as i am dreamer, a jester, I let the domino’s fall in whatever way they want.  I’m day-to-day, she is 20 years into the future.  While I love my mother very much and while I think she did an excellent job as a parent I am still never fully comfortable around her, expecting her judgement and wording things carefully.  And this is a terrible burden me sometimes.

  (My mom and I on my wedding day.)

 

I held my baby girl for the first time on Nov 8th, 2008.  I am sorry to say the memory is blurry and though I did not feel an overwhelming sense of love and a bit of disappointment, I recall the fierce need to care and nurture her.  As the weeks progressed, as I settled into my roll as mother I didn’t so much as dream for her but wonder what type of person she would become? And would it be something I could relate to or not? Would a popular, pretty girl involved in a million activities make me happy; like what my mom wanted for me or who I prefer an artsy, strange, whimsical girl; one like me who would find herself tortured under the weight of her own thoughts an ideas until she aged enough to deal with it?  Will I not care either way? My ultimate goal for her if I break it down into the simplest form, a single celled organism of a goal if you will, is that I raise her well enough to become a happy, healthy, independent adult capable of making informed decisions regardless  of the path she takes to get there.  I hope that, will I am biased to having a little girl grow into an eccentric version of me, that whatever she becomes I won’t look at her like she is nuts, I will try to understand the things she says to me and the course of actions she things, and accept her for the person she decides to become.

 

Even if she one day brings home a dead animal in a pencil case and demands a burial.  I will stand by her side at the burial

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

God Loves a Test Crash Dummy

     Four months into my pregnancy I found out I was at risk for having a child born with Down Syndrome.  I am 27 years old.  I went from a one in 1,300 chance to a 1 in 85 chance with one blood test.  This news came to me in the form of a phone conversation with the practitioner at JFK hospital.

 

     “Can you give me like…some numbers or something behind this?” I ask the doctor.

      “I’m not really sure what you mean by that,” she says to me in her slight Filipino accent.

     “I don’t know,” I try to slow my mind from racing so I can sound like a functioning human being.”What is it that was wrong with my blood work.”

     “This is a diagnostic test, not meant as a diagnosis,” she replies.

     “Okay…but what exactly do you look for?”

     “Oh,” she sounds very nonchalant about all this.  I imagine she is waving her hand vaguely in the air as she is speaking because this is something I would do. “Several different factors compound the likelihood.”

      I am no less confused. “So then what you are saying is that I have a one in 85 chance that this baby is going to have problems?  Or 15% I will?  Does anything else factor into the percentage that I should take into account?”

     There is a moment of silence on the other end of the line.  “You shouldn’t look at it as a series of numbers and data.  The likelihood is still very slim that you child will be born with Down Syndrome.  We can discuss several different tests that will give a definitive answer at your next appointment.  But again, Ms. Dogeatdog, I wouldn’t worry too much over this.”  And with that last sentence the conversation ended I still wasn’t sure what had just happened.

 

     I went through the rest of the work day hating myself for trying to go against the grain of society and not have a phone with Internet capabilities.  Because goddamn it, I needed medical websites, babycenter.com, and Yahoo! Answers. 

     I went home from work that day and broke the news to my husband.  I explained as much as was explained to me.  He asked fewer questions.  He sighed and was quiet and said, “Whatever it is, God wanted it this way.”  Then we ate dinner, spoke little of it, and he slept well that night.

     I, on the other hand, had research to do.

 

     And there lies the biggest difference between my husband and myself:  His faith in God and my faith in statistics and numbers.

 

     I need medical journals and Dutch Institute studies.  I need questionnaires, statistics, pie charts, venn diagrams, quotations from the experts, data, and studies spanning decades to be happy and calm.  I need to break things down to the simplest form to not only understand it but to feel comfortable with it.  I need to know the why’s, the when’s the howcomes, the whats of everything in order to fall asleep at night.  Which really doesn’t make sense when you realize I’m not mechanically inclined and sort of artsy fartsy. 

     Jim is the opposite of me, in that he IS mechanically inclined and very black and white about most things.  But to him, all things occur because God has a plan, we aren’t seeing the bigger picture, that somehow this is all suppose to lead to something.

    

      God seems like a sick prick and i am envious of Jim’s way of thinking.  Because while he is in bed getting the mandatory eight hours of sleep i’m cross checking facts on the Internet.

 

     I am not anti-religion.  I am not anti-God.  I am not an atheist.  Logic overtakes me and if I believe with all my soul in UFO’s and the super-natural, well, it doesn’t make sense for me not to believe in God either.  There aren’t really pie charts or data on His existence to either prove me right or prove me wrong.  It certainly seems like a possibility that there is a higher force above us that causes things to happen.  But I also don’t believe in fate.  So who the hell knows.

 

     I have struggled in my head for some sort of spiritual journey.  I was raised in a Jewish household that couldn’t give a parted sea about religion.  My mother tried, lackluster might I add, to raise us with Jewish tradition and Jewish faith but she had no idea what the hell she was doing and I don’t really think she believed it herself.  So the motions of Sabbath and all the other mombo-jombo were just little rites of passage we did sporadically.  I can remember sneaking out of a temple service to play in a stairwell, cast red by the Exit sign.  There was no awakening here other than I was morbidly impressed and terrified of the dark and the red glow that cloaked me.  I eventually made my way to the offices on the second floor and was dismayed to find the doors locked.  So much for a holy intervention.  I guess God locked his doors when he left for the night.

