Westward Ho!

November 16, 2011December 1, 2011 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

“I just can’t take it anymore,” I complained to Tammy, cradling the phone with my neck while I finished washing the dishes. “I need a serious change and I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, why don’t you come live out here with me and Dean? That way you have a place to stay for a while until you get on your feet, and I’m happy to help out.”

I was quiet on the phone for a minute. “Wow”, I finally said through my tears. “Really, you’d do that for me? You do remember what it’s like to live with a three-year old, right?”

Tammy laughed and said: “Yes, and I miss having a little boy around. Danny wants to continue living with his father in New Hampshire, and that’s been really hard for me, but he’s thirteen, and he has good friends there, and I just have to accept that I’m only going to see him for vacations. I think it’ll be good for both of us if you come live out here.”

“Let me think about it some more, and I’ll get back to you.”

“I’m here for you, whether you stay in Maine, or come out to San Diego.”

“Thanks, Tammy. I love you.”

“Love you too. Bye.”

“Bye.”

That conversation in March of 1994 changed my life. I had a new option, and while I had friends and some support where I was, I was a single mom in poverty, with no car and only a part-time job that I was about to lose. It snowed over a hundred inches that winter in South Portland, Maine, and I was very close to giving up my son to his alcohol-addicted father, and committing suicide. I had a plan, and I was getting the courage to implement it when chance circumstances re-connected me with a friend I hadn’t talked to in nearly ten years.

Imagining a different life helped make the life I was in a bit more tolerable, and I began preparations to make the move. Several friends and relatives told me that it would be stupid to move so far away with someone I hadn’t seen in so long, even though we had been best friends through high school, and I had a young child to consider, and what was I thinking, dragging him across the country?

The other contingent, whom I sided with, saw it as an opportunity to better myself and give my son a chance at a better life too. As I went, so went my son, type of thing.

I made my decision, and Tammy, who was going to fly back East in July to stay with her father for a few weeks while spending time with her son, decided to drive out with a friend, and bring me and my son back out with them on their return trip.

She had a pick-up truck with a tall shell for the truck bed, which she furnished with a mattress, and I was to sell my beds and other large belongings because they wouldn’t fit in the small trailer we’d rent for the trip back to California. She had a guest room with a bed that my son would sleep on, and I would stay on the couch until I found work and could buy new beds. I sold all of our big furniture, and kept my son’s books and most of his toys, as well as dishes and whatever else could fit in the trailer, because we’d be taking turns driving while one of us slept in the back of the truck. I ended up paying for one night in a motel room so we could have a shower and get a decent night’s sleep.

My boyfriend at the time and I had a rocky relationship, but we liked each other enough to work through issues. He asked me to stay in Maine, but conceded that he didn’t know where he saw our relationship going. The week before I left, he told me he would have asked me to marry him if I didn’t have a child. After he said that, I knew leaving was the right decision. So many choices in my life translated to ‘damned if I don’t, damned if I do’ propositions.

August 4th, moving day: Tammy and her friend, Ann, were to arrive around Noon. I spent the morning cleaning my apartment, and bringing whatever didn’t sell, and I didn’t want, outside to bring to the dump when my friend arrived. My son was upset that most of our things were gone, and he didn’t want to go anywhere. By the time Tammy got there, I was sweaty and irritated, and wondering if this had been such a good idea after all.

It was really good to see Tammy, and Ann and I pretty much instantly disliked one another. She made some remark about my attitude, and I was kind of stunned that this person I barely knew was openly judging me after having worked my ass off all morning, with a crabby child in tow, and no other help. “Fuck you”, I wish I had said, but having a bit more grace than her, I fluffed it off and asked Tammy if she’d bring the junk pile to the dump, while I got some lunch for my son and played with him for a while. She, being a parent herself, was completely empathetic about my state of mind, and told me to take a break, and she’d deal with the trash and help me finish whatever cleaning was left to do later.

It took several more hours than expected to finish up, rent the trailer, and make sure we were ready to hit the road. We left Maine around 5pm, with my son and I in the back of the truck for the overnight drive. Luckily the truck’s motion put my son to sleep fairly soon, but I had too much anxiety, so I slept very little.

