Jan 29, 2012
World Trade Center Memorial
Even the smallest act of service, the simplest act of kindness, is a way to honor those we lost, a way to reclaim that spirit of unity that followed 9/11.
-President Barack Obama
-President Barack Obama
Jan 23, 2012
I Like Your Perky Teets
Plenty of Fish was once described to me as “Plenty of Freaks,” and the longer I am on this site, I can certainly agree. This weekend I received an email that simply stated, “I like your perky teets.” I wonder what his expected response was. Perhaps:
• Thanks so much! Your balls don’t look half bad either!
• Want to see them?
• We should totally get together then!
My response to my friend was, “I have to get off of this website.” I planned to do that today but haven’t gotten around to it. I guess I could be doing it right now, but then I wouldn’t be able to share this next email with you, my five followers.
My wife and I see that you are a beautiful attractive woman... My wife and I are looking for a serious committed relationship that could lead to loving family and children one day... We are serious about this sweetie and I hope you understand. Hit us up when you have a chance babygirl.
I mean, really? REALLY? This is what’s left out there? Sigh.
He Pooed in My Shoe
A mouse that is...not a bad date. Get your mind out of the gutter.
It was 6 a.m. and I wasn't awake yet. Like every other morning, I got up, shut my alarm off and headed to the bathroom to shower. When I switched on the light, I thought I saw something scurry behind the toilet. But, like I said, I was half asleep and tend to imagine things. I quickly thought back to when I first moved in and a giant roach ran across my foot. I had refused to go home until my friend found and caught it. I was prepared to move if these things were going to sharing my space. I fear bugs, especially giant bugs.
Once in college, I had just gone to Carvel to get some ice cream. Driving back home, a green spider appeared on my dashboard and was happily crawling along. I was at a red light when I saw it and the fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, so my first thought was to run like hell out of the car. I quickly realized that was probably a bad idea, but still not out of the question. All I had to defend myself against the green invader was my ice cream cup—which I promptly threw at my dashboard. As you could imagine, this was not effective, and I was now out of my tasty treat, ice cream all over the dashboard, spider lose in my car. I was never able to locate it. It may still be there.
Much like that spider, I never saw a giant roach again, so I saved myself a move (you think I'm kidding). Maybe until now.
So I took a deep breath, hopped up on the sink so nothing would be able to run over my feet, and slammed the toilet lid down to scare whatever it was out of hiding. That it did, and that "it" was a mouse. He ran out from behind the garbage and under my bathroom door into the kitchen. He was a tiny little thing—a small brown field mouse. Or in this case, a small brown apartment mouse. Relieved it wasn't a giant bug that would try to crawl in my ear and murder me while I am sleeping, I proceeded with my morning. I jumped in the shower and started to wonder how I would handle my little houseguest. Perhaps he was already gone.
I keep my shampoo and conditioner on the floor between the tub and the wall. This morning, when I went to grab my shampoo I noticed it wasn't alone. It was being kept company by little mouse droppings. Little guy must have been chilling in the bathroom all night. But again, I thought, maybe he is already gone.
After the shower, I turned on every light in my apartment so Fievel would be aware that I am there and he probably shouldn't show his little face. I debated even calling the landlord because I didn't want anyone to hurt the little guy. Maybe Fievel and I could leave peaceably together. I have pretty much no food in my apartment, so I'm sure he couldn't be planning on extending his visit that much longer.
So 40 minutes later with no mouse in sight, I became a little more sure that he was long gone. It was a fluke mouse. He just got lost last night looking for some cheese, or trying to escape the questioning cat that lives in the backyard. But when I went to get my shoes out of the closet, one single mouse dropping fell out. Ugh.
After listening to my friend tell me what one little mouse did to her house, I begrudgingly called my landlord. So all I can say is, Run little mouse. Run like the wind! And stay out of my shoes.
Jan 20, 2012
The Great Wall and the Great Molesting
This ended up being an outtake from the book. If you scroll back to my trip to Beijing, you can contrast the amazing imagery with this story:
In 2009, I decided to visit my friend in Hong Kong. There’s nothing like a 16 hour flight to really make you feel how far you have actually traveled.
I went with my friend Phil and we stayed with my friend Brian. The first night, the first song I heard was Bon Jovi, and in that moment, I knew I had made the right choice in going there. The signs, the smells, the store windows with duck and octopus hanging in them—it was all so exotic.
The next morning we flew another four hours to Beijing. That first night we walked around Tiananmen Square, the Bird’s Nest, and I was introduced to both spicy food and Chinese toilets. After eating spicy food for the first time and washing it down with a ton of beer, you do not want to have your first meeting with an Asian bathroom. I opened the stall door to find there was not in fact a seat, like I had been accustomed to my entire life, but a hole in the floor with poreclain foot grips. This would be a feat of strength for my thighs. But, when in Rome...squat and pee in a hole in the floor.
The next morning we were off the Great Wall. I could not wrap my head around the fact that in a few hours I would be standing on the actual Great Wall of China. Once it came in to view, I was speechless. My friends were also speechless but that’s because in the 90 degree weather, their hangovers from doing shots with Canadians at the hostel all night were becoming unbearable. In retrospect, I think the dramamine I took for motion sickness probably saved me from the same fate.
We walked five miles of the Great Wall that day. Well, I don’t think walking is the right word. There are areas of the walls that felt like they were built perpendicular to the ground, and other areas that put my newly acquired rock wall scaling skills to use. It was simply amazing.
“How the hell are you not hungover?!” Phil blurted out as he sat in a tower, red-faced and rested while a Chinese souvenir saleswoman fanned him.
“We’re on the Great Fucking Wall of China!” I yelled.
We returned to Hong Kong the next day. The following days were filled with sight seeing, giant Buddhas, tiny Buddhas, and some wild monkeys. And, since it was Asia, before we left we just had to have some custom clothes made in Shenzhen. That ended up being less glamorous than imagined, probably because the whole experience began with us getting quarantined at the Hong Kong/China border and having to sign paperwork that was in Chinese, which, I was convinced, was some confession of some sort and would land me in Chinese prison never to be heard from again. Luckily, that didn’t happen. And somehow despite the fact that these were custom clothes and they took measurements, nothing fit.
Shenzhen did give me something that I love to this day—a tiny plastic zebra that runs in circles around a pole and lives in the most poorly translated box I had ever encountered. Shenzhen also gave me the worst massage experience of my life. Massages are cheap in Asia, so it seemed worthwhile to take advantage of that. A place called the Peninsula was recommended to us. When we pulled up out front, key letters of the sign had gone out, and it read, “Peni s la.” When we entered the Penis-la, as I took to calling it, we quickly realized no one there spoke one word of English.
Brian was trying to explain in hand gestures that we wanted massages. I sat in a chair and watched as he struggled through it.
“Bri, you realize your hand gestures aren’t at all matching anything you’re saying,” I said. “You look like a lunatic.”
Eventually, since it was afterall a massage parlor, they figured out what we were there for. They started to lead us up a set of stairs and then the boys were told to go one way and I was about to be led another way.
“Just so you know,” Brian said, “they will probably have you take a shower first. I don’t know why, that’s just what they do here. But then they will take you downstairs to meet up with us, and we will all be in the same room for the massage.”
Sounded easy enough to me. I followed along into a locker room, where they motioned for me to take off my clothes and they were holding a towel out to replace them. There were three women standing there watching me. Awkward. I deposited my clothes into a locker and wrapped the towel around myself. Then I was ushered into a shower stall. So far, just like Brian said. As I started to lather up, one of the ladies whipped the shower curtain open furiously shaking her head No. I froze for a second, confused, then tried to cover my nakedness with my two hands. She left as quickly as she had come in and took any comfort level I had along with her.
I once again wrapped the towel around me, now half wet, half covered in soap and walked out of the shower stall. The same lady then led me past a small pool into a steam room. Now, this was my first time in a steam room. I had no idea if it was supposed to be so...steamy. I could barely breathe. She came in and quickly deposited a glass of water next to me, which I didn’t if I should drink. Is China like Mexico? Am I supposed to avoid tap water? Was it tap water? I left the cup untouched, but was starting to wonder if I was supposed to let them know when I was done with the steam room, or if they were going to come get me. Just as I was reaching my limit and needed some air, she came in and ushered me into the next room.
There was a table in a small room that basically just fit the table. I figured Brian was wrong, and they weren’t going to take me to meet the boys, I was just having my massage here. Since my anxiety level was growing by the second, I was okay with that and just wanted this experience to end so that I could get back to my friends. And with that thought, she ripped the towel off of me and motioned for me to get onto the table. Once again naked and uncomfortable, I laid down, closed my eyes and made believe I was okay with this.
I heard her rustling around in the corner so I looked over to see her reaching into a bucket of what I can only assume was old, dirty Chinese water, she took out a sponge and started scrubbing me. The scrub got personal enough where I felt like I should have gotten a free meal. At one point she had her hand on my breast to steady it while she scrubbed my stomach. Massages were supposed to be relaxing. This was not relaxing, this was molestation. I guess I could have gotten up and left, but was unsure if this was a normal practice in China and it was merely my American ways that was completely uncomfortable with what was happening. Or perhaps it was having my vagina scrubbed by a stranger. Either.
When my scrub down ended, she held out a piece of paper and a pen. The small notecard had some Chinese writing on it, a happy face, a straight mouth face, and a sad face. Well, I was certainly sad. She kept motioning to me to circle one.
