We Will Begin Again

Jun 06 2013

my mother’s kitchen

Once, I walked in on my mother and my stepfather, sleeping in the early morning hours, naked. I don’t remember why I was there. Their bed was a mattress on the floor. My stepfather’s flabby white ass glared back at me, peeking above the blanket. That blanket had some sort of animal on it–an eagle, a bear, a wolf howling at the moon, something like that. He was the sort of man who would own a blanket like that. He had a large, bushy mustache. He owned a yellow Datsun. He collected beer bottles and knives. He was also the sort of man who instructed me each night to lie on my stomach so he could tell me a story. He would gently pull my pajama bottoms and underwear down, and lightly trace his fingers over my own bare ass before bed. I remember the heat and alarm that flushed through me, but I didn’t know what to say or do, so I said and did nothing.

I was maybe 7 or 8 years old when I walked in on he and my mother, and I recoiled at his surprising nakedness, and quickly and quietly shut the door. I felt like I had made some grave violation, that they would find out and punish me. But they simply slept on, and I went back to my bed and fell asleep. When I woke, I found them in the kitchen, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, like always. The smoke hung around their heads and mixed with the morning light.

In that kitchen, my mother taught me how to mix equal parts cinnamon into sugar, to spread butter onto warm toast, and pour the mixture over it. We shook the excess onto the plate, and dipped our fingers into the sweet brown powder and licked them. I could eat six slices of cinnamon bread at a time. I could eat a loaf. I was a heavy child, a voracious eater, and I always wanted more.

We did dishes together in that kitchen, filled water balloons for fights. My sister and brother and I spent hours building Play-doh and Lego creations at the big, round table. There’s something incongruous about the fact that my mother was a drug dealer whose life was unraveling, but that her kitchen counter featured matching ceramic canisters marked “Flour,” “White Sugar,” “Brown Sugar.” This was a novelty to me. She owned a spice rack, and she used her spice rack. Also a novelty.

The house the kitchen occupied was a shabby rental at the end of a dirt road in the hills above Lake Elsinore. The house was infested with carpenter ants and tarantulas. The tire swing in the back yard swung directly over a cliff. The kitchen, though, was clean, organized, inviting, safe. I only went to my mother’s house for sporadic weekend visits, and, once, a whole summer, over the course of three years. It was a temporary place to her, but it was the only place in which I ever remember her living. I have a lot of terrible memories of her, of that house, but none of them took place in the kitchen.

Photo credit: http://www.thekitchn.com/good-question-54-87349

Tagged childhood, drugs, kitchen, Lego, mother, parents, Play-doh, stepfather

May 24 2013

2 Comments

Ryan Bartlett

Walk-in Killer

Hold my holy rosary

(turn out the light)

Jilly’s talking in her sleep

(turn out the light)

I can hear him in the wall

He is looking for a door

–

I clean my closet everyday

(I know)

yet it always looks the same

(I know)

Mom gives seconds to complete

what never will be neat.

–

Diamond Bar’s not far away

(turn out the light)

We just past it Saturday

(turn out the light)

We just left the house too soon

He’s snuffing up my room

–

Hair is wavy as the heat

(turn out the light)

His mouth’s melted to my sheets

(turn out the light)

My wall’s not really a wall

I’m not even here at all

–

Jack Clark hit it into space

(I know)

See the look on Daddy’s face

(I know)

See the lines left on my wall

that were not there before

–

Sweat is on my trundle bed

(turn out the light)

that isn’t from my head

(turn out the light)

Eyes the size of time and space

are sucking up my face

–

Police sketch stapled to my wall

(I know)

Matt just saw him in our hall

(I know)

He just opened up a door

that wasn’t there before.

May 23 2013

Prince Carlos’s Poison (1568)

I keep falling down the stairs

especially those that are not there

Father said he’d save me first

but my best became his worst

–

Silent William, you had no choice

to fill me up to find your voice

Prince of Orange/Oh Prince of Fight

I’ll drink the day right from your night

–

Poison ends us all the same

Life is just like iocane

We choke loud on pregnant words

Ones that hemmorage do not surge

–

Mother, My Queen…Don’t cripple me just yet

just yet just yet

–

I could be your miracle

My brain reverses life cycles

I could darn your butchered heart

a broken clock turned brand new art

–

I could be your peace retreat

wind you back to be pretty

I could be all that you’ve reaped

Death won’t part us/help us sleep

–

I could teach you not to grieve

I’ve got clots no one can see

Yes, the blood we should not break

is the blood you have to take.