We drove through the night, choosing a route through the Poconos, which Tammy later told me creeped her out because Ann had fallen asleep, and my son and I were out of view in the way back – the window into the cab being hidden behind boxes, blankets, and pillows – and she was thinking about the Sleepy Hollow legend, imagining seeing the Headless Horseman as she drove through the darkness, with few other travelers that late. We could have kept each other company, but I wouldn’t have been comfortable leaving my son in the back of the truck where I wouldn’t know what was going on with him, or with Ann, who wasn’t fond of children.

I drove the next morning, our route taking us through most of Ohio, and then down through Kentucky, and finally into Tennessee where we would stay on I-40 for the bulk of the trip.

We stayed in a motel in Tennessee the one night we didn’t drive through. One bane of the trip was automatic flush toilets, which seemed to be installed at every stop we made, and which my son was afraid of, along with any loud, not-easily understood noises, so we had to find rest stops with a Port-A-Potty (or a wooded area) for most of the journey.

By the third day, we were all miserable, and my son was the only one vocalizing it freely and frequently, to which Ann questioned my child-rearing style of just letting him complain. I told her I had learned to tune out most of what he said, and did my best to keep him entertained by imitating his favorite Sesame Street characters voices, while making up stories, singing songs, and playing games, which seemed to annoy Ann, and made it even more pleasurable for me. Poor Tammy was caught between trying to support her friend, but enjoying being with my son, grumpy or not.

I’m sure Ann was most happy when my son and I were riding in the back of the truck, or when she was back there sleeping. I was most happy when it was just Tammy, my son, and I, riding up front. I was driving when we neared Flagstaff, Arizona, and I saw a ‘Grand Canyon, 50 miles’ sign. Ann was riding up front with me and my son, and I asked her if it would be ok if we took a detour as I had never seen the Grand Canyon, and thought it would be a perfect opportunity. Ann said she’d rather not, but if Tammy was willing, then she’d go along with it. The hitch was that I’d have to wake Tammy up to ask her, and I didn’t want to interrupt her sleep, so we continued on into California where Ann took over the driving until we reached her apartment in Ocean Beach.

I’ve always regretted not making a unilateral decision and just driving to the Grand Canyon because I still have not been there.

I was talking to Tammy on the phone the other day, both of us amazed at how much time has gone by, and she suggested I move back out once my son is through college, and I’m seriously considering it.

All Hallows

November 1, 2011November 1, 2011 / Hermionejh

Rabbit, Rabbit. The ancient Celtic year begins today, marking the start of winter. Winter was already ushered in rather harshly with our recent Nor’easter dumping thirty inches of snow in some areas. I feel lucky that my town escaped with just over a foot of the heavy, wet snow. I was only out of power for part of a day, while some of my friends are yet to get back their electricity.

Yesterday, I visited my Mom because her phone was out and I wanted to make sure she made it through the storm alright, even though I know that one of my aunts was staying with her, and the guy who works for her and lives nearby would also have checked on her and I figured I’d have gotten a call if anything bad had happened. Then I thought that all phone service in the area might be out, and I just wanted to visit regardless of anything else. I was a bit worried that fallen trees or downed wires would prevent me from making it to my mother’s house, and it might well have earlier in the day because I saw evidence of cleared trees and other debris all the way there.

It was almost evening when I arrived, and I brought a flashlight in case it was dark by the time I left. My mom doesn’t have electricity or running water, so the storm changed nothing for her except interrupted phone service.

The glow of the kerosene lamps, and warmth from the wood stove, enveloped and welcomed me even as I was welcomed by my mother and aunt. They were happy for my unexpected company and we chatted about the snowstorm’s effects, and how weird it was to have a major storm before Hallowe’en, as we sipped coffee and evening began settling in. I don’t know if it was the time of day and the way the lamplight glowed and cast slight shadows on the walls, or the steamed windows and cooking smells from whatever dinner my mother was making, or simply spending time with my mother and one of her sisters, but there was something so extraordinary about being there that I noticed and enjoyed in the moment, and that feeling, or experience, actually, has stayed with me since.

I left before it was dark and made my way up the path without needing my flashlight. I noticed the stillness of the woods around me as I walked, and had a sense of being present to life in a way that I rarely sense.

I got up this morning and began working on things that I often think about doing rather than starting – or finishing. I feel my life changing, almost radically (for the better), and I hope that’s true.

Spooky Hallowe’en!

