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Friday, September 23, 2011

Sometimes

...I find myself crying for no reason. I know that's a symptom of something horrific, according to one of those chemically life-altering anti-depressant commercials, but, alas, I do. I used to think my mother was insane for crying at Hallmark commercials, but...now that's just par for the course. Sometimes I can't even go in to a Hallmark store. Well, and that Maxine just gets me going, too.

So, today, as I was sitting in my dark and clouded dining room, I found myself staring at a "mega-noodle" on my spoon. I was thinking how it was indeed much more practical than an "average-noodle,"when suddenly, something plopped down into the liquid. I thought to look up to the ceiling, but I then realized it was a tear. I plunged the spoon back into the bowl of Campbell's and rested my forehead into my palms, twisted the pressurized knob of the emotional spigot in my brain, and let everything pour out. A flood of all things unspoken (at least unspoken to most) came rushing through my head; tightening my throat, burning my eyes and making my nose begin to run.
Next week I have to go and have another ultrasound, and it terrifies me. What if it's something really bad and...what if my kids, God forbid, had to grow up without me? In two weeks, I'm turning 30. In 10 years, I've been a wife twice, a mother three times, and I've lived in four houses, not counting the cottage and three apartments. Yet, I still haven't figured out what to do with my life. I just know it goes on, whether you figure it out or not.
And then,there's the deep-dark secret. No, I'm not going to tell you what it is, but it's there, tucked away, all the same. Right there, snuggled next to "no one understands you." They've become good friends. And the reminder I give myself: "you can't get upset with people because they don't understand, and not everything you do can be undone."
Today is my little baby girl's birthday. She is two! She is two.

I suppose I could have been crying for any of those reasons. Sometimes, I just do. And so I sat, staring at the orange and brown and green stripes of my place mat, and feeling the warmth of a ray of sun, creeping between the limbs of a tree and making its way through my dining room window. For now, though, I tell myself, it's time to dry it up and put on a smile. There's a cake to be made, some laundry to be done. There's a little boy who wants to me to play Legos, and another one who will want to tell me all about his day at the school farm. Yes, so just get up.

Tomorrow, after all, is just another day.

Monday, September 12, 2011

The day after September 11

I didn't post this blog yesterday, mainly because I just couldn't get it right. Okay, in all honesty, I didn't type it until today.
But that's no big thing, really. I write everything in my head way before you ever see it in typeface.
I didn't post it because I kept thinking about the actual day of September 11, 2001, and how on that day, nobody had any idea what had just happened. But the next day...after hours of no sleep, and trying to get to the bottom of it, we all had a pretty clear picture of the magnitude of horror. And ten years later, watching the events unfold again on television, I had just that feeling: what in the heck is going on? So I waited. Till today, to see if my thoughts would magically congeal into something more...logical. And I regret to inform you, they have not. There was no lightbulb, no "a-ha!" moment, when I suddenly understood why families have suffered from this tragic day for ten years. Because it was all stemmed from hate. And hate has no logic.
Some of us have suffered less than others, certainly. I didn't lose a family member in the Trade Center, and no one I knew was on one of the flights. We all remember what we were doing on that day - just like my mom remembers what she was doing when she found out President JFK was assassinated. You just remember stuff like that, I guess. I was in school, if you care to know. And I was an Army wife, which presented a set of problems all on its own. My husband wasn't home...he was in Ranger school. Somewhere in the Everglades. I was alone. Next to an Airforce Base, where it was normal for Chinooks and Little Birds and C-130s to hover the area regularly. As I drove to the base, though, that afternoon, the silence in the sky was deafening. The military police were bigger jerks than usual, armed with weapons fit to kill something much bigger than me and my dog, Sarge. We just wanted to get through the gate before the base locked down, and get to someone we knew. Marc Anderson walked out to my car, pet Sarge and asked if I was alright. He said he wasn't sure when I'd see my husband again - he didn't know the plans. Maybe they'd all deploy to help, somewhere. Maybe they'd just go to Iraq and blow up the bad guys. I know a lot of guys were hoping it was the latter. There was a lot of anger, amid the confusion.
There was a lot of fear. I needed my mother...no matter how old you get, when you're scared, you want your mama. I must have called my mother ten times that day. And my two best friends in Georgia, Tracey and Laura. And of course, I had Sarge. During the next few months, Marc was a big brother to me, too. He made sure I got out of the house for a few good dinners, and asked me to come and help pick out an outfit for his brother's expected baby. He was incredibly excited to be an uncle. We even got a boonie hat embroidered, "Lil' Anderson."
That Christmas was bittersweet, in 2001. "The boys," otherwise known as 1st Platoon, came over for Christmas dinner. I made the biggest turkey I could find at the commissary, and enough sides for, well, an army. We had a roaring fire in our old brick fireplace, and that tiny cottage with the wooden walls was never cozier. All the guys spread out on the floor and we watched Shrek. I remember Marc fell asleep with a cleaned-to-the bone turkey leg resting on a plate on his chest. We all joked that he looked exactly like Shrek.
The next day (which is always kind of a letdown anyway, when the festivities are over), the boys all left for Iraq. With the nation whirling around in fear, frustration and uncertainty, it was just the icing on the cake to know that my husband, not to mention the rest of the boys, were heading for war.
And to make matters worse, Marc never came home. Those bad guys took him down, on March 4, 2002. I told you nothing good comes from hate.
So, yesterday was a flood of emotions, as it is every year on the 11th of September. I watched the programs on television and I remembered, of course, what I was doing that day. I still felt the horror and disbelief when I saw the victims jumping from the Trade Center windows. The gruesome thud of bodies, hitting the concrete. The firefighters valiant effort to herd masses of corporate America down dozens of flights of stairs. The shaking voices of wives, hearing a final goodbye from their husbands, on a plane about to crash.
A horror film.
And then I heard the bagpipes. And I love them, but since Marc's memorial service, I just can't do them anymore. Then a beaten and battered American flag triumphantly unfurled at the memorial site, telling the story of her courage, even though her rips and holes and dirty stripes didn't come for free. And I sobbed and sobbed.
And I reached for the phone to call my mother.