 

     I decided something Pagan was the way to go when I was 13, mainly because I was a Goth kid, it was the 90’s,  and I really, really was a huge Marilyn Manson fan.  I liked the idea of worshipping nature and respecting it for what it was.  And I liked that things were ritualistic.  And i was an unpopular flat chested teen with black eyeliner, frizzy hair and that just added to my Gothic edge.  It turned out that I was more interested in smoking cigarettes, listening to industrial music, and copying things that i had seen on The Craft.  So much for Paganism.

    

     When I was 17 I finally tried Catholicism, as this is what my dad was, and I figured several million people couldn’t be wrong.  I read the Old Testament (which made my eyes cross with how boring and slow the story was.  Just a whole bunch of people birthing more people) and attending a class on the teachings of the Catholic faith, ran by a nun who had unnaturally blue eyes.  She had us watch videos on…who the hell knows really?  Men with beards and robes roaming around the desert, being smoted, smiting others, wishing they were smoted on behalf of the great smoter….and a lot of lambs.  Just a whole mess of cattle running through the whole thing.  Nary a clue what any of this really meant but I had a feeling that this wasn’t faith.  Either way, I started going to church, waiting to feel the Divine Spirit.  I had heard that’s what happens.  You just suddenly know that God has somehow heard you.  And while i found the hymns the nuns sang beautiful and loved listening to the tinkle of their voices, like wind chimes swaying lazily on a back porch, I still felt nothing.  I felt jipped somehow.  God was like the big brother who watched out for me, the one I never had.  Why was everybody else so sure He was looking out for them and not me.  I asked the Nun this.

     “You have to open you heart to Him,” she responded quietly.

     Short of open chest surgery, I felt my want was enough. “How do you propose I go about this?’ I ask.

     Her slight smile never wavered, not mockingly either. I’m pretty sure that even during bouts of diarrhea she still maintained that slight smile. “You have to look inside yourself and find it.”  She pats my hand and closes her eyes.  Is she praying for me?  I feel slightly insulted.

 

     A week after this baby thing occurred, I asked Jimmy how he could fully jump in with both feet into faith?  How could he not have a safety net underneath him if he was wrong?

     “God has a plan,” he said, a saying I have heard a million times.

     “Sounds like a cop-out answer to me.  People just say that because they don’t really know,” I spit back at him

     “That’s what Faith is, Heather.  You just know it,” he takes a drag of his cigarette.  We are sitting outside on our porch chairs.  “God gives people bad things to test them for greater things in the end.”

      I like this.  It sounds like I may one day win the lottery.  I tell him this.

     “I mean that after all is said and done, you serve in Heaven,” he explains.

     “That’s bullshit!  What if I don’t believe in an afterlife?”

      He looks at me.  I pretty sure he is regretting ever putting a ring on my finger.  I don’t really blame him, I know I am sounding like a brat.  I continue regardless; he knew what he was getting into. “I’m not saying I don’t believe in an afterlife, i’m just saying that there is a possibility that there is no afterlife either, see what i’m saying?  There may be, there may not be.  You may get to walk through the pearly gates, you may find yourself being used as a test dummy for Honda’s newest model.  But it will be okay because you’ll be dead.  And really, helping a lot of people.”

     “Are you high?” he asks me.

     “No, i’m not high,” I’m really just pregnant, stressed and hormonal. “I’m donating my body to science.”

     “‘That is fucked up.”

     “Why?  You don’t think I’ll make a good crash test dummy?  It’s okay.  They don’t always even use the whole body.  My torso may go to Harvard Research, my head to help doctors practice nose jobs, and my shoulder and arm to a car company to see what the pound per pressure is to break my rotary cuff.  I may inadvertently help create a safer car for future generations!”

     This is when he gets up and goes inside wordless.  I am pretty sure he is done having conversations with me for the evening.  He can’t wrap his head around my ideas and I can’t commit to wrapping my head around his. 

     But I love that he has faith.  I love that he believes in God, in Jesus, in Good and Evil.  I get to live vicariously through him, as faith is something I can’t really grasp.  I guess you either have it or you don’t. 

 

     So far I am 30 weeks pregnant and other than a sonogram I declined to do further testing to determine whether or not he has Down Syndrome.  Several people think this is careless of me and don’t understand how I wouldn’t want to prepare myself for what may be.  My reasons are simple:  I want to enjoy this pregnancy as much as I can.  I don’t want to sit there day after day and think ‘He has it, he has it, he has it.”  Testing doesn’t make it go away if he does and while I would be temporarily devastated to find out he did have Down Syndrome , while I imagine raising a child with the complications that go along with it must be trying; it isn’t the end of the world. Either way he’ll be loved. And i found that with my decision came a peace about it-not only is it not in the forefront of my mind but it’s really in the back either.  I can’t help but wonder if this is Faith weaving it’s magic through me.  That somehow this less than pleasant news, the opposite of winning the lottery, getting into heaven, or being a crash test dummy for Kia, is what has made me feel this way.  But this small moment of Faith, this little nugget of tranquility, has thus far been wonderful.  And I didn’t even have to get up early on Sunday to get it.