“I don’t know what this is,” I said pushing the card back at her. “You do it. You circle one.”
This went on for probably longer than it should have and I eventually just signed a happy face hoping that meant I could get the hell out of there. So back to the locker room we went and instead of being given my clothes I was given a spa top and pant outfit. But then they weren’t letting me leave the room. Money? Did they want a tip? Yes they did. As a sidebar, somewhere along the way, my brain that could once do calculus degraded to a point of struggling with basic math on most days. I’m always grateful there’s someone else around to score darts. So being anxious and flustered I just wasn’t able to figure out the exchange rate properly and think I tipped this woman entirely too much for the dirty water bath. But finally, she led me downstairs. At this point, I was shaking, scared, humiliated, you name it. Everything opposite of the good feelings that come with massages and spas—that was me.
When they led me back to my friends I found they sitting at a table in plush robes with beers and food in front of them looking like the two most relaxed people in the world.
“What the hell happened to you?” Brian asked.
“I’m drinking all of your beer, right now,” I said.
The Thai massage that followed was actually fantastic, but to this day, I still don’t know what the hell went on upstairs, and every woman Brian asked who had a massage in Shenzhen, never had an experience like that.
Only me.
In 2009, I decided to visit my friend in Hong Kong. There’s nothing like a 16 hour flight to really make you feel how far you have actually traveled.
I went with my friend Phil and we stayed with my friend Brian. The first night, the first song I heard was Bon Jovi, and in that moment, I knew I had made the right choice in going there. The signs, the smells, the store windows with duck and octopus hanging in them—it was all so exotic.
The next morning we flew another four hours to Beijing. That first night we walked around Tiananmen Square, the Bird’s Nest, and I was introduced to both spicy food and Chinese toilets. After eating spicy food for the first time and washing it down with a ton of beer, you do not want to have your first meeting with an Asian bathroom. I opened the stall door to find there was not in fact a seat, like I had been accustomed to my entire life, but a hole in the floor with poreclain foot grips. This would be a feat of strength for my thighs. But, when in Rome...squat and pee in a hole in the floor.
The next morning we were off the Great Wall. I could not wrap my head around the fact that in a few hours I would be standing on the actual Great Wall of China. Once it came in to view, I was speechless. My friends were also speechless but that’s because in the 90 degree weather, their hangovers from doing shots with Canadians at the hostel all night were becoming unbearable. In retrospect, I think the dramamine I took for motion sickness probably saved me from the same fate.
We walked five miles of the Great Wall that day. Well, I don’t think walking is the right word. There are areas of the walls that felt like they were built perpendicular to the ground, and other areas that put my newly acquired rock wall scaling skills to use. It was simply amazing.
“How the hell are you not hungover?!” Phil blurted out as he sat in a tower, red-faced and rested while a Chinese souvenir saleswoman fanned him.
“We’re on the Great Fucking Wall of China!” I yelled.
We returned to Hong Kong the next day. The following days were filled with sight seeing, giant Buddhas, tiny Buddhas, and some wild monkeys. And, since it was Asia, before we left we just had to have some custom clothes made in Shenzhen. That ended up being less glamorous than imagined, probably because the whole experience began with us getting quarantined at the Hong Kong/China border and having to sign paperwork that was in Chinese, which, I was convinced, was some confession of some sort and would land me in Chinese prison never to be heard from again. Luckily, that didn’t happen. And somehow despite the fact that these were custom clothes and they took measurements, nothing fit.
Shenzhen did give me something that I love to this day—a tiny plastic zebra that runs in circles around a pole and lives in the most poorly translated box I had ever encountered. Shenzhen also gave me the worst massage experience of my life. Massages are cheap in Asia, so it seemed worthwhile to take advantage of that. A place called the Peninsula was recommended to us. When we pulled up out front, key letters of the sign had gone out, and it read, “Peni s la.” When we entered the Penis-la, as I took to calling it, we quickly realized no one there spoke one word of English.
Brian was trying to explain in hand gestures that we wanted massages. I sat in a chair and watched as he struggled through it.
“Bri, you realize your hand gestures aren’t at all matching anything you’re saying,” I said. “You look like a lunatic.”
Eventually, since it was afterall a massage parlor, they figured out what we were there for. They started to lead us up a set of stairs and then the boys were told to go one way and I was about to be led another way.
“Just so you know,” Brian said, “they will probably have you take a shower first. I don’t know why, that’s just what they do here. But then they will take you downstairs to meet up with us, and we will all be in the same room for the massage.”
Sounded easy enough to me. I followed along into a locker room, where they motioned for me to take off my clothes and they were holding a towel out to replace them. There were three women standing there watching me. Awkward. I deposited my clothes into a locker and wrapped the towel around myself. Then I was ushered into a shower stall. So far, just like Brian said. As I started to lather up, one of the ladies whipped the shower curtain open furiously shaking her head No. I froze for a second, confused, then tried to cover my nakedness with my two hands. She left as quickly as she had come in and took any comfort level I had along with her.
I once again wrapped the towel around me, now half wet, half covered in soap and walked out of the shower stall. The same lady then led me past a small pool into a steam room. Now, this was my first time in a steam room. I had no idea if it was supposed to be so...steamy. I could barely breathe. She came in and quickly deposited a glass of water next to me, which I didn’t if I should drink. Is China like Mexico? Am I supposed to avoid tap water? Was it tap water? I left the cup untouched, but was starting to wonder if I was supposed to let them know when I was done with the steam room, or if they were going to come get me. Just as I was reaching my limit and needed some air, she came in and ushered me into the next room.
There was a table in a small room that basically just fit the table. I figured Brian was wrong, and they weren’t going to take me to meet the boys, I was just having my massage here. Since my anxiety level was growing by the second, I was okay with that and just wanted this experience to end so that I could get back to my friends. And with that thought, she ripped the towel off of me and motioned for me to get onto the table. Once again naked and uncomfortable, I laid down, closed my eyes and made believe I was okay with this.
I heard her rustling around in the corner so I looked over to see her reaching into a bucket of what I can only assume was old, dirty Chinese water, she took out a sponge and started scrubbing me. The scrub got personal enough where I felt like I should have gotten a free meal. At one point she had her hand on my breast to steady it while she scrubbed my stomach. Massages were supposed to be relaxing. This was not relaxing, this was molestation. I guess I could have gotten up and left, but was unsure if this was a normal practice in China and it was merely my American ways that was completely uncomfortable with what was happening. Or perhaps it was having my vagina scrubbed by a stranger. Either.
When my scrub down ended, she held out a piece of paper and a pen. The small notecard had some Chinese writing on it, a happy face, a straight mouth face, and a sad face. Well, I was certainly sad. She kept motioning to me to circle one.
“I don’t know what this is,” I said pushing the card back at her. “You do it. You circle one.”
This went on for probably longer than it should have and I eventually just signed a happy face hoping that meant I could get the hell out of there. So back to the locker room we went and instead of being given my clothes I was given a spa top and pant outfit. But then they weren’t letting me leave the room. Money? Did they want a tip? Yes they did. As a sidebar, somewhere along the way, my brain that could once do calculus degraded to a point of struggling with basic math on most days. I’m always grateful there’s someone else around to score darts. So being anxious and flustered I just wasn’t able to figure out the exchange rate properly and think I tipped this woman entirely too much for the dirty water bath. But finally, she led me downstairs. At this point, I was shaking, scared, humiliated, you name it. Everything opposite of the good feelings that come with massages and spas—that was me.
When they led me back to my friends I found they sitting at a table in plush robes with beers and food in front of them looking like the two most relaxed people in the world.
“What the hell happened to you?” Brian asked.
“I’m drinking all of your beer, right now,” I said.
The Thai massage that followed was actually fantastic, but to this day, I still don’t know what the hell went on upstairs, and every woman Brian asked who had a massage in Shenzhen, never had an experience like that.
Only me.
My Little Dust Jacket
Since I'm sharing pieces of the book I've been working on, here's my favorite part—the artwork!
Excerpt from Part Two: It's Not a Tumor. Except, Yes, It Was.
Chapter Two: Day One of My New Life
The next day I went to practice despite they lack of doctor clearance. I was running around one of our standard practice runs around the local reservoir, but the workout was becoming nearly impossible. Every time I landed on my feet, a pain shot through my head like lightning. I had to stop and walk. Coach drove by and asked if I needed a ride. Feeling defeated, I accepted. I got back to the school, went through my book bag and took two more Tylenol.
The next run I had leave early—I had my M.R.I. appointment. I had no idea what to expect and that scared me, but with everyone’s assurance that this was only a precaution, I didn’t expect anything to be wrong. The technicians explained that I would be in a narrow tube and could not wear anything metal. The magnetic pull of the machine would rip any metal right off of me. There would be a drumming noise, but there was an intercom so they could talk to me at all times. Another technician came out beforehand to ask me a series of questions.
“Do you wake up with the headaches?”
“Yes.”
“Do they go away if you take Tylenol?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s good.”
I became certain that nothing was wrong.
The M.R.I was difficult because, as it turns out, I am claustrophobic. I imagined that this is what being in a casket must feel like (if one were to actually know what that feels like at the time). The drumming was more of a jackhammering construction worker drilling deep into the street, right over my head, which the technician said I'd get used to.
“One day you’ll be able to sleep right through these.”
I thought he was crazy.
“Doesn’t matter,” I thought, “I’m never going to come for another one of these anyway.”
