Fibbing

This was later.  But I want to tell it anyway.  I lied to Ma all the time.  I was only sometimes where I was supposed to be, other times, I was anywhere I wanted to be.  That's just how it is when your left on a short leash and you get the scent and feel for a little freedom.

I had wildness in me like you wouldn't believe.  And passion.  As a teen-age girl, I wanted nothing to do with that cubbyhole of an apartment.  I wanted air.  And breath.  And life. 

Even moms forget that, what it's like to be young.  Oh, they think they know; even come back to it later in life, when they're recounting their stories, hoping to pass something on; but they forget when it really matters, when their own daughters are burning.

A lot of the times, it was just a matter of getting outside.  Sure, I got outside whenever I wanted, but there are rules to follow and those rules say, "Don't stay out after dark."  I grew up in the '80s.  Remember that?  We were afraid for our candy.

Anyway, a friend of mine lived close enough that we could walk and meet-up half way.  We'd swing by the Stop-N-Go for an ice cream sandwich and ogle the curly-headed guy working the counter. 

Then, we'd head down the street to nowhere.  Nowhere really was the underside of an overpass along a busy road.  In case you noticed a trend, I have a fascination with bridges.

We'd climb up the steep concrete  underside and make a home of rushing cars and passing bicyclists and evening walkers.  It was as good as confession up there.

I don't think anything ever got figured out.  Seems it was probably a route to boy-talk and angst.  But we all have our places we like to go, don't we?  They may even be places right there out in the open where nobody is looking, like hiding a Christmas present under the bed.

What Little Boys Are Made Of

The first time I fell in love I was wearing a borrowed red sweatshirt with a hole in it.  The boy wore a similar shirt and we flirted across a volleyball net.  I was six.  You can imagine how important this was.

Ma and I were at some farm.  A friend of our neighbor's was having a party.  I think Mary wanted to get Ma out of the house for a little fun so they invited us along.  That may have been the night I realized my affection for farms and barns and haylofts.  It could have been the boy.

There was another girl there, a few years younger than me.  She hung around us too, but we didn't pay her much attention after a while.  We ran through the yards, ate the ice cream and swung from the tire swing.  I always did like a good tire swing.

Greg, the boy, was strawberry blond and freckled and two years older.  He made up jokes.  I blushed.  He put his arm around me.  I giggled.

Evening showed up as she always does, so pretty in the summer.  Ma took a tour of the farm.  We went with, chasing through the hayloft, finding quiet.

Greg got close then, looked at me so seriously, "Do you wanna kiss?"

"Okay," I said and he leaned in.  It was just a little peck on the lips, a little boy's peak into the real thing.

He must have had big brothers.  He must have known something, at least.  "We have to lay down," he said.

"We do?"

"Yeah.  If I'm going to kiss you we have to lay down."

"Someone might see us," I said.

We bobbed our heads around the corner.  The adults were lost to us.  "Okay," I said and lay down.  He crawled on top of me, closed his eyes and again, a little peck.

That night we drank lemon aid in a stranger's living room.  Somebody took our picture.

Reaching in my pocket and coming up with lint

You want to know something stupid?  I can't tell you a good damn thing about most of my sisters and brothers.  I sure can't tell you what it was like to live with them, because most the time, I didn't.  That's the thing about being the youngest in a hurricane of offspring, at some point they make a jump all willy-nilly and sometimes, they don't make a show of coming back.

Unless, maybe, every time they come back is a show.

Seems to me I can't write a story about my family if I can't talk about my family, not with any acute knowledge, that is.  So, I'm just going to sit here every now and then and write a few things down, leave a little tangible evidence of my presence, stir it up once-in-a-while and see what kind of story to make of it.

You understand.

That Would Be Telling

I'm sure if I found some misspelled, grammatically incorrect, thoroughly embarrassing school project 20 or so years after the fact and transcribed it in all it's agonizing glory for you to read, it could be construed as a self-flagellation of sorts.  I'll do it anyway.  As you can see, I have little pride.


My Inheritance

by Little Me

I inherited my big mouth, thick hair, and nearsightedness from my mother.  My father also gave me nearsightedness so I guess I'm pretty well stuck with it.  I got my temper, my hight, and my sister said skinniness from my dad.  When I have my child I would like him or her to be skinny, tall, and have thick hair.

I really don't have any medical traits I have inherited.  I think the only thing is needing glasses.

I really am a "mutt" as my dad called us because we come from all over.  My mom was mostly from Germany and my dad was from Englad, Irland, and Holland.

My mom doesn't work but my dad works at G.M.A.C.

I really don't know what my family structure is it's very different.  I live with my mom so it's only my mom and me at home.  I go visit my dad everyother weakend from Saturday-Sunday.  My dad is remarried and I have two step-sisters, Dawn and Dianna.

I don't know how I would change my family structure but I know I would.  I think I would like my mom to get remarried and have maybe a stepsister or brother at home so it wouldn't be like I was an only child.  I also wouldn't go to my dad's Every other weakend because I have other things I would like to do but my father has a way to make me feel guilty.

The family structure of my ansesters on both sides of my family were nuclear.  When my family makes decisions by usually asking me how I feel but some important decisions are made without me.

In the future I would like to have a nuclear family structure.  I think it would be to hard to be a single parent and I would like my children and there father to be together.

In my mom's family their was three girls and my grandma & grandpa.  In my fathers family their were 7 children and mom & dad.

In my future family I want to have 2 children.  One boy and one girl.

We don't really have any rituals or traditions but we usually have most of my brothers & sisters come to our house for Christmas.  We have been doing this for about 6 years.  After my parents got devorced.   

