I had written a thing (and it is an awesome thing). However, it sort of turned into a possible GWJ article. So I ran it up the flagpole on that side of things and we'll see how that goes. ;)
Been cleaning out my closet and dresser, and organizing things to get ready for packing for PAX Prime. Back in a deep corner of a drawer I ran into a little piece of family history -- a certain pair of white denim jeans. These things bring back memories, but it requires a bit of story-time to explain.
When a kid misbehaves, people judge the kid. But they also judge their parents. And being a single-mom, you start off with a double-handicap. I used to get so much crap from all sides. I was too strict. I wasn't strict enough. If I'd punish them more, then they'd not act out. They were acting out because I punished them for anything at all. Why are you hanging out with kids so much? Why did you just drop them off and abandon them at this other place? Between the kids' need to push the boundaries and grow and the world's expectations for how a mother is supposed to act, everything I did was a careful negotiation through a minefield. Dealing with a situation when a kid is acting out in public and you don't feel safe rounding on them for it is difficult. Adding my personal approach of trying to frame everything as a natural consequence without actually just giving them enough rope to hang themselves and it gets doubly complicated. But one day I accidentally found an equivalency I could express that gave them just enough of an idea of how I was feeling about a given situation and put them on notice they were headed outside the lines, while being framed just weirdly enough it could be used anywhere. And it all started with these white jeans. Back in the day, the Gang liked to go to our local roller rink every Friday night. And one time I wasn't thinking and wore this certain pair of white denim jeans and a white t-shirt. I'd forgotten it was "Black-out Night"; they turned on a set of black lights on the floor so everything was this eerie purple and clothes glowed. To top it off, I decided to skate too. Under black light, that outfit glowed like a good deed in a naughty world. The dye in them is really phosphorescent. Then to top it off, Oh... My... Gawd, Becky. "Baby Got Back" rolled up, and I was grooving along, not even realizing that I was basically Casper the Unfriendly Ghost, public-image-wise. I was a known quantity anyways; the regulars around there knew I was weird as chicken mittens. No one actually said a word. But after I got off the floor I realized that, socially speaking, that might have been a tactical failure on the scale of Napoleon calling a rain-day at Waterloo. So I stayed off of the rink for the rest of the night. A few weeks later, some of the yahoos were acting like dorks in a store and some random "concerned" citizen had just given me a bunch of crap for my "permissive" parenting style. I was really upset. On the way home in the car I pointed out to the kids that the way they were acting made me feel embarrassed in public, just like they might have felt when I was skating in those jeans. They remembered. And they then told me that I'd made the rounds of the school rumor mill again. Not bad, just at the titter-and-eyeroll level. That made me feel even worse. But now we had common ground. We talked about it then and at various other times, and the code-word "White Jeans" came to mean, "Hey, you're acting like a putz in a way that's going to cause problems. Quit it." It went both ways. They could use it on me when I'd rolled the geek-o-meter up in the high 8's in public. I could use it when they were headed to Brat Alley. The point of it wasn't to actually do it. I never did wear those (or a white t-shirt) to Skate King again. The point of it was to be able to communicate how we were feeling about what was going on and ask the other to quit it without going into specifics we weren't comfortable with in public. We used that tool all through the rest of their growing years. The infamous jeans are laid across the bed while I finish this up. The girls will be here in a while to help me to sort through more of my mom's things that have been sent down to me in an attempt to get this house in some semblance of order. I'm considering meeting them at the door wearing them, to see if they remember. ;) I'm getting cold feet on this book thing.
I read back through these snippets I have here, and I don't know. I mean, I find it hard to imagine anyone but me and maybe a Gramma or two would care. Or, instead of caring, maybe they're hurt. If I stuck with fiction, it wouldn't be so bad. They would have to figure out which part of it was supposed to be "them" before they freaked out. With anecdotes, it's one step easier. I know there's a balance here. I will have to find it. ... but I can't understand it for you.
Read that somewhere, and I've been pondering it. Talk about a way of reframing life. My Gramma used to say something similar. "Don't take aspirin for other people's headaches," was one of her favorites. An online acquaintance posted, "I just realized my parents spent most of their time trying to make better kids. I spend my time trying to be a better parent." It's a common wisdom, but it's hard to keep a hold of on days when you are running around Mach 5 with your hair on fire. Was looking for something on Pintrest, and ran into a couple pieces of wisdom to share.
"You can't always control who walks into your life, but you can control which window you throw them out of." "Why is it called beauty sleep when you wake up looking like a troll?" "Be with someone who ruins your lipstick, not your mascara." Well... that exceeds even my large RDA of quasi-mawkish bumperstickers, so I'll leave it at that. ;) You may note that I've got a Twitter feed widget working again (yes, I know they fixed that like a year ago but also remember my work schedule at the Daily Planet).
