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Grace seeks sanctuary

Category Archives: Nostalgia

For love and goulash

25 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by Graceinspades in memories, Nostalgia

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Daddy, love, memories

The weather is turning cooler and I’m making goulash for comfort food.

As I prepare the ingredients, I remember the first time I heard of that dish with the funny name “goulash”.

I was in the 7th grade and my dad had driven all the way up to where I lived with my mom.

It was just getting dark when he arrived. As usual, no one else was home except my sister and me.

I was so happy to see him. He didn’t often come the full way to our house. He and mom usually met half way, but this time he’d come the whole way to pick us up.

He asked if I’d eaten yet. I hadn’t. He rummaged about in the big fancy kitchen with all the best newfangled gadgets money could buy, looking for something to cook for us, he said, not much in here to work with, what do y’all usually eat?

I don’t know daddy. Whatever is there. Sometimes I sauté a can of mushrooms in butter or if there’s lunch meat, I might make a sandwich. Just whatever’s easy and available.

As he’s flipping through the plethora of cabinets and cupboards, “Your mom doesn’t cook for you?”

No, not very often. She and Jim are usually gone until around bedtime. Jim’s business is always busy, so they work a lot. We just usually cook for ourselves or eat whatever’s on hand.

He grins that big beloved grin of his. “Ohhhh, I see something with potential in here! Don’t you worry, I’ll whip up something you’ll love in a jiffy!”

What’re you gonna make daddy?

Goulash!

Goulash? What is that? That’s a weird word. Never heard of that before. Kinda makes me think of rain boots!

My dad laughing, “What? You’ve never had goulash? Don’t you worry, it’s gonna be good. Finish your homework and dinner will be ready in 20 minutes.”

In the living room with my school books, I kept glancing behind me into the big kitchen thinking how strange it looked to see my dad bustling about in my mom’s kitchen that my step-dad had built for her.

It felt comforting seeing him there and I was excited to have a real supper… actually cooked for me and everything. That didn’t happen often in this house.

He’d doctored up some leftover chili into goulash to stretch it to make it delicious and enough for all 3 of us.

He put onions and beans in it with pasta and tomatoes, spices, and the leftover chili.

I despised onions and was not a fan of beans, but I didn’t tell him that. I ate every single bite and gushed with praise over his magical cooking skills to transform a little bit of leftover chili into a fantastic meal.

I remember feeling so content, safe, loved, and happy as I ate my goulash, chatting with him about school and all things about being 12. I wished more than anything he lived closer.

And right in that minute, I couldn’t remember the last time someone had cooked for me. Even with the onions and beans I didn’t care for, that goulash tasted like a bowl of love itself to me.

I savored every minute and every bite.

And when I grew up to be a momma, I cooked dinner almost every night for my daughters. I fussed and fretted throughout many days about groceries and what i could fix them for dinner each night. I always wanted dinners to be a special time for them.

…because I’d never forgotten how much impromptu spontaneous goulash, even with yukky beans and onions, could taste like love.

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Sun Porches and Socrates

11 Saturday Aug 2018

Posted by Graceinspades in abandonment, Complex Post Traumatic Disorder, Dreams, family, memories, Nostalgia

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innocence, memories, nostalgia

On a good day, I can step onto this tiny sun porch in this old nostalgic house haunted with a million memories of laughter, love, and joy.

Closing my eyes, it’s August of 1993. There’s a young girl sitting on that tired bamboo sofa covered in sun-faded flowers, her long tanned legs curled up under her, messy sun-kissed blonde ponytail that wishes it were drenched in sand and sun whipping about on the beach.

I can see her so clearly, I almost can convince myself to reach out and touch her. Have a conversation with her. Advise her…. Warn her maybe?

I’m not sure if I should….

But she’s too deep in concentration, brow furrowed, nose buried in a heavy textbook absolutely determined to intelligently decipher these wise debates between Aristotle and Socrates. At least enough to make her own clear arguments on any essay question put to her in the near future.

