Hyperbolic aerodynamics

“What the hell are you doing here?” my cousin says to me. She is twice my age. Looks like Janis Joplin, if she’d survived. And kept on partying the same way. And had three kids and a biker husband they had to special order a casket for.  And they kept on putting pieces of her back together and sedated with enough morphine to not do her any more damage. This woman has always been a secret idol of mine, though the corners of my father’s mouth always took an extra sharp plunge upon finding out that this particular cousin and her brood were present at this or that family member’s home.

I smile. Broad smile. In retrospect I should have hugged her, but we were in the bathroom at the park and I was waiting to leave.

“I heard something about some Sleeths getting together. Maybe a few Hayes.”

“Oh, this is where the family reunion is?” she manages to look confused. 

Beside her is my aunt. My uncle’s wife. Maybe ex-wife reconciled now. No blood relation. Tiny, feisty woman. Married to my brute of an uncle. Well, the brutiest of them. Brutest? I was terrified of her growing up, but I loved her. I just knew she would tear me in two if necessary because life had once torn her in two. Her daughters were the same ages as my younger sisters and the group of them was always finding something to do, leaving me to entertain myself quietly. Mostly, I sat and did what I always did when I found myself alone – I listened.

I was compulsively shy as a child. Obsessed with what others thought of me. Horrified at the thought of partner-projects in school because I would be stuck in my chair, waiting for all the other kids to pair up and I was left with the kid who wet himself or has special snacks, or worse yet, I would have to be the teacher’s partner. This left the rest of the class with the impression that I was teacher’s pet or k-i-s-s-i-n-g the special-snacker, when in reality I was just afraid that if I opened my mouth and spoke the first word to another person or stood out in any way, the world would somehow stop spinning on its axis.

That is not hyperbole.

So I learned to blend in. To not be me, to not be seen or stand out in any way so others wouldn’t be upset with or critical of me. I already knew I couldn’t play their rules and didn’t like their games anyway, so I tried hiding. How can you find fault with someone who isn’t there?

I tried to control it after that. The next stage in my growth. To represent myself and market myself like a tennis shoe or a lip gloss. Confident. Hard-working. Better aerodynamics.

This morning as we were leaving for the reunion I looked down last minute at my brightly painted toenails and slightly too snug tank top. A cigarette dangled from my mouth and as we pulled out from the lot, I flipped up the visor mirror.

“Dude,” (I call her 'Dude') I smiled into the mirror and told her, “I am pretty white trash today.”

She shook her head at me.

"Today we are Sleeths.”

 Then she cranked up the radio and some hip-hop song bounced the minivan as we rolled through an industrial area. The kind of place our grandfather and our uncles would have worked. On my mother’s side. The Sleeth side. The kind of place my dad’s family might have slummed as plant supervisor but never would have set place otherwise. At least not long enough for any dust to settle on.

My parents’ families lived across the street from one another at one point. It was the first home in which my mother remembers having running water. To some people in my father’s family, especially after the divorce, my mom and the Sleeths became a joke, the name synonymous with poor white trash.  And they often made those jokes in front of me. I don’t know if that’s where things started to turn south for me: I really no longer care.

   

On the way to the reunion, bouncing over the train tracks, I thought about the weekends spent at our grandparents as kids. I loved going down to play with all the cousins, but hated nighttime.  I used to lie awake, terrified of the dark, and listen to the lonesome sound of the train whistles. Proof of life, awake, out there somewhere in the night, while in the house all I could hear was grandpa snoring and maybe a cricket we let in during the day or a bull frog outside the window. Mostly though it was the train whistle that let me sleep. That reassured me. To me, this little girl lost in the dark, that whistle was reassurance that even if I fell asleep, the world would still go on and another whistle would wake me in the morning.