As it turns out, I can, now, sleep right through them. I also pass out immediately in movie theaters. But that’s a different story.
Once it was over, I wanted them to tell me I was okay, but legally they aren’t allowed to say anything until a doctor reviews the films. They’d be mailed to the doctor and then someone would be in touch with me—within a few days. Frustrated I still didn’t get the final OK that I was all right, we headed home. My focus shifted back to running and I just wanted to get home in time for that evening’s practice. As soon as we hit the driveway I ran in the house to get ready. I went into the bathroom to put my hair up and wash my face. The phone rang.
My dad answered and I was hoping he wouldn't be long, or this wouldn’t be Uncle Jimmy needing help, because I needed to leave. I was sixteen and still dependent on my dad for mobility. He said only a few words and then became silent.
"Well I'd like a meeting with you to discuss this," he said.
Something was wrong, that was easy enough to tell by his voice. But, it was me. I knew this was about me. Something was wrong with me. I felt my body start to tense and a flutter of anxiety settled in my chest. I tried to convince myself that the call probably wasn’t even about me and I was overreacting. Besides, the tests were all just a precaution, I just needed glasses. That’s what everyone had said.
The second he got off of the phone, I asked him what was wrong. There was no answer. He paced the living room with a red face and his hands on his hips, holding in a breath. He looked like if he let that breath go, the entire world would fall apart. The two minutes that it took him to tell me felt like an hour. It could have even been thirty seconds, or ten. It was the longest pause I had ever experienced. He knew he had to tell me. He knew he had to break my heart only a few moments after his had been ripped out. I asked again.
“Oh God, give me a minute, it’s just a shock,” he said, still seeming like he hadn’t exhaled.“What?" I pleaded.“They found a tumor.”
Numbness, then blackness; or maybe it was the other way around. Those four words hit me like a truck. I suddenly felt the floor beneath me. I was on the floor, overwhelmed, trying to catch my breath and fruitlessly trying to wipe my cheeks dry with tear soaked hands. At first I didn’t know if I was really crying. For a few seconds it felt fake. Like, under the circumstances, I had to cry. Then my vision blurred and I could feel the tears roll down my face—but I couldn’t feel my legs.
“I’m going to die,” was all that ran through my head. I was too young. I wasn't ready. Not like this. Four days until school. Running. Future. The thoughts crashed together and filled up my mind. I didn't know what to do first. My dad went downstairs and left me alone.
High school had forced me into certain habits and ways of thinking, like any other adolescent. At the time, this was what life was and only looking back do you realize how simple life was then. I had become very good at balancing time between classes, running and my job at the ice cream shop. Aside from the dysfunctional home life, I was a teenager and life could be very superficial. I had a boyfriend, Dominic, and felt a large part of my life revolved around that relationship. But that life, that version of my life, had just ended.
The first thing I did to try to hold onto the life I had until ten minutes ago, was to call Dominic. What I hadn’t anticipated was that I wouldn’t be able to speak. I forced out a “Hello,” but couldn’t find much else beyond the tears. He asked me if I wanted him to come over and I managed to tell him I did.
I had to call to tell coach Mizzone. I still wanted to go to pratice that night and tried to think of a way to make that happen. I definitely didn’t want to go downstairs and join in whatever was going on down there. But the words left my mouth before I could even try to stop them.
“I can’t make it to practice tonight,” I said.
“Why?” he asked. “What did you find out?” I had to say it for the first time.
“I have a brain tumor.”
“Did they tell you anything else?”
“No,” I said, crying again.
“Call me back when you find out anything at all.”
“Yeah.”
The panic slowly but continuously began to grow inside of me. Maybe I could just focus on breathing. Just breathe. I went down stairs in a daze. I was told to sit down and relax, but I wanted to scream. I stumbled to the kitchen where I found my father telling my grandmother.
“Don't tell me that. Don't say that,” as she started to cry. “No, no, no,” my grandmother said over and over as if she could somehow with her words refuse to let it happen.
My cousin stood leaning against the counter next to the sink, speechless. I stood observing for a moment before they realized I was there. Seeing me, they tried to gather themselves. They straightened out their shirts, wiped their faces with their hands, like they could magically erase the redness of their eyes and the look on their faces. I imagined myself reading their minds, “Be strong for her, we’ll have time to be upset later.” I was floating through all of it. No matter how hard I tried, I could not be a part of the same reality.
The room felt uncomfortable and suffocatingly small, so I went outside, just in time to see Dom pulling into the driveway with his dad. He got out of the car and I collapsed into his arms.
“What is it, baby?” he asked softly.
He put his arms around me. As he hugged me, I cried into his shoulder, “I have a brain tumor.”
I clung to him, like he was a safety raft. If I could just hold him long enough this would end. We could just freeze this moment and I could just stay there, inside his arms.
But time would have none of that. The rest of the day blends together like a bad dream. My grandmother stood outside assuring me that I was too beautiful for anything to happen to me. It was a ridiculous notion, that almost made me angry because I wanted some solid reassurance that I was going to be okay, but I smiled.
My mother arrived amidst the confusion with her live-in boyfriend, later to be her second husband, Mike. I hugged her, as she cried in my grandmother’s living room. I remember her face, the helpless face of a mother who could do nothing to help her child. I found myself assuring her that it would be okay. It was hard to say, because I didn't believe it myself. Right then, I thought I was dying, so I might as well comfort everyone else. Everyone had an unsettling, calm demeanor, except my mother who cries hysterically in movies theaters, so there was no relaxing her now.
The tears had nearly sealed my eyes shut and my nose was shut down, adding an unneeded layer of discomfort on top of everything else. There wasn’t enough space in my head to think and my house seemed to be growing small enough to wear, like I had eaten the wrong mushroom and was growing at an alarming rate. I had to get out. Maybe I could run. Maybe I could just out run this. Leave it at the house, and I could run away and have it still be there, without me. There was this thing in my head trying to kill me and there was nothing I could do. There was nothing anyone could do. It wasn’t an arm or a leg that you could stare at and disassociate from—worst case, we cut off the appendage that is trying to kill me. No, it was my head. I definitely couldn’t cut off my head. The best I could do was to get out and get some fresh air. So Dominic and I went out for a walk.
We went to the church, where I had recently been confirmed as a Catholic in honor of my grandfather, but it was closed. A sign perhaps? Not sure where we were headed next, I subconsciously walked towards my friend Erica’s house, a path I hadn’t actually walked in years. She lived three streets above mine, but early on in our childhood we discovered a set of stairs that cut through the first street. They were narrow, cement stairs with a wooden fence and rusted railing on the right side and two houses on the left. I passed the first house and the big round pool in its backyard, its cover filled with water around the supporting bulge in the middle. As long as I could remember, I have never seen that pool open. It always had that same green cover with leaves, snow, and water taking their turns resting there with each season. We passed the second house that a friend once described to me as “periwinkle” and I had laughed at the strange new word.
Although I had been this way, maybe a thousand times, this time it was different. Everything I did that day was different; it may be the last time I was ever going to do them. It became one of the longest walks I ever took. Time slowed down, sped up and froze all at the same time. Questions began to flood my mind and I poured them out to my companion, who had not yet let out any sign that he, too, was terrified. He let me talk and held my hand.
“Can I not picture myself in the future because I’m not meant to be there? Is the future clear for you? Like, when you see yourself in twenty years, do you really see yourself or is it just some hazy illusion of what might be? Maybe I see it like that because it’s not really there. Why is this happening to me? Why now? Why this? God, am I going to die? I don’t want to die. I’m not ready.”
I searched for some place to ground my mind, and for a while I found it in reviewing the facts. I repeated what I knew to myself; I was number one on the cross country team, I was academically in the top ten of my class and I was dating one of the “popular” boys. All that was only one week away...but now it seemed like an unattainable time and place; myself an hour ago was impossible. And then I was lost again.
When we reached Erica’s house her father came to the door.
“Hey, stranger,” he said.
“Erica around?” I asked.
“Nope. How you doing?”
“Good, good. Can you just tell her I stopped by?”
“Of course.”
I had grown up splitting my time between her house and my own. Her father was my dad away from home. The images of my father holding in his pain flooded my head. I couldn’t do that to her father too; so I mustered up the energy I had and made believe I was fine. I left without saying a word about it; to come back to my house, where it was waiting for me.
When I got home I was still trying to make sense of some of it. All I could figure was that I was going to die. I have no recollection of where the next few hours of my life went. At some point, I stood with my father outside, in front of our house. We leaned against the old white Chevrolet we used to have before Tina totalled it. I stared at the two maples lining my yard. It was dusk and the air was growing cooler, another reminder of the impending school year...
...The hours eventually passed. Every now and then I would drift into an unsettled sleep. I had one vivid dream that night—it was my funeral. There were white bouquets spread all around the room. All of my friends were there and wearing black, a color none of them would ever wear, having grown up in the fluorescent eighties. I saw my father’s pale face. He was in shock.
“My baby. My baby,” he said, hunched over in a chair in the first row.
“Don’t cry Dad. I’m okay. Look Dad, I’m right here. I’m fine.”
But he wouldn’t acknowledge me. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t listen to me. He was staring directly in front of him, right through me, so I turned around to meet his gaze. There was a casket. I inched up to it, afraid of what I would find inside. When I peered in over the edge, I saw my body and I saw my chalk white face clearly, and then I understood.
