Tag: Fact

If she could do it, so can you

~ Christi ~ 2 Comments

My mom used to be afraid to go out. When I was a kid, until I was eight, she mostly stayed in the house. We lived in a small, suburban apartment, a short walk to a shopping center. We didn’t have a car. When I was really little, the farthest that my mom would go was a fire hydrant that was maybe 100 yards from our door. We used to call it the yellow thing.

“Want to walk to the yellow thing?” my mom would call.

“Yeah,” I’d say and jump up to get my shoes on. I remember being really excited about it.

That went on for years. My mom would need another adult to accompany her to the grocery store, drugstore, doctor’s office, or wherever she needed to go. We didn’t go out much.

Until I was about eight, my mom knew that she had a panic disorder, but I don’t think that she saw a therapist or took any medication for it. I do remember her keeping a jug of wine in the hall closet and having a glass whenever she did have to go out, any time of day.

As a kid, I didn’t think any of that was strange. I didn’t have much comparison, so I just accepted it. I even liked walking to the yellow thing.

One day, out of the blue, when I was about eight, my mom asked me if I wanted to go to Rite Aid to get a candy bar. “Really?” I asked. I couldn’t believe her. I skipped along beside her to the drugstore, practicing my whistling.

A few days later, my mom began seeing a doctor and got a prescription for Xanax. Now I’m not going to lie to you and tell you it was a wonder drug. It wasn’t. She traded her fear of going out for a habit of falling asleep anywhere – on the city bus, at a school assembly, even at the dinner table. I hated it. But my mom’s decision changed our lives. She was suddenly able to take me places – to the mall, to the library, on trips downtown. All of a sudden, my world expanded from the limits of our small apartment.

If my mom were around now, I’d ask her why she decided to change. Did she do it for me? What was it exactly that made her want to be different? What gave her the strength? As a kid, I was thrilled when my mom started venturing out. But now, as an adult and a parent, I can appreciate her choice so much more. It was hard, but she did it anyway. Thanks, Mom, for the great lesson.

I Don't Like Mondays Blog Hop

Go plant some bulbs

~ Christi

I planted my bulbs yesterday. Luckily I snatched up one of the last few sunny, tolerably cool days left this fall. In other words, perfect bulb-planting weather. I do it every year, and now that the kids are old enough to help me, it only takes an hour or so to plant a few hundred bulbs. Yeah, the soft Midwestern soil helps, too. You can practically dig a hole with a plastic spoon around here.

When I plant my bulbs, I am usually a little sad about wintertime. Winter is hard to look forward to, especially since it lasts for six months here. Planting bulbs is not my last chance to be outside – no, not with three kids. Kids need fresh air and exercise all year, so I find myself outside, at the park, building snowmen, having snowball fights, all winter long. No it’s no longer a last chance, but it is the last time until spring that I spend time outside because I want to.

Planting bulbs is a study in patience. The cold, leaf-covered ground looks like it would rather be left alone. Yesterday was sunny, but it could have just as easily been overcast, even rainy. I still would have been out there, planting. The bulbs themselves are ugly, and confusing – I can never quite tell which side should point up. Once I plant them, and replace the soil, everything looks the same as before I began. Afterward, no one would ever guess that I’d just planted 300 bulbs in the yard.

Then I’m left with a wait. Around here, the earliest bulbs don’t come up until April. That is five long, cold, dark months. All I have to tide myself over is a secret. A new life is overwintering in the snow-covered soil. Chances are I’ll forget all about those bulbs come December. By the time February rolls around it feels like the world will forever be gray. At least around here, winter kind of kills hope.

Sometime around the end of March, I usually find myself drawn outside almost against my will. By March, 30 degrees feels warm, and I can shed my down coat, hat, and boots and have a look around. Usually the kids notice the first green shoots before I do. But there they are, poking up from the muddy garden. It’s awesome.

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Now you see it, now you don’t

~ Christi ~ 9 Comments

There’s a chance that Geoff might get fired today. I really wish that I were joking, but I’m not. If you know me, know him, then you probably want to laugh anyway. You’d know how crazy it sounds. Geoff gets promoted, not fired. In fact, he has been promoted twice in three years. You’d know – without me having to tell you – how hard he works and how much he accomplishes. He’s a doer. It’s a challenge to find him not doing something even in his free time. Imagine how much he can accomplish when you throw money into the mix.

If you know Geoff, then you know what a nice guy he is, how agreeable he is. He rarely ever gets angry. It’s one of the things that I love most about him. You’d know that he’s really smart and that he has an uncanny ability to teach himself anything that he wants to know. You’d know that he is an innovator, always thinking of ways to make things work faster, more efficiently, no matter how small.

So, if you knew all of these things about him, would you believe that it would ever be possible for someone to turn all of Geoff’s skills, all of his gifts, against him? Could you believe someone who cast a light in such a way as to make his attributes look like flaws? Would you buy it that he is a liability, not an asset to his company?

Well, it happened.