It’s her first semester of college. Her daddy is 100 feet or so away, his feet propped up on his favorite old blue lazy-boy recliner. The soothing soft sounds of golf play on the television, he dozes in and out, having just returned home from 18 holes in the perfect Michigan sun.

It’s summer of 1993. Her whole life is ahead of her. Her daddy will live forever. She’s confident she will be deeply loved someday by a wonderful man and they will have a beautiful happy family after she’s an established attorney providing legal counsel for the poor and underrepresented.

Her only concerns in this world are getting an A- not a B- on her political science exam Thursday, who she’ll hang out with Friday night, how she’ll manage to pay for 4 years of college, and if the weather will be as nice on Saturday so she can go to the beach since she’s had to spend this perfect summer week studying to make certain her GPA remains high enough to qualify for the honors courses.

She’s hopeful that her mom will love her…someday. She doesn’t really worry about such things though. She’s too determined and far too optimistic to stress. All she has to do is work hard and be a good human being. She just instinctively knows that she’ll be the most amazing human being, lawyer, wife, and mother someday.

She believes without hesitation that all the worst life can do to her is behind her.

All the best is yet to come.

Any possibility of future failure and a life full of empty loneliness and agonizing daily terrors aren’t even glimmers of thoughts in her head.

She doesn’t know she’s beautiful and I want to convince her. She’s endless optimism, an infinite summer frolicking on the beach. She’s hope and faith. She’s trust and kindness. I want to bottle that up, wrap it in cashmere and keep it safely tucked away in a drawer for some day when she’ll desperately need to believe in such things again.

I’ve so much to tell her. Dammit, she’s right there… and she needs to know…

She’ll never know or understand how i envy her. Even if I could tell her, she’d just set about to debate with me on the silly futility of envy and compassionately tell me every beautiful thing she sees in me that I can’t see at all.

I like her so much but she’ll never know that either until it’s too late and everything that she is and all that she believes has been depleted… vanished.

Olfactory Dreaming

11 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by Graceinspades in Dreams, memories, Nostalgia, Parental Alienation Syndrome

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Dreams, innocence, nostalgia, olfactory dreams

sawdust

I don’t recall my dreams often any more and that’s a grace considering the depth of horror most of them entail, encapsulating my real life horrors so that even sleep doesn’t provide a moment’s respite.

This dream was different, though.  I’m grateful for it and yet it leaves me trying to analyze what most likely was just a dream.

In this dream, my neighbor, Juanita, was visiting.  We were chatting in front of my big built-in bookshelves when she accidentally knocked something over and most of the books on the shelves fell behind the case.   I was dismayed and assumed they’d be lost back there forever with no way of retrieving them and putting them back in their rightful position on the shelves.

I tried to move the built-in shelves out to see if it was even possible and surprisingly, it moved easily!  Effortlessly, I pulled it out far enough to squeeze behind.  My first thought was, oh my, I’d better vacuum back here before I slide it back.  It’s a dusty mess back here!

The strong odor of sawdust and that distinctive scent of  fresh new remodeling hit fast and heavy.  That wasn’t dust!  It was remnants from remodeling or building the bookcase that had not been swept up.  Fresh and crisp, preserved in time back there as if the bookcase had been built just earlier this very day. My dad did not install the bookcase, it was here when he bought this 1896 house so I can’t possibly know when that mess was made and left behind.

But I am taken aback in my dream with the surprising joy of this unexpected olfactory treasure.  In my dream, as I stand there behind this built-in bookcase, I’m flashing back in time.  It’s summer of 1988 and my dad and I are touring this house for the first time…me, giddy with adoration at the historical element as well as the little secret idiosyncratic treasures massive ancient homes often display. I’m looking at my dad, gushing about that beautiful library! Then, I’m coming home to construction guys working in our house, the smell of fresh, clean paint, and my dad in the kitchen hollering out as I toss my book bag on the dining room table, I made some supper, baby! How do you like that color in the living room? 

