Only The Good Die Young

I want to tell you about poetry school. I want to be able to say, shyly, "Who woulda' thought, you know?" and you say, in sweetness, "I thought. I always thought" in the kind of way a dad would say. Except we would both know that you've been worried about my trajectory.

Teach me to change my oil, would ya? And while we're at it, can we conquer the country roads with a manual shift?

Let's sit on the porch and gossip about your neighbor lady, but the good gossip. The "can you believe how earnest she is about keeping strangers out of our yard?" gossip. And the "She's honestly still kicking" and "She never NOT talks about her surgery" gossip. We'd start every sentence with: "I mean, I'm not talking bad, but.." We'd finish (probably) a 12 pack of beer and feel fulled up with the meat of a good-goddamned autumn night.

Tell me the importance of measuring twice, cutting once. Tell me the mistakes you've made, that seemed big, but now are small.

Is everything permanent? If not, why does it seem like concrete has filled the little sacs in my lungs?

We should be crazy one night and buy expensive tickets to a rock and roll show. We can sit and eat up the night; poison it with sentiment. If you wanted, I'd let you tell me about when you fell in love with mom, what it was like in the 80s, the first time you heard Guns'N'Roses, why you stayed with mom, what it was like when your children were born... If you wanted, I'd listen all night, after the music died with the moon. Maybe we'd drink a little bourbon and I'd promise my first born would have your name. Girl or boy.

Maybe one day I'd call you and cry, but I'd call you because I just needed your voice to calm me, like it did when I was a tiny with an upturned nose. You'd say, "Did I ever tell you about that time we were in the abortion clinic - and I looked at your mom and your mom looked at me? Did I tell you what I said?" [Silence] "I said, 'I think we can do this,' and so we left." And that would appease me. That would reaffirm me that at least two people in the whole world, so big/so small, loved me before I even existed. And I'd stop crying. We'd probably make dinner plans. Afterwards, I'd help you weed the garden.

Anyway, I want to tell you about poetry school. But you're dead.

It Feels Like Independence Day

[This one was hard to write. It may be hard to read]

Once, when I was smaller, I was terrified that my aunt and uncle were going to beat someone up in the big blue van they had. And when I say "terrified", I mean that. Memories of the nervous nausea that comes along with that kind of anxiety never leaves you. And I knew they were serious. A few years before, while we were camping at the Prairie Creek Reservoir, they captured a mole around 10am and stabbed it to death with a screwdriver. I begged them. I remember begging them until I threw up to just let it live. They didn't listen; I locked myself in our pop-up camper and cried until I was delirious.

So, I knew they'd do it. This time I didn't protest.

They lived near the rumored gay park in Muncie where, if you were driving through the park at night and someone tapped his brakes at you, it was invitation to get to know each other better. And this just didn't sit well with them. I still don't know the origin of the hate they had. Queer Bashing became an obsession in many conversations and it all became super aggravated after school one day. My cousin came home and said that a man tried to coerce him into his car. Which, I believe happened. Instead of praising my cousin for staying strong and getting away, and thanking their lucky stars nothing happened to their son, my aunt and uncle were furious. This was the night that someone was going to get it real bad, pay for these sins and get dumped near the White River, bloody and broken. They had a plan and I was this little tiny thing, petrified for another living soul.

Yesterday I was reminded of this memory while I was running. Running affords me a lot of time to myself - and yesterday... yesterday, I felt free. Absolutely and stunningly free. Somehow I got out of terrible situations in my formative years unscathed - save my gnawing anxieties. Somehow, even as a tiny, I knew killing a mole with a screwdriver was a disgusting display of brute and possibly the deepest sin I had experienced.

Somehow, even though I was inundated with the gospel that homosexuality was wrong and needed to be punished, I never believed it. I never believed it and I never understood it.

Yesterday I was reminded that sometimes there's a resiliency that needs to be praised.
I was reminded that even though some people hate, some people love. Some people love. Some people love.

And how lucky I am for a million reasons.

I Said Things I Meant to Say

My papa tends to things in a way no-one else can.

