Catch Up

I'm about to head to the A to visit a friend and while talking on the phone with said friend last night, I realize that I had not really met my obligations for writing, obligations I'd promised myself and in turn you guys - since you're the ones that are supposed to be holding me accountable. If I don't do this every day, it won't become the habit I want and need it to become. I've been out of practice of everyday writing. I need to get back in practice... so I practice...

Today's prompt:
"What do you take? You have ten minutes to evacuate your house forever! All family and pets have already escaped. Write about what you'd imagine yourself taking with you with only the limited time you have."

The first stop is the bedroom where I will scoop up my stuffed animals. They are all unique little animals that have a story behind them. Bear, my big stuffed brown teddy bear, has been with me since I was a senior in high school and has traveled with me everywhere (though he didn't make it to Africa because I was afraid I might lose him), Bayer, my little brown stuffed Teddy Bear that I got as a gift from a pen pal, Bunkey, who is a monkey dressed in a bunny suit that my husband bought me for Easter the year I demanded the Easter Basket my parents never gave me. It also included bubbles and chocolates, which has already been blown and eaten, as well as Porkchop, a pink pig that somehow has an expression when I take pictures of it.

The second stop would be my hard drive, which has ever episode from Doctor Who that has been released since 1963. Every episode from 63- now. I couldn't bear to have to try to get them all again.

While I'm in the office, where the hard drive resides, I will also try to find the David Bowie, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Beatles and John Schneider albums. I will give myself to the count of 15 to put my hands on these. In fact, I'm going to go organize the pile of records so that the pile on the right are the albums I want to keep.

Next, I will stop by my bar area to get the glasses Little Sister bought from me, then run to the living room. In the hallway is a photo of my husband and myself with the date of our wedding. I will pull that picture from the wall. I would grab every elephant from my mantle piece (there happens to be a lot, even though I don't collect them), the small box of photos that are also on the mantle piece, the wedding photos on the coffee table and the art that is hanging on the living room wall, a wedding gift from my husband's best friend to us.

If I had to leave anything off the list, it would be elephants.

The thing that has bothered me for most of my life is that I don't have photos. Our photographic memories were lost in a fire nearly 15 years ago. It is not one of my happiest thoughts. To know that there is no photographic reference to myself before the age of 19 is a bit depressing, although my grandparents have one of me giving Santa the decidedly evil eye and a little pendant picture of me as a child in overalls, flashing nip. I like taking that walk though the life of the people you know, seeing them as they were then, maybe coming to understand a bit about who they were and how that plays into how they are. It's an interesting tale, something that shines a light and obscures at the same time. So pictures are precious to me and would be the main thing worth saving.

Writing Prompt #2
"Who told you that you couldn't, and you really wanted to prove them wrong? Write about it."
I am not a bad student. Some people might actually say I'm a very good student. I don't go that far because learning once came very easy to me. I don't have a photographic memory, but I had a very good reference memory. If I could remember the clues, I could always find the answer. And the writing I had to do in high school... well, let's just say I was good enough that I could write a paper in homeroom for my first period class and get an A.

But math, that was another story.

I wouldn't have disliked math so much if it hadn't made me cry. Math made me cry huge, angry tears of frustration and represented the first C grade I was every presented with. Well, let me take that back. It's not math's fault. It's Algebra 2/Trig's fault. Algebra 2/Trig and my math teacher who hated me.

Now, when a student says a teacher hated them, they usually are instigators who have angered the authority figure in the classroom. I was not that person. I said yessir and yesma'am with a contriteness that would make my mother's traditional heart swell with pride. I turned in my school work, I asked questions, I tried to understand, I worked into the wee hours of the night and I never gave up. Yet at every turn, my teacher would ridicule my inability to understand the numbers because they were so different from the words I'd grown to know and love.