The next day I went to practice despite they lack of doctor clearance. I was running around one of our standard practice runs around the local reservoir, but the workout was becoming nearly impossible. Every time I landed on my feet, a pain shot through my head like lightning. I had to stop and walk. Coach drove by and asked if I needed a ride. Feeling defeated, I accepted. I got back to the school, went through my book bag and took two more Tylenol.
The next run I had leave early—I had my M.R.I. appointment. I had no idea what to expect and that scared me, but with everyone’s assurance that this was only a precaution, I didn’t expect anything to be wrong. The technicians explained that I would be in a narrow tube and could not wear anything metal. The magnetic pull of the machine would rip any metal right off of me. There would be a drumming noise, but there was an intercom so they could talk to me at all times. Another technician came out beforehand to ask me a series of questions.
“Do you wake up with the headaches?”
“Yes.”
“Do they go away if you take Tylenol?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s good.”
I became certain that nothing was wrong.
The M.R.I was difficult because, as it turns out, I am claustrophobic. I imagined that this is what being in a casket must feel like (if one were to actually know what that feels like at the time). The drumming was more of a jackhammering construction worker drilling deep into the street, right over my head, which the technician said I'd get used to.
“One day you’ll be able to sleep right through these.”
I thought he was crazy.
“Doesn’t matter,” I thought, “I’m never going to come for another one of these anyway.”
As it turns out, I can, now, sleep right through them. I also pass out immediately in movie theaters. But that’s a different story.
Once it was over, I wanted them to tell me I was okay, but legally they aren’t allowed to say anything until a doctor reviews the films. They’d be mailed to the doctor and then someone would be in touch with me—within a few days. Frustrated I still didn’t get the final OK that I was all right, we headed home. My focus shifted back to running and I just wanted to get home in time for that evening’s practice. As soon as we hit the driveway I ran in the house to get ready. I went into the bathroom to put my hair up and wash my face. The phone rang.
My dad answered and I was hoping he wouldn't be long, or this wouldn’t be Uncle Jimmy needing help, because I needed to leave. I was sixteen and still dependent on my dad for mobility. He said only a few words and then became silent.
"Well I'd like a meeting with you to discuss this," he said.
Something was wrong, that was easy enough to tell by his voice. But, it was me. I knew this was about me. Something was wrong with me. I felt my body start to tense and a flutter of anxiety settled in my chest. I tried to convince myself that the call probably wasn’t even about me and I was overreacting. Besides, the tests were all just a precaution, I just needed glasses. That’s what everyone had said.
The second he got off of the phone, I asked him what was wrong. There was no answer. He paced the living room with a red face and his hands on his hips, holding in a breath. He looked like if he let that breath go, the entire world would fall apart. The two minutes that it took him to tell me felt like an hour. It could have even been thirty seconds, or ten. It was the longest pause I had ever experienced. He knew he had to tell me. He knew he had to break my heart only a few moments after his had been ripped out. I asked again.
“Oh God, give me a minute, it’s just a shock,” he said, still seeming like he hadn’t exhaled.“What?" I pleaded.“They found a tumor.”
Numbness, then blackness; or maybe it was the other way around. Those four words hit me like a truck. I suddenly felt the floor beneath me. I was on the floor, overwhelmed, trying to catch my breath and fruitlessly trying to wipe my cheeks dry with tear soaked hands. At first I didn’t know if I was really crying. For a few seconds it felt fake. Like, under the circumstances, I had to cry. Then my vision blurred and I could feel the tears roll down my face—but I couldn’t feel my legs.
“I’m going to die,” was all that ran through my head. I was too young. I wasn't ready. Not like this. Four days until school. Running. Future. The thoughts crashed together and filled up my mind. I didn't know what to do first. My dad went downstairs and left me alone.
High school had forced me into certain habits and ways of thinking, like any other adolescent. At the time, this was what life was and only looking back do you realize how simple life was then. I had become very good at balancing time between classes, running and my job at the ice cream shop. Aside from the dysfunctional home life, I was a teenager and life could be very superficial. I had a boyfriend, Dominic, and felt a large part of my life revolved around that relationship. But that life, that version of my life, had just ended.
The first thing I did to try to hold onto the life I had until ten minutes ago, was to call Dominic. What I hadn’t anticipated was that I wouldn’t be able to speak. I forced out a “Hello,” but couldn’t find much else beyond the tears. He asked me if I wanted him to come over and I managed to tell him I did.
I had to call to tell coach Mizzone. I still wanted to go to pratice that night and tried to think of a way to make that happen. I definitely didn’t want to go downstairs and join in whatever was going on down there. But the words left my mouth before I could even try to stop them.
“I can’t make it to practice tonight,” I said.
“Why?” he asked. “What did you find out?” I had to say it for the first time.
“I have a brain tumor.”
“Did they tell you anything else?”
“No,” I said, crying again.
“Call me back when you find out anything at all.”
“Yeah.”
The panic slowly but continuously began to grow inside of me. Maybe I could just focus on breathing. Just breathe. I went down stairs in a daze. I was told to sit down and relax, but I wanted to scream. I stumbled to the kitchen where I found my father telling my grandmother.
“Don't tell me that. Don't say that,” as she started to cry. “No, no, no,” my grandmother said over and over as if she could somehow with her words refuse to let it happen.
My cousin stood leaning against the counter next to the sink, speechless. I stood observing for a moment before they realized I was there. Seeing me, they tried to gather themselves. They straightened out their shirts, wiped their faces with their hands, like they could magically erase the redness of their eyes and the look on their faces. I imagined myself reading their minds, “Be strong for her, we’ll have time to be upset later.” I was floating through all of it. No matter how hard I tried, I could not be a part of the same reality.
The room felt uncomfortable and suffocatingly small, so I went outside, just in time to see Dom pulling into the driveway with his dad. He got out of the car and I collapsed into his arms.
“What is it, baby?” he asked softly.
He put his arms around me. As he hugged me, I cried into his shoulder, “I have a brain tumor.”
I clung to him, like he was a safety raft. If I could just hold him long enough this would end. We could just freeze this moment and I could just stay there, inside his arms.
But time would have none of that. The rest of the day blends together like a bad dream. My grandmother stood outside assuring me that I was too beautiful for anything to happen to me. It was a ridiculous notion, that almost made me angry because I wanted some solid reassurance that I was going to be okay, but I smiled.
My mother arrived amidst the confusion with her live-in boyfriend, later to be her second husband, Mike. I hugged her, as she cried in my grandmother’s living room. I remember her face, the helpless face of a mother who could do nothing to help her child. I found myself assuring her that it would be okay. It was hard to say, because I didn't believe it myself. Right then, I thought I was dying, so I might as well comfort everyone else. Everyone had an unsettling, calm demeanor, except my mother who cries hysterically in movies theaters, so there was no relaxing her now.
The tears had nearly sealed my eyes shut and my nose was shut down, adding an unneeded layer of discomfort on top of everything else. There wasn’t enough space in my head to think and my house seemed to be growing small enough to wear, like I had eaten the wrong mushroom and was growing at an alarming rate. I had to get out. Maybe I could run. Maybe I could just out run this. Leave it at the house, and I could run away and have it still be there, without me. There was this thing in my head trying to kill me and there was nothing I could do. There was nothing anyone could do. It wasn’t an arm or a leg that you could stare at and disassociate from—worst case, we cut off the appendage that is trying to kill me. No, it was my head. I definitely couldn’t cut off my head. The best I could do was to get out and get some fresh air. So Dominic and I went out for a walk.
We went to the church, where I had recently been confirmed as a Catholic in honor of my grandfather, but it was closed. A sign perhaps? Not sure where we were headed next, I subconsciously walked towards my friend Erica’s house, a path I hadn’t actually walked in years. She lived three streets above mine, but early on in our childhood we discovered a set of stairs that cut through the first street. They were narrow, cement stairs with a wooden fence and rusted railing on the right side and two houses on the left. I passed the first house and the big round pool in its backyard, its cover filled with water around the supporting bulge in the middle. As long as I could remember, I have never seen that pool open. It always had that same green cover with leaves, snow, and water taking their turns resting there with each season. We passed the second house that a friend once described to me as “periwinkle” and I had laughed at the strange new word.
Although I had been this way, maybe a thousand times, this time it was different. Everything I did that day was different; it may be the last time I was ever going to do them. It became one of the longest walks I ever took. Time slowed down, sped up and froze all at the same time. Questions began to flood my mind and I poured them out to my companion, who had not yet let out any sign that he, too, was terrified. He let me talk and held my hand.
“Can I not picture myself in the future because I’m not meant to be there? Is the future clear for you? Like, when you see yourself in twenty years, do you really see yourself or is it just some hazy illusion of what might be? Maybe I see it like that because it’s not really there. Why is this happening to me? Why now? Why this? God, am I going to die? I don’t want to die. I’m not ready.”
I searched for some place to ground my mind, and for a while I found it in reviewing the facts. I repeated what I knew to myself; I was number one on the cross country team, I was academically in the top ten of my class and I was dating one of the “popular” boys. All that was only one week away...but now it seemed like an unattainable time and place; myself an hour ago was impossible. And then I was lost again.
When we reached Erica’s house her father came to the door.
“Hey, stranger,” he said.
“Erica around?” I asked.
“Nope. How you doing?”
“Good, good. Can you just tell her I stopped by?”
“Of course.”