October 31, 2011November 8, 2011 / Hermionejh

Jack-O'Lantern in the snow

I’m looking out the window at the six inches of snow still on the ground, and it’s hard to get into the Hallowe’en mood. There are still green leaves on many trees around here, and we haven’t really had a proper autumn. These climate change indicators suck. We had a hurricane two months ago, along with a record-breaking flood. We had a tornado two months before that, which decimated several areas in Massachusetts. If you had said that we’d have a tornado and a hurricane, a record-breaking flood, as well as record-breaking early snowfall, I’d have packed my bags and moved to – where? Is there any place relatively unaffected? We’ve had tornadoes for the past several years now, not like they do in the flatter mid-west, of course, but it is extremely unusual weather for this area, and it’s frightening how common it’s becoming. I’d rather go through a haunted house or see a scary movie – at least I know that has an ending.

I suppose climate change is the spook this year, and giving it candy and sending it on its way is not going to appease it. Any smashed eggs or strewn toilet paper tricksters might dole out do not usually cause dire consequences, however annoying it may be to clean up, but getting the power back on after heavy snows brought wires down and cut off electric service to millions, is not so easily remedied.

Trick-or-Treat, indeed!

P.S. For anyone who looked for the hidden object in yesterday’s post, I updated the post with a photo pointing to the object. Cheers!

Too Young To Trick-or-Treat On My Own

October 28, 2011October 31, 2011 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

On Hallowe’en, when I was around five or six (maybe even the same year I split my head open), my older siblings were allowed to leave on their own to go trick-or-treating, but I had to stay home until I finished my supper, and wait for my mom to get my little brother in his costume.

I remember thinking how completely unfair it was that I had to wait for my baby brother, and be treated ‘like a baby’, when my next oldest sister was only two years older than me, and she got to go out with my other sister and brothers. After enough complaints, my mother warned me that she could leave me home while she brought my brother around if I kept harassing her. I don’t think I uttered a word after that until we finally went out into the chilly night.

We had split-pea soup that night, which was one of my favorite dishes my mom made, but there would be no seconds that night. I wanted to get out there and trick-or-treat until my pillowcase was filled to the brim with candy! I never stopped to think how heavy it would be to actually fill a pillowcase full of candy. Back then, there were no ‘fun-sized’ candy bars, only full-sized bars, but people often gave things like small boxes of raisins, or popcorn balls, or apples. My mom would usually throw out anything that wasn’t store-bought, so I had to beg her let me keep a candied-apple one year, and she finally acquiesced after I badgered her so much that she told me it would serve me right if I found a razor-blade in the apple. I also think I lied and told her I knew who it was who gave me the apple, so she could have them arrested if I died.

All week before Hallowe’en I walked home from school singing the Five Little Pumpkins song, and felt a chill up my spine when I sang, “Oo, ooh went the wind, and out went the light…!” I would pull off any leaves still clinging to their branches that I could reach on my way home, as though that would hasten the arrival of the much-anticipated day.

My older sisters and brothers always ended up with more candy than I, or my younger brother ever got, and I remember thinking that I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to get as much candy as them.

Hallowe’en Decorating

October 27, 2011October 31, 2011 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

I don’t think I put any effort into Hallowe’en last year; I wasn’t as motivated for whatever reason. I didn’t remember how many cool decorations I have (mostly eerie candle holders), but even looking through my old costumes has been so much fun this year. I forgot that I had picked up old clothes for a straw-man two years ago (or woman, or alien…), but it’s been raining off and on for the past week so I’m not going to gather leaves to stuff the outfit, or buy expensive straw. I’m irritated when I see corn stalks selling for ridiculous prices because they’re ubiquitous around here. I’ll go pick my own. I was growing corn every year, and then using the stalks to decorate, but my landlord won’t let me have a garden, so the next place I move, I’ll make sure gardening is allowed.

Putting up my decorations brightened my mood and I feel happy every time I look at them. I like Hallowe’en much more than Christmas, but I enjoy having a tree to decorate and singing carols as well. I’ve always considered Hallowe’en to be the start of the holidays with Thanksgiving on its heels, and then right into Chanukah and Christmas.

I haven’t settled on my costume for this year, and I only have a couple of days left! I prefer cobbling a costume together to buying a commercial one, but I’ve never been patient enough, or have the skill required to make one from a pattern, or design my own. I suppose going to thrift stores and finding elements to make a costume out of is akin to making my own, but if I don’t settle on an idea, I’ll have to go with one of my old standbys.