I remember one time in particular when we learned to do three dimensional graphing. I was working out the problem, graphing the solution and I saw that it formed a box. From that point on, I would plot the answer and if it didn't form a box, I would know that one of my equations was incorrect. It was my eureka moment! Filled with the enthusiasm of someone who knows something without any doubt, I walked around the class saying, "It forms a box! It forms a box!" Of course, my classmates did not pick up on this, nor did they understand what the hell I was talking about. So I picked the guy who eventually became our co-valedictorian and showed him what I was talking about. Suddenly, the light was in his eyes. We both went around the class bringing our fellow students into the light and our teacher came up to D and asked him how he'd figured it out. He pointed at me. She turned to look at me with more surprise than should have been in her face and said, "M figured it out? Well would you look at that!" (M is my maiden name). I could feel my face turning red, but I stood my ground. "Well, why don't you explain it to the whole class then," she said. I did. Everyone got it. It made me feel awesome.

Yeah, that was the only time.

At the end of the school year, when she was advising me on my classes for the next year, she recommended I take Statistics. I asked what she recommended for the other students. Pre-Calculus.

Damn. Pre-Calculus. I had to swallow hard on that one because I knew that Algebra 2/Trig had basically kicked my ass, but I wasn't going to be the only AP/Honor student not in Pre-Calculus.

So I told her I was going to take Pre-Calculus. She basically said, "It's your funeral." I passed Algebra 2/Trig with a C. I passed Pre-Calculus with an A and got a B in Calculus my 12th grad year. If any of you have ever taken calculus, you know they rely on letters and words much more than any other math. That, a pretty stellar teacher and someone behind me not believing in me pushed me to achieve more than I ever thought I would.

Sometimes I want to thank her for not liking me so much. I don't give her credit for pushing me in a reverse psychology kind of way. I don't have that kind of faith in her.

Pondering

I visited my grandmother tonight. My father's mother, who is not my grandmother, but is. I wanted to talk to her about searching for my family, but the same thing that stopped me telling my dad that I knew he wasn't my biological dad stopped me from mentioning anything to her.

I just wasn't sure if she wouldn't see it as an insult.

It wouldn't be an insult, of course, but it could easily be misconstrued as such. I know that my grandmother knows that she is not my grandmother, even though she is. I can't spend 34 years with her and her not feel something for me. I wonder if, since I've pulled away from her and my family (my fault, not there's - other than the vague feeling I've always, that I don't belong with them, even before my knowledge was complete), she believes that I've discovered the truth and she has begun the process of anticipating my rejection.

I've always felt a lot different from my family. I wonder if it was noticeable even then. Yes, I get picked on by my white husband that I enjoy more things from Stuff White People Like than he does, what with me not being white and all, but stick that in the ghetto and you get someone not only different from their family, but also from the community they were brought up in. That must come from somewhere. I've never let myself wonder where because what if I didn't find out the answers? What if I asked the questions and never got the answers? The questions (maybe even the answers) would be floating in the nether forever. It's been nearly 10 years since the death of my bio-dad. I've never seen a picture. I've been forced to subtract my mother's features from my face (and I am very like my mother) and try to put a face to the remaining features. What if I get unanswerable questions? What then?

I'm just gonna stop promising you things. You really do hold me accountable when I don't complete them.

Weekend Blogging

I'm rubbish at it.

Writing Prompt:

Write about the fastest ride you ever had, but describe only a few seconds of it...as though it was happening to slow motion."

I could feel my insides shifting and the soft hair of my pigtails moving across my neck. I could feel myself lifted from my seat on the soft cushion of the back seat of the ancient cadillac. I was too young to know to lift my hands as we careened down the steep hill. It was a once a year pleasure, a street my mother had found long ago, like a roller coaster, with hardly any life on it. It was a road, absent of homes, that lead to somewhere, but the where was not important.

We felt a bit like daredevils, my brother and I, as we raged down the road. If I were to remind my mother of this now, she would say it never happened. She's not the reckless kind anymore. As we came to the end of the dip and made our way up, my insides came crashing down, our bodies pushed down into the ugly green felt, our fingers gripping the edge of the seat. There were no true g-forces, but I could feel my face shifting ever so slightly on the upward momentum. My mom did not look back to see our fun. Our squeals of joy spoke for us.

Pieces of Me

Some of you know about the complicated relationship I have with my family.

My father, whom I had known my whole life, turned out not to be my biological father. Oh, and I hated him with a cold, emotional hatred for more than 12 years of my life, a hatred I've never been able to resurrect for anyone. Which is a good thing.

I am the alien child in my family. I have never been like them. I have acted as if I were one of them, but I am not. I do like my family, but they don't like the real me, so I have to be another me to them. It's just the way the world works, sometimes. Not that they wouldn't love me, it's just not satisfactory for them.