Why Midgets Don’t Control Traffic and Other Stupid Stories

*I grew up in a time (the 80’s) where the lines of child endangerment were blurred and seatbelt laws were a little more lax. To have a four year old riding in the front seat of her parent’s car was not illegal yet and not frowned down upon. Due to my front passenger seat follies at an early age, it did not take me long to realize that traffic lights had their own rhythm, a fluid dance it played leading the other cars through the tango of traffic. I was amazed at how traffic never seemed to back up from one light to another. That when one light was red the one two blocks down was just turning yellow. How once our light turned green we did not have to fully stop at the next light, it would shortly turn green too. I was impressed that when there was little traffic, the light would take longer and vice versa. But how did it know to do this? It could not possibly be a random occurrence?

The idea of timers was lost to me, something never to be considered. My mother and would sit at traffic lights and I would follow the wires and metal poles with my eyes down to where it broadened a bit and disappeared into the cement ground, often at a median in the middle of the road or to the sides. These metal poles were to narrow for an adult, I reasoned; but small enough for a person my size to fit into. A midget! (since this was a thought in my head during the 80’s, midget was still an acceptable term.) Obviously, a midget would be small enough to fit into the base of the pole. Most likely there were surveillance cameras mounted to survey the traffic and the midget would know when to stop and start traffic. What a fantastic job, only one step down from playing God. I prayed I would never grow so I too would one day be able to determine who gets where on time.

At some point I recanted this thought. It just did not seem plausible. The pole would still be too cramped and hot and the girth of the pole probably did not allot any room for a decent desk fan. Instead I decided that there were bunkers beneath the roads under each traffic pole, little office space with computers, monitoring screens, and a water cooler. There probably was a doorway somewhere off to the side of the road that all of the Traffic Light Employees entered through. They traveled down a short corridor and entered into the office, where they sat and monitored for eight hours.

I never confirmed this with any adult. At the time there was no reason too. My six year old brain could not be swayed that anything other than Pole Midgets and secret underground offices existed, hidden and away from the passing cars.

*Sadly, some things never really change, my beliefs cemented and stagnate  inside my brain. I was obsessed with the supernatural as a child. I am still obsessed with the supernatural as an adult. I envision a future where my now nine-month old comes into my bedroom and to tell me that she cannot sleep because she saw a ghost in her closet and my assuring her that she is probably right. Then I would get up and look for clues. Her therapy bills will be huge and solely my responsibility.

I felt that every mundane thing that happened in my eight-year-old life was the work of the supernatural. Case in point, when I was in first grade a stray cat made his appearance in my neighborhood. He was all white and lacked any identification. He came in winter, a winter that saw more snow than was normal for New Jersey. I would see him run across the yard and leave nary a paw print behind. After a week of hanging around, he vanished from the block never to be seen again.

He was a ghost, you see. I lacked the creativity to name him anything other than Ghost Cat. So profound was that damn cat that I wrote a story about him in third grade also cleverly called “Ghost Cat.” I told my grandmother about the cat and her immediate response was “There are no such things as ghosts, silly.” I was dismissed with of wave of her wrinkled, smooth hand and thought she was being the silly one, not me. The evidence was in the pudding, in this case the snow in which there really was no evidence which just proved this cat was a ghost. Much too light to create any marks signaling it was there in the first place.
The real scenario probably was a lot more morbid than an already dead cat stalking me.

Most likely it died of starvation or was scraped off the side of the road by those poor unfortunate souls who scrape dead things up with a shovel for a living. I mean, I had petted the cat and it was solid and furry which should have proved it was a warm blooded, living organism. Then I was pretty sure it was a ghost who could turn solid for my own benefit. Now I know it was just a stray cat enjoying it’s freedom and strokes from a stranger.

*Around the age of nine, Kathleen and I discovered the internet, more importantly chat rooms. Online was a fairly new phenomena and not everybody had it in their homes. My house most certainly didn’t; we didn’t even have cable or a Nintendo like Chris across the street did (he also had a pool which sky rocketed his popularity.) So when her parents were not home we signed into her fathers computer. We had a persona: 16 year old, green eyes, long brown hair, and a cheerleader. Because at the age of nine, success and adulthood meant that you were 16, had green eyes, long brown hair, and lead the football team to victory with an overwhelming amount of high school spirit.

My god, we were dumb. But we had the entire future (or at least, until the age of 16) planned when we were nine. We would both be beautiful and have long, flowing hair (because to be successful you had to have long, flowing hair). My long, flowing hair would drive a nice, red car and enjoy having wind blown through it. In fact, my hair would always look like wind was blowing through it. Because to be successful not only did you have to have nice hair but it had to look like a fan was always pointed in it’s direction. I would look like the girl in the Milk: It Does a Body Good commercial, the one where she transformed from a tiny, prepubescent nerd into this curvy bombshell over night just by drinking two glasses of milk a day. We would hang out at the mall a lot, be beautiful, have boys constantly chase us and epitomize success.

To add to that list we would never French kiss anybody, be virgins until we were married (even though we weren’t sure what sex actually was) and never did drugs.