A few weeks ago one of my cousins lost his six year old son in an accident at their home.  In another lifetime when we were blonde and summer-tanned and Kool-aid lipped, we used to cross the highway to the cemetery and go into the old abandoned buildings we were supposed to stay away from in the ghost town my grandparents settled in.  None of us, I’m sure imagined such a thing. I was amazed at the church watching my now grown cousin and his wife go through the process of burying their son. I was amazed at their strength. Amazed at the way they did not curl up into a ball and stop going.

There’s a short story I love and I can remember neither the title nor the author, but it was about the narrator’s dirt-poor family and the rabble of cousins and how when one died in some tragic accident around the family farm, barely anyone seemed to notice. Life went on. As it always had. As it always will. I don’t think facing down our fate that many of us could move forward.  

My aunt and rock star cousin and giggle a bit at whatever one of them said last. The sound of a toilet flushes out their words, but I laugh a little anyway as I wait to use the sink in this tiny cinder block latrine. I think to myself how they look as they did twenty years ago, the two of them huddling together in secret laughter.  It is good to see some institutions, some relationships, some friendships withstand. It’s good to see that the earth stays on its axis, no matter what I predict.

“What the hell?” my aunt shouts, even though we are a foot apart. She is referring to the open stall behind her for which there is no door.

Considering our white trash credentials, I find it apropos.

DHF and the little sisters

I have two sisters. One is three years younger than me and the other is the same three younger than her, and because my parents weren’t paying attention and gave my middle sister a name with the same initials as mine, they ended up continuing the initials with my youngest sister. This worked to their advantage in the mid-eighties when monogrammed sweaters were the thing to have, and all my clothes were passed down. Of course, by the time my youngest sister grew into my old hand-me-downs, she was, shall we say, less than thrilled to be sporting a bright yellow, puffy shouldered v-neck with two of her initials emblazoned above one breast (the first initial had fallen off in the wash some time earlier).

Despite the fact that we were neither triplets nor members of the Osmond family, my mother found it somehow necessary to dress us alike for family portraits and trips to the grocery store. She was quite the seamstress, my mother, and she was continually whipping up matching jumpers or terry-cloth jogging suits. And though she did allow us the slightest bit of dignity by sometimes altering the colors of our matching outfits, I still remember the resentment over the fact that my sisters had to be dressed like me and the uneasiness over whether or not we were going to be expected to break out a song and choreographed dance routine whenever we were taken out in public.

We never were, but the fear was there.

Taking off my black hat

So this is how it usually works:

The kid’s grandmother (my ex’s mom) asks my son what he’d like for Christmas and his birthday (which is just a few days later). He tells her. She goes out and buys it right away, tells him that she’s bought it, wraps it up and makes him wait until Christmas morning to unwrap it.

As a kid, the fun of Christmas for me was wondering what was in those boxes under the tree. I always hated when the surprise of a gift was spoiled for me, and even though I don’t argue with the kid’s arrangement with his grandmother, I just don’t understand it. But, as I said, I don’t say anything about it.

This year, though, it has gone too far. Last night when I got home from work – my first night off in many nights – I was informed by the kid that his grandmother told him she would get him the new Guitar Hero game for his Xbox. No big deal. I was kind of happy actually because it’s somewhere around a hundred bucks and he really wanted it, but I knew I would have to pick up a few extra shifts if I wanted to get it for him. So good for him.

But there was a catch. It seemed she had also told him he could have it early if he wanted. I was slightly irritated by this – the kid has no patience and a lot of this is due to the spoiling he received while living with his dad and grandparents – but I didn’t make a big deal out of it. I just said something about not being disappointed when Christmas came and he didn’t have anything new to open from his grandparents.

I went to my bedroom and started changing out of my work clothes when the kid’s voice came through the door.

“Grandma said she would send you the money if we went out and got it. So can we? Go pick it up?”

I moved beyond irritated. I was pissed.

“No, we can’t,” I said, opening the door to see his pathetic face. “I don’t have the cash.”

“She said she would send you the money for it,” he argued as I walked past him and into the kitchen for a drink.