But then again, that family is not my own. They belong to my non-biological dad. Ahhh, see then, it begins to make sense.

My mother and I are exactly like each other in many ways. We both have a similar sense of humour and anger, although I think I'm a little more explosive than she is. We are both very stubborn. We are both very arrogant. The things that irritate me about her are things that I find irritating in myself.

I don't see my family often, even though I feel like I should see them more. I saw my grandmother (my non-bio dad's mom) the other day and she has lost a lot of weight. We may be going to her funeral soon. But that's morbid.

Yes, I have a complicated relationship with the family I know, but today, something made me consider looking up the family I don't know.

One of the girls in my office learned a couple of years ago that the man she'd been taught to believe was her dad was, in fact, not her dad. She also learned that the man who was her dad had only died a few months before she was told of his existence. Robbed of the ability to get to know him, she set out to know of him through talking to his (and by blood, her) relatives, visiting his grave site, etc. She walked away from that encounter fulfilled. Knowing about her father has helped her answer some of the pesky questions in her life, like why she was so different from the rest of her family.

I'm a big believer in nature vs. nurture, but from all accounts, my bio-dad was not a great guy. Of course, I did spend more than 12 years hating the man who reared me as his own and died never knowing that I knew he wasn't. But what questions do I have about myself that could be answered by knowing a family that has no idea I exist.

Is it an adventure I want to go on? Is it worth examining? I feel like I've filled in the gaps of my difference with being as me-like as possible. I owe my personality to accepting and rejecting things that other people think I should do. Do I have questions? Can they be answered? I don't know.

For years, my uncle was like my father. He asked about my schooling, he kept up with my awards, he watched a particular news because I worked for it at one time, he read all of my writing... Maybe my dad did the same thing, but he never told me, never talked about it. My bio-dad died in 2000, many miles from the city, from the state, in which I live. I want nothing to do with the personality of a man who, from all accounts, was an abusive, drug dealing thug. But I hear that his brother, my uncle, is a stand up guy. Why is it that I can't find the right father? Why is it always someone else who is willing to invest in me like a daughter?

So, I'm asking the questions now. What do you think? Should I try to find out about these people? Should I risk having another set of people that are disappointed because I'm not what they thought I would be after all the work they put into making me that way? Can I deal with another disappointing family? Is it worth it as a person? As a writer? What do y'all think?

Trying Not to Revert

Remembering to write is not as easy as you might think, even for someone that's a writer.

I mean, I'll eventually get words onto paper or finish a story at deadline, but remembering to visit this site to put down a few words... yeah, sometimes I forget.

Also, I've been a bit morose of late. Things get you down and it's hard to come back up from that. So you take part in pursuits that have no enduring value to the things you want to do just so that you're not reminded of life's shortcomings. I just have to remember, I'm not the first going through this, nor the last, and others are right there with me right now.

I can see why people become mommy bloggers. Kids do crazy things all the time. I've been fighting the urge to write about the cats - well, at least not write much. We have two cats. One is sweet and just wants to be cuddled. One is into everything and just want to know what "that" is. Oh yeah, "that" is everything. I want to get good video of her playing with her toys. It's the funniest thing that you will never care about.

Even though I have scaled back on some social activities to concentrate on writing, I'm still going out an awful lot. Well, this week, little sister is visiting, so I'll be out. That means I have to finish my articles because she's going to be taking up my non work times. Even though I'm going out a lot, most of the activities I engage in are nerd activities. Trivia on Tuesday and Wednesday nights at different bars. Cocktail Hour at different houses on Thursday nights. This week, a free concert Friday celebrating Anti-Valentine's Day (oh how I love this!), a friend is putting out a free album Wednesday, another friend is playing a small concert at a local bookstore on Tuesday - Not sure what is going on Saturday, but I'm pretty sure friends will try to get me to go out Thursday night to a college bar that I feel too old to even look at and Saturday night to sit in a smoke filled room drinking and listening to somebody's southern rock and screaming over the noise. I hope somebody brings a banjo.

