I’ve been thinking a lot about this unfinished draft since I wrote about it on Sunday, and there’s no doubt in my mind that although a lot of other things occupy my time, this draft has been an overwhelming mental and emotional roadblock for me, and I really need to put it behind me. I’m not so naive that I think clicking “publish” will take away the weight in my heart that this piece represents, but it’s time for me to let this one go.
~~~
You were there again last night, standing off to the side in that dream I had about–what? I don’t even remember what it was about, just random bits of place and sound, and you. Always you. You have been in my dreams almost nightly since that Saturday in August, the Saturday before you took your leave, the Saturday I had THAT dream. That’s the dream I can’t forget. I’m willing to bet I never will.
I’m sure you’ve heard the stories. You know the ones where people swear their mother or grandfather or lifelong best friend was sitting at the kitchen table or standing in the dimly lit corner of the bedroom hours or days or weeks after they breathed their last. The survivors speak with sincere conviction, and they will talk of how serene they felt after the encounter, how they found peace and closure and the strength they needed to heal. Don’t mistake my tone for skepticism; I believe those people. I just hope I’m never one of them. I have always been very clear with my loved ones on this issue: I don’t want you to come back for a visit, because you would scare me right into the grave with you. Just musing about it right now makes the back of my neck prickle. I’ll miss you terribly, I have explained, but please don’t haunt me.
In all the dreams sinced that first one you have been a quiet figure at the table, a part of some nondescript crowd, a silent passenger in my car. Is there something you are trying to tell me? Because I’m not getting it. This standing around watching thing you’re doing–it’s lost on me. Say something already. It’s like that time we were having dinner at some Italian restaurant after Derek’s college graduation, and we were sitting at different tables, but every time I looked up you were burning a hole into my glass of Chardonnay, shaking your head in silent disapproval but saying nary a word. Of course, the silent treatment only lasted until we were in the car, and then I got the alcohol lecture. You never were one to hold your tongue. So spit it out. I’m listening.
The week before my grandmother died–wait, let’s cut the formality. We called her MaMa. The week before MaMa died my mom and sisters and I sat in the room where she slept and reexamined the pictures and keepsakes we’d been looking at our entire lives. We tucked some things away in our pockets, trying, I’m sure, to maintain some connection to this person who was so suddenly so vacant and absent. It’s what we do when someone is dying or has recently died: we handle their belongings, breathe in their fleeting scent, make every feeble attempt to wrap them around us even as they are departing. It’s been three months since we huddled over those photo albums and glass jars, and those few things we slipped into our pockets that week are the only things we’ve got left of MaMa, save what’s in our hearts and minds. For the last eight years she was married to someone who now has decided he’ll let us know when we can carry out that final ritual. At first it was all I could think about–what he was keeping from me, what he was denying my family. And then I started seeing her–in my dreams.
I guess you know there were a lot of things that went unsaid between us. I have been mad at you for a long time–eight years, to be exact. You left me when you married him, physically, but also in some other way I can’t explain very well. A part of you went away for good eight years ago, and I have missed that part of you terribly. It’s a tricky combination, this mixture of immense love and hurt and anger, more so now that I don’t see any chance of resolution. There’s the rub, see. I have always believed there would come a time when we would clear the bad air and set things right, but now, well, you see the problem. I came to square things away with you that last Sunday afternoon, to say my piece, to make sure you knew how much I loved you, how good my life had been because of you. But you were mostly already gone by then, and I have been dragging around these heavy chains of regret and sadness and, yes, the anger, it’s still there, ever since. If I knew how to break free I would, but for some reason I am convinced you are holding the key, and I don’t know how to get it from you.
She drove me crazy a lot of the time. She knew everything, everything, I tell you, and she repeated everything she knew. A lot. She was only 73, so I’m pretty sure she was just that way by nature and NOT because of her age. I can remember her arguing with my PaPa when I was little, and he knew everything, too, so for an introverted kid like me it was always best to find a seat out of the line of fire and keep an eye on the door, just in case I needed a quick escape.
And I’m not entirely sure, but I think you are almost certainly frowning at me. Is that for real, or am I just projecting my own disappointment in myself on your dream face? That’s the trouble with dreams, isn’t it? They can’t ever really be trusted, and yet, there they are, night after night.