“I don’t have the money,” I repeated. “If she wants to send you the money to buy it, then I can take you out to pick it up when I have time, but I do not have the cash right now.”

He argued with me for several more minutes about how he knew I had that much (I have him count my tips each night and I try to keep him aware of, if not directly involved in our budget), and that his grandma would reimburse me so I wouldn’t be out anything.

I didn’t give in. For one thing, my ex and his family haven’t always been great about paying me back. They’re very generous with the kid when he’s living with them, but as soon as he’s with me, they seem to forget that he might need or even want anything (yes, there’s a child support arrangement, but that’s a rant – I mean topic – for another time). And I’ve paid up front for many things – airline tickets, shoes, school clothes – for which I was promised cash in return, only to be stiffed and put into a financial bind when the money didn’t come. I’ve learned my lesson and I’m certainly in no position for that to happen again. For another, if his grandmother wants to get him a present, then she should get it for him. She should get it. I’m already annoyed that I have to do the actual shopping, but I find no reason why I should have to do the paying too.

The part of it that really pisses me off is that she knows we’re on a pretty strict budget. She knows I’m working two jobs and that the holidays are coming and that I’m trying to put some money toward going to Iowa over the break, so she should be aware that I’m in no position to go out and purchase the kid’s Christmas present for her. Apparently, she isn’t aware.

So she told the kid he could have something and because I am unwilling/unable to go along, I am the perceived villain, and the kid moped around the apartment all night.

My ex and his family do this stuff to me all the time. One year, the kid wanted an electric scooter for Christmas. I shopped around all fall until I finally found one I could afford. When I discussed it with my ex, he said he didn’t think it was such a good idea. The kid was still fairly young and living with his father at the time, and he didn’t think they were very safe. I disagreed, but we’re in this parenting thing together (like it or not), so I didn’t buy the scooter.

On Christmas morning, the kid was a little disappointed that he didn’t get it, but he liked the other gifts I bought instead and everything was fine. Then for his birthday, his dad and grandma gave him cash and a gift card and took him to the store where they let him buy himself - you guessed it - a scooter. He was so excited about it. He immediately brought it over to my sister’s house, where I was staying, and drove it around the neighborhood. His little face beamed as he showed me the turn signals and the working headlight, and my heart broke a little that I couldn’t be the one to make his holidays so wonderful.

My mom used to complain about my dad doing the same types of things to her, always trying to make her look bad in our eyes, always trying to make her into the bad guy. One day a few years ago, when we finally started opening up to each other about our experiences with depression and the bipolar and therapy, she told me things really changed for her when one therapist told her this: “[dhf’s father] has his white cowboy hat held on with superglue. It’s never coming off his head, so stop trying to knock it off. All you can do is take off your own black hat and refuse to wear it anymore.”

I choked up a little when she told me that. Okay, so we had been drinking and I might have become a blubbering mess (two bipolar women drinking – I gotta tell you, it doesn’t get much more fun than that). I was angry with her over the years for various things – I was a teenager – but I never saw her as the villain, and it hurt to think that that’s how she saw herself for so many years, that that’s how my father made her feel. I told her that. I told her that her hat was always white in my book. And even though I know it didn’t take away the pain she felt for so long, I think it healed her in some ways. And we cried and had a few more beers. Well, I had a few more beers. She went to bed.

I know that it will be a long time before my son can step away and really assess our performances as parents. I know that he may never realize the ways in which his father failed us both, so many times, without remorse. And if he never sees his father without the glow from his gleaming white hat, I don’t really care. But I’m not wearing the black one. I’m not going to be the mustache-twisting villain, and I’m not handing over my gold just so he’ll like me. And maybe someday over a few beers, he'll put the white hat on my head.