I had grown up splitting my time between her house and my own. Her father was my dad away from home. The images of my father holding in his pain flooded my head. I couldn’t do that to her father too; so I mustered up the energy I had and made believe I was fine. I left without saying a word about it; to come back to my house, where it was waiting for me.
When I got home I was still trying to make sense of some of it. All I could figure was that I was going to die. I have no recollection of where the next few hours of my life went. At some point, I stood with my father outside, in front of our house. We leaned against the old white Chevrolet we used to have before Tina totalled it. I stared at the two maples lining my yard. It was dusk and the air was growing cooler, another reminder of the impending school year...
...The hours eventually passed. Every now and then I would drift into an unsettled sleep. I had one vivid dream that night—it was my funeral. There were white bouquets spread all around the room. All of my friends were there and wearing black, a color none of them would ever wear, having grown up in the fluorescent eighties. I saw my father’s pale face. He was in shock.
“My baby. My baby,” he said, hunched over in a chair in the first row.
“Don’t cry Dad. I’m okay. Look Dad, I’m right here. I’m fine.”
But he wouldn’t acknowledge me. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t listen to me. He was staring directly in front of him, right through me, so I turned around to meet his gaze. There was a casket. I inched up to it, afraid of what I would find inside. When I peered in over the edge, I saw my body and I saw my chalk white face clearly, and then I understood.
Excerpt from Part One: The Beginning
Chapter One: All Because Two People Fell in Love, or at Least Had Sex
My parents met in a bar, I’m told, which seems fitting given the huge role alcohol has played in my life. My father was a musician, playing local bars for money. The cover tunes paid the bills, but beneath all of that he was a very talented singer/songwriter. If you look hard enough, you can still find his record floating around out there—Bob Minchin, Organized. He played the organ.
Dad used to bring me with him to set up his equipment at the Chandelier in Bayonne, New Jersey. I learned at a young age how to be really good at winding and packing up wires. When I was in college working as a photographer’s assistant, one photographer commented on how, out of all the assistants he’d had, I was the best at winding and packing up cords and wires.
When I was little, “knee high to a grasshopper,” as my grandmother would say, there was a made-for-TV movie out called “The Electric Grandmother.” My father changed the words to a song from its soundtrack and sang it to me all the time.
“Jennifer, Jennifer, eyes are so blue. Jennifer, Jennifer, Daddy loves you.”
I can still hear the melody. The day I realized he had taken it from the movie, I felt a little gypped, but still always appreciated being sung to sleep. My dad introduced me to music and I’ve loved it for as long as I can remember. He got me my first microphone, amplifier, guitar, keyboard, record player, record, cassette, compact disc player, and first CD. He gave me my first passion. But even before any of those things, Grandma says I used to stand in my playpen outside her window singing into a stick. Which begs several questions, one of which being where did I get a stick if I was in a playpen?
My mother was…well, probably not old enough to be in a bar when she met my father. I don’t know really anything about her at the time, except she had hair that went down to her butt.
“Remember Ma,” my dad would say, “how Trishe’s hair used to go down to her butt?”
“Oh my stars and garters,” she’d say. “It was long.”
My dad used to refer to her as “Trishe the fish on a dish.” It made no sense, but for some reason it always made her angry. He’d greet her with it sometimes when she picked me up on Friday nights.
They got married and did not live happily ever after. I’ve never seen a wedding picture of them and I definitely don’t remember them being together. I have seen her wedding dress, though. I like old things—antiques, used books, old towns—things with history. I am that daughter that would want to wear her mother’s wedding dress because it has a story. But, that dress is long gone. Knowing my parents as they are today, it seems like a very strange match. But they made me, so, there’s that.
I was sixteen when my mother remarried the first time. She needed a copy of the divorce papers as part of the marriage paperwork, and for some reason she didn’t have a copy. She was a successful sales person, so to this day, since I pair dress suits with being organized, it seems strange to me she hadn’t saved a copy somewhere. My father had, which is also strange, because he can’t remember where he puts anything. Dad gave me the documents to give to her. Curious, since I knew very little about my parents relationship, I read through them.
Lo and behold, they were married in June of 1979. I was born August 11, 1979. Oops. My dad said there had been a delay from getting things settled from his first marriage. I stand by “Oops.” This could very well explain why, when I was a small child, my mother would tell me things like, “Jennifer, if you ever get yourself ‘into trouble’ I will help you take care of it.” At six or seven, I didn't know what that meant. I just knew that my mother made me watch Lifetime movies I didn’t understand and she cried to them. She cried like someone had just told her that her puppy died.
Fast forward to a Thanksgiving visit to mother in Florida when I was 24. From across the breakfast bar she said, “Jennifer, I am so proud of you, for never getting yourself into trouble.” It all clicked. Who knew the proverbial bar was so low? I think the only solid piece of advice I ever got from her was to take a business class in college because once I entered “the real world” I would need it. Well, I never took a business class, but I also never got knocked up. Let’s call it a wash.
So my parents split and my father got main custody. My dad wrote a song that I have always assumed was about my mother, since he said she broke his heart. Mom used to play it for me on her then super high tech stereo system and sometimes I would cry because I wanted Mom and Dad to be a family. A few times, she even caught me crying and threatened to never let me listen to it again. But I loved it, so I made sure to cry only when she wasn’t in the room. I’ve figured it out in all different keys on the piano because I can remember the melody, but I’ve forgotten most of the words. “What am I gonna do without you baby?” I still get teary eyed thinking about it, but don’t tell my mother.
People always say that in New Jersey the courts favor the mother when it comes to divorce and custody, which leads to me think she willingly gave me up. That’s what my step-mother always told me. Maybe she never wanted me. Maybe she was just too young. She had me when she was 21, and at 31 I still can’t say I’m responsible enough to raise a child—but if the situation arose, I would never let her go.
My mother lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Beaver Brook Gardens and had turned the dining room into a bedroom for me. There were hanging plants spanning the front window, which was covered in a sheer curtain. In the summer, I loved the way the air conditioner would blow the curtains up into the air. I also loved the smell of her air conditioner.
She had a giant ceramic mouse that, for many years, was bigger than me. She had a walk-in closet that always fascinated me. Mom was a mystery, so I felt that her closet held clues to who she was. I would try on her shoes, look through her clothes, and smell the plastic that shrouded her dry-cleaned suits. One year I discovered that the closet was also where she would hide my Christmas presents. I walked in the closet and was greeted by a giant box of gifts. A purple pen with a green alien head on top was peeking over the top of the box. I was elated. Mom, not so much.
My bedroom had a bed with two storage drawers underneath, a dresser, and a closet jam-packed of God knows what. For a long time when I was small I liked to clean out the drawers under my bed and play in them. They were always filled with Barbie dolls. I never liked Barbie, but my great-grandmother seemed to buy me one for every occassion. I would sit in my drawer, Barbi’s strewn about the floor, and I would make believe I worked in a bank. Other little girls were playing dress up or playing with their imaginary friends—I imagined myself behind the counter of a bank making endless deposits and withdrawals for my imaginary customers.
I also had a three-foot-tall E.T. piggy bank at Mom’s apartment. My mother tells me that when she took me to see the movie, I cried and cried and cried at the end, yelling, “I don’t want E.T. to go home!” She bought me a movie poster and eventually the piggy bank. Problem was, at night the life-size E.T. scared the bejesus out of me and I could never sleep with it in my bedroom. So Mom would take it and put it in the living room so I could sleep peacefully. One weekend, for whatever reason, she lugged the changed-filled creature out to the front porch. By morning, it was gone. I’m not really sure what she thought would happen putting what must have been over $200 in change outside overnight, but E.T. was once again gone from my life, and this was no doubt followed by a weekend full of tears.
I now have a three foot tall E.T. stuffed animal that guards my car. I was given it years ago from a friend and my backseat seemed like a good place to keep him. He’s buckled in—safety first. E.T. is my co-pilot.
My parents met in a bar, I’m told, which seems fitting given the huge role alcohol has played in my life. My father was a musician, playing local bars for money. The cover tunes paid the bills, but beneath all of that he was a very talented singer/songwriter. If you look hard enough, you can still find his record floating around out there—Bob Minchin, Organized. He played the organ.
Dad used to bring me with him to set up his equipment at the Chandelier in Bayonne, New Jersey. I learned at a young age how to be really good at winding and packing up wires. When I was in college working as a photographer’s assistant, one photographer commented on how, out of all the assistants he’d had, I was the best at winding and packing up cords and wires.
When I was little, “knee high to a grasshopper,” as my grandmother would say, there was a made-for-TV movie out called “The Electric Grandmother.” My father changed the words to a song from its soundtrack and sang it to me all the time.
“Jennifer, Jennifer, eyes are so blue. Jennifer, Jennifer, Daddy loves you.”
I can still hear the melody. The day I realized he had taken it from the movie, I felt a little gypped, but still always appreciated being sung to sleep. My dad introduced me to music and I’ve loved it for as long as I can remember. He got me my first microphone, amplifier, guitar, keyboard, record player, record, cassette, compact disc player, and first CD. He gave me my first passion. But even before any of those things, Grandma says I used to stand in my playpen outside her window singing into a stick. Which begs several questions, one of which being where did I get a stick if I was in a playpen?
My mother was…well, probably not old enough to be in a bar when she met my father. I don’t know really anything about her at the time, except she had hair that went down to her butt.
“Remember Ma,” my dad would say, “how Trishe’s hair used to go down to her butt?”
