They tried to make me go to rehab but I said 'no, no, no'
Yes I've been black but when I come back you'll know know know
I ain't got the time and if my daddy thinks I'm fine
He's tried to make me go to rehab but I won't go go go
~ Amy Winehouse "Rehab"
I used to get drunk to get my spark
And it used to work just fine
It made me wretched but it gave me heart
I miss Jimmy like I miss my wine
~ Shawn Colvin "The Facts About Jimmy"
I don't remember how old I was - maybe 10? When I heard about this. My aunts & uncles & my mother and I guess my Dad too, staged some kind of intervention...they were in their 60s, my maternal Grandparents.
He (Grandpa) was probably newly retired from being a GP (General Practice) doctor in Portland, OR. They don't call them that anymore, I don't think, "GP" doctors. But back then he was that "country doctor" you still remember, or wish you could remember, who made house calls, delivered babies in a pinch, and took payment in food-stuffs sometimes, or just waved it off with a "well, we'll settle that later."
He was a great man. And I thought about becoming a doctor too, thinking about him, at some point during high school when I had a really good biology teacher, and it all seemed possible. And maybe I would have done it, if not for daunting O-Chem classes at college. And the fact that I didn't really love math after all, despite winning the 8th Grade Math Award and loving my algebra teacher Ms.Marion, who was a real task-master. It took A LOT to please that woman and yet I think I somehow did, in the end. :)
So...anyways, my Grandparents. I think that my Grandfather held it together while he had to, and then after he retired well...that's another story, one that is probably not my right to tell, mostly because I have no idea what it was really like for them. But I do imagine...and have some thoughts, below...
I remember showing up in Portland after 3 hours road-trip down from Seattle, how we'd run to the deep-freezer for popsicles and their house was so big! and beautiful. How she always had cookies in that bronze tin on the counter and how did my Grandmother keep it together after her reason for living was gone? Kids all grown and grandkids only visit so often....it's a little like my own mother now and I can't exactly relate but I can certainly sympathize.
When my grandfather retired & my grandparents suddenly had all that time on their hands, you know the reward of their hard work all those years, I think it just fell apart. How bad it got I don't know, but bad enough for an "intervention" at some point and they went to rehab & stopped drinking & I guess they lived the long "good" life we all want. My sweet grandfather lived to be 87 years old and died just before his money to pay for in-home nursing care ran out.
She died first, and spent her last 5 years or so in a wheelchair - after raising 9 children (one of whom died before the age of 5 from Leukemia), I can't really blame her for wanting someone to take care of her! I still remember the last time I saw her - she was sitting in her wheelchair pulled up to the table, smoking a cigarette and looking like old-age had just crashed through her life & taken everything, her eyes so empty.
She said "I should have had more children" and when I (blanching inwardly) said "I think you had just the right amount of children" she only responded "well, I can't have any more now." I was so sad for her.
And my own mother is the same story: she's taken care of others her whole life, and now that her spouse is dead, kids all grown & gone (mostly), and she's stopped doing day-care I think she doesn't know what to do with herself.
I know you can't tell a depressed person to just "snap out of it" but I wish I could help her get a toehold in moving towards mental and physical health...by telling her this secret I think I know: it doesn't matter where you are currently, how bad it is, all your joys & sorrows, what you have lived up to this point, if you can change your thinking you can begin a new life now.
I truly believe this in my heart and will tell it to anyone I love who is suffering (including myself), whether they want to hear about it or not. So this is how I hang on, this is how I don't give up.
"I Shall Believe"
~ by Sheryl Crow
Come to me now
And lay your hands over me
Even if it's a lie
Say it will be alright
And I shall believe
I'm broken in two
And I know you're on to me
That I only come home
When I'm so all alone
But I do believe
That not everything is gonna be the way
You think it ought to be
It seems like every time I try to make it right
It all comes down on me
Please say honestly you won't give up on me
And I shall believe
And I shall believe
Open the door
And show me your face tonight
I know it's true
No one heals me like you
And you hold the key
Never again
would I turn away from you
I'm so heavy tonight
But your love is alright
And I do believe
That not everything is gonna be the way
You think it ought to be
It seems like every time I try to make it right
It all comes down on me
Please say honestly
You won't give up on me
And I shall believe
I shall believe
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/sherylcrow/ishallbelieve.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3Nnrj6i9Vk
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Sophie's Choice
Lately I am wondering about my father's ancestors - Ruzika, Ruzicka or Ruziska or Ruziscka - the name our father told us before he died. Who was this man & who was this woman, who had an affair (and which one's name was it? probably his), while they were both married to other people in 1941 or 1942? And then she got pregnant, birthed my father and gave him up for adoption? Was there tons of guilt, and shame & secrecy and is this why it is going to be hard for me to find out anything more now, all these years later?
We know that our father did some research on his birth-parents back in the late '80s or early '90s but he apparently never got very far with it. I have my older brother sending me the documents from that search & once I get them I will figure out where to go from there, if I will go anywhere at all. Maybe it's best to let it go, let "sleeping dogs lie" and not stir up any ghosts?
But I am so full of questions: Were they really Romanian, like I remember my father saying? I want them to be. If only cuz I'd like some I'm-a-Gypsy-Princess fantasy to play out, like I had when I was young, hearing my father talk about his blood-ancestry, how it was all possible then because we just didn't know. But I hated how he would call himself a "bastard" - it seemed wrong to me, even as a young child, just hurtful & unfair. I guess I could sense even then, that he had some unresolved, leftover shame from it, something.
My father had done nothing wrong, he'd just been born! And then adopted by my damaged paternal grandparents. Well, *damaged* mostly just my grandmother, as I remember it. What her parents must have done to her, my poor Grandma Hirning, for her to be so angry & awful - despite the fact she died of cancer when I was only 6 years old, I still remember being afraid of her.
And I also saw up-close the number she had done on my Aunt Margaret, my father's anorexic/bulemic also-adopted younger sister. She died suddenly at the age of 59, after she'd already buried her mother, brother and father (in that exact order), and was left all alone in that most heartless place, the "city of angels" (Los Angeles, CA).
