Peanut Butter and Jelly

 February 15, 2022

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are part of the fabric of childhood for most kids.  This was true for me as well, but for me it didn’t just represent childhood; it was uncertainty and instability.  It was a reminder that things had changed–monumentally so.  It was loss and fear and the end of innocence.  

Sometimes I am in awe of the courage it took my mother to pull herself and her children out of the volatile situation we found ourselves in.  A young mom with five children, 13 years and under, she found herself one night throwing whatever we could fit into the trunk of our car to seek safety and shelter elsewhere, as far away from our home as she could get.  The younger kids in the family really didn’t have much of a concept of what was going on–they thought we were just going off on an adventure.  I was older, though, and much more of a confidante than I should have been at that age.  I knew that night was going to change everything about our lives.  

We drove to a payphone across town, after Mom had taken many backstreets and circuitous avenues.  She was afraid she might be followed.  At the payphone, Mom called the local Marjorie Mason Center.  Unfortunately, there was no room at the inn.  It’s difficult to house a mom with several small children, even for a home dedicated to domestic violence victims.  (To be honest, I held a child’s grudge against the Marjorie Mason Center for a long time.  They were supposed to be there for families in need, but they could not help us in our desperate time.)  The best they could do for us was to offer a place to stay several cities away.  We didn’t have enough gas to get there, or enough money to pay for the fuel it would take.

Finally we landed at our youth pastor’s house in the middle of the night.  He and his wife took us in, but were unprepared to keep us all for more than a night.  They just didn’t have the space.  The next day we all ended up on the floor of a spare bedroom in one of my mom’s student’s homes.  The student, who was close with my mom, had talked with her mother, who extended the offer.  I have no idea how Alma knew the details of why we were in need of a place to stay, but I imagine it must have been incredibly humbling to my mom.

Alma’s mom fed us a meal, but Mom couldn’t bear to have the family feel like they were responsible for continuing to feed us.  Their family had their own financial struggles.  Mom had no access to her own bank account–many wives didn’t in the 1970s–, and payday was still two weeks away.  She took the $20 bill from her purse and went to the grocery store to get food that could be stretched out over several days and that wouldn’t go bad without a refrigerator.  Peanut butter and jelly and bread were our lifesavers in those days.  It was our breakfast, lunch, and dinner for nearly two weeks. We sequestered ourselves in that spare bedroom while Mom was trying to figure out her next moves.  She had to move from immediate survival mode to future planning mode.  This current situation was only sustainable for a very short time.  While she planned and strategized, she also had to keep five young children fed and quiet.  

“Why can’t we go outside and play?”

“Where’s Dad?”

“I’m bored! There aren’t any toys here to play with.”

“I want to go back home!”

“WHHHYYYY do we have to have peanut butter and jelly again? I hate peanut butter and jelly!”

We were kids.  We whined. We wheedled.  We cried.  We yelled.  Sometimes she would respond in sadness, sometimes in anger and frustration. She didn’t want to be here in this position any more than we did, but now that we were, it was her job to figure out what our next steps were.  It must have been overwhelming.  It must have panicked her sometimes and kept her awake on her palette of blankets long after she could hear the slow, steady breathing of her children as sleep overtook them at night.  If it was just her, it would have been easier.  But to be wholly responsible for five young lives who couldn’t help her and who were bewildered by the breakneck speed with which all our circumstances changed must have been a heavy burden that weighed on her constantly.

It was a turning point, for us and for her.  We did finally find more permanent shelter, after bouncing from place to place for a time.  I don’t know how she managed to gather resources and help, but I know there were many kind people who helped along the way, in ways both big and small.  I marvel at her perseverance, her willingness to set aside pride, her resilience, and her courage.  She shielded us as much as she could, but it would take years before she regained her financial equilibrium after striking it out on her own.  Things weren’t easy, but they got manageable. I think those immediate years after that night affected all of us children differently.  We all had different perceptions and memories of those days and the months that followed. For me, weirdly, a lot of it centered around those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  I guess it was easier to focus my frustration and anger from that time period on the fact that we didn’t have any choice other than to swallow the only thing that was put in front of us, rather than deal with what put us in that situation in the first place. 

It was more than twenty years before I could touch one of those sandwiches again.

Old Memories Through New Eyes

 February 2, 2022

Not long ago, in light of the #MeToo movement, I thought about the fact that I was lucky I had never experienced sexual harassment in the workplace.  I remember having a conversation about it with a friend of mine, since the issue was all anyone seemed to be talking about at the time.  I empathized with women who had experienced it, and was duly indignant on their behalf.  I said that no one had ever subjected me to anything like that before...except, they had.  I had experienced it, but I didn't realize it at the time--couldn't put that name to it.  Another friend of mine had said he thought the #MeToo movement all had gotten out of hand, and why did it take some women 20 years to report it if it had really been traumatizing?  How was it possible that people were only just realizing that abuse was abuse ? The speculation was that women were simply jumping on a bandwagon for attention, but hadn't really been traumatized by what they were claiming as harassment in retrospect. But I get it.  In the novel 1984, the government attempts to shrink the language in order to minimize the possibility of articulating, or even thinking about, rebellion.  How can you acknowledge it if you can't name it, can't recognize a context for how to label it?  What I experienced as a young college student was an assistant manager who lived by the 'boys will be boys' attitude--everything was just fun and games.  It wasn't assault; I didn't fear losing my job because of it, but by today's standards, what he subjected girls to in that place of business would absolutely be grounds for firing.  I didn't know, though.  Back then, we reserved that term for overt shows of force or threats to employment, not all the subtle ways harassment can manifest.  I knew he was inappropriate, but I also assumed my only recourse was to have a sense of humor about it, to give him wide berth, and to try not to find myself alone in the stock room with him.

Even more recently, I was talking with a friend about my home life as a child.  There was domestic abuse, but although I was witness to it, I was not the recipient.  Even writing that seems too black and white; I rarely say that what I witnessed was domestic abuse.  It didn't happen all the time.  It only happened when he was really stressed. There was only one time that I know of that it was bad enough for the police to become involved.  There were no broken bones.  But that's how we rationalize, right?  That's how people stay in those situations, sometimes until it's too late.  And then as we continued talking, my friend and I, I recounted a couple of other stories. The times he held us underwater in the pool until we couldn't breathe, fighting and kicking to come up for air, terrified of drowning.  The times he locked us kids in a room with him individually for hours at a time to lecture and intimidate us.   The way his anger led him to send subtle and not-so-subtle signs of destructive consequences when he did not get his way. The way he tried to wield his power to drive a divide among family members.  My friend, who continued to ask questions, finally asked me if I thought I had come from a background of abuse.  My immediate reaction was no, and he asked me why.  Again, I said I had only witnessed it, but not been the recipient.  Even as I was saying it, juxtaposed to the examples I had just given of some of my dad's behaviors, for the first time it began to dawn on me that I wasn't in proximity to it; I too lived it. I didn't name it because I always thought of myself as lucky that it wasn't bruises or broken bones--the face of abuse-, and therefore I couldn't name it for what it was.  At 54 years of age, I finally acknowledged that just because it wasn't as bad as many people experience, it doesn't make me 'lucky' to have endured that abuse.  No one should have to.