I don’t remember everything I dream, but when I do, MaMa is part of what I remember. She is silent, but her presence is unmistakable. Actually, I sort of see her everywhere, but not in the creepy afterlife sense. Last week I was dusting the antique lantern she gave me last winter, the one my mom had given her for Christmas 40 years ago, and I discovered a post-it on the back with a message in her familiar scrawl: Hand-Me-Down Lantern. There is a large manila envelope in my hall closet filled with pictures and notes she wrote to me about her childhood; she sent it to me a few years ago, and every time I get something off the shelf where it rests it falls in the floor at my feet. Other reminders are not so obvious. There are the Tazo teabags on the shelf over the sink, which my aunt gave me for Christmas at MaMa’s house, and they remind me of the truly awful cup of tea she fixed me on Christmas Eve to help me stop coughing. There’s the dust ruffle on Mia’s crib, which my mother made while MaMa and I tag-team vacuumed my floor and sorted tiny baby clothes and listened to June Carter Cash’s last recording on my laptop. There’s the light fixture on the screened porch she helped me install, and the antique scotch bottle she went for every time she came here–she wanted to see how much it was worth and spent hours at my computer, no doubt trying to hook me up with Antiques Road Show. Sometimes when I’m missing her hard, so that the mere act of breathing in and out causes tears to rush into my eyes, I cannot look around my house without thinking of her: she sat right there, she left her purse in that chair (twice) and had to come all the way back for it, she once left this door open and my cat got out, she almost set that tree on fire trying to smoke out some insect’s nest, I was going to send her those pictures of Mia and never did, she rocked my baby on that end of the sofa, and here, on this end of the sofa, she once tried to comfort me because I was emotional over some dumb movie. And I turned away from her. Can you here my chains rattling?
That night–the night before you left us–I dreamed we were at the community center where our family reunions were held every year, and it was sort of like a reunion, except for the part where your casket was on that long table at the front of the room instead of the old family pictures and keepsakes. It was the end of your funeral, and we were leaving you there, walking toward the kitchen at the back of the room. The doors were wide open and light was pouring into the dim gray light of the cinder block room, and then the side door went dark and someone walked in. It was PaPa–before his kidneys failed, before he got that stagger in his step, before me, even. I recognized him from those pictures you kept in the bottom dresser drawer, all strong and thin and handsome, and he walked right past us, walked right up to the front of the room to where you were lying. Except you were standing by the table now, no casket beside you, no vacant look on your face, no death in your eyes. Your hair was longer, and dark like it used to be before you had to ”wash that gray right out,” and you were wearing a white dress I’d seen in a picture once. You reached out your arms to him, and he lifted you up and carried you out into the sunlight, and you were both gone before we all got outside. I woke the next morning feeling dazed and ethereal. That afternoon you were gone for real.
I’ve started this last paragraph seven or eight times. When I started writing I wasn’t sure where I’d end up. Turns out I’m still not sure. Maybe I thought the reflection would lend me some clarity, melt away some of these awful feelings, free me from the chains. Maybe it will over time, but for now I have to keep reminding myself: I have been missing her for three months and eight years, and now I’ll be missing her forever. This isn’t how it was supposed to be.
~~~
I originarlly started writing this piece in December of 2007, three months after my grandmother died and about two weeks before her second husband decided to allow us into their house to claim some of her belongings. A lot has changed since then. He is now on wife number 3, whom he married the April after my grandma died. Mia and I have moved into a new house. The hall closet and the couch and the tree and the screened porch and the chair and the teabags over the sink that I mention in this post as memory triggers are now memories themselves. In my attic are two plastic bins full of my grandma’s stuff, and I am gradually finding myself able to pull some of it out and examine it, ocassionally placing something on a shelf or on a wall in my new home. I don’t have those dreams every single night anymore, only every once in a while, but about once a month I dream that she has died all over again, and the events are so real that I wake up feeling like I did in those weeks just after she died, the grief so fresh and painful that I can hardly remember the motions required to get through the day.
A few things have not changed, however. I still remember every single detail of that prophetic dream, right down to where I was standing and who was standing next to me, and what we were wearing, and the way the light from the open door cast a fuzzy glow on my grandparents as they left us. I still run into reminders of MaMa on a daily basis, and sometimes I am able to smile about them, but most of the time they catch me so off guard that I am stunned into silence for hours. And if you listen closely, you can still hear my chains rattling, and I don’t know that I’ll ever find the key.
After offering Mia a bite of cheese omelette, which she politely removed from her mouth after a few chews:
Me: Oh honey, you like eggs. [aside] At least you have in the past.
Mia: Mommy, it’s not the past anymore.
From the dining room, where she had been warily watching me vacuum the kitchen:
Mia: Are you all finished?
Me: Yep.