How, you ask? Well I’m not positive, but I have a suspicion that emotions are to blame. I could go into the gritty details, but I don’t think it really matters. Suffice it to say that emotions are like a magician’s bag of tricks. In one set of hands, a dove flies out of a top hat. In another set, the top hat holds a cloud of gloomy black smoke. It’s a simple illusion, nothing more than a manipulation.

Just remember, not everything is as it seems. I’m half hoping that he does get fired today. Maybe it’s just the kind of motivation that I need to find my way back to the workforce. Maybe we can use the time off and severance money to take a trip. I hear Hawaii is nice this time of year.

Postscript: Geoff just texted me — he’s still employed. Whew. I think.

Maybe I should be a receptionist

~ Christi ~ 27 Comments

She had four different bottles of perfume in her purse. She used to do her makeup at her desk first thing in the morning even though she was pretty enough without it. First, she’d pull her long dark hair into a ponytail. She bubbled. She was recovering from a bout of lung disease and had given up smoking a few months earlier, but can’t you just see her sitting cross-legged at the end of the bar, a glass in front of her and a cigarette in her hand?

She was, what, maybe five years older than me? She hadn’t been to college but was thinking about starting. She was an excellent receptionist and everyone – lawyers, paralegals, clients – liked her, even me. She wasn’t my first girl crush, or my last. I never admitted anything to myself, just kept an admiring eye on her and took a lot of mental notes.

I worked hard that summer, the one after my sophomore year. I earned the money to buy my first car. I had just moved in with Geoff, into his crummy college apartment, and I was thrilled. I cleaned up that slovenly law office. I set to work in May determined to earn enough to buy myself a car by August.

I used to get to work before anyone else. I’d wait outside, reading, until the office opened at 7:30. Subtracting time for lunch, I worked ten-hour days, five days a week. I received time and a half for overtime. I milked every minute out of each day. I started out organizing and relocating all the files that lined halls, which made a good impression. I made a lot of progress in the first few weeks. I wanted everyone to know that I was doing a good job, and it worked.

By the third or fourth week, I slowed down. I bided my time, I chatted with my receptionist. She had a lot of first dates, and she did hang out at the bar. She was interesting. Sometimes she let me fill in at the phones for her while she went to lunch. I wish I could tell you that I did as good a job as her, but I didn’t. I was shy and uncomfortable. I didn’t bubble. I still wore the wrong clothes, had the wrong hair.

Nevertheless, I stuck it out. I worked my ten-hour days until August when the office manager told me that they couldn’t afford my overtime anymore. By then the office was immaculate. I was fine with it – I had $3,000 in the bank and a waiting boyfriend. I cut back to four days a week and bought an ‘83 Toyota Tercel with a manual transmission, which I learned to drive in one day.

The last few weeks, I put some money in the bank for gas and insurance payments. I bought some cute outfits and took some long lunches. A few of the lawyers asked me to stay, to not go back to school, but I refused. I liked my receptionist and as much as I wanted to be like her, I didn’t want to end up like her with a dead-end job and no degree. Do you know what I mean?

Let’s go for a ride

~ Christi ~ 1 Comment

For one whole summer, he drove me everywhere. He had a little blue Mazda that he had named the Smurf. We’d pick up friends and drive downtown to get coffee at Louie’s bookstore or to wander around Fell’s Point laughing at the drunk people. Sometimes we’d go have enormous sundaes at the fancy pastry shop, sometimes we just drove to the park and made out on the grass.

For one whole summer, I was important. I was interesting. I was fun. We had our own silly, secret language to prove it. We were “Smurfing it,” and everyone knew it. We communicated in strange, archaic, made-up words and when we talked it felt like we had always known each other. How could four months feel like a lifetime?

For that summer, we were always together but never alone. Our friends were our witnesses, they were our audience, and they created us. Without their eyes on us, we would have been boring, bored. With them, we were everything. We spoke in imaginary words and made out under blankets, and they observed us on the outskirts, soaking up our excess energy.

Without our friends, we took a few trips together. Alone, we researched obscure authors. We fought. We crammed too much into that summer. Alone, we flared and burned out.

Two decades have passed and it dawns on me. Aren’t we all always waiting for someone to pull up in their cool car and roll down the window, point a finger, and grin? “Get in. Let’s have some fun.” And we would. Aren’t we all waiting for someone to notice us, to take an interest, to make us feel special? Don’t we all want to attract an audience? Isn’t that what our lives are all about?

I Don't Like Mondays Blog Hop

Three nightmares and a revelation

~ Christi ~ 2 Comments

Three nightmares:

A baby, a ladder, a criminal

The baby has a slit neck, blood oozing, gruesome.

A set of ladders, in place of escalators, in the center of a glittering shopping mall. I avoid the climb down.

The criminal invades our home. He sits with my daughter as she draws, chatting with her, influencing her.

It’s risky. No matter how difficult it is for me, it’s time.

 

 

Do you remember?

~ Christi

When I picked you up, you asked me not to touch you.

“I’m not a huggy person,” you mumbled.

I drove you to the mall and bought you a CD. I didn’t know that it was the wrong thing to do. How differently this story might have turned out if we’d gone to a museum instead.

Back at home, we made lasagna for dinner and watched a movie. Your laughter was like music.

