A few years back whilst at work, I was operating a dough sheeter to roll out puff pastry. The sheeter was located next to the time clock, so I often had constant streams of people asking me who was punched in, who was out, who was on lunch etc. I found it irritating, to say the least, and I really only attempted to answer truthfully if a supervisor asked. On this particular day a young man approached, walking with difficulty. I had seen a coworker get his hand caught in the sheeter, fracturing several fingers, so I merely used my peripheral vision to glance quickly. I figured he was a visitor, perhaps a relative of an employee. When he made it to the cards and reached for one I remained silent as it took him fifteen minutes to grasp his card and drop it in the slot. The whole time was agonizing. He said nothing, but I wondered if I should offer assistance. As I rubbed the dough down with more flour and checked its thickness I glanced at him again. From the way he held his hands and his walk it appeared to me that he had cerebral palsy.

Hours later when my supervisor and I had time to slip out back for a quick smoke break I asked her who he was. She explained that his name was Ben and he worked in a separate part of the buildings. Our paths had never crossed before because we worked opposing shifts, but with the upcoming holiday everyone was on overtime. I wondered aloud to her what job he could do as his hands were practically frozen at his chest and his gait suggested wheelchair needed more than high volume, fast paced production work. She exhaled a long stream of smoke, smashed out her cigarette, and said his parents were friends with the owners. I nodded.

As the days went by I was introduced to him and we started doing the hi and the bye and the have a nice day. When bread roll season arrived he started hanging around my area at the moment I was racking up the rolls and rolling them to the cooling area. The kid had a good nose and an affinity for fresh from the oven bread. Even though I had been sternly warned by the owner about the employees eating the profits and instructed to make anyone who asked for one to produce a receipt I turned a blind eye to Ben’s sneaky fingers. He started smiling a lot in my direction.

Soon after, pie season hit its peak and I struggled to keep up. When the orders hit the thousands I was promised a helper. There I was, filling and topping pies, when who should appear but Ben. I had trained several women to make pies before Ben and I told them to try to keep my pace. I could fill, top, egg wash and sugar a pie in 45-60 seconds. To Ben I just showed him the steps and let him try. So much egg wash, intended for the lip of the bottom crust, ended up in the fruit filling while he was trying to work the pastry brush that I feared he was turning them to quiche. After a few hours I had him sprinkle the sanding sugar for me while I did the other steps. He was quite chatty, rather smiley, and I found myself liking having him around just to help the hours fly by.

Soon he was in my station everyday. He told me his life story, in a way, but he never mentioned his disability. I did my breathing exercises through the panic attacks that kept washing over me while I worked and smiled at his jokes, funny or no. At some point, as it always has when I’ve worked side by side with anyone for awhile, the topic turned to sex. He admitted that at 24 he was still a virgin and had never even had a date, let alone a girlfriend. When he said that he would probably never get laid, not ever, I looked up from my work as he tried to push his glasses up off of his nose, leaving a slimy smear of egg and course sugar across his face. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” I told him, “If I was single and younger I’d totally go out with you.” His smile lit up his whole face and I felt good to have made him smile. He was a nice guy and I wondered to myself if I knew anyone I could set him up with.

I thought that I had handled myself well until the other bakers started teasing me about my new boyfriend. Apparently, Ben had mentioned my comment about how I said I would date him, only he substituted the word “fuck” for “date”. I was mad at Ben and shocked for a moment until my coworkers started talking about how Ben couldn’t even get a pity fuck and he was destined to remain a virgin unless he hired a prostitute and paid big.

“You didn’t really mean that you would fuck him, did ya?” they asked me. I decided that I needed to put an end to this so I selected my words carefully. “How do you know I haven’t already?” The whole kitchen erupted into laughter, hoots and hollers.

Later as I was pulling off my hair net and tugging on my coat I saw Ben again. This time he was with the other guys and they were teasing him about me and slapping him on the back. His eyes met mine and he waited for that instant, his eyes shifty, nervous. I smiled at him and winked as I left the building.

Yes, I removed my last post because I wrote it in a fit of anger and when I was able to look back at it I found it served no purpose at all. I was reacting to my daughter’s school sending home countless newsletters and then complaining over the fact that they are constantly short on copy paper. At the beginning of the year I brought 1000 sheets to the office, as instructed, and within two months they were begging for more. Meanwhile, half the crap they send home is useless. They sent home a note last week asking parents to “reduce their carbon footprint” and “feel free to help us reduce ours” so I granted myself audience with the principal and explained how they could reduce theirs.

1) If a family has more than one child in the school, just send the newsletter home with the eldest child instead of sending multiples to the same house.

2) Print on both sides of the paper (their copy machine does have that function) using a smaller font than the size they have now, which is set for the legally blind.

3) Consider having parents sign up to receive the newsletter via email to save paper.

4) Eliminate messages to the entire school that are only relevant to one classroom. i.e. “SHHHHHH! Teacher Suzie is having a surprise birthday party next week. Please join us in the cafeteria for refreshments and gifts!!!!!!”
I said, teacher Suzie already knows about your surprise party, she doesn’t need more apple paperweights, and I honestly don’t care because I don’t even know who teacher Suzie is, as she is not my daughter’s teacher.