Mia (with her hand on her chest): Shoo-wee, Mommy. That was a close one.
At random times in perfect context, she also frequently says the following phrases:
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“It’s as good as new!”
“It’s very important.”
“It was an accident. Do you forgive me?”*
“That’s awesome!”**
“That’s a GREAT idea, Mommy!”
And last night as we walked past Mia’s pediatrician’s house estate, which is on the opposite end of our street, and which I had pointed out to her on a walk several days ago, she said loudly, while our pediatrician’s husband and two of her kids were in the front yard, “THAT’S WHERE DR. L. LIVES!”
Note to self: shut the hell up in front of the kid.
*This one came directly from “Ni Hao, Kai-Lan.” No idea where she heard the rest of that stuff. No one has EVER made me laugh as hard as this kid does on a daily basis.
**Also from “Ni Hao, Kai-Lan.”
A question for you writers: do you ever read your own past work with an awful feeling in the pit of your stomach, a feeling that stems from the conviction that what you are reading–this stuff from a month or a year or two ago–is your best work, the most you are capable of, and you will never be able to write with such wit and skill again, so you might as well just take up another hobby, like cross stitchery or paint-by-number, because writing is clearly something you USED TO BE good at (back when you did not have to add an afterthought in parentheses to avoid ending a sentence in a preposition)?
I was just wondering. Because this morning, while lying in my bed with the cat sleeping soundly on my neck, I remembered a post I wrote a few years ago about what my cat and dog would say to each other if they could talk while I was at work. Semi-recent events (the death of the “talking” dog in that post) and current circumstances (the arrival of a new dog who is still finding her place with the cat who likes to crush my esophogeal passage) made me nostalgic about that post, so, using my mobile internet capabilities (so I wouldn’t disturb the cat, of course), I re-read that post, and about 10 others, and for about 22 seconds I felt inspired to rush down to the laptop and write. Write! Like a writer! With words and writing! Oh, calling that has eluded me! And then I turned on the computer and checked my Facebook and read some blogs on Google Reader and looked at some stuff on Twitter, and then Mia got up a whole hour early before I had even taken a drink of coffee, and for the rest of the day I have been grumpy and sullen, convinced that any writing skill I had before, back when I started this blog, and back when I was writing humorous stuff about being a teacher, and back in November when my beloved now-defunct Wondertime, may you rest in peace, offered me a writing gig HAS COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY DISAPPEARED.
Before I go on, I want you to know that I’m not asking any of you who might be reading this to praise my writing and boost my ego. That is so not my point, so don’t even go there. The truth is that I don’t really believe you can have an inherent skill that just “goes away,” and I’ve shamelessly said before that I believe writing is a skill that came packaged with my brain at birth. It’s something I’ve always excelled at and enjoyed, and I don’t think I can kill it with lack of use (the same cannot be said of my poor wilting biceps and quads, but that is a story for another day). And anyway, I write all the time. In my head. I am constantly thinking in complete sentences and paragraphs, crafting the description of an event, playing with words and phrases on an imaginary screen. A screen that sadly does not have a “publish” button. And so my point, which I do have, honestly, is that I don’t really think I’ve lost my creativity, or that I’m no longer a decent writer, but when I have time to be creative or put my skill to practice, I end up doing something else with my time (as well as the part of my brain that motivates me to be witty in print). Cue Facebook, Twitter, and iGoogle (and its many minions, including a Twitter gadget, a mini Facebook gadget, and Google Reader, so I don’t have to miss one of YOUR posts even as I ignore my own). So there’s that, and that’s a big deterrent, and I am not really sure I’m willing to give it up because of the access it allows me to so many people I never, ever see. But where to draw the line?
And then there is That Draft I Started Working on in December of 2007. Honestly, if I analyzed my blogging habits to date, I feel sure I would discover a marked decline that began around December of 2007. Remember that post I wrote about being a single drafter? And about how I have trouble starting something new before what I’m working on is complete? Well, take that trouble and multiply it by five billion when the incomplete piece is about the recurrent dreams I am having about my deceased grandmother, whose death still troubles me and whose last several years troubled me just as much. Every time I log into wordpress, thanks to the new and improved dashboard, I am reminded of that draft and its state of incompletion, and yet, because of the subject matter, I cannot bring myself to open it and finish it OR do away with it entirely, and so it hangs there in so many ways, rendering me incapable of giving myself over completely to new creativity and fresh ideas.
