Tuesday Night Lights

You know that book, “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff?” As I was mopping up my flooded upstairs bathroom and downstairs laundry room yesterday, I was evaluating whether or not being a temporary single parent, while single-handedly cleaning, purging and organizing for a cross-country move and handling every single bill, errand, kidtastrophe and bit of minutia, qualifies as “small stuff.”  Stuffing a massive load of soaking wet towels and rugs into the washer, as water dripped from the ceiling onto my head, I determined that yes…this was small stuff. But, I forewent the polite admonition to not, “sweat it,” and just said, “fuck it.”

“Don’t sweat the small stuff,” is more of an admonition, isn’t it? “Fuck it,” is just the decision to not to let the small stuff suck you into the mind-numbing vortex of bullshit that constitutes a day in the life of the average American house frau. So, I sopped up the mess…ceiling still dripping, and headed out to retrieve The Duchess from school. Thus far, my Tuesday had been a comedy of errors created, I’m quite certain, by the mind of a distracted, overworked, underpaid and unappreciated, Me. Too many things to do, too many interruptions, too much on my mind, not enough sleep and not enough help. 

The Duchess and I arrived back at the house, completed her daily 30 or 40 minutes of homework and I poured myself a glass of wine.  From a box. Don’t judge me.

As I was standing there in my kitchen, experiencing a wee bit of the blues, it suddenly occurred to me: “It’s Tuesday!” I picked up my phone and sent a text: “I made red sauce, salsa and dessert.”  Within minutes, a text back: “I’ll be over in 10 with tamales.” Oh, yeah.

You don't even want to know...

For the past several months, my neighbor, Carmen, has come over on Tuesday nights to eat, drink and commiserate. Tuesday nights are her Fridays, so she can stay up late, eat, drink and be merry without having to get up at 4:00 a.m. for work. On Tuesday nights, my house lights up like a stadium. The food is abundant, the cocktails flow, and Carmen and I talk and laugh and gossip until standing up is no longer an option. Usually, at least a couple of her kids come over and eat, talk and laugh until it’s time for them to go home and get ready for school the next day. Most Tuesday nights, her husband gets off work and comes over about 9:30 and we warm up dinner, make him a Shirley Temple or two and yenta it up for another hour or so. Two families, blended into a lovely, cross-cultural oneness, held together by food, laughter and love. Bliss.

At the end of the night, Carmen weaves her way down the sidewalk, two doors down. I do a quick clean up of the kitchen, head up the stairs and take my final cocktail of the night, which consists of two Ibuprofen, water, and a significantly lighter spirit.

You see, Carmen and I have somehow, unknowingly and unintentionally, created a tradition. It’s not just that I have a neighbor who comes over every week to hang out. No. It’s more than that. Over the past four years, we’ve developed a friendship…that has turned into a sisterhood… that I have come to count on.  When Carmen and I are together, the world just fades to black and nothing exists outside of my lit up kitchen and those precious Tuesday night hours.

It was only a year ago that I realized that Carmen is one month older than my youngest sister. The realization floored me and made me sit there on my bar stool with my mouth hanging open trying to process that fact. If you’ve read my blog, you know my past feelings about my younger sister. Hapless, helpless, unfocused, immature, irresponsible, etc.etc. etc.  I’d always considered Carmen my absolute peer and equal. She’s been with her husband since high school, had three children, two of which are very close in age to two of my own, keeps an immaculate house, works full time and despite having had tremendous obstacles to overcome in her life, is a happy, well-adjusted, fun-loving, responsible wife, mother and citizen.

Carmen is the very epitome of the American Dream. Her parents were immigrants from Mexico and she is a first generation U.S. citizen.  She became pregnant at sixteen and worked her little buns off to go to school, work and provide for her son. Her boyfriend was killed when their son was an infant and yet she persevered and worked to create a stable home life. Like me, she has daddy drama and struggles with the emotions of loving her father yet despising his actions. Her family gatherings with her mother and six siblings are boisterous and loving. They fight, they cry, they love and they make up. By watching them, I have learned what “family” is capable of being. When they invite me to family affairs, I feel strangely different, yet familiar. Not fluent in the least in their native Mexican-Spanish, I understand little of what they say when they speak to each other. But, Carmen and her sisters are always quick to turn to me and translate what’s going on and include me in the conversation. I have learned much about love, family, forgiveness and perseverance. For that, I am truly grateful.

