Southern Fried Children

Loose Change

2013-06-09T21:24:00.003-04:00

(If you haven't heard of it, NPR's All Things Considered hosts an occasional contest called Three-Minute Fiction. The premise is simple, write a story that can be read in three minutes - about 600 words. They provide the prompt, give you a week to write, then dribble out finalists until they announce the winner. The winner gets a prize, generally the book(s) of the guest author/judge, and publication in The Paris Review. Which is huge. HUGE. For this round, the prompt was to write a story in which a character finds an object that they have no intention of returning. This is my entry, which neither won nor placed, but was fun to write nonetheless. If you'd like to see the winner and finalists, check outThree-Minute Fiction on NPR, and be sure to read my personal favorite, Picked Clean.)

***

She ran fast; her bare feet chewed up by the dirt road, hair stuck to her sweaty face, right hand jammed deep into her pocket. She knew he was right behind her, but she didn’t dare turn around. She just kept running.

In her pocket she felt the coin pressed deep into her palm. She imagined that when she finally pried it loose, George Washington’s face would be burned into her flesh. Maybe forever. She’d seen his sharp profile staring at her from under the porch and wiggled her arm through a crevice in the wood, all the way up to her shoulder before she managed to pinch it between two fingers. She’d pulled it out and licked it clean and had admired Mr. Washington for only a moment when the boy had yelled,

“Hey! That’s mine!”

And she’d started running.

Turning the corner tightly now, almost running into the building. It was kind of hard, running with one arm pumping and the other stuffed into the pocket of your dress. Don't turn around, she thought, and then, falling victim to the jinx, glanced behind her.

He was right there. Right there, so close she didn’t know how she hadn’t felt his breath on her neck. So close that he could reach out and push her lightly, just enough to make her fall. She felt tiny pebbles dig into her knees and the palm of her hand. She rolled over in the dirt onto her back and he jumped on her, sitting square on her stomach.

She kept her hand in her pocket, elbow locked, George safe in her closed fist.

“That’s mine,” he growled, pulling at her arm.

“Is NOT!” she yelled between clenched teeth, “Finders keepers, and ain’t no way you dropped that dumb quarter under the porch! If you’d lost a quarter, the whole town would’ve heard you crying about it!”

He grew still and leaned down, his face blotting out the sky.

“Don’t you do it!” she squealed.

He stuck out his tongue. Fat and pink and wet, he let it dangle there, spit sliding down the sides. “Beware the Tongue of Dooooooooooooom!” he slobbered, and moved closer to her face.She screamed and jerked her knee up hard, slamming his delicacies into his pelvis and making his whole face go white.

“Oof,” was all he could manage to say before he rolled off of her and into the dirt.

She didn’t wait to see if he was okay. She was up and running again, fists closed tight, arms windmilling, feet scraped all to hell, but the end in sight. The drugstore stood tall and gleaming at the crossroads. Through the glass doors she could see people smiling and laughing, clean and cool and safe. No one in there had been chased in.

“Give it to me!” she heard him yelling, recovered and in pursuit. But he was too late.

She pushed open the doors and made a hard right. Her hand had cramped up around the quarter and, for a minute, she was afraid it wouldn’t open. But it did, and she held the coin between trembling fingers. She could see him through the window, storming towards the door. She carefully placed the quarter in the slot and turned the handle once, twice, and back again.

Plop.

She closed her eyes and made a quick wish.

Red.

Her favorite. His favorite, too.

He threw open the door and she gave him a long look before popping the gumball into her mouth. She smiled, and began to chew.

Marlis

2013-05-28T23:26:00.001-04:00

"Good lord, Marlis! Your feet stink."

I thought I smelled something funky when she first got in the car. Something like wet dog, or corn chips. I should have know it was her feet.

"They do not, these shoes are breathable!" She folds her legs into my Duster and closes the door with considerable effort, a creak, and a slam. She hoists one leg up onto the dashboard and points at her foot, slipping around inside a pair of Carolina Blue Jellies. Jellies. Christ himself would have had stinky feet, had he walked around in a pair of Jellies.

"Breathe-uh-ble," she repeats. Her skirt slides up to a knobby knee. Her legs are thin, young, tan, and dirty. She's not shaved in maybe ever, and there's something that looks like oatmeal stuck to her ankle.

"Did you have oatmeal for breakfast, Marlis?" I ask, and she picks the food off her ankle.

"Eggs," she says and looked for a moment like she might pop the morsel in her mouth. Instead, she throws it in the floorboard. She pushes her sunglasses up on her nose and leaned the seat back. "Let's go," she says.

I turn the car around, narrowly missing dogs and hogs, and head down the long dirt drive. In the rearview mirror, I watch her trailer grow smaller, swallowed up by a cloud of dust.

"I don't know why they had to have the service in Beaumont," she purses her lips and sucks her teeth disapprovingly. "Fancy."

"Well, Elma was fancy." I say, though if pressed I might have wondered if it had more to do with Elma's daughters than her. "GODDAMN!"

The smell punches me square in the nose and I nearly run off the road. "GodDAMN, Marlis! Put your shoes back on!" She's taken off the Jellies and thrown her stankass feet up on the dashboard.

"It is a long RIDE, Conrad, and my feet are hot." Her feet are crisscrossed with indentations from the shoes, red and angry. They sit up on the dash like a weird, podiatric ornament. She lets her knees fall apart, and fans herself with the bottom of her skirt. The resulting breeze sends the smell of her feet all the way through the car.

"Oh, God. You got to stop that," I moan. "It's like a convection oven in here."

"Roll down the window if it's bothering you that bad!" She snipes, fanning faster.

"You know I got the air conditioner going, Marlis! If I opened a window, it would let all the cold air out!"

"Apparently, your air conditioner don't work worth a shit, Conrad, because if it did my feet wouldn't be all swoll up and on fire!" With that, she reaches down onto the floorboard, picks up those godawful Jellies, and sets them up on the dash.

"You want me to open a window?" I ask.

"I wish you damned would."

I crank the window down furiously, turning the handle so violently that I nearly hurt myself. Then I grab her shoes and throw them out. The wind catches them for a minute, then they're bouncing along the side of the highway, plastic tumbleweeds.

"Conrad!" She bolts up in her seat, mouth open, eyes wide. Then we start to laugh. We laugh so hard that we forgot to turn around and get the shoes. We laughed until we cried, and then she kept right on crying even after I stopped. We pull into town, down the side street behind the church and into the parking lot.

"Damn, Marlis, I hate you have to go to the funeral without any shoes on."

She looked at me and sighed, "Not like it's the first time."

Decade

2013-05-20T20:13:00.001-04:00

"Daddy won't wake up."

That is all my brother said, and I said, "I'll be right there," and hung up the phone before he told me anything else.

We had been waiting for him to die all week, watching as he slept more and ate less. He could barely hold his eyes open the day before, as he looked at my daughter and said the last words I'd ever hear him say.

"She's such a pretty girl."

The phone had woken me, but the sun was up. I broke a nail on the closet door as I was getting dressed, and chewed it smoothe on the drive over. Twenty forever minutes while is he dead is he dead rolled through my head on a continuous loop.

He was not.

He was not dead, but he would not wake up. His chest rattled and his feet were cold and we would spend all day watching that coldness creep over his body. We would spend all day greeting friends and family and talking to nurses and swabbing his lips to keep them moist. We would talk and take the flicker of an eyelid as acknowledgement. I read the Reader's Digest aloud and made bad jokes and pressed my body against his in a vain attempt to get him warm. To keep him alive.

That night, my mother drifted off to sleep next to him, and I fell asleep in his chair in the living room. I woke not much later not to a sound, but to an absence of sound. My brother, standing in the living room, his head cocked toward the bedroom door. We walked in together, silently, and knew he was gone. I sat on the bed and my mother woke up and said his name and I screamed, Don't turn on the light!, but only in my head.

And then they turned on the light and made it real; made him inescapably, unavoidably, gone.

Decade.

It cannot possibly be a decade since I tried to warm my father's dying body, since I watched my mother fall in on herself. She folded in and in over and over until she was hardly there at all. It cannot possibly be a decade since I last held his hand or kissed his face or heard his voice.

This week, a friend lost her father after an illness that robbed him of strength and dignity. The kind of illness that makes faithful people say things like 'at least he is no longer in pain', and, 'his suffering is over'. The kind of illness that brings a heavy, unwelcome respite to caregivers. She asked the same question that I asked, that everyone asks - when? When does it get easier? When do I get to feel normal? Like I felt before all of this?

I sigh and smile and avoid the question, because the answer is never.