Even as I draw this ramble to a close–hurriedly, as I am already running late for a dinner gathering because I’ve spent entirely too much time on Facebook!–I feel like I’m at the same place I’ve been for the past several months: I want to write often like I used to, but I’m not sure how to make it happen. Do I give up Facebook and the like and use that time to write? Do I delete that draft and move on without it? I don’t think I have it in me to do either of those things, and thus far I haven’t found the draft’s ending yet so finishing it right up is not an option, either, so if you’re reading this and you have an idea, I’d sure like to hear it.
Since the “BEFORE” slideshow of my house has my address and some other personal information included, and since said slideshow would not allow me to right click and save the pictures to Flickr, I have password-protected the entire post. If you want to see it, email me, and if I actually KNOW YOU and you are not a creepy stalker, I’ll share the password.
I’d like to take you out to lunch, but I can’t seem to find a train that will take me to Heaven
Happy Birthday, Norma Jean. I miss you like crazy.
- Other than rope and duct tape, and believe me, I’ve considered both, does anyone have a suggestion for keeping a 2 year-old from slipping out of her 5-point car seat harness? Yes, it is snug, and yes, the clip is at chest level. She still finds a way to free her arms. I think she is removing them, but I can’t be sure.
- For those of you who live in older houses with plaster walls, I could use a voice or two of experience on hanging things and heating/cooling issues.
- I don’t really consider myself a new parent anymore, which means I am only slightly less of a mess about child-related situations. For example, I didn’t take my daughter to the ER the first time she hit her head on something after Natasha Richardson’s tragic death, I only THOUGHT ABOUT IT. See, I am so much more chill as a parent now. However, I am now parenting a child who used to love vegetables, who would try anything I put on her plate, and who ate a wide variety of foods, and who now seems to hate all edible substances that are not yogurt, apple sauce, breakfast cereal, or pasta. I am concerned about her lack of adventure as an eater, sure, but mostly I am concerned about her nutrition. Should I be?
One of my greatest weaknesses as a human being is that I allow things to accumulate for such ridiculous periods of time that I often never get around to dealing with them at all, because to address them beyond their natural deadline seems foolish to me, and so I continue to ignore them and have bad feelings about myself for ignoring them–unmailed birthday cards, for example (there is a stack on my desk right now, addressed but unsigned and unstamped), or clean laundry wrinkling in an array of plastic baskets that never gets folded and put away. In my own defense, I have never committed this crime of procrastination against really important life tasks, like parenting, work, and car maintenance (although I have been known to “recycle” the occasional stack of ungraded journals, and I have only ALMOST run out of gas). But I have, for several months now, been allowing this cycle of accumulating and ignoring to affect my writing and blogging, which means that the numerous posts and essays I should have been writing for months now have been reduced to bullets on a list, and like my 2003 holiday cards, which were mailed after Valentine’s Day 2004, they are yours to ponder.
- I am deeply unhappy with my job, the one I agonized over and leaped faithfully into, and I am taking some action, and soon I will discuss it openly here. Until then, I am completely and totally blaming this job for the absolute loss of creativity I have suffered lo these many months, and you should, too, and you should hope for the best on my behalf. And that is all I can say about that.
- I think someone from Angie.s Lis.t is stalking me. The very day after my painter finished painting the trim in my house (quite badly, I might add), I received an offer from A. L. to “help me find the best painter in my area.” This phenomenon was repeated after I had my carpet cleaned and my lawn mowed.
- Since February I have sold my house, made an offer on a house, terminated the contract on the latter, moved into temporary housing, closed on my house, made an offer on a second house, and closed on the new house. Here are some things I have learned throughout this process: 1) considering how small my house was (976 sf), I have a lot of crap; 2) you can only donate so much to Goodwill before they stop offering you a tax receipt; 3) you should always trust your weird feelings, because sometimes they mean something really significant, like ”Hey, this isn’t a house, it’s a pit of mold, rot and contagion”; 4) the ease with which wallpaper is removed is directly related to the skill and care with which said wallpaper was applied; 5) moving, living in temporary housing, and home repair/renovation directly impacts the potty training process; 6) sleep deprivation from sleeping on a shitty mattress really does mimic chronic fatigue syndrome (I read this somewhere but now cannot find it because, duh, I am suffering from major sleep deprivation from sleeping on a shitty mattress).
- You will notice, if you made it through my blindingly bulleted AND numbered list above, that I did not mention moving INTO the new house. That’s because I haven’t. I keep setting deadlines for the first sleep under the new roof–and missing them, because I have this dream of moving into a house that is, well, move-in ready. And right now it is so not move-in ready. This Friday is the day, though, I can feel it. There are sofas there now, and a bed in my room, and only a few unpacked boxes remain, so I am hopeful.