The street I live on is putting on a block party and I think the Honey and his friends are going to play it. I don't think they're going to be the main form of entertainment, but it will be interesting to see him performing in front of a live audience. He's been in bands before. I know he doesn't have anxiety about it - I mean, no more than normal - and he must like the work or he wouldn't have let anyone else hear it. To me, it's fantastic. I already have the melodies of some of the songs in my head. I wish I could remember the words. He hasn't given me a copy, but then again, I haven't asked.

I got into a long conversation with a friend about our connection to Africa. She said she grew up feeling an emptiness that she felt might be filled with knowing her African roots. I said I never felt that calling, as if a part of myself were missing. If, by some miracle of records keeping I were to be able to actually trace my roots to country of origin, I would definitely want to see where I would have grown up should I have survived birth, but I think the complete me is what I am today. Even knowing my bio-dad's family wouldn't offer any form of completion for me. But I remember being on the Zambezi River with the wind flowing through my hair and being very touched by where I was, but also very satisfied with what I'd seen. Not too satisfied, mind you, but enough.

I had my tarot read the other day by a friend who's been dying to do so. The cards think we'll be okay. And who can't trust the cards?

Get Back

I've been up since 6:30am. I don't like getting up that early. I have a lot of writing to try to do today before 6pm - maybe even until midnight if it comes down to it, so I will be brief in this format.

I was so ready to go home yesterday and when I got home, I was so glad to be there that I didn't ever want to leave. For those of you who pray and for those of you who ask things of the universe, my one request is that this year I am successful. Ask that for me.

I'm not talking success as in my name is known worldwide - although that would be nice. I'm not even talking big publications in big... publications. I'm talking about able to support myself and my college captured husband solely on writing. We're working on him supporting me in the future. But now, let's work on me for support.

We knew when we took this step, it was going to be hard. We knew there would be times when we wouldn't have any money. But now we are looking at bills we didn't even know existed (poor record keeping. My bad) and having no money once all the monthly stuff is paid. I wish we could get a break. The thing that put us over was switching to a new school. Extra money we weren't expecting to pay... they waited until it was too late to make the switch back to the old school which wouldn't have been as expensive, although it would be a waste of time because nothing else he took would transfer... and we would have lost the "hold" money we had to pay once they accepted him into the school. It feels like a racket.

And as much as I talk about wanting to do something else, I'm so grateful for my job. I could be without a job. I know several people who are. I could have to try to do this all on half of my salary, which is what almost any other job would pay. I'm glad that I am coming up with ideas that may help us in the future, but I wish that those ideas could be paying for us now.

Can you see how much our financial woes are affecting me? So I worry and my hair doesn't grow and my skin gets dry and the area behind my eyes are tired and I find myself slipping into despair (yeah, that bad). And then I remember we've been able to survive with the help of friends and neighbors and occasionally, my mom. At least when my dad was alive, before the end, I could count on an infusion of $80 every couple of weeks because he'd won somebody's lottery. I'd buy an orange soda and sit in the car with him as if these were old times. They were not. Our landlord is awesome too. Not enough can be said about his generosity and kindness to us in our hard times.

Financially, the thing I miss the most is eating out. I need to start writing food reviews again. Maybe I can do them on my own and take them out of taxes next year. I still haven't tried the brunch at a couple of places. I hear there's a Bloody Mary bar (Make your own Bloody Mary's? Heaven. With lots of hot sauce) and they put hollandaise sauce on the omelets.

Oh well, eventually, we will get out of this hole and be the better for it. Maybe we will learn to be frugal people and will become people who learn to save our abundance.

Like Bringing Down a Skyscraper

We now own two cats. The first cat was a mutual decision. The second cat was a surprise to The Honey, a bit unwelcomed at first, as unasked for surprises often are, but now is part of the family.

KitKat and Twix. We love our candy bars.

KitKat is a beautiful Siamese, the sweetest cat in our house. She's very talkative (which is crazy cat lady speak for meows a lot), very snuggly and so very, very sweet. Twix, on the other hand, is very young. She can't sit still. She bounds around the house, her nails clicking on the wood parts. I've heard her hit her head on the metal part of our bed while running into our room. She can play with anything. Shiny crinkly things, balls with bells inside, dryer sheets, that spot on the floor. It's comical to watch her play with any of these objects, batting it around, jumping around it. We have so much fun watching her playing.