My opening act

My mother called this weekend and for once, I actually answered the phone. It’s not that I don’t like speaking to my mother, I just don’t like speaking on the phone in general. And she usually calls at the most inopportune times – like when I’m in line at the grocery store or when I’m sitting in my comfy chair and flipping through the television stations because there’s nothing good on and I’m bored. So by the time I actually feel I can stand holding the phone up to my ear for an hour, three weeks have gone by and I have twelve missed phone calls from my mother.

Yes, I’m a terrible person.

Anyway, she called and I actually answered. Okay, she called and my son answered and told her I was out picking up dinner and he talked to her for about an hour, so by the time I “returned” from my errands, she was pretty much over holding the phone up to her ear and our conversation was relatively brief. I only had time to smoke two cigarettes. Don’t start.

I’ve decided this is a good strategy from now on. My son can be my opening act. Except that while most opening acts are meant to get the audience pumped and excited, mine will just wear them down, so by the time I take the stage, they won’t really care about my performance. I’ll still be the headliner, and they can tell people they got to see (speak to) me, but I don’t really have to do much and they’ll still feel like they got their money’s worth.

And before you accuse me of using the kid, let me say that he loves to talk on the phone. And by “talk on the phone,” I mean that he likes to be on the phone, to be a presence on an open line between two people, but he doesn’t really have much to say. A typical conversation with my son consists of asking him one hundred and ninety-two questions, most of which are answered with monosyllabic grunts and sighs. The one hundred and ninety-third question, about what video game he is currently playing, is met with a forty-five minute response in which he explains what level mage he is (I still don’t even know what that means). But mostly he just sits there, breathing into the mouthpiece and refusing to take the hint when you ask him things like, “Well . . . is there anything else you’d like to talk about?” The fact that there never is anything else does not mean he’s ready to hang up. He isn’t. Unless, of course, food has arrived.

Or, you know, fake food.

In a one-room bar on the Missouri-Iowa border

This is part of a larger piece about my mother and dancing. I've been working on it for some time now (ie avoiding submission and rejection), and since I just realized it's the middle of October and spent yesterday researching airline tickets for the Christmas break, I've been thinking a lot about home and my crazy relatives and especially my mom. Anyway, enjoy. Or don't.

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My sister selects “Baby Got Back.” Her favorite. Embarrassingly bad for anyone to dance to, but even more so for those with extra wide posteriors. Fortunate for them, no one in my family believes that they have extra wide posteriors, so they take over the dance floor and get the gala going. Besides the bartender and a couple of regulars, we are the only ones there, my sisters, our friend, my aunts and a few cousins. They are all out on the linoleum-tiled dance floor at the other end of the room.

I watch from the table, alone, ignoring multiple requests for me to join them. I call to the bartender for another beer and he sends it over with one of the regulars, a scrawny guy with two days’ worth of stubble and a John Deere ballcap, probably fixes cars for a living because his hands are stained with motor oil.

“Not much of a dancer, honey?” he asks, shoving the mug into my hand, leaving smudges on the handle.

“Oh, I’m a hell of a dancer,” I laugh, sip some beer. “But I prefer the Meringue.” I laugh again and he follows suit, completely out of politeness.

“Ain’t even gonna try it?” he picks up his baseball cap and slicks his greying hair back, then puts the cap on.

I shake my head from side to side, take another drink from the mug. “I don’t belong out there.”

“Hell,” he says, “that’s just dancin’. Ever’body belongs out there.”

“Not ever’body. Definitely not me.” I sigh and John Deere leaves after a quick wink at me and a smile. I watch for a while longer before getting up to play pool.

I don’t make it to the table. Two pairs of arms grab me from behind and a third pair helps them drag me onto the floor. I struggle to free myself from my sisters’ grasp and growl at my aunt. I make a complete fool of myself, even in front of John Deere and his friends. I stay on the floor rather than run away, but there still is no dancing. Maybe if I stand here for this one song, I can go finish my beer.

My mother, six weeks into her first of a long series of psychiatric treatments, will have none of that.

“Dance, girl,” she takes hold of both my hands, squeezing them tight as she swings her arms in and out in an overly wide motion. Her feet move in time with everyone else’s. “Come on. You never dance anymore.”

