Happily Even After

My husband married me because of my shortcomings, not despite them.  There's my penchant for sudden change; spontaneous upsets with scissors and hair dye; a love/hate relationship with the written word that has been festering more than half my lifetime; my crooked teeth; and when I'm really, really tired, a ravaging hysteria of laughter so intense I get stomach cramps.  Still, we're weirdos in love.

I've spent an entire lifetime discovering how strange the people of the world think I am and how, secretly, many of them delight in the off-beat. 

It's nothing to me.  I mean, when you're a kid and do and say kid things and your sister's mantra is, "You're weird," well, what can you say?  I'm creatively driven.

My big brother, the one who's been riding Harleys my entire life and is tattooed up and down, has scoffed at my hair and clothes more times than I can count.  "You've always been the black sheep," says he.

I smile. Family.

I was insecure, oh, so insecure.  "You're weird", the other kids always said.  But they hung around.

Later on, in high school, when they loaded up the insult cannon with the word "Freak" it bounded right back at them, splattering a little pride across their Esprit.  Freak was a compliment, an homage to beloved Ralph Waldo Emerson who gave us permission not only to love, but to be art. 

"Be yourself; no base imitator of another,but your best self.  There is something which you can do better than another.  Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that.  Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.

To be great, is to be misunderstood."

--Emerson, Self-Reliance

And it was art, and music, and poetry that drove me into myself.  It was writing that saved the soft bits, that firmed up the wants and dreams, that gave me permission to disregard expectation and head on out and be misunderstood.

Thanks, Ralph, I owe you one.

One True Sentence

I want to give you something.  I don't want to sound wounded because I am not.  What I want to do is reach in and draw out the truth, a nod to Hemingway perhaps, a reaction to rain in June to be sure.

I love the rain.

A few days ago on Twitter's #writechat we were talking about the writer's voice which inevitably moves on to truth which in turn becomes self examination and honesty in your writing.  And I wonder how honest I am in my writing, in memoir writing.

Not much.

And to a certain extent we don't want memoir writers to be too honest because too honest can lead to blame and contempt.  I just don't want to go there.  It's not enjoyable.  Drama disagrees with me, it gives me heartburn.  It makes me growl.

But rain in June does funny things to me.  Listening to Leonard Cohen does funny things to me. 

Before I dropped out of college, I had several poems published in the school's lit mag.  This was before I let English take me back, while I was still pretending to want a reasonable career in Interior Design.  The day the journal came out I nabbed a copy and took it with me to class.  My instructor, a women, opened the book, searched out my name and proceeded to read my words out loud to the class.  It was fine, all our classes were together for the most part, we knew eachother well and I sort of stood out as the...I don't know what I was, but not timid, and to them, not dull.

So, she read the first poem in a very cavalier fashion and moved on.  This is what she read next:

Old Words

I wanted to read from dirty old men
to dry up the lisp
to learn the currents of the belly
what they hide in them
to turn a word.

I began by smoking cigarettes
and hoarding brandy
followed the swing of words down the spine
opened windows
and doors
and returned in my bra and underpants
to the living room floor.

I wanted to read the smoky old ramblings
the canterings on
about campfires and ships and women
but when I started
the sky closed up
and threw down its rain.

 ***

Though I sit here fully clothed with nothing but a cup of cold coffee, the rain still seeps into my spirit, while the words of men, this time the music of Leonard Cohen, inhabits me and I think I should do something, write something honest.  This is not to say women don't have this power over words, quite the contrary.  It's only that this day in particular is for Cohen.

So what do I write?  What total truth needs to be revealed?


 ***

Give me a memory of junior high (middle school)

Exercise #7 from Old Friend From Far Away

How to French Kiss with a Pop Bottle

My sister, all grown up and married with kids, thought it'd be a great idea to have a Halloween party at her place.  Sure, of course, sounds perfect, great. 

We papered the mache, stacked the corn stalks, dumped dry ice in a plastic cauldron and made s'mores bars out of cereal, marshmallows and chocolate chips.

The party would do double duty--she'd have her friends, I'd have mine.  Mine were all girls, tween style and tittering.

Early on we took to the Ouija board and a dark little bedroom where we tried to contact Sid Vicious.  Fingers played around the pointer, always someone pushing, denying, pushing, giggling.

Eventually some woman came in, I think her name was Sue, I didn't know her. Maybe she worked for the county with my sister moving the elderly from bed to bed, any guess is good.  There's nothing an adult likes talking about more with young girls than boys, especially a drinking adult. 