Eventually, the fog lifts. Sometime after that, pictures bring smiles and not tears. Later, you can laugh and not feel guilty. One day, you can sit and write about the day your father died and not be turned inside out with grief, hollow with loss.

I wish I could hold her hands and take her into the future, to the time when the clarity of details begins to blur. When you can't remember exactly what you wore and what they said. When you can look back and think, oh, it wasn't so bad, even when something inside reminds you that it was. Time turns snapshots into watercolors, making pain go soft. I wish I could speed up time and have her here with me, when memories are sweet and faith is strong and there is no doubt that we will laugh again.

Decade.

Waiting

2013-04-27T10:10:00.001-04:00

There is a man sitting next to me, telling a story. It is not a good story, but he is telling it with great enthusiasm, waving his hands and raising his voice. He is speaking to another man and we, this other man and I, are listening carefully, waiting for the climax of the story. Of course, they don't know I'm listening; me, with my nose buried in a book whose pages I haven't turned. Me, trying desperately to read the story on the page - the good story - but instead, distracted by this loud man and his spectacularly shitty story.

He is wearing brown suede shoes and pegged jeans and a button down, striped shirt, buttoned to the top. His hair is mousy and the part is crooked and it is still wet from the shower. He is young, younger than me, and dresses from the decade before he was born.

He stands abruptly and walks away - they started without him and he scrambles to catch up. What was he talking about? What was the point? Was he simply talking to fill a perceived empty space? I must know and don't care, and I'm disappointed in him for leaving me.

A woman sits down next to me, in the row of folding chairs against the wall. I cross my legs away from her and lean away. My bag is in the chair to my right, creating a safe zone of personal space. I am too conscious of other peoples smells, their body heat and proximity to me makes me strain to hold my arms close to my body. I am uncomfortable, but moving would be incredibly rude. So I sit, the lesft side of my body tight and tense, taking shallow breaths through my nose.

I will be here all day.

There are stragglers in the hallway. Some of them talk, too loud and too fast, in that superficial way you talk to people you don't really know, or don't really like. Those people you run into at the grocery store and are forced to make small talk while you desperately try to remember their name. These are the people who always seem to know so much about me, making mention of my children and life events, while I stare blankly and search the dark crevices of my memory for a name. Who are you? I want to scream, but I smile and nod and ask vague questions and look for a conversational exit.

I crack my knuckles and the woman flinches. It's a horrible habit and one I've had since I was a child. I do it so often I'm hardly aware of it. Sometimes, I'll do it out of nervousness in a quiet room and the pops erupt like rifle shots, pinging off walls and making old women gasp. I mumble sorry and wonder what I'm apologizing for.

My knee is cramping and my rear end is falling asleep. My shoulders are up around my ears and the shear effort of leaning my body imperceptibly away is making my jaw clench. I uncross my legs and lean forward and reestablish the personal space barrier. Twelve minutes. I feel like thirty minutes is the minimum I have to sit here before I can move without seeming rude. And then, I can't simply move to another seat. I'll need to go walking around this giant, unfamiliar space, pretending to find great interest in things like bronze plaques designating memorial meeting rooms.

I wonder if Richard Blythe lay on his deathbed, his mind resting easily knowing he would be immortalized by a bronze plaque outside a meeting room. There is a continental breakfast laid out on the table below it, and businessmen and women who are torn between the joy of missing a day of work and the pain of sitting through a seminar on increasing profit margins read it while waiting for the person in front of them to dig a disc of cream cheese out of a paper cup with a plastic spoon.

Richard Blythe - immortalized, recognized, forgotten by the time they get to the muffins.

Eighteen minutes.

She moves. I am released from my prison and yet highly offended. She has broken the spell and I find myself suddenly hungry for muffins.

Flashback '70s Style

2013-04-18T11:51:00.000-04:00

I'm working on something - and by working, I mean looking at a lot of old photos and talking and thinking and not actually writing, but the writing is just all that thinking put on paper. And sometimes that takes awhile.

In the meantime, I am loving the horrid decor choices of my parents during the 1970s.

Exhibit A, 1974:

Where to begin.

Firstly, I look adorable. Cute dress, cute hair, awesome watch. The kid behind me with the nice tan and unfortunate hair? No idea who that is. Raggedy Ann? Bitchin. I also got a matching Raggedy Andy that year, so I can only assume he is lounging on that amazing green shag carpet.

It's hard to pick what my favorite thing in this room is. The Fisher-Price castle to the right? The killer sound system perched atop the pillars in the background? The hanging tassel of what was no doubt one of my mom's fabulous macrame creations? Or maybe it's the preponderance of dried flowers? Look behind me on the right and you'll see those awful, tall, foofy things that shed like a dog and made your nose itch. I have no idea what they're called, but if you were alive during the decade of disco, you know what I'm talking about.

I would kill to know the titles on the stack of 8-tracks on the floor. I wore out my mom's copy of Elton John's Madman Across the Water. I remember...HOLY SHIT. There it is. My favorite thing about this photo - a life sized, golden plaster statue of a cobra. A golden cobra says you mean business. A golden cobra says, "Hey, I may have a shitty stereo, but did you notice my golden cobra?".

Fast forward to 1979.

The times, they are a'changin'. We've moved to North Carolina, and my folks are missing their cowboy home, so they went Western. 70s Style.

In this photo we have me, dressed in a fashion forward stripey shirt, embroidered khakis and brown shitkickers. Seating next to me is my brother Shane, rocking the corduroy overalls and his own pair of boots. As a todder, Shane had curly hair. Which is weird, because no one in my family has curly hair, which leads me to believe that my mom was perming his hair. It is a trick to make thin hair look fuller, one she would duplicate on my poor father in the early '80s.

In 1979, my parents loved Waylon, Willie, weed, and the color brown. Not necessarily in that order.

The pile on the carpet is shorter, but the color is still delightfully pukey. The books on the mantle are a series of Time-Life books on the Old West. I spent hours looking at the miners, chiefs, cowboys and gunfighters. I was sure that one day I'd be flipping through them and see a picture of my dad.

This is around the same time my mom started painting statuary. Cowboy and Indian busts and figures came into our house an alabaster plaster and were painted and stained and fired and placed on every available flat surface, or hung on walls next to mirrors framed with horse collars.

When she wasn't painting, she kept macrame-ing. Sitting on the floor with the end looped around her big toe, smoking cigarettes and watching Gunsmoke. Our house smelled like Marlboros and jute for the better part of a decade. One her finest pieces can be seen in this photo, holding some truly lovely dried flowers.

Brown flowers.

And next to that, the brass spittoon that never held anything and the HOLY SHIT PLASTER RAM THAT GOES WITH NOTHING.

I don't know what inspired my mother to buy that monstrosity. I mean, I understand macrame. I understand shag carpet and plaster statues and I even understand the golden cobra (because cobras, by the very fact that they are motherfucking cobras) are badass.

But giant plaster rams are just weird. Even for the 1970s.

(Hey, while I'm working on this thing I'm working on, why don't you go to my review of Epic Mom and enter to win a copy. I'll pick a winner by this Friday!)

Epic Things

2013-04-06T21:21:00.001-04:00

You may have noticed I've been scarce recently.

But instead of doing important things, like writing books or reading books or making dinner for my family on a regular basis, my mind has been sucked dry of productivity and creativity because of silly piece of mail.

From Ogden, Utah.

The (resourceful, respectable and always delightful. and fair.) IRS sent out an Examination Form for our 2010 taxes.

Some folks might call that an 'audit'. Some folks might call it bad names, but I wouldn't. Because I have faith in the kindness and generosity of the Internal Revenue Service.

We're a few days away from the deadline and almost finished and I have learned two things about the year 2010:

We had our third child.
We were not good record keepers.

One might have something to do with the other.

During this month, I have had little mental respite except for those magical fifteen minutes where, if the weather is good and Henry is asleep, I spent my time in the car rider line at school, in a terrifically wonderful way.

I read Epic Mom: Failing Every Day a Little Bit More Than You, by my friends Julie Harrison (MOV of mothersofbrothersblog.com ) and Marianne Walsh (http://webandofmothers.blogspot.com/).

Yes, it's funny. Yes, if you have kids you'll completely get it. Even if you don't have kids, these stories are about your family - they're your moms or your sisters or you. But where a lot of the mom-humor around slips into dumb husband and poop jokes, Epic Mom never insults you. Julie Harrison's tongue is usually firmly in cheek, and then every now and again she says something that is so amazing that it makes you sit up straight in your chair. Julie is crazy prolific. She posts regularly, usually every day. She has published books. Plural. She is everything I wish I could be, but lack the drive and commitment. And style.