5) Consider printing out a half dozen pages with reminders of upcoming events such as PTA meetings and tape them to the windows on the doors where parents can see them during pick up and drop off instead of printing off 1000 sheets saying “PTA Meeting ! 6 p.m.”

Anyway, the principal was not receptive to my suggestions and I left in a shitty mood. O.K. I entered in a shitty mood. When Polly and I boarded the bus home it was almost full. There was a man sitting across from us who was visibly intoxicated and he leaned over and asked me if that was my daughter. I am used to this comment, as Polly and I hear it from many people, and I replied, “Yes, she’s my daughter.” I expected him to remark on our resemblance. Polly was gazing out of the window by then, her headphones on her ears, and the man began to go into graphic detail about what he would like to do to my daughter, sexually. By then the bus was packed with people who were standing. I felt this rage come up from my core into my mouth as I rose to my feet , certain that I was going to kill this bastard with my bare hands. He rose to his feet, rang the bell, and then started yelling to the driver, “I need to get off here!” He pushed his way out the back door and I sat down, my heart racing. Here I am walking with a cane now, when I can walk, smaller than that man, and for that instant I was blinded with my emotions. It was frightening in several ways.

It has been almost two weeks since I injured my back and I have acted horribly at times. I know about the pain = rage connection, but I have spent so many years of my life trying to swallow my anger, always equating it with violence. My inner bitch has been here all too often lately, and I feel ashamed.

My kids were so afraid when I fell off of the couch on the evening of February 19th. I was trying to get to the bathroom. I couldn’t get back up so they took it upon themselves to call someone. My mom was at the beach with friends, so they were debating between my two sisters, my brother, and 911. I begged them not to call anyone, especially not my brother who doesn’t even know where we live, to be totally honest. I tried to tell them I would be fine, it was just my back (again). They ended up calling Maria who has three kids under the age of nine. She said she would be right over. I begged for the phone and Nathan handed it to me. I called my sister and told her not to come, explaining that there was nothing she could do. I explained that our insurance doesn’t allow us to just show up at the ER without an ambulance ride unless we call our doctor and get approval. She told me to call my doctor and I promised I would. She waited for me to call her back.

The doctor on call was not someone I knew. She told me to put ice on my back, take 2400 mgs. of Ibuprofen, and call if I wasn’t better in 48 hours. I called my sister and told her not to come.

The next day I was in even worse shape.The pain was absolutely unbearable no matter what position I was in. Alex had two days off so he could give me a hand, and I still couldn’t walk which made trying to get to the toilet an issue. Finally, around six p.m., I was able to speak on the phone with my own physician who told me to get to the hospital immediately. I was going to call for a cab, but I didn’t know if they would be able to assist me in and out. I thought about it for too long before calling my eldest sister, Monica. She works full time as well as college but her kids are older and I figured it would be easier for her to drive me since she doesn’t have the babysitter worries. She said that she would, but she had to work late that night as she had patients coming in after five o’clock. And it would be late when she got to my house. She suggested I call an ambulance but I was afraid insurance wouldn’t cover it.

I called Maria again and she tossed her kids into car seats and was at my house in a flash. The kids were all crammed in the back and grumpy from a long day at school and daycare. They all competed for my attention by yelling out their important news and I managed to pat each one’s knee and say hello. Then the two little ones started hitting the eldest boy, Evan, in the head with the toys they were holding. Maria remained focused on getting me into the car.

The look on Maria’s face as she got me into the car reminded me of her face when she stood by my side while I went through labor and delivery with Polly. The pain in her eyes was so staggering that I apologized for having her there in the delivery room. It’s been almost 13 years since that day and I felt this need to explain that emotion to her and to apologize for having had her witness that pain. When I see my pain in her eyes I can only think that it would be easier for us to change positions. I couldn’t explain it.  She understood. I cried for a minute and she fed me pink tissues as she headed out into rush hour. Maria has been studying to become a licensed Acupuncturist. It’s funny, my sisters are so different; one works in Eastern medicine, the other has a career in Western medicine.

Maria told me about school and what she has been up to. She is taking Chinese lessons so she spoke to me in Chinese, which oddly made sense at the time. I knew that she was filling the spaces with words to distract me, the same way she and Alex tried to do crossword puzzles out loud during my labor. I can remember Alex asking for a five letter word starting with  S for indifference and I yelled STOIC! during a contraction. It’s funny now, not so much then.

She expressed to me during the ride that she had always wanted to see me doing something that I loved, something that would bring me great fulfillment. She asked me if I had ever felt as if I was really good at something. I told her that someone had once told me that I could become a millionaire as a motivational speaker, like Tony Robbins. I have no idea where that came from; I haven’t thought about that in years.

I glanced at her, her face contorted in confusion, and she blurted out, “Who the hell told you that?” “Um, Chaz.” I felt really stupid for a second and then we both started laughing. Not bad, it only took me six or seven years to get his sarcasm. I had almost forgotten the way she laughs with her whole body. When she laughs really hard she cries, huge warm droplets running down her face. We both laughed for the rest of the drive even though I begged her to stop because every movement was excruciating.

