Category Archives: Memories

It’s Best Not to Wonder.

If I had to guess, I’d say my father was probably fishing on Sunday. He once told me that was what he liked to do with his time. He also used to do projects around the house, like that year he spent digging out a basement underneath the cabin he lived in, but I’m not sure he’s in any shape to do that sort of thing anymore. He turned 65 last month. At that age, I guess anything is possible though. I really wouldn’t know.

While I did my best to keep the focus of Father’s Day on my husband, thoughts of my own father kept creeping into my mind. I pictured him sitting in his rowboat, that one he had shown me all those years ago when we went for a walk along the lake he lived on. I could see him sitting there, the oars perched off the sides in a way that I honestly don’t know is even possible as I know nothing about rowboats. Maybe it wasn’t a rowboat. I’m not sure now. But it was blue. Or white. I actually can’t remember too much about it.

In my mind he was smoking. I wondered if he would pitch the finished butts out into the lake and risk hurting the fish or if he’d stamp them out in an ashtray he’d brought along with him. I pictured the old lunch cooler he used to bring to work, the red one with the flip down white lid. I’ll bet this one didn’t have beer in it though. He’s been sober for over twenty years. Well, last time I talked to him he had been sober. He probably doesn’t have that cooler anymore, anyway.

I wondered if he would head home at a certain time to sit down to a meal with his second wife, the woman he married some time in the last 15 years or so. I’m not sure when that happened. They weren’t married when I met her and then the next time I talked to my father they were. My father’s remarriage was one of those big things that remains a mystery to me, mostly because I wasn’t included in it.

I wondered what he’d think about, sitting there in the boat. What would he talk about later with his wife? Surely he knew it was Father’s Day. Did he wonder where his children were and what they were doing?

And then I wondered what kind of father abandons his children, gives up without a fight, just walks away. Not just once, either, but multiple times, over and over. I want to think he had a good reason, but in all this time he’s never once shared that with me. I want to think that if I were in his position, if I had been given the second and third and fourth chances, I wouldn’t squander them.

But maybe I would. Maybe I couldn’t turn it around either.

Maybe some people aren’t worth fighting for.

Maybe he feels the same way about me.

Edited to add: This post took crowd favorite over at yeah write last week! Thanks to everyone who read, voted, and commented!

Featured image credit

Estate Sale.

The drawer was pulled open. The utensils slammed against the back from force. The plastic tray holding them scraped the bottom, the same rattle-scrape for twenty-five years.

These knives were once weapons used against us both.
I’ll be glad when they’re gone.

 

To find out what the gargleblaster is, click the badge above. You can read the other entries into the challenge and vote for your favorites on Tuesday.

Edited to add: Hey look! I came in 7th and earned myself a top row seven badge. Yay me!

A Question of Loyalty.

He wasn’t technically my boss, but he had power within the organization and he lorded it over me as if he were. I will admit that in the beginning I enjoyed the perks his position afforded me.

One day I was invited into his office to chat and told to shut the door. He told me he needed to know if I was happy with my job. I said that I guessed I was, sure. That wasn’t good enough. He wanted a yes or no answer. While I didn’t feel like I was going after my calling by spreadsheeting insurance rates and finding out why claims weren’t paid, it was better than unemployment.

“Yes,” I said. “Why are you asking?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

But it most certainly did matter. It turns out that someone overheard me say I hated my job the day before. He didn’t have to tell me who. I already knew. I had been very frustrated with a client and I told a colleague that I hated my job. Another colleague, someone with a vested interest in making sure I never rose above her in the ranks, was in earshot. I wouldn’t have let her hear had I known she was there, but I have a big mouth and at that moment I did hate my job. But moments pass.

The issue of my loyalty became a problem for both of us. He constantly felt the need to question it and I felt pressed to defend it. In my experience, one of the quickest ways to crush the spirit of a committed employee is to constantly question that employee’s commitment. I did my best to let the exchanges go, if for no other reason than to get through each day.

A few months later, after a few happy hour drinks with a client, I was accused of “only sticking around until I got pregnant and could be a mommy.” And while part of my life plan included children, the insinuation that I would bolt as soon as my biological needs kicked in was beyond insulting.

I didn’t want to work around the clock. I didn’t want to spend evenings at the office when I wasn’t paid to do so. I put in my time, extra when needed, but only when needed. My job wasn’t my life and this left him dissatisfied.

There were many other instances of his condescension. His my-way-or-the-highway approach never went unnoticed and, in fact, was starting to make the highway look pretty damn appealing. One particular day we had a disagreement and he eventually raised his voice telling me I needed to do as I was told. I reminded him I wasn’t one of his children and spent the rest of the day making an exit strategy.

Once I was pregnant and deliberately edged out of everything possible, I think he thought he had been right all along. But it was more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than anything else because here I am, nearly eight years later, still working full time. Still a dedicated employee, still doing what needs to be done.

The difference is I don’t do it for him.

Air Conditioner.