Marianne Walsh is like a pair of yoga pants. Her stories are comfortable and warm and I feel like I'm at my own kitchen table, only with less screaming and vomit. I can see Marianne and I curled up on a couch in a couple of Slankets, eating popcorn and watching Alf.

I've also spent the past week marathon-watching the first season of Glee. I'd never seen it, and I'm on like Episode 17. I don't really watch TV, so that is a whole shit ton of TV for me. I think Glee is a different post, though.

The book is pretty fantastic. The stories are blog post-ish in length. They're sweet and funny and smart and perfect to read in the car rider line. Julie and Marianne were kind enough to send me a copy to review, and not only do I recommend it, I recommend it as a gift for friends, family, coworkers, random strangers on the internet.

So, now I am going to blow your mind - I want to give YOU a copy. That's right, I am going to purchase one copy of Epic Mom and give it away to one lucky commenter on this post. I am a horrible blogger, and I don't pay enough attention to you folks who come here. I lost a follower this week, and I was going to come here and whine about it and give a big F-U to the person who unfollowed me, and then I saw it was my mom.

Buy the book.
Comment, and maybe win the book.
Keep good tax records.
Be nice to your mom.

Epic.

Amarath

2013-03-21T20:47:00.001-04:00

He hated Amarath.

Rumor was, his mother pulled off the side of the road, squat down and bore him while the car was still kicking up late August dust. Then pulled away before the dust had fully settled, leaving him red and squalling in a ditch.

Facts were, he was found pink and naked and newborn by a passerby, then raised collectively by Amarath. The town passed him around it's citizenry out of obligation, but not with care. He stayed in one house until he'd outlived his usefulness, or become too expensive, or too mouthy. He walked out of his last host home on the day of his eighteenth birthday and stood in the the road, both middle fingers extended high in the air.

"Fuck you, Amarath!", he yelled to the town. He stood there for a moment, half expecting women to wail and men to curse him, or bolts of lightening to come down from God Himself and strike him dead. Instead, he was met with the persistent silence that proved what he had known since the day of his birth - no one cares.

Apathy and poverty proved stronger than resentment, and he took a room at the boarding house in the middle of town. He paid fifteen dollars a week for a shared bathroom, breakfast, and a metal framed bed in an eight by ten room. His fellow boarders were primarily transient; they stayed only long enough to earn the money to leave. Folks didn't come through Amarath and think, 'Now this is someplace I'd like to settle down.' It happens sometimes, if a man's car breaks down and he never gets around to getting it fixed, or a woman falls in love with the sheriff (he is a foxy fellow), or a baby is dumped in a ditch by the side of the road.

There are some holes too deep to dig yourself out of.

He wasn't sure what brought the woman to Amarath. He stood in the hall and banged on the door to the bathroom and when the door swung open, instead of Bob Jenkins - who stunk up the bathroom with his cabbage shits and general lack of hygeine - it was the woman. Her hair was wet and stuck to her face, and she smelled like soap and steam and sex. He sucked the air in through his mouth, trying to swallow it, to swallow her, gulping her down as she pushed past him.

"Do you believe in God?", she asked one night, much later. They lay on his bed, blowing smoke in the air and trying not to look at each other.

He hadn't given it much thought. He spent the summer of his tenth year living with Jonas Nabb's family, and they were devout Church of Christ. They went to church every Sunday morning and Sunday night, and Wednesday nights, too. Sometimes, Jonas would skip Wednesday nights and spend two hours in the barn instead. He'd come out red and sweating and rubbing his crotch, then he'd tithe extra on Sunday.

"Nah," he said, "I don't suppose I do."

"But what about when you die?", she raised herself up on her elbow and looked him in the face. "Don't you believe in Heaven?"

He blew out a stream of smoke and stared at the ceiling.

"What about Hell?", she sounded nervous now.

"Yes," he said, "Yes, Hell is real and I know its name."

She started to laugh, but choked it back. She traced a finger along his chest and down his belly. "Well, what's its name?", she teased.

In his head, he was on top of her with his hands around her throat, her face purple. He squeezed and squeezed until her eyes bulged and her tongue swelled between her teeth, until her legs stopped kicking and her nails stopped scratching.

In the bed, he exhaled slowly and turned his gaze to her and said, softly, "Amarath".

There Is Something Wrong With My Eyes

2013-03-13T22:39:00.001-04:00

There is something wrong with my eyes. Everything seems blurry, like I've forgotten to rub the sleep out of them, or I've left my contacts in too long, or I'm battling ragweed. Except I did rub it out, and I don't wear contacts (at least, not anymore), and I don't have allergies.

Allergies. I used to cluck my tongue at my husband when he'd start rubbing his nose in April and sneezing in May and walking around with watery eyes until October. Good God, I'd say, can't you take a pill or something?

I keep my pills in one of those plastic cases, on my nightstand. It has letters for the days of the week across the lids, one row for morning, one for evening. The mornings are so full that the lids no longer close. I laughed when my doctor first suggested it. Those are for old people! I said. I think I can keep a few pills straight! I said. The alarm goes off at 9 a.m., and again at 6 p.m. It's one of those high pitched, intermittent buzzes, but in my head it screams, Take your damned pills! Take your damned pills! My daughter always comes in after the alarm goes off to make sure I've taken the pills, and taken the right ones. Like I can't figure it out.

You mess up one time and all of a sudden, people think you're a fool.

I spent years bent over the desks of children, making sense of the numbers they'd scrawled on the papers in front of them. Picture it in your head! I'd say, but most of them couldn't see it the way I did. Most of them didn't see the numbers stretch out on a coil, wrapping around each other, spinning and dancing in space. Math was like music for me, I could positively hear equations being solved! I tried to teach those children, and my own, but too often got nothing but blank stares in return.

My children still look at me like that, sometimes. Sometimes I will catch them staring with furrowed brows and sad smiles. What was that, Mom? My son said to me this morning, wearing that face. I'd said nothing, and told him so. He squeezed my hand and kissed my forehead and left the room.

What the hell was that all about?

When I first started taking all those pills, I drove myself to and from the doctor. Then one Sunday after church, they all cornered me in the living room and accused me of keeping information from them. I hadn't not told them anything, as far as I could remember. But they didn't let me go alone after that. Then there was the business with the car. I've always been an excellent driver, anyone would tell you that. But the girls were worried, and I guess didn't want me busted by the fuzz for driving while hopped up on pills. I've never been arrested, and it sounds like something everyone should do once, but I kind of understood. Plus, that was right around the time I was getting tired, and who doesn't want to be chaffeured around like Miss Daisy, or Beyonce?

Now they have a nurse come to me, which is just fine. She comes in and calls me Mrs., and rubs my feet with lotion, and refills my box of pills. It's quite fancy, actually. One time, my husband paid for a woman to come and give me a massage at our house. She brought a fold up table and warm blankets and even a CD of what sounded like whales, or Taylor Swift. I don't remember exactly. I was a little nervous at first, because she did it in the living room, and the oversized photo of my children when they were just little ones was staring at me from the mantle. They hadn't seen me naked since they were about that age, and here I was having some strange woman rub me down in the middle of the house. It's not like we were having sex or anything, but still. It was kind of weird.

About two minutes into the massage, I totally forgot about the picture, and the fact that I was naked in my living room at noon on a Tuesday, not having sex. I melted under her hands, under the warm blanket, the sound of Taylor/whale songs in my ears. When she was done, I pointed to a check on the table, stumbled the seventeen steps to my bedroom, and slept for the next twelve hours.

The home nurse isn't quite that good, but she rubs my feet and hums, which is nice.

I haven't told her about my eyes, either.

I gave up contacts long ago, when they started scratching my eyeballs like sandpaper. You have very dry eyes, the doctor said. A thirty dollar copay for Mr. Smart Guy to tell me what I knew before I left the house. So I started wearing the glasses again; wore them until they started hurting behind my ears and I had to wear them perched on the tip of my nose, arms pointing straight up. You look like a bird, my husband said. I showed him a bird, the one located between my index and ring fingers.

I wore them to watch my favorite television programs and read my books, even when I started forgetting what was happening on the shows, and reading the same page two or three times. I wore them until there was nothing left to see, then I sat them on my nightstand next to the pill box.

When I noticed somethng was wrong with my eyes, I put them back on. Nothing changed, so I took them back off. I got nose to nose with myself in a hand mirror and looked for a long time at my eyeballs.

They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, but I am telling you - I looked for an awfully long time, and all I saw were the tired eyes of an old woman.

And I am tired. I am tired of doctors and sad smiles and foot rubs and I am tired of that damned pill box. So I won't tell them that there is something wrong with my eyes, because I am too tired to do anything about it.