I’m transferred back to 1988 when my dad was alive and well, my whole life was before me, and I still believed in love and that children would never betray a momma who loves and cherishes them; transported to an innocent time when my dad could protect me from everything and I knew I’d marry a wonderful man who loved me and be the best momma ever someday.

In my dream, I breathed in that smell so deeply over and over… and resolved to never vacuum or sweep back there, just so I could pull out the shelves once in awhile and visit this pristinely fragranced land of nostalgia.

I woke up confused.  I’ve never smelled a nonexistent smell in a dream before.  There’s no remodeling going on here today and that was a million years ago; there’s no sawdust in this house.  And this was so distinct and strong a smell which came from such a random, trifle of a dream.

I googled “smells in dreams” and it turns out the research is limited, but it’s not a very common occurrence. I did find an analysis of the sawdust though:  to see sawdust in a dream suggests that you need to clear up an emotional wound that has recently opened.

What an astute analysis for- of all things- sawdust!  Yet, I have no recently opened wounds.  Just  the same ones I’ve carried for six years now that refuse to heal at all.

I can’t imagine it says much for my sad, empty, meaningless existence that even in my dreams- a place where my fantasies could run rampant and I could be drenched in the joy and happiness of my children again, my dad could still be alive and laughing that infectious larger-than-life belly laugh and I could be living life as I once did, that even in that realm of limitless fantastic world of impossibility,  my greatest imaginable joy is reflecting on the nostalgia of a time before I ever imagined this could ( much less would) be how my life turned out, rather than dare to dream of some new wondrously alive or happy occurrence.

The only remote possibility of feeling joy, even in my dreams, has become the same nostalgia I feel in my waking hours.  My vast imagination is even limited now to believing the only joy possible is revisiting times before I could have imagined the things done to me since were even possible, much less inevitable.

A time when I truly believed a boyfriend slamming my face repeatedly into a glass door or a mother’s inescapable incessant cruelty was the worst my life would ever be…

I long for those days now.

I can’t quite put my finger on what that all means, but it strikes me at my core to realize  how nonexistent any hope for happiness or belief that it even exists for me at all has become.

It was delightful to just dream of having the sweet nostalgia of sawdust scented innocence and faith.

 

Memory Lane

05 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by Graceinspades in family, memories, Nostalgia

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Daddy, family reunion, joy, kentucky, memories

Main St., Hyden, KY
Main St., Hyden, KY
hyden creek

I had a sudden wonderful memory the other day.  I smiled to myself just recalling that delightful day in my life.  I’ve no one to share it with, so I suppose it belongs here.

Daddy used to love going to our family reunions in Kentucky every summer.  I looked forward to it because it was time with my dad, time free from my mother, and time with extended family who were friendly and loving to me.  His family is from way out in the hills of eastern Kentucky; a tiny little town called Hyden, where most everyone in the town is related by either blood or marriage.  So, the family reunion was like a holiday for that little town as most everyone who lived there attended.

I think I was maybe 10 this particular year.  It was an especially wild reunion this year, it seemed to me from a child’s eyes who didn’t get out in the world much living as a virtual prisoner at my mother’s.  The reunion lasted around 3 days in various forms with the big shindig on Saturday night.

The first day we arrived, I went wading in little creeks and stomping through the woods with various cousins and kin related to me in ways I didn’t know around my age.  We crossed an ancient swinging bridge and I remember being terrified to cross it!  It was so high up and rickety and swayed.  I was so terrified, I crawled across through the middle part where it was most swingy-y!

We made it across though, then climbed down that mountain and splashed around in that icy cold creek below the bridge.  The water was so clear, crisp and cold on that steamy summer day.  It felt especially great after huffing down the rocky mountain and the sweaty terror I’d had crossing that swinging bridge! I remember my dad ducking his head under and coming up shaking the drops off laughing with delight almost like a little boy.