–

Father, my king…Don’t love us like this yet

just yet just yet

May 21 2013

2 Comments

Angela Cardinale Bartlett

politics is prayer

When I lived in Ohio for a couple of years as a kid, a tornado touched down in nearby Willoughby. Since I was from Southern California, I was accustomed to the threat of the Big One, and earthquakes still don’t frighten me, though they should. But a tornado, a spire of wind and debris shooting hundreds of miles per hour from the sky? That was terrifying. No one died in Willoughby’s tornado. I glimpsed a little corner of damage in the town. I was informed about the safety of basements.

Yesterdays tornado in Oklahoma was unprecedented. Winds hit 300 miles per hour, and a two-mile wide monster barreled down on a school. People, many of them children, are dead, and many more are injured, and others may still be trapped. I am so sorry for the families of the victims, for the victims themselves.

I know people get angry when others get political after a tragedy. But I think it is healthy to get political, so long as you aren’t exploitative (which is a fine line to walk sometimes). People should mourn and pray and love each other and do everything they can to find some comfort right now. Maybe there is nothing we can do to prevent this in the future, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, that we shouldn’t ask.

I was reading through The New York Times comment section this morning and wanted to share these two:

“I am a school psychologist for Moore Public Schools. I escaped with my life, but as I write this, I fear for my students. My heart aches for the parents who are left with the knowledge that their child died alone in the debris of not only one of the poorest schools in the Moore Public School system, but one of the the most poorly constructed.

I am angry tonight. After our recent record of devastating tornadoes and lives lost, there is no excuse for a public school in a tornado-prone area not to have been retrofitted with a “safe room” large enough to accommodate all occupants. Unlike past years when tornadoes were more of a nuisance than a threat in Oklahoma, we no longer have the luxury of scurrying to a closet or interior room for safety. Meterologists tell us unequivocally to go underground, go to a safe room, or basement, and if none of these is an option, to get in the car and drive away from the tornado.

Thanks to our meterologists, we have plenty of warning of impending tornadoes. The people of Moore had at least half an hour to an hour to get to safety. However, the children and teachers who died today had no such option. Sadly, they were forced to take shelter in the sheetrocked hallways of buildings shabbily built in the 1960s. No basement. No safe room. A death trap. Perhaps it is time to rethink our priorities and begin re-directing money toward, not only better educating our children, but keeping them safe in school–and not just from crazed gunmen.”

-Angela, Oklahoma

“This is the time for politics – politics are costing lives and livings – to suppress comments about politics is to suppress a discussion of how lives could be saved. Those of us who recognize this and press for political reason are those who are most likely to have a positive effect on future horrors. Politics has created this problem and is the only means by which it can be effectively addressed. Politics is prayer.”

-Jennifer, North Carolina

Donate here:

Tagged earthquakes, natural disasters, New York Times, Ohio, Oklahoma, politics, tornado

May 20 2013

1 Comment

Angela Cardinale Bartlett

liebster award

This blog has now been nominated three times for the Liebster Award, which is given to deserving blogs with fewer than 200 followers, most recently by Looking Up With Down Syndrome, and once upon a time by my good friend Anthony at My Gay Mom.

There are several contributors to this blog, so on their behalf, I say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We are all together right now, bowing in our sweatpants via satellite.

Since I currently have a whole bunch of work to do and it is late in the evening and I enjoy not sleeping after 11pm or so, I have decided to finally accept this glorious award and bestow it upon others. Here are the rules.

1.Thank the Liebster-winning Blogger who nominated you and link back to their blog. If you don’t thank me, you are dead to me.

2. Post 11 interesting facts about yourself.

Here are mine. I’m sorry they aren’t very interesting.

1. I know the difference between a choke hold that will simply make you pass out and a choke hold that will kill you.

2. When I was pregnant, I cried at that movie 5o First Dates with Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler.

3. I used to be a sign holder, a dancing waitress at Denny’s, and a construction day laborer.

4. I am exceedingly self-righteous.

5. I attended six different schools by sixth grade.We were not in the military.

6. I have been punched in the mouth more than once.

7. I’m really skilled at the lost art of rollerblading.

8. I’ve smoked pot a handful of times, and I don’t think I ever did it right.

9. I don’t understand wine drinking culture.

10. I get nervous when there is too high a concentration of rich white people in one location (which may explain #9).

11. I am a horrible liar.

3. Answer the 11 questions your nominator asked.

Here are her questions, with my answers.