I think I'll just close them for awhile, instead.

The Most Random Post Ever.

2013-03-09T21:31:00.001-05:00

A friend of mine posted this movie on Facebook with a 'remember this?' and, usually, I don't, but this time I did.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089652/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_p

Pot roast was my culinary Waterloo. Was, until I found this recipe -

http://www.cookscountry.com/recipes/Chuck-Roast-in-Foil-Recipe-Cook-s-Country/27308/

The idea of cold oatmeal, or overnight oats, repels me. Like, I find it morally repugnant.

http://www.theyummylife.com/Refrigerator_Oatmeal

I decided to give it a try, and turns out, I love it. Chia seeds are crack. I disgust myself.

I am reading Epic Mom, a book by my friends MOV and Marianne. I'm reading it sitting in the car line, and it makes sitting in the cold car while Henry throws shit at the back of my head much more bearable. I'm going to review it, which will be the first time I have ever reviewed anything.No one has ever asked, which kind of pisses me off, now that I think of it! So, thanks MOV and Marianne!

http://www.amazon.com/Epic-Mom-Failing-Every-Little/dp/1479350257

I am going to be more honest than I want to be here: Julia drives me nuts. She is just so intense and winter is hard on her, and me. She needs to get out and run around and she isn't getting that. Katie's play is in the last week of rehearsals, and we have school projects due and she's nervous, and Henry pees on everything, and poor Julie is just floundering. She really needs more of my attention and patience, and I need to remember that she is just a little kid. She is the easiest of the three and I get so exasperated, and I feel awful. I will change that.

Also, March owns my ass.

I don't think there is a day on the calendar when something isn't going on. I am behind on doctor's appointments and pictures and oh, everything. I finally made an appointment for the piano to be tuned since we bought it (three years ago), and the grandfather clock to be serviced (every 5 years, we've had it 12 and never done it).

I bought some clothes because, again with the painful honesty, I was embarrassed. I gained some weight over the winter and nothing fit. I was wearing a lot of sweatpants and sweatshirts. Ratty looking shit from Target (clearance, $3.99), not lululemon.

The weather is going to be nice next week, eliminating my last excuse for not running all winter, and most fall. I don't think I've run even once since November. I am scared to death of that first go, but my life is so much better when I'm running, even a little.

I am not writing, I am tired. I told a friend that I was sitting at the literary equivilant of the Woolworth counter. Later, I realized I meant Schwab's where Lana Turner was discovered, not the site of a civil rights protest in Greensboro, NC. I am not comparing my writing to the fight for racial justice. My bad.

I always feel like there is so much to do.

Shutup Roxy needs a bath. The last time I cut her nails, she got away before I could get one paw, and now I can't remember which one I missed. She turns thirteen this month, and she is such a jerky dog, but she's mine and I love her. My mom got a puppy, because she is crazy. It makes me want one a little, too. Like I feel when learning a friend is pregnant - for just a minute I want one too, and then I remember what huge pains in the ass puppies and babies are. They just suck the life out of you, in a good way. I will be content with my kids who poop in a toilet and my old, fat dog who pees outside.

Our pillow top mattress was shit, just horrible. I was sleeping in a hole. Mattresses are ridiculously expensive, so Sean cut the pillow top off and we bought a foam topper for $159 at Costco. Next to the $14 air popper, it may be the best money we've ever spent. Take that, mattress people!

I am restless. I want to get out and dig in the dirt and stop wearing coats and pull out the flip flops. I want to wash everything and throw things away and do something new. I feel a deep need to spiff shit up. I'm thinking about something new for SFC, and I'm going to ask my friend JRose what she thinks.

http://cheeseblarg.blogspot.com/

Out with the old, in with the new. It seems to be a thing, this March.

Talk to Me, Goose.

2013-03-04T20:12:00.001-05:00

People keep dying, and it's getting on my nerves. Not people I know, but people who are known by people I know. Sometimes, it's removed one or two more times; close enough that I hear about it, but not so much that I am upset enough that it affects me longer than a few minutes. I'm sorry. Do you want to get some lunch? It's like Six Degrees of the Grim Reaper.

It's kind of depressing.

And I think what really annoys me is the coopting of tragedy that seems to go on, especially on social media sites. Please pray for my aunt's neighbor, she is very ill and needs your good thoughts! I'm not sure what her name is, but I know if you just pray for "Susie's Aunt's Neighbor", God will hear you! I'm guilty of this, I admit it. I pass along stories of horrible things that happen to people I don't really know. I'm saying, this is horrible! But I'm thinking, thank God it isn't me. It's like the telling is a talisman against the Boogeyman who is constantly circling, his stinking breath fogging up our windows, his dog shitting in our yard.

Hug your babies tight tonight! They warn us. As if the death of a stranger makes us love our children more, or take our good fortune for granted less.

What do we take for granted?

There is an elderly gentleman at church, who comes alone each Sunday. He shuffles in to the coffee room after the mass, his shoulders stooped and one hand shoved in his pocket. Everyone is cordial, everyone is always cordial, but you can see the slight shift in bodies when he walks in. People suddenly need to use the bathroom, or see someone about something, somewhere. Because he's going to talk - a lot. He might start by pronouncing some great truth in Latin, followed by an awkward silence while everyone tries desperately to remember their one semester of high school Latin. Then he translates, and everyone nods knowingly, as if we have any idea where this is going.

Then he starts in. It may be a story about his time in the Army, or his years spent as a traveling salesman, or as an educator. And while his audience tries desperately to come up with a subtle and polite escape, they miss the story. They take it for granted. Because here's the deal - This is the coolest guy you'll ever meet.

He is old and bent and ignored and taken for granted because he appears so terrifically ordinary.

I remarked to a friend recently that I thought she lived a very different life inside her head. She wasn't sure if I was being sarcastic, or insulting, or complimentary. The truth is, she is a very ordinary, intensely interesting person. Not everyone is out there making movies and writing policy and curing cancer. But the guy driving the truck is no less complicated, his life no less rich, than the guy exploring the jungles of South America.

OK, the explorer might be a little more interesting. The point is, everyone has a story. This is what we take for granted, from the people we meet every day, to the man in the church basement, to the people in our own families.

And the tragedy is when we lose them, never having heard their story. Our lives are littered with unassuming people, content in simplicity, taking for granted their own importance. Go, find one of them now, and ask them to tell you a story.

The House I'm Talking About

2013-02-24T23:12:00.001-05:00

Do you know the house I'm talking about?

I know you've passed by it a thousand times on your way through town. It sits off the road aways, half hidden by scrub and oaks. There used to be a fence, but only the gate remains; hanging there like dusty hand bones, waving in the wind and clattering against the sidewalk.

You know the house. Every time you pass by you wonder, what happened there? You can see in the lines of the roof and the stone in the foundation that this house had been important, once. To someone. Now it sits there, vines and vermin eating its flesh, stinking up the landscape, a rotting relic of prosperity past.

Small, scared children creep up the porch stairs to touch the doorknob, cold under their hot hands. They run with screams stuck in their throats, swallowed by nervous laughter once they're safe on the other side of the broken gate. Teenaged couples slip away to sleep on its bare floors, burned by cigarettes, covered with dirt and sweat and illicit acts. They spread blankets and make fires and lie back to back after all is done, pretending to sleep and praying for dawn.

You know the house. On the porch there is a chair, rusted green metal, rounded back, spring loaded legs. Your grandma had one on her porch, but in red. You sat there for hours reading Nancy Drew and comic books and drinking sweet tea out of jelly jars. I wonder if a child sat in this chair on summer days and solved mysteries and looked out at the road and wondered where it went.

There are big trees in the backyard and I suppose if there had been a child, there must have been a tire swing. I spend too much time looking up into the sun, searching branches for pieces of rope. I run my hands along the trunks and pretend I can feel the footholds. If I stand too long in the sun and manage to forget the noise from the road and put my face against the warm wood, I can feel the tree shake under the weight of a boy climbing up.

There is a low stone wall around one side of the house. It has fallen in parts and bits of stone have been thrown carelessly against the house, making messes of windows. The holes like little mouths gaping, caught in perpetual screams.

Do houses weep? Do they cry as they crumble and wail as we abuse them, kicking corners and slamming doors? Does the earth cry out in pain as we dig it up and shove things in it that don't belong, like mailposts and birdbaths and flagpoles?

Do houses miss us when we're gone? Do they silently beg us to return and fill them up with laughter and love and tears, until their walls swell and beat like great, living things? And do they die, then, when we abandon them? When we decide that they are, afterall, only things? When we pack up our possessions and don't bother locking the door and leave them to become detritus, legend, mystery?

