Nanowrimo Pouring Down

I've neglected this blog. There isn't time or reason to make excuses. As an amends I offer this token--Nanowrimo. Though it is a bend in the rules, memoir writing is not noveling, I am using Nano to hoist Penny Jar into the atmosphere.

Midnight November 1st is soon, too soon and I am beset with pains and worry and guilt about everything that won't get done in that time. But,you know what? It never does anyway. I also have a favor to ask of you. For those of us who have experienced the Nano marathon in the past and have, ahem, not completed the required 50,000 words-it can be quite a trying experience. Words of encouragement are encouraged. Nods of affirmation are affirmed.

If you excuse the shitty first draft that is Nanowrimo in it's purest form I will include snips and snaps on this blog from time to time-just so you know.

Two If By Land

My daughter is just on the verge of 3 years old, but already she has a favorite story of when her mama was a little girl. It hearkens back to the days of Atlas Pit before it became a reputable fishing spot, when drunken teenagers broke their necks diving from cliffs.

I was the only subscriber to the every other week Dad Weekends. The rest of the kids were grown, and on their own or nearly so. It had to be hard for Dad, I imagine, working himself up to an entire weekend as the prime caretaker of a young girl. He would have had to have been out of his element considering his entire family history was made up of two nearly full time jobs and until then, a wife to tend the children. But, he took me on and often times I groaned to myself of the boredom. What an older father thinks is interesting to a young girl often is not.

The day my daughter dreams about came with chocolate malts and summertime. As was a normal weekend event, we went for a drive through town in Dad's big, black Chevy pick-up truck. The window behind my head was open so Butch, hot and wind-free beneath the truck topper, could drool over my shoulder. We pulled into the drive at Atlas Pit.

Dad must have thought I would be excited or impressed to see what a 4 wheel drive could do as the tires ground over a loose gravel shore. He talked about trees, water, fish. I sat, a docile, complacent child when in his presence. He wasn't a terrible man, I just feared the raising of my father's voice after hearing the pandemonium prior to my parents' separation and tried to stay under the radar.

In his talking he pointed out the shore, the trees, the ducks dropping their metallic green or spotted brown heads below the flat reservoir. He inched the truck up, closer to the shoreline, dipping the front tires like toes in a pool. I watched, disbelieving. He was driving into the water.

I held on, quiet, a slow terror rolled in my gut. This was my dad, nothing would happen, the truck is safe, the water, shallow. We rolled forward still. I looked out my window and down. Water, but not deep. Still. Water!

Out it came, a horror, my complacency denied. A cry I tried to suck up escaped into the cab, then another sob. I was terrible at swimming, frightened by the thought of not being able to touch bottom. My body required I find purchase on land, stable and safe. Though I adored any chance I had at a beach or pool, I was timid and panicked if confronted by the deep. Whatever Dad was trying to prove, this was not okay.

He didn't persist, but threw the truck into reverse and calmed me with a laugh and easy words.

My daughter is fascinated by this story, that Mama could be so small and scared. She presses for details and I give what I can. It is comforting for her, I imagine, to know the little grow big and the scared grow strong as she looks to me for guidance, for purchase on this huge overpowering land.

Cursed

Leigh leaned over me, “Say, ‘Shit!’ or I’ll tell mom you swore.” She was only fifteen, but scared the forbidden word right out of me.

“I can’t,” I whined all of four feet tall and nine years the younger.

“Say it,” she threatened again and laughed with Kate, her best friend.

I can’t imagine why Mom thought it was a good idea to send me along or why Leigh agreed, but we were walking a good mile and a half up Pontiac Hill past the elementary school and Eagles grocery store, across E. Milwaukee St. to Kate’s front door. We had almost made it to the cornfield before the threats began.

“Say, ‘Shit!” she said again and I buckled.

A whisper, “Shit,” hands clenched to my mouth trying not to let the word escape.

Kate laughed. “You’re mean,” she said then laughed some more. We were in front of the flat red brick apartment building I’d see every time I went with Mom to the credit union. The front yard was always scattered with plastic riding toys and discarded whiffle balls.

Across the street the cornfield threatened, even in the day. Leigh could see I was wary of this, we’d been here before. “Watch out for the Children of the Corn,” she chided on to a new tack.

True Love Explained?

When I was a roller girl I didn't like to skate alone. And when Anne, the oldest of the mob, came to visit with her spoil-making husband Brad (married the year I was born) I was in basement heaven. Mom and Leigh and I were living in the duplex by then, our house downsized by divorce. But the duplex basement was better than a finished basement for skating anyway, a good, solid concrete floor was what I needed--forget carpet and couches, a girl needs space.

If I begged, if I pleaded, I could drag Brad down the stairs to sit and watch and talk while I rolled circles around the poles and dipped past the floor drain. Watch me go backwards. Watch me spin around this pole. Watch. Watch. I constantly demanded and his patience complied. He always was my favorite.

We talked. I skated and quizzed him on the various routines of life. He answered without showing rancor. This discourse may have taken an hour, but I was quick to get to the meat of things.

Why did you and Anne get married?

Because we love each other.

Did you always love each other?

And on and on.

I might have left it there, love to float freely among the cobwebs, but kids aren't that way. Dinner is a time for discussion as well as food and I wanted to let everyone know that I too understood.

Brad told me that him and Anne got married because they love each other. There was a general agreement, so I went on. Can anyone get married who loves each other?