Despite the all-too-obvious damage, my Grandma Hirning, for some reason was expected to be maternal and to have & raise children - despite her barren womb and probable incapacity to truly nurture. I guess it was the times, as they say....
I look past the Hirnings, all dead now anyway (God bless them), and wonder...were they, my blood-grandparents - this scandalous mystery man & woman - somehow connected to the detritus of WW II? I want them to be. If only because I have this romanticized image of desperate people trying to "make it" in America and love the description of DPs, Displaced Persons, in one of my favorite books The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood....she SO gets the baby-boomers, that whole generation.
And also, I recently watched the movie "Sophie's Choice" and seeing Meryl's Streep's beautiful anguished face while she told her stories of what it was like to be in a concentration camp and have her children taken from her, I felt somehow connected to that history, that horror...how insane it was and how banal too. Just world politics happening and taking people with it, the broad sweep of brutality that happens to this day, it's just not quite the whole European diaspora that happened then and with such attention.
It's just that I don't know how you do this - it's "Sophie's Choice" and how do you choose?! And when it's so banal, when living as a depressed & anxious person, in wealthy America in 2011 is so painful yet so comparatively easy, what do you do with that? Life or death? My husband tells me to "Pick!" all the time and he means something else but it is the same choice.
I only know that I watched the documentary following "Sophie's Choice" and I know that I'm NOT doomed, like they said she was (and she did kill herself at the end of the movie). I'm not dead - yet. I'm still fighting and if that means I have to be angry all the time, then so be it. I'd rather be angry, at this point, than dead ("better dead than red" says the WW II & Cold War voices in my head). Hey world, life ~ bring it!
We know that our father did some research on his birth-parents back in the late '80s or early '90s but he apparently never got very far with it. I have my older brother sending me the documents from that search & once I get them I will figure out where to go from there, if I will go anywhere at all. Maybe it's best to let it go, let "sleeping dogs lie" and not stir up any ghosts?
But I am so full of questions: Were they really Romanian, like I remember my father saying? I want them to be. If only cuz I'd like some I'm-a-Gypsy-Princess fantasy to play out, like I had when I was young, hearing my father talk about his blood-ancestry, how it was all possible then because we just didn't know. But I hated how he would call himself a "bastard" - it seemed wrong to me, even as a young child, just hurtful & unfair. I guess I could sense even then, that he had some unresolved, leftover shame from it, something.
My father had done nothing wrong, he'd just been born! And then adopted by my damaged paternal grandparents. Well, *damaged* mostly just my grandmother, as I remember it. What her parents must have done to her, my poor Grandma Hirning, for her to be so angry & awful - despite the fact she died of cancer when I was only 6 years old, I still remember being afraid of her.
And I also saw up-close the number she had done on my Aunt Margaret, my father's anorexic/bulemic also-adopted younger sister. She died suddenly at the age of 59, after she'd already buried her mother, brother and father (in that exact order), and was left all alone in that most heartless place, the "city of angels" (Los Angeles, CA).
Despite the all-too-obvious damage, my Grandma Hirning, for some reason was expected to be maternal and to have & raise children - despite her barren womb and probable incapacity to truly nurture. I guess it was the times, as they say....
I look past the Hirnings, all dead now anyway (God bless them), and wonder...were they, my blood-grandparents - this scandalous mystery man & woman - somehow connected to the detritus of WW II? I want them to be. If only because I have this romanticized image of desperate people trying to "make it" in America and love the description of DPs, Displaced Persons, in one of my favorite books The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood....she SO gets the baby-boomers, that whole generation.
And also, I recently watched the movie "Sophie's Choice" and seeing Meryl's Streep's beautiful anguished face while she told her stories of what it was like to be in a concentration camp and have her children taken from her, I felt somehow connected to that history, that horror...how insane it was and how banal too. Just world politics happening and taking people with it, the broad sweep of brutality that happens to this day, it's just not quite the whole European diaspora that happened then and with such attention.
It's just that I don't know how you do this - it's "Sophie's Choice" and how do you choose?! And when it's so banal, when living as a depressed & anxious person, in wealthy America in 2011 is so painful yet so comparatively easy, what do you do with that? Life or death? My husband tells me to "Pick!" all the time and he means something else but it is the same choice.
I only know that I watched the documentary following "Sophie's Choice" and I know that I'm NOT doomed, like they said she was (and she did kill herself at the end of the movie). I'm not dead - yet. I'm still fighting and if that means I have to be angry all the time, then so be it. I'd rather be angry, at this point, than dead ("better dead than red" says the WW II & Cold War voices in my head). Hey world, life ~ bring it!
If I Could Save You
from falling off that mountain
I would scold you to be more
patient, and careful
I would yell at you like
you yelled at me when I was
a teenager and you were so afraid
because you saw me falling
and I didn't know it
my only thought was of having fun
now, I would yell and scream and pound
my fist like you did, my father
if you would only still be alive
if you were, everything would be different
if I could stop you, my brother
from jumping off the Aurora bridge
I'd yell and scream and tear my hair out
and if you did jump
anyway
I would try to catch you
and then
we'd get coffee and talk
tears and rain drops
falling into our cups
the rest of the world would stop
while we discuss family history
genetics of depression
we can't escape it but
it's not the death of us
it doesn't have to be the death of us
yet
it's hard to overcome
but yell at me and fall and fight
all you want, but don't die
don't die yet
don't die
if I could save you
I could save myself
Friday, June 10, 2011
Perfect Summer ~ A Poem
The following poem based (loosely) on a poignant memory of David's, from when Trevor (his now 24-year-old son) was a little kid:
There once was a time
this magical summer
when all the kids were playing
on the lawn and
the air was warm and
life seemed good
and the adults were....
having affairs and smoking pot
and trying to
not be children
themselves
how could it have been
any better?
how could we have lost it?
and how can we go on
with knowledge of all
that was happening
underneath
all that apparent
perfection?