Last night, Carmen helped wash the dishes and put away the remnants of dinner and dessert. As always, I walked her to the door and she kissed my cheek and thanked me as I locked the door behind her. In the process of wiping down the counter tops and readying things for the morning, it hit me like a bolt of lightning.  In just over a month, I would be in Texas and Tuesday nights would be, well…just Tuesdays.  No Carmen, no swarm of kids asking what their adopted, “tia” made for dessert, no gossip and no house with every light blazing.

The thought of no Tuesday night lights and no Carmen, makes my heart heavy. As happy as I am to be moving back to the city I consider, “home,” I’m so very sad to be leaving my Carmen. In the past forty-three years of my life, I’ve moved somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty times, but for the first time, I feel as though I’m leaving behind a little piece of my heart. Family is consistent. They are “there,” no matter where you are. Middle Sister and I live on opposite sides of the country, but still speak and e-mail and text several times a month. With a friend though, you have to wonder...will this be it? Will moving away mean the loss of the closeness between the two of us?

Carmen has taken to referring to me as her, “guera,” which loosely translates as, “blonde girl,” in Mexican lingo.  For hysterical reasons I won’t go in to, I refer to her as my, “bandita.” It only occasionally occurs to us what we must appear like to others when we’re together, but neither of us cares. As far as we’re concerned, we are just two of the best of friends, laughing ourselves silly every time we’re within six feet of each other. La Guera y La Bandita. Amigas para siempre.

As I’ve written before, “home” isn’t necessarily a place; it’s who is waiting for you behind the door when you arrive. My new home in Dallas may not have all of the lights lit up on Tuesday nights, but I need my bandita to know that no matter where I am, she will always have a home, a friend, a sister and a partner in crime. Hours and miles may come between us, but the bright Tuesday night lights will burn on in my heart.  

La Bandita y La Guera

Yesterday

Yesterday, I am clueless as to how my car ended up parked neatly in the garage or how The Duchess got a bath, got her hair braided neatly, and tucked into bed by 8:30 sharp. I think I slipped into a mini-coma and functioned merely out of habit and some built-in Mommy GPS.

I vaguely remember taking The Duchess to school while wearing camo pants, a sweatshirt that didn’t match, my eyeglasses and a clip in my unkempt hair. I may have had Monday night’s martinis oozing from my pores to boot.

My car must have driven me home from the school because I woke up in my bed three hours later feeling no better than I did three hours before. The dog had planted herself firmly next to my disgusting, un-showered corpse and shot me a look that said, “Really? Three hours? I’ve had to pee for the last two.”

My inner fat chick arm wrestled the part of me that wanted to climb back up the stairs and throw myself on the bed again, so I made a turkey sandwich, ate a giant handful of cheese balls and polished off a Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich. Honestly, I have no idea what I did up until the time my cell phone rang and I answered only to hear Snotty on the other end begging for a ride home from school because she had cramps.

Somehow I managed to pick Snotty up, listen to the one hundred and ten exclamations of, “I’m gonna die…I know I’m gonna die,” retrieve The Duchess from school, return home and help with homework.

At some point I recall having the desire to eat but no desire whatsoever to actually conjure up food. It took about ten minutes of my inner fat girl yelling at my inner lazy ass before I grabbed the car keys and hit the drive-through lane at Kentucky Fried Chicken. If you haven’t had Kentucky Fried Chicken in awhile, just a word of advice: let your inner lazy ass talk your inner fat chick out of getting some.

The rest of the evening is a messy blur of baths, dogs, teeth brushing, etc. etc. Truthfully, I barely remember putting The Duchess to bed.