I imagine they do.

And I imagine they take one small breath, beat one small beat, when we pass by and later remark, do you know the house I'm talking about?

Oh, Henry.

2013-02-19T21:03:00.001-05:00

You exhaust me, little boy.

He is so very loud and always moving and forever insisting that he can do it, yes! He can and he will and I shouldn't dare try to help. I give us a ten minute head start to every outing, an allowance for him to put on clothes and buckle buckles and close doors and climb up and get down and do everything just so.

I will, occasionally, make the mistake of doing something for him. Then I must bite my tongue and clench my fists and stand back as he undoes what I have done, and redoes it himself.

He changes clothes a dozen times a day. Yesterday, he insisted on wearing his new Spider-Man underwear. All seven pair. All at the same time.

He seems to have read a little boy manual, and follows it to the letter regarding nose- and butt-picking, animal noises, climbing and jumping, farting, and generalized mess making. He is maddening in his endless energy and strong in his will and there are many days when I feel utterly and completely defeated by him, our small dictator, our benevolent despot.

Katie was reading through a book of baby names one day and came across 'Henry'.

"It means," she said, "Ruler of the House!" And we all laughed, because it is true.

He marches through this space giving us orders and demanding attention and we scramble to accomodate. Because we adore him. Because he is our little prince and when he gives us his affection we all feel like we've been blessed from on high.

Because there are few things in this world that beat Henry putting his fat little hands on your cheeks and kissing you softly on the mouth. Because, when Henry says 'I love you', you feel like he loves you more than anyone else.

He is the baby, and we should all be ashamed at how we fawn over him. But we don't care. We laugh and squeeze him and say, "Isn't he amazing?".

Today, Henry is three years old. He came as a surprise, was born in a hurry, and has spent his whole, short life wrapping us tightly around his tiny finger. Happy birthday, sweet boy of boys. You are loved, completely.

Dirty

2013-02-12T20:20:00.001-05:00

(Neat)

She was a little bit dirty, he could tell. She sat there with her elbows up on the bar, cigarette in hand, shoulders hunched. She twirled her drink with her free hand, rubbing a finger up and down the glass, collecting the moisture. Every few twirls, she'd reach up and press her wet finger to her lips. It must be cold, he thought. There was a small piece of tobacco clinging to her lower lip and he wanted desperately to pick it off.

She dipped a finger in her drink and sucked the liquor off, and that is when he decided to stay.

"Hello," she said, but didn't smile.

By his second drink he was no longer bothered by the stickiness on the barstool or the sweat stains under her arms or the constant stream of smoke that spilled out of her mouth, rolling over her tongue and dancing on her words.

"Let me guess," she said, "You sell insurance."

People always assumed he sold insurance, or worked in a bank, or was an accountant. As if these professions were the only options for men of a certain type. Of his type. Usually, he viewed it as a small minded stereotype but he looked through the smoke and into her eyes and said, "Yes, insurance." The lie came out naturally, as if he'd been doing it his whole life. Like there was nothing unusual about sitting in a bar in broad daylight, drinking gin and talking to a strange woman and breathing in her stink and smoke and lying about who he was.

"Everyone needs insurance," he smiled.

He was very very drunk when they walked out and she, who had been very very drunk when he walked in, walked taller and straighter than he could manage. "It takes practice," she explained. He fumbled with his key until she took in from him, sliding it into the lock with authority. Once inside, he fell against the wall and she pushed herself up against him. Her lips burned his face and her hands scratched at his clothes and the smell of her filled his head. He felt sick and giddy.

"Here?", she said and he did not know exactly what she meant. He only knew the answer was yes. Yes here and yes there and yes, but first, he caught his breath and found his voice and said into her ear,

"Let me bathe you."

He drew a bath and watched her undress. She was all angles and bones and, naked now, older than he'd first thought. Her skin was pale and freckled in odd places and shone silver in the marks on her belly and breasts. She caught him staring and covered herself awkwardly with her hands, like a girl.

He took his time washing her, gentle and sure. She closed her eyes and gave herself to him, floating in the water, turning when prompted, holding her head back as his rinsed her hair. She was pink from the heat when she stepped from the bath, and he could feel her warmth under the towel as he dried her. "Through there," he said softly, and pointed to the door to his bedroom. He turned from her and drained the milky water from the tub, her sediment floating and swirling and clinging to the sides.

She lay on the bed smelling of soap and sex, one hand behind her head and the other cupping her breast.

"How do I look?", she asked, and he answered truthfully - happily -

"Clean."

A Short Post in Which I Pander For Votes

2013-02-06T09:24:00.003-05:00

Part Two of the story will be posted soon, but I had to break in and thank everyone who nominated SFC for Favorite Local Blog in Triad Mom's On Main's 2013 Moms Choice Awards. Last year, I was annihilated by the Blog That Shall Not Be Named. Help me make a slightly less embarrassing showing this year by going here - http://triadmomsonmain.com/_blog/My_Blog/post/The_Finalists_are_in_for_the_2013_Moms_Choice_Awards/ - to vote. There are several great blogs nominated, including my friend Kristen at Four Hens and a Rooster, as well as some fantastic businesses in a variety of categories.

If you're visiting Southern Fried Children from TMOM for the first time, thanks for stopping by. I write short fiction and creative nonfiction about...well, lots of stuff. My kids, meth, love, cats who eat dead people. Whatever. I hope you poke around the archives and find something you like.

Thanks for reading, and for your votes!

Neat

2013-02-04T20:18:00.001-05:00

(Part One)

Fourteen.

There are fourteen black hairs that grow between his eyes. He know this because he plucks them every other Monday, as soon as he gets out of the shower. Fourteen hairs between two exquisitely manicured eyebrows. He plucks, then combs his eyebrows up and trims them straight with a pair of nail scissors. Every other Monday.

Every day, he lathers and shaves and trims his nose and ear hairs. There are more of these than there used to be. His hair he wears severely to the left, a razor sharp part that screams there is no nonsense here! He brushes and flosses, then brushes again, then mouthwash and lip balm. Then there is the business with his nails. He carefully pushes back each cuticle with an orange stick, then buffs them to a high shine. Oh, you paint your nails! A girl at the office had said once. He glared at her and bared his teeth and spat out, No.

White shirt and black pants and red tie. It is reliable, and he finds it suits any occasion. He went to his nephew's baseball game once, dressed as such, and his brother in law remarked that a pair of jeans might be more suitable for the ballfield.

Jeans!

He decided then that he didn't like baseball, even a little bit.

He toasts an English muffin and empties the tray on the toaster. He takes his coffee black from a single serve machine and washes the mug as soon as he is done. He leaves a room as it was when he entered, and it is almost like he was never there at all.

Some people may see a man like him and assume he harbors some dark secret. Perhaps he likes whores or dances naked to Lady Gaga or was once a seaboat captain with a lust for drink and a love of the sea. At the very least, they think, he wears thong underwear. But he had never been with a whore, nor did he know who Lady Gaga was. He became green at the mere mention of the sea and his underwear were as chaste and white as snow.

He had no friends that he was aware of. He was simultaneously feared and ignored at work. He had no interests, no hobbies, no relations, no commitments, no joy or pain or life.

Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. It must be Monday again. He plucks the last one and said aloud to no one, I need to get out.

He walks home from work and instead of turning left where he should have turned left, he turns right. He walks into a bar and sits down on a stool that is crusted with something he thinks may be vomit. He starts to move, then sits again in despite the crunch of the leather.. He sits down, because he's sitting next to her.

Send a Kid to Camp

2013-01-29T11:55:00.000-05:00

As many of you know, for the past six summers we've sent our daughter Katie away for a week to summer camp at YMCA Camp Hanes. It has become this wonderful ritual of scheduling and registration and packing and hugging and sending forth.

It is a week of swimming and hiking and arts and crafts and bugs. It is a week in which personal hygiene is highly questionable, but personal growth is assured. Because while it is swimming and hiking and fun and bugs, it is not.

It's a chance for my kid to become a leader, to find herself, to be completely independent in thought and action, without my influence. The lessons she learns in that week stick with her all year long. This year, she is looking forward to taking a 'rag challenge' - a goal she develops with her counselors and works on all year long. They stay in touch with her throughout the year, offering support and encouragement. Summer camp has, without question, made her a better person.

Which sounds ridiculous.

But this place is special.

Which sounds ridiculous.

But it is, it is special. The counselors are trained to the extent that they offer camps dedicated to children with autism, and diabetes, and special needs. There are kids from every background, of every color and creed, learning from each other and loving each other, guided by people who are dedicated to making sure that no child leaves that camp without knowing their value as a human being. Without believing they are special.