Life in Death

March 29, 2021

A couple of months ago, I was talking with a dear friend who had recently lost her mom.  Her husband had lost his dad a handful of years earlier.  I lost my own mom over twenty years ago.   We sat together late into the night and shared memories, shared struggles of missing our loved ones, of not being prepared to let go, and reminiscing about the times we were able to share with each of our respective parents before they passed.  We laughed about small shared moments; we cried about momentary meaningful moments, and grieved what we missed--what they missed in no longer being here with us.  We celebrated things we learned from them, and traits we share with them, and gifts they gave us, in memory or in experience, that shaped who we are.

I confessed to them something I had never said to anyone, because it seems a little morbid, in light of social norms.  I am the picture-taker, the memory keeper of my family.  The last pictures taken of my mom, just a few days before her death, were of her holding my niece, her most recent grandbaby.  By that time, cancer had ravaged Mom, and she was weak and tired.  Still, she said in moments when her fiesty spirit and devotion to family was as strong as ever, that she had never not held one of her grandbabies, and she wasn’t about to let cancer stop her from holding this one.  In the photos, we had placed my week-old niece in Mom’s arms, and my sister had her arms underneath my mom’s to stablize her, since she didn’t really have the strength to hold up even that tiny little bundle.  Those pictures are hard to look at to this day.  Mom’s eyes are beaming, proud of her precious new granddaughter, but she is hunched over in her wheelchair, her face is swollen from the medication, the wig she wore to cover her hair loss is slightly askew, and her smile is tinged with pain.  Her spirit was there, but her body was only days from letting go.  This is not the image of the vibrant matriarch of the family, filled with zest for life, that I picture when I think of my mom.

Ironically, then, my confession was that one of my strongest instincts at Mom’s funeral was that I desperately wanted to take a picture of her.  Lying in repose at the front of the church, my mom looked beautiful in a dress she’d picked out well in advance for the occasion.  She entrusted me to make sure she was buried in a dress she liked--one she knew was a good color on her.  Mom liked to look good when she was going out in public.  Her face was no longer swollen and sallow; they had taken great pains to make her hair and her make-up beautiful and natural.  She was peaceful, no longer in pain, and she looked like the mom we hadn’t seen in months.  Her spirit was no longer there, but her body looked like her.  I wanted to capture that vision of her to remember that last look, rather than her battle-weary body in the months leading up to her death.  I wanted to take a picture of the roomful of loved ones too--family, friends, colleagues, students--who came to pay their respects and to share their stories of how she’d touched their lives.  She would have loved that, honestly.  But we don’t do that, do we?  That’s somehow looked down on as perhaps disrespectful?  Uncouth?  Irreverent?

I didn’t mean any of those things--disrespect or irreverence.  I was so moved by the emotion of being in that room with all of those people Mom was important to, and feeling like I’d been given back my mom for a brief moment even as she was being taken away from me, that I wanted to save those memories, that expression of love and grief and loss and connectedness, and tuck them away to savor and reminisce about later--all the minute details.  But we don’t do that, do we?  We don’t take photos of the dead, or of the celebrations of their life.  And I wonder why that is.  We record for posterity all other aspects of life--births, first steps, milestones in school, marriages, even divorces and heartache, reunions, moves away from home, from friends, and jobs, and celebrations of new beginnings.  But the end?  Recording the end of life is perhaps too difficult, too much for us to acknowledge its finality.

It’s not really final, though, is it?  I don’t want to call too much on something as trite as ‘the circle of life’, but when we are celebrating the life of someone we love, especially a parent, what we are doing is recognizing those moments big and small that will continue to ripple out among hundreds of people with whom they spend their lifetimes.  “You have her eyes.” “I can see her in your smile.” “I went into my profession because she inspired me.” “When I look up at the clouds, I can see him.”  “She is sending me rain to say hello.” “You have your mom’s intuition.” “She had the same generosity of spirit you do.” “His sense of humor was just like yours.” A hundred little things that connect us, repeat the idiosyncrasies and personality traits and likes and dislikes, and beliefs, and traditions, and physical traits, and memories of shared moments, days, lives. In the same way that we celebrate and record all those other milestones of life, death--or the passing on of all of these gifts to our loved ones to carry on and continue to share with our loved ones in turn--should be captured as one of the most significant milestones of them all.

I wish I had one more picture of my mom.

In Too Deep

July 7, 2017

Summer in July. If you’re from Fresno, that means if humanly possible, you’ll spend as much time in the pool as you can. If you’re a kid in the 1970s in Fresno, that means every day, all day, flaunting the scorching sizzle of 105 degrees of unrelenting heat by splashing, playing, and diving into the deliciousness of the backyard pool. We had sitting-on-the-bottom-of-the-pool contests, and races walking on our hands into the deep end. We belly-flopped and did back flips and cannonballs off the diving board. We took breaks to run in the house to pee if we thought Mom was paying attention; we didn’t run into the house if we thought we could get away with it, because it was so much work to drag ourselves out and away from the fun, dry ourselves off completely so as not to drip a trail of water through the house, and peel off (and then put back on) the cold, soggy suit just to run back out and rejoin whatever games were in progress. (I know you’re judging here; I also know you’ve done it too. And if you have kids now, you’re fooling yourself if you think they’ve never peed in your pool.)

We had a built-in group of playmates, since there were five of us kids. Our next-door neighbors had ten kids, some of whom were older and out of the house, but many of whom were right there with us in our pool every day. Around lunchtime, Mom would often appear with a stack of sandwiches and some grapes or oranges. We also feasted off of the two mulberry bushes that were in our backyard. (Until we moved to that house, I thought mulberry was just a made-up word that was used in a nursery rhyme.) We knew Mom was in the house and was only a yell away in case of emergencies, but she didn’t often come out to the pool to swim with us. She was scared of swimming, borne of the sink-or-swim lessons she had as a child, when her step-dad threw her into the lake and told her she’d have to figure out how to get back to land on her own. She never got over the panic she felt around water, but she wanted us to have a pool. (She also paid to take us to swim lessons so we could learn how to swim in a less threatening environment than she did.) Although Mom occasionally passed by the kitchen window with a casual “Be careful!” or “Watch your little brother!”, we were mostly joyously, raucously, exuberantly free from parents, from worries, from cares about anything more important than which kid got to decide the next game that we played. Sun up to sundown, that’s where we were. It’s a wonder we survived without drowning or sunstroke.