“And with good reason,” I look back over my shoulder, at the table, at my chair.

“Come on. It’s just us here.” She is still dancing. So are my arms. “Dance. No one’s even paying attention.”

I am certain everyone is looking at me now. I try to lead my mother back toward my chair.

“I don’t even know how.”

“It’s easy,” she tells me, letting go of one hand. “A line dance. Just step like I do.”

“I can’t,” I try to pull my arm free.

“Young lady, get your butt on this floor and dance to some music!”

In my mind, I hear the song stop as the record is ripped from under the needle and everyone stands staring at me. Back in reality, the music keeps playing.

“Okay. Show me.”

She lets go of my hands completely and I realize that I can make my escape, but I know I cannot leave. This foot forward, she says, then over, then over, then back. I watch her feet as she speaks, trying to make mine do the same thing. Or at least a similar thing. And back and over and turn. I go over and back and back. We try again. Forward and over, over.

I begin to figure it out and at some point, I move in the same direction as the rest of my family. And over, and over, and back, and clap. I do just that. And soon she stops speaking and I am getting the rhythm of it and I forget that I cannot dance. I look around the floor, at my mother and my aunts, at my two sisters and my cousins, all moving in the same direction, all whooping as they clap, contributing to the ruckus in this normally quiet pub. I want to whoop with them. I need to yell and laugh and be a fool. But I never do. I just keep moving my feet, hoping no one will notice me.

Why, yes, Mr. Bundy, I would love to get into your van

After our dinner rush, I stood in the break room talking to a couple of other servers, when one of them stood on a chair and very excitedly started telling me about how her latest crush is going. Because there were other people around, and her crush is one of our co-workers, she was speaking in code. And this was on top of her already shortened and overly enthusiastic speech. When she left the break room, another server shook his head and commented that she was crazy.

She must have heard him as she walked away because later, as we were cleaning up the restaurant, she asked me if I thought she was indeed crazy.

“Yes,” I told her. “But I find that your insanity is one of your most endearing traits.”

And I meant it. I admit, when she first started working, I found her a little off-putting. She is loud. She has an odd laugh. And she laughs a lot. At her own jokes. Which aren’t funny. And aren’t jokes. She’s also nice. Like really nice. Like insanely, over-the-top, unnecessarily polite.

But we’ve worked together a few months now and after many smoke breaks together and a couple of drinks after work, I’ve discovered that I really like her.

She isn’t afraid to say what she thinks or feels. She has a really unique laugh. She laughs at her own unfunny jokes and I find this very charming (probably because I do this too). And she’s nice – would do anything for anybody (except watch your tables while we’re in the middle of a dinner rush).

And several times over the past few weeks, we’ve hung out in her car and smoked and talked before I headed home to the kid. I think I have a new friend.

Anyway, this got me thinking about first impressions. Mostly, how mine turn out never to be right. And by this, I mean I thought Mike Vick was a real sweetheart, right up until he asked if I wanted to meet his dogs.

Some examples of my (wrong) first impressions:

When I was thirteen, a new family moved into the house across the street from us. I was playing football with a group of neighborhood boys (tackle football – I kicked ass) in the church yard across the street, and the new kid emerged from his house and asked if he could join in. He said his name was “Daniel.” He was gangly and awkward and sucked at football. I didn’t like him at all. After his father called him in for dinner, I joined the other boys in making fun of him.

Reality – He turned out to be really, really funny. Also very smart (I think these go hand-in-hand). He liked the same corny movies I did and read the same books. He turned out to be my best friend all through school. He was my date for senior prom. And even though we never dated (and he is madly in love with another friend of mine), my mother still refers to him as the one that got away. Oh, and his name isn’t Daniel, though it’s close.