I never went to camp as a kid. But Camp Hanes has made me a believer in the importance of empowering my children. We budget and make allowances and figure out how to send Katie every year because we feel it makes a difference in her life.

But all that special comes with a price tag.

Camp Hanes provided financial assistance to approximately 500 kids last year through their Send a Kid to Camp campaign. They believe that every child should have the opportunity to learn and grow and experience all the wonderful things that they offer, and so do I. This year, I am pledging myself to help raise money to send some kids to camp, and I want you to join me.

I want SFC to send a kid to camp. I'd really like us to send TEN kids to camp. I've put a little button up on the top right of this page (if you're reading on a mobile device, you'll need to click the view on the web option). Clicking it will take you the donation page for Camp Hanes. There you can make a one time donation, or set up a recurring monthly donation ($57 a month for a year will send a kid to sleepaway camp for a week, $21 a month will send a kid to day camp for a week) . Make sure you designate "YMCA Camp Hanes".

Then, send me an email at southernfriedchildren@gmail.com and let me know what you did. I will send something AMAZING and AWESOME to you as a thank you, no matter the size of your donation. Because YOU are amazing and awesome, and so is this camp.

If you want to read more about Camp Hanes, and see some fun pictures and videos, check out their web page here. From their web page, about Send a Kid to Camp:

Through participation in the Annual Campaign, you can help YMCA Camp Hanes continue our more than 80 year camping tradition for future generations, insuring none are left out.
YMCA Camp Hanes partners with various groups so that we can affect the lives of Everyone, Everywhere. By doing so, we reach out to children who otherwise would not be able to experience Camp and offer them the opportunity to create lifelong memories.

Our partners for 2012 Resident camp include:

Camp Imagine and The Autism Society of ForsythCounty
The American Diabetes Association’s Camp Carolina Trails serving campers with diabetes.
US Army Reserve Child & Youth Services: We hosted children whose parents are in the U.S. Army Reserve.
The Youth Empowerment Support Services (Catholic Youth Services)
Omega Psi Phi: We partnered with the professional fraternity to host camp to instill discipline and pride in young African-American men.

They are doing good things up there on that mountain; thank you for helping however you can.

*Note: I have not been compensated in any way for this post, and all opinions are my own. Well, they did give me a water bottle, but not to write this. It is a nice water bottle, though.

The Facebook

2013-01-24T07:15:00.001-05:00

"Gawd, Granny. Everyone has a Facebook page." My granddaughter Ivylee says this, popping her gum and flicking the little hoop in her navel.

"Here, let me set you up." And she jumps up from the couch and leads me like a child to the computer. Five minutes later and there is my face, in my 2001 New Year's Eve Commemorative Eyewear, next to a box asking me, "How are feeling today, Lurlene?"

My corns are acting up, I type.

"Gran!"

I never was one to beat around the bush.

"Lurleeeeene! I cain't believe you are on the Facebook!" It's that cow Angela from down the street. She's cornered me on the cereal aisle at the Piggly Wiggly. The cereal aisle always gets me, there's just so many choices and, even though I know I'm going to get the same two cereals I've been getting since 1976 (Rice Krispies and Raisin Bran), I get taken in by the clever marketing ploys. Lose 10 pounds in two weeks! Win a trip to Paris! Prize INSIDE THE BOX! I'm in this cereal haze when Angela grabs hold of my arm and invades my personal space with her big weepy cow eyes and her peanut butter breath.

"Facebook! I didn't know you were such a social media maven!" She giggles. What fifty year old woman giggles? Angela does.

"Ivylee set it up. You're in my personal space, Angela."

She giggles again and backs up. "See you online, Lurlene! We'll have some LOLs!"

Licks of lard? Lots of liquor? If it's the last one, I might like this whole Facebook thing.

It's nearly five before I get home, close enough to supper to fix myself a bowl of Raisin Bran and watch Wheel of Fortune. Vanna White is nearly as old as me, and she's up there sashaying around like her face isn't held together with spackle and a prayer. She probably has her navel pierced, too. I remember when Ivylee came home with that ring in her belly, her mama about threw a fit. She called me up and ranted and raved about kids and respect and the body is a temple and home to the spirit of Jesus.

I reminded her that she got drunked up on her twenty-first birthday and got a dolphin tattooed on her titty. I don't think Jesus is hanging around Ivylee's bellybutton anymore than he's on your teat, Mandy. I said it nice, but she still hung up on me. I swear, that girl found Jesus and completely lost her sense of humor.

I finished my Raisin Bran and Wheel was over and it was still just six o'clock. Too early to go to bed, too late to go out. It was either crawl up in bed with my heating pad and Miss Marple, or check out the Facebook.

What the hell, I needed to shake things up.

I had thirty-six people who wanted to be my friends. Earl the pharmacist and Jenny the cashier at the Piggly Wiggly and Jeremy, Mandy's no good ex-husband. Ivylee and her boyfriend Jesse, Jesse's mama Taylor, her boyfriend and their "surprise" baby, Maxon (they pronounce it 'Mason'. Do not ask me why they didn't just spell it Mason.) I always said if you are having the sex and you are too dumb to do anything to prevent a baby, then it shouldn't be a surprise when that's what you get. Maxon was 16 now, and a bagger at the Piggly Wiggly after school.

The older I get, the larger the role the Piggly Wiggly seems to play in my life.

And Angela, of course. She'd taken a picture of herself in black and white, with her cow eyes at half-mast and the left side of her face covered by her hair. She looked almost attractive. She looked nothing like herself.

I clicked 'accept' on all their pictures, even the ones I didn't really like. This might be a darned fine way of keeping up with everyone. Even in a small town, it's sometimes hard to remember who's kin to who. I started looking at their pages, their pictures, their words. It was strange, how these folks felt so comfortable putting the details of their life out there for everyone to see. And some of it was just dumb. Maxon wrote, 'Gonna go to work now! Piggly Wiggly!', four times in four days. That boy don't have anything more interesting going on in his life? Wait, five days back it was 'Gonna shower then go to work! Piggly Wiggly!' Really mixing things up there, son.

Finally, I got to Angela's page. There were lots of pictures of Angela getting her nails done and Angela on a four wheeler and Angela's plates of dinner, which all seemed to be beige food. Another masterpiece! She'd caption it, and it'd be a picture of some potatoes and corn and macaroni and breaded chicken. Beige, beige, beige, beige. The woman was allergic to green.

And then, a picture of a man and a woman in blackface. The man I didn't recognize, but under the woman's makeup and do-rag I saw those big stupid cow eyes of Angela's.

Now, I am an old woman and I have seen things that would make your hair curl. I once watched a man being beaten for no transgression other than the color of his skin. I have seen Asian-Americans hauled off to camps and held prisoner by their fellow citizens. I have seen women, I have been the woman, grabbed at and catcalled and reduced to tears for the mere possession of my sex. But I have lived a long time and even in a small town, I believed, truly believed, that there no longer existed that level of ignorance.

Angela and her stupid face proved me wrong.

Guess who's winning the costume contest this year! Read the caption.

I sat on my hands. I stood and paced and sat on my hands some more. I thought about calling Mandy, then thought better of it. Mandy would say something like what would Jesus do?, and I would say something like Jesus would slap that dumb bitch, then Mandy would hang up on me again. What I should have done was turn off the computer and gone and watched The Golden Girls. But I am old, and I do not have many opportunities left to put someone in their place.

That is a racist costume, I typed.

I stared at the screen and half hoped she wouldn't reply and I could go on about my evening, feeling like I had said my peace. Then -

Lurlene! It is just a joke!

It ain't no joke, it's racist.

Well I am sorry u feel that way, but you know I am not a racist. You know some of my very best friends are black. What about Jerry?

Oh, hell no she didn't.

Angela, Jerry Thompson sold you some shoes. He is not your friend.

He is my Facebook friend!

Maxon is my Facebook friend, do you see me and him hanging out after school? Playing video games and talking about girls?

I am sorry you feel that way, Lurlene. maybe you are just too liberal to be my friend.

And you are too stupid to be mine, Amanda.

Then I sat back for a minute and, because I am old and cannot help myself, added - Also, you have the face of a bovine.

I clicked the little button that said, 'Unfriend', and turned off the computer. Turns out, I'm not such the social media maven, afterall.

Kitchen Folk

2013-01-23T02:31:00.001-05:00

It is still dark outside when I hear my grandfather's voice, Here, Sarah - sit up a little, as he slips a dress on over my head. He gently lays me back down and puts my shoes on, then wraps me in a blanket and carries me to his pickup truck. It is wintertime, and the truck is blowing white smoke and chugging in the cold air, but inside it's already warm. He lays me on the floorboard of the cab, amid a pile of blankets and pillows, and I curl up for the ride.