There once was a time
this magical summer
when all the kids were playing
on the lawn and
the air was warm and
life seemed good
and the adults were....
having affairs and smoking pot
and trying to
not be children
themselves
how could it have been
any better?
how could we have lost it?
and how can we go on
with knowledge of all
that was happening
underneath
all that apparent
perfection?
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Everybody Has a Swimming-Pool Story ~ Post-Script
As the weather continues to heat up here in Florida (which means "Flowery" or "Floral" in Spanish btw, see hyperlink below), and our A/C stays off sometimes, too much of the time to my mind but David loves the heat so...
http://www.ask.com/questions-about/What-Does-the-Word-Florida-Mean
My thoughts continue to turn to additional memories & stories of swimming pools. And how I have one now at our apartment, that I can go to anytime or at least on the weekends, and how I didn't even have to give up my "kingdom" for it! :) See last year's Mem.Day blog post ~ http://yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.html
The pressure is off to enjoy this swimming pool, cuz it's there all the time, and the pressure is off to enjoy a sunny day because they happen EVERY DAY here...I love it and it is SO different from what it was like to grow up in Seattle and also what I experienced during my not-so-brief 14 year tenure as a Wisconsinite.
I used to have this day-dream or fantasy as a kid, about getting an in-ground swimming pool (not one of those measly things I'd seen & been in, that were barely more than a very large blow-up kiddy pool), in our backyard, how one day I'd swim to the bottom and find a secret compartment.
I'd open it up & discover treasure and my family would be rich and safe and happy forever. We only needed the swimming pool to make it all happen!!! And they wondered why I wanted an in-ground swimming pool so badly. In cold rainy Seattle of all places. As a kid, I remember that I wanted this even more than my own room, far away from my snoring little sister (bless her heart, I think she had an adenoids problem).
I have another specific childhood memory of the swimming pool that wasn't - how my "rich" friend Merret had this HUGE backyard behind her family's HUGE mansion at the bottom of Capitol Hill, just past Broadway. Where I spent the night often and was so scared - how that house creaked and groaned, seemed to breathe, making just the weirdest noises, after dark when my friend was already asleep and I lay awake listening.
(Especially scared after reading that really great book Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan - see hyperlink below - which I probably placed in Merret's mansion in my mind).
http://www.amazon.com/Down-Dark-Hall-Lois-Duncan/dp/0440918057
This friend had the space & money for a swimming pool and I never understood why she didn't have one already. I probably nagged her, because it made no sense to me, but it never happened. She said she liked her soccer field's length of grass behind her house where we'd try out our one-handed cartwheels in warmer months & yes, kick the soccer ball about sometimes when bored. But to me it was a real no-brainer - perfect space for a swimming pool, helloooooo!?!
Later on, I had a "friend" for a milli-second, who had an actual swimming pool - I spent the night and I remember seeing it, partly covered with a tarp & strewn with leaves in her backyard, surrounded by a nice wooden deck. I think it was too cold to do more than gaze at it longingly, through the sliding glass doors....and I did, shamelessly.
This "friend" was Diana, brand-new to St.Joseph's Catholic grade school in 6th or 7th grade and we had at least one sleep-over at her modest house in Madison Park neighborhood, maybe two but then - like with exotic Carmela and athletic Jeannine before her - somehow I guess I did something wrong & was never asked back. (See previous post ~ http://yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2011/05/black-swan-b-fast-club-popular-girls.html)
Besides, petite, blonde, with a little pert turned-up nose, impossibly cute Diana was already angling for entry to the popular girls' club and I just couldn't compete. Before I knew it she was gone - their magic circle opened up for the blink of an eye and then closed ranks around her, like an amoeba or jelly-fish consuming something.
I'm over the popular girls thing (at least I think I am, or should be for God's sake, as I approach 40), but not over the swimming pools, obviously. They are still magical to me and so I am still seeking others' swimming pool stories. Even my little sister had one (I'll let her tell it, it's about as *happy* as my LA pool story), so c'mon ya'll I know you have them too!
http://www.ask.com/questions-about/What-Does-the-Word-Florida-Mean
My thoughts continue to turn to additional memories & stories of swimming pools. And how I have one now at our apartment, that I can go to anytime or at least on the weekends, and how I didn't even have to give up my "kingdom" for it! :) See last year's Mem.Day blog post ~ http://yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.html
The pressure is off to enjoy this swimming pool, cuz it's there all the time, and the pressure is off to enjoy a sunny day because they happen EVERY DAY here...I love it and it is SO different from what it was like to grow up in Seattle and also what I experienced during my not-so-brief 14 year tenure as a Wisconsinite.
I used to have this day-dream or fantasy as a kid, about getting an in-ground swimming pool (not one of those measly things I'd seen & been in, that were barely more than a very large blow-up kiddy pool), in our backyard, how one day I'd swim to the bottom and find a secret compartment.
I'd open it up & discover treasure and my family would be rich and safe and happy forever. We only needed the swimming pool to make it all happen!!! And they wondered why I wanted an in-ground swimming pool so badly. In cold rainy Seattle of all places. As a kid, I remember that I wanted this even more than my own room, far away from my snoring little sister (bless her heart, I think she had an adenoids problem).
I have another specific childhood memory of the swimming pool that wasn't - how my "rich" friend Merret had this HUGE backyard behind her family's HUGE mansion at the bottom of Capitol Hill, just past Broadway. Where I spent the night often and was so scared - how that house creaked and groaned, seemed to breathe, making just the weirdest noises, after dark when my friend was already asleep and I lay awake listening.
(Especially scared after reading that really great book Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan - see hyperlink below - which I probably placed in Merret's mansion in my mind).
http://www.amazon.com/Down-Dark-Hall-Lois-Duncan/dp/0440918057
This friend had the space & money for a swimming pool and I never understood why she didn't have one already. I probably nagged her, because it made no sense to me, but it never happened. She said she liked her soccer field's length of grass behind her house where we'd try out our one-handed cartwheels in warmer months & yes, kick the soccer ball about sometimes when bored. But to me it was a real no-brainer - perfect space for a swimming pool, helloooooo!?!