When I was very young, I thought my father was the greatest person on the planet. He was really smart and really funny and took me to football games. It didn’t bother him that I liked to play with GI Joe (back when he was a full-sized doll and not that puny piece of plastic) rather than Barbie. In fact, he thought it was kind of cool. I thought my mother was kind of boring. She was just, you know, a mom. Like June Cleaver. Except she complained a lot while doing the housework, which I found totally unnecessary (“How in the Hell did you get spaghetti sauce on the ceiling? I told you girls not to eat in your room!”).

Reality – My father is smart and he is funny, but he’s a violent shit-hole. And irresponsible. And did I mention, a shit-hole? My mother could kick June Cleaver’s ass. And probably Ward’s (and not just because he’s dead now), but she would never kick anyone's ass because she's just too cool. I found out after my parents’ divorce that she was just quiet most of the time because my dad was too busy doing all the talking. And telling her to shut up. And I realized that my mom was really smart and really, really funny. Especially when manic. Oh, and she used to wear combat boots. What of it?


My first semester in grad school, I adopted two cats. I planned to adopt one, but when I met Mickey and Annie, they were just too sweet to pass up. Annie was kind and gentle, and her brother, Mickey, came right to the front of the cage and rubbed against my finger, then rolled over on his stomach, and though I couldn’t reach it, I knew he wanted a belly rub. He stole my heart.

Reality – Annie was sick. Her full lethargy surfaced within a year, and she had to be put to sleep. Mickey turned out to be aggressive and standoffish and the first time I rolled Mickey’s upturned belly, I pulled back a shredded hand. When I took him to the vet to be neutered, the vet laughed at me and told me the cat had already been fixed. And that, oh yeah, he was a female*. I changed her name to Mickie.


I worked the closing shift at a convenience store during my first semester of college. I had to restock the coolers and clean out the back room before I could go home each night (early morning), but I could only do this when there were no customers in the store since unattended customers tend to shoplift and/or masturbate in the bathrooms (yes, really). Every night, about an hour before close, this guy would come in and play pinball for about forty-five minutes before finally getting the hint that I had work to do and he needed to move on. I assumed he was just some lonely, creepy dude who loved pinball.

Reality – He was just some lonely, creepy stalker dude who loved pinball. Apparently, I had said something funny to him one time when he stopped in for coffee. He took this as flirting and came back the next night, and the next, and so on, hoping to continue with said flirting. Oblivious, I gritted my teeth each night when he came in because his presence in the store meant I couldn’t get my work done and get the hell out of there. One night, I took my frustration out on a cardboard display stand of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and as I tried to move the stand (by kicking it across the floor), the cardboard collapsed and candy bars spewed forth. The creepy dude helped me clean it up and a conversation ensued. His son now lives in my spare bedroom. And eats all my food.


*The Richmond SPCA sucks. That is all. Dismissed.

A GI party isn't as hot as it sounds

Years ago, when I was resisting brain-washing at basic military training, I often looked for an excuse to get out of the day’s planned activities – running, marching, standing in formation, being yelled at by TI’s, more marching. There were very few opportunities to avoid these things, but fortunately for me, my mother had gone through the same abuse-filled summer camp just years earlier, and before I left for San Antonio, had given me two exceptions to the cardinal rule of not volunteering for anything. Ever.

My mother taught me that a GI party, while it sounded fun, was nothing more than a complete and thorough cleaning of the dorms, followed by inspection, which no one ever passed thus followed by laps around the training field. So, for example, I knew before I arrived not to volunteer for the “bunny patrol,” which entailed lying flat on one’s stomach and wiping dust and hair from under bunks and lockers, not as the name seemed to indicate, standing outdoors and watching for fluffy-tailed mammals.

Two things that at first might seem distasteful, however, I should by all means take part in. The first, it seemed, was road guard duty at chapel. This conjured up thoughts of standing at attention all day beside a traffic barrier on asphalt in the southern Texas heat. I was skeptical, but followed Mom’s advice and volunteered. It turned out that being a chapel volunteer got you out of most of the Sunday GI party, since you spent much of the day at church, where the chaplains, unlike every other non-trainee at basic training, behaved like actual human beings, and treated you as such.