[insert laughter, chortles, and finger pointing]

I never managed to get myself to turn into a bombshell, even though I drank milk everyday up until I was 16. At 24 you can throw me in sweatpants, a tee-shirt and if I am wearing a hat I can easily be mistaken for a 14 year old boy. Androgyny aside my point is this: These things never happened. My hair was never long and flowery (Kathleen’s is long indeed with little body while mine looks like I stuck my finger into an electrical socket) and neither one of us had a red sports car. We never spent our days at the mall being chased by boys (I spent mine in detention, Kathleen in extra curricular activities.) We are neither beautiful, never ran around with a pair of pom-poms, and are both too broke to be considered successful. She was just stranded in another state during the week of taking the BAR and had to ride back with a stranger, I often have to jiggle the spark plugs in my car to get it to start. We discovered in high school life was much more than nice cars and pretty hair In reality, everything is difficult, happiness is measure in little moments with friends and family and not in the lack of split ends, and dreams are easily shattered and new ones take it’s place.

Though it would still be lovely to have nice hair and a bitchin’ ride.

*Strangers are bad people. Every single stranger who has roamed the earth has one of three objectives: To kidnap me, to sneak drugs into my edible items, or to stick razor blades into my Halloween candy. So told to me by Officer Fatty Man as I sat in Mrs. Brown’s first grade class and watched as a neurotic was born.

This was the first year that the D.A.R.E. program was in effect, at least for me. All drugs were bad. All strangers had drugs and would force you to do it. Hence, all strangers were drug peddling, child kidnapping perps and must be feared. All of them. I saw them in malls, at playgrounds, in the car next to me. All plotting my eventual demise and looking at me from the corner of their eyes, waiting for my mother to leave me alone in a parking lot of by a cash register at K-Mart.

Halloween was a strangers playground. Chris, the boy who lived across from me told stories of old men who baited candy and apples with razor blades and rat poison. Kathleen confirmed this story and said there was a man on her street who did this. Because Kathleen was quiet and therefore intelligent, I believed her. The old man in question had yelled at us one for walking across his lawn so it was obvious he was plotting his revenge via a Snickers Bar. Chocolate nougat would be the thing to take me down. As a result, I meticulously studied every piece of candy that I poured from my pillow case onto the living room floor after I arrived home from trick or treating. Anything as minor as the corner of a Twix Bar wrapper being wrinkled and I disregarding the candy or gave it to my brother Nick.

Then one day I slipped and my suspiciousness momentarily disintegrated. My grandfather, Ed, took me to the playground one afternoon. It was a warm day so the park was loaded with children playing on my tire swing and climbing across my monkey bars. The mothers all huddled together and traded stories, my grandfather had disappeared behind a newspaper and I was left to my own devices. There was a woman there with her children and I watched as she pulled out chocolate ice cream bars for her kids. She looked up and saw me wistfully looking and she offered me one. I ran to my grandfather to ask permission “that lady over there said I can have some ice cream,” I said tugging down one side of his paper. In response, he looked up and squinted over to her direction. “Don’t tell your grandmother,” he said and resumed reading, already forgetting about me and my appetite.

So I ate one. And it was delicious. And I was caught the second I walked in after returning home. The chocolate smeared on my lips and my grandfather’s poor eyesight in realizing I was covered in chocolate gave us away. My grandfather was scolded and my grandmother took the opportunity to lecture me about strangers and talking to them. I had forgotten all about that. A stranger, disguised as a frumpy soccer mom is how death would come to me. I turned pale, immediately became nauseous, and spent the rest of the evening crying over my impending doom.

Nothing happened. I digested my ice cream and would grow up to spend part of my teens digesting much worse substances from people much stranger and eviler than that frumpy soccer mom in Edmund’s Park.

*Most people would not believe me but I had a horse growing up. It was pink with a white seat with hearts dotting it and purple streamers sprouting from the handle bars. It’s name was Schwinn, My Mighty Steed. And Schwinn and I could often be found galloping out of control down the hill around the corner from my house.

I actually did not want a pony when I was growing up. I did not want to be a princess either. Having a pony disguised as a bike was good enough for me. Even better that all of my friends had ponies disguised as bikes so we could all trail ride together.

My best friend at the time was this girl named Melissa who I met in first grade. She lived across town from me and almost everyday after school, my poor retired grandfather would drive me over to her house. Melissa’s house was on a side street surrounded by elm trees. Her front yard sloped downhill where it touched the curb. It was a ranch styled brick home. The backyard had a concrete pathway that started from her deck and did a full circle around the garden.

We had a game with a simple objection: To be thrown from your horse. We started at the deck, rode the circle pathway, around the side of her house, and then peddled full blast down her front lawn. Then you had to “be thrown from the horse” (i.e.; jump off the big) before getting to the curb and getting hit by on coming traffic.

It was loads of fun.

At one point you had to turn around and wave at the other person and say “See you at McDonalds” and then throw yourself from the “horse” or else the fall did not count. Why we said “See you at McDonalds” and not “See you at the stable” is still a mystery. It’s not like you can walk a horse through a drive through. Besides, I hated fast food even at the age of six and Melissa’s mom was a vegetarian. McDonalds was the least likely eatery we would have gone even if we had a horse.