Today we wouldn’t dream of leaving our young kids to their own devices all day, especially not in the pool. The dangerous part for us, though, was when Dad was off for the weekends and he decided to join us in the pool. Dad liked to rough house and was impatient with ‘weakness’. He’d jump in the pool and wrestle and fight, pitting his 200 pound frame against his 12 year old son, his 10 and 8 year old daughters. On the one hand, we liked when he would join in our games; he was a busy man and spent a lot of time at the office during the week days. There was always an edge, though—the feeling that things could turn at any moment. They often did. Riding on Dad’s back was fun; watching him swan-dive into the pool, seeming to freeze momentarily mid-air to cockily salute and wave to an adoring audience—well, we loved those moments. But inevitably, Dad wanted to wrestle us, take us on precariously close to the deeper end of the pool where he could stand, but we could not. There was something strange that overcame him during those battles, a competitive spirit that could not be tempered with logic or reason. He played dirty, not one to let his kids get the better of him. His signature move was to suddenly swing around to face whichever kid was trying to ride his back to bring him down. He’d swiftly reach out to hold us underwater, the palm of his hand planted firmly on the top of his opponent’s head—the ultimate show of superior strength and agility. To this day I can remember the feeling of being held, firmly and helplessly, under the surface, just moments shy of far too long—arms flailing, panicked eyes casting about for some means of escape, feeling the burning sensation in my lungs and knowing I couldn’t hold my breath anymore. I remember several times thinking, “He’s going to forget to let me up in time. I’m going to drown before he lets me up!” Inevitably, when Dad did finally let me or my brother or sister up from his vise-like grip, we’d either be angry (my brother, my sister), or we’d be crying. Gary even tried to sucker punch Dad in retaliation once, but a swift, sneak attack underwater is difficult to pull off. It set Dad off even more, and Gary was pushed underwater once again in order for Dad to underscore his dominance. Dad’s victorious gloating grin after these matches would be eclipsed by that impatient, irrational anger. He’d call us babies, he’d rail at us for playing the game and then being sore losers. He’d become enraged and said he wouldn’t play with us anymore, and then he’d either banish us to the shallow end or tell us we weren’t big enough to go in the pool at all and would make us get out for the day. He’d brood and sulk for the rest of the day. There were always arguments with my mother, too, when she told him he needed to be more gentle with us; he needed to remember that he was bigger and stronger than all of us. He, on the other hand, didn’t want to raise sissies; he didn’t want to have weaklings for kids. We needed to get over it and toughen up. At the same time, he seemed to need constant validation that we acknowledged him as the strongest, the wiliest of us all. He needed to know that we knew he was the alpha male. Even as a kid I thought it was irresponsible—unparental, even.

Those 1970s summers were seemingly carefree and without purpose, but they taught me a lot, too, about what I expect, and what I accept, from those who hold positions of power in my personal, professional, and public world. Back then, I was willing to jump back in the pool again and again, knowing that danger and anger lurked there, for the trade-off of my father’s playful bravado and fun that always preceded it. But I what I eventually realized is that risking my well-being in order to feed someone else’s insecurities is simply not worth diving into. Is it selfish to not want to drown under the weight of someone else’s baggage? Those hot summer days taught me that being selfish is sometimes necessary for survival.

Be The Right One At the Right Time, Redux

December 17, 2014

There are two times of the year when I feel my mother's loss more than any other.  You might think it would be her birthday, or the anniversary of her death.  Those are important days.  But the first day of school every year (she was a teacher too) and Christmas are the days when her presence is strongest.  She instilled in us a love of giving and Christmas spirit which is now an indelible part of the Christmases each of my siblings and I celebrate with our own families.

As we are fully in the holiday season, I am feeling reflective and nostalgic.  I thought I'd repost an excerpt from one of my favorite older posts, because it honors a value I hold dear, and because it honors Mom, who is part of our Christmases, even  though she is no longer with us.

Excerpt from original post (2009):

As we reflect on this season, the message of service is something I feel we have gotten away from over the years in this atmosphere of Looking Out for Number One. As we count our blessings at Christmas time, I think it it important to reflect on not just the people and things for which we are grateful, but also on those who might be struggling, for whom a hand held in service might make all the difference.  This is one of the most important values my mother instilled in her children.

Now, I’m not opposed to looking after myself and my children—of course not. Obviously, it is one of my greatest privileges and responsibilities to look after the moral, emotional, and intellectual well-being of my three children, as well as providing for them their basic safety and shelter needs. However, in providing for them, it is my duty to show them how fortunate we are as a family, and instill in them the desire to help others in need when we can.

There are lots of reasons that people don’t reach out to others—they are struggling with issues of their own, they feel hopeless that their small efforts will make a difference, they feel others might take advantage of their generosity, they feel they don’t have adequate resources to spare, to name a few. Compelling arguments, all, with some truth to them. We all struggle with our own personal issues, be they financial, emotional, or spiritual. And yet, I find that when I reach out to someone else, I view my own difficulties with a more balanced perspective. Those who are working hard just to pay the bills and put food on the table may lament the lack of resources to be able to reach out and help, but really, generosity of spirit is the only necessary resource; you can give of your money, your time, your self. Being of service to others means reaching out in your community and your world with what you perceive as a need, and sometimes, that might even be something as simple as adjusting one’s attitude towards someone in need and listening with a sympathetic ear. Are there those who would take advantage of someone with a generous heart? Sure. I’m an optimist, but I’m not naïve. I truly want to believe the best in others, and don’t mind if every once in awhile I help someone whose spirit is not positive and open. That’s not the point, after all. Perhaps those are the people who are in most need of all, but they just don’t know it yet. In time, perhaps if enough people reach out to them and show them kindness and generosity of spirit, a true positive change can be effected. Finally, for those who feel their ‘drop in the bucket’ won’t make a difference, know this—if you just reach out to one person, you have made a difference, and you never know how that individual effort may manifest itself positively, radiating outward and reaching even more people.

I remember a time in my young life when my mother was struggling. My brothers, sisters, and I may never know the full extent of the hopelessness she must have felt, but I imagine it must have been overwhelming at times—a weight almost unbearable. When my mom chose to leave what had become a dangerous situation for her, she brought along with her four of her five young school-aged children. (The oldest chose to stay.) Her only plan was to seek shelter at the Marjaree Mason Center, but she found, late at night, that there was no room at the inn for a woman with four children. She ended up spending money she intended to feed us with on a hotel room for one night. That was the end of her financial resources until the end of the month. With no home to go to, and virtually no money, we lived out of our car for a couple of weeks, rotating through the only clothes we had brought along—only what we were able to fit in the three suitcases in the trunk of the car. The oldest of the kids who came with her, I was in junior high and acutely aware that it must be obvious to my classmates that I slept in my clothes. My mom was lucky enough to have a few friends in the church take us in here and there for a night or two to brush teeth, take showers, and sit down for a meal. It is one thing to take in a woman in need; to take on four kids as well was truly a burden, and Mom was embarrassed to put people in the position of having to say no if such an offer of help were to stretch them beyond their means. One of the kind families who let us camp out on their floor for a night loaned my mom money to buy peanut butter, jelly, and bread, and that served as our main meal for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the majority of those two or three weeks until payday. We children complained about it vehemently at the time; I am quite sure we did not comprehend the toll it took on her to not be able to provide anything more. I myself did not eat another peanut butter and jelly sandwich for twenty years after those weeks were behind us.