The summers of my childhood were sweltering. The air was thick and sat heavy on my chest. Everything was always damp from the humidity or just plain sticky. It was inescapable.

This rarely bothered me during the day when games and playmates could keep my mind off how uncomfortable I felt. My mother would twist her hair at the nape, secure it with one barrette, and walk around with a wet washcloth around her neck. She would sigh, appearing more tired than usual. If I aggravated her, which was much easier to do in the summer, she’d simply say, “Michelle, it’s hot.” That was my cue to leave her alone.

Without the distractions of the day, I could not shake off how truly miserable I was at night. The second-floor bedroom I shared with my brother was small. If I had to guess, I’d say it was an eight foot by eight foot square. Jim’s bed was a youth size, smaller than your average twin. My bed was a glorified wooden box atop which sat the same crib mattress that I used as a baby and Jim used before that. I couldn’t be sure, but I would guess we weren’t the first babies to sleep on that mattress either. Jim and I each had a small night stand, which wasn’t so much a nightstand as a set of drawers made of cardboard. Mom bought them at Woolworth’s or the five-and-dime, or maybe McCrory’s. We had one small dresser for our clothing. Nothing else could fit.

There was one window in the room where Mom placed a box fan facing out. She placed a similar one in the hall window. She said it pulled the hot air creating circulation to cool the house down. I’m sure this idea makes sense from a scientific standpoint, but as a child whose body was threatening to melt, I just thought she was crazy. When we would go to bed, Mom would say, “Just don’t move and it will feel cooler,” this another logical piece of advice that I thought was pure crap. No matter what, we were roasting in there. There was no breeze and every night felt about a thousand hours long.

One day, an air conditioner appeared. It was just the one, and I had no idea where it came from. Our new-to-us air conditioner wasn’t powerful and no doubt this is why it was cast off by the original owner. But it was better than nothing, and so it was installed in our dining room window. So incapable was this AC of cooling the entire first floor, small as it may have been, that Mom thumb-tacked bed sheets over the doorways to thwart the drift and dissipation of the cooler air. That night, and many otherwise unbearable nights to follow, Jim and I brought our sleeping bags down to the dining room and slept under the table, as this was the only clear spot large enough to accommodate us. The table became a makeshift fort and sleeping beneath it was just another shared story of our youth.

We only had that air conditioner for one summer. It limped along nobly until it finally just gave up.

Jim and I haven’t shared a conversation in years, much less a space as close as that under a dining room table. Since that time, the bridges between us have burned hotter than a New Jersey summer night, the embers smoldering on longer than a hand me down air conditioner ever could.

 

 

Everything Changes in an Instant.

Think about human life for a minute. Think about the idea that two people get together and do what people do and then, from that, another person is created. Just like that. It happens in an instant. Wild, right?

As the four year anniversary of my mother’s death approaches, I’m not feeling what I would have expected to feel. I’m not deeply and profoundly sad as I have been in past years. I’m not doing the fandango over here, but it’s more a general melancholy this time around. Perhaps my emotions will change day to day, minute to minute, as it gets closer. That is probably normal and to be expected.

I think I’m finally coming to terms with the idea that what’s done is done and it is all it will ever be. I mean, what choice do I have? She is already dead. Failure to accept this reality will not alter the ultimate ending. She is and will remain dead.

In one instant, she ceased to exist and I, in turn, ceased to be the person I was.

Things have changed so much since she died. These are changes I believe could not have happened until she was gone. There isn’t one single transition and for every one there is, there’s an offshoot of that creating a new shift, like branches on a tree.

I’m not who I used to be. I’m a person without a mother. The woman who got together with someone else and did the thing that people do, then carried me inside her for months is dead. And this human being, or what’s left of her at least, is sitting in a marble urn, a fine powder I presume, on my mantle. Think about that. That’s the reality of things. She’s dead. She’s powder. She’s on my mantle.

Some days it’s a sad thing, an emotional thing. And other days, it’s just a practical thing. These matter-of-fact acknowledgements happen more now as the intensity of my grief wanes. I think to myself oh, I have to go dust the mantle… Hi, Mom… It’s just how it is. Maybe I’m compartmentalizing. Maybe I’m accepting. I don’t know.

Four years and everything is different. A part of me, my past, is gone. My future, one that was virtually unimaginable while she was alive, looks bright. The enormity of the realization that her life and her death are both so instrumental in shaping everything about who I am is sometimes surprising. And yet, it shouldn’t be. She gave me life – it’s only right that everything between us will be profound, even when the depth of it isn’t felt until I’m ready to feel it.

I keep thinking back to one moment: I was walking out of her room, hospital visiting hours over for the day. I knew she wouldn’t live though the night. I knew I’d never see her again. I’m just starting to understand the gravity of that walk.

Think about human life for a minute. Think about the idea that a person goes around and does what people do and then, one day, they don’t. Just like that. It happens in an instant and everything changes.

 

Joining my friends in the weekly writing challenge at yeah write. Click the badge to read the other entries and learn more about what the challenge is all about.