Melissa and I grew apart after she found another best friend in second grade and I started telling people she was adopted out of spite and hurt feelings. My horse still took many transformations: Sometimes it was a unicorn, sometimes it was a car, mainly it was used in absurdly dangerous ways (tying a jump rope and trying to tow your friend on roller blades down unevenly paved hills never results in anything good.)

     I can’t help but think that if I still owned a bike and took it out to trails and to parks, it would still be a horse. While other people would glance my way and think “oh look, there is a lovely young lady getting some exercise,” in my head I would be galloping on a majestic beast of a horse through an enchanted forest to fight evil gnomes or something. The little smile that would be on my face would reflect I had defeated evil somewhere in my mind.

I never really grew up. I mean, I matured obviously. I have a job, a child, my own place, an engagement. I pay bills, I get tune ups on my car, I take Sophia to the pediatrician when she needs a wellness checkup. My life is a routine, the things in my head are not. I miss believing in silly things and I feel that part of me has to hold onto ideas of the absurd so I don’t turn into a stuffy, boring predictable adult. I mourn the death of my childhood, though not everything was simple it still was not as mind numbingly tedious as adulthood seems to be. I do not find the idea of Santa stupid, Hogwarts sounds plausible to me, and I hope to raise my child believing in the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy, and underground Traffic Controller Elves.

Dandelion Free is the Way to Be

Once upon a time there was a young girl, maybe around the age of four, named Heather.

 

Heather was at her mom friend’s house, Diana, being baby-sat, sitting on the front lawn in front of her apartment with her two sons, Billy and David.

 

David was ignoring her because he was two years older and therefore couldn’t be seen with a four-year old least it ruin his reputation with the other six-year olds in the neighborhood and Billy, a year younger than Heather, decided to spend that particular day either crying or whining, so she didn’t bother with him too much.

 

Heather, at age four was a dreamer (as she is at 27) and still believed in unicorns, Santa Clause, and wishing on fluffy dandelions. And, on the side of the house about 20 feet away, was a slew, an army, A GAGGLE of fluffy dandelions. Enough wishes for every day for the rest of her life.

 

She picked herself up from the front stoop and walked over to the side of the house, searching for the perfect fluffy dandelion. One that was full and soft and large and white as snow. A fluffy dandelion that held the promise of making her wish, whatever it was, come true because it was just that perfect.

 

She looked carefully, crouched down and studying each one with a critical eye until, after about ten minutes, she found it. It had a fluffy head as big as her hand with, what looked like, over a million tiny, fluffy seeds forming a perfect circle. Yes! This would be the most splendid dandelion she would ever see again, she was sure.

 

But of course, a fluffy dandelion this large would no doubt need to be blown in a perfect way. No little, rapid, short breaths would do, the kind that only scattered a few seeds at a time. Oh no, the breath used on this dandelion would be the same one reserved only for blowing out birthday candles, something that was taking quite seriously at age four.

 

Heather focused herself and brought the fluffy dandelion, so delicate and fragile, up to her lips, a quarter of an inch from. She closed her eyes and thought of her wish, which was for a baby sister because her baby brother was such a goddamn pain in the ass, and knew it would only come true if she blew hard enough to send all of the seeds flying into the air. She opened her mouth and inhaled harder than she could ever imagine possible, hard enough to make her heart start thudding and her lungs feel like they were about to explode.

And then she started choking, her stomach heaving violently. Because at age four, Heather didn’t realize that inhaling was only exhaling in reverse, that if you sucked in your breath quick enough and hard enough, if would have the same effect on the fuzzy dandelion. The fluffy seeds vacuumed themselves into her throat, through her nose; a wish in reverse. Her eyes tear up, her face turned red, and she coughed, wheezed, and heaved until she threw-up onto the sidewalk, her wish now a puddle on the sidewalk.

 

I’m pretty sure that my life started to roll down-hill from that point on, though I didn’t realize it yet. So started my days being accident prone and clumsy, a trait that has not managed to change no matter how hard I concentrate.

 

I never got my baby sister, probably because I vomited her out from ever being created. I got three more younger brother which is better now, I realize, because now I don’t have to compete with someone either smarter, nicer, and better looking. My brothers are all a bunch of jackasses, as boys always are, so I don’t have to compete with them at all.

 

You know, I’ve always known I was a space-cadet, not stupid or naive, just existing in a plain between reality and my own mind. I’m that person who wouldn’t realize I was on fire until I actually saw the flames. I always thought it was the drugs that had maybe depleted some of my brain-cells but thinking back from it, I’ve always been a little absentminded and lacking common sense (like don’t eat fluffy dandelions.)

 

There is absolutely no point to this post. I have no reason to share it other than it’s a funny story and I don’t mind people laughing at me. Most of my writings have a moral or point at the end of it. This one doesn’t.

 

Except I guess never inhale something that’s fluffy and doesn’t get you fucked up. Fluffy Dandelion free is the way to be.

The End of the Days Will Begin at a Chuck E. Cheese

     I have come to realize that the worst thing about having a kid is having to take them to child oriented establishments, hence being forced to interact with other parents and their snot-nosed, petri-dish kids.

     It isn’t so much that I had to spend my afternoon at Chuck-E-Cheese.  It was that I had to spend my afternoon with self entitled parents and their equally self entitled children.