Why do you blog? Writing helps me work things out. It’s a compulsion, like many things that I do. And I care less and less about being an officially published writer than actually doing the writing itself, on a regular basis.
Aside from me and my fabulous blog, what are you passionate about? I am passionate about being a parent, politics, reading, writing, running, music, moving, learning, growing, becoming a better person, slowing my crazy brain down occasionally.
Myself excluded, who do you admire? I admire my kids. They both have had some significant developmental delays, but they keep kicking ass and surprising me. They are two of the most interesting people I know. I admire my husband because he has so much more compassion than I am capable of. He also makes up way better stories and does an uncanny Pillsbury Doughboy impression.
What would you like written on your tombstone? “How strange it is to be anything at all.” -Jeff Mangum
If someone is reading your blog for the first time because a wildly talented, somewhat disheveled blogger who is wearing actual underwear today nominated you for a Liebster Award, which post do you want to make sure they read? There Should Be a Greeting Card for That by contributor Vicky Tulacro or Somebody I Used to Know by contributor Michelle Dowd or More than Fingernails by me.
Hypothetically speaking, If my kids have allergies but they are not really affecting them right now, is it still okay to give them Benedryl so I can take a nap? Yes, but my kids have the opposite reaction to Benadryl, so that doesn’t work for us, unfortunately.
What is your favorite place and why? I love the Bay Area, mostly because it is ridiculously beautiful there. I got to live there for two years. I wish I could breathe in that cool, foggy air right now.
What is your favorite book? I hate this question because I have so many. A few that pop into my brain: The Things They Carried, Fun Home, Wild, Madame Bovary, Foe, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Giovanni’s Room.
You know that song that get’s stuck in your head even though you hate it – which song is that? Is it stuck in your head now? It is always “Party in the U.S.A.” That song haunts me.
What is the meaning of life? Homeostasis.
Where did I put my car keys? Fuck if I know. Mine are lost, too.

4. Create 11 questions for your nominees.

Here are my 11 questions for my nominees:

1. How are you doing right now? This exact moment? Really?

2. Is Facebook good or evil?

3. What is your best quality?

4. What is your worst quality?

5. Where is the best place in the world you have been to? Why?

6. What is your favorite album from the last 10 years? Why?

7. Why can’t I fall asleep?

8. Does the good in people outweigh the bad? Prove it, you dirty optimist.

9. Will you promise me that you will never use the term “bucket list”?

10. What is the most important lesson you have ever learned?

11. What book do you think I need to read immediately and why? It better not be Fifty Shades of Grey.

5. Nominate 11 blogs of 200 followers or less which you feel deserve to be noticed and leave a comment on their blog letting them know they have been chosen.

1. Second Lunch

This guy does weird, cool comics and I heart them.

2. Mother Sugar

This blog that I’ve been following for some time is “an extended conversation among friends.” There is some beautiful, heartfelt writing here. I want all of these women to be my best friend and whisper wisdom to me over chai lattes.

3. Daniel Nester

I’m sure Daniel has more than 200 followers, but I can’t figure out how to tell. And he’s fucking awesome and way out of my league. We published some profiles of New York together in this book, and I sort of stalk him on Facebook because he’s funny and talented. Sorry I’m such a creep, Daniel.

4. Glass Half Full

I have a son with autism. So does the author of this blog. And she writes about it very well, and with a healthy dose of humor.

5. Absolute Frankness

This girl is 20 and studying the Classics. She lives in Dublin and is working shit out for herself and I like this blog a lot because it is well-written, and, well, frank.

6. Eric Shamp

My friend Eric is good at everything. Like, he doesn’t train for a race and then he beats you anyway good. It’s sort of annoying. A year ago, he started this blog that “illuminate[s] the (partially fictional) life of Thomas Kinkaid in words… colorful words… words of so many goddamn colors…” He only wrote two posts, but they are brilliant. Tell him to write more. I need my Kinkaid-based lit fix.

7. unkilled darlings

“Faulkner said, kill your darlings. I say, put them on the internet and let strangers read them.”

8. Another angry woman

Part anarchist. Part feminist. All angry. Has too many psychology degrees. Likes brevity in internet profiles. Blogs a mishmash of feminism, psychology, politics and navel-gazing.

9. Shoebox Dwelling

I’m sure she has more than 200 followers. Again, I can’t tell. This is a design and culture blog that is simple and beautifully curated.

10. MisEtcetera

Melissa and I are Facebook friends. Homegirl has great taste. Check it.