She was so little when we got her. Too old to be without her mom, but with the mom dead, someone had to take care of her and she was just too cute. Even now, more than a month after she came to the house, she is still so tiny, though her legs are really shooting out.

Last night, after we had gotten into bed, nice and cozy, we heard a loud crash. In the room. Only one culprit. We jump out of the bed. Our dresser is face down on the floor. We panic. We hope that Twix is not underneath it all. I'm pretty sure that's the most panicked I've even been. Luckily, she'd run free of the falling behemoth. Mike found her in the office, staring at our bedroom. Not just looking. Staring with deep concentration. It took her a while to come up to Mike. She didn't start crowding me in bed until much, much later that night. She's still very jumpy.

Once we realized that she was fine, we started laughing. How could that tiny, tiny kitten bring down our dresser. The Honey was incredulous. Twix is so small, he equated her taking down the dresser to the two of us knocking over a skyscraper. We laughed really hard because the imagery was funny and because we were really relieved that we hadn't lost our feline baby.

Where Do I Stand?

This is a topic I've been avoiding for about 3 years now, but it is something that is becoming very important since I've been communicating with my mom much more in the past few months.

Where do I stand with God.

Frankly, I have nothing against God. I kinda like the guy. Jesus is alright too. What I don't like is religion and unfortunately, love of God has to be tied up with some kind of religion in everyone's mind.

I told my mom about my financial problems and she asked me if I've prayed. I wanted to say, Well, duh! because I'm one of those people who actually like prayer. Where it goes, I don't know. What the results of the prayers are has been me in the straits I'm in, but I've never fallen through the gaps. It's definitely not my doing, though I do work hard to keep control of the strings I have my hands on, but so much is out of my control that I feel the prayer helps.

That's my mind, though. After 10 years of loving God but following religion, I finally had to throw off the shroud of religion. When I hear my mom telling me that if I follow God's teaching and if I do what He says in His Book (that's right, capital B), then I don't have to worry about my finances.

I already knew I didn't have to worry about my finances. We are two intelligent human beings that see what we are doing wrong and right and it is only in continuing the right and quelling the wrong that we have sustained ourselves. I think prayer is a comfort for me and in my head, I have this little thought that if there IS someone (something) listening and helping, they have grown used to my voice for the last 15 years and are offering some help. But it is a comfort and a superstition I'm okay with having.

I have a few books that I want to read that let me hold on to my belief in God while giving me the out to not have to go to church. It's a relief, actually, to not have to go to church. Though there are some things that having a church family could help. If I hadn't had a church family, I would never have gotten my first car for a dollar. Support for my writing endeavors also came from my church family, despite the curse words at times, because we were in the same family.

But what I do not miss is the recriminations and the "the only way it can be done, He can be followed, is the way I say it". If I were to ask my mom which "Book" she thought I should get my wisdom of God from, she would think it sacrilege to look anywhere but the Bible yet would firmly agree that the wisdom of God is in anything wise.

I can't win, so in my family, I'm not a Christian, just to make it easier. But one day I'm going to have to sit down and figure out where I actually stand, just for me.

Funerals Suck

I buried my dad Wednesday. I even cried. Understand, my relationship with my father was rocky at best, hate-filled at worst. It's a long story, filled with many things that will stay buried with him, but the turn around came when I introduced him to my husband.

Relationships are hard. Interracial relationships are even harder. Interracial relationships in the south... well, you get the picture. My father was not the most open-minded man in my younger days, so I didn't expect the meeting between him and my intended to go well. My dad met him, heard the news that we were engaged, and gave him a real handshake, talked to him a little and never changed a thing about who he was or how he acted. Many people in my family did change because of my husband's race, but the first person I expected to shun him did no such thing. For that, I will always honor my father.

Do you remember those Oreo cookie commercials where the dad feels like his adult daughter doesn't need him anymore? Then she lets him open her cookie for her to symbolize that she will never stop needing him... do you remember that? That was not my life. I stopped needing my father when I was about 10. I mean, c'mon, I needed him. I just got used to the fact that he wasn't going to be around. While I thought I was so tough and self reliant, I usually ended up with guy friends who just wanted to protect me, who would do anything for me. In a way, my friends became my family because what I needed as a child, as a person, I never got from my family but I always got from my friends - whether it was tough talk, laughs, hugs, enjoyment, validation, or forgiveness. I used to cry at those Oreo commercials because I wanted that relationship with my father. I wanted to need him.