When payday did come, almost all of it went to first and last month’s rent, and deposits for utilities. My parents were married in the days when a man was in charge of the finances; when my mother started out on her own, she had no credit built up in her name, and no savings to fall back on. She was starting off a babe in the world, with only one paycheck to her name, but with four human beings utterly dependent on her ability to move forward and survive. I’m sure there were days she didn’t want to get out of bed, but there were people along the way who went out of their comfort zone and reached out to help. I’m sure the lady at the church who donated a box of canned goods didn’t know if her ‘drop in the bucket’ was going to ensure that we survived as a family, but she knew that on that day, it made a difference to us. I’m sure the man who knew someone he could encourage to rent a home to Mom even though she had no credit history didn’t know if it would do any good, but he did it anyway. People who let us stay on their floors for a night couldn’t give us permanent residence, but they let us get one day closer to being on our own. Those teachers who noticed that something seemed to be different in our lives and checked in with us to make sure everything was okay—we learned that people were watching us, and were looking for ways to give of their finances, of their time, of themselves. We noticed, and it made a difference.

It didn’t ever become easy, but it certainly did become better. It was because there were people who chose not to just ‘Look Out for Number One,’ and reach out to someone in their community who was in need that our family survived and ultimately thrived. There were others who chose not to help because they said she got herself into her own problems, and it was her responsibility to get out. There were those who said she shouldn’t have had so many children. (Easy to say after the fact!) There were those who said they were worried about looking like they were ‘taking sides’ and therefore didn’t want to get involved. The reality is, that’s what a lot of us do—it’s easy to rationalize inaction by judging someone’s actions and saying they don’t deserve help. Did Mom always make the best decisions every time? Of course not. Do any of us? Is that really the best way to judge if another human being is worthy of another human being reaching out a hand?

Mom was a giving and loving human being. She sometimes had the financial means to reach out to others as the years passed, but more often did not. That did not keep her from reaching out. I think she lived constantly with the knowledge of how important service, in whatever form, is, at the most basic and individual level. She didn’t worry that her ‘drop in the bucket’ would be lost; if she saw a need she could fill, she did it. She raised us all to look at the world through those eyes as well, and as we are all adults now, I am proud to see the ways my brother and sisters put that service into action in their own communities. This is one of the most important values I hope to pass on to my children as well.

Are we all going to go out and change the world? All at once? Tomorrow? No. And that’s okay. We don’t have to wait for the grand gestures. One day at a time, one person at a time, we make a difference. The exponential possibilities are endless, as my drop joins your drop which adds to his and hers and theirs. The potential for good is limitless.

Don’t wait for someone else to get up and get the ball rolling. Be the Right One at the Right Time for someone. Anyone. Donate blood, donate to charities, sponsor a child, reach out to families in your neighborhood who might need a sitter but can’t afford one, tutor a struggling child, champion the fight against illiteracy, or breast cancer, or fight for autism awareness. Find ways to encourage and support our troops, or their families left behind, or volunteer in your church nursery, for the Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, or the PTA. Find service in a kind word extended, or a shoulder to cry on. Don’t wait for the big opportunities to come along; opportunities for service surround us every day. Be the one to start building that community, one drop at a time. You may never know the impact you may have, but you will know that you have made a conscious choice to act on behalf of another human being. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Pancakes, Anyone?

May 1, 2013

I'm the only one on the planet apparently who doesn't like pancakes.  I don't like waffles and I can't stand syrup, but mostly, I really, really, really don't like pancakes. 

The rest of the world, however, views them as comfort food, symbolic of home, love, Mom.  Idyllic family around the breakfast table kind of symbolic.  Somehow pancakes are something like the Norman Rockwell nostalgia food.  I don't get it.

When I was a kid, my mom would try every possible way to make pancakes appetizing to me.  Maple syrup?  Nope.  Berry flavored?  (Straw-, blue-, rasp-....whatever.)  Gag.  Plain butter? Mush sticking to the roof of my mouth.  Thin, thick, covered in whipped cream or powdered sugar, spread with peanut butter and rolled up?  Even covered with chocolate syrup?  There may have been melodramatics involved in my reactions to any and all of these offerings, but the response was always the same at its core:  no amount of disguise could mask the unmistakable taste and texture of the awful pancake.

You might not know it to read about my adamant response to pancakes, but in virtually all other ways in my young life I was a people-pleaser.  I wanted to make people happy and have them smile at me.  (Really, I wasn't a brat.  I was a good kid who tried almost any food my mom set down in front of me, at least once.  That was our rule.)

When I was eleven years old, my mom hit a crossroads in her life.  For her safety and well-being, she decided she needed to get herself and her kids out of our home and onto a new life.  We were without home and without most of our belongings, and the youth pastor at our church opened his door to us on that first night while mom tried to figure out what her next step should be.  I knew, as did all of my siblings, that we were to be respectful and thankful guests in his home, since Mom felt guilty about imposing herself and all five of her kids on someone else. That's a lot of baggage. We were quiet, probably a little frightened and stunned by the turn of events that led us to their doorstep to begin with, and having left our home--for good, it would turn out--late in the night, we were exhausted.  Not much talking that first night.  That would come later.

We slept in our clothes and woke up the next morning all huddled together in blanket pallets on the floor.  After all, not many people have an extra five or six beds at their disposal, so we slept together in the living room, Mom on the couch and the rest of us on the floor.  We awoke foggy and not quite remembering where we were, whether or not the events of last night had been a terrible dream.  Our youth pastor's wife, knowing everything we had gone through the previous evening, did what many folks do in those kinds of situations--she cooked comfort for us.  Breakfast was already being served up on sunshiny yellow plates at the kitchen counter as we stumbled out of the living room rubbing the sleep from our eyes.

Hopping up onto the high kitchen stools, she set a plate in front of each of us--three huge, fluffy pancakes each, laden with butter and dripping with gooey, sticky maple syrup.  Sher--the youth pastor's wife--had kind eyes and was wearing an-everything-is-going-to-be-alright smile, one that was meant to be reassuring to us.  "Your mama's still asleep; let's let her get some rest while you eat breakfast."  She noticed me picking at mine and mistook my lack of interest for depression or sadness.  "Honey, please eat up.  Everything is going to be okay, I promise."  And she looked at me with such earnestness, such a desire to make us all feel okay again, that I couldn't let her down.  I felt guilty.  Ungrateful.  And so I ate.  And she smiled.