Evan started demanding that I tell him how an Etch-A-Sketch works and I had to admit that I wasn’t sure. I promised him I would find out before we saw each other again. I peeked at him turning the white dials carefully, shaking his head in frustration if he didn’t get it just the way he wanted it, shaking the lines away before trying again. I remembered how much I had wanted an Etch-A-Sketch as a girl and how my Mom couldn’t afford to buy me one. It’s funny how material things can seem so important for a time and then they slip away. I remember buying Nathan one before he was even old enough to use it, determined he wouldn’t be deprived of that all important toy. Neither of my kids seemed to like it much. They were too busy playing with their Magna Doodles.

Maria got me to the admitting counter at the ER and offered to stay with me. I looked at her standing with her little ones and knew it was their turn now. As much as I wanted her by my side, I had to be a big girl and ask for help alone.

Swistle wrote a post about the worst Valentine’s gift being a single red rose, and it got me to thinking. Alex and I have been together for so many years that I can’t even remember all of the different holidays we’ve spent together. I remember our first Valentine’s Day living together because we pooled our money together; bought an eight ball of cocaine and a pack of cigarettes, rushed home, dumped some of it out, and chopped out four fat lines, two for each of us. After we had each snorted one Alex looked at me over the mirror we reserved for such purposes and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t have any money left over to get you some flowers or something.” I said I didn’t care and I meant it. Cocaine or crank were the only things I wanted those days, as well as pot and alcohol to help me come down. We had bonded over pharmaceuticals. That would also be the last time we used cocaine, ever. When we ran out and started to get sick we made a vow to each other and to ourselves to never do it again. We held each other through the withdrawals. He hadn’t eaten in so many days that I cooked him cream of rice cereal, thinking he might be able to tolerate it, and he didn’t even complain about the lumps. He peeled me an orange and fed it to me, tiny segments at a time that seemed so dry in my mouth, telling me he was going to watch to make sure I ate every bite.

As the years went by we sometimes had lots of money to splurge on each other and other years Alex picked flowers out of our garden and placed them in a vase on the mantle, way up so the kids wouldn’t grab them. There were years of sex toy gifts for me, followed by hours in bed, and years when one or both of us had to work, and we barely had time for a rushed “Happy Valentine’s Day” and a quick kiss as we passed off the child watching responsibilities.

Looking back today and wondering about the worst valentine’s gift and what it might be, I thought that receiving a bathroom scale would suck pretty hard. Then it occurred to me, a valentine’s day I had forgotten about. I was visiting my sister Maria. Nathan was just a babe in my arms, so it must have been the early 90s. Maria’s boyfriend knocked on her apartment door and when she opened it, there he stood with a beautiful bouquet of a dozen red roses surrounded in a halo of baby’s breath. My sister’s face was overcome with joy as she reached her arms out. I don’t think she’d ever received flowers from a man before and I felt so happy watching her. Before she could take them in her arms he pulled away, reached into the bouquet, pulled out one single rose and handed it to her. “The other eleven are for my other special lady friends”, he explained. Maria kept her composure until the door was closed. She was absolutely crushed. She had truly believed that she had this very special relationship, this special bond that existed between just the two of them, and she found out in a horrible way that she was one of twelve. Maybe Swistle was right about the single red rose as a gift.

P.S. Off topic completely, but where would you guys like for me to respond to comments? In the comments, or in the next post? I am not sure if everyone comes back and reads the comments and I want to reply but then sometimes life gets in the way and I don’t get around to it for a day or two and then I feel guilty. Damn Tammy, raised Catholic much?

Never could I have dated. I am too self conscious, too unaware of the rules, the jargon; too willing to hide myself as well as I can without exploring the possibilities of someone else discovering me. My husband knows me, but it remains unspoken; a space between us that doesn’t exist; a topic only broached if I bring it up or he vents in frustration, which is rare.

Having spent years in the kitchen doing food service related jobs, I became used to hanging out and working with men. As a teenager it was easy to feel that I fit in as just one of the guys, but when I returned to the kitchen as a baker at age 29, after spending ten years screwing around and watching Sesame Street; I was hopelessly, impossibly out of touch.

I kept quiet as I did my job, trying hard to keep up with the younger stronger men who seemed like boys to me. As I worked I would listen to their back and forth banter with a smile on my face. I quickly realized the three stages they went through on their shifts: Hunger, Horniness, and Sleepiness. A few of them went through the stages in that order, others mixed it around a bit before they clocked off.

I had no problem with their crude humor; their attempts to shock me were futile. I had the dirtiest mind out of the whole crew. As I grew more relaxed in the environment I entered into their conversations. For the most part I did alright, but I embarrassed myself, and a few of them, by not having any idea what they were talking about on a few occasions. Once, a coworker was telling me a story about getting a reach around. I stopped him and asked, “Hey, what’s a reach around?” He stopped, tomato red, speechless. I seriously wanted to know, but it wasn’t until my older female supervisor who had been listening from the next station pulled me aside and told me that it clicked in my head.