Yes, they can.

What if two girls loved each other and wanted to get married, would that be weird? This caused an exchange of glances around the room.

A chuckle. Yes, it would.

I was getting into the swing of things.Would it be weird if two boys loved each other and got married?

More laughing. Yes, that would be weird too.

I sat there content, mulling over the implications in my mind. The world didn't work just any old way.

Paradise by the Dashboard Light

If you have ever ridden in the hatchback of a 1979 Chevrolet Chevette you must have been small, and you must have been me. What I remember clearly is someone having a great idea, the kind of idea that takes you places. This is an idea so wonderful it will get all your friends and your kid sister exactly where you want to go, in one teeny, tiny little car--the kid rides in the trunk.

Hey, why not? She's small, right? She'll fit. It'll be fun. Besides, it's a hatchback. I think it was fun, at least at first. Until the trunk closed and I was again in the fetal position, though this time, not wrapped safely and soundly in amniotic fluid. This time I got to see outside my little metal womb. I should have, the glass was practically pressed against my face.

And I was privy to all the action up front--adult talk, cigarettes out the window, a beautiful spring day. It was nothing to me, the going with a big sis and hangin' out with her and her friends. I loved it. Someone would take me to the laundromat and I'd plunk in the coins. At the gas station, I'd happily run in and pay. Trunk-riding was a new game. I rarely complained.

The radio was on and the car was filled with hair and chevron mustaches. We were going to my sister's flat on Cherry St. I spent my fair share of nights there gorging on ice cream and chocolate milk. Her boyfriend taught me how to play backgammon and he probably let me win half the time. It was a happinin' place.

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One night, later on, when I was a little older (though not old enough by my current standards) I was spending the night on Cherry St. when the boyfriend called. Did she want to go out? Yes, but her little sister was over. She's old enough to stay by herself. Hmmm. Tempting.

Did I think I could stay by myself? She would call to check up on me. I could eat anything I found in the fridge, watch anything on TV, stay up and have a party. By my self.

In a strange apartment.

Sure, sure. I was fine, would be fine. Terrified. For hours on end. MTV was great. I couldn't watch that at home (I loved Cindy Lauper). There was a window in the kitchen near the refrigerator. Outside that window was a tree with branches scratching and scraping in the wind. Terrified. Awake. Awake. Waiting for the phone.

Was I alright? Of course, fine, fine. She'd be home in a few hours. The ice cream went back in the freezer half eaten, waiting for breakfast.

Penny Jar

This is reposted from my other blog Mama's Experience Initiative where it originally appeared. It is the inspiration for this current project.


As a kid I adored thunderstorms, still do. Something about the charge in the air makes me want to crank up the music and dance like nobody's mother. I have a very vivid memory of thunderstorms as a kid back in our old red house near Interstate 90.

My brother was newly home from the Marines. I guess it was spring or summer and I couldn't have been more than five. Our family, being sizable, constituted a party in sheer numbers. The mood was festive, my brother tall and muscular and commanding in his dress blues. (Mom loved to see him dressed so) He divvied out trinkets he'd gathered from his tour, answered the questions, ate the food, walked the walk.

What I remember so clearly was the descent of the evening storm--how we left the front door open and listened to the thunder rattle the metal screen. It seems there must have been some candles lit or an oil lamp preparing for a fight against the dark.

We didn't use the living room much. The finished basement served as family room and main entertainment, but this night I was upstairs sprawled on the shag carpet. I counted pennies sprung from a glass jar, wishing money, he had saved for his youngest sister. What a normal, mundane family we felt like then.

They say that when my brother was over seas in Okinawa, I drew him pictures to go with every letter my mother wrote--all line drawings of a single person, naked, with belly-button featured prominently. He hung them on the wall of his barracks. That's what they say.

The pennies rattled together competing with wind, thunder and a room full of people. Something other than a coin rolled from the jar big enough to excite a young girl living through her princess dreams. It could have been a gumball ring, he never said.

I love the memories of my family then. The house was full and moody. I could eat off recollections of camping trips and snow falls. Of course, it changed and sides were chosen, but for my part (the prologue) I hold to the storms and count and sort like so many pennies in a jar.

Thelma J.

The clearest memory I have is of cinnamon apples. My sisters and brothers would say fudge—chocolate, or peanut butter, or maple, but I stand by cinnamon apples. Years ago, I mentioned those apples, how sweet, and crisp and unnaturally red, like pickled beats. Someone said they are sold in cans at holiday time, that Grandma didn’t make them, but bought them and served them whenever we visited. I don’t care. I love the memory of her cinnamon apples.

My paternal grandmother will forever be my idea of what a grandmother is. She was a soft, warm bun of a woman, gray-haired and virtually blind. She lived in a trailer a few hours north-west of where I grew up. Everything about her was homemade.

The trailer's crafted-up interior was filled with afghans and crochet dolls. Her chair sat along side a small table she used to keep her large-print Reader's Digest and over-sized magnifying glass. To get to the bathroom, one had to pass through the kitchen and squeeze past the plant table with its buzzing purple glow and trays of african violets. I loved to visit this place, to poke around. There were so many textures.

Grandma died when she was 74 of a heart attack. I don't remember the year or how old I was. I don't remember my reaction to the news or the funeral and dinner after. And yet, how clear it is, her home, her face, her coke-bottle glasses. I can feel her chubby mama's arms and taste the cinnamon apples.