Sue warmed herself up to us.  Who did we like?  Did we go on dates?  Titter.  Have we kissed a boy?  Titter titter.  Then came the instructional, "You know, it's a good idea to practice first."

Uh, okay. How do we do that, then?  

"You can practice on a pop bottle.  You have to kiss it and don't forget to use your tongue."

The tittering was out of control by this point.  There was no going back.  The entire Halloween was tinted with soda pop fizz. After the party died down we girls sat in the living room giggling around an empty Coca-cola bottle and gave instruction to my sister's video camera.  Married now with 2 kids, I think it was pretty poor advice. 

A Memory of a Haircut

Exercise # 6 from Old Friend from Far Away

Of course, it was just before Freshman year that my hair had to take the hit for me.  That, and the cajoling of a dear friend who knew of my impetus for spontaneity.  "Let's get your hair styled," she'd said.  As harmless a word as any, styled didn't mean cut, it meant a small change, a cool beginning.

Later I would come to realized "Let's get your hair styled" also meant, let's not touch mine.

My dear friend and her perfect shoulder length dishwater blond and high, flat wall of bangs was not one to fall victim to the shears.  It would be me and an unceasing hunger for change.

So there at the end of summer, my butt plopped down in a chair at Cost Cutters and I pointed to a picture in a magazine.  The stylist must have thought I had a sense of humor.  Maybe she thought she'd help show off my over-sized spectacles and shiny braces.  Whatever she was thinking, it was not about giving me the style I'd asked for.  It was about butchery. 

Those were not bangs, they were spikes.  Those were not layers, it was a mullet.  Going into high school just got that much better.  I couldn't wait to find my locker in Dirt-ball Hall.

A Taste You Hate

Exercise #5 from Old Friend From Far Away

I couldn't help it.  Car rides made me sick.  From the time I was first strapped in all wiggly and cooing, it wasn't long until the nausea set in. 

And since Mom didn't drive and there were so many older kids, I didn't go too many places except on the big trips, to grandparents', to aunts' and uncles'.  They were always long drives, scenic, up and down "tickle-belly" hills. 

Dad had a van, it was two-tone brown and tan with the extra tire on back and a ladder to the top.  The back windows were shaded with those nifty pictures you could see from the outside, but didn't hinder the driving--trees hinting at a forest, an orange sun, the tail end of a buck looking back, listening.

After enough trips Ma found a medicine to help with the motion sickness, a liquid, amaretto flavored, thick like cough syrup.  In the morning, after a big breakfast and right before we piled our masses in to the back of the van, she'd take me to the kitchen, have me tip back my head and choke it down.

Give me a memory of cold

Exercise #4

I remember what it was like to love winter, frozen toes inside thick snow boots, wet mittens, a red nose.  Suzy and I would spend days outside her yellow house just up the hill from the creek.  We'd slide down through the trees, land on hard, slick ice, and skate in our boots.  The ice never froze in the smooth, perfect way of skating rinks, but in jagged lumps punctuated with broken sticks and rocks.

The creek was our battle field and our home.  There were places beneath the trees where roots stuck up through the snow and we'd dig in, building a nest, proving you could stay warm before the melt.  We dared ourselves, taking off socks and gloves, feeling the cold prickle against our skin.  We'd redden, and swear it didn't hurt.  We'd lie down and try to sleep, then jump up, a new battle on the other side of the creek.

Don't touch the bottom, we'd warn, grabbing branches to keep ourselves aloft.  I was the clumsy one, never coordinated or graceful, always heavier inside my bones.  I'd skitter through the trees, scrambling to keep myself in Suzy's graces, following her until I finally lost her scent.

Give me a memory of the color red, but don't say the word "red"

Exercise #3

My mother's favorite color plasters the bathroom walls, the floors, the shower curtain, the towels--ripest cherry screaming out at you, warning you not to bother if you have a hang-over or get easily jettisoned by boldness.  Always, my mother's favorite color was a blindfold to me, a given to nature, but I never stopped to think of the "her" underneath the screaming scarlet.

As my age moves along an upward scale I feel a sort of gravitational pull to the poisoned apple grazing all my memories, so much so that my daughter has begun to think I belong there among the poppies.  I mix metaphors, speak in obscure phrases that mean little, do little to increase my station.  The thoughts that are so obviously mine bore me so much that I slouch, sniff the candle with the word "fire"on it's box, roll my eyes at the pictures on the wall.

There is nothing to see here.  Please step aside.  It's time to go home.