And the actual work we did consisted of spending twenty minutes of the very early morning standing beside a barrier, waiting for the base commander to arrive for chapel service so we could move the barrier and salute his car as it drove past. Once he arrived, we were free to come inside and have a soda or snack and sit in the chapel courtyard until the first service was over, until it was time to go back out and move the barrier and salute again. The rest of the day we spent standing at the doors, handing out programs to our fellow airmen as they arrived for the various denominational services. During each service, we were free to either join in – and some time I’ll post about that – or again, sit in the courtyard and chat with the other ushers. At about six, we all marched back to our dorms, to be greeted by our flight-mates who had been working hard all day, glared at us, begrudging the fact that they had volunteered for the wrong tasks.

The other thing my mother urged me to volunteer for was KP duty. I had watched enough Bugs Bunny cartoons and Bob Hope comedies to know that KP was usually a punishment handed down to screw-ups; nevertheless, I again took Mom’s advice, and when the day came that our flight was tasked with the duty, raised my hand. KP sucked. The actual work of it anyway. For one thing, those on KP duty had to get up at three, knocking out two hours of sleep, a precious, precious commodity at basic training. And we didn’t get to do anything glamorous like peel potatoes or spoon slop onto airmen’s trays either. No, we spent our time washing dishes. It was hot, physical, gag-inducing work, but the upside was that in between meals, after all the dishes were cleaned and set out for the next meal, we were allowed to eat.

Chow time at basic on a normal day meant standing in line, at attention, and waiting to get into the chow hall. During this wait, any number of TI’s might approach you, ask a question from your Airman Training Order (the military bible which you were meant to memorize), and send you to the back of the line if you answered incorrectly. Or worse. Once you finally got your food and got to your table, you stood at attention behind your chair until the table was full, and the last airman to arrive announced that you could all be seated. Once seated, you were required to drink three glasses of water before picking up a fork (this was to prevent dehydration in the San Antonio heat).

The food, for the most part, was under-seasoned, and all condiments and other yumminess – like ice cream and beverages other than water – were located in the center of the diningroom, where we were welcome to venture once we’d polished off our water. The problem with this was that the path to the condiment and beverage bar went right past the Snake-Pit, the appropriately-named table where the TI’s sat and dined and randomly called upon airmen out of their seats to answer questions from the ATO, and just in general, humiliate us. Few were brave enough to get up.

Besides the fear of the Snake-Pit was the fact that chow time had a limit. A flexible limit that was often set according to how well the flight had performed that day or whether or not the TI had gotten any the night before. Sometimes, all we had time to do was drink our water before the TI called our flight back to attention and we had to bus our trays, throwing out all the food we might have actually liked to eat, so wasting time by getting pepper or a glass of milk was too big a risk to take.

Thus, spending a few hours scraping off plates of barely-eaten food and wet napkins seemed like a fair exchange for three leisurely meals. And ice cream.

Our dance

Sometime in 1997, I wait on the other side of a heavy dung-colored door. Someone has to come and let me in. To only let me in and not let the crazies out. My son is at home with his father. I know that my mother wants to see him, but I wonder what it does to him sometimes, coming to this place where men with beards alternately shout obscenities and weep for their mothers. The nurse leads me down the hall and puts me at a table to wait for my mother. Around me in the dayroom, the patients twirl and glare.

She wears cotton pants and two cotton gowns – one facing the back and one the front. The last time I saw her, she was in my apartment with a homeless man who was wearing a pair of her shoes. She wore a cowboy hat. And a feather boa. It is difficult now to find anything strange. She smiles when she sees me, stepping out of her room and into the bright, clean light of the hallway, but by the time she sits at the table with me, she is in tears.

“Hi, baby girl,” she says. Her hands lie cupped in her lap and her shoulders hunch forward. This is barely the woman I grew up with.I swallow hard.

