Writing Assignment: Childhood Memory

I think at this point, it's pretty safe to say that I have official writer's block. It's been days since I could think of something that I wanted to write about. For me, that constitutes some serious writer's block. 

In an attempt to unplug my brain, I was given a writing assignment from my dear friend and sister in law Lucia, who has her own little budding blog, which you can check out here. 

The assignment was to write about a memory from my childhood/teen/early adulthood, in detail. To make her feel like she was there with me, living it.

So here I go.

When I was 7, my dad took my mom and I to the fair. 

They had separated two years before, and after she disappeared for a year, she showed up again, and they started spending time together. She had a little apartment in Sunnyslope, a new wild hair cut, and she started calling me "girlfriend". Like "Ready to go, girlfriend?" 

It was weird. 

One day, while I was swimming in her apartment pool, she came out looking breathless, excited and like she was in a huge hurry. 

"Get out of the pool" she said. "Your dad is taking us to the fair, you need to dry off and get dressed." To me, this sounded like good news. Holy shit, the fair! And with my dad! AND my mom! But she seemed oddly stressed about it. She was nervous and fidgeting all night, pulling at the short auburn pieces of her hair, smoking too much and picking at the chapped skin on her lips. 

When we got to my dad's house, it smelled the way it always did when my sisters and I were gone for a while. Like unwashed dishes and sweat. I felt bad for being away at my mom's for most of the summer. I knew my dad needed me. 

I remember them moving around each other in the kitchen like they didn't know how to share the same space. I realized for the first time how seldom I saw them in the same room with each other when they weren't fighting. I wondered if what was truly foreign, was getting along. 

I went to the bathroom right before we left, and I remember while I was in there washing my hands, my mom called to me "Come on, we're gonna miss the fair, girlfriend!" It didn't bother me. At least she was calling me something. At least she was talking to me. 

And then my dad corrected her. He said "You know, you shouldn't call her that. She's your kid, not your girlfriend. You're confusing her." and just as I opened the bathroom door, I saw her face fall. It was another thing she wasn't doing right, in her long list of failures. It was the same tired, defeated look I saw on her face, in all of my memories of her. Like a balloon losing all it's air. 

The ride to the fair was quiet. We took my dad's tow truck, with one bench seat. Me in the middle. My dad drove, and my mom looked out the window. I wanted to ask her what she was thinking, but the question sounded stupid, and I wasn't used to talking to her, so instead I sat between them and wondered what the fair would be like. I wish now I would've said something to her. Touched her shoulder, held her hand.

When we got there, I tried to make them hold hands. I walked between them, only coming up to both their waists. They held my hands, and I kept trying to bring their hands together, as if I could work their fingers together without them noticing. When they sat on a bench, I pushed them together, put my  dad's arm around my mother's shoulder. I thought, at the time, that them getting back together was the best thing. It was the only way for anything to make sense again.

My parents laughed at my childish attempts to make them fall in love, and I wished on every star in the sky. 

The only ride I remember, was this big bumpy slide, where you sat on a piece of burlap, and slid down the whole way. I went on it with my mom. She sat behind me and put her arms around my waist. I dug my fingers into her legs as we flew down the slide, catching air on each big bump, and screaming our heads off. 

At the end of the night, when my dad dropped me off, he gave me a framed picture of a Bengal Tiger. And I still have that picture to this day.

It's the only memory I have of my parents being together for a whole night, and not fighting. 

I laid down that night on the love seat in my bedroom at my mom's apartment, with carousel music in my head, while my mother chain smoked in the living room.

My Mother, Pt. 2

By my own admission, I know very little about my mother. What I do know, I am not sure is even true. Some people say there are two sides to every story, but to the story of my mother, there are as many sides as those funny shaped little dice with all the numbers on them. Too many to count, impossible to understand. All I know is what I remember, and what I felt at the time. So this is my mother, from my point of view.

I didn't know my mother was an alcoholic until she left my father. If he had one gift when I was little, it was making her look like the bad guy, and somehow simultaneously hiding all the truths about any real faults she had. I knew my parents went out a lot. I knew they drank a lot. But I didn't know what an alcoholic was, or that she was one, or who was to blame, or why she was always crying. I just knew that the yelling scared me, and when it got to be too much, my brother would let me listen to music with him in his room.

