Do You Realize?

Frisco

Last week, I mentioned to my therapist (who is actually a psychoanalyst) that our family therapist has made the comment a couple of times that I exhibit a lot of signs of someone who has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that she had asked if I'd ever talked to him (my regular therapist) about it. My therapist replied that, yes, indeed, he thinks I do. All of this stems from my first marriage to C. (Remember him? If not, you need to go here. And here. And here.) Honestly, that thought had never crossed my mind. I never really think of myself as a "victim" of anything, only sometimes an unwilling accomplice in some things; I believe in accountability, and I take responsibility for a lot, even things for which others would say I am not to blame. Things like Frisco.

C. came home one day with a surprise for the kids. (I don't know where he had been, but it couldn't have been a job; I didn't ask a lot of questions before we got married, and now I realize it was because I knew on some level I wouldn't like the answers.) As he pulled out this minuscule gray fluffball of a tabby kitten, tiny enough to fit in my two small-ish palms. Eldest's eyes sparkled like a diamond in sunlight. "His name is Frisco," she declared. We spent the next several hours playing with Frisco at my parents' house.

Then I had to leave for work. Oh, how I wish I'd never left. I tell myself, even today, that hearing about an atrocious act is different than seeing it happen, and that if I'd seen it happen, maybe my life would have changed for the better.

It was a weekend, I think, because I remember being able to talk for a while when my mother called me at work to tell me that Frisco was dead.

"How?"

"C. killed him." She was, understandably, distraught.

"What happened?"

And this is what she told me:

C. was watching the kids in the living room. All the other adults were in other rooms of the house.

Middle (again, at that time he was Youngest, but you know him here as Middle) was in his playpen, one of those contraptions with fabric mesh for walls. He had a particularly endearing habit of leaning his weight, face-first, into the mesh, contorting his cherubic little face into all sorts of hideous but adorable shapes.

Eldest was still playing with Frisco. She was in love. Frisco was digging Middle's playpen, a vehicle on which to propel himself with his little kitten claws.

What happened next will never be completely known, since the only three people in the room were C. and two toddlers, and a 6-to-8-week-old kitten. What we do know is that within seconds, this picture-perfect Norman Rockwell scene would transform forever. Frisco would lay bleeding and convulsing at the base of a nearby wall, where C. had thrown him.

C. insisted that Frisco had attacked Middle, and that Middle was crying and bleeding. (For the record,
Middle had a scratch on his cheek that was one quarter of an inch long, and my parents said that when they walked in, he was not crying.) C. reacted quickly, simply wanting to save Middle and get the cat off of him. He didn't mean to slam it into a wall.

What I believe to have happened is another story. I've played this scene out so many times in my head, I feel like I was there, and sometimes I have to stop myself from actually thinking that I was. I suspect that Middle had mashed his face into the side of his playpen at the very same time that Frisco decided to climb up the very same place. C., who was probably not watching very closely, heard a commotion, grabbed the vile, vicious kitten, and hurled him into the wall, killing him.

As with some of the other things I've related about C., I wish I could tell you this was the end. But it wasn't. It was only the beginning; we hadn't even married at this point. Why did I stay? Because I thought I was damaged goods, a young woman with two small children, and I thought my possibilities for a mate had diminished to the point that maybe this was the best I could expect. Why do any of us do things at the ripe old age of twenty that will later cause us to cringe with remorse? My fuck-up was just more grand than others.

See how blurred lines can become? Will we ever know C.'s reason for throwing that kitten? No. I've tried to tell myself time and time again that C. hadn't grown up with cats as I had, that he really thought the kitten was hurting Middle. I told myself that because the alternative was too painful to consider. What I do know is that I was expecting more than one tiny scratch on Middle, and that I was expecting some remorseful behavior. I got neither. To the bitter end, C. insisted he'd acted as a hero with quick instincts.

They were killer instincts, anyway.

Sunday Scribblings--Smorgasbord

This week's prompt is: Smorgasbord. From dictionary.com:

smorgasbord:
1. a buffet meal of various hot and cold hors d' oeuvres, salads, casserole dishes, meats, cheeses, etc.
2. an extensive array or variety

We can use either definition, and with the use of the second, choose from any previous week's prompt to use. I thought I'd take it one step further. I will offer some new writing using one prompt, then point you in the direction of a couple of older posts I've written that could easily have been used for other Sunday Scribbling prompts. (The rules say we are not to link from there to an old post. I think they simply don't want us to wimp out on actually writing something new. As such, I'm simply pushing the limits of vague rules, which is not altogether uncommon.)