I thought about dressing up as Medusa because I’ve never gone as her before, but I also like the idea of Cerberus. I won a prize for the scariest costume when I went as a zombie prom queen two years ago, but I had longer to get that together than I do for something different this year.

Regardless of what I end up going out as, I’m just glad I’m having so much fun this year!

A Stitch In Time

October 26, 2011October 31, 2011 / Hermionejh

When I was about five or six, my family moved into a two-story house heated by steam radiation. I used to try spinning on the twist knobs at the bottom of the cast iron radiators, and managed a three-quarter turn. I stopped my efforts at a full turn when I fell and got a black eye after hitting the knob.

My older sisters and brothers used to scare me and my little brother around Hallowe’en by taunting us before bedtime with a ghostly sounding chant of: “There’s a bad guy in the window!”, starting low and soft and reaching a high crescendo after the third or fourth refrain, and we’d run screaming up to our rooms. A night or so before Hallowe’en that year, my brothers got the bright idea of cutting out a cardboard silhouette of a man, placing it in the upstairs window near my bedroom, and illuminating it with a flashlight behind the curtain.

While the 'bad guy' in the window didn't look like this, this drawing I found is creepy enough to represent what it looked like to me.

I got so scared when I saw it, especially because one of my sisters was chanting the ‘bad guy’ theme just before my brothers moved to reveal the cut-out, or somehow made sure I saw it. I ran screaming with my hands over my eyes and my head down, directly into one of the cast iron radiators. I cut the top of my head open so deep that my mother had to bring me to the hospital to get stitches.

I remember that when we got to the hospital and they were cleaning the wound, the nurse told me that the doctor was going to sew me up, but if I needed him to stop, just tell her it hurt, and they’d stop. I was lying face down in a pillow, and yelled as loud as I could for them to stop because it hurt so much, but they didn’t listen. My only consolation was that it took three nurses to hold me still enough for the doctor to finish sewing up the wound. I was so mad at that nurse for tricking me.

Being lied to about pain when I was a child led me to always tell my son that shots, or stitches, etc., would indeed hurt, but that I believed he could handle it, and it would be over as quickly as possible. Thankfully, there weren’t many times I needed to prepare him for pain.

Shivering Wind, Blustery Day

October 25, 2011August 2, 2026 / Hermionejh

Fluffy white, cotton-ball clouds are moving lazily through the bright-blue sky misleading viewers to the tempestuous scene closer to the ground as furious gusts of wind threaten to blow open the door and windows as I sit here typing this.

The young maple tree across the street is ablaze with orange and red leaves, the sunlight making them shimmer and glow as the wind tears at the leaves clinging defiantly to their branches, while hundreds of their brethren are ripped into the sky, a rain of color and twisting shapes in a flora danse macabre.

Leaves piled in a building’s alcove swirl up and around in a whirlwind, settling back down in drifts, and swirled around again in the next updraft. Some of the leaves resemble tiny kites performing acrobatics, flying higher and higher until the wind changes and the leaves zig-zag gracefully down, or plummet violently in a wind shear.

This blustery day reminds me of Piglet and Pooh Bear, and I am once again missing my son and the happy hours we spent reading Winnie The Pooh, and watching the videos. I have seen the movies, and read the books with the other children I watch, but it’s not the same. I realize that I want another baby, but only if the circumstances were right. I also know that desiring another child is a passing fancy, borne of the exciting autumn winds, and upcoming Hallowe’en, my favorite holiday.

I’ll decorate my house for my inner kid, who still craves the not-too-scary thrill of ghost stories around a bonfire with friends, and shivers in delight when the wind rattles the windows during the night, and the bare tree branches against the twilight and night sky look menacing, as though they could reach out and grab unsuspecting passers-by.

Maybe I’ll buy a pumpkin or two to carve later. I’ve already been eating some of the candy I bought for Trick-or-Treaters, so I have to steel my will against eating any more, and buy what I don’t like next time!