Later on, I had a "friend" for a milli-second, who had an actual swimming pool - I spent the night and I remember seeing it, partly covered with a tarp & strewn with leaves in her backyard, surrounded by a nice wooden deck. I think it was too cold to do more than gaze at it longingly, through the sliding glass doors....and I did, shamelessly.
This "friend" was Diana, brand-new to St.Joseph's Catholic grade school in 6th or 7th grade and we had at least one sleep-over at her modest house in Madison Park neighborhood, maybe two but then - like with exotic Carmela and athletic Jeannine before her - somehow I guess I did something wrong & was never asked back. (See previous post ~ http://yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2011/05/black-swan-b-fast-club-popular-girls.html)
Besides, petite, blonde, with a little pert turned-up nose, impossibly cute Diana was already angling for entry to the popular girls' club and I just couldn't compete. Before I knew it she was gone - their magic circle opened up for the blink of an eye and then closed ranks around her, like an amoeba or jelly-fish consuming something.
I'm over the popular girls thing (at least I think I am, or should be for God's sake, as I approach 40), but not over the swimming pools, obviously. They are still magical to me and so I am still seeking others' swimming pool stories. Even my little sister had one (I'll let her tell it, it's about as *happy* as my LA pool story), so c'mon ya'll I know you have them too!
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Everybody Has a Swimming-Pool Story
As the weather heats up my mind turns to pools....not just pools of sweat, given that it so DANG HOT in Florida during these summer months, and we still try to turn on our A/C only when we really *need* to (it's off right now, despite it being 90+ today), but also to that quintessential summer place - the community public swimming pool.
You know, the place you went on hot summer days as a kid. The one to which you maybe now take your own children.
That place featured so vividly in the wonderful book & movie "Little Children" - where wordless seduction happened and the neighborhood pedophile showed up and scared everyone off (you know what I mean if you've read/seen it)...I'm telling you, this can be a dangerous place ya'll.
Even without the pale skinny guy in mask & flippers - who really wasn't menacing anyone at that moment - showing up & then later getting out of the now-emptied pool. "I was only trying to cool off!" he exclaims, upon exiting under the watchful eyes of the police. It's a great scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKRb2AeHyZA
I have this one specific childhood memory/story of being at a public swimming pool in Los Angeles (where my father grew up), 'round the tender age of 7 or 8. We were waiting to use the high-diving board and there was probably some kid-jostling and whatnot but at some point it apparently got ugly.
A tough little dark-haired boy I can still see in my mind's eye got angry for some inexplicable reason, and then said something like "you want me to show you my dick?! You wanna see my dick? I'll do it right now!" He seemed to be reaching into his swimming trunks and I was so confused & terrified...what the hell?! I definitely did NOT want to see his dick - I just wanted to use the high-dive!
Some other boy stepped between me and this angry little boy - I will never forget it - and I felt protected, grateful, safer. This other nicer boy subdued the rude boy, I guess, and that's where it ended.
At the time, I had no idea what the f--- was happening but now, all I can see is that in that bright L.A. sunshiny pool-day suddenly someone was angry, turning it all awful & using their genitals as some kind of weapon. As a young innocent girl I had to look away, and be afraid & protected by another boy. That really sucks, when I think about it. I wish I had just had the "balls" to put that little shit in his place myself. Chances are he's still an asshole. And today, I would tell him so.
David has his own story: he doesn't remember how it happened or what happened next, he just has this poignant image of a little girl - also 7 or 8 years old - whose bikini top strap had broken and she was crying because of it. He felt so BAD for her but also had NO idea what to do, and probably rightly intuiting that if he had tried doing anything to make it better he just would have made it worse (can you picture THAT scene? he would have gotten blamed for sure), he did nothing. But he remembers that little girl crying forlornly, with her bikini top held up against her chest with her little arms and no one coming to help her, to this day.
And don't get me started on WHY she was crying - maybe it was simply because she thought she'd get in trouble with her parents cuz of torn bathing suit OK, maybe, sure, but if it was because of some breasts she hadn't even begun to grow yet and certainly shouldn't have been ashamed to show, then just - wow - how messed up is that?!
Either way, these twin stories intrigue me, if only for how they dovetail so nicely. Two little girls being somehow shamed and afraid, at such a young age! about bodies that God made for us to use & enjoy. For me personally, I could easily turn my story into "boys-men are evil" - it certainly *felt* like that, at the time, just scary and icky.
If not for my knowledge since then, about such good good men that I love on this planet. If not for David, my sweet husband, who was a "sensitive guy" even back then by his own swimming pool story, even if he couldn't act on his convictions, and his sympathies.
I like to believe that he would have been that other boy standing up for me, in the line for the diving board, if he had been there in L.A. instead of growing up in Milwaukee (and also truthfully, if he hadn't been um, about 18 years old when I was 8). :)
I still believe in the good in people despite the shit we sometimes do to each other. So, I have to put it out to the general public - what's your swimming pool story? Share! And believe in the redemption of kind people and of summer, in all its glory.
You know, the place you went on hot summer days as a kid. The one to which you maybe now take your own children.
That place featured so vividly in the wonderful book & movie "Little Children" - where wordless seduction happened and the neighborhood pedophile showed up and scared everyone off (you know what I mean if you've read/seen it)...I'm telling you, this can be a dangerous place ya'll.
Even without the pale skinny guy in mask & flippers - who really wasn't menacing anyone at that moment - showing up & then later getting out of the now-emptied pool. "I was only trying to cool off!" he exclaims, upon exiting under the watchful eyes of the police. It's a great scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKRb2AeHyZA
I have this one specific childhood memory/story of being at a public swimming pool in Los Angeles (where my father grew up), 'round the tender age of 7 or 8. We were waiting to use the high-diving board and there was probably some kid-jostling and whatnot but at some point it apparently got ugly.