Prompt: What's your sign?
I was born on July 13, under the sign of Cancer. Every personality trait attributed to Cancer is attributable to a tough outer shell protecting a soft and vulnerable inner core. I fit so well under the blanket of Cancerian traits, I shouldn't be getting cold anytime soon. This page has the most dead-on description of me, it's uncanny.

My good qualities, according to the astrological indications, are qualities of which I am proud. Tenacious, resourceful, defensive, loyal? Check. A homebody, intuitive, generous, emotional? Yeppers. Loving, sensitive, protective, cautious? You betcha. Purposeful, shrewd, warm, security-oriented. Most assuredly. Imaginative, romantic, creative, sentimental? Oh, yeah. Wise, warm, sympathetic, caring? True. Receptive, perceptive, instinctive, inventive? Affirmative.

I also have some bad qualities that are typical Cancerian traits, as well. Moody, overly sensitive, depressive, touchy? So what of it?! Dominating, devious, manipulative, overly dramatic? Why on earth would one think that of me? Eccentric, lacking in stability, tending toward lethargy, clingy? Don't hate me for it. Passive, non-self-assertive, unable to foster self-interests without feelings of guilt? Umm, is that okay?

There are a couple of traits I've read that don't necessarily apply to me: conservative, cold (but how can one be both cold and caring?). Hm. Mike Huckabee needn't get his hopes up.

Now, for a trip down memory lane, here are a few older posts which could easily fit into the smorgasbord of today's writing.

Prompt: Thief!
Post: Those Crazy Genetics

Prompt: Hotel Stories
Post: I'll tell on the hotel

Prompt: In the Kitchen
Post: Movin' to the country, Gonna eat a lot of peaches...

Prompt: Rooted
Post: Green Thumbs and Other Myths

A Super Secret Undercover Mission

One big reason that Youngest triggers horrific reactions in me is that he is a carbon copy of his biological father. And I divorced his biological father for a reason. Because he wasn't a likable person, and I didn't like him. At all. Now, it's like I have to live with him again, with no divorce in sight.

"So, are you going to look for a job today?" a very pregnant me asks a very unemployed husband. (Remember him?) Thirteen years ago.

"Not yet. I have something I have to do today. And I'm going to take Middle (who was really Youngest at that point in time) with me. We'll go to the park or something. We'll hang out." (We'll be a chick magnet.)

"No job?"

"Tomorrow." (Riiiiight. If hell freezes over.)

Hours pass. Unemployed husband comes home with toddler and three new comics in hand. (How the fuck did these get in my hand when I have no fucking money? Huh.) Elated. Giddy. Euphoric.

"Middle was a hero today, Mommy." (Ummmm...)

"Oh, really? How's that?" (Ask you no questions, tell me no lies. I should know better.)

"He saved a police investigation." (Huh?)

Me: "Tell me about it."

"Well, I've got this friend at the department who I occasionally do favors for when he needs somebody. Like an informant." (Oooh, this is gonna be good.)

"So, today, he asked me to come and make a pickup of an audio tape for a big investigation they're doing right now. I can't say exactly who it is, but when it breaks it's gonna be big. Very important political figure. His family owns juice companies." (Really good.)

"I'm sitting on the bench waiting for the drop-off, and when it happens, the tape falls to the ground. Middle ran over & picked it up & brought it to me. Didn't you buddy?" (You're asking a fifteen-month-old.)

Me: "Did you get paid for this?" (Wait for iiiit....)

"No. But I helped the police out, baby! If you can't handle my working with them, you need to get over it now. Because I do important stuff for them sometimes. They just can't pay me for it." (Oh, well, of course not.)

(sarcasm) Thirteen years later, I'm still trying to figure out what political scandal Bob Dole was supposedly being investigated for in Floyd County, Georgia. Maybe he was lying. Maybe he was out spending money we didn't have on comic books. Ya think? (/sarcasm)  I'm telling you, I couldn't make this shit up.

Woofday Wednesday--Soot & Ash

This is Soot & Ash. They are my cross to bear as an individual who takes in the unwanted. They are the ones I couldn't save. They followed my husband home while he was out jogging one day. They were the sweetest dogs, but they were big dogs, the biggest we'd ever taken in, and the kids... well, the kids weren't so big. When it came time to walk dogs, Soot & Ash would be so excited they would knock the kids over like bowling pins. When the gate was opened to the backyard, one or both would streak out & take off for an adventure, which would cause us to have to follow them and haul them back home, usually wet & muddy.