This morning when the alarm on my cell phone sounded, I had the overwhelming urge to throw it through the window and fake an illness so horrific that it would give me an excuse to not have to take The Duchess to school for the rest of the week. Mr. Right was out of state on business though, so I’d only be shooting myself in my own damn size 8 ½. Up and at ‘em, Warrior Mommy.

By sheer willpower and the strong desire to not let my sweet daughter see her mother once again taxi her to school looking like a B movie zombie, I dragged my bloated arse off the bed and actually managed to put on a little eye makeup and clothes that matched. Kind of.

I’ve spent the better part of the day trying with all my might to be productive and to, “snap out of it,” but Middle Sister’s phone call Monday night is still rattling around in my brain box and I’ve yet to be able to rid myself of the shrapnel caused by the explosion that reverberated through my skull when Sister said, “Dad is going back to jail.”

No child, no matter the age of that child, should ever have to hear those words once, much less twice. But, as they say, “shit happens.”

It took the thirteen years my father served in prison, plus another eight or nine for me to work through all of the shit-that-happened. I had to come up with truthful, yet not completely accurate answers to questions such as, “where does your dad live,” and, “what does your father do for a living?” Sure, I tried the truth a few times, but quickly learned that for some strange reason, having a father who’s in the clink for murdering his girlfriend isn’t the most acceptable fodder for small talk at cocktail parties. Who would have thought that people would judge ME for the sins of my father?! People are odd, no? 

After thirteen years of collect calls from prison and censored letters that my eyes only got to see second hand after a prison guard's…after thirteen years of declared repentance and promises of becoming the father he’d never been, he was returned to society and back to the Land of Stainless Steel Utensils. I braced myself for the impending tsunami of love and affection that was soon to wash upon the shores of my childish and broken heart.

The tsunami never arrived. Nor did a wave, a ripple or a droplet quench my thirsting heart. I reached out. I called, wrote letters and sent items for which he’d asked. Still…not even a speck of humidity.

When my Gram passed away, Mr. Right and I traveled to Illinois to attend her funeral. For the first time in twenty years, I was going to see my father. I have no idea what I expected, but whatever it was, I didn’t get it. As we left my Gram’s house two days later, I turned and watched the shape of my father growing smaller in the background. It was then that I knew that the father-sized shape in my heart would never be filled and that it was time to start letting go.

It’s a strange thing it is. I thought I’d done a pretty swell job of filling in that void in my heart. I’d accepted things as they were and moved forward. Nice and neat was the package I’d tied a string around and tucked far back into the corner of my ticker.

With one click of a button, with one uttered, “hello, Sister,” with one blink of an eye and one nervously delivered sentence, I shattered once again.

This time…oh, this time…he’s learned his lesson. THIS time, he’ll never touch a gun or a drink again. No one was hurt this time and it was all just a big silly ordeal, but for sure…he’s learned his lesson this time.

Today I’ve thought about what I would say to him if I saw him. I’ve come to the conclusion that I probably wouldn’t say anything. Not because I have nothing to say and not because there aren’t things I want him to hear, but because he wouldn’t hear them. He's incapable. My words wouldn’t change a thing.

Middle Sister keeps hanging on. She clings by the tips of her fingernails to the precipice of the deep empty canyon of Fatherly Love. She explained to me her yearning to be a better human being than my father and her feeling is that if she continues to hold on and remain a part of his life, she will have done better than he did with his father. She still desperately hopes that one day he will give her heart what it has so desperately needed since the beginning of her memory. I understand her need and her desire, really I do. It just hurts my heart to know her longing.

My path will be different from Middle Sister’s. I will choose, rightly or wrongly, to continue healing until nothing remains but a daddy shaped scar.

Scars have a certain beauty, I think. When I look in the mirror at the Frankenstein-ish scar left on my clavicle from the two surgeries after my car accident, I am vividly reminded of my own frailty. But, sometimes…when my shoulder is really hurting me, I reach up and run my fingers over the uneven scar tissue and smile, because it is proof positive that I also have the ability to heal and to overcome more pain than I thought I could bear. 