I remember watching him laugh that big belly laugh, shaking off the droplets of water, and giggling out loud at my dad while thinking I had the happiest, kindest, most fun and loving, greatest daddy in the world!  I was absolutely certain no one’s father could ever be as amazing as mine and there was nothing anyone in the whole wide world could have said that might have ever convinced me otherwise.

The next day was the big old party!  There was so much delicious food- deviled eggs, fried chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, fish, hamburgers, hot dogs, and every kind a pie table that went for miles.  I ate nonstop all day.  The older boys and men played horseshoes in the field, drinking beer while the women mostly cooked, talked, and organized everything, and the younger kids like me just ran wild in the fields playing tag, investigating interesting bugs, just being as free and delighted in the simple things of this world as kids often are.

One distant cousin lady there that year had a brand new baby, as tiny as a doll.  I was torn all day long between playing like a hooligan with the kids, standing around the horseshoes with my dad, and holding that little baby.  I wanted to do all three all at one time and didn’t want to miss a second of any one of those delights.

When it got dark, there was a band that played.  It even had a fiddler and a guy picking a banjo!  Everyone danced and the band called for a dance contest.  I watched this with particular interest because I had only danced to records alone in the downstairs of my mother’s house.  I’d never seen so many people dancing in my life!  I wanted to watch and learn how to actually dance.  My amazing dad won the dance contest and they gave him a family reunion t-shirt that said he was the best dancer or something.  I was so excited when he handed it to me and said I could wear it!  I put it on over my shorts and tank top, like a nightgown, and wore it with pride at having the best daddy who I was now certain was also the best dancer in the world on top of all other matters of excellence my dad was!

After the dance contest, wearing my dad’s trophy t-shirt, it was getting dark and I asked the woman with that little baby if I could hold her again.  The baby was tired and fussy and I could tell her momma needed a break.  I took the little doll outside the big noisy room onto the porch and rocked her while singing Rock-a-bye Baby, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and all other little songs I thought would soothe and comfort a tiny baby.  I sang all the songs I sang to my doll at home, but this time to a real live teeny little baby!

She fell sound asleep in my arms almost instantly and I couldn’t stop just staring at her tiny little mouth, her delicate eyelashes, her miniature fingers, and her soft little curls.  I fell madly in love with this precious little creature!  I never ever wanted to put her down!  This was the first time I’d ever held an infant all by myself before with no grown-ups even watching me, like they trusted me with this perfect tiny little human being.  I felt so much love and joy in those hours, I could hardly stand it.  I didn’t even care that I was missing the party or was away from my dad all alone outside.

She made little sounds as she slept and I was fascinated.  Her name was Lexi and I was so sure she was the most beautiful living thing in this world, I vowed that night as I rocked her and watched her sleeping to name my child after her someday because I knew there could be no more precious or perfect baby in the world as this one except the one I would have someday just like her.

We had to make that long drive home the next day and I talked to my daddy about Lexi the whole way home.  I told him how perfect she was, how much I loved her, how much I missed her already, and that some day,  when I was a momma, I would have a Lexi just as perfect.  A baby Lexi just like her, only my very own, who I would never have to let go of and would get to rock to sleep every night, not just one perfect hot summer night in Kentucky.  And I knew all my days would be perfect then- when I was a grown-up who could love and adore my own Lexi forever.

My daddy laughed at how smitten I was that day driving home from Kentucky, but 13 years later when I had a little girl, he knew before I told him even what her name would be.

Lexi.

And so it was.

Existential Chicken Noodle

02 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by Graceinspades in abandonment, Daddy, grief, Nostalgia, Parental Alienation Syndrome

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cooking, Daddy, despair, grief

Digging through cabinets, I think chicken noodles, maybe?