It was too much to handle for us at the time. We'd had them spayed, we tried the obedience classes, but they never got any calmer. It was an agonizing decision, because we loved them (even though I admit I jokingly called them Shit and Ass when I was irritated). I cried and cried when we took them to the animal shelter. I keep telling myself that labs & lab mixes are one of the most popular dogs & that someone adopted them because they were so sweet. But the fact is that I don't know that for sure, and it still troubles me, even after four-and-a-half years.

I miss you, girls.

Love a stray; neuter & spay!

Sunday Scribblings--The Unspoken Competition

There exists in today's culture a competition so fierce, with competitors so driven, and so exclusive, in which men cannot even hope to participate and women have been accused of cheating for the title. It's a competition which is never advertised, and no one is to ever call it such. Its ostensible purpose is to help each other, to offer a sense of camaraderie and fellowship. Don't be fooled. It's a competition. It's the Childbirthing Championships.

When I got pregnant at seventeen, I didn't tell anyone for five months. Part of it might have been trying to avoid women of all walks of life telling me I was going to hell and that I should give that baby to a family who could raise it right, but most of it was self-preservation. I had seen women all but eat each other for the title of Most Death-Defying Delivery, and when they spy a pregnant belly, they seem drawn to it by some unnamed force, to tell their horrific, harrowing tales of painful parturition. The longer I could avoid that the better. Invariably, though, they found me. Each woman of Prima Gravida status or higher had a story to tell me, but not to scare me or to outdo some other woman of equally noble character; no, they were there to help me, to let me know what to expect.

I'm calling Bullshit. I'm now a member of the Multi Gravida Club, and I now have a story to tell, too. I KNOW that it's all about the competition. And everyone has a different strategy. Who went the longest without an epidural? (For the record, the epidural is my friend.) Who labored longer at home before going to the hospital? Who drove themselves to the hospital? Who was in such pain they passed in & out of consciousness, having Frida Kahlo art-inspired visions? Who endured pain and panic and delivered their baby at home on a holy rug with no pain relief but a midwife's comforting whispers?

I'll own up. I'm in. My story is easily as worthy of Childbirth Champion status as someone else's. My childbirth story. Let me tell you it.*

*I'll tell you later. Just know that it involves 38 hours of action, adventure, suspense, pain, blood, and gore. I'm in it to win it, peeps.

Woofday Wednesday---Poogan

We have six dogs. All of them are rescues of some brand or another. Each of them has their own sad story & their own baggage that they carry with them, but I love each of them dearly. For a while Wednesdays will be dedicated to our canine friends and others' canine friends who were adopted.

Buying a dog from a breeder is like buying a T-shirt from Saks Fifth Avenue. You're paying way too much to find a designer dog, when a pound puppy will likely fit better and be happier to serve your needs.

Without further ado, this is Poogan. She was named after hubby's & my favorite restaurant in Charleston:  Poogan's Porch. We were so taken by the story of this restaurant we decided it would be the name of our first dog.

Some may say Poogan doesn't qualify as a rescue, because she came from a pet store. After one meets Poogan, your mind will change. If anyone but us or another 0.00001% of the population had ended up with Poogan, she would have been dropped out in the country to fend for herself, used for a bait dog, or euthanized. This dog is truly NUTS! She is a fear biter, and she is afraid of a whole plethora of evils: the vacuum, aluminum foil, brooms & mops, shadows on the wall, reflections on the ceiling. The list goes on. And when she's afraid, she yaps... in a high-pitched, little dog yap... a lot.

Despite all this, we love her. She was our first dog. She was supposed to be a Pomeranian, but having come from a disreputable puppy mill, we really can't pinpoint exactly what she is, since she weighs about 15 pounds. (She weighs more like what original Pomeranians weighed when Queen Victoria loved them so.) She's fiercely loyal to hubby & me. She has a heaping helping of neuroses that might otherwise get her kicked off another family's island, but we run the Island of Misfit Animals, so she's Queen Bitch here.
She's getting on up in years (almost 11), getting kind of blind (that really helps her neurotic state of mind, I assure you), and when she gets really anxious about something, she starts panting & does the greatest Jack Nicholson "The Shining" impression I've ever seen.

Love a stray;
neuter & spay!
AAAARRRRRRRGH!

Walk Like an Italian

The most (and most enjoyable) walking I've ever done was in Italy. Walking there is much more common than here in the States.

