"Let it ring."

I'm going to share something, that I find pretty embarrassing.  Actually, it's downright humiliating, and leads to even further awkward situations down the road. 

My telephone freaks me out.

Not in a "boogie man" sort of way, but in a "jeezus, that fucking thing is ringing again, and the thought of picking it up and actually talking to the person on the other end, is making my heart sink into my stomach," way. 
I'm not sure, exactly, what freaks me out about it.  Maybe I'm afraid I'll hear bad news.  Maybe I'm afraid the person wants something from me that I don't have to give.  Maybe I'm worried that I'll get "stuck" on the phone with them for an extended period of time, and won't have an excuse to hang up. 

When my mother still called, it was impossible to get her off the line.  She literally chattered on for up to three hours sometimes, about nothing but herself.  My least favorite subject.  And nothing shut her up.  "Oh, look, one of the kids is on fire...gotta go," would still leave me on the phone with her for another half hour, while she explained in great detail why she hated fire. 
Ok, maybe it's not that extreme.  But that's how it felt. 
That is, when we weren't screaming incoherently at one another.  Which was often. 

My father has been calling for weeks, and every time he does, a knot swells inside my throat.  "He's either shit-his-pants drunk and wants to ramble on for an hour about aliens, or he's sober, and won't have anything to say to me at all."  Both are equally unnerving.  His messages fill me with panic and guilt, and remind me what an asshole I am for not answering my phone when he calls. 

My friends call, and my husband looks at me as if I've done something terrible when I say, "let it ring." 
"But, why don't you want to talk to them?" 
The short answer is, I don't know.

                                       


In high school, most of my hours were spent on the phone.  With a boyfriend.  With a best friend.  With wrong numbers, even.  Several times, I literally spent the entire night on the phone, only to be surprised by my 6am alarm.  I would wander thru the day exhausted, nap after school, and wake in time for dinner and phone.  The thought of that now makes my insides twist. 

Talking on the phone with my husband is not particularly a problem.  I think I could talk to him all day, and feel comfortable.   I can even handle making "professional" phone calls, to deal with our personal business, because I have an agenda, I can say my peace, and I can hang up when it's over. 

But the thought of an unsolicited phone call from a friend, relative, or otherwise, leaves me feeling a weird, anxious and embarrassing feeling.

I feel as if I'm well-spoken, thoughtful, and thought-full in text.  I can read an email, take a few minutes to think on it, compose a response, re-read the response, and delete or reword what doesn't come across the way I wish.  I can double-check myself for anything that I might wish to take back.  I can triple-check for anything that seems insensitive.  I can be sure.  Very, very sure.  And then, send. 
There is no "undo" over the phone.  Once I say it, I can't un-say it.  It's out there in the universe, and I can't take it back.  It's done. 
Fuck. 

More than once, this has lead to friends feeling alienated.  Ignored.  Left behind.  It has led to an angry father, frustrated loved-ones, and a very confused, and embarrassed me. 
I'm happy that they want to talk to me.  I'm happy that someone loves me enough that they want to hear my voice over the phone.  And I feel ridiculous that I can't (or don't) reciprocate.  I'm anxious when they do call, and scared to death that one day, they won't.  My fear is that one day, the phone will finally fall silent, and no one will bother with me anymore. 
Gross. 
 

Mother(fucker)-in-Law

Heart falling out of ass. 
It's the only way I know how to describe the feeling I get when something unpleasant takes me completely by surprise.  One second I'm fine, and the next second, my heart has plummeted from my chest, and threatens to fall right out of my ass. 

If you read regularly, you'll know that my husband and I are estranged from our mothers.  With good reason.  So I don't need to go over that again. 

Last weekend a phone call, at nearly midnight, led us to think someone must be dead, and so rather than ignoring it as usual, my husband answered it.  His mother claimed her phone was blinking his name, as if he had called.  (An obvious lie, since our flip-closed cellphones are physically incapable of "butt dialing.") 
She talked as if nothing had happened between us.  As if she hadn't been banished to Shitty-Mother Island, and as if she hadn't been told to "never darken our doorway again", after the disgusting things she said to my husband...
She asked about coming up to visit, "if I stay in a hotel," and my husband told her that we would just have to see how things go, since his schedule is weird.  