“Yes, chicken noodles”, I answer myself.

I glance at my own hands, pulling the chicken from the freezer.  I think of my daddy’s hands.  There aren’t words in any language to define how much I suddenly want to make chicken noodles for him and my daughters. I think of a zillion times he cooked for me, how happy that made him, how he loved cooking.  …and how I’d so much loved cooking for my daughters too.

I wish I had counted every meal he made for me in my lifetime.  I couldn’t ever begin to count them.  Suddenly, I ferociously want a number…I want the exact fucking number!  I want the number and I want to race through the house screaming that number at the walls…

FIVE MILLION, TWO HUNDRED, AND SEVENTY-EIGHT!

FIVE MILLION, TWO HUNDRED, AND SEVENTY-EIGHT!

FIVE MILLION, TWO HUNDRED, AND SEVENTY-EIGHT!

FIVE MILLION, TWO HUNDRED, AND SEVENTY-EIGHT…….TAKE THAT, ALL YOU HATEFUL PEOPLE WHO WANT ME TO BELIEVE I’M WORTHLESS AND UNLOVABLE!  TAKE THAT, YOU LIARS – YOU NASTY DECEIVERS!

FIVE MILLION, TWO HUNDRED, AND SEVENTY-EIGHT —– AND YOU’LL NEVER EVER BE ABLE TO TAKE THAT FROM ME!

I’m angry at how easily I could count the times I cooked for him.  I’m not going to let myself stop and count those, though.  Not in my head, not on my fingers, not today…not ever. No.

…spilt milk and all…

Why did I not cook for him more? I angrily ask myself as I wash my hands. I need to tell him.  He needs to know these things.  He must know them.  It’d be too unfair if he never knew.  And my life overflows with futile, senseless, non-budging, disgusting unfairness already.

This simply cannot be one more.

I walk into the living room, lean against the entryway, and look directly where his chair always sat.  I can’t look in that spot and not see his gigantic grin, his unstoppable energy to do for others, how genuinely delighted he was when I was happy, how he beamed with pride at watching me succeed at a job or just watching me be a momma to his grandbabies.  He effortlessly defined joy.  And I don’t know where he went from me.  I don’t know how I’ve lost him from my soul.  Once upon a time, I was so much like him in that way…

I briefly wonder when was the precise moment I stopped being who I was and became who I am.  I ponder who it is I am today and how he would have hated seeing me be this.   I reflect on how his entire last 30 years were spent encouraging my happiness, supporting my struggles, lifting me up from the daily battles of physical handicaps, balancing my single-mother struggles, assisting me with impossible financial situations….

He had fought so tirelessly hard, yet so cheerfully, for me in all of it.  He would be devastated to see this – all of this… now.  Everything he’d devoted himself to – everything – up in existential smoke.  He’d dedicated so much of himself to not this. And, I realize I never once saw him devastated or beaten…not once.

Not. Even. Once.

I tearfully apologize to him. My heart spilling over with the ache of regret, missed chances, missed conversations, missed opportunities to cook for him, and the tragic lack of even one final I love you before there would never be another.  Ever.

I look back down at my hands.  Things like manicures and pretty fingers have become so senseless, yet I’m appalled at the rapid aging of my hands from just the past six years.  Are these even my hands?  I’ve not accomplished a fraction of what he did and my hands look hideous.   I hear him smiling saying, “Heyyyyy bay-bah…?  Let’s go get you a manicure!” with that confident excitement of an innocent child he always had when he knew he could fix something…make it better…bring joy and Band-Aids to someone he loved.

And he always loved me. Always.  So great big and so out loud that its absence is an indescribably painful emptiness.

I think of his hands and how aged they’d seemed the last we spoke…and how deeply it had bothered me I hadn’t had any lotion in my handbag that day to moisturize those loving, worn and wearier-than-I even-knew hands.

I tell him he deserved better from me; he deserved more somehow.