“Oh my stars and garters,” she’d say. “It was long.”
My dad used to refer to her as “Trishe the fish on a dish.” It made no sense, but for some reason it always made her angry. He’d greet her with it sometimes when she picked me up on Friday nights.
They got married and did not live happily ever after. I’ve never seen a wedding picture of them and I definitely don’t remember them being together. I have seen her wedding dress, though. I like old things—antiques, used books, old towns—things with history. I am that daughter that would want to wear her mother’s wedding dress because it has a story. But, that dress is long gone. Knowing my parents as they are today, it seems like a very strange match. But they made me, so, there’s that.
I was sixteen when my mother remarried the first time. She needed a copy of the divorce papers as part of the marriage paperwork, and for some reason she didn’t have a copy. She was a successful sales person, so to this day, since I pair dress suits with being organized, it seems strange to me she hadn’t saved a copy somewhere. My father had, which is also strange, because he can’t remember where he puts anything. Dad gave me the documents to give to her. Curious, since I knew very little about my parents relationship, I read through them.
Lo and behold, they were married in June of 1979. I was born August 11, 1979. Oops. My dad said there had been a delay from getting things settled from his first marriage. I stand by “Oops.” This could very well explain why, when I was a small child, my mother would tell me things like, “Jennifer, if you ever get yourself ‘into trouble’ I will help you take care of it.” At six or seven, I didn't know what that meant. I just knew that my mother made me watch Lifetime movies I didn’t understand and she cried to them. She cried like someone had just told her that her puppy died.
Fast forward to a Thanksgiving visit to mother in Florida when I was 24. From across the breakfast bar she said, “Jennifer, I am so proud of you, for never getting yourself into trouble.” It all clicked. Who knew the proverbial bar was so low? I think the only solid piece of advice I ever got from her was to take a business class in college because once I entered “the real world” I would need it. Well, I never took a business class, but I also never got knocked up. Let’s call it a wash.
So my parents split and my father got main custody. My dad wrote a song that I have always assumed was about my mother, since he said she broke his heart. Mom used to play it for me on her then super high tech stereo system and sometimes I would cry because I wanted Mom and Dad to be a family. A few times, she even caught me crying and threatened to never let me listen to it again. But I loved it, so I made sure to cry only when she wasn’t in the room. I’ve figured it out in all different keys on the piano because I can remember the melody, but I’ve forgotten most of the words. “What am I gonna do without you baby?” I still get teary eyed thinking about it, but don’t tell my mother.
People always say that in New Jersey the courts favor the mother when it comes to divorce and custody, which leads to me think she willingly gave me up. That’s what my step-mother always told me. Maybe she never wanted me. Maybe she was just too young. She had me when she was 21, and at 31 I still can’t say I’m responsible enough to raise a child—but if the situation arose, I would never let her go.
My mother lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Beaver Brook Gardens and had turned the dining room into a bedroom for me. There were hanging plants spanning the front window, which was covered in a sheer curtain. In the summer, I loved the way the air conditioner would blow the curtains up into the air. I also loved the smell of her air conditioner.
She had a giant ceramic mouse that, for many years, was bigger than me. She had a walk-in closet that always fascinated me. Mom was a mystery, so I felt that her closet held clues to who she was. I would try on her shoes, look through her clothes, and smell the plastic that shrouded her dry-cleaned suits. One year I discovered that the closet was also where she would hide my Christmas presents. I walked in the closet and was greeted by a giant box of gifts. A purple pen with a green alien head on top was peeking over the top of the box. I was elated. Mom, not so much.
My bedroom had a bed with two storage drawers underneath, a dresser, and a closet jam-packed of God knows what. For a long time when I was small I liked to clean out the drawers under my bed and play in them. They were always filled with Barbie dolls. I never liked Barbie, but my great-grandmother seemed to buy me one for every occassion. I would sit in my drawer, Barbi’s strewn about the floor, and I would make believe I worked in a bank. Other little girls were playing dress up or playing with their imaginary friends—I imagined myself behind the counter of a bank making endless deposits and withdrawals for my imaginary customers.
I also had a three-foot-tall E.T. piggy bank at Mom’s apartment. My mother tells me that when she took me to see the movie, I cried and cried and cried at the end, yelling, “I don’t want E.T. to go home!” She bought me a movie poster and eventually the piggy bank. Problem was, at night the life-size E.T. scared the bejesus out of me and I could never sleep with it in my bedroom. So Mom would take it and put it in the living room so I could sleep peacefully. One weekend, for whatever reason, she lugged the changed-filled creature out to the front porch. By morning, it was gone. I’m not really sure what she thought would happen putting what must have been over $200 in change outside overnight, but E.T. was once again gone from my life, and this was no doubt followed by a weekend full of tears.
I now have a three foot tall E.T. stuffed animal that guards my car. I was given it years ago from a friend and my backseat seemed like a good place to keep him. He’s buckled in—safety first. E.T. is my co-pilot.
Jan 18, 2012
Excerpt from Part Three: Everything After
Chapter Two: There Are Things I Don't Remember
I don’t know if I have a terrible memory or have just gotten good at repressing things, creating a black hole that just eventually sucked most things in. My grandmother, on the other hand, constantly amazes me with her memory. She used to always tell me stories about things that happened before I was born, when I was “up in Heaven sucking on oranges.” As she gets older, her short-term memory continues to deteriorate, but the woman can still whip out an incredibly detailed story from when she was seven.
In college, an essay assignment inspired me to get some of these stories down, so I asked her to tell me a story. She sat across from me at her kitchen table, one hand holding a can of Budweiser, the other pulling at her lip, searching her eighty-three years for something interesting to say. She was wearing her white button-up Coca-Cola shirt with thin red vertical stripes that my uncle must have given her years ago, but she still wore all the time.
“My wedding day,” she said. “You couldn’t make story out of it though. Dad’s brother stood on our porch roof when I was coming in the house, it was August 16th, a hot, sweaty day, and he threw tapioca on me. Tap-i-o-ca! It all went down my dress, ‘cuz I had a queen-skin collar and it all went down my dress, all stuck in my...akk. What a mess I had. But you couldn’t make a story out of that. I was mad,” she says as her face flashes me a stern look to prove to me that it was not, in fact, a funny event. But I was still wondering what a queen-skin collar was.
After a slight pause she continues, “But he was studying to be a priest so I couldn’t holler at him. Hmm...let me see. I know a lot of funny stories about Grandpa that I didn’t think were funny at the time. We went on vacation, this is nothing to write about, we went on vacation, Kathy was only a little baby, a little one.
“Well, she could have been in a stroller. So we’re walking the boardwalk and Grandpa decided he’s going in for a beer. I had to wait on the boardwalk. He went in and started talking to somebody and forgot I was out on the boardwalk. But me being a damn fool, I sit there and waited a couple hours, just standing there in the hot sun, getting madder and madder, and when he came out, well you couldn’t holler at Grandpa ‘cuz he got mad at you. I said, ‘I’m so mad.’ He said, ‘Well if you’re mad, we’re going home.’ I didn’t want to go home. I could’ve killed him. A couple of hours I stood there waiting, started talking to a man with a beer and forgot I was standing there outside with the baby.
“That’s not funny. That’s not a funny story. Needless to say, we didn’t go home. I didn’t get a beer, though, either. But in them days, in them days, girls couldn’t go in the taverns like they do today.” After a pause she adds, “But it was on the boardwalk,” in a tone that made it clear she thought that particular social standard was on the ridiculous side.
“Now how many years ago was that? Kathy was only knee high to a grasshopper...I suppose you couldn’t write about that either.”
She always has a smile on her face when she tells a story, and you can see her drift off, back to whatever time it is she is talking about. Right then she was in a world sixty years ago when her husband of over fifty years was still alive.
“We had an old car going down to Seaside,” she continued, “we had this old car, this old black car, it was always running out of water because of the radiator. The boys and Grandpa had to go to the bathroom, so they peed in the derby. When he ran out of water, steam was all coming out of the radiator, he takes the derby full of pee and puts it in the radiator. He gets back on the highway and starts down the road again. Terrible. He was a nut really”...she trails off, still staring off into space and softly whispers, “really.”
I didn’t know what a derby was either.
I don’t know if I have a terrible memory or have just gotten good at repressing things, creating a black hole that just eventually sucked most things in. My grandmother, on the other hand, constantly amazes me with her memory. She used to always tell me stories about things that happened before I was born, when I was “up in Heaven sucking on oranges.” As she gets older, her short-term memory continues to deteriorate, but the woman can still whip out an incredibly detailed story from when she was seven.
In college, an essay assignment inspired me to get some of these stories down, so I asked her to tell me a story. She sat across from me at her kitchen table, one hand holding a can of Budweiser, the other pulling at her lip, searching her eighty-three years for something interesting to say. She was wearing her white button-up Coca-Cola shirt with thin red vertical stripes that my uncle must have given her years ago, but she still wore all the time.
“My wedding day,” she said. “You couldn’t make story out of it though. Dad’s brother stood on our porch roof when I was coming in the house, it was August 16th, a hot, sweaty day, and he threw tapioca on me. Tap-i-o-ca! It all went down my dress, ‘cuz I had a queen-skin collar and it all went down my dress, all stuck in my...akk. What a mess I had. But you couldn’t make a story out of that. I was mad,” she says as her face flashes me a stern look to prove to me that it was not, in fact, a funny event. But I was still wondering what a queen-skin collar was.