Finding Home

Growing up, my home life was much like living in a circus whose performers had recently escaped from the local asylum so, the subject of Home has always been a touchy one for me. What is it about Home that stirs within our hearts such emotion, such happiness, such bitterness and such angst?

In my 20’s, day after endless day was spent being wretchedly and miserably partnered to a wretched and miserable mate, and I often found myself longing for Home. After the initial trickle of tears would begin, the realization would hit me that I had no home to which I could go. This thought would completely break the dam, and all hell would break loose in the desolate cavern that was my heart. Where was Home?!? What was Home?

For a while during my childhood, Home was a place. Home sat at the edge of hundreds of acres of corn in Southern Illinois and was warmed only by a pot-bellied stove in the winter and cooled by open doors and screen-free windows during the summer. Home was the place I left every summer morning as soon as the sun lifted its fiery red head and to where I returned when it dropped its lazy round bottom below the horizon every evening. Home was where I ran barefoot, wild and free through fields of corn. It was where my sisters and I skated on frozen creeks in the winter, pretending we were beautiful ice skaters, despite the fact that our “skates” were Wonder Bread wrappers secured with rubber bands to hand-me-down tennis shoes.  It was where my mother made bath soap in a churn in the front yard and where we ate watermelon while sitting on the tailgate of my father’s battered truck. Home was this place…this ancient, run-down, dilapidated, beautiful place. And, as it turns out, this house was the last place I would ever truly feel at home…until now.

After moving from that old house when I was the ripe old age of eight, life became much more treacherous. Home became a place to lay my head at night, a place from which to flee during the day, and at night a place I feared to return. Details aren’t necessary to tell my tale. You’ve most likely experienced very similar bumps and bruises to body and brain, dysfunctions and malfunctions, loss of innocence and hard-earned gains in character. What I will tell you…and don’t act shocked…is that life is hard.  So difficult at times, in fact, that our brain boxes often seek refuge and sometimes in the most unlikely places. In retrospect, I look back on moments in my life and wonder, “Why in the bloody hell did I ever want to go home?!”

Now that I’m in my 40’s, happily partnered and the recipient of large doses of expensive therapy, I can sit back with relative ease and survey my past. I see much more humor in it now.  The harsh lines have softened and memories are seen through the hazy filter of time. My family has become what I refer to as a, “family by choice” and Home is an ever so lovely stained glass window made of places, people and feelings.

In talking to my friends and family over the years about what Home means to them, I’ve heard varied responses. A friend of mine grew up in the same house her entire life and, to this day still goes home with her husband to that same house. She says she gets excited that she’s almost Home as soon as the highway signs over I-35 say, “Oklahoma City.” Getting through Oklahoma City means she’s only about an hour away from her old house and the landmarks become familiar. Those signs tell her that Mama isn’t far away and, as she put it to me, “Home is where Mama is.”

My sister says that Home is where she’s created a history, formed relationships, become familiar with an area and has made memories. “Given enough time,” she says, “Anywhere can feel like Home.” Indeed, when you walk into her house, no matter if she’s lived there for ten years or a month, her shelves contain the same old familiar and comfortable books and treasures. She carries with her those tangible memories that make her feel at home.

My friend J.T., (and former Sadie Hawkins Dance partner, whether he remembers it or not!) says that because his family lived in several houses during his childhood, Home has become something all together different than merely a place. Home is when he’s with friends and family and the conversation turns to, “Do you remember when…?” “That,” he says, is when he’s “home.” Shared memories and shared pasts sometimes have sturdier walls than even the best built houses.

My cousin’s mother passed away last November, and she no longer feels a connection to “home.” Her sister attempts family get-togethers, but the sense of belonging remains lost to her. She has yet to be able to find her way home again, but I know she will because she commented to me, “home right now, is where my sister is.”  Home still exists for her but her heart remains much too broken to accept that Home will be different now.

My sister-in-law grew up in a crowded, loud and chaotic household (Actually, several crowded, loud and chaotic households). She now feels that, Home is where there is “peace, quiet and comfort.” I’m fairly positive that she would be perfectly at home if her favorite comfy chair suddenly took flight and landed in the middle of a jungle, so long as the Natives left her to her iPad (and chanted very quietly). Home for her, is being where there is literal peace and quiet.