I shrugged it off, hoping that it was a way for him to blow her off, hoping he would ignore any further communication from her, and hoping that neither I, our children, or my precious husband would have to endure the black cloud she always carries with her...the chaos and darkness she will inevitably spread thru our house with her bitter comments, her racism, homophobia, and her general nasty disposition...
And sort of knowing that my husband is torn. 

Then, nothing.  No more calls, no emails or letters, just the ever-present nagging sense of her presence, somewhere deep in my brain. 

And today, in a "heart-falling-out-of-ass" moment, we receive this email:

"(Your grandmother) and I are going to come up to see the kids and you guys sometime before they go back to school.  When do they start back?"

The fuck?  Did she just invite herself back into our home?  Did she just tell me that they are arriving, and ignore the fact that she's forbidden to show her face on our property?  Talk about balls.  She definitely has a pair of big fat hairy ones. 


My immediate reaction is to call my husband, and say something along the lines of "guess who's coming to dinner," and hope he freaks out as badly as I do, so we can agree as a unit not to allow her back.  But I don't.  I stare at the message, instead, and panic. 
If my husband wants to see her, I won't stop him. 
I don't want to see her.  Ever, at all.   She's wretched.  She's miserable, and only finds happiness in making others miserable, too.  And the bitch was hateful to my children.  That alone is grounds for immediate and permanent dismissal. 

But I also know how many times I have given my own disgusting mother a "second chance."  Lots.  Of course she's a sociopathic lunatic,  and she blows it every single time, without fail.  So I am familiar with the cycle of forgiveness and heartbreak.  He is not.  After a lifetime of abuse, his first and only confrontation with his mother resulted in two years of not speaking to her. 

My fear is that this will drive a wedge between us.  That she will drive a wedge between us.  She has before.  Even going so far as to tell my husband "next time, you'd better marry for looks!"  I want her to go away, take her miserable cloud with her, and stay away. 

And now, she's just declared that she will come.  "You have no say in the matter, and I will be there.  Kindly go fuck yourself in preparation for my descent." 

                                      

  I want to move.  I want to hide.  I want to run away.  I want to escape the chaos she brings, simply by being.  I want to tell her that if she shows up at our door, I'll meet her with swear words and a fist to the teeth.  I want to shove her in a box with my own mother, and ship them off to Abu Dhabi, Garfield style. 

I want to be supportive of the needs and wishes of my husband.  And I'm sorely afraid that this will be an instance where I come out looking like a huge dickhead. 

Fuck. 

Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me...

We watched one of those TV news specials tonight.  Not a particularly noteworthy event, however the content of this particular program left me feeling incredibly...
Without. 

I'm not sure what was supposed to be the main focus of the program.  It seemed to jump around a lot, or maybe I was just so lost in my own thoughts that I didn't catch on.  But basically, it was focused toward religion, and faith. 

Unquestioning faith.  Unrelenting faith.  Just plain old blind faith, that never wavered or weakened. 


They all looked a little nuts to begin with.  Hands open to the sky, tears flowing freely.  Hundreds of people who climbed mountains, or waited in lines for hours, hoping for just a glimpse of someone claiming to be a healer.  Collapsing into hysteria or unconsciousness when touched by such a person. 
People claiming visions of, and even conversations with the Virgin Mary. 

All of them so sure of their faith.  So unmoved by how they appeared to the "outside" world. 






And I felt sad. 
I felt left out. 
I felt sorrow in my own lack of faith. 

What is it that they have, that I don't?  It isn't that I haven't tried.  I went to church as a little kid.  My mother tucked four quarters into my little palm every Sunday, and sent me off to Sunday school to get my Jesus on.  I got up early on Sundays to attend services as a teenager, and even sang in the church choir for a number of years.  Even in my adult years, I've sat thru sermons, sometimes even arriving an hour early to sit in the sanctuary, and hope for something "holy" to fill me up. 
I prayed. 
I talked right out loud to whatever deity would listen. 
I let my seven hundred year-old preacher dip me in the magic water. 
I even dove nose first into a bible a time or two.  Or twelve.  Or more. 