Around Halloween, pumpkin pie season started. We made so many gallons of pumpkin pie filling we had to use garbage cans to store it in. At first the smell was a refreshing change, the color gave a bit of visual interest to what can become a mundane task, until finally it settled into a crusty orange substance I had to scrape off my shoes. We mixed that pie filling and teased each other with the huge paddles and whisks, pointed out the spanking possibilities with the giant size kitchen utensils, labeled the cans with masking tape and sharpies and tried to wheel them into the walk in coolers without tipping them over.

After a fortnight or so I started to notice the labels were changing. Someone had written, “Blumpkin Pie Filling” on one, another one was labeled, “Plumpkin Pie Filling”. My boss, looking at the buckets with me one evening to assess whether we needed to make more, pointed and said, “These young boys today, they cannot spell.” I nodded my head, pretending to understand the gravity of generation Y, and waited. As soon as I could I asked one of the other bakers about blumpkins and plumpkins. He shook his head NO.

I waited until I had a spare moment with Alex at home and mentioned it to him. He shook his head, sighed and told me the meaning. I asked him how it could be that we could have lived together for so many years and I didn’t know what he knew. “I’ll bet you know what a reach around is too!” I said, and he did. I had held his penis a million times and the thought had never occurred to me. I told him that the guys at work were laughing at me and he laughed too.

The jokes at work grew tiring eventually and everyone settled into a more reserved state of chronic fatigue as the holidays approached. Thanksgiving and Christmas are not the most wonderful time of the year for a baker. As I stirred the pumpkin filling with the four foot whisk my eyes burned and filled with tears, making the sea of orange with flecks of spices blur, then disappear completely.

“Tammy?” Rodney said from across the kitchen where he stood mixing chocolate cake batter for Yule logs, “How far south do you go?” I looked at him for a second and answered, “I’ve been as far as the California Mexico border before turning back.” As the laughter broke out in the room I realized; I’d done it yet again.

It’s October, 2006. The time before we must have my mother’s house empty has dwindled to hours. There is no longer time to sort through the boxes and repack them. I have started merely dumping the old boxes into new ones, taping them shut and scribbling misc. on them. The only reason I am bothering to place the stuff in new boxes is because these boxes have been sitting for decades and the bottoms have deteriorated to dust. There are mice in several, awakened from their nests as their shit rains into a new box. There is no more time to care. My heart is racing; the weight of all of this is on my shoulders. My mom is ill and hasn’t slept for days. She is starting to speak in nonsensical fragments not even close to coherent sentences.

There are people around now. Two years have passed since I began preparing this house for sale and the people have arrived at the last minute, offering their help, their cars and trucks, their backs and arms. My mom doesn’t want them there. She whispers to me to get rid of them, but I can no longer do this alone and so I ignore her wish. Why is my mom sitting in the kitchen with her computer on a cutting board emailing Tokyo? People are asking what is wrong with her. I ignore them and try to come up with a system. Only I will deal with the boxes in their raw, dust covered state. After they are repacked and labeled (an absurd term for what I am doing) I will allow people to begin to load them into a waiting vehicle.

My mom is a hoarder, a packrat. It is her secret shame. I am trying to protect her from anyone else finding out, but family members and her best friend are witnessing what can no longer hide in a basement larger than most people’s homes. Some whisper about how things ever managed to get this bad. Fewer look to me. Is that blame in their eyes? So many dumpsters, trips to goodwill, yard sales, items on craigslist, trips to the dump and yet somehow, so much left is here.

I am dumping boxes as fast as I can when I see it, an envelope. It is a letter addressed to my brother in my father’s handwriting. I look around to see if anyone is watching me and quickly shove it deep into the pockets of my jeans. I say nothing to anyone.

Later that night at my house I pull it out and stare at it. It is thick. I knew about this letter before, but it hasn’t been mentioned in years. In 1983 my mom put my brother Matthew into a foster home. She did this for his safety, as he and my dad were coming to blows now that Matthew had started fighting back when beaten. My mother feared for his life. He went to live with a wealthy family with several kids who were grown by that time. My father wasn’t notified of his whereabouts. I was jealous. I wanted to be sent to live with a different family too. I missed my brother. Sometimes we would meet him at secret places (usually fast food restaurants) for a quick visit. He would hug us all before he walked out the door first and I would blink back tears as he headed in a different direction than our home. Walking, he was always walking, no matter how far he had to go, no matter the miles wearing out his shoes or the fact that he had bus fair in his pocket. It might have cleared his head. I’m guessing, of course. Years later I started walking to clear my own.

During that time when my brother lived in another house, in another city, my father begged, pleaded and cried for his son’s return. When that didn’t work he punched us. No one ever divulged the secret of his whereabouts. We were good secret keepers. My dad wrote this letter to my brother and asked my mom to deliver it to him. My brother refused to even glance at it. After a year my brother came back home to live with us. Another year or so and my dad was dead, having walked down the basement stairs to make a noose and end his life. There was no suicide note. My mom and I tore apart the whole house looking for one. It was weeks before she would allow anyone to take the garbage out for fear that it might be thrown away.

A few more times over the years my mom tried to deliver the letter to my brother, but he always refused to accept it. My mom said that she had read it and she felt he should too. I said nothing. I was jealous. This letter was not mine to read.