Across the country in D.C., I have a soulful and beautiful friend who feels at home when she’s in the kitchen cooking for her closest friends and family. She’s a kindred spirit, she is! Home is not where she was raised, but who walks through her doors, eats her food, and who makes her laugh until she forgets that any variation of Home ever existed outside of her chalet walls.

Then…there’s my sweet friend I’ve known since high school whose longing for home is deep and intense right now. Her parents are fading, and her extended family is in emotional shambles. Mere photographs of her childhood home bring tears to her eyes, and even traumatic memories are all but forgotten to make room in her heart to remember Home as she needs it to be remembered. Although tragedy, pain, and misery happened within those walls, “Home,” is still that old house on Walnut Street where she felt safe and where there was a sanctuary from town gossip and judgmental peers.

In all of these stories, there are differences but, even so, the similarities remain. “Home,” it seems, is indeed, “where the heart is.” Broken hearts feel homeless even among the familiar faces of family. Gypsy feet may wander hither and yon, but always feel at home when planted firmly next to an old friend’s while swapping tales of yesteryear. Highway signs that lead us down well worn roads to houses we know our way around by heart, don’t tell us what really makes that house a home. What makes it “home” is who is behind the door waiting with open arms when we arrive.

Looking back on those times when I wondered why I ever wanted to go home again, I now understand what it was that I really wanted. It wasn’t the chaos, the shabby house, or the emotionally absent parents. What I wanted was comfort and the feeling that I belonged somewhere.  Now that I’m grown with a family of my own, and I’ve had plenty of time to sort through the tattered old memories which comprise the scrapbook of my life, it is clear to me that I am home. I’m home because I’m loved, and because I stay in touch with old friends with whom I share a home town and a heart-shaped box of memories. I am home because I have a sister whom I love, who loves me and who knows all of my secrets and keeps them safe. I am home because when I cook for my friends and family, we eat and laugh and share our souls with each other. Home is in my heart, and it abides there, wherever the road may take me.

They say you can’t go home again, but I’ll let you in on a secret: You can. 

As written by Amy Colclasure Warner for the inaugural edition of Hom~o Magazine, published October 2011.http://www.hom-o.com/ All rights reserved. Content may not be duplicated. Artwork by Alex R. Warner. 

Dusk Dame

It is after the sun has set that I feel most like Me.

If I were a cowboy in one of those old-time Western movies 

and they asked me to ride off into the sunset,

that's when the real fun would begin.

Final Waltz

Reaching for his hand she laughed and said,

"Dancing with you is so much fun.

I want to go on but, I'm ever so tired."

He smiled and pressed his lips against her ear

and said, "My love, I've never been able to keep up with you." 

She blew him a kiss and leading as usual,

 let her hand slip from his and gently

waltzed away.

Musterion

Only after the moon came out
and the stars began their evening dance 

did she reveal her true identity.

Oh...what beauty and mystery the moonlight revealed! 

And when the sun rose, so no one would be the wiser,

she once again donned her daytime disguise

of an apron and sensible shoes.

A Sparrow Through My Heart

With one quick swipe of the broom, my heart set itself up to be broken.

Preoccupied with my thoughts, I ran my broom under the grill on the back porch and out bounced a little Sparrow nestling. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the little gray fur ball and quickly ran to scoop it up in my hands. He appeared perfect and healthy. My heart raced but over the thumping, I heard the chatter going on above me. Still cupping the tiny bird, I looked to see where the racket was coming from and saw a sparrow sitting high on the window ledge of the house next door. She was responding to every chirp of the baby I held gently in my hands.  I didn’t know what to do. Did I put the baby down and just let Nature take its course or should I intervene and try to help mother and child reunite? In the blink of an eye, my heart trumped my head and off I went to research how to care for a Sparrow nestling.

 Baby...just minutes after I found him.