I wanted to have faith.  I wanted to feel what it seemed the church-goers around me were feeling. 

I didn't.  Even a little. 
Oh, sure.  I felt good singing hallelujah songs, and being "joyful" near those people who were more righteous than I.  I liked the company, and the happy feeling I got when my adorable and feeble preacher put his hand on my shoulder at the end of every sermon, and told me how special I was to him, and how happy he was to see young people like me in church every Sunday. 
But as far as being hardcore, dead sure about anything "godly," there was nothing. 

I questioned the bible.  I questioned it's authenticity, and it's authors, and it's messages that I found to be, at times, entirely contradictory.  I questioned the sincerity of people I encountered who preached love, while using it to justify hate.  I questioned my own sanity and morals, wondering why my naughtiest thoughts took place in church.  I questioned why, if all of this was "real", was I allowed to feel such doubt.  And why nothing I did was enough to "make" me a believer. 

Not that I'm not a believer.  It's just that I'm not sure what I believe.  I don't know the answers, and I find myself feeling a sense of longing when I run into those who seem so sure. 

I ran away when I was seventeen.  With a man.  I stayed gone for somewhere near a week, calling once or twice to let my family know that I was ok.  It was a weird time.  I returned to a lot of very angry people, naturally.  It was hard to articulate what I'd been thinking, and I know I must have been asked that question at least a hundred times. 

One evening after church choir practice, I found myself sitting on the steps outside with our song leader, smoking together, and talking about my brief ordeal.  He listened intently, and with great empathy.  He advised me, he hugged me, and he warned me, gently, about the potential folly of my path.  He finished with "men can be real bastards sometimes." 
I didn't know he was allowed to say that.  He was religious, after all.  And they don't say words like "bastards."  Do they?  They're not real people, are they?  Not flawed and messy, like me... 

From there, I began to wonder if perhaps that isn't the "real" god.  Maybe he was, in that moment, some kind of "god" in a sense.  A real person, with real compassion, and real concern, reaching out where he knew he could help.  What if it's truly that simple? 


And if it's not, then what is so wrong with me, that I can't just accept all of these things on faith, without questioning the logic of it all?  Without noticing the contradictions?  Without being constantly bombarded with my own inner voice, saying, "something about this doesn't jive..." 

Do "good" believers feel this uncertainty?  How do they settle within themselves the seemingly endless list of questions that I have asked for so long?  How do they just believe it all, without question?  Part of me is glad that I have the capability of independent and logical thought, and have not been swooped up with the religious "crazies," climbing some foreign mountain to touch someone claiming to talk to angels.  And another part of me is a little sad that I can't be filled in such a way.  That I can't just "know" what they seem to know.  That I can't feel sure, the way they feel sure.

 












Our song leader died a few months later.  And while I missed him so terribly, I felt such a sense of great gratitude for having been able to share such an altering and important moment with him on the steps of our church.  I think of him often, and wonder where he is now.  If he is now.  I wonder if he is with his deity, or if he's currently a fourteen year-old sheep herder in New Zealand.  I wonder if he's just ceased to be, infinitely, and secretly hope like hell that's not the case. 

And that's all. 

I am Ophelia

I am Ophelia. 
Today, my young friend, Alice, and I were blown by the wind, far away from our familiar home (never mind where) and into a strange and mysterious new land, where everyone and everything was unfamiliar and new. 

(I am Krystal.  I am an irritable, lately miserable, frumpy housewife, and this afternoon, after the most miserable morning, as the wind nearly blew us off our feet, my daughter declared, "thank goodness we're too heavy for it to blow us away" to which I responded, "maybe we're not.  Maybe the wind can pick us up and carry us far off, somewhere where we don't know anything or anyone.  We can start brand new.  We'll pick new names, and speak in funny accents!  What's your new name?" 
"Alice,"  She replied.  "What's yours?" 
"Roger,"
"MOM!  You can't be a boy's name.  Pick a girl one."  Sometimes she has no sense of humor. 
"Ophelia," I declared, as I threw my arms to the wind, secretly hoping it could carry me away.)