- My daughter, who began showing signs of a temper very early in life, has apparently made it her life’s work to perfect the tantrum. She is freakishly strong and can resist a diaper change or a car seat buckling with such force that I am often afraid my efforts to triumph in these areas will result in injury for one or both of us. She has also become a picky-at-best eater, loudly voicing her preferences (yogurt, apple sauce, and cheerios) and systematically ignoring nearly every other food in existence. She is also quite verbal now, and when presented with something she doesn’t want to do, she loudly proclaims, “I don’t want to ____ ANY-MOW-AH!” Activities that have filled that blank lately include, but are not limited to, bathing, wearing pajamas, wearing clothes, being safe (in the car seat), sitting (as opposed to standing) in a chair, eating anything resembling a vegetable, picking up her toys, having a wet diaper removed, having a dry diaper applied, allowing a grown-up to brush her teeth, getting a haircut, and having her uncut wild tangle of hair pinned back out of her eyes.
- Despite her, eh, high spirit, I am more in love with my little wild girl every single day. She is reaching an age where she is intentionally funny, and nothing tickles her more than making someone laugh. She knows the words to several songs and asks for them by name; her current favorites are Jason Mraz and Colby Caillat’s “Lucky,” Rob Thomas’s “Little Wonders,” and “Shake Your Booty” (K.C. and the Sunshine Band?). She is easily embarrassed when asked to perform on demand, but last night, without an ounce of reservation, she did a spontaneous little shimmy/booty shake/tree in the wind dance in front of 20 strangers at a restaurant. She is intensely curious and has a frighteningly good memory, and even though her reply to my “What do you say?” is often, “I don’t want to say please any-mow-ah,” she rarely forgets to say thank you, and if I am lucky enough to be at home when she wakes in the morning, she smiles and says, “Good morning, Mommy.”
- And finally, this post has been brought to you by the fine people at Pfi.zer, makers of Zo.loft, without which I would not be sitting calmly at my desk munching on tortilla chips and typing these bullets.
Conversation at our table over dinner, Tuesday, March 24, 2009:
Mia: I want some letters*!
Mommy: You have to eat some chicken first.
Mia: I want some letters!
Mommy: You can have some letters as soon as you eat some of your chicken.
Mia: I want some letters!
Mommy: Okay, eat ONE bite of chicken and you can have some letters.
Mia: (with a very serious face and creased brow) I will get in trouble if I eat chicken, Mommy.
Sigh. I think Mommy is in trouble.
*Trader Joe’s Cinnamon Schoolhouse Cookies
I never in my life thought it would be such a difficult thing to sit down at my computer and write something to post on this blog. Never. I’m not sure how long I’ve historically gone without posting in the four years I’ve been writing here–I could look, but I don’t really care–but I’m pretty sure those other gaps in contribution were nothing like this last one has been. In the weeks since my last appearance here, which was over a month ago, I have sold my house, purchased a house that turned out to be a den of mold and unseen disrepair, terminated contract on that house, purchased another house, vacated my home of almost 8 years, and moved into temporary housing. I have also run headfirst and hard into the realization that this job I now occupy is not a good fit for me, have applied for another job, and have started taking an anti-depressant. Good times, friends. Good times.
I’ll be honest with you about this post: I don’t even want to be writing it. I am already disgusted by how self-pitying it sounds. I am forcing myself to continue out of sheer desire to rediscover my writing self, who, according to writing practice theory, is not just going to show up unbidden like that muse I used to have in college when life was simple and cranking out a poem in an afternoon was a routine activity. Apparently I have to write in order to write. And even though I’ve said I was going to do just that about a dozen times on this very site, this time I am for real, because this time I can feel myself slipping into a place I don’t want to go, and I’m the only one who can stop me from falling. I knew there was trouble when I logged into WP last week and seriously considered deleting my blog. The alarms that sounded as that thought passed through my head were a big wake-up call, and I heard my sane voice state, well, sanely, “If you don’t want to abandon it, for God’s sake write something and make it worth the space it’s occupying.”
I am not making any public vows or promises to anyone but myself. I’m not pledging to post daily. I’m not even sure I can keep up any sort of daily writing practice outside of actual blogging. I’m just giving myself a nudge, a little push in the direction of a light I know I haven’t completely lost, even though it feels like it much of the time. I am not yet a permanent resident of the dark place, and I am hoping for the best.