     I never really like children.  I merely only ever tolerated them.  Or maybe I only ever liked them because I knew that at some point their parents would take them back home with them, guaranteeing me the freedom of solitude.  Oh, I always assumed I was going to be a mother myself.  And I wasn’t naive enough to think that once I had a child of my own I was going to magically love the world’s little munchkins.  But I did not anticipate that I would dislike other children more or that, to my own surprise, would hate their parents, particularly the mothers, equally if not more than their offspring.

     I was never forced to look at the parenting styles of others until I had my daughter.  Maybe I had a quick second opinion about the seven year old having a throw down tempertantrum in a Walmart aisle but never anything I applied to myself.  While pregnant with Sophia I was told by another mother “Just wait, after the baby is born you are going to see the most of your friends are other mothers.”  Well, 3 1/2 years later and this couldn’t be farther from the truth.  If anything, I am the only mother in my group of friends.  I find most other mothers boring and self absorbed over them being a mother or over their unique and delicate snowflake.  This is most evident on on social media sites, my childless friends have hobbies and something interesting to say and most mothers only have status updates outlining the “not unique, not special, not cute, not hilarious” thing that Lil’ Johnny does every other hour.  Congrats, your kid took a shit in his child potty.  Something all kids eventually do.  It should be a cause for celebration in your home, not on the Internet.  And no, I do not agree on whatever injustice was forced upon your kid by his daycare provider/teacher/another kid on the playground/another mother on the playground/stranger; ect.  How about you teach your kid not to be an asshole or to have a thicker skin?  And I can’t jump on the “I’m-A-Goddess-Mother-Look-At-Me-I-Am-A-Superior-Being-Wheeeeee!”  Sorry, childbirth and parenting have existed since the beginning of time, before modern medicine, hospitals, in-door plumbing and modern appliance.  Come to me after you gave birth in a field while fending off sabre-tooth tigers and then i’ll bow down to you and kiss your feet.

      Remember, you are only special to the people who know you.  Beyond that you may as well be invisiable.

     But i digress, this is suppose to be about Chuck E Cheese and the decline of Western Civilization.

     So Jim, Sophia and I enter and I am immediately assaulted by noise, lights, and other kids.  The woman who stamps my hand won’t look me in the eye. In fact, all the employees look like they are on parole. There is no where to hang you coat.  I have no idea what is going on but I feel like I tripped down a worm hole and landed in a pile of Awful on the other side.  Sophia wears the expression of either being underwhelmed or of being slightly spooked.  I bend down to get to her level and ask her what she wants to do first.  She just stares back at me, obviously thinking “You’re the mother, you tell me.”  What I really want to do is run through the exit, across the parking lot, and into Route 1 traffic but this pretty much goes against the rules of being a good and enthusiastic parent so i lead her to the first video game that doesn’t look like it was installed before 1994. 

     So really, it wasn’t the out-of-date games or cracker crumbs all over the floor.  It wasn’t even that every surface was slightly sticky or that it smelled like Lysol was seeping through the vents.  It was that the place was loaded with parents that were doing everything but…parenting.  Every ten minutes there was an announcement over the loud speaker declaring a lost child was looking for their mommy.  I constantly had kids pushing Sophia out of line for things she was waiting to use.  Since I am not yet comfortable with telling a strange five year old that they are rude and a failure at life, I would wait for the parent to step in an lecture the child on sharing, patience, waiting your turn.  Because really, aren’t these the first fundamentals of life? When Sophia got into a kids face at daycare and tried to pry a toy out of his hand and he reacted by smacking her across the face with this toy, I mean, the kid wasn’t right for smacking her but lets be fair, that’s what happens when you try to snatch shit from another person.  Which I told her after i picked her up from daycare that day.  In a much more child friendly way of course.  If my daughter is acting like an asshole I let her know it, I don’t act like she is being a jerk because she’s a complicated and artistic soul.  Or whatever the reason is that other parents let their kids act like caged animals and turn the other cheek.

     And sometimes, at the park, I am fortunate enough to have the same type of mothers at the playground.  Obviously these mothers don’t go to Chuck E. Cheese.  I watched two little girls cut me in line while I was trying to show Sophia the finer points of Skiball.  The eight year old just stared me dead in the eye as she did it too.  Her father was standing right there, either not interested in teaching his children basic social skills or on meth.  His eyes were a little glassy come to think of it.  And unfortunately my muscle, a.k.a Jimmy, had wandered off to play Guitar Hero.

     We finally decide to get in line and order lunch.  As we are standing in line the woman in front of us is arguing over why she can’t just load her and her kids stuff at a both even if they aren’t eating.

     “Those booths are for people who have ordered food,” the woman behind the counter explained.

     “Okay, but I brought my three and four year old here today and you’re telling me that i’m, what? Suppose to follow them around all goddamn afternoon while they play?” the woman looked outrage over the idea of…watching her kids?

     The employee behind the counter was losing her patience and regretting dropping out of community college.  I can tell that look in under two seconds. “M’am, that really isn’t my problem, those booths are for people who are eating.  So you can sit at one as long as you got some food in front of you.”

      “This is bullshit!” the woman screamed.  Jim rolled his eyes, Sophia got bumped by one of the fifty morbidly obess kids that were wandering around the place, and I regretted ever rolling out of bed this morning.