"Ophelia," she began, in the most charming British accent, "where can we go for some water?"  Finding myself parched as well, I decided we'd venture off into this new land, meet the locals, and see if our "home" money could buy us a few refreshments. 

We found ourselves nestled inside a cozy little hamlet (Applebees) where most of the locals seemed friendly enough. 
"Look at that pretty little baby boy there.  What do you think his name is?"  I asked Alice.  "I'll bet it's Francisco." 
"That's not a boy."  She insisted.  "That's a girl." 
"In disguise?"  I asked.
"Yes.  It's a girl, disguised as a boy.  Her name is Sarah.  She's a princess."  Alice looked worried, as she looked around, suspiciously. 
"Are they looking for her?"  I whispered. 
"I think they are." 

(The waiter, Joshua, appears.  "What are we up to today, ladies?" 
I reply, in character, "my young friend Alice and I are out in search of adventure today."  Alice covers her mouth to hide her obvious giggle. 
"We're pretending," she whispers, and our waiter doesn't seem as if he entirely gets it, but is friendly enough, and goes along with our silliness. 
"Ahhhh!  Well, what kind of adventure are we looking for?  Where are ya headed today?" 

To which Ophelia replies, "where the wind takes us!"  Alice erupts into laughter, as we order three desserts "two cherries on this one, please," and two gigantic waters.  Joshua disappears.)

"Alice!  I've just remembered!  It's your twenty fourth birthday!" 
Alice looks surprised.  She should.  She doesn't look a day over six. 
"Oh, thank you, Ophelia!"
"We should do something to celebrate.  Perhaps a nightclub later.  We can dance." 
We break into finger-pointy, shoulder wiggly, seated style chair dances.  Alice is briefly mortified as Joshua returns with our water. 

"I WAS SO THIRSTY!"

"Yeah!  Hydrate!"  Joshua cheers.  People are strange here. 

Alice and I pass the time by drawing rainbows on her place mat, and by inventing secret hand signals, in case we soon discover that this land is a hostile one.  However, we didn't get much past the signal for "I love you," because attention spans are short when one is six.  Er, twenty four. 
I remind her again of her birthday, and we realize suddenly that today is my twenty fourth, too. 

A waitress arrives with our desserts.  A hot fudge sundae, some sort of warm pudding concoction, and a strawberry shortcake.  All three piled with whipped cream, and stuffed into over-sized shot glasses.  Our eyes widen as we survey our sugary lunch, and thank the messenger profusely in our terrible accents.  "Oh, how loveleh!"

Quickly, I notice that there is only one cherry on the sundae.  Ah well.  Nothing was perfect in our old land, either.  That won't spoil our feast.  We grab spoons, and dive right in. 
Joshua arrives, as Alice and I are both in mid stuff, cheeks full of whipped cream. 
"How is it?  Did they remember to give you two cherries?"
"They didn't," I said, "but that's alright.  Everything looks totally pleasant." 
"Well, that just won't do!"  He said, and he disappeared again...

"Oh, this was just a lovely idea, Mommy.  I mean, Ophelia."  Her face was sticky with chocolate and whipped cream and ice cream, and some sort of strange mixture of all three.  Her pretty hair still in tangles from the wind that had sailed us over. 

Joshua returns, with two shiny cherries, resting on a dainty little plate.  "It's not a party unless there are enough cherries!"  Alice is beside herself, and immediately snatches one up, and dangles it in front of my mouth. 

"Look around at all the people who came to celebrate your twenty fourth birthday."  I say. 
She's pleased. 

Sarah, the baby girl in disguise as a boy, is carried by. 
"There goes the princess!"  I say.  "Do you think Joshua is looking for her?" 
"I think he is!" 
"And he brought us those cherries..." 