He deserved so fucking much better than that and far, far, FAR better than this.

I’m making chicken noodles on a cold and dreary day, Daddy.

I can’t wait to see your smile when I bring you a plate.

Dear Savannah…

24 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by Graceinspades in Lexi and Savannah, Narcissists suck, Nostalgia, Parental Alienation Syndrome

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children, memories, parental alienation, Savannah

Dear Savannah,

I need to write you a letter and I’m not even sure where to begin…

I wish with my whole heart that you’d allow me to just tell you these things… it’s difficult to write them out, much less write them all. And it was so important to me that you know every last sentiment and memory I hold in my heart about you.

But…. that’s not to be. So I’ll do my best here….

You and I have been through so very much… far more than you could remember (thank God!).

The color I always associated with you was yellow, a very specific shade of buttery yellow.

Yellow like a very certain sunrise, yellow like the lost hope of my youth, yellow like a butterfly surprise with sunlight illuminating its wispy wings. Soft like a love song but powerful like the sun itself.

You’ve said and done so many extraordinary things- we’ve shared so many amazing moments, it’s just impossible to write them all out and I can’t shake the sadness I feel when I think you may not know or remember every single one.

You were literally sheer light when you were born. You know my pregnancy with you was difficult and tenuous. The stroke I had when I was 3 weeks pregnant with you could have easily killed us both. But it didn’t! The doctors weren’t sure of the amount of damage the lack of oxygen might have done to you. They said it could cause anything from severe physical and mental disability to no effect at all. There were no guarantees. I don’t have words to explain the vastness of my fears for you, for me, for Lexi… obviously I can’t write here of them all…

Fast forward to the morning you were born. It was different than Lexi. I had had to choose your birthday because the doctors didn’t want to risk me going into labor and possibly having another stroke that might kill us both.

The morning of your birth, your dad drove me to the hospital as scheduled and they induced labor so you could be born in a set and safely planned environment.

I was petrified for your safety and well-being and for Lexi, just a sweet little barely-toddler, should anything happen to us that morning.

Dr. David had been our doctor since the day I had the stroke on June 4, 1998. Your grandmother( my mom) had been so furiously angry at my stroke and that I was pregnant by your dad again even though I’d left him, that I had invited her to your birth… my hope was that she would love you regardless of all of that if she got to watch you come into this world. My friend Cindy held one leg and your grandmother held the other as you came into this world.

I was so scared.

Dr. David was delivering you and suddenly her face had this astonished look and I freaked out… not sure if you were deformed or dead… and I yelled out “WHAT??!?” Dr. David said, all I see is light!

You literally come out of my body with a crown of light around your head, Savannah.

And you were healthy and “normal” and AMAZING!!! Actually, you were far, far beyond normal.

You were wicked smart and breathtakingly beautiful.. with the strength of a tiger but the tender sweetness of a kitten.

I still don’t know what that crown of light around your head the doctor saw was, but she told me she’s never seen anything like it in all her baby deliveries. And I thought of you like an angel sent to me and Lexi.

As you grew, you were challenging and brilliant in every sense of the word and intelligent so far beyond your years… way beyond what was even possible.

You were a mini-me and I was determined not to suppress that amazing individuality in you nor allow anyone else to shame it away or suppress it.

And every frustration I ever had to face to encourage that brilliant light in you was worth it.

I don’t have the words to describe how I see you. You are brilliance and sunlight. You are cuddles and extraordinary sweetness with the fiery strength of a lion with the intelligence of a rocket scientist with the wisdom of Socrates.

When you were around 4, you told me you knew you had chosen me for your momma before you were born because you wanted the best momma of all.

I just don’t have the words for your level of amazing. You’re so far beyond any of that.

Thank you for calling me last month when there were shootings in Las Vegas . That meant the world to me. You’ll never even know how much that meant.

Thank you for choosing to be my daughter. Thank you for your wicked funny sense of humor that saved me a zillion times in stressful moments I couldn’t tell you at the time.