“Hi, Mom.” I want to reach over and squeeze her hand, but I don’t. She already seems so frail, I am afraid that this gesture will be her undoing. Instead I hand her one of the tissues I brought with me. While she wipes her eyes and nose, I try to find something to say.

“Brought you some movies,” I finally tell her. “Sleepless in Seattle. Moonstruck.” Her favorites. She watches them over and over. Her doctor tells me it is comfort for her, something familiar to grasp in a world that seems to be spinning away from her.

“I have a vcr in my room.” She sniffles. I think of my son, catching his breath as he tries to calm himself after a good cry.

“The nurses told me when I called.”

“You called?” I can tell by the way her voice goes up at the end that I’ve made a mistake.

“You were sleeping.”

“Oh. Okay.”

But I know it is not okay that I called and did not speak to her. I know that she sees this somehow as an indication that I do not love her. It doesn’t matter that I called to check on her. It does not matter that I am here now.

"I’m thirsty,” I tell her as I stand up.

“Do you want anything? A soda?”

She shakes her head. “I have tea in my room.”

“I’ll be right back.”

I walk across the dayroom to a vending machine and dig for change in my pocket. I feel the eyes of the patients on me. Coins clank as they fall into the hopper, and I glance around the room, smiling uncomfortably and nodding as I make eye contact with the others in their cotton pants and hospital gowns. One woman bursts into tears and a man wants to know what the hell I’m looking at. I press my selection and try to concentrate on the banging sound of the can as it falls through the machine.

I keep my eyes to the floor on my way back to the table.

She has stopped crying completely, this stranger who inhabits my mother’s body, and I hesitate for a moment as I try to choose whether I should move to the chair on the other side of her, where my back would be to the room, or if I should sit down where I was. I decide on my first seat. It is better to make eye contact, no matter how uncomfortable, than it is to turn my back on them. On anyone.

“Was the boy sleeping?” she asks about my son.

I lie and tell her yes.

“Does he ask where I am?”

“He knows you're at the hospital. He wanted to buy you a teddy bear.”

My mother smiles. But her eyes don't show it.

“Maybe I will bring him next time.”

“Next time,” she says and the smile leaves her face. “How long am I going to be here?”

I close my eyes and bite my lip. Sometimes I think I will never get the hang of it - this dance we do so often. My mother listens too intently to what I have to say, hovering around every word, attempting to uncover what is yet unsaid. I shuffle my feet, try to stick to the choreographed steps, and hope to keep her from whirling too far away.

Work 101. Instructor: dhf's mother. Credits: 0. Day/Time: MTWTFSS 12:01am - 12:00am

Things my mother taught me:

1. There is work to be done. Someone has to do it. You can’t count on anyone else to do it right, or at all, so you might as well do it yourself.

2. If the work is not done, it will only create more work down the road, and since #1 almost always holds true, you will be the one doing more work.

3. At any given task your co-workers will be one or all of the following:
a. Lazy
b. Incompetent
c. Absent
Therefore, it is in your best interest to help them out (ie do all the work) to avoid # 2.

4. Work that is not done will bring shame and condemnation on you and your entire family.

5. Once the work is done, there is more time for fun, and the fun will be made even more fun by the fact that you don’t have the thought of undone work hanging over your head.


Things most of my co-workers’ mothers apparently taught them:

1. Life is not about work. It is about joy, and sunshine, and gossiping about the little people, who are working. Don’t waste your time doing something someone else can do better.

2. Tasks left unfinished will be completed by the next person, who let’s face it, is probably beneath you anyway, so who cares?

3. If someone else is willing to help you out or do it for you, let them. They likely:
a. Enjoy it
b. Have nothing better to do
c. Are too stupid to know any better or do anything else
If not, they would stop.

4. You are a special person, with special gifts; do not squander your time on details and menial tasks (See #2).

5. Have fun! There will be plenty of time for work later.