We both look at the plate with the single cherry.  "I'll bet they're poisoned!"  I say. 
"No they're not!"  Alice insists.  "I ate one already, and it wasn't poisoned." 
"Well, then.  You eat it.  You eat that one, and tell me if it's poisoned.  I don't want it." 
Unaffected, she snaps up the remaining cherry, and chews it defiantly. 
I feign wooziness, and pretend to faint.  She isn't fooled. 

Midway thru our third dessert, Alice decides she can't eat anymore. 
"Ugh.  I can't get thru it, Mom.  If I eat anymore, I'll blow up."
"Like a blow-fish?" 
"What's a blow-fish?"
"It's a fish.  It fills up with air and gets big and round and fat.  Like this (puffy cheeks)." 
Alice looks unimpressed.  "No, not like that." 
"Well I don't want to look like that.  Who knows what might happen in this weird new world.  You'd better help me finish this, so I don't blow up like a blow-fish." 


We finish our dessert, and immediately break into more finger-pointing, wiggle dancing, pausing only when Alice thinks someone might be looking.  She is briefly mortified once again when Joshua returns, and asks her if she was doing the Karate Kid maneuver.  She stares at him, blankly when he remarks on the generation gap. 
"Oh, no," I reply.  "She's twenty four today!" 

(I am Krystal.  I am an irritable,  lately miserable, frumpy housewife, back at home again, wishing things could be different.  Hoping that my little daughter will be able to remember the fun adventures of Alice and Ophelia, and forget the shit that drags on in between.  Knowing full well that isn't how it works.
Wherever we were, it was lovely there.  I hope she'll ask me back soon.) 

I am Ophelia.  I was blown here by the wind. 

Max-A-Millions

Max-A-Millions. 
That is his name. 
I realize it's not the proper "Maximilian", but that's his name, nonetheless.  I named him when I was nine, maybe ten years old, after one of my dads gave him to me.  I don't know why he was special, I'd had a hundred stuffed bears before, but I immediately knew he was different.  And I can't really remember any stuffed bear before him, or since.  
He was big, and brown, and naked, but for his red bow tie.  His stitched brown mouth sewn into a Mona Lisa-esque smile. 

Max-A-Millions has absorbed gallons of tears, buckets of snot, oceans of urine, (my daughter is a bed-wetter.  What were you thinking?) even strawberry jam, and still he does not protest. 
Within his raveling stitches he has housed love letters, hate mail, pens and pencils, and never once has he said to me, "I hate this about you.  Change this." 

When I am sick, sad, weak, or pitiful beyond toleration, my beloved Max-A-Millions nestles close, so that I can mumble complaints and grievances into his furry ears, and he never so much as lets free a sigh in frustration or disappointment. 

He, at the risk of sounding like the fat girl who loves her stuffy way too much, is the perfect man. 
Maybe it's because his mouth is made from stitches and he can't open it to tell me all the things I do wrong...

Nothing to see, here.

There is nothing profound to report today, not really. 

While out shopping, an old man stopped us in the parking lot, and asked me to return his shopping scooter to the store.  He had to show me how to operate it, and it made me laugh.  I missed my grandfather profoundly, and thought of him, as I drove that scooter toward the store at mach negative four thousand.  Holy shit, could it have gone any slower?  It was like the opposite of the Delorian, and I think I went backwards thru time. 

A little girl and her mother were buying an enormous bunch of balloons, and my daughter, of course, asked, "can I buy a balloon?" 
"No." 
Maybe it's not the nicest approach to parenthood, but telling them "no" without discussion is normally the easiest way to avoid tantrums and begging, since they know I do not negotiate after "no." 
She didn't whine, or protest, and as a consolation, I offered to color a beautiful balloon bouquet with her the moment we arrived home.  This seemed to satisfy. 
As we pulled away from our parking space, the mother of the little girl with the balloons waved me down. 
"My daughter would like to give your little girl a balloon."
I didn't know what to say.  I wanted to cry.  The little girl couldn't have been more than eight.  We thanked them both until we all might have been made uncomfortable by it.    
My daughter chose a pink balloon, (of course) and spent the rest of the day pulling it behind her as if it were the greatest present she'd ever received.  "One day I'd like to give someone a present like this." 