11. Literopathy

“You tell us what’s wrong. We’ll tell you what to read. You’ll feel better. Or at least smarter.”

6. Display the Liebster Award logo.

May 12 2013

8 Comments

Uncategorized

Mother’s Day, part 2

This post is a tribute to my good friend Angela, who manifests courage in all aspects of her life.

As you may know from our blog, she recently ended her relationship with her stepmother. I deeply respect this, but it is not something I can bring myself to do with my own biological mother. The reasons for this are many (surely some of them weakness), but that is fodder for another post.

I interact with my mother a handful of times a year, and each one ties me up in knots for days on end. I have tried for many years to heal the wounds of our shared past, but I have come to accept this is not likely to happen. I, too, struggle with how to buy a Mother’s Day card.

My mother is a scientist by nature and by training, and she doesn’t communicate well verbally. In other words, talking makes her tense and nervous and she avoids it at all costs. I, too, think better through numbers than through words, but I have consciously and actively fought against this, have struggled long and hard to develop an effective means of verbal communication through which to navigate my various relationships.

I often fail.

I don’t hold my mother accountable for my inadequacies, even the ones she inflicted. That neither she nor my father were capable of loving or tending to any of their children is not, entirely, their fault. They are products of a long line of unfortunate teachings. I am just beginning to unravel these.

The truth is, there are many suppositions my mother ingrained in me, that her mother likely ingrained in her, ideas I absorbed over the years of my unconventional upbringing, that I would like very much to unlearn. I don’t want to pass these liabilities on to my own children; I want them to be more open and direct and self-confident than I am. Perhaps this will be more likely if I acknowledge that there are some things I inherited from my mother that I have been unable to shake.

I trust that no one who is in contact with my mother knows that I contribute to this blog; so I will share here what I will never say to her.

Mom, thank you for bequeathing me self-discipline, a strong work-ethic and indubitable energy, but I genuinely wish you hadn’t ingrained in me:

…how to be so damn strong under pressure, how to hide emotion, how to overcome the femininity you perceived as weakness.

…how to keep myself in the world, but not of the world.

…how to hide myself from men, to distrust them, to fake interest and allegiance to stroke their egos.

…how it’s never, under any circumstances, permissible to let a man see that you are smarter than he is.

…that I have no legitimate needs, that my desires and and my body are sinful, something to be ashamed of.

…that it’s unacceptable to be vulnerable.

…that love is a weakness.

May 09 2013

6 Comments

Angela Cardinale Bartlett

mother’s day

Sunday is Mother’s Day. This year, I decided to end my relationship with my stepmother, who raised me, and my biological mother is dead. Both of these women lacked the resources or capabilities to be effective parents. My mother-in-law is amazing, but she did not raise me. And so there is a bit of an empty space where a mother should be. Most of the time, this does not feel like sadness. It feels like relief. Every year, I used to try and find a neutral card to give my stepmother. There were rows and rows of cards with pictures of flowers and heartfelt, saccharine poetry. Generally, I’d find something blank and scrawl something inside.

Dear Mom (I don’t want to call you Mom, but remember how you forced me to when I was 8?):

I don’t really know you even though we lived in the same household for many years. Please accept this candle/lotion/chocolate that I felt obligated to purchase for you. I hope the weather is satisfactory today.

Regards,

Angela

That’s what I always felt like saying, anyway.

This dumb photo of Gwyneth Paltrow and her mother made me cry one time.

My friend recently lost his mother. Although I wasn’t close to my mother, and I didn’t know her very well, and I have in my possession only one photograph of us together, and I rarely think about her or cry about her, I feel that absence intensely from time to time, like pain in an amputated limb. I am so sorry for my friend, who was close to his mother. I know the pain he must feel is 1000 times more intense than what I feel, and that there is nothing anyone can do to change any of that.

I guess what I am trying to say is that Mother’s Day, like all holidays, can be complicated.

I have two lovely boys, and I hope I know I am a good mother to them and I know I can do better. Last night, I helped Ben cast his Mario Bros. toys as characters in Hairspray (again). Mario is Link. Luigi is Corny. Princess Peach is Amber. Toadette is Tracy. I was exhausted after work, and this made me laugh and laugh. This morning, Elliott insisted he didn’t need a sweater, and I told him to step outside and see. I watched as he stood alone in the backyard and felt the breeze wash over him, squinting into the sunlight. He finally agreed to the sweater. Like me, he is stubborn. It is sometimes frustrating, but I also love that he needs to decide for himself.