Friday, September 2, 2011

It's all baloney

I am eating a bologna sandwich. I can't tell you the last time I had one. I might have been ten. No, I was nineteen. I remember this now, because I was incredibly poor, and bologna was cheap. So were pickles and grape jelly. Our fridge was interesting. This sandwich is good; I put butter on it, along with the mayo, by the way. I always do, because my mom always did, and my grandma always did, and beyond that, my grandpa put butter on anything edible. And he lived to be 98.

Butter and mayo and bologna and bread. And let's just get it out in the open, I think it's stupid that "bologna" is spelled with a g-n-a at the end. So in the title, I spelled it "baloney." It works out better that way.

I'm eating this baloney sandwich and blogging, about nothing. About the sandwich, so far. Earlier this week, a female acquaintance of mine commented on a post I made on Facebook. She said I ought to write a blog; what I have to say helps her prepare for the future in raising her own children. (They're babies, still, and I've been there and done that already). Of course I told her I already do write one, and she should follow it. If she wants. Not that I'm an expert on child-rearing, but because sometimes, it's easier to deal with your own life if you can see that you're not alone. It's better than going to counseling, see, because you can read it and either say "Ahhh, well, there now, I'm not that crazy," or (and hopefully not) "Good grief, I'm in trouble." Self-diagnosis.

Anyway, after reading this acquaintance's suggestion, I asked myself, why do I write a blog?

For one thing, the computer doesn't talk back. It doesn't question. It allows me the freedom to "talk and talk" and it never rolls its eyes or pretends that I'm interesting.

I know there are other moms out there who must experience the same things I do. Life's trials and tribulations, moments of ultimate frustration with kids and husbands and family, along with moments of indescribable joy. My life is plain, yet it is never dull. We aren't rich or fancy, we don't take lavish vacations, and I can't, honestly, even remember the last time I ate dinner out somewhere. Unless you count Pizza Hut family night. So, I can't write about red-carpet-worthy events. I can write about my love for stuffed-crust, however.

Each blog is a snapshot of my mind at a current moment. Some days I am contemplative, some days nostalgic, and some days, I'm just writing because I need an outlet. A listening "ear." So I sit (with or without a baloney sandwich) and click the keyboard. I note that I'm getting crumbs on the keys.

There's this feeling of disbelief that people are actually reading what I write, yet they say they do. People have even said they like it. Perhaps they have related to something. Some blogs are a little pointless, like this one, maybe.

I don't know if you have ever experienced this, readers, but sometimes, when your mind seems to be flooded with thoughts, the last thing you could do is put them in writing. The thoughts are transparent; you cannot grasp them and nail them down. And they're so overwhelming, you'd love nothing more than to be able to do just that. Because if you could line them up, you could prioritize; make a plan. But you can't. Or I can't.
I keep hoping that by writing things down, eventually, things will sort out. They typically do.
So I just blog.

And develop wrinkles in my forehead.
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