He takes me inside and sets me down, still half asleep. I walk over to my grandmother, bent over the butcherblock counter, cutting biscuits. She pauses, wipes her hands quickly on her apron, and gives me a small kiss on my cheek. Go lie down, sweetheart. Jimmy is there, brushing the tops of the biscuits with butter. Good morning, little girl, he near whispers, and there is white flour on his brown nose. It makes me smile.

I bury myself under my blanket on a braided rug next to the heating vent. The rug is old and smells like cooked things; it smells a little like dirt, and a little like dog. Mostly, it smells like me. I close my eyes and pretend to sleep, and I listen to their voices. Grits on? she asks. Yes'm, they reply. Bacon frying, biscuits baking, great vats of gravy peppered. There is the clang and clatter of plates on plates as the dishwashers roll out carts. It is the easy patois of kitchen folk.

During it all, I must have fallen asleep, because my grandmother is waking me now. She passes me a warm mug of coffee, heavy with sugar and cream, and a warm piece of toast, spread thick with cream cheese. I carefully dip the toast in the coffee and take a bite, as I had seen her do each morning. It is warm and cool and sweet and tart and simple and wonderful.

Then the boys come. Hastily dressed, eyes still crusted with sleep. The fronts of their hair parted and slick and still wet; the backs bristle-brush dry and sticking straight out. Their pillows must still be warm, I think. They jostle and jockey for position in line, throwing the occasional good natured elbow. My grandmother begins an endless stream of commentary about growing boys and extra helpings and too skinny and eat everything on your plate. Some days, she may throw in a proverb or remind them of the starving children in Africa. They grin and nod and yes'm, willing to listen to anything she has to say in exchange for biscuits and sausage gravy.

I listen, too. I listen to her voice and the boys. I listen to the scrape of forks on plates and of Jimmy, slurping his coffee beside me. I listen to the hum of the heating vent and the far-off rumble of my grandfather's truck and, under it all, the slow beat of my heart. It ticks in time with the boys and the plates and the heat and it all says one word, again and again - home, home, home.

Julia's Birthday

2013-01-19T20:40:00.001-05:00

Seven years ago this month, I suffered my third miscarriage. After my d&c, a very nice nurse came in with a little box, which held a small ring and a little book, as a keepsake. She squeezed my hand and I took the box and turned away from her and cried. Again.

I went home to my five year old Katie and told her we weren't having a baby afterall.

Then, in May, on Mother's Day, I threw up my breakfast and took a pregnancy test. Positive. I cried, again.

I wore the medal of St. Gerard around my neck for the next nine months and took a pill every day for sixteen weeks and prayed and prayed and prayed that this baby would make it. And when she kicked my ribs and had a case of the hiccups for days on end, I thanked God and modern medicine. Then she was here, in my arms, perfect and lovely and slightly pissed off.

She cried. She screamed. She was happy only in my arms, preferably latched on. When she started walking, she threw herself across the room like she desperately needed to go somewhere. When she started talking, she talked loud and fast and with the opinion that everything she said was right.

"I know that," she would say, "I know everything about that!"

She is right, most of the time. She wins, most of the time. She is loud and loving and strong and spirited, all of the time. She is the most self assured person I have ever met, and with good reason.

Yet for all of her bossiness and aggressiveness and loudness, she is also this tiny little girl who loves nothing more than to fold herself up in your lap and love you. She will rub my cheek and give me a thousand gentle kisses and tell me she loves me over and over. She is kind and generous and fun and sweet.

She is perfect. She is my Julia. Happy birthday, firecracker.

I Cannot Write

2013-01-16T22:04:00.001-05:00

I cannot write, right now, because I am too busy playing Candy Crush Saga. If you know what this is, you understand. If you don't, please don't go looking for it, it will consume your life.

I cannot get past Level 74, and it is making me crazy. I came within 1 FRIGGING ACORN and ran out of moves. I seriously teared up.

And this is why I can't write. Level 74.

Also, because I am at that jumping off place.

My house is kind of a mess and I haven't gone for a run in months and the ends of my toenails are blue, the last slivers of a color painted at the beginning of November. I honestly can't remember the last time I shaved my legs. I have two good stories to tell you and no energy to write them.

"How are you doing?", asks my friend Y-.

Weird. I am doing weird.

When I started this blog, I did so with the intent of keeping up with faraway friends and family. I had no idea that people made money from blogs. I had no idea who Dooce was.

Before this blog, I had never written anything longer than a response to a message board post. I was a good reader, a good thinker, sometimes funny. And now here I am a couple of years later, walking around with my chest puffed out calling myself a writer. Sometimes it feels very much like a sham.

Sometimes it feels like this is the best thing I've ever done short of those three perfect children. Sometimes, I want to kick myself and say, what are you doing, you are so lazy! I should be submitting things and being more active and consistent and engaging. But then I get distracted by washing machines and special snack and soccer registration and play rehearsal.

And Candy Crush Saga, Level 74.

So here I am, at a jumping off place. I will, I will, I will jump.

As soon as I get to Level 75.

The Jumping Off Place

2013-01-12T21:48:00.001-05:00

I am at the jumping off place, she thought.

She walked into his office and told him she'd quit. "You're not leaving the job," he said, "You're leaving me."

She stood and walked out, because what he'd said was true.

She went home and packed her clothes and her CDs and her two cups, two plates, two forks, knives, spoons, her one expensive coffee machine. She put a check and her key on the kitchen table, and a note for her roommate. Sorry for the short notice, it read.

She might have added, I am at the jumping off place.

She went to the bank and withdrew three-thousand, four-hundred, forty-two dollars and seventy-three cents and closed the account. The bank manager wanted to talk about why was she closing her account, and, were there any incentives they could offer to make her stay? But she set her face like flint and smiled tightly and said, "No, thank you."

It was lunch time and she was hungry and, well aware that you should never jump on an empty stomach, went to the best restaurant in town. She ordered her favorite things, all cream sauces and cheesey pastas and rare meat. She had nothing to read, and so she ordered a salad and greatly admired the tablecloth while she waited for her food. She left, too full, and thankful for elastic waisted pants.

She drove up on the bridge and then over to the side. She checked her reflection in the mirror, tightened her ponytail. After some consideration, she put on a little lipgloss. There was a small observation deck at the beginning of the pedestrian walkway, and she lingered there, staring at the city. She could see the hospital where she was born, and where her mother had died. She saw the hotel where she'd had too much to drink before prom and spent the night bent over the toilet, while her boyfriend danced with another girl in the ballroom down the hall. She saw her office building, and thought of meeting him there.

There was a high metal railing around the observation deck, and down the length of the walkway. She had been standing there, clutching it in her hands, thinking about twenty-eight years spent in this city, in this life, with nothing to show for it. The metal chilled her hands, she put them to her cheeks to warm them. They smelled like old pennies, like dried blood.

I am at the jumping off place, she thought.

She turned away from the city and walked back to the car. She started the engine and turned the radio up too loud and pointed the car west. "Just jump," she said aloud, and started to drive.

Bum Rush

2013-01-07T21:51:00.001-05:00

When I was five, or maybe six, we lived in Longview, Texas. Or Burns Flat, Oklahoma. It doesn't matter. I was a small person in a small town in a flat land in the midwest. My clearest memory is of the neighbor boy, who was always trying to get me to show him my heinie or kiss him on the lips or play army guys.

His name was Jason. He was a toe-headed kindergartener who lived on our cul-de-sac. As all children of the '70s, Jason and I were largely unsupervised and found all sorts of trouble to get into. His father kept a stack of Playboy magazines in the hall closet, and one day Jason said, "Hey, look at these." I'm sure I ooh-ed and ahh-ed at the softly airbrushed boobies, the artfully feathered hair, the 'articles'.

I'm sure I didn't tell him that my own father kept Penthouse and Hustler in the bathroom. I had seen crotch shots that would make a hooker blush. Playboy was like reading Twilight after War and Peace.

We didn't have video games or twenty-four hour cartoons and so were forced to play outside for hours at a time with things like rocks and sticks. I'd bang on the screen door and call for my mother. "I want to come inside!" I'd shout.

"Play outside! It's a beautiful day!"

"But it's hot! My face is so sunburned my forehead has cracked and is peeling off! I'm thirsty!"

"Get a drink out of the hose!", she'd yell, and go back to her doobie smoking and plant hanger macrame making.

I leaned over the hose so as not to get my shoes wet, the water hot on my lips and tongue.

"Hey!", Jason called from the sidewalk. "Jimmy found a dirt pile!"