When I found the letter in a box filled with junk: twist ties, expired coupons, disposable napkins, photos that had gotten wet at some time and were stuck together, ruined, old magazines long since molded, I said to myself that I was just going to keep it safe.

Of course I read it. It is nine pages long and filled with details about my father I was never aware of. He explained his decent into mental illness and alcoholism, his feelings of failure for having ended up being an abusive drunken husband and father. He wrote of his time spent in church praying for the lord to save him. He asked my brother to relay messages to my sisters and me; messages of love and apology that no doubt would have fallen on deaf ears in the early 80s, but now, now they make me weep. I never got those messages. Would they have helped? I don’t know anymore.

I hid the letter in my locked file cabinet and pretended that I wasn’t doing anything but waiting for the right opportunity, maybe after my mom was settled in her new house.

I pretended that I wasn’t mad, not at my mom for not taking better care of the letter and for choosing not to tell me the words that were written to me, but most of all I tried not to be mad at my dad for not writing me a letter like that one. I tried not to be mad at him for not trying harder to make it through his illness.

Finally I admitted to my mom that I had found the letter during the move and held onto it for her. She has demanded it back and I shall return it because it’s not mine to keep. I am glad that I had an opportunity to read it now as an adult. I was ten when it was written. I never would have understood the words then. Now I do.

My dad would have turned eighty over this past weekend. It’s hard to imagine. In my mind he hasn’t aged a day so he still has a full head of hair and a strong build. I remember the way I felt when he hugged me tightly, and whispered in my ear that we were the last two members of the family who were blond and we needed to stick together. His hair was gray, but he never tired of that little joke between us.

My Mom asked me last Friday to go with her to place flowers on his grave and I said no. I only want to go alone. It is three buses and a walk and I still want to do it alone. There is no one in my life that I can talk to about the conflicting feelings I have about loving someone so much and losing him, someone who also had a side where he hit me and said horrible things to me.

Grief. It never goes away fully for me, it changes. I am now 35; my father is forever stuck at 57. I couldn’t have saved him from his fate then anymore than he can save me from myself now. But I am glad that I found that letter and that my dad took the time to write it. Even if it never ends up in the hands of your only son dad, it helped your youngest daughter. Thank you.

When I was a freshman in high school, before I hooked up with Alex, my now husband, I had a wonderful boyfriend. He was sweet, sexy and oh so kind. When we kissed I went weak in the knees and when I saw him or when he called me my heart did flip flops and my stomach got that delicious butterfly feeling. At the time I was attending a private Catholic all girls school with girls who had real problems, such as, “Should I have my daddy buy me a Mercedes or a BMW for my 16^th birthday? “ I was depressed and out of place. I tried very hard to hide, but this boyfriend was very intent on getting to know me, the real me. I had only one pair of pants, and they were filled with holes. I wore the button down shirts that were left over from my Dad’s career as an electrical engineer. My mom had kept everything after he died. He had a few nice cardigans, and I was sorry that his pants didn’t fit me in any way shape or form. I wore his old boxers and undershirts, as he called them, around the house. My mom really shut down after her husband’s death. Truth be told, she gave up on everything from parenting to cooking. After so many years in a hostage like situation I was free, and I had no idea what to do with that freedom.

After school my boyfriend would call me. My mom had used some delivery service to get cases of a few foods delivered. We had boxes and boxes of Wheaties and Cheerios, and the cupboards were filled with cans of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. Everyday when I got home I would heat a can of soup even though I knew then that I wanted to be a vegetarian. I couldn’t stomach another bowl of those two types of cereal, and we never had milk. After a few weeks of phone calls my boyfriend would say, “Let me guess, you’re eating chicken soup and your mom is watching Mary Poppins.” It wasn’t even a question as the TV blared Mary Poppins and when you’re talking to someone with “Spoon Full Of Sugar makes the Medicine Go Down” in the background what can you say? My mom watched that movie every single day after work and if we moaned or complained about it she turned the volume up.

I had been trying to hide the fact that I didn’t have much in the way of clothing by wearing a large long coat everyday. I wore that coat even in the summer, pretending I wasn’t hot when people in shorts and tank tops asked about it. It was my security blanket.

Once I was talking to weak in the knees maker with the beautiful eyes and he told me what he had made for dinner. It was something with artichoke hearts. I had never heard of or eaten an artichoke before, and at the time I thought that it was an animal. I imagined people eating the heart of this creature and I let out a “EWWWWWWWWWWW”.

“They’re really good; you’d like them.” he insisted. Being too embarrassed to admit that I had no idea what he was talking about and admitting that the most exotic thing that had ever graced my plate was an avocado I told him that there was just no way I would even try such a disgusting thing.

Eventually, I broke up with him. He was so nice and he seemed to be truly good at heart. I didn’t know what to do with nice, and so I hooked up with Alex, who was cold and standoffish and utterly obnoxious. Alex also didn’t appear to give any indication that he wanted to get to know my inner most self. I felt safer.

Now Alex and I are married with two kids and I eat artichoke hearts on everything from pasta to pizza to salad.