When my mom finally did leave my father, she disappeared for a year (I think) and when she resurfaced, she had an apartment in a shady part of Phoenix called Sunnyslope. It was small, two bedrooms and totally bare. The furniture was all mismatched and I could tell she didn't know what to do there all by herself. I don't remember her ever really cooking, and it seemed like she was never there, but that can't be true. I just remember there was always ice cold Pepsi in the fridge, and she stayed out late a lot. She had scented trash bags too. I guess sometimes in life it's the little things.

She and my dad tried to date each other again, I remember that. How awkward and unnatural that was. They would go out together and come home smashed, loving at first and then suddenly angry. One night my dad got pissed off about something, and there my sisters and I were in our pajamas in the middle of a hot summer night, as he screamed at her, and pushed her, hard. She tumbled back, knocked over a black and white dining room chair, and fell down, her legs flying over her head. I remember I saw her underpants. I was so embarrassed for her. It was the only time I saw her stand up to him. She stood up, clenched her fists, and told him to leave. And even though I didn't know what was happening, or why they were fighting, and I didn't want my dad to go, I was proud of her. All three of us girls looked at my dad, out of breath, sweating and full of rage, waiting to see what he'd do next. But he didn't do anything. He left. It was the last thing any of us expected. My mom stayed up all night cleaning all the appliances. I got out of bed as dawn broke through the slatted blinds and helped her scrub the toaster, but I didn't know why.

That summer went by quickly in a flash of swimming in her apartment pool, waiting for her to come home, watching Beavus and Butthead until the sun came up on MTV with my sisters, and my very first case of serious insomnia. I had my 8th birthday in that apartment. My mom and dad bought me an awesome birthday cake in the shape of a dragon, with red icing and yellow scales. It said "Happy 8th Birthday, Sarah" and they both told me how when they were having it decorated, they both accidentally told the baker it was my 4th birthday, but neither of them knew why.

Then one day, it all ended. Anita and Michele, our middle sister got into a fight about something, and she told her to go. My dad's dad was dying of cancer, and he was living in his sister's house, where his dad was on his death bed. He said we could come stay. I watched Michele pack what little stuff she had into spring rain scented trash bags, and then I did the same. My cousin Brandy came and picked us up, and we left.

I wonder what life was like for her in that little apartment all by herself. I wonder if she missed us, if she wished she could take it all back. I wonder if she cried, if she blamed herself, if she blamed my dad. I wonder who drank all the Pepsi she kept buying, and what would have happened if we'd stayed.

There have been so many moments in my life that I thought at the time were insignificant. Moments that seemed like every other minute of my confusing life, things I didn't realize at the time I would remember forever. Things like the way my mother looked when she came home from work. Or the fact that Brandy had a hair clip wrapped around the emergency brake on her car. Or that my grandfather (who I barely knew at all) like biscuits and gravy for breakfast. Things like the time my mother brought home these weird clear sodas with little floating colored balls in them, and I understand somehow it was her way of saying she cared.

It is this that grips me in the still of the night as I check on my kids before I go to bed to make sure they're still breathing. What will my kids hold onto? What little, stupid, insignificant memory will they take with them when they turn 18, when they get their first apartment, when they fall in love for the first time? What moment in time will be forever frozen in their head, left their to replay every time they're afraid, alone, happy, unsure or heartbroken?

Will it be all the times I tried to do the right thing? Or the times I messed up? When I was shorter than I wanted to be? The moments that I would give the very breath from my lungs to go back, change, replace, undo?

What are my children holding onto, when they lay their sweet heads down at night, and drift off to sleep?

I hope I'm doing the right things.

My Mother: Pt. 1

To date, this is the only picture I have of my mother and I.

Christmas, 1987

Over the last three years I have put an incalculable amount of time into bettering myself. Not to sound smug or anything, I just used to be kind of a shitbag, and over the last few years I have tried very very hard to become a better person. To become more responsible, less emotional, more calm and centered, less volatile, to be a better mom, to be a better friend, to mend wounded relationships and let poisoned relationships go. It hasn't been easy. To really, truly change it requires a level of self awareness that's just plain fucking uncomfortable sometimes. It requires you to look at yourself right in the eye, and right smack at the worst parts of yourself. I learned a lot. It wasn't all pretty.