There were few things more exciting than a dirt pile. You could play mountain or king of the castle or have it be base for tag or kickball. You could run around it or dig in it and bury stuff in it. You could slide down it.

And that is what the neighborhood kids were doing when we got there. Someone had found a large plank of wood and had leaned it precariously against the dirt pile at a steep angle. Kids were scrambling up to the top, then sliding down the plank. Sometimes they'd make it all the way to the bottom, sometimes they'd fall off midway down.

The whole set up looked rickety as hell, and extremely dangerous. Sliding down that mound of dirt would be a really horrible idea.

"Race you to the top!" I yelled to Jason.

We half-ran, half-crawled to the top of the mound and jockeyed for position in line. "Ladies first!", I yelled, and Jason took a step back. Even little boys knew that you had to let girls go first. "Stupid girls," he grumbled.

I sat down on the plank. It was smoother than I'd expected, and warm from the sun and countless kid butts sliding down it's surface. The pitch of the plank suddenly made me dizzy and I felt like I might fall right then. "Go on, don't be a baby!", Jason taunted me. "I'm not a BABY!", I yelled back. What did he know? He probably thought pubic hair grew in little heart shapes.

I stood up. "I'm a tightrope walker!", I yelled, and started down the plank. But it was too steep to walk, and I went faster and faster until I was nearly running, windmilling my arms wildly until I jumped, too soon, and landed in a heap at the bottom.

I looked up at Jason, who gave me a thumbs up. I returned the gesture with one of my own, but used a different finger.

"My turn!", he called and straddled the plank, grinning.

I don't remember how far he'd gone when things went wrong. Not far. One minute he was grinning and the next he was screaming bloody murder. He fell off the plank, jumped up, and ran home screaming.

The other kids and I stood there, staring. Then, sensing an impending trouble, possibly even an ass whooping, the kids scattered in the direction of home. I ran home, past Jason's house, where the door was flung wide open. Into my kitchen, where my mom was making pork chops and cornbread and black-eyed peas (which I hate, and to this day associate with the terror that was to follow).

"What is wrong?", she said with concern (after yelling STOP RUNNING IN THE GODDAMN HOUSE). I told her what had happened. She said Jason's parents were in town, and his grandma was at the house. And that was when the screaming began.

They were the screams of a kid who's grandma was pulling a bigass splinter out of his butt. Except, in my six year old head, the splinter grew to ruler size and was not (as it was, in fact) in his buttcheek at all but in his butthole.

I didn't see much of Jason those last few weeks of summer. I went over to his house a few times, but his mom always said he was at the store. Even once when he was standing pretty much right behind her. Grown ups think kids are stupid.

When we went back to school, Jason kept his head down. None of the kids really gave him a hard time, we were still little and some of us thought the poor kid had a splinter in his b-hole and that, for whatever reason, makes you want to be nice to a person.

We nearly ran into each other one day, heading out to recess.

"Oh, sorry, Jason. You go ahead."

He smiled for the first time I'd seen in weeks. "Nah," he said, "Ladies first."

New Year's Girl

2013-01-01T21:46:00.001-05:00

Katie is the most interesting person I have ever met.

She has gone from a serious baby to a precocious and sweet toddler to a charming little girl and now, a quirky and fun and fantastic twelve year old.

Twelve's years old, today. My New Year's Girl.

On New Year's Eve every year since she's been born, we have kissed her and told her happy birthday at the drop of the ball. She is the beginning of our family, the beginning of everything, and her birthday means hope and light and opportunity. The opportunity to do good things; the opportunity to be a better person. Redemption. Renewal. She brought me to life.

Last night at a quarter to midnight, she tore herself away from the television and the computer and the handheld devices. She ran downstairs in her shorts and her Abe Froman - Sausage King of Chicago t-shirt, her robe and slippers. She ran back up and added a crocheted Yogi Bear hat and MagiQuest belt where she had stuck - instead of the wand - a pen featuring a wolf's head and arms that punch.

That outfit, somehow, is everything I love about Katie.

She popped the bottle of Martinelli's and we all held high our skeleton Halloween goblets and counted down together - 10...9...8...

And then we toasted our daughter, who is the very best thing that has ever happened in my life.

Happy birthday, New Year's Girl.

Awake

2012-12-27T22:11:00.001-05:00

It is very easy, I think, to give a dark seed a warm place to grow in your heart. It is easy to despair and curl up and stuff yourself full of pie and pity and a heavy, heavy dose of fuck it all.

It is very easy to forget the things that give you the most joy and just get lost.

I feel I have been a little lost.

I write stories in my head that I have neither the patience nor the focus to get onto paper. I stare at running shoes in my closet, sigh, and sit back down. I say, "Later, later," to my children and later never comes.

I cancel plans.

I ignore the phone.

I break promises.

And then little hands grab at me and small mouths kiss me and my stupid dog lays her old face next to mine and all of these things say, 'Get up.' My husband reaches across the car and holds my hand on the way to church, and the priest says something that cuts right to my heart and a friend sends me a text to tell me I'm loved. And all of these things happen for no reason, while I sit in my darkness and stew in my juices. All of these things say, 'Get up,' so I do.

There are stories to be written and clothes to be washed and books to be read and games to be played. There are races to be run.

Julia is asleep on the little bed on the floor next to me. I can hear her soft breathing, mixed with that of the dog. Earlier, I watched Katie walk three doors down to spend the night with a friend, wearing nearly every piece of Christmas clothing she received. She turned and waved and blew me a kiss before she walked through their gate. She knew I'd be watching. Within the hour, I expect to hear Henry's bare feet pad down the hall and into our room. He will crawl into our bed without a word and throw his arm around my neck and close his eyes. And while they sleep, they know I am here. Their easy breaths say the same thing, speaking in symphony with my heart, telling me - Get up.

O, Christmas Tree (of a most humbling nature)

2012-12-17T04:50:00.000-05:00

Last year, you may remember that our artificial tree bit the dust last year, right before Christmas. I did two posts about it; one after the tree gave out, and one after we went out and bought a live tree.

This year, we went to the mountains for the full on Christmas tree experience. We had cocoa. We rode on a tractor. We picked out tree and posed for the Facebook picture as the friendly fellow with the chainsaw cut it down. It was a huge, glorious tree and it scraped the ceiling of the living room. Shutup Roxy especially loved it. So much, that for her first Christmas ever, in thirteen Christmases, starting scratching her back against the bottom branches.

"ROXY!" I yell a dozen times a day. And, "CHILDREN!", as they round the corner running and graze the tree.

There are needles everywhere.

"Did you water it today?" Sean asks.

"Of course."

"Does it seem like it's dropping a lot of needles?", he asks.

"It does."

He reaches out and touches a branch and it crumbles in his hand. We both gasp.

We have a housefull of company coming for Christmas! We have to have a tree! We are agonizing over what to do! In the end, we decide to try to find a cheap tree, something to get us through. I'll have to undecorate the old tree and decorate the new one and I am agonizing over that to the point that I consider having a beer at two this afternoon.

Sean and the kids go looking for a tree and I spend an hour taking ornaments and lights off the old tree. The branches snap and break and the pile of needles on the floor would fill my kitchen sink. The rest of the family returns, unable to decide because they know - this is my tree. We head out again and find it- the replecement tree, the second stringer.

We get it home and set it in the stand and cut off the netting. It does not scrape the ceiling.

"It's smaller than it looked on the tree lot." Sean says.

I am slightly heartbroken. As I decorate, Sean throws out platitudes like, "Oh, it looks bigger with the lights on it." But the more I on the tree, the better I like it. The more time I spend futzing around with the ornaments and the lights, the lovelier the little tree becomes.

There is a lesson here! I think to myself. It's like a Christmas spirit thing! I feel all warm and fuzzy. I feel smug.

I feel like the biggest asshole in the world.

There have been words rolling around in my head for the past few days that do not make sense and can not seem to make it onto paper in a coherent way. I rambled for what seemed like an eternity to Katie; nearly 12 and old enough for most truths. I couldn't seem to end the conversation and I couldn't look at her until I finally did, and said "I don't know." And then my kid put her arm around me as I sobbed about something can not, in my worst nightmare, fathom.

Six hours later, I was mentally high fiving myself for being awesome. It is easy to forget when it's not your reality. It's easy to ignore the things that happen around us when we are safe as houses. It is easy to forget the darkness when we live in the light.

There have been words rolling around in my head; words like faith and hope and hero and sacrifice and evil and sick and pain. Words that don't make any sense, no matter what order I put them in. The only words that seem to fall correctly everytime, the only words that ring true, are I don't know.