I choked down every bite of those three over-sized pancakes.  I'm not sure how I did it, honestly.  But I was proud of myself for being the good guest, allowing our host to feel good about making us feel better, and I turned to my older brother to ask about whether or not we'd be going to school that day.  After all, our world had pretty much turned upside down.  Did normal rules apply still?  I turned back to finish off my orange juice just as Sher was coming back with a spatula stacked with three more pancakes.  "Here, Sweetie.  I knew you must have been hungry!  You ate those so quickly, I thought you might want seconds."  I tried to decline, but she insisted, thinking I was just being shy.  Just then Mom came into the kitchen, also still in her clothes from the night before, bruised face and swollen lip still evident from her struggle the night before, the cause of us leaving behind everything we knew.

"Donna, what are you eating?  You don't like pancakes!"

I saw Sher looking a bit crestfallen.  "No, no, Mom.  It's okay!  I like them now!"  Sher went to take back the three new pancakes back.

"You don't have to eat them if you don't want to.  You should have told me!  I would have made you something else, poor thing!"

I felt bad.  I didn't want her to think I didn't appreciate her feeding us all, taking care of us.  "No really!  I want them.  I'm still really hungry.  May I have them, please?"  Ignoring the look from my mother, I watched Sher load up my plate with more butter and syrup, and then I dug in.  And I ate every last bite of pancakes number four, five, and six.

Immediately after I finished, I excused myself and promptly went to the bathroom to throw up.  Thirty-five years ago, and I haven't eaten a pancake since.

That incident didn't cause my intense dislike for pancakes, but I'm pretty sure it sealed the deal. 

 

Clovis High Scholarship Awards

May 18, 2012

Frank, this year's recipient of the Diane Mayes Memorial Scholarship.

Not Quite Normal, But None the Worse for the Wear

October 10, 2011

I spend a lot of time running my kids around to soccer and drama and choir and softball and robotics...you get the drill. When the kids were younger, there was T-ball, gymnastics, soccer, ballet, tap--if my kids expressed an interest, I thought I'd let them give it a try so they could see what 'spoke' to them.

When I was a kid, some of the same things my kids expressed interest in also appealed to me. My five-year-old little self was enamored of fancy tutus and the tip-tappy sounds of musically magical tap shoes. Little girl leotards were sparkly, and I wanted five or six fancy ones to wear to gymnastics class while I balanced precariously and glamorously atop the balance beam. I coveted the jaunty pink T-ball hats that the community Little League bestowed upon the little girls as they first learned the correct direction to run after hitting the ball off of the tee. I wanted all of those things desperately--things that many of my classmates had. I heard about them running off to practices and classes after school, and I wanted to join them. I saw myself, if I was able to join my classmates in their various glamorous activities, as elegant, beautiful, and graceful. Who wouldn't want to see me in all my finery out on the stage, or out on the gymnastics floor, or out on the baseball field? I know I wanted to see me there.

My mom, inexplicably, had other ideas about what I might like to try as a child. Who knows what her rationale was. Maybe she thought that having me try out an activity that was more obscure would give me an edge and help me excel in the field. Maybe the activities that she chose to sign me up for were simply less expensive lessons than the lessons my counterparts received. I really couldn't say. All I know is that when the other kids in the play group were off in their respective dance and gymnastics classes and learning about the rules of the great American sport of baseball, my mom ushered me into our 1970's Brady Bunch-style station wagon and drove me off to accordion lessons. Yes, you read that right; I learned the invaluable skill of playing a portable piano organ.

Now, lest you think I am disparaging the venerable art of the accordion musicians around the world, let me assure you I have respect for those who can play any instrument--any instrument. This many years later, this is a lost and mystical art to me. No, it's just that when I was taking lessons so many years ago, from an old man with an almost indecipherable accent in a tiny studio across town, I only knew one other person who was under the age of retirement who was learning to play the accordion, and that was my brother (also dragged unceremoniously, a fairly unwilling participant in the whole ordeal). I'm not sure if Mom thought we would eventually grow up and take the world by storm on the Lawrence Welk show with our modern renditions of polkas, or if she was grooming us for the life of a quirky street musician. Either way, our foray into this musical sub-culture was a brief one. My only real source of pride in the whole episode was that it was universally acknowledged (well, by my parents and my teacher, anyway) that even though I was two years younger than my brother, I was the better accordion player. A dubious distinction, to be sure, but I was proud of it, nonetheless. Sibling rivalry will do that to you.

You'd think after our undistinguished side-trip into the non-traditional that my mom might have learned her lesson and brought us back a little more center. You would think. But no, that's not exactly how it went. A few years passed, and Mom decided it was time to seek out a new extra-curricular activity for me. Again, I'm not sure what put this particular thing on her radar, but suddenly she was researching baton twirling. Not cheerleading. Not dance. Twirling. Don't get me wrong; in some parts of the country, twirling is, even today, fiercely competitive. And there are definitely sparkly outfits--sequins and glitter galore, automatically garnering more than a passing interest from me, especially since playing the accordion offered nothing like anything girly. But mainstream, here in California? Not even back when I was in elementary school. Once again, perhaps it was the only thing that wasn't cost-prohibitive. Or maybe she decided to stack the odds in our favor by sending her girls into lessons that most little girls didn't have. Whatever the reason, we delved into the world of twirling and parades and half-time shows.

This endeavor lasted much longer than accordion lessons--some two or three years, by my count. And unlike the accordion, I really enjoyed it. I twirled as a member of a team; I twirled solo. I got to march out in front of bands in parades, and wore my hair in fancy buns with glitter in my hair and sequins on my outfits. Eventually, I twirled myself right out of relevancy though, as twirlers eventually got benched in favor of high stakes cheerleaders on the football field and high powered dance and guard teams moving in synchronicity in band field shows.

In junior high and high school, I found my way to some of the more traditional extra-curricular activities--choir and swimming and band--and I loved them. These things were neither better nor worse than my previous affiliations, but at least I know other people who have had some of the same experiences I had in these organizations. But twirling? And even more so, accordion playing? Oh, those are secret societies, I think. Those of us who endured should have developed a secret Freemasons-type handshake to identify each other later in life, since I don't know too many who freely give up that information to just anybody.

My own kids have found themselves attracted to a wide variety of activities over the years, some of them in the realm of the mainstream, and some of them not so much. The main difference with my kids is that I have allowed them to find their own way and seek out their own interests. They got to chose. If I had a kid who wanted to pursue twirling, I would help him or her seek out opportunities to learn those skills. The kids who showed interest in Destination Imagination, in baseball, or in choir or dance--they piled in the van and off to rehearsals we went. I want them to seek out places where they can do what they love (not necessarily what I love), regardless of whether they are 'popular' activities or off-the-beaten path ones. However, I think that if one of my kids decides to get involved in, say, accordion-playing or Live Action Role Playing (hypothetically speaking) because it's what they really love and enjoy, I'm going to suggest that they try to institute a secret handshake. Later in life, they might enjoy being able to reconnect with their own people once again.


The girl playing the accordion is not me--she's just a representation. As far as I know, there is no photographic evidence of my musical prowess. The picture of the baton twirler, sadly, is me.