He is making bat houses this spring. He raises worms. He feeds his birds. His flower garden is unparalleled. He adopts stray cats. He heals my heart whenever I'm anxiously sad. He makes sure his wife doesn't forget her evening pills. He is attentive when anyone is speaking. He loves to watch a good game of ping pong and always cheers for the winner. He might disagree, but it's always respectfully. He compliments servers. He sends me newspaper articles he thinks pertain to me. He lectures about life lessons (I listen).

He shares what he has - all the way from his worm-tea to bean dip to space on his houseboat in the summer, any summer. He fixes things, and paints things, and hangs things for my nena. He knows just when to hug me. He says the phrase, "grab and growl" before any meal. Sometimes, if we pray, he says: "So mote it be" at the end (which might be a freemason thing, but who knows? more importantly, who cares?) He listens to the Babs. He taught me to water-ski, to cry in public, to drive, to shoot free throws, to be kind and most importantly, to be happy no matter my circumstances.

I'm still really working on that last one. I suppose that's one that comes with age.

Have I told you lately that, basically, I'm the person I am because of him? I'm sure my dad was just like him - I never got a chance to know that. But if I'm anything, it's lucky. And loved.

you have been gone too long.

I heard the very last words my dad ever said. And just a few short hours after he said those words, I heard the last sounds my dad ever made.

Five houses down, banging bruises on my fleshy palms, trying to wake my grandparents in the still of the morning, I watched my childhood home burn down. I noticed the flag tear itself away from the pole and float with flames to the summer grass. I watched electrical lines bounce in front of the house with an ironic pep. And, probably 35 seconds before my beautiful papa opened the door to a world of grief, to his shock stricken granddaughter and his dead son, I heard a window break and my dad scream.

My dad's last breath was panicked and rushed and probably full of excruciating pain. I heard it all.

Remembering is funny. Some nights, like right now, everything is at my fingertips. When it plays through my mind, some parts are in fast forward, other things are caught in a silky breeze, slowed and luxuriously articulate. And, my brain will grab random memories and toss them in haphazardly - and I mean, random shit.

Once my dad had a friend over, I think his name was Gary, who tried his hardest to impress me. It almost worked until he broke an egg over our kitchen table trying to do an experiment I'm sure he saw in high school. It doesn't matter, what matters is: he broke the egg over the table in front of my dad who died in that kitchen near that table.

That memory means nothing. And everything.

If you're wondering, I was in the house. I crawled out the back door and ran five houses down.

The last words he said (the ones before the scream):

"I don't know what I'd do without you and your brother."

I'll be goddamned if he'll ever have to find out.

the time for sleep is now

I've been at a loss for words for days and days. I've been a hollowed out and brittle lump of human these past few weeks. I've been longing to do. Just do, you know? Can't really even describe what it is about the NOT doing that kills me in horrific ways. But I can't make myself do the doing. Do you even know what I mean?

So, I wanted to make a list of life changing/shattering events in chronological order, but decided against it. For a few reasons, really. No. 1. You already know if you read my posts. No. 2. It'd make me sad. Steering away from unnecessary sadness might be a good choice. But then, I think, is it unnecessary? I don't know. You guys don't either. Or maybe you do, but chances are, I won't listen.

This year will be great, I mean, I don't want to put a lot of pressure on 2013 - but I'm holding on to a weird hope that a new number in my dates will turn it all around. I shouldn't. Our millennium is just a teenager. And if I remember correctly, 13 was terrible for me. Acne and boys being mean and braces. Damn it. But, maybe this 13 year old, this beautiful, brand new teenager, will be a middle schooler who stands up for the bullied. And maybe he'll get voted captain of his intramural basketball team. He might be the kind of 13 year old who helps his grandma carry her groceries. You know? You just can never tell.