Ma

Ma was married and pregnant with her first child at the age of 18.  Ten months after the birth of a daughter the second girl came squalling out.  The next year brought a boy, the year after another boy, then a girl, a boy, a girl.

A three year gap marked the coming of the fifth daughter who at the age of 9 was competent and comfortable with her station until I interrupted just before Valentine's in the year 1975.  Ma was 39.

It seems she never really had a chance to come into her own, not by the way I see it.  Despite the legal definition of it, 18 is still a kid to me.  At least, I was still a kid at 18.  Someone once said, "Who you marry at 20 is not who you'd marry at 30," or some such.  Seems about right to me, having nearly gone there too young myself.

But Ma, she was married and too far gone with babies to make any reverse decision on the matter by that time.  As far as I can tell she still measures a woman's success not by degree or profession but by marriage and childbearing.  She's old fashioned that way.

I think I'm more generous to Ma than many of my siblings who complain and grouse about matters of upbringing that are so long passed in the scheme of things it seems absurd to even bring it up, though how I'm much better with my writing every thought down I don't know.

Ma has her own ways, ways that can drive her kids mad what with her seeming disinterest in all things political, her nose for gossip and the effects aging is having on her capacity for social interactions.

My theory on the matter is that a she started her mothering early, before she was really ready to be her own person, before she had a chance to have her own interests.  I think that the only thing she ever really had to experience outside of childhood and adolescence is us, a lot of us, and her husband.  It could cause a person to go a little loopy, I would imagine.

Besides the awe her sheer fecundity has inspired over the years, it's the fact that she has never driven a vehicle that really trips people up.  I don't even know if she has ever ridden a bike, though it seems unlikely anyone with fully functioning physical abilities could get through 73 years of life without peddling a bicycle at least once, I suppose we shouldn't stifle our imaginations.

I find it difficult to explain Ma because as simple and mundane a person may seem, the layers always peel back revealing a deepest sense of regret, hope and desire.

A thing I can never get myself to recognize, to believe in, is the darkness she enveloped with the falling of my dad.  I mean, I was a kid and kids don't really know what's going on.  As far as I was concerned, dark rooms and sad country music were the way of the grown-up world.  Don't get me wrong, there was a lot I did understand, though being a kid I was just as underestimated as any other and learned to adapt.

What I'm saying though is that there are a lot of women out there with no-good, rotten, very bad cheating husbands who are willing to put up with an awful lot.  My ma though, she didn't.

This woman who was taken fresh from the farm straight to the wedding bed, who gave her entire existence over to her family, who never really got a fair shot at knowing herself did something that would scare the bejesus out of me.  She stood up after 9 kids and twenty-something odd years of marriage and said, "Enough is enough." 

Can you imagine?

What to do?

There are a lot of questions bubbling up and around this memoir project that I'm trying to sort out.  Frankly, I threw my arms up in the air and there they are, stuck, not knowing whether to gesticulate or shrug.  See, the last post gave me a different feeling about the whole thing.  The voice was that of a fictional character I used to write named Clyde.  She's sassy, non-articulate and fun.  When I write my family I can't really use that voice, I feel like I'm cheating, because I am, because the word "fun" isn't the word I'd use.

Writing the last post was freeing, whimsical and a little terrifying not because of anything it revealed, but because I could feel the edge of real tension eking in, the kind of tension I've been trying to uncover.  So now I feel like a real dim-wit.  I go from writing memoir (no, still not abandoning the project) to writing a Nano-no-show fantasy back to memoir into the adrenaline-filled caverns of fiction "loosly based on" reality.  Can I do that?

I think I need to read every craft book ever written to get a grip on what needs to be done.  And hey, there's plenty of time.  The other thing is that the memoir is really a different time period.  I'm feeling growing pains here.  I'm feeling a novel breaking through and the overall dynamic tension leads me right down the path to a girlish Stand by Me.

What say you?  What would you do?

Shitty First Draft

      The red house next to the open field, that was ours. My dad built it. Got the land for a song’s what he says, what with the way it snugs up against Interstate 90, who would want it otherwise? And that was way back in the late 60’s before the Reagan years and inflation and heaving property values. It was a good house, solid—a ranch with three bedrooms upstairs, a finished basement and another room down below for the boys. I haven’t lived there in nearly 30 years but sometimes when I fall asleep I still walk the hallways, still tip myself over with spinning on the oriental rug.

     The empty field next door was never mowed when I was a kid. The gully ran off between it and the interstate until it came to our property line, then the water sort of slunk off down the sewer tunnels so we could have a nice yard with no pit. If you followed the gully through the field you’d find the creek bed (pronounced “crik”, if you’re wondering) and some warn-down paths stretching out below the interstate bridge.

     I was 7 when we moved out of that house, when the divorce was finalized, when all but my sister and I had left home. The three of us, Mom, Sis and I, moved to the other side of the bridge. There is something telling in that, but I can’t figure out what it is just yet.

     That place just under the bridge was one of those places kids hung out when there was nothing better to do, a place to catch crayfish with ice cream buckets, to toss rocks, call names and spray paint. It was a place for secrets.

     “I heard if you hit someone with a rock in just the right place you can kill ‘em,” Laura said.

     “Duh,” the rest of us clucked. As if stoning were ever a new thing.

     “No, I mean, my sister told me. If you get hit right here,” she tapped at her temple, “you can get killed.”

     It seemed improbable that a tap with a pebble on the side of your head could knock you out much less kill you. It was nothing like a stab to the heart or bullet wound. It would be like skipping stones. Innocent. Yet it gave us a sense of power.