One of the things I wanted to understand, was myself as a mother. I wanted to take a hard look at how I had so far handled my precious turn at motherhood, and better understand why I had made the mistakes I had made, and why I was so afraid of everything I was so afraid of. One thing this journey of introspection and soul searching kept bringing me back to was my mom. I feel like that word should be capitalized or in bold, or come with some sound bite of ominous and emotional music to really express what that word does to me inside. Thinking or saying the word "Mom" in regards to my own mother always feels heavier than it should. Maybe that's why for the last 10 years I have referred to her as Anita more often than Mom. It distances her, and everything thinking about her brings back for me.

I don't know very much about my mother, really, and what I do know has been pieced together from bits of information I gathered from my father, my sisters, sometimes my own mother, and the few memories I have of her from my childhood. It's odd to me that she has lived within a 20 minute drive my whole life, and I feel like I don't know the first thing about her.

I know her name is Anita, and she is the oldest of four children. I know her father was abusive in such unspeakable ways that just thinking about what he did to her makes me cringe. I may not like my mother, or have much of a relationship with her, but I would bust that son of a bitch's skull in her honor if I ever got the chance. I know my mother was born in Idaho, and lived in the same small town her entire life. I know she met my father in Alaska, supposedly running away from an abusive pimp in Seattle, because Alaska was one place he was legally barred from going. I don't know why, or if the guy was really her pimp, I don't even know his name. Like I said, I learned about her in bits in pieces from mostly biased sources. I know my mother got pregnant with my older sister before my parents were married, and that was part of the reason, if not the only reason they got married. They had a little ceremony in her home town in Idaho after picking up my half brother from his mom in South Carolina. My mom was 3 or 4 months pregnant, and she isn't smiling in any of her wedding pictures.

If I could write my mother's life for her, she would have been born to someone else. Someone kind and loving who would have protected her, not started killing her the day she turned 5 years old. She would have had a gentle and loving husband, who stroked her pale face at night and extinguished the red flame of her wild hair with his palm against his chest as she fell asleep. He would have told her everything was going to be ok, and she never would have been anybody's mother.

By Anita's own admission, she never really wanted children. At least after she had my two sisters she definitely didn't want more. I was a "surprise" and from the time I was born, to her I was a betrayal. My father was mean to her. They partied too hard, drank too much and fought all the time. To her, it wasn't any better than being back home with her father. When I was born, my father caught me with his bare hands. According to Anita, I preferred him over her forever after that.

Like I said, I don't remember much about her, and it's hard to understand still to this day, how she could have dismissed me at such a young age, because all I can remember from my first memory until I was 18 years old, was wanting her to love me. She was thin, soft and pretty. She had brilliant auburn hair and blue-green eyes, and she always smelled like vanilla, breath mints and the slightest hint of smoke. She had a big smile, and long long legs. She had soft hands, and the few times I remember her touching me, it was always soothing. She was my mother. And all I wanted was to be her daughter.

But bad marriages lead to bad parenting, and neither of my parents had any kind of good example for how to protect and shield their children from their poison. I became biased. I learned to prefer my father because he never refused me. I found more in common with him than with her, and to my mother this was confirmation of what she had always suspected. I would grow up to be just like him. Her abuser, her worst enemy. I was just a kid who wanted someone to notice me.

When I was 6 (I think) my mom finally left. I remember the day so clearly, I can still smell the meatloaf she made. She made bell peppers stuffed with meatloaf, she didn't leave a note. She left while I was napping in my room and my dad was asleep on the couch. She said goodbye to my sisters, hopped the fence and walked away. Did someone pick her up? Did she look at me before she left? Did she touch my cheek, or smell my hair, or whisper some goodbye? Did she think about me? What did she put her stuff in? I heard it was a trash bag, but that could be wrong. There is so much I still don't know. I just remember waking up and the house was hot. Dinner was ready, I could smell it from my room, but she was gone. I knew that before I even started looking for her. There was something too final, too quiet, too empty about the house. She was gone.

If I remember right, she didn't show up again for a year. But she never told me where she'd gone.