Nostalgia, Continued

August 11, 2011

I went looking online for a picture of the last home I had in Garden Grove a few days ago. Did you know you could find childhood memories on the internet? 11252 Ivanhoe--it was actually only our home for a few years (from my 1st to 4th grade year), but there were a lot of memories there. The living room where one whole wall was mirrors, and kids were only allowed in for special circumstances. (It was nearly impossible to talk to Scott in that room; he was absolutely incapable of carrying on a conversation without being drawn to his own reflection.) The huge den with the wet bar where we kept cream sodas for a treat. That was also where Mom held the Cub Scout meetings, for which the was the Den Mother. The huge fish tank in the hallway with mesmerizing Angel Fish. The huge walk-in playhouse that Dad built in the backyard. The sandbox and jungle gym right next to it, where we would climb up and watch the fireworks that Disneyland shot off every night. Our bedroom with the lavendar paint. Our across-the-street neighbors with the red door. (The mom and dad were Arlene and Charlie. Arlene chewed and smacked her gum all the time; Charlie was always very nice to us, and we lovingly named our pet salamander after him. ) The white rocks lining our driveway. Roses lining the front porch. Dad's red and white Javelin. The family car--the seventies-style station wagon that took us back and forth to Oklahoma each year for Christmas vacation. (Oh man, I was angry at mom when they traded that thing in for a dark green, luxurious Lincoln Continental. She, on the other hand, felt like she was moving up in the world.)

The pets who lived with us there were Maggie and Missy (dogs), Charlie the Salamander, Hansel and Gretel the guinea pigs, Charlie Green, my parakeet, a host of hamsters and more fish than I could possibly count. I took accordian lessons while living there, and Gary took saxophone lessons, and we both took piano. Laura was born while we were living in that house. Mom and Dad's friend Bruce lived with us in the garage for a time, and his sister, Janet, was one of our live-in babysitters. We also had a string of other live-in babysitters, one of whom had two kids (Victor and Janice) who also lived with us.

It's weird how interconnected the memory is. Every little memory brings you to another one. I could go on all day, I suppose, but there are very few people for whom these snippets have any meaning besides myself and Lisa and Scott, and even they were pretty young to remember much of this. Guess I'd better bring myself back from my reverie!

Happy Mother's Day

May 16, 2011

We spent Mother's Day at our second annual Mother's Day gathering at Lisa and Larry's house. Doug's whole family was there for lunch, and of course, pictures.

I Can See the Headlines Now: Five-Year Old Does Hard Time for Swiping a Candy Bar

February 8, 2011

It's amazing that my siblings and I managed to turn out (relatively) normal, given some of the experiences we had in our childhood. Take, for example, the virtual Russian Roulette my parents played with the caregivers we had over the years. Dad was working long hard hours in his job at the Small Business Administration, and Mom was working various jobs while finishing up her teaching credential at school. That left four little ones at home (and later, five) to be cared for. We had a string of babysitters, mostly ones who lived with us--for room and board and some extra money, they were charged with our care while our parents were away.

Some of these babysitters were excellent--bonding with us, giving us the kind of love and care and attention our own parents did. Some of them, however, were a little less able to rise up to the challenge of being a good role model and nanny-figure to us. One of our sitters, one of the younger ones, was a good example of how not to earn a reference when moving on to greener pastures.

She was one of the ones who was not a live-in sitter. She probably still lived at home; I'm guessing she was a college girl looking to pick up a little pocket-money. She was ill-prepared for four rambunctious kids. (Truth be told, it was mostly one rambunctious kid and three fairly mellow ones, but Gary could make it seem like there were far more of us than there actually were. He actually made it a game to see how quickly he could get our sitters to quit--his record was one day.) Anyway, she liked Gary and me, because we were a lot more verbal and self-sufficient than Lisa and Scott were. We were somewhere in the neighborhood of 7, 5, 3, and infant at the time. It was summer time, so we were all at home all day long.

Every afternoon, after lunch, it was naptime for the two youngest. Lisa would be put down for a nap in a bedroom just off the front porch, and Scott would be put down for a nap in his crib in Mom and Dad's room. That just left Gary and me to be entertained. Our sitter began to get a little stir crazy being stuck inside all day, so she decided to start taking walks with us during that hour or so that the little ones were napping. As soon as she felt Lisa was completely out, we'd quietly sneak out the front door and wander down the street.

It's shocking, now, to think that our babysitter made a habit of leaving those two tiny children to their own devices for an hour at a time. In today's world, terms like 'child endangerment' and 'neglect' and 'abandonment' would be thrown out fiercely. Heck, if it were my own kids I'd be issuing those accusations. Back then, though, I guess she just figured the kids would be fine sleeping safely in their beds for a bit. Who knows if she ever considered how scared they might be if they woke up and no one answered their cries.

Gary and I also didn't worry about consequences. We were kids, after all, and adults knew best. If she said it was safe to leave them alone, then she must be right. We were happy to get out of the house, too, especially when she lured us with the promise of treats. We lived a couple of blocks away from a convenience store and a little hamburger place called Jo Jo's Hamburgers. That's where our walks took us every afternoon. We'd head into the mini-market and she'd pick out a candy for us, and then she'd treat us to an ice cream or soda at Jo Jo's. Sometimes, she'd even let us get a burger, if we hadn't had a big lunch.

How long this went on, I'm not sure. I know there were several trips, though. After the first few, we really began to look forward to them, knowing we were getting treats that the others weren't big enough to have 'earned' yet. We were big, we were mature, we were responsible. We were old enough, she said, to be able to keep it a secret from everyone else, because she didn't want our parents to think she was playing favorites, and she didn't want to hurt Lisa's feelings because she was too young. We completely bought it.

One day when we were in the mini-mart, she gave me a candy bar. "Put this in your pocket, will you? I'm going to pay for it, but I don't have any more hands to hold on to it." So I did. We wandered around a bit longer, she went up to the cash register to pay, and then we left. On our way home I asked her if she had remembered to tell the cashier that I had the candy bar. She laughed. "I didn't forget, but I didn't tell him. They make so much money that a little candy bar won't make any difference!" I was shocked, but didn't really know what to say. I felt a little guilty eating the candy, but I did it anyway.

On return trips, she continued to either hand stuff to us or simply drop items into our pockets. She was paying for less and less, and using us to carry out more. I was starting to get scared, so I told her I was worried I was going to get caught and the clerk would accuse me of stealing. She leaned her face down close to mine and said, "If you tell anyone--the clerk or your parents--I'll tell them it was your idea to steal, and they'll send you away to prision for a long, long time. And I'll never bring you back to Jo Jo's again, either." I believed her, and I certainly didn't want to go to prision, so I kept quiet and kept taking the treats she was having us walk out the door with.