After a slight pause she continues, “But he was studying to be a priest so I couldn’t holler at him. Hmm...let me see. I know a lot of funny stories about Grandpa that I didn’t think were funny at the time. We went on vacation, this is nothing to write about, we went on vacation, Kathy was only a little baby, a little one.
“Well, she could have been in a stroller. So we’re walking the boardwalk and Grandpa decided he’s going in for a beer. I had to wait on the boardwalk. He went in and started talking to somebody and forgot I was out on the boardwalk. But me being a damn fool, I sit there and waited a couple hours, just standing there in the hot sun, getting madder and madder, and when he came out, well you couldn’t holler at Grandpa ‘cuz he got mad at you. I said, ‘I’m so mad.’ He said, ‘Well if you’re mad, we’re going home.’ I didn’t want to go home. I could’ve killed him. A couple of hours I stood there waiting, started talking to a man with a beer and forgot I was standing there outside with the baby.
“That’s not funny. That’s not a funny story. Needless to say, we didn’t go home. I didn’t get a beer, though, either. But in them days, in them days, girls couldn’t go in the taverns like they do today.” After a pause she adds, “But it was on the boardwalk,” in a tone that made it clear she thought that particular social standard was on the ridiculous side.
“Now how many years ago was that? Kathy was only knee high to a grasshopper...I suppose you couldn’t write about that either.”
She always has a smile on her face when she tells a story, and you can see her drift off, back to whatever time it is she is talking about. Right then she was in a world sixty years ago when her husband of over fifty years was still alive.
“We had an old car going down to Seaside,” she continued, “we had this old car, this old black car, it was always running out of water because of the radiator. The boys and Grandpa had to go to the bathroom, so they peed in the derby. When he ran out of water, steam was all coming out of the radiator, he takes the derby full of pee and puts it in the radiator. He gets back on the highway and starts down the road again. Terrible. He was a nut really”...she trails off, still staring off into space and softly whispers, “really.”
I didn’t know what a derby was either.
Excerpt from Part One: The Beginning
I started writing a book last year around this time. Well, late February 2011 to be more exact. I've been tinkering with thoughts of going back to it to finish it up, or at least move it along some more...which led me to deciding to post pieces. Because, hey, why not. So here's a bit from "Part 1: The Beginning, Chapter 2: Consider the Source."
My father and I were living with my grandparents in their two-family house. We had the upstairs, they the downstairs. The house was always there for the family. Before my dad moved in, my aunt was living upstairs. Over the years my cousin was in and out of the TV room/second bedroom in the back of the first floor, next to my grandparent’s bedroom.
There were thirteen stairs in the house that lead upstairs. I used to always count them, half hoping one day I would find out that I had counted wrong and there would be twelve or fourteen, that there would be something new I could discover, like the one time I found toys that had been hidden by my cousins in a hole under the carpeting in a corner of the stairs. But, there were always thirteen.
I liked spending time downstairs, especially in the winter because my grandparents had radiant heat and I loved the way it felt on my feet. So did the dogs my grandma had through the years. Grandma’s knick knacks always fascinated me. Resting on a hutch in the living room, the glass animals seemed like tiny treasures. One day I even asked her if I could have them when she died. I was a tactful little one.
My grandmother was a ceramics painter until her eyes became too bad for her to focus on the small details that brought everything she did to life. The house was filled with her creations, including an entire wall of ceramic heads in the TV room. It was this sea of meticulously decorated heads that stared at you when you watched TV or took a nap. Her pirate head stands out most clearly in my memory...the patch over his eye, the green parrot on his shoulder. Grandma was my earliest exposure to art.
She was also my first stylist, always trimming my hair and bangs for me when I needed it, until I got older and became a victim of the late-80’s/early-90’s permanant wave. Then I had to turn to a professional. I actually thought these faded away like New Kids on the Block, but just this morning a co-worker said she had just gone for one. I wonder if she listens to New Kids on the Block.
Grandma made me breakfast before school and ironed my clothes. She seemed to iron everything in those days, even her sheets. She’d say things like, “Well Heavens to Betsy.” When my dad worked nights, she would take care of me. In those early years, she was my mother.
She’s loved Budweiser for as long as I can remember, but even longer than that. She says that she had her first beer ever when she was seven on Coney Island, with her aunt. She will fight you fiercely if you tell her there’s no way that is possible. I made that mistake once.
“In them days,” she said, “people wouldn’t think twice about it. Not like today.”
She’s only had Scotch once, but promptly resumed her loyalty to Budweiser. She swears drinking beer is the only reason she is still alive. At the time of this writing, she is 94 years young.
“My sisters didn’t drink—dead,” she’d say. Grandma likes butterscotch on her ice cream and wears Jean Naté.
I’m pretty sure she’s also where I got my ability to be punctual 90 percent of the time and a sometimes overwhelming need for order. I was always fascinated by my grandparents’ dressers. Grandma’s had a level of organization that I loved and was baffled by. She had rows of hankerchiefs, sheets, and pillow cases neatly folded and in perfect rows. The dresser had a distinct scent that she said was from the smelling salts she kept in there. No one was ever fainting, to my recollection, so I don’t know why she would have them. Sometimes Grandma was a jokester, though, like the time she introduced me to garlic by telling me to take a big bite of a clove.
My grandfather was the entertainment. He would sing old songs, “If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife. Take it from my personal point of view—get an ugly girl to marry you.” He’d tell jokes, and take out his teeth at the table. He wore polo shirts, plaid pants, and bolo ties.
He drove a white 1977 Mercury with a blue top. He’d take Grams shopping, to the doctor, pick me up from school if I was sick, or drive down to Murph’s, the local bar. He drove that car until he was unable to drive anymore, and probably should have stopped way before that. His glasses were thick like Coke bottles and my grandmother would always talk about how he had to have special glasses made because his eyelashes were so long. That’s a trait I wouldn’t have minded inheriting.
As a kid, in the early days of my neat-freak-dom, during summer breaks from school, I would help Grandma dust. I used to wash my grandfather’s car and I’d make him cards with crayons and whatever paper I could find. Sometimes he would pay me. Now, I was a kid and was always happy to have money, but I always wondered if he thought I just wanted the cash. Well, maybe that’s why I cleaned his car, but certainly not why I made him cards. I loved him.
Grandpa used to always have a fabric hankerchief with him. Maybe using something that could be washed and reused was a product of the Depression Era, I don’t know. To me, it seemed as if he carried them around in his pockets forever, blowing his nose, then putting it back in his pocket. One summer while cleaning his car interior, I came across a hankerchief he had left in between the seats. I pulled it out to find that it was full of maggots. There’s definitely something to be said for disposable tissues.
Grandpa was social. So much so that whenever Jehovah’s Witnesses would come by selling their brand of religion, he would always let them in. It drove my Grandmother nuts. One summer day, after Grandpa had passed away, I came downstairs to find my Grandmother hiding behind the kitchen table.
“Um, what are you doing Grams?” I asked.
“Are they gone?”
“Who?”
“The Jehovah’s Witnesses. Your Grandfather would always let them in and they keep coming around.”
I looked out the front window and there was no one in sight.
“I think you’re good to get up now,” I told her and laughed.
My father and I were living with my grandparents in their two-family house. We had the upstairs, they the downstairs. The house was always there for the family. Before my dad moved in, my aunt was living upstairs. Over the years my cousin was in and out of the TV room/second bedroom in the back of the first floor, next to my grandparent’s bedroom.
There were thirteen stairs in the house that lead upstairs. I used to always count them, half hoping one day I would find out that I had counted wrong and there would be twelve or fourteen, that there would be something new I could discover, like the one time I found toys that had been hidden by my cousins in a hole under the carpeting in a corner of the stairs. But, there were always thirteen.
I liked spending time downstairs, especially in the winter because my grandparents had radiant heat and I loved the way it felt on my feet. So did the dogs my grandma had through the years. Grandma’s knick knacks always fascinated me. Resting on a hutch in the living room, the glass animals seemed like tiny treasures. One day I even asked her if I could have them when she died. I was a tactful little one.
My grandmother was a ceramics painter until her eyes became too bad for her to focus on the small details that brought everything she did to life. The house was filled with her creations, including an entire wall of ceramic heads in the TV room. It was this sea of meticulously decorated heads that stared at you when you watched TV or took a nap. Her pirate head stands out most clearly in my memory...the patch over his eye, the green parrot on his shoulder. Grandma was my earliest exposure to art.
She was also my first stylist, always trimming my hair and bangs for me when I needed it, until I got older and became a victim of the late-80’s/early-90’s permanant wave. Then I had to turn to a professional. I actually thought these faded away like New Kids on the Block, but just this morning a co-worker said she had just gone for one. I wonder if she listens to New Kids on the Block.
Grandma made me breakfast before school and ironed my clothes. She seemed to iron everything in those days, even her sheets. She’d say things like, “Well Heavens to Betsy.” When my dad worked nights, she would take care of me. In those early years, she was my mother.
She’s loved Budweiser for as long as I can remember, but even longer than that. She says that she had her first beer ever when she was seven on Coney Island, with her aunt. She will fight you fiercely if you tell her there’s no way that is possible. I made that mistake once.
“In them days,” she said, “people wouldn’t think twice about it. Not like today.”
She’s only had Scotch once, but promptly resumed her loyalty to Budweiser. She swears drinking beer is the only reason she is still alive. At the time of this writing, she is 94 years young.