A tough little dark-haired boy I can still see in my mind's eye got angry for some inexplicable reason, and then said something like "you want me to show you my dick?! You wanna see my dick? I'll do it right now!" He seemed to be reaching into his swimming trunks and I was so confused & terrified...what the hell?! I definitely did NOT want to see his dick - I just wanted to use the high-dive!
Some other boy stepped between me and this angry little boy - I will never forget it - and I felt protected, grateful, safer. This other nicer boy subdued the rude boy, I guess, and that's where it ended.
At the time, I had no idea what the f--- was happening but now, all I can see is that in that bright L.A. sunshiny pool-day suddenly someone was angry, turning it all awful & using their genitals as some kind of weapon. As a young innocent girl I had to look away, and be afraid & protected by another boy. That really sucks, when I think about it. I wish I had just had the "balls" to put that little shit in his place myself. Chances are he's still an asshole. And today, I would tell him so.
David has his own story: he doesn't remember how it happened or what happened next, he just has this poignant image of a little girl - also 7 or 8 years old - whose bikini top strap had broken and she was crying because of it. He felt so BAD for her but also had NO idea what to do, and probably rightly intuiting that if he had tried doing anything to make it better he just would have made it worse (can you picture THAT scene? he would have gotten blamed for sure), he did nothing. But he remembers that little girl crying forlornly, with her bikini top held up against her chest with her little arms and no one coming to help her, to this day.
And don't get me started on WHY she was crying - maybe it was simply because she thought she'd get in trouble with her parents cuz of torn bathing suit OK, maybe, sure, but if it was because of some breasts she hadn't even begun to grow yet and certainly shouldn't have been ashamed to show, then just - wow - how messed up is that?!
Either way, these twin stories intrigue me, if only for how they dovetail so nicely. Two little girls being somehow shamed and afraid, at such a young age! about bodies that God made for us to use & enjoy. For me personally, I could easily turn my story into "boys-men are evil" - it certainly *felt* like that, at the time, just scary and icky.
If not for my knowledge since then, about such good good men that I love on this planet. If not for David, my sweet husband, who was a "sensitive guy" even back then by his own swimming pool story, even if he couldn't act on his convictions, and his sympathies.
I like to believe that he would have been that other boy standing up for me, in the line for the diving board, if he had been there in L.A. instead of growing up in Milwaukee (and also truthfully, if he hadn't been um, about 18 years old when I was 8). :)
I still believe in the good in people despite the shit we sometimes do to each other. So, I have to put it out to the general public - what's your swimming pool story? Share! And believe in the redemption of kind people and of summer, in all its glory.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Black Swan & B-fast Club: Popular Girls & Perfectionism
I believe in peace/I believe in peace bitch/I believe in peace
~ Tori Amos "Waitress"
"Why didn't he just make one? Another angel. I mean, he's GOD after all, why didn't he just MAKE another angel?!" ~ Nicole Kidman in the movie "Rabbit Hole"
God sometimes you just don't come through/God sometimes you just don't come through/Do you need a woman to look after you?
~ Tori Amos "God"
"I just want to be perfect." ~ Natalie Portman in the movie "Black Swan"
I remember yes/in my peach party dress/no one dared/no one cared to tell me/where the pretty girls are/those demi-gods/with their nine inch nails and little fascist panties stuck inside the heart of every nice girl
~ Tori Amos "Precious Things"
I'll never forget the group of "popular girls" at my grade school. Ask any grown woman about this type of thing and - where ever she fell in the social rankings, part of this coveted group, on the fringes, or so far out of range it was just never-gonna-happen - you are bound to get an earful. They weren't always the prettiest, the skinniest, the richest or the smartest (though they often were all this & more), but they had something (charisma? being like-minded? just knew the fucking secret hand-shake?), that set them apart and got them entrance to this world that seemed so very desirable to me, at one time. That was the age (8-12 maybe?) when I pretty much would have sold my soul if I could have just somehow been one of them.
I was a fringer...sort of acceptable in certain ways (I played soccer with them, would help them with their math), but ultimately a little bit too weird to be fully let in. I was the girl who got invited to spend the night with one or two of them...but then I must have done or said something wrong, or perhaps we just didn't "click"? Because I never got asked back a second time.
This was actually EXTREMELY painful for me back then, but you can't really MAKE someone want to be your friend, as my mother probably tried to explain. I remember her telling me that even though I thought they and their lives were perfect, they still had problems and worries, just like anyone else. A pretty astute comment and absolutely dead on, I realize now of course, but sadly I don't think it helped a ton at the time. A friend's mother took a little bit of a lower road by telling her daughter something like "all those popular girls from when I was your age are fat & ugly now so don't worry you'll get the last laugh."
And this was just GRADE SCHOOL - for some I think it only got worse in later years. It's all right there in "The Breakfast Club" when Molly Ringwald's character basically says that she & Andrew (the wrestler) couldn't acknowledge the others when back at school next week, because the fallout from their group of friends would be cataclysmic. And that for Brian (the brain), for instance, he of course would want to acknowledge her & Andrew because well, they're in the popular group, everyone wants to be them! The brain (sweet Anthony Michael Hall) says something like "God Claire you're so conceited!" but she had a valid point he couldn't deny.
Man that movie is full of great quotes! I found three whole separate websites where they're compiled for the viewing pleasure of all us children of the 80s -
http://www.liquidice.co.uk/quotes/breakfastclubq.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088847/quotes
http://www.retrojunk.com/movie/quotes/7-the-breakfast-club/
And later on Claire says: "I hate it! I hate having to go along with everything my friends say!" John Bender (the exquisite Judd Nelson) has some choice words for her on this topic also, but I won't go into it - you can click on hyperlinks above if you want that trip down memory lane.
For me personally, by high school I had somehow managed to embrace my weirdness and gone off in other directions (not all of which were good - see the "dangerous boys" blog post from a couple years ago), where those "popular girls" sort of no longer existed (starting public school after 8 years of catholic was a big part of this). But I guess I thought of them again recently while watching "Black Swan" because, man, those ballerinas could be some serious bitches!! Is that how some people really are?!