Well, there's a reason for that, and a bunch of other changes you're hopefully going to be seeing here soon. I'm not going to list them out now because frankly I don't know what they all are yet. But things have got to change in my life, and this place is going to be a big part of that. In the meantime, it's back to re-arranging the furniture around here. Don't worry, the deck-chairs are all already in place. ;) We live in a world of sound-bytes and bumperstickers, so sometimes it's hard to find the scattered bits of wisdom afloat in all the froth. I ran into a particularly nice vein of it lately, and here's a couple:
You learn how much you don't know when a kid starts asking you questions. I'm getting real tired of your shirt, AutoCorrect! Biologists take cell-fies. Dum Dum Suckers are the greatest truth in advertising message there is. Because if you eat those things you are dumb, and if you believe they are the flavor on the outside of the wrapper you are a sucker. I wrote this back in 2007 on a sick day, and it seems appropriate for today:
remember the green skirt girl... and everywhere be tender of the grass She looks up from the page and over her shoulder out the window at a noise. Not startled or alarmed. Just wondering. The blinds lid the weeping window's eye but the rain is over. Clear thin tracks and lowered gray brows beyond are all that remain. The girls are out with a flock of their friends under the carport tossing a hackey-sack and discussing lipgloss. The sound had been the particular grainy slap the beans inside make when it hits the steel uprights, and the teasing laughter that had followed that miss. Turning back and shifting on the couch to ease the neck-crick, she looks down again. Where were we? remember the green skirt girl... and everywhere be tender of the grass The guys thunder in the front door, soaked to the bone and dripping mud and bravado. They'd been out playing football with their buddies and somewhere there's a patch of lawn that is being beaten into this spring's battlefield. At her comment about the mess they're making they laugh and step back onto the doormat. Arrangements are made to go out again, and then back to the page for just a flicker. It's not making any sense. The words lie on the page in their ordered ranks and come readily to her beck and call, but for some reason once they get to their destination they are blunted. Maybe they're just tired from the journey from page to eye, or maybe the cacophony of complaints from the rest of the body are drowning out the sense. She closes her eyes. Maybe if she just thinks about a line at a time it'll work. remember the green skirt girl... and everywhere be tender of the grass The girls chatter and squelch their way off to the basketball court, and now the computer fans chanting their one-note koans are the only sound. A sniffle and a sneeze curl the body momentarily, but then they are gone almost like they were tossed into the wastebasket with the tissue. The motions are automatic now from many repetitions. She hardly notices anymore. There is work that should be done. The test scripts are done running - the excuse for lying idle is gone. The dryer is done and is waiting to have this mouthful of it's daily meal of jeans and socks taken out. It would be easy to just pull the covers up over the head and let them wait. A half-hearted negotiation with her sense of duty later she gets up and deals with the laundry. The words still ring in her head. "Do the girls have a green skirt?" she wonders aloud as she chases that last fractious sock around in the dryer's drum. ... jiggity-jog.
The trip home yesterday was all kinds of interesting, but it's over. And I'm sitting here in the shambles of my house, trying to get my feet under me. I won't bore you. Started off with the usual "TSA is uh... interesting". Then segued to "being cramped on a plane with 300 of my closest strangers sucks". Followed by "baggage claim woes". It all ended in sushi with friends and home to my kids and my dog and my mess to straighten out, so I feel like I'm the clear winner here. But under all that busy-ness is an ache that I don't know how to deal with yet. I know how this whole process works so you don't have to tell me the stages of grief thing. I started shaking my fist at Heaven when she was diagnosed, and I got to the real Anger part of that whole thing before she even died. I know people mean well and are trying to help in the only ways you really can, and I do my best to remind myself of that repeatedly. So I'll spend the next quite-a-while trying not to respond sharply to people when they try to comfort me with our societally-approved irrelevancies like "she's in a better place". Sure, she could be in Heaven or Nirvana or Gehenna or One with the ALL. What the heck do I care? It doesn't matter. That place isn't here with me, and I can't go there yet myself to see her or talk to her. That's what I'm mourning. Someone says "she's not suffering anymore" and I want to scream either a) How the heck do you know!? You've never been dead! or b) If she'd gotten well she wouldn't be suffering anymore either! But that's not right. She'd be on my case if I did that, and she'd be right to do so. Me hurting others because I'm hurting doesn't help a stinking thing. I'm still here in the town I grew up in, and we drove past the only theater in a several town radius hereabouts on my way to ship a bunch of stuff Outside. It brought back a flood of memories.
It's got the name of a big theater chain on the front now, but the building is still the same late 70's commercial building metal siding, scored down to a powder-coat-like finish with years and years of wind-driven ice. You can still see the ghost of the old logo in under the new one. And that old sign stood out front of some of my fondest youthful memories. It's where me and my best friends honed our popcorn throwing and straw-wrapper blowing techniques at the back of various courting couples' heads when dragged out to "St. Elmo's Fire" by one friend's mom. It's the dark corner of the balcony where I spent the last 20 minutes or so of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" weeping unashamedly into one of my little sister's stuffed animals. It's where I was first greeted as a Starfighter, and given my mission against Xur and the Kodan Armada. I won't have time to see a film there this trip, but that's okay. I doubt it's still the same inside as it was 30 years ago (at least I frelling hope not!) so I'll keep my dingy red velveteen memories unsullied by the march of progress for a while longer. |
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