You spent the night on our futon, and in the morning you refused our chocolate chip waffles.

“Too sweet,” you said.

You were what, 16? You wore girly clothes and sneakers. You already knew your limits well and stayed away from your fences. I admire your awareness.

I tried to braid your hair in a zig-zag pattern, but I wasn’t yet a mom. I had no clue how to braid. I’m sorry.

We drove you home and waved goodbye as you went inside, not touching, not making future plans.

I failed you.

Your fences felt like brick walls to me and I didn’t try to climb them. You had my heart but I was scared of your fear and your anger. Your not-hugs felt like punishments and I’ve never liked to be punished.

So years passed and I wished things were different. I still refused to learn to climb.

You’re older now and I think I see your bricks beginning to crumble. I see the glimpses of light showing through the cracks. Maybe you’re lonely inside those walls. I’m going to build a fence of my own next to yours, almost but not quite touching. I’m going to share your cracked brick wall.

Let’s not hug, just hang out. Let’s laugh some more. It will be fun.

 

A memory

~ Christi
This was written by my niece, my sister’s daughter. It means a lot to me to have some of her beautiful, heartfelt writing here on my blog. Thanks, S.

As much as I try to deny it and force it back, I find myself thinking about you more and more lately. I spent years suppressing any thought that had to do with you, where you might be, who you could be doing it with, if you’re even alive. What should have been my first indicator that something was not quite right.I don’t remember how old I was, because so much happened in such a short period of time, it all kind of blurs. For a lot of the time I was with her growing up, she was in bed, and I do remember times when I would try to get her up to play with me, while my dad was hard at work, because all I wanted at that time was to be with my mom, even if I was always more of a daddy’s girl. Why isn’t mommy getting out of bed? I never knew until years later, but it did upset me at the time, and I guess my brother did a good job of keeping me distracted while he could.

Either way, I did get some time with her, when she felt good enough to get out of bed. She would creep into my room in the middle of the night, and now, at nearly 30, knowing what I do, I’m not sure if she was completely sober and just wanting to spend time with her little girl, or high on something and needing a junk food binge, but she didn’t want to be alone. My brother never wanted to go, yet I was always willing to climb into the car in my night gown, windows down, music blasting. She would take us up to High’s, a convenience store that was open all night, and I could pick out the candy bar of my choosing. We would keep this secret between us, because, of course, it would upset my dad to know, and I liked keeping secrets at that age. Having the special time with my mom that no one else did.

We would sneak back into the house like criminals in the night, making sure not to wake either of the boys snoozing upstairs, and she would tuck me back into my bed, singing “You Are My Sunshine” to me, in a version she had altered, and I would drift back to sleep.

That’s one of the few good memories I cling to, because not long after that, things went downhill fast. Emotional trauma, divorce, living two separate lives in two separate homes, I don’t really know how I made it this far. Sometimes, I feel her sickness creeping into my brain, like we did on those nights, in the form of my anxiety and depression, on the days when I feel like I can’t leave the house. Does the apple really fall far from the tree, especially when the tree is withered, and the apple gets knocked around and bruised by every branch it hits on the way down? Life is funny that way.

My five-year old won’t talk to grownups (or am I a good enough mom?)

~ Christi ~ 3 Comments

My son started kindergarten a few months ago. With the start of school came a strange new habit. He refuses to talk to grownups at school. Now, Gabe isn’t shy. When he was one, he made friends with parents at his big sister’s preschool, waving and calling “Hi!” down the hallway like a movie star in a fourth of July parade.  At home, he is verbal and emotionally aware. He fills me in on every detail of his day. He sings. He is a chatterbox with his friends’ parents.

Then kindergarten began and he won’t speak a word to any adult at school. When a grownup asks him a question, he freezes and his eyes glaze over. It’s disturbing bordering on frightening. And worse, nothing helps him snap out of it, not a joke, a hug, nothing.

He spent one recess period in the principal’s office, coloring, because he wouldn’t tell the recess helper where he left his sweatshirt. He had an accident a few weeks ago, his first since he was two, because he wouldn’t ask to use the bathroom. When he spilled his juice at snack time, he took his teacher by the hand and led her over to his desk to show her. Great, he’s adapting.

I won’t lie, I am concerned. I want Gabe to be respectful of adults. I don’t want him to turn into the weird kid at school. But his teacher asked me to stay positive, to make a big deal about his good behavior and not say too much about his silence. So I’m trying to stay calm. I’m no helicopter.  And I like that he’s picking up new ways to communicate. I feel a little guilty about never teaching him sign language as a baby. Man, I am such a slacker.

It’s all cool. I want him to learn to how to function in the world on his own. I know it’s not easy out there. He’s making up his own rules. And at least if he refuses to speak to adults, he’ll never end up on some therapist’s couch, complaining about how his mom never forced him to use his words.

I Don't Like Mondays Blog Hop

 

My motivation

~ Christi ~ 6 Comments

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I see you there

Glaring at me

Leering

Taunting

Brimming with hatred

Warning me not to come too close

Not to try

Because my story won’t fit on the shelf next to you.

Thirty-three words inspired by beasts in unexpected places.