In Varenna, my favorite place on Earth, my husband & I would start our morning walking down the side of the mountain from our hotel overlooking Lake Como into the medieval town itself. We would wander to a pasticcerie to buy freshly baked breakfast pastries with real butter and milk. Then we would walk to the same spot to sit and eat this colazione ("first meal") while we watched the sailboats and the ducks.  This is the spot: 

Then we would wander the tiny town for the rest of the day, trying out limited Italian (and the locals trying out limited English), then walking back to the hotel for a nap at some point during the day.

If I had an extra $10 million lying around, I'd love to buy up one of the gorgeous villas on Lake Como, there since Pliny the Elder's days. But I'd also take a tiny, two-bedroom cottage and be very, very happy. But since history is more important  to native Italians, people don't tend to move often; they stay in a house their entire lives, and in the case of the villas, for centuries. And they walk.

(The image contained in this post was taken by one Marco Mayer, and is not copyrighted.)

Sunday Scribblings

I found this challenge blog one week a month or two ago at the site of one of my fellow Photo Hunters. I thought it was great, but I didn't want to add another challenge to my plate. There is a weekly topic, just like Photo Hunters, but participants use it as a writing prompt.

And if ever there was a topic that was near to my own experiences, it is this week's Sunday Scribblings topic: Misspent Youth.

As  a child, I was terrifically smart; I taught myself to read at the age of four, and by first grade, I was being separated from the rest of my class because I was doing sixth grade-level reading. They had to separate me; I couldn't just switch classrooms to a higher grade for reading, because it was elementary school, where fifth grade was the highest grade. (By the time I was in eighth grade, there were three of us that needed advanced math, so we were transported to the high school & back.) This separation left in me an impression that if I were too smart, it separated me from my peers. All through elementary school, I was separated at some point in the day for some academic reason.

By the time sixth grade rolled around and we were moving to a new school, I knew what was in store for me: separation. Soon I developed a plan to purposely let my grades slip down to average. I was finally allowed a spot in my own classroom, but I was still separated, even if it wasn't physical any longer. I was still the smart kid, the kid off of whom everyone expected to cheat; I was still different. I tried my hardest to let my grades slip even further, and it worked. And I made some friends, ones that weren't interested in cheating off my papers, but in me.

By tenth grade, I wanted not just friends, but cool friends. And letting my grades slide wasn't the path to cool friends any more; grades were no longer any status indicator. So I quit band, colored my hair, and devised another plan. I got a boyfriend at a different school, one who was like me; B. hung out with the popular crowd, but he was not really a part of them. We dated for more than a year; we lost our sexual and alcoholic virginity together. After that relationship ended, with B. cheating on me in the back of his truck with one of my "friends"), I kind of felt like there was nothing else to lose. And so began two years of hell for my parents.

I had friends from four or five different schools in town, some popular, some not so much. Some had family money, some were poor. I did not discriminate; if they wanted to party, they were my friend.

In the course of those two years, I chased love and acceptance through promiscuity and alcohol. I never found it, but I tried. Many a night I would drive home drunk; it's truly fortunate that I never was involved in an accident. My parents had no idea how to control me, and so they sort of treated it as a "phase" I would grow out of. That ended up being the truth, but it took an incredibly long, painful fall to get there.

I was seventeen. I had met a really hot guy, C.,  from the wrong side of the tracks. (His grandmother had run a brothel "back in the day," and his father had eventually gone to prison, tried as a "career criminal" after attempting to arrange a hit on the DA. His uncle ended up dead, I believe, and not naturally so. I found all this out a year later, but it probably would have only made his appeal that much greater.) I had a job and had just bought my first car. C. would come to work & pick up my car to wash it every day. I had that car twelve days.

One Friday night, a friend and I went cruising in my car, staying out well past my curfew. Suspecting I was pregnant, but not having told anyone, I had not drank any alcohol that night. But it was very late. At about 1 a.m. I fell asleep at the wheel of my car, headed down an embankment, hit a culvert, and flipped my car end over end five times, landing on the roof. It happened on the highway in front of the house of my mother's best friend, who was an EMT. A truck driver saw the accident & stopped to pull my friend and me from the car. I never got to meet him.

I did, however, eventually meet the fetus that was two weeks settled in my uterus that night. She's now a beautiful, intelligent, independent, honest senior in high school. She's the reason that, although I consider myself mostly Democratic and liberal, I don't believe in abortions as birth control, or simply for poor judgment. She's my only daughter.

Another Crazy Gene Story

Another story, short but sweet this time.

C (my first husband, remember?) refused to drink milk. And he refused to admit he just didn't like milk. He was allergic to milk.