“My sisters didn’t drink—dead,” she’d say. Grandma likes butterscotch on her ice cream and wears Jean Naté.
I’m pretty sure she’s also where I got my ability to be punctual 90 percent of the time and a sometimes overwhelming need for order. I was always fascinated by my grandparents’ dressers. Grandma’s had a level of organization that I loved and was baffled by. She had rows of hankerchiefs, sheets, and pillow cases neatly folded and in perfect rows. The dresser had a distinct scent that she said was from the smelling salts she kept in there. No one was ever fainting, to my recollection, so I don’t know why she would have them. Sometimes Grandma was a jokester, though, like the time she introduced me to garlic by telling me to take a big bite of a clove.
My grandfather was the entertainment. He would sing old songs, “If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife. Take it from my personal point of view—get an ugly girl to marry you.” He’d tell jokes, and take out his teeth at the table. He wore polo shirts, plaid pants, and bolo ties.
He drove a white 1977 Mercury with a blue top. He’d take Grams shopping, to the doctor, pick me up from school if I was sick, or drive down to Murph’s, the local bar. He drove that car until he was unable to drive anymore, and probably should have stopped way before that. His glasses were thick like Coke bottles and my grandmother would always talk about how he had to have special glasses made because his eyelashes were so long. That’s a trait I wouldn’t have minded inheriting.
As a kid, in the early days of my neat-freak-dom, during summer breaks from school, I would help Grandma dust. I used to wash my grandfather’s car and I’d make him cards with crayons and whatever paper I could find. Sometimes he would pay me. Now, I was a kid and was always happy to have money, but I always wondered if he thought I just wanted the cash. Well, maybe that’s why I cleaned his car, but certainly not why I made him cards. I loved him.
Grandpa used to always have a fabric hankerchief with him. Maybe using something that could be washed and reused was a product of the Depression Era, I don’t know. To me, it seemed as if he carried them around in his pockets forever, blowing his nose, then putting it back in his pocket. One summer while cleaning his car interior, I came across a hankerchief he had left in between the seats. I pulled it out to find that it was full of maggots. There’s definitely something to be said for disposable tissues.
Grandpa was social. So much so that whenever Jehovah’s Witnesses would come by selling their brand of religion, he would always let them in. It drove my Grandmother nuts. One summer day, after Grandpa had passed away, I came downstairs to find my Grandmother hiding behind the kitchen table.
“Um, what are you doing Grams?” I asked.
“Are they gone?”
“Who?”
“The Jehovah’s Witnesses. Your Grandfather would always let them in and they keep coming around.”
I looked out the front window and there was no one in sight.
“I think you’re good to get up now,” I told her and laughed.
Jan 11, 2012
Baby Prison Island
There's a new park in town, out on a pier, that from a distance looks like it's lined with barbed wire, so I've dubbed it "Baby Prison Island." It's actually quite nice, except for the giant slide and dark tube you have to climb up to get to it. Aunt Jen had to do it twice. Aunt Jen was a little sad about it. Anyways, here are my friend's gorgeous kids playing in said park.
Jan 5, 2012
24 Hours in Miami (Fuck You American Airlines)
As you can see from the last post, I recently spent some time in the gorgeous Turks and Caicos Islands. The problem was, the trip that I needed more than I need a Pepsi after taking too much Xanax at work, started a day late. Why? American effing Airlines. I think when (if) they come out of bankruptcy they should change their slogan to, "Eh, fuck it." Or maybe that's what it is now. So, here's what happened.
My friends and I headed to JFK (pretty sure the F here also stands for "fucking") at 2:30a.m. I was running on an hour of sleep, Sara two or three, and Ann the rockstar had just stayed up. The security check wasn't open yet when we arrived at 3:30a.m., but the employees were there delicately polishing the 3-1-1 sign, because, well, that's important.
I am a cranky air traveler, never mind trying to travel and function on one hour of sleep. I couldn't wait to get on the plane, pass out, and wake up in Miami. I got the first two...but I was woken up by the captain saying something to the tune of "mechanical failure" after we had taxied away from the jetway. Turns out, the de-icer wasn't working and after an hour of trying, they couldn't fix it. We would need to change planes. But, there was no jetway available so they intended on keeping us on the plane for awhile. Picturing the germs being spread around the plane in the recycled air and a missed connection looming on the horizon, I was quickly becoming unhappy.
The captain then told us a representative would be coming on board to discuss connections. This never happened. Once we were allowed off of the plane, we were told to NOT talk to the representatives, they had other things to do, we would have to call their 800 number for connection assistance. Customer service fail number one.
Once all 200 and some odd people filed off the plane and lined up to get checked into the new plane, with the representative yelling, "If you keep lining up on the wrong line, I cannot go to the other line to check you in. Do not speak to me, call the 800 number." Customer service fail number two. Logic fail number one.
Ann was on the phone with the airline seemingly getting nowhere, we were at the end of the line which was not moving, so I decided to go get some water. This is when I discovered there were no American Airlines employees at the beginning of the line to check people in, and the other rep was still unable to figure out how to walk away from the counter at the old gate and continued to tell people to not talk to her. Awesome.
So the reps on the phone told Ann (and later me when I called not willing to accept no help as an answer—after being on hold for 26 minutes) that they couldn't do anything over the phone, that we had to speak to someone at the airport. Customer service fail number three.
We finally boarded knowing there was no way we were making our connection and our trip was not going to be off to a good start. I boarded the plane after telling the rep how awful she was. I'm productive like that. As we were walking onto the plane, the flight attendant was announcing that, "in business class you will notice you have much more leg room on this aircraft than the last. You will be much more comfortable. In coach you'll notice, we added pillows and blankets." Well hell, I'm about to lose a day of my vacation but thank christ you gave us some pillows and blankets! Golly gee we were lucky!
As expected we landed in Miami well after our connecting flight had left. Next step was to visit the Rebooking Center—because American Airlines knows they are so awful they have an entire gate devoted to rebooking people. Again, awesome. We were told we were put on standby for the 6:40p.m. flight (it was now 11:30a.m.). The rep said we didn't have a good chance of getting on the plane but that we'd be in the first three standby spots. If we had to stay overnight, they would provide hotel rooms in what some bar goers would later compare to a hotel they had seen while at war in Baghdad.
We decided to take the chance and wait for the later flight. This gave us the opportunity to do several laps of the Miami airport, bar hop, and meet a guy who told us all about how medical marijuana is so much better than anything they had when he was young. He had recently tried to get high with his mother (this man was easily in his late 50's) but his mother was afraid, "old school" as he worded it. This guy's mom must be beaming with pride. We also got to take this picture:
 |
| That's right, eff you and your Christmas display American Airlines |
Sad and defeated we headed to the hotel that was so shady you needed a room key to even get in the elevator. The next morning we couldn't get out of there fast enough. We were finally headed to Turks and Caicos. Ann explained our entire ordeal to the ladies at the gate and they said it sounded horrible and while they couldn't upgrade us, they could get us a free drink on the plane. It was a start.
When it was time to board, the three of us were randomly selected by the same woman who noted how bad our trip sounded, to have our bags sized in the antiquated "here's how big your luggage should be" rack. Ours didn't fit, because no one's fits, because my feet don't even fit in that thing.
"This luggage has been with me on every flight," I told her. "It fits on the plane."
"It has nothing to do with the plane," she said.
"What does it have to do with?"
"Policy."
"What is that exactly?"
"You need to check your bag."
Red faced and cursing, I boarded the plane...only to see that the overhead spaces 1) had plenty of room and 2) contained bags much larger than mine. Customer service fail number five. Here's where I will give some props—the flight attendants on this leg of our trip listened to our story and gave us a lot of alcohol. Probably too much for the one hour and twenty minute flight. Now that's the way to start a vacation.
We did arrive safely in Turks and Caicos. It was beautiful and we all had an amazing time, but were sad we lost a day. (See previous blog post for how beautiful the island is.)
But that wouldn't be all for the illustrious American Airlines. On the flight home, which was a lunch time flight that offered meals for purchase—which made us quite happy because we hadn't eaten since breakfast—we were informed American Airlines, despite printing shiny new menus and even after the flight attendant read off the food that was available, had actually not loaded food onto the plane. Customer service fail number six.
I will leave you with this article from the New York Times:
American, which filed for bankruptcy-court reorganization in November, has struggled with its operation for several years. For the past five years, American has been among the worst three airlines at on-time performance, a key measure of an airline's operation since it impacts mishandled bags, bumped passengers and even canceled flights and customer complaints.
Last year, American was worst among major carriers at baggage handling and had the highest percentage of canceled flights. The rate at which American canceled flights was 70% higher than at United, Delta and the industry average for major airlines, which the DOT defines as those with more than $1 billion in operating revenue.
American, which replaced its top operations executive last month, says its aging fleet has led to increased cancellations because of more mechanical breakdowns. In addition, American said its hub cities seemed particularly plagued last year. A severe thunderstorm season last spring in the South took a toll, along with a tornado in St. Louis, a fuel-farm fire in Miami and a hailstorm in Dallas that damaged 50 jets.
The carrier has placed large orders for new replacement jets and stepped up baggage scanning to improve accuracy. It now hopes bankruptcy reorganization will allow the same kind of cost cutting and work-rule changes that have boosted operations at other airlines, said Jon Snook, American's vice president of operations planning and performance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)