Silly question, I know they are, I'm just lucky enough to not be around women like that much at all these days. (Although there was one piece-of-work I encountered in Milwaukee, I will never forget her, she taught me some great life lessons!) And also fortunate to not be in such a cut-throat competitive profession. I wonder if it's just part of that world and maybe similar to what it's like for actresses and other types of performers? But for ballerinas in particular, the drive for perfection seems inherent - I'll never forget how the main character in that book all us girls read back then, The Best Little Girl in the World was a ballerina, starving herself & throwing up just like Natalie Portman did, and also striving for the impossible.
For it is impossible really - perfection, so it's kinda silly to even try for it, I am starting to think. Only GOD is perfect after all, even if he does seem to make some questionable decisions that make us pretty angry (as depicted in the movie "Rabbit Hole").
What a gift to let go and just do your best. This is especially true for me lately with trying to write better & better software requirements in my now 1-year old "new" job. If those damn requirements could have been perfect by now through sheer effort, believe me they would be! And anyway, I'd really rather be writing blog posts (or my new idea: writing for T.V.! hellooooo Grey's Anatomy) or anything else more interesting.
I gotta admit there is a catty part of me that wonders if any of those "popular girls" are fat & ugly now (I did see one of them later on in high school and was a little, um, surprised by where she was going with her look). Or at least I just wonder in general, "where they are now" - those little "demi-gods," especially the ones who weren't particularly nice to me (for they weren't all evil, truthfully).
But the further truth is, removed from that cut-throat-girlhood world (NOT all sweetness & light, as some might think, obviously), they are probably just regular women these days, no longer the "anointed" like they seemed to me, way back then. Just women taking care of their families, working in offices, sleeping, loving & grumbling, growing older, and making the best decisions they can for their lives now. Normal women muddling through, just like me & just like you.
~ Tori Amos "Waitress"
"Why didn't he just make one? Another angel. I mean, he's GOD after all, why didn't he just MAKE another angel?!" ~ Nicole Kidman in the movie "Rabbit Hole"
God sometimes you just don't come through/God sometimes you just don't come through/Do you need a woman to look after you?
~ Tori Amos "God"
"I just want to be perfect." ~ Natalie Portman in the movie "Black Swan"
I remember yes/in my peach party dress/no one dared/no one cared to tell me/where the pretty girls are/those demi-gods/with their nine inch nails and little fascist panties stuck inside the heart of every nice girl
~ Tori Amos "Precious Things"
I'll never forget the group of "popular girls" at my grade school. Ask any grown woman about this type of thing and - where ever she fell in the social rankings, part of this coveted group, on the fringes, or so far out of range it was just never-gonna-happen - you are bound to get an earful. They weren't always the prettiest, the skinniest, the richest or the smartest (though they often were all this & more), but they had something (charisma? being like-minded? just knew the fucking secret hand-shake?), that set them apart and got them entrance to this world that seemed so very desirable to me, at one time. That was the age (8-12 maybe?) when I pretty much would have sold my soul if I could have just somehow been one of them.
I was a fringer...sort of acceptable in certain ways (I played soccer with them, would help them with their math), but ultimately a little bit too weird to be fully let in. I was the girl who got invited to spend the night with one or two of them...but then I must have done or said something wrong, or perhaps we just didn't "click"? Because I never got asked back a second time.
This was actually EXTREMELY painful for me back then, but you can't really MAKE someone want to be your friend, as my mother probably tried to explain. I remember her telling me that even though I thought they and their lives were perfect, they still had problems and worries, just like anyone else. A pretty astute comment and absolutely dead on, I realize now of course, but sadly I don't think it helped a ton at the time. A friend's mother took a little bit of a lower road by telling her daughter something like "all those popular girls from when I was your age are fat & ugly now so don't worry you'll get the last laugh."
And this was just GRADE SCHOOL - for some I think it only got worse in later years. It's all right there in "The Breakfast Club" when Molly Ringwald's character basically says that she & Andrew (the wrestler) couldn't acknowledge the others when back at school next week, because the fallout from their group of friends would be cataclysmic. And that for Brian (the brain), for instance, he of course would want to acknowledge her & Andrew because well, they're in the popular group, everyone wants to be them! The brain (sweet Anthony Michael Hall) says something like "God Claire you're so conceited!" but she had a valid point he couldn't deny.
Man that movie is full of great quotes! I found three whole separate websites where they're compiled for the viewing pleasure of all us children of the 80s -
http://www.liquidice.co.uk/quotes/breakfastclubq.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088847/quotes
http://www.retrojunk.com/movie/quotes/7-the-breakfast-club/
And later on Claire says: "I hate it! I hate having to go along with everything my friends say!" John Bender (the exquisite Judd Nelson) has some choice words for her on this topic also, but I won't go into it - you can click on hyperlinks above if you want that trip down memory lane.
For me personally, by high school I had somehow managed to embrace my weirdness and gone off in other directions (not all of which were good - see the "dangerous boys" blog post from a couple years ago), where those "popular girls" sort of no longer existed (starting public school after 8 years of catholic was a big part of this). But I guess I thought of them again recently while watching "Black Swan" because, man, those ballerinas could be some serious bitches!! Is that how some people really are?!
Silly question, I know they are, I'm just lucky enough to not be around women like that much at all these days. (Although there was one piece-of-work I encountered in Milwaukee, I will never forget her, she taught me some great life lessons!) And also fortunate to not be in such a cut-throat competitive profession. I wonder if it's just part of that world and maybe similar to what it's like for actresses and other types of performers? But for ballerinas in particular, the drive for perfection seems inherent - I'll never forget how the main character in that book all us girls read back then, The Best Little Girl in the World was a ballerina, starving herself & throwing up just like Natalie Portman did, and also striving for the impossible.
For it is impossible really - perfection, so it's kinda silly to even try for it, I am starting to think. Only GOD is perfect after all, even if he does seem to make some questionable decisions that make us pretty angry (as depicted in the movie "Rabbit Hole").