Most of the day that first day was spent looking out the window into my back yard. With awe, I watched Momma fly in and out of the yard to tend to Baby. According to the research I’d quickly conducted, baby nestling Sparrows who are just about ready to fly, spend a few days on the ground while their mothers continue to feed them and care for them until they’re strong enough to spread their wings and soar. So, with great curiosity and a mother’s heart full of hope for this tiny creature’s success, I watched.

At night, I put Baby in an old mesh butterfly “house” that The Duchess often used to cage various ladybugs and caterpillars.  A nice cozy nest was made for him and I sprinkled some hardboiled egg bits with water and put them in for a nightly snack should Baby get hungry. Each morning, Mr. Right would unzip the little door to the house and out would come Baby. His favorite spot was in the shade underneath our sprinkler that looks like a miniature farm tractor and he would usually bounce right over to sit and wait for Momma.

My almost daily tanning sessions in the back yard were forsaken so that Baby and Momma could carry out their business, but I didn’t mind. “There will be time for soaking up the rays once Baby learns to fly,” I thought to myself. Watering the lawn became a manual chore instead of an automated one and I kept all backyard activities to the bare minimum. My puppy, Ellie, was kept on close watch and I’d only take her out to do her necessary business and then scoot her right back in.

On the third day of Operation Baby Watch, the sun was so hot that I rigged my tanning chair over the top of the sprinkler where Baby hung out and put a beach towel over the top so that a nice big patch of shade was created.

Day Four saw the clouds move in and I breathed a sigh of relief that the Sparrow family that now occupied my yard on a daily basis wouldn’t be as parched as the day before. Day Four also marked the day a Sparrow went through my heart.

As I prepared to leave for an appointment and went about the normal tasks of readying The Duchess and myself to leave the house, I called Ellie out to the backyard for a final bit of business before we left. The Duchess followed behind and I told her to keep a close watch on Baby who had made his daily flutter over to the shady patch against the far fence.  As Ellie finished up and ran to stand beside me on the porch, I looked at the birdbath and decided to fill it before I left. Retrieving the hose, I stood and let the water run from it for a few seconds so that it wouldn’t be so hot when I filled the bowl. As I turned around, a flash of motion caught my eye. Turning to look, I saw Ellie with her nose to the ground just to the side of the porch. That’s when it happened. In one instant my brain perceived the listless little gray ball on the ground and in the other half of that instant, I found myself in the grass on my knees, sobbing like a lost child. My attention had been diverted for mere seconds, but that was all it had taken for my Ellie to snap up Baby and break his neck.

Bundling Baby up in my hands, I took him inside and, sobbing uncontrollably, found one of my old clean t-shirts and placed his little perfect body inside of it.  Now running almost late for my appointment, a shoebox seemed the safest resting place until I could decide what to do.

Two hours later as I headed home, The Duchess just couldn’t take the events of the day anymore and fell asleep. I, on the other hand, took the opportunity of a 45-minute car ride and a sleeping child…to cry. I had failed miserably to keep that sweet and perfect little creature alive and it made me so incredibly sad. Had I not seen with my own eyes the care that Momma took with Baby, maybe I wouldn’t have wept so hard for her loss. But, there I sat in my car, crying as I hadn’t cried in years, for both of our losses.

That evening, we dug a hole by the back porch just a couple of feet from where Baby had sat under the tractor sprinkler for those four days. The Duchess and I placed roses inside the box where Baby rested and The Duchess added a folded picture she’d drawn, on which she had written, “I love you, Baby.” We placed the box in the hole and sprinkled a little dirt on top of it before lowering the rosebush with little pink baby rosebuds on it that I’d purchased for this occasion on my way home earlier.

What exactly made such an impact on me about this experience I’m still not quite sure. I’ve boo hooed less at funerals for humans, for crying out loud. But, what I do know is that the eighty dollars I spent at the bird store the next day, buying feeders and seed made me happy. Happy, because now as I watch out my back window every day I see the Sparrows. I see them and I get to convince myself that they know that I tried and that the birdbaths and feeders are my lame attempt at an apology.