And then, a dinner that took all four members of our family to prepare, if you count the little one helping me dig potatoes from the garden. 
It was nice. 

The Green Divide

Our youngest small person gets chronic ear infections.  So chronic, in fact that she was a lip-reader, and nearly deaf by two years old, because of the constant blockage in her ears.  Evidently her pain tolerance is pretty high, because she rarely made a sound, other than crying over a wet diaper or a hungry belly.  We had no idea there were issues with her ears until pus began oozing out one day, and she scolded me for covering my mouth when I spoke.  Not a Supermom kind of day, to discover your kid is practically deaf, and you've let her head fill up with infection. 

Our reactions back then were to rush her to the doctor at the first sign of trouble, pump her full of antibiotics and pain medication, drop mystery liquids into her ears, and wait for magic to happen.  And magic did happen.  For a while.  The infections always returned within a month or two, and we'd repeat the process, each time sort of hoping someone would suggest that magical surgery that would rid her of this problem forever.  And sort of not hoping for it at the same time, because who wants to think of their baby, helpless on an operating table, no matter how favorable the end result? 

And then, my grandmother filled up with cancer. 
It seems she's been at one doctor or another nearly every day since her diagnosis.  Scans, and tests, and blood work, and now the treatments...and so many medications.  And the medications and treatments themselves seem so very frightening.  So many chemicals and foreign things being pumped into her and stuck inside of her.  So many not-found-in-nature things being forced into her bloodstream, all with the intent to "cure" the very foreign thing that's taken over her body...
It seems so...
backward. 

And I have begun to consider lately, very adamantly, the things happening in our own home. 
Our daughter's ears have been one of those considerations, and it hasn't been a great upheaval.  Four fairly painful infections have come and gone over the past few months, without the use of antibiotics, and with minimal use of conventional pain medications.  Old-fashioned "witchy" medicine has done the trick to cure her, along with a little TLC, and both she and I have been satisfied with the outcome. In the end, it's become much harder to break down and take her to a medical doctor for conventional medicine, when "voodoo" can't cure her.  At the moment, she's sitting with a belly full of antibiotics, and an ear full of pus, and it's bothering me.  A lot. 

And causing me to wonder, what's this like for my husband? 
Because the refusal of medicines and the home remedies have not been the end of it.  I have become aware of nearly everything around me.  Around us.  Inside of us. 

I've given up shampoo, completely.  There are strange concoctions all over the house, and showering is no longer as simple as grabbing a bottle from the closet and lathering up.  There are are unlabeled, gritty bars of solid soap, there are blended containers of fruit in the fridge, there are canisters of dry powders, vinegar blends in the window...it's impossible to keep up with what's what, and he can't possibly keep up with what strange brew I have scheming at any given moment, in search of that "perfect" blend. 

He's painfully shy, and I wonder if my insistence against plastic bags at the grocery store is more embarrassing to him than I realize.  If I've forgotten my cloth bags, I just ask the bagger to toss my items (normally no more than four or five) back into the cart.  I swear, it seems to make him uncomfortable.  If he's at the store without me, I think they see him coming, and bag those five items in six goddamn bags, to make up for what I didn't take.


So much of this is brand new, and very unlike the person I was just a couple of years ago.  I worry about how it affects him.  How he handles the fact that his wife stopped wearing commercial deodorant.  How he feels about the fact that his wife started making her own cloth menstrual pads.  Is he weirded out by baking soda toothpaste?  Have I turned into some alien-esque creature to which he no longer relates?  Some tree-hugging, hyper-aware, chemical-paranoid conspiracy theorist, when all he wants is to sit down to a pizza and a Dr. Pepper, that he brought home in a plastic bag, and not have to catch shit about it from his wife who hasn't shaved her pits in three months?

He's had more patience than I think I might have, were I in his position.  Part of me senses great ambivalence from him.  Were there no one else on the planet to judge him, I think he might be absolutely with me.  And were I not here to bitch at him for using gasoline to kill weeds in the backyard, I think there would be a hazy green cloud over our house right this very moment. 
*sigh*