     It was around the time I was wondering how much pressure per inch it would take me to strangle this woman when a manager intervened and ushered the outrage woman to a table, where she proceeded to sit for the next hour, looking bored while her kids formed their own Lord of the Flies society in the ball pit and tubes.

    We ordered about $20 dollars worth of food.  I say this because it actually cost $40 but was really only $20 worth of food.  And then we looked for a place to sit.  Pretty much every booth was occupied by more parents that didn’t feel like watching their kids or found the idea of lugging around a toddler sized coat too daunting, so they threw it into a booth and wandered off to pick raw carrots out of the salad bar while their child was forced into hand to hand combat with another kid over some lame ass video game.  We never really found a booth, instead deciding to crash the end table of a birthday party.  When in Rome, right?

     I spent my time  waiting for the food by gazing around the room.  The atmosphere was manic.  All the parents moved in a haze, glassy eyes, suggusting a night of binge drinking.  60% of the people in room could have benefited heavely from diet and exercise.  Even the animatronic band looked like they would rather be anywhere else than here.

     We decided to book it after we had finished our food, which we did by bribing Sophia with the rite of passage of picking out a cheap gift with the tickets we had won for her (or hijacked from machines were the player was too young to even realize that tickets had printed.)  So she picked out her worthless, cheap toy that was probably painted with lead based paint and got into the car.

      “Did you have fun?” I asked Sophia. Please God, say no and that you never want to come back here.

     “Yes, I go to Chuck E Cheeses tomorrow,” she replied, twirling her plastic trinket.

     “No, we all have to go back to work tomorrow,” I say, snapping her into the car seat. We will never come back to this shit-hole-hell-on-earth-place again.

     “I think i’m going to the hall after this,” Jim quips. Please, take me with you.

     “Besides,” I slide into the passenger seat of the car, “it’s going to be warmer out soon. We can do better things, like the zoo or the park.  Or the boardwalk and aquarium.”

     “I don’t like the zoo.  I like Chuck E Cheeses,” she protests to me.

     “Please, you’re three.  You don’t know what you like.  Chuck E Cheese kills kittens, i’ll have you know.”

     Jim gives me a look, Sophia grunts at me, and I contemplate how much drugs my body could handle before I ever agree to go back to this place again.

     So after all is said and done, parents, stop acting like you and your child take precedent over every other human being in the world. Unless your goal in life is to raise a self absorbed, brat who thinks the world revoloves around them, only to step a toe into the real world after they graduate high school and learn that, in fact, they are actually a small fish in a much more talented, intelligent, creative, and competitive pond; are unable to hack it and spend the rest of their days living in your guest room while you circle Help Wanted ads in the paper and yell at them for swiping your credit card to get a life time membership to Match.com.

    

 

 

    

 

 

Boy Meets Girl

 

Everybody loves to hear a fuckin’ love story. 

I know this because i am engaged.  I have been engaged for about a year.  People immediately notice the ring.  Not because it’s huge.  Or big.  Or moderate.  It’s a small diamond, very simple setting, no bells or whistles and I am absolutely in love with it.  I work for a storage company and have a lot of face to face interaction and people love to ask me about the wedding, how we met, how long we have been together; blah, blah, blah.


So I dutifully answer their questions.  And as I talk about it using the minimal amount of words allowed in a sentence without sounding rude their smile fades from their face and they look concerned.

“Aren’t you excited?” they asked concerned.


And I am slightly taken aback.  “Yes, of course I am.  It’s just….” and then I fade off or comment on the weather.


My favorite is when I tell them I am getting married after 8 years of being together and they chuckle “Oh, finally got him to settle down, huh?”


And I normally respond with “No, he got me to settle down.”


Which of course makes me sound like a loose woman who couldn’t commit when really, it has been a monogamous relationship and we have been living together for almost five years and I love the guy.  I just wasn’t in a rush to get married.  And when I tell that to people they think I am fucking weird.

So Jim (the groom in question) and I decided to start planning our wedding in late summer for the following spring.  We both decided it was going to be a small, personal, no-fancy schmancy wedding for close family and friends.  Low budget and in my mom’s backyard.  Family and friends were like “finally.”  I mean, 8 years together, 5 living together, and a 3 year daughter together.  It was the natural progression.

And then about a month later, my darling brother announces his engagement to his lady of 8 months.  The family was concerned but my brother insisted that he loved her, this was the woman he wanted to spend his life with, and that anyway no worries because it was going to be a long engagement.   And then a month after that they decided to move their wedding up a bit.  Four months after mine.  In my mom’s backyard.  Small, personal,non-fancy schmancy wedding for close family and friends.  And they were going to have a second wedding a year after that for the other family and friends that were not invited to the first one.


And I was fine with it.  I love my brother and would support him through anything.  And his girlfriend was okay.  No obviouse personality defects that made me hate her.  Obviously head over heels from my brother so it was fine.


Immediately after their engagement, a million pictures, notes, and status updates began cluttering my facebook feed regarding their wedding.  30 pictures of the ring with photoshopped love song quotes showed up every 30 minutes.  I was sent two different requests to join Facebook groups regarding their wedding, dress shopping, color themes.  They constantly tagged each other in every status update and slapped anybody who had yet to block them with their gag inducing proclamations of love. 