For the first time this year, I had two children who didn’t want to celebrate Halloween with me. Last year Nathan and I were moving my Mom out of the house she had sold and into her new apartment and so my sister Monica took Polly trick or treating. This year Polly wanted to go to a friend’s house to pass out candy and Nathan wanted to go with his girlfriend to help her take her little brothers trick or treating. I had always heard how fast it would go, those years with the little kids, and to cherish those moments while they lasted, but I don’t believe it really hit home until this year when I knew they would rather be with their friends. So I let them go.  I stayed home with the puppy Maggie and the cats. Alex had to work so we had the whole house to ourselves. I baked an apple rhubarb crisp. Maggie waited for me to drop peels as I worked on the apples, the way way she waits when I peel potatoes. We played fetch in the backyard in the dark, with nothing but the back porch light to go by. I thought of my kids over the years in their different costumes. Nathan was a clown, Barney,a clown again, Batman, a skeleton, Superman, Darth Maul, Zorro, Darth Vader, Scream, Leatherface and an assortment of masks that could only be described as yucky, or scary. Polly was Pooh Bear, A Bunny, a Princess and then came years of different variations of the princess theme. She was a ballerina princess, an ice skater princess, a fairy princess, a Glinda the good witch princess. Every year a princess, and I let her just go with it. Alex would wail,”A princess again?” and I would just shake my head at him to be silent. Then one year she announced she wanted to be a cheerleader. A dead cheerleader. That was a fun year because I got to go back to the way I wore my makeup in the 80s when I created her face. Most of those years Alex was unable to go with me to take the kids trick or treating because he had to work. Two of those years I was unable to go because I had to work, and for a baker, Halloween spells the beginning of the hell that is the holiday season. The first time Alex took the kids trick or treating while I was working I cried while I loaded sweets in and out of the oven. By my third year at that job I said to my supervisor before Halloween, “I’ll be in late Halloween night!” and she wasn’t even bothered by that.

Two groups of kids in costume were all that showed up at our door. When Nathan came home he said that there weren’t many kids out in the neighborhood he was in and predicted that Halloween as he used to know it would be dead within three years. Polly had a good time passing out candy, but she seemed to miss having some to eat ,because she wanted to go to the store to buy some. No one wanted apple rhubarb crisp. Maybe next year I’ll have made a friend or two and I’ll have someone to hang out with.

The conclusion to my search for answers regarding Brett Reider can be found at Brett Reider Is Alive and Doing Well.

I had an entry all planned out for today, complete with photos that I took on Alex’s camera, but he was too tired when he got home from work and I don’t know how to upload them, so this will have to suffice for now. Speaking of cameras, I called the shop that’s had mine since May and the woman who answered the phone acted all shocked when I said, “Uh, yeah, I am calling to check the status of my camera that I dropped off a long time ago”

“Oh my God!” she responded, after typing my name into the computer, “You should have had your camera back a long time ago!” No shit. Apparently the part they need is on backorder and it should be ready by next week. I am so excited, because I will actually be able to take pictures and put them up by myself without asking my husband to do it for me.

As I’ve mentioned, I have two older sisters, Monica and Maria. I have detailed the closeness of my relationship with Maria here, but I don’t think I’ve talked much about Monica. When we were growing up we didn’t get along. Even as adults we have had huge arguments that have involved yelling and then not speaking to each other for months. Today though, she did me a huge favor and took Polly to see the new Harry Potter movie. She has two daughters, ages 13 and 12, and they get along well with my daughter, so for the sake of the girls I have tried not to fight with their mother. I really do appreciate her taking them to the movies because me, I wasn’t looking forward to it so much. I wanted to wait until the hoopla died down a bit before we went. Monica bought tickets online in advance. So today has been quiet, with Alex sleeping and Nathan just hanging out and talking on the phone or watching TV.

My medication has been upped even more than it was, so I am now taking three times the amount. Every doctor I’ve seen has tried this with my antidepressants to see if they can eliminate the panic attacks and anxiety and reduce my reliance on benzodiazepines. The side effect is more panic, a constant state of anxiety and insomnia. Last night I was up until 6:30 this morning. I had a quick nap on the couch and then woke at ten. These side effects do go away in time; you just have to ride them out.

When dealing with insomnia I usually try very hard to go to sleep before I just say fuck it and either get up or watch TV or something. This morning I was flipping through the channels and I came across a documentary on HBO titled “Brett Killed Mom”. I was totally sucked in. The lives that my siblings, my mom and I lived in the years before my father’s suicide are not ones that I have ever been able to convey to anyone. A psychiatrist once asked me how bad the abuse was, and I told her that it was bad. Really bad. She asked me if my father had ever broken any bones. I said yes, and she explained that the abuse scale put physical abuse into two categories; one with broken bones and a less severe form with no broken bones. I never knew there was a scale, and I personally think that the emotional abuse has left the most crippling scars. I have spent many years in therapy and I am frankly tired of trying to make sense of my past. I want to deal with now. I know, I know, I can’t move on until I deal with what happened.