I'm here, guys. I'm here hoping for the best year yet.

only, I don't know how

I happen to be okay by myself. Which is shocking and unexpected news from someone who rates as a 99% extrovert on all the personality tests. (Let's be honest, I've only taken the Myers-Briggs: ENFJ, gentlemen.) But I'm okay alone. Let me clarify, though, to allow no room for error. I'm okay alone for a small amount of time. And by alone, I mean, surrounded by people. Because here I am on a Friday night, the husband is out of town and I tote my laptop to my favorite pizza place, order wine and listen to the hum of happy families eating. It's still alone, right? Just *not* alone. It's a seriously complicated paradox, but me? I'm okay with it.

It wasn't always so, as it is with every love story. In college I was not okay. The middle of my sophomore year I was a funeral march. Everything was devastating - I stayed in bed for hours and days and hours in a day and months more like, it was foreign to me. The soles of my feet were heavy with pain - why would I want to walk?

And here's the turn around: one night, locked in a study room in the upstairs of the library trying my little heart out to type a Philosophy paper, I called my Nena and cried and cried and cried about everything. I just kept sobbing "I'm so sad" over and over again. She waited until I took a breath (a gasp, a "MAN OVERBOARD" kind of thing) and she said calmly and seriously and full of the softness of a goddamned rose, she said: "pack your bags. I'm coming tonight."

That's the woman who helped build me.

That's the woman who had a major health scare this week - everything is fine, now. But Tuesday I was convinced that every breath I took, every red light I saw on my frantic drive down to her house was going to be forever stayed in my heart as a fucking curse.
Did I mention she's fine now?

She is. And I'm not sure I've ever been so thankful. Because here is the truth: my life is nothing without her joy. Because sharing a bottle of Merlot with her on the north porch in my hometown beats everything. Everything. She is mine and there is no simple way to say it. With her living, I live.

I know you understand.

I'll See You in Heaven (if you make the list)

There are big things to write about all the time. And mostly, I don't do it. There are HUGE things that should be completely unavoidable: meaning of life, ancient atoms forged in the sun, Buddha, Gandhi, Jesus..all being born from the same mother - you know, big stuff like that. Mostly, I'm all selfish and little and petty and "my problems this" and "my problems that".

Today is going to differ this way: I'm going to talk about good, solid, salt of the earth stuff. And it's going to revolve around my mom.

My mother was a tile setter - one of the first women in Indiana to move past her apprenticeship and become a full fledged Journeyman, you know, Master. Not kidding. She worked hard as fuck for the money she made; she'd haul bags of dry concrete mix up and down stairs, she'd work in the freezing cold or smouldering heat surrounded by construction men, who, more than once, taught my worldly mother a new colorful phrase or two. My mother essentially became "one of the guys" by working her hands to the bone.

Before that, she was a hairdresser. Before that, she was a teen mom. And before that she dropped out of high school to ran away to Texas, following a boy with blonde hair and big teeth.

She decided to have me, despite having made an appointment for an abortion. Can you believe that? She was actually IN THE WAITING ROOM before she and my dad decided, "you know, we can do this..." And they did do it, people. Here I am.

She has given me her work ethic. She taught me to fry an egg perfectly, in bacon grease. Devotion and loyalty and to utterly lose my shit when a bee or a mouse or a moth is around. I know, because of her, that I'm strong. Even though mostly I'm insane, I know I could take this world on. I have learned through observation that we can all move past our pasts. She was beat, emotionally and physically, and while I was young, she was better to me. She always told me she loved me. There wasn't ONE NIGHT that I spent with her that she didn't give me a ridiculous amount of "good night"s, and "sleep tight"s, and bed time kisses.

She instilled in me a serious drive to always have clean sheets. She never once told me I was ugly, or a whore, or stupid like her dad told her a lot. She only spanked me with a belt once. She let me listen to Nirvana and Violent Femmes and Green Day. She didn't ever give me permission to date that older boy, I mean, I did anyway - but I also got that from her.

So, what I'm saying is this: most of my life was good. The "men standing around with one foot on the truck's bumper drinking beer and women gathered around clucking about weather and kids and men" good. There were some hard times - some of my deepest wounds are from her, but some of my strongest characteristics were cut from her mold.

This post is for my mom - and if I'm ever a mom, I can't wait to tell my daughter about the good things her grandma has done.