Finally, after a few weeks, we were making our daily trip back home, still licking ice cream cones from Jo Jo's as we walked the steps up to our front porch. We were always told to be extremely quiet opening the front door, so that we didn't wake the kids who were soundly sleeping at home. On this day, though, there was no need for silence. Mounting the steps, we saw Lisa in the parted drapes, eyes red and swollen with tears, standing on her bed by the window. There was an instant of relief when she saw us, and then indignant anger. She'd woken up early from her nap only to find herself alone with the baby, and she'd been scared. But then we came walking up with ice cream in our hands! She'd had to take a nap and we got ice cream? It seemed so unfair!

That evening, when our babysitter felt like she had gotten the situation diffused and had gone home for the evening, Mom came in to find me practicing my piano lessons, a small pile of candy on the bench beside me. "Where did all that candy come from?" she asked. I told her the babysitter had given it to me because I had been good. As instructed, I had left out the part about us going to the store to get it. Lisa heard and fell to crying again. "She gets candy and ice cream too? I want candy! I want ice cream!" My mom only had to dig a little before both Gary and I were ready to confess. Even though I was terrified of going to prison, I was too tired of sneaking and pretending. We were scared to stand up to our babysitter, but maybe Mom could. I was scared she'd be really mad at us and call the police, but she said she was only angry at herself, for trusting that woman with her babies. We had a long talk about stealing and why it was wrong, even if an adult tells you it's okay. She hugged us and apologized to Lisa for leaving her with someone who would leave her alone, and told her she'd always do whatever she could to make sure all of her kids were safe.. Then she told us we'd never see that babysitter again--and we never did.

Fourteen Years Ago, I Met You

November 22, 2010

Bright and early, you made your arrival into this world fourteen years ago today. Just like your sister before you and your sister after, you thought it best to come on the scene after keeping your mama up all night. At three in the morning we arrived at St. Agnes Hospital, since I decided I'd do most of my laboring at home. We were progressing quite nicely, and everyone was predicting a six a.m. birth. I thought that was perfect, since your sister had made her arrival at 6:01 a.m. three and a half years before. But that time came and went, and the doctors finally had to admit it--you were stuck! With some extra intervention and with great relief to all, you were born at 6:30--all 9 lbs., 3 oz. of you. Perfect little fingers and toes, no hair, and tiny translucent eyebrows that were almost invisible unless you looked carefully.

We named you Nicholas Taylor because it's the only name your dad and I both liked. We had no back-up names, no what-if-he-doesn't-actually-look-like-a-Nicholas names on deck. I was pretty fond of Steven as a possibility, since that's your dad's middle name. Turns out, your dad doesn't like his middle name at all. Your dad lobbied pretty hard for Liam, a name which just looks to me like someone forgot to write the whole name. He also threw his own name into the ring. But William? It sounds so formal for a tiny little baby. And Billy doesn't work for me, nor does Willie, which is what they called your dad as a child. As a nickname, they called him Willie Lump Lump. Maybe you had to be there in order for that to be cute, but I wasn't there, and it wasn't cute. I didn't want to saddle you with that nickname, too. We also let Brianna throw out a few choices. She really was hoping for a baby sister, so I thought maybe if she felt she was part of the naming process, she might bond more easily with the new addition to the family. Bear in mind that Bree was only three and a half at the time. If she had had her choice, we would be calling you Simba or Figaro, names of animals from two of her favorite Disney movies. We opted to go another direction.
So Nicholas you were, and Nicholas you remain (despite your gradual transition to the more 'manly' Nick over the years, your mama named you Nicholas, and you will always be Nicholas to me). It's been incredible to watch you grow over the years, from an energetic, kinetic, whirling dervish of a little boy to a mature, responsible, respectful young man. You showed real creativity and aptitude for building and creating as a tiny little guy, and today you are talking about studying engineering or architecture when you go off to college. You tower over me, and your voice is deep and booming, but my little boy is still there in my gentle giant every time you hug me or tell me you love me. I love that you are so loving and affectionate, and that you love to explore science and history, and that you are so gentle and caring with those who are younger than you. I love that you still love Legos and Star Wars and soccer and video games. You are at that unique time in your life when you are straddling the worlds of childhood and adulthood, and as you continue to grow and challenge yourself and find the person you want to be in your future, I hope you never forget to bring along with you that loving, innocent, sweet child-like heart. You are a wonderful young man with so many doors opening up before you. I'm so thankful I get to come along with you on the journey.
Happy birthday, Sweet Pea. Mom loves you!

Heeere's Johnny!

October 25, 2010
It's the time of year when the T.V. channels are filled with the kind of slasher/horror movies designed to tap into the love-to-be-scared-to-death vicarious thrills people seem to seek as Halloween nears. Me, I could do without all of that. I'm a big scaredy-cat who likes her 'spooky' Halloween to be about fluffy black kittens in witch hats and Winnie the Pooh dressed up as a pumpkin. Although I've made peace with the fact that my husband is Mr. Creepy Halloween, I still have to change channels quickly whenever I see a commercial or trailer for a scary movie. Honestly, I was even hesitant to put up the creepy picture of the knife for this post, because I'm sure I'm going to see it come up in my nightmares tonight. So where did this morbid fear of knives come from? As far as I can tell, it all began with Johnny.

No, no, not that Johnny. (And yes, I've gone out of my way to avoid watching The Shining. Just the trailer for that movie is too much for me.) No, I had my own personal Johnny. He was a neighbor kid who lived up the street from me when I was about three years old. My brother Gary was five, and by that age, already showing signs of precociousness. That's a diplomatic way of saying Gary went out of his way to prove he could outsmart and outwit just about any adult he came into contact with. As a matter of fact, eventually he made it his mission to see how quickly he could get our babysitters to quit--he made it a game. At this time, though, he was only just beginning to test out his skills at getting under people's skin.

My parents were both working and going to school, so my mom had hired a young mother to come to our home during the day to watch us. When she was too sick one day to come to work, my mother was left in a bit of a bind. She couldn't miss school or work, so she had to find someone to stay with us. Since it was summer, our neighbor Johnny was home during the day. He was a sixteen-year-old kid who was willing to give up a day to earn a little pocket money, and my mom was desperate. Having never met Gary, he didn't really know what he was getting himself into. Gary, it would turn out, was also a bit out of his element.

You know how when you get in trouble or get scared and you just want someone to be in it with you? How it kind of lessens the fear? Well, Johnny was pretty much a non-factor for me. I stayed in my room playing quietly. But Gary found a way to push Johnny's buttons. I don't know what he did, or what he said, but he eventually went too far. Suddenly, Gary burst into my room where I was minding my own business and playing with my dolls. "Johnny's got a knife and he's trying to kill us!" he screamed. His eyes were wide as saucers and he slammed the door shut, trying to jam a chair under the doorknob. I didn't question him; I didn't doubt him. I heard Johnny banging on my door and yelling, "Come back here, you little brat!" Even though Johnny didn't have any reason to be mad at me, I wasn't processing reason. I was three, after all. When Gary told me we had to jump out the window to escape or Johnny would stab us and kill us, I scrambled after him, abandoning my dolls to whatever fate befell them if Johnny should happen to break down my door.