I hate yet to change my Facebook from “in a relationship” to “engaged.”  Jim’s still said “Single.”


Jim was less than okay with it.  “They are overshadowing our wedding.  They aren’t even a real couple.  What time have they put in?”


“Eh, who cares?” I said, washing dishes at the sink. “You know them, they are both drama whores.  They love that shit.  We aren’t like that.”


And we weren’t, aren’t, never will be.  Jim and I aren’t romantics.  We covet our private lives as they relate to each other.  We are more likely to joke and bust each other’s balls than hold hands and gaze into each other’s eyes.


And as they continued their movement to make their wedding day into a bank holiday, Jim and I struggled to plan our wedding.  The whole “having a life thing.”  Childcare, long work hours, bills, things that have to be taken care of now, ten minutes ago.  It’s not that we didn’t want to plan our wedding. It’s just that it easily slipped our mind.


My brother and his girlfriends behavior online began to irk Jimmy more and more while I was pretty immune to it.  He felt that we were being shown up.  I would retort that it shouldn’t matter, we were marrying because we were committing to each other and didn’t “need” to show anyone up.  He stayed mad, I stayed indifferent.

Until my mom pulled me aside one day while I was at her house taking advantage of her washer and dryer and said “You know, you don’t have to get married if you don’t want to.”


I was miffed, “What makes you think I don’t want to get married?”


“Well,” she said sincerely,”you don’t seem excited about it.”


I stared to get angry, frustrated.” Why?  Because i’m not leading a fuckin parade down the street like my brother and his girlfriend…”


“I didn’t say…”


I cut her off. “You want me to start doing cartwheels over it on your front lawn?  Get his birthday tattooed on me? (His girlfriend had).


“Jesus Christ,” my mom waved me away.  “I get the point.  Sorry I said anything.”

And it was only after that conversation that I realized the family and friends had lost interest in my wedding.  Which wasn’t a problem.  I don’t expect it to be on the forefront of everyones mind.  Shit, it wasn’t even in the forefront of my mind.  The problem was that when i did mention it people weren’t really taken me seriously.  Probably because I wasn’t gushing.  Or because maybe because I tend to joke around so much people didn’t take me seriously to begin with.


I was never that type of girl who daydream about the day they had a wedding, got a husband, and became a parent.  I am not a feminist.  To me there is nothing wrong with those women whose whole purpose in life is to be a wife and mother.  Those are serious roles to play.  There is also nothing wrong with the woman who want a career over a husband and children.  That too is a serious role to play.  I fit neither of these things.  I assumed both would one day happen.  I didn’t sit around and day dream about the dress, the man on the white horse, the flowers, the bridesmaids, the invitations.  I didn’t yearn for motherhood, grubby hands, chubby cheeks, the innocence of a child, the love I would feel for them.  I’m a nomad.  Wanderlust. Spent time day dreaming instead of all the awesome places I would one day see.  People I would meet.  Wind in my hair, music blaring from a car radio, driving down Route 66.  Writing my memoirs, living a day to day existence.  And if I got married and had kids somewhere between all those other things that was fine too.  I didn’t NOT want it.  I just didn’t go out of my way to plan for it.


So boy meets girl.  Boy dates girl.  Boy nails girl in the backseat of a 94′ Nissan Sentra, girl agrees to move in with boy, boy knocks up girl, girl and boy plan their wedding.


And here we are.  Cut and dry, planning a wedding, mapping out our lives together.


I am not a proclaimer when it comes to certain things.  I will talk about my hatred for big business, my distrust of the government, the decline of good music, and how stupid movie studios must think the rest of the public are.  I don’t really talk about my…you know…feelings. 

I don’t have to get online or scream from the rooftops my love for Jim.  I think it should be a given.  I’m not sitting around here waiting for a fucking bus, i obviously love the guy enough to stay with him.  Our wedding, our union is a huge thing for me.  It’s why it took eight years for it to happen.  I take marriage seriously.  I tamed the beast, he tamed the beast.  Our beasts joined forces and now it’s just one beast working together.  It’s a union of our family, finally.  He isn’t my boyfriend anymore (a phrase I deplore, as it sounds like we are in high school) nor my baby daddy (loath, as it makes him sound like a deadbeat that I had a one night stand with and the condom broke.) He will be my husband.  My dude.  The ball to my chain.  It’s a way for me to say “I want us to be a team forever.  It’s just you. There is nothing that can happen that will cause me to turn my back on you. I accept you now, I will accept you 40 years from now.  And guess what?  I will also probably still want to see you naked 40 years from now too.” 


People want to hear me say this to them.  They want me justify my marriage.  My relationship.  The wedding.  No.  Why? For what?  To give them something to believe in?   Romance ain’t dead if Heather says it isn’t.  Well, i’m not saying it.  The only one I have to say this to my future husband.  He’s the only one that counts in this whole thing anyway.

So after all is said and done I am planning the wedding I want.  Small and personal.  I am not going out of my way to prove anything.  i am not stomping necks to try and outdo my brother and his girlfriend.  And I am not changing my facebook status to prove to the masses that yes, I am indeed engaged and  come may 19th I will be a married woman.