About the third time I caught him chowing on half a box of Froot Loops with soy milk poured on top, I finally asked, curious to his answer since he could really pull some interesting stuff out of his ass, "I thought you were allergic to milk. So, why is it you can eat all the kids' cereal with milk with miraculously no ill effects?"

You know what he told me?

He actually responded, "Because when the sugar in the cereal mixes with the milk, it chemically disables the lactose in the milk, and I can have it then. Swear to God, learned it in Chemistry. But not anytime else. Because I'm allergic to milk. By itself, I mean."

High School Meme-sical

I hope everyone had a great three-day weekend. The kids enjoyed being out of school, although I'm not so sure a day off so soon is such a good thing, but whatev. I played laser tag with the boys (and older son's gf), helped the teenagers swap bedrooms, and took Eldest out for a session of Senior Portraiture.

What with all the senior picture-taking and my friend RedMolly's blog entry the other day, I thought I'd play along with her meme and confess that it led me to create a MySpace page and try to look up some high school classmates there. The meme goes a little something like this:

1. Who was your best friend?  I didn't have a single best friend; I didn't want to open myself up that much. I had a few, with all of whom I got into enormous amounts of trouble. Holly G. at CHS, Jodie H. at PHS, and Erin at WRHS (why the hell I can't remember Erin's last name this morning I don't know... maybe it's because it's 6:30 and my brain cells aren't functioning, or it could be that so much Everclear consumed in high school turned my long-term memories to mush.)
   
2. What kind of car did you drive?  When I was 16, I drove my parents' Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight. When I turned 17, I bought my first car: a super-snazzy blue Honda Civic CRX. I had that car for 12 days before I totaled it in a devastating single-car accident. I was lucky enough to have not been drinking that night (as I suspected I might be very newly pregnant, which turned out to be true); I simply was out too late and gained charter membership in the Snoozin' and Cruisin' Club.
   
3. It's Friday night. Where were you?  Likely at an alcohol-laden gathering of some sort that I wouldn't recall the next day.
   
4. Were you considered a flirt? No, more of a tramp. Which (unlike Molly) was largely deserved. Like a lot of Southern Baptist parents, mine had preached the word into me that "sex is only done with someone you love." Desperate for love of some sort, I became pretty damned promiscuous; it was sort of a twisted science experiment, and I discovered that my parents and the Baptists were wrong.
   
5. Were you in the band, orchestra, or choir?  I was in band for my Freshman and Sophomore year, trying out a different crowd.
   
6. Were you a nerd? No, not by high school. In elementary school, I was both a smart girl and a cheerleader. In middle school, the cheerleaders abandoned me, Lord of the Flies-style, to my increasing geekiness. By freshman year, I tried embracing the geekiness to try band. I was rejected by the geeks there, too. I was not a geek, and I did not fit in. So I became a wild child. But, no, "nerd" was not in my repertoire of hats that I wore in high school, although I remained one of the ones that everyone wanted to cheat off of for tests.
7. Who was your favorite teacher? I can't even remember her name; what the hell is up with my memory for names today?!? I can see her clearly, small & slight with black hair, suspiciously resembling visual depictions of witches (which a lot of kids thought of her, too). She was tough and serious and she taught English of some variant, always close to my heart. She told us on the first day of class our freshman year that she hated freshmen and that she couldn't wait to be rid of us. I had her for both freshman and sophomore year, I believe. I always admired her candor, her toughness, her dedication to teaching, and her lack of caring what other people thought. (After I graduated, she quit teaching; legally changed her whole name, both first and last, to one she liked; got married; and had a child, all post-forty.)
   
8. What was your school mascot? The Dragon, although it was really a griffon. I always thought that was kind of lame.
   
9. Did you go to the Prom?  Junior year, I didn't go to ours, but to another school's. Senior year, I was VERY pregnant, and since they didn't make sparkly sequined whale sheaths, prom was out.
   
10. Did you have a job your senior year?  Yes.
    
11. What year did you graduate? 1991
    
12. Would you/have you go to your class reunion reunion? True to our slacker Gen-X reputation, I don't think we had a 10-year reunion (if we did, I never got invited... LOL!). But, I think 10 years is still too soon to face some of the closed-minded, judgmental pricks of the past. When 20 years rolls around, I think I might go, just to see if and how time has changed people's attitudes and perceptions and personalities.

ETA: Chambers! Ms. Chambers! I feel so relieved now, remembering her name, like maybe not all my brains are mush...