What a gift to let go and just do your best. This is especially true for me lately with trying to write better & better software requirements in my now 1-year old "new" job. If those damn requirements could have been perfect by now through sheer effort, believe me they would be! And anyway, I'd really rather be writing blog posts (or my new idea: writing for T.V.! hellooooo Grey's Anatomy) or anything else more interesting.
I gotta admit there is a catty part of me that wonders if any of those "popular girls" are fat & ugly now (I did see one of them later on in high school and was a little, um, surprised by where she was going with her look). Or at least I just wonder in general, "where they are now" - those little "demi-gods," especially the ones who weren't particularly nice to me (for they weren't all evil, truthfully).
But the further truth is, removed from that cut-throat-girlhood world (NOT all sweetness & light, as some might think, obviously), they are probably just regular women these days, no longer the "anointed" like they seemed to me, way back then. Just women taking care of their families, working in offices, sleeping, loving & grumbling, growing older, and making the best decisions they can for their lives now. Normal women muddling through, just like me & just like you.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
My Friends, by Dar Williams
I really love this song. Especially "She's found a common balance/Where you do your work, and you do your love/And they pay you, and praise your many talents." AND "She says 'You know I think you remember every part of me.'" Enjoy!
My Friends
~ Dar Williams
"He's a quiet man," that's all she said
And he's a thoughtful man
It's just he likes to keep his thoughts up in his head
And we finally meet, and she tries to draw him out a bit
She says "He's writing something,
Hey now, why don't you talk about it?"
And he doesn't make a sound
He's just staring at his coffee
And I know there's all this beauty
And this greatness she'll defend
But I think it's in my friend
I have a friend in a bright and distant town
She's found a common balance
Where you do your work, and you do your love
And they pay you, and praise your many talents
Well I'm passing through, and we know we won't sleep
She laughs, puts up the tea
She says "You know I think you remember every part of me."
And the water starts to boil
And if I had a camera
Showing all the light we give
And showing where the light extends
I'd give it to my friends
Sometimes I see myself fine, sometimes I need a witness
And I like the whole truth
But there are nights I only need forgiveness
Sometimes they say "I don't know who you are
But let me walk with you some"
And I say "I am alone, that's all
You can't save me from all the wrong I've done."
But they're waiting just the same
With their flashlights and their semaphores
And I'll act like I have faith and like that faith never ends
But I really just have friends
My Friends
~ Dar Williams
"He's a quiet man," that's all she said
And he's a thoughtful man
It's just he likes to keep his thoughts up in his head
And we finally meet, and she tries to draw him out a bit
She says "He's writing something,
Hey now, why don't you talk about it?"
And he doesn't make a sound
He's just staring at his coffee
And I know there's all this beauty
And this greatness she'll defend
But I think it's in my friend
I have a friend in a bright and distant town
She's found a common balance
Where you do your work, and you do your love
And they pay you, and praise your many talents
Well I'm passing through, and we know we won't sleep
She laughs, puts up the tea
She says "You know I think you remember every part of me."
And the water starts to boil
And if I had a camera
Showing all the light we give
And showing where the light extends
I'd give it to my friends
Sometimes I see myself fine, sometimes I need a witness
And I like the whole truth
But there are nights I only need forgiveness
Sometimes they say "I don't know who you are
But let me walk with you some"
And I say "I am alone, that's all
You can't save me from all the wrong I've done."
But they're waiting just the same
With their flashlights and their semaphores
And I'll act like I have faith and like that faith never ends
But I really just have friends
Grief and Grey's Anatomy AGAIN
Grey's Anatomy inspires me to write on this subject again.
It was another powerful season-ending finale and I had a lot of feelings while watching it, but interestingly one of them was ANGER. I couldn't help but flash back to when I found out about the sudden death of my father, years ago (for details read http://yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2009/07/day-music-died-part-one.html).
There was no staff of concerned-looking doctors (and they are all so attractive aren't they, so pretty, it's amazing!) ready to take me to a "grief room" to break the news gently, there was no world-renowned grief counselor on hand to help me, there was no other people in a waiting room to share the experience with, there was no free coffee!!
So, not entirely sure what THAT is about except maybe after recently posting my "Daddy" poems I'm still processing some level of grief, and still mad at him for dying or just how it happened. Whatever, I'll get over it but I had to share cuz it was that powerful.
Still I loved this episode, the moment when the woman stands up to her husband urging her to leave & says "I would like to stay." And the moment when the distraught woman with the daughter in surgery says "that's incredible" about the people who stayed in the waiting room to pull for her daughter, the one survivor, the "unaccompanied minor" from the plane crash.
http://www.greyswriters.com/2011/05/debora-cahn-on-unaccompanied-minor.html
What some humans will do for another person, it's as beautiful as the shiny shiny people who are the doctors on this show.
And I loved when Meredith says "I am going to get it together and we are gonna figure it out" - her bravery in the face of being alone with her new baby for the first time, being totally responsible for Zola all by herself, just wow. (I'd be completely terrified.)
And what he says to her about being a bad mother - frickin Derek, what the hell?! The writers have to do it for drama, I get that, but what she did is no reason to leave her like that.
I would love to write for Grey's Anatomy but have no idea what I would invent for these characters. Better just to watch and feel whatever feelings I have, I guess. :)
It was another powerful season-ending finale and I had a lot of feelings while watching it, but interestingly one of them was ANGER. I couldn't help but flash back to when I found out about the sudden death of my father, years ago (for details read http://yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2009/07/day-music-died-part-one.html).
There was no staff of concerned-looking doctors (and they are all so attractive aren't they, so pretty, it's amazing!) ready to take me to a "grief room" to break the news gently, there was no world-renowned grief counselor on hand to help me, there was no other people in a waiting room to share the experience with, there was no free coffee!!
So, not entirely sure what THAT is about except maybe after recently posting my "Daddy" poems I'm still processing some level of grief, and still mad at him for dying or just how it happened. Whatever, I'll get over it but I had to share cuz it was that powerful.