When I found out he had cancer... well, I've already written about that. And when I heard he died, I was blank. Nothing. I wanted to cry and I wanted to feel nothing at the same time. When I was 19, I found out that the man I'd hated for 9 years was not my real father. While I should have felt relief, I suddenly realized what he had done for 19 years. Good or bad, he had made me feel like I was his child. It was the first grown up thought I'd ever had. In my mind, when I wished I was adopted, I'd come up with scenarios of how I would push my non-relation to him in his face, but when faced with the actuality of not being related to him, I found that I didn't want to do it. I struggled through 3 more years of trying to forgive him, never fully understanding why I felt I should. In that time, while seemingly being hit on by a much older man, I met someone who knew my biological father, who told me when he died a couple of years later. I'd already decided I wouldn't search for him and the possible half siblings I might have. Yet for a brief moment, when I heard the news, I felt sorrow. It was a sorrow for all the things that would never be possible.

Maybe that was what I felt this Wednesday as I looked down at his body for the last time, but surely something more. Surely more than what I felt for a man I never knew, I hope. And despite never knowing the man that brought me up and accepted me as his own, there is a piece of him that will always be a part of me. Maybe that is why I never told him that I knew. Maybe it is because I was a sucker for that daddy/daughter moment and I couldn't take it away from me by letting him know I knew the truth. Even as we looked at each other, knowing the truth until the day he died, we both kept quiet. Whatever the why, I did stand at his grave, watching them lower him down, and said goodbye. I am sad in ways I don't fully understand, maybe won't for a while. I cry when I remember, in strange places, like getting my battery replaced or on aisle 3 at Kroger. No reason, just crying. But I'll be okay.

He and my uncle are together again, only space separating them. And God bless the poor soul that has to lay between them for eternity.

Muthafucking Cancer

My dad has cancer. He has it because he drank and smoke most of his life. I have a conspiracy theory about his time in the Vietnam War, but we'll save that for another post.

I don't see him often. We were never really that close, but 2 years ago I lost my favourite uncle to cancer. It happened so fast that two months after I found out, he was dead. A year later, my dad was diagnosed. I didn't want the same thing to happen. So I started visiting my dad more often. The first visits were at the hospital, so depressing because he was sliding downhill while they delayed his chemotherapy to wait for insurance to cover him. He refused to talk because he thought talking might mess up his voicebox and the tracheotomy would be permanent. I believe he nearly died, but they started him on chemo and I got to see him doing well right before I left for Europe. I saw him a few more times and then right before and right after Africa in July/August, I saw him. He was thin, shockingly so. His voice rasped because he still had his trach. But he was getting better he was less morbid and his sense of humour was returning. I saw him one more time where he convinced me to take him to the store to play the lottery and he bought me a peach soda like I was his little girl.

I saw him again last night and he'd aged 30 years in a month's time. He sounded the same, he walked the same, but he looked like his dad, my grandfather - he looked like they were brothers and not father and son. I don't know what my face looked like when I saw him, but for any of you who know me, you know the emotion was plainly on my face.

I don't know how to be, but the resolve to visit my dad has grown. Which will make my grandmother happy, although she doesn't understand that my dad like people (especially people visiting) even less than my husband. So we'll see how it goes. I think, for the sake of the only good conversation my dad and I ever had, I will be there during the election to see if we will watch history together or if we will once again be disappointed.

Death makes me feel small. I feel it waiting, watching the proceedings. Death doesn't smile with glee, it just bides its time. It knows that this is inevitable. In a macabre sense, I know that my dad is ready, has been since he stopped being so morbid. He's been enjoying life, getting out, doing things that, I think, he always wanted to do. Being responsible for something when he was always afraid to before. Taking the time to get to know his children as people and not as, well, as children. We don't visit as much as my uncle's children did and still do because we didn't have the same kind of relationship. While my uncle's children were abandoned by divorce, my dad abandoned us while he was still there. Not all of it was his fault, but he is reaping the repercussions of not having a close relationship with any of us.

But we're growing and I hope we get to learn new things before Death decides it's time to go.