I want to say thank you to these little guys for teaching me what it is to be a mother even as I am still figuring it out. I want to say thank you to them for making Mother’s Day meaningful to me, something to celebrate. And I want to say that I am sorry to those of you out there for whom this holiday is painful and complicated and nothing like the cards or commercials try to convince you to believe that it should be.

Let’s make this day, and every day, our own.

Photo credit: http://jjscholl.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/i-heart-mom/

Tagged children, death, family, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hairspray, Mario Brothers, mother's day, parenting, stepmothers

Apr 30 2013

2 Comments

Angela Cardinale Bartlett

why cody lived

I read this story about a 2-year-old boy who was bitten by a rattlesnake in Idyllwild this past weekend. He was airlifted to the hospital and injected with antivenom. He made a full recovery. We had rattlesnakes on the property on which I grew up. They were all over the place. I’d find one and freeze in place. I’d yell for my dad, and in one swoop, he’d slice through it with a shovel, sometimes splitting it open to reveal a bird’s egg, or a whole mouse, slimy and undigested. I was scared of bees (still am), but I wasn’t really worried about rattlesnakes for some reason. I stayed away from piles of rocks and wood and dense weeds. I listened for rattling. I’ll tell you this much, though. If I had been bitten as a 2-year-old, I would have likely died. We didn’t have health insurance. My parents would surely have tried to drive me to the hospital, which was far away. There wouldn’t have been a helicopter ride. We didn’t have the resources.

But instead of crediting Cody’s recovery to the helicopter pilot who got him there on time, the scientists who created antivenom, the doctors, or even the snake that didn’t fully release its venom, “Cody’s parents called his recovery a miracle and credit the prayers of their church group.”

No.

Cody lived because his parents had resources. His mother is a nurse who knew what he needed and how to get it to him. Cody had access to a helicopter and a hospital and doctors and medicine. And if he didn’t have access to those things, Cody would have died. The prayers had nothing to do with it.

Last year, a “snake pastor” died at the age of 44. Guess how? And guess how his father died (at the age of 39)?

While this thinking is well-intentioned, there are plenty of people who die every day because they don’t have resources. Rather than thanking god, feeling special, and moving on, why not thank the people who worked really hard to save this boy’s life, and then look around and see what we can do to make it so that others have the same resources they need to survive? It is arrogant to believe that a man in space saved this boy. Because that also means this Space Man chooses to overlook all of the rest. Why would anyone want to be a part of anything like that?

Photo credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rattlesnake

Tagged atheism, God, health insurance, Idyllwild, medicine, resources, science, snakes

Apr 25 2013

4 Comments

Uncategorized

The Draw of the Draw

My last semester of my undergraduate education, I decided I would cap it off by studying abroad in England—what better place to go for an English major, right? Much to my mother’s chagrin, I flew out of LAX on my birthday and enjoyed a nice fourteen hour sleepless flight over nothing but an invisible ocean below. At one point I just remember thinking about all of those fish we were flying over, but most of the time I played video games on the console built into the back of the head rest in front of me. It was free, so why not?

But this story is not so much about my trip as it is about a habit, a struggle. I loved it in England. I stayed with a family; I traveled; I studied; I drank…a lot. And it is in the drinking that this story has its point, not that I have a drinking problem or anything of that sort. I simply enjoy beer—plain and simple. No, the problem came in what surrounded the beer and everything and everyone else in the bars.

At the time, and England remedied this about two years after I had left, people could smoke in the bars. While I drank my beer, I noticed a misty, fog-like haze throughout the entire room only to be punctuated by dense wisps of white smoke finding its way upward from some nameless face’s cigarette. All bars I had the pleasure of patronizing had this scene.

One day, while I very consciously breathed in the smoke of the other guests at a particular pub, I just thought to myself why not try it? I am already breathing this junk in anyway; I might as well see what all of the fuss is about, so I asked one of my roommates for a cigarette. He asked if I was sure and I assured him I wanted one. Because I had been drinking plenty of beer before this, the nicotine had quite a dramatic effect. I instantly felt light-headed and felt like my body was about to sink in upon itself because it was so relaxed. Later I found out that this is because a person’s blood pressure shoots up dramatically when smoking, but at the time I did not care.

Now I have had people, my own family members included, who have told me how difficult it is to quit smoking. I always thought how hard can it be? You just stop. It is all about will power. But I have to say, when I came back to the U.S. with every intention to stop smoking, I immediately understood what they warned me about because one of the first things I bought upon my return was a pack of cigarettes.