Still I loved this episode, the moment when the woman stands up to her husband urging her to leave & says "I would like to stay." And the moment when the distraught woman with the daughter in surgery says "that's incredible" about the people who stayed in the waiting room to pull for her daughter, the one survivor, the "unaccompanied minor" from the plane crash.
http://www.greyswriters.com/2011/05/debora-cahn-on-unaccompanied-minor.html
What some humans will do for another person, it's as beautiful as the shiny shiny people who are the doctors on this show.
And I loved when Meredith says "I am going to get it together and we are gonna figure it out" - her bravery in the face of being alone with her new baby for the first time, being totally responsible for Zola all by herself, just wow. (I'd be completely terrified.)
And what he says to her about being a bad mother - frickin Derek, what the hell?! The writers have to do it for drama, I get that, but what she did is no reason to leave her like that.
I would love to write for Grey's Anatomy but have no idea what I would invent for these characters. Better just to watch and feel whatever feelings I have, I guess. :)
Friday, May 13, 2011
Breathe & Live Wide ~ inspired by Erica Jong
For Claudia, Against Narrowness
From Loveroot
Narrowing life because of the fears,
narrowing it between the dust motes,
narrowing the pink baby
between the green-limbed monsters,
& the drooling idiots,
& the ghosts of the Thalidomide infants,
narrowing hope,
always narrowing hope.
Mother sits on one shoulder hissing:
Life is dangerous.
Father sits on the other sighing:
Lucky you.
Grandmother, grandfather, big sister:
You'll die if you leave us,
you'll die if you ever leave us.
Sweetheart, baby sister,
you'll die anyway
& so will I.
Even if you walk the wide greensward,
even if you
& your beautiful big belly
embrace the world of men & trees,
even if you moan with pleasure,
& smoke the sweet grass
& feast on strawberries in bed,
you'll die anyway--
wide or narrow,
you're going to die.
As long as you're at it,
die wide.
Follow your belly to the green pasture.
Lie down in the sun's dapple.
Life is not as dangerous
as mother said.
It is more dangerous,
more wide.
© Erica Mann Jong
Breathe & Live Wide
I have always wanted to
"live wide" and be free
to breathe
but
the world is so dangerous
and it only seems to get
more so as I age
inevitably
for it's a thin and narrow life
that finds me going from
home-to-work to-grocery-store
for beer & cigarettes, back to this balcony
where I'm putting the damage on
and don't breathe, at all, or just barely
it's a thin and narrow line
I walk, from here to the
fear, guilt & shame I feel, almost daily
that my mother
taught me, so eloquently
my father too
they sat there saying
"we can't control you"
but what did they try to do?
my 21 year old boyfriend
when I was 16, was only going to
help me live more wide (I thought)
they tried the priest, one time
but he didn't know what to do, or understand
a teenage girl and her parents begging for help
and then, when I confessed
to my mother that
I was having sex
she merely said
"you're going to do what you want
but I can't condone it"
my father just raged
and felt helpless
as fathers do
but if he had only looked me
in the eyes and said
Sweetheart, baby girl
that I love - I can't stand to see you hurting yourself
I'm so worried about you
maybe I could have come
to my senses, made different choices and
not be where I am now
but that's all in the past and
I'll die anyway, as we all do
I never did get pregnant, as they probably feared
I went to college, kept playing soccer somehow
was a "good girl" and graduated, so they did a
"good job" and everything is fine
actually, now
it's just that I'm going to die
much faster, with more fear, guilt & shame
and way less "wide" than I could do
otherwise
From Loveroot
Narrowing life because of the fears,
narrowing it between the dust motes,
narrowing the pink baby
between the green-limbed monsters,
& the drooling idiots,
& the ghosts of the Thalidomide infants,
narrowing hope,
always narrowing hope.
Mother sits on one shoulder hissing:
Life is dangerous.
Father sits on the other sighing:
Lucky you.
Grandmother, grandfather, big sister:
You'll die if you leave us,
you'll die if you ever leave us.
Sweetheart, baby sister,
you'll die anyway
& so will I.
Even if you walk the wide greensward,
even if you
& your beautiful big belly
embrace the world of men & trees,
even if you moan with pleasure,
& smoke the sweet grass
& feast on strawberries in bed,
you'll die anyway--
wide or narrow,
you're going to die.
As long as you're at it,
die wide.
Follow your belly to the green pasture.
Lie down in the sun's dapple.
Life is not as dangerous
as mother said.
It is more dangerous,
more wide.
© Erica Mann Jong
Breathe & Live Wide
I have always wanted to
"live wide" and be free
to breathe
but
the world is so dangerous
and it only seems to get
more so as I age
inevitably
for it's a thin and narrow life
that finds me going from
home-to-work to-grocery-store
for beer & cigarettes, back to this balcony
where I'm putting the damage on
and don't breathe, at all, or just barely
it's a thin and narrow line
I walk, from here to the
fear, guilt & shame I feel, almost daily
that my mother
taught me, so eloquently
my father too
they sat there saying
"we can't control you"
but what did they try to do?
my 21 year old boyfriend
when I was 16, was only going to
help me live more wide (I thought)
they tried the priest, one time
but he didn't know what to do, or understand
a teenage girl and her parents begging for help
and then, when I confessed
to my mother that
I was having sex
she merely said
"you're going to do what you want
but I can't condone it"
my father just raged
and felt helpless
as fathers do
but if he had only looked me
in the eyes and said
Sweetheart, baby girl
that I love - I can't stand to see you hurting yourself
I'm so worried about you
maybe I could have come
to my senses, made different choices and
not be where I am now
but that's all in the past and
I'll die anyway, as we all do
I never did get pregnant, as they probably feared
I went to college, kept playing soccer somehow
was a "good girl" and graduated, so they did a
"good job" and everything is fine
actually, now
it's just that I'm going to die
much faster, with more fear, guilt & shame
and way less "wide" than I could do
otherwise
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