One aspect of being an abused child that I’ve had trouble coming to grips with is the fact that as the years moved on and the abuse grew worse and my self esteem was nonexistent I used to spend a lot of time thinking about killing my father. I honestly felt that someone was going to have to do it or we would never be safe. I imagined how I would do it and I knew that I would go to prison for it. I felt that it would be a fair exchange; my freedom gone, my father’s life taken and my mom and siblings would be free. I never acted on those plans because I physically was not strong enough to fight back in self defense and I knew on some level that if I did I would only manage to make things much worse. After my dad died it was years before I admitted this dark secret of mine. When I told my psychiatrist she said that it was a normal reaction, a matter of self-preservation. She said that it wasn’t uncommon for the abused to contemplate killing their abusers. On different occasions I spoke with my mom, my brother, and both of my sisters about it. They admitted that they too had thought about killing him. My mom went so far as to say that she felt that it was her duty to protect her children by any means necessary. She too felt as if she would one day have to kill or watch her children die. Somehow none of this makes it any easier, or maybe it does, I don’t know.

When I was watching “Brett Killed Mom: A Sister’ Story” I literally felt as if it could have been me there on the screen being interviewed from prison. I wanted to hug him; to tell him that I understand how it had happened. Brett Reider’s story is one that I feel everyone involved in the system should see; whether it is police officers, social workers, teachers or just people who can’t understand the results of a life where the one who should love and nurture you becomes the one who you have to get away from to save you.

Tomorrow: A deep longing that I have had for years will be fulfilled by my husband. I’ll have to get pictures of tomorrow to share with you. Hopefully I’ll be able to sleep tonight.

I received my first hate email from this site two days ago. I guess it is to be expected; I have been doing this for about a year now without any. This particular email made me very angry, and I logged out of my email account without responding. I wanted more time to think it over first and to decide if I should respond. This particular person didn’t attack my writing, they attacked my character. When Alex woke up and began to get ready for work I told him about this woman and what she had said about me. Hey broke into a huge grin and said, “Your first hate mail! That’s great. You should create a page on your site just for hate mail and post it there.” His idea was intriguing; I have seen other journals with hate mail and responses that have been quite humorous. It wasn’t the course of action I really wanted to take though. Instead I waited until I had calmed down enough to respond, and I did so with kindness. I did not hear back from her. This got me to thinking about email. My former best friend used to tell me that email gave people false muscles, like alcohol. He was of course commenting on the fact that there were things that I would never have said to him in person that I confided via email. An even more dangerous combination is email or the phone with the addition of alcohol. Obviously I am not the only one who has used a computer screen to hide behind while communicating. I do try, however, to ask myself if I would feel comfortable saying whatever it is I am trying to convey via email directly to the person’s face.

My Mother recently sent me an email with the subject line “Your Cousin”. I currently have a cousin who is in the Army stationed in Afghanistan. One might think that he would have popped into my head first, but before I opened the email I already knew who the subject matter would be.

Back in 1983 my mom took her four children to her homeland of Australia. There I spent an idyllic summer surrounded by aunts and uncles, grandparents and countless cousins. It was the first time in my life that I felt free. My father stayed here in America; without him nearby I blossomed. I wasn’t so afraid. I didn’t feel the need to constantly walk on eggshells. I felt a sense of belonging, a feeling of being home for the first time, and more than anything I was surrounded by so much love that my heart threatened to burst.

During that time I met my cousin Steve. We hit it off immediately and spent hours together talking, walking around the abandoned railroad tracks of the sleepy little town my mom had grown up in, sneaking cigarettes and making plans for the future. We were both dreamers, you could say. We made plans to be famous musicians (him) and highly successful writers (me). We built each other up. Youth gave us the belief that anything was within our grasp. When I left that summer I ended up crying my eyes out at the airport, begging my mom not to take us back to America, back to a place where daily beatings at the hands of my father were the norm for us all, back to the place where we slept with one foot on the floor always ready to jump up and run at the first noise in the night.

The next trip to Australia took place under very different circumstances in 1985. My father had died. I had decided to take my inner rebel and run with her. I was shaving parts of my head, wearing tons of makeup and smoking a pack a day. I was nervous about seeing Steve again, afraid that the connection would be lost. We ended up discovering that although we had had zero contact since our last visit we were now wearing our hair the same, dressing in a similar way, and listening to the same bands. He had fulfilled his promise of learning to play the guitar, and was now quite good at it. We picked up where we had left off. When it was time for us to leave the country this time I tried to beg my mom to let us stay there. I felt that there was no life for me in America. My mom informed me that Steve and his mom and sister would be returning to America to live with us. I was so excited.

We spent the next several months spending all of our spare time together. He knew that at times I would gab on like a maniac and at other times I would sit in silence. Sometimes I would cry for seemingly no reason and he made it clear that was O.K. too. He tried to teach me to play guitar and we practiced together. We wrote music together, me working on the lyrics mostly, him carefully jotting down the notes. We agreed to meet in NYC when I turned 18. There we would start our own band, become famous, and live happily ever after, rich and free. Ah, to be young again.

When the time came for him to leave we considered running away. It seemed like the only solution until the reality of us having less than two dollars in coins and a half pack of smokes between us kicked in. We promised to keep in touch through letters. That promise lasted about 18 months, not bad considering our ages at the time.