My grandmother almost died of a stroke at the age of fifty-three because of her smoking. She lost the use of her whole left side. I knew this. It was a very real, clear warning sign in my head about what could happen if I continued down this path. Yet, the draw of the draw proved too powerful. For about five years after returning to the U.S. I smoked increasingly more. At one point, in graduate school, I was up to smoking about two packs a day.

Recently, I have cut down considerably on how much I smoke, but a smoker does not just quit. No, there is no finality to quitting for someone who used to smoke. It is day in and day out choosing not to go back to it because once the physical addiction wears off, the more powerful part, at least for me, the psychological part of it still lingers like a siren in the distance pulling the ex-smoker back. And so this constant war rages on and on. Sometimes I win. Sometimes the cigarettes win, but as long as there is a battle, I feel like I have a say, like I am winning small victories along the way. If the battle were to end, then I would be in trouble, so I tell myself to battle.

Apr 07 2013

7 Comments

Michelle Dowd, Uncategorized

The Fall

There are very few phrases my father has ever spoken aloud to me. “I love you” is not one of them. “Never depend on a man” is. And I don’t, in fact, rely on men for emotional sustenance, for income, or for praise. I have never hoped for the extraordinary, and I resist disappointment like a used hanky.

Back when we were all small, when my sisters and brother and I shared a bedroom, before our family fell, when we lived on dreams and loans, in the only house we would ever own, a soon-to-be foreclosed 800 square foot shelter bordering the city dump, I used to rise early, when it was virtually silent, to watch my father get ready for work.

I would sit on the counter in the bathroom while he lathered his face with Noxema, heating the water until it fogged the mirror, watching while he slid his razor across his preternatural white face. Sometimes I would dip my fingers into the cream and softly, tentatively, quietly mold it onto my girly face. My father tolerated this in silence, without so much as a nod. One time, when he was finished shaving, before he splashed on his Old Spice with a virulent shake, he took the blade out of the razor and handed me the empty shell. I carefully stroked my tender cheeks with the vacuous metal, until each white row had vanished and I looked like a little girl again. Then I splashed my face with water and looked to him for approval. He didn’t comment, but he held my gaze, and I felt something akin to respect. There was validation in the motions I had sequenced, almost in tandem with his, the rituals of manhood like a handshake between us.

My older sister later told me that girls don’t shave their faces, but that wasn’t of particular interest to me. Our home was a man’s world, where brute strength still ruled, and I was proud that I had stood there next to him, doing what men do. I loved watching his calm face in the mirror, as every errant hair was meticulously removed. My sisters often claimed he looked like a bear, that they were frightened of him, of his gruff manners and his gutteral growl. And to be frank, I was often frightened of him myself–but not as I sat on the bathroom counter, not during his morning ritual, not while I could see my face in the mirror next to his.

It’s simpler to remember the brutality, to focus on the slaps and the slugs that came later, on the random anger, the tightening spine of fear. It’s simpler to negate moments like these, to dismiss early morning reflections in a mirror, to see them as the anomalies they certainly were. And yet, I wonder now if he shared mornings like these with his own father when he was small, before his mother took him far away on a bus in the night, away from abuses of which he has never spoken. He did not see his father again after their stealthy, well-planned and much-needed exodus. His father died of alcoholism and pneumonia only four years later, long before he could become my grandfather, a man I never met, buried in a military grave in San Diego that my father visited for the first time three years ago.

My first boyfriend, called me a cat. He said you could drop me from unimaginable heights and I would squirm and screech and hiss and flail, but I would consistently land on my feet. I told him that sounded like a form of torture, that people shouldn’t take cats up skyscraper heights, let alone drop them. He said this was the way of the world and we survive the best we can. During a particularly difficult juncture not long ago, he called to remind me of this. I assured him I had come to the end of my nine lives, that my luck had rampantly run out. “Ahhhh, but it’s not luck,” he assured me, “it’s in your training. It’s so well-rehearsed, it looks like instinct, but the fact is, you know how to fall.”

We do not know how our origins will save us. We can only recognize when they do.

We Will Begin Again

one badass writing gang

my mother’s kitchen

Walk-in Killer

Prince Carlos’s Poison (1568)

politics is prayer

liebster award

Mother’s Day, part 2

mother’s day

why cody lived

The Draw of the Draw

The Fall

Follow “We Will Begin Again”

one badass writing gang

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Follow “We Will Begin Again”