Gary opened the window and used my bed as the trampoline to jump up onto the window sill. He quickly dropped into our front yard and yelled for me to follow. I struggled to jump up high enough to jump up to the window, hindered by short little limbs and blinded by frightened tears. My heart was pounding as Gary was screaming for me to jump while Johnny continued to bang on my bedroom door. I was terrified, and when I finally made it to our front yard, I was sobbing. Gary grabbed my hand and we ran to the neighbors' house, where the kindly grandma-type let us in to wait until our mom got home. I was inconsolable, and could only feel safe hiding under her bed until Mom came to retrieve me. Neighbor Grandma even tried to coax me out from under her bed by offering me cookies; she eventually left a small plate of them under the bed for me.

When Mom finally came over to get us after she got home from work, she tried to console me. I don't think she actually believed our story, and couldn't believe how hysterical I got. Gary verified the story, but he shook it off pretty easily. Me? I was scarred. When I tried to go to sleep that night, I closed my eyes and saw Johnny with a knife. Now, mind you, I never actually saw Johnny with a knife. It probably wouldn't have scared me nearly as much if I had. As it was, I was free to use my imagination to picture what kind of knife Johnny was chasing us with, and man, it was BIG. And very sharp, and very shiny. In hindsight, I would imagine that the truth of the matter was that Gary smarted off to Johnny, and Johnny probably pulled out a little pocketknife that was ubiquitous among the 'cool' teenagers during that time. Realistically speaking, if sixteen-year-old Johnny had really wanted to hurt an obnoxious five-year-old (let alone a little three-year-old), I'm sure he would have.

None of that mattered, or even occurred to me at the time. All I knew was that there was a killer who lived on our street, and he was after my brother and me. I was afraid of going outside for fear of seeing him during the day. At night I couldn't sleep, and when I did, I had terrible nightmares. I was miserable, and I made my mom miserable, too. She didn't know what to do with me, or how to assuage my fears. She was pretty smart, though, and ultimately, she came up with the solution that allowed me to sleep peacefully again. What did she do? She lied. She lied knowing that I'd fall for it, and that it would work. I was, as I have said, only three. After about the fifth day, she came home from work and told me that she had talked to the police. The police, in turn, had gone to Johnny's house and talked to his mother. And do you know what the police did? They made Johnny move to another street. And for the first time in nearly a week, I slept like a baby that night. Now I don't know what actually transpired between Johnny and my mother--maybe she didn't pay him for babysitting. Or maybe she did. Maybe she never spoke to him about it, or maybe she told his mother that he wasn't mature enough to babysit kids, for future reference. I don't have any idea. All I know is that when Mom told me the police made Johnny moved away, I thought I put it all behind me. Mostly, I did. But knives? The glint of a blade, or a slightly crazed look in the eyes of anyone with a knife in his hand, even in jest, takes me right back to an irrational, instinctive reaction. And in case you're wondering, there's way too much of that right around Halloween for my liking.

So while I don't have to hide my knife block in the kitchen before I go to bed each night anymore, and I no longer leap on my bed from across the room just in case there's a creepy psychotic escaped convict ready to reach out and grab my ankles before I head off to dreamland, I'm still no fan of simulated fear. Real life is scary enough; I can't spend energy going out of my way to find extra fictional ways to scare myself to death.

It's Always Different When It Happens to You

July 19, 2010

**If you read this in the southern accent that's in my head as I'm writin' this, it'll sound better. We're Oklahoma folk, originally. Although Grandma's been a transplanted Californian for several years, the accent is still unmistakable--unless you're Grandma, who doesn't think she has an accent.
I've been spending a lot of time with my grandma lately, and I've learned a thing or two about my mom that would have been useful information several years ago.

Grandma and I, in the course of our recent conversation, got to talking about when my young parents decided to pack up their three kids (in the days before numbers fours and five) and move from the mid-West out to California. "Do you know how I found out your mama was moving out to California?" I did not.

"Well, your mama had missed my graduation from nursing school, and I was wondering why." Honestly, I was surprised to hear that. My mom was very big on celebrating accomplishments. "Well, after we got home, a man from the fillin' station across the street came over and told us we had a phone call." (For those of you not of a certain era, gas stations used to be called 'filling stations'.) "We didn't have a phone at the time, but your mama somehow found out the number of the fillin' station to get ahold of us."

'Where are you?' she said, when she got to the phone.

'We're in California!'

'California? Why?'

'Well, we moved here.'

'You moved? Why didn't you let any of us know?'

'We just didn't want anybody fussin' at us about it, so we thought it'd be easier to tell you after we were already here.'

Seriously? My mom moved halfway across the country and didn't even give my grandparents advanced notice to get used to the idea? Or even to say goodbye to the grandkids? I would have been livid if that was me. (Bree, are you reading this? Whenever you plan to move away, have a chat with your mama first, huh?)

After she'd delivered the news, my mom started to complain to Grandma about how rough their trip had been. They even lost a mattress that had been tied to the top of their car and had run over it. It had apparently been quite a journey, especially with three kids under six.

Grandma told her she didn't care. "That's just good enough for ya--somebody that'll up and move without tellin' her mama!" She didn't have a bit of sympathy for her. She just didn't think my mom had done her right--and I can't say I blame her. She found out that my parents hadn't let dad's parents in on the secret, either. Grandma Mayes' response? "Why would you want to move out to California? All they do out there is lay on the beach and smoke marijuana." (By the way, that would be exactly the kind of reason lots of people might actually want to move out to California, if, in fact, it were true.) I imagine there were hard feelings on my grandparents' part for sometime after they got those phone calls.

So now, flash-forward several years, to the day I moved out of my mother's house. I was a college kid, in my second year. Mom's house was well-known among all of our friends as an open house kind of a place--Mom welcomed anybody, anytime. It was great, except that as a college student, I needed quiet and privacy to study, and there was so much distraction and temptation to be social at home, ironically. There was no fight, no falling out--we had a great relationship and were very close. I just wanted to be responsible so that I could focus on school. Mom was devastated.

I remember distinctly the day I pulled out of Mom's drive way toward my new home. She'd had weeks to get used to the idea, and had even helped me find my new apartment and pack for the move. The apartment was literally on the same street, just a mile up the road. And yet, as I pulled out of the driveway, she was sobbing, huge tears rolling down her face, saying over and over, "I'll never see you again! I 'll never see you again!" She had always been very good at the whole Mom Guilt Trip, with heaping side of the Over Dramatic. It almost made me want to stay, just because I felt like such a bad daughter, abandoning my mom.

And yet....when she moved? All the way to California?? Oh, man, if I had only known! Maybe I'd have taken off and let her know after the fact. You, know--so I didn't have to have anyone fussin' at me. I can just hear my grandma saying, "Well that's just good enough for ya!" I guess when it happened to her, it was a whole new ballgame.