Good Dog

October 23, 2011October 25, 2011 / Hermionejh

My friend’s dog died two weeks ago. He was one of my favorite dogs. I met him a few years ago at a party I attended at my friend’s house. I had a plate of food and sat down outside and there were at least twenty other party guests sitting around with a plate of food on their lap, but Cooper decided that he wanted to sit next to me. He followed me all day long even though I never offered, or dropped, a bite of food. I didn’t know it then, but we had just become friends.

Any time I went to my friends’ house after that, Cooper would follow me around and be so happy when I would pet him or pay attention to him. He was a sweet bulldog and I’m so happy I got to know him.

I went to my friend’s house tonight after a fun night out on the town, and we were so full of our evening that I didn’t even absorb Cooper’s absence until I went into their living room, and it hit me so fully that he is gone. I was misty-eyed as I remarked that it was so weird that Cooper wasn’t there, and my friend’s husband said: ‘here he is’, and pointed to the pretty box with his ashes. I held the box for a while, even though I know Cooper’s soul isn’t in there, but I really felt that beautiful dog’s presence in the room with us.

There are very few times in one’s life that the feeling of unconditional love is encompassing, and tonight was one of those nights. My friends said that Cooper’s spirit now lives on ‘Bulldog Island’. When I was a child, and our dog had to be put down, my father told me that she went to live in the ‘happy hunting grounds’.

All I really know is that Cooper was a good dog, and he will be missed.

Thinking Of My Father

October 20, 2011August 2, 2026 / Hermionejh

It was my father’s birthday yesterday. He died in 2003 and I miss him a lot sometimes. He had some charming qualities like his sense of humor, and his charismatic personality. His moods and actions could change in an eye blink, but when he was ‘on’ there was no better entertainment around. He was highly intelligent and quick-witted, as well as tall and handsome.

I sense him around me sometimes when I work out at the gym. If it’s truly his spirit I feel, and not just my active imagination, I guess he approves of me taking care of my body.

I miss hearing him say: ‘Oh, run down, tired, used up – doing just fine’ – or several variations – when I’d call and ask him how he was. He could bark exactly like Dino from, The Flintstones, and could make up fantastic ditties, poems and limericks on the spot. He told me that he had gotten drunk at a party one time in his twenties and began ‘speaking in tongues’. There was a woman at the party who told him he had just spoken perfect Gaelic. My father is Scots-Irish, but never knew any Gaelic.

It’s unfortunate that we never developed a better relationship, but I am forever grateful that he apologized to me for his violence and terror when I was a child, and for not being the parent he should have been. Regardless of that being somewhat ‘too little, too late’, it is certainly better than not at all.

The Precipice

October 5, 2011August 2, 2026 / Hermionejh / 4 Comments

It’s amazing how fast my inner reality can change from wonderful to dreadful. I actually don’t understand the mechanism, or process, of my mind. Regardless of the how or why, I worry that one day I will remove any barrier between me leaving or staying on this pointlessly spinning rock.

I know that we bring any meaning to this world, or our lives, and that’s a problem when I can’t see anything worth enduring for. I see people who cannot help but hurt others, and those who actually delight in it. I live in a dishonorable society growing more hedonistic all the time. All we need do to finish the treatment is to erect a huge bull in our nation’s capitol, and start worshiping Baʿal again. The love of money has taken center stage in our society, and pushed those who seek equity to the fringes, as though they are contemptible, and not the other way around. We’re once again a nation who honors the Shylocks and Scrooges among us, and our legislators make more laws to protect the few from the many, while undoing, or trying to undo, laws that serve the least among us. Women are being treated as commodities more openly again as Machiavellian legislation is introduced that seeks to strip all rights to our own bodies, with several states either already legislating, or seeking to grant a fertilized egg ‘person-hood’, as well as making birth control a murder weapon!

I am a sovereign being! I don’t believe in your God, or your ideas about what I can and can’t do with my body. I can be raped, and if I live in Alabama, or Nebraska, or several other states, I’m forced to bear that child?! Hey, pro-lifers: Don’t like abortion? – then don’t have one! You are trying to play God with my decisions. You want me to have free will as long as I use that will the way you, you limited, fallible, troglodytes, try to force me to! Step off!

There are far more of us who truly seek personal freedom than there are those with massive egos who think they have the right to tell everyone else how to live. Those are the people who rape, molest, and torture women and children, and who are so deeply perverted that they try to control others so stringently because they cannot control themselves. Here’s a little tip: get a therapist, and leave the rest of us alone.