My 18^th birthday came and went. I remembered the young woman who had been so naive to have thought that everything would be O.K. if only I could make it to NYC on this date. I had children; he had children. He married; I didn’t, until later. In 1993 I flew with Nathan to see my family once again. I saw Steve twice during that trip. I met his wife and kids. I had heard from family members that he had become successful as a guitarist; I wasn’t surprised. We didn’t have much time to talk during our visits, but he did ask me if I was still writing. I said no. He told me that I had a good head on my shoulders and a story to tell. “You should do it, kid” and he smiled. He asked me if I was still practicing the guitar chords he had taught me. I had to tell him that I had tried to, for a long time I tried, but without him there to guide me as to the finger placement I had given up. “It’s O.K. I can teach you again!” I laughed. It was too late. It was ridiculous. We parted, promising to write, although I think we both knew we wouldn’t.

Three years later a letter arrived in my mailbox from him. He was congratulating me on the birth of my daughter. We wrote back and forth for a while and then moved on to phone calls from time to time. Sometimes long stretches of time would go by without a word and then one of us would reach out. The time never seemed to matter; we picked up right where we had left off. During the period of time when his father was terminally ill and his marriage was headed for divorce we spoke frequently. When he met and fell in love with his second wife I didn’t hear from him often. I was admittedly the same with him. We were the opposite of fair weather friends in many ways. When I was in the darkest hour of depression it was him I called late one night, collect, no less. He accepted the charges and chatted with me until he had me laughing. He once calmed me down from a severe panic attack over the phone by going through his cupboards and fridge and naming everything he had that I, a vegetarian, could eat at his house. It worked for some strange reason.

More time passed with no contact. Last year his name popped up in my email inbox. I was surprised and pleased. We had never done the email thing. We started out with daily emails. In time they became weekly, and then monthly, then they stopped. I wasn’t sad or confused or surprised. I understood now that this was the way it had been since 1983 and that was O.K.

My mom’s email titled “Your Cousin” was about him, just as I had known it would be. While on vacation in Thailand he was riding a motorbike and was hit by a truck, which ran over his body and then fled the scene. He survived. He is now in the hospital in Thailand with too many broken bones to fly home. I ran through a whole series of emotions and ideas after I read the news. I went from wondering if I should call him at the hospital, wondering if I should send a card to him in Thailand or have one waiting for him when he returns home to Australia, to one crazy moment where I felt as if I should fly there and sit by his bedside to make sure he is O.K.

Right now I realize that no matter what I do, even if I decided to skip even the simplest gesture of a get well card, it would be alright. He would understand. Some relationships can transcend the restrictions of whatever means of communication are available to us at any given time. In a nutshell, I know it in my heart that I don’t have to say or do anything at all. He knows. He already knows what I would say.

I finished Polly’s room. Of course I wasn’t done when she came back from the beach, despite having stayed up until 4 a.m. to paint, and she cried when she walked through the door. I underestimated the length of time it would take me to do the room. Just the spackling alone took hours. She went a little crazy in there with the staple gun, and the thumb tacks, and the good old fashioned hammer and nails. It looks so much nicer now. I even bought her new carpet, as hers had met its match in a red kool-aid spill. She seemed to have fun decorating once it was time for her to move back in, and we were all glad to get her things out of the living room. She is a little pack rat.

Last night, after my kids recommended it to me, I watched Freedom Writers. I didn’t expect to like it, even though I definitely liked Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby. It was pretty much exactly what I expected it to be, not too horrible, not too good. It did however open up the lines of communication regarding race issues with my kids. I thought the depiction of the separation between the teens of different races was a bit extreme. After telling my kids what I’d thought, Polly stated that I was right; the kids in her junior high school were not divided by race. Nathan assured me that at the first school that he attended last year it was exactly as it had been in the movie, all of the kids divided up according to ethnicity; White, Black, Latino, and Asian.

My husband happens to be half Hispanic. It hasn’t been something that we’ve given much thought, to be honest. When we first moved in together he asked why I didn’t buy tortillas, beans, salsa and hot sauce and so I bought all of those things and he was happy. Maybe he is only Mexican at dinner time. When we had children Nathan came out dark like his father, and much to our surprise Polly is fair skinned and blond, like me. I have had numerous people ask me if my children have different fathers. Nathan went through a bit of an identity crisis in high school, unsure of which group he fit into. He ended up with the Latino kids. He once told me in anger that he wished his dad had married a Mexican woman. I was both amazed and confused. I had hoped that we had as a society had gone beyond voluntary segregation. I underestimated the need for my son to fit in, to feel as if he had a proper place within a group.

When I was growing up I felt more of a division in the schools based on socioeconomic status. Of course I went to private schools and what I was experiencing might have been based on my own struggle to pretend that I didn’t care that I had old, hand me down underwear and ill fitting shoes. I struggled to be “cool”. I tried very hard to pretend that I didn’t care. I am learning that the struggles my son faces are different than anything I have ever been through. Even his father is a bit baffled, as he never gave any thought to the fact that he had friends of many different races in high school. He didn’t feel the pressure to chose between Hispanic and white and stay within the confines of a group. I sincerely hope that in time Nathan feels at home within himself, and the world.