You exceed the words brilliant and amazing but I have no other words right now.

I love you to infinity.

Dear Lexi 2… I

24 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by Graceinspades in Childless momma, Lexi and Savannah, memories, Nostalgia

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Lexi, memories, parental alienation

I remember we moved in that house on Summit Avenue in October of 2007. You and I sat on the little front porch the day we moved in and you were so amazing!! You were in the 5th grade and you were so wise, so optimistic.
I felt horrible that I couldn’t afford something more elegant or fancy, but I was happy to finally have us in a good neighborhood inside your school district. Still, I felt like a failure because I wanted to be able to get us something so much nicer.

I wasn’t saying much on the porch. I was nervous because it was a bit expensive for my budget and also bc it wasn’t as nice as what I wanted for you heading into middle school…

But you… you just took my breath away. You said to me, momma this is the best house in the world!!! And I said, “is it Lexi?” And you said “yup momma it is.. it’s the best one of all because it’s OURS!!” It took all my strength not to cry. I was so deeply proud of the wise and beautiful person you were and literally amazed that I had raised such an incredible, thoughtful and encouraging child. No one in my life had ever validated my efforts or reassured me like that. I was speechless!

I’m sorry… when I think back to you being scared of the bedroom on the 2nd floor in that house. It was the nicest bedroom in the house and I was so proud to give it to you. I didn’t mind sleeping in a closet in the basement so we could live there, but I was somewhat frustrated that you didn’t like to sleep in your bedroom when I was in an actual closet. You and Savannah didn’t tell me you thought it was creepy until I bought us the house on Roosevelt. If I’d known you were that scared of it, I’d have let you sleep with me every night.

I think of that now and I wish I’d known. I really didn’t know until we’d already moved though.

I always invited you to sleep with me when you had bad dreams. I still remember the last time you came to sleep with me in the middle of the night after a nightmare in 7th grade. My mother had always yelled at me to go back to bed or slapped me for waking her when I had nightmares… which I did frequently as a child. So, I made sure you were never afraid to come to me if you had bad dreams.

Lexi, I swear on all that’s holy in this world and beyond that I literally tried every single day to be a wonderful momma for you. You deserved the most perfect momma possible! I wish I’d succeeded more at that in your eyes.

You were always the most amazing child any parent could hope for. Maybe you weren’t literally perfect, but you were as close as I could imagine a child to be.

I love you 143 million tuna melt sandwiches forever and always ❤️

(I pray you remember that I sent you a note to school one day reminding you of that!)

Unacceptable death

20 Saturday May 2017

Posted by Graceinspades in apologies, Coping, Nostalgia

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Tags

Daddy, death, love

album w. beer at picnic

My dad ❤

It’s a rainy, reflective Saturday afternoon here in my dad’s big old house and I can’t help but think of the many rainy Saturday afternoons my dad probably sat here, watching golf or westerns or gospel videos on his big tv.  It’s a safe bet that he’d call me or the girls at least once (or maybe 5?) times to just say, “Hey bayyybeee” in that deep southern baritone voice of his.  I’d guess these would be the rare days when one of the three of us hadn’t asked him to do something for us, take us somewhere or buy us some desperately wanted thing we “direly needed”.

I feel sad when I think of how many of those times I wasn’t really doing anything important, but I’d hurry off the phone after a few minutes of chit chat.  I really don’t believe my dad knew lonely though.  He stayed so busy golfing and taking care of us til the very last end that he never could have felt unwanted or very much alone.  We needed him too much.  I believe he felt sad when mother left him for her boyfriend.  I’d imagine he might have felt lonely then, but I’d guess it was more sad and heartbroken than actual loneliness.

The last few months of his life though, in hindsight it was almost as though he knew it was almost time to go.  He wasn’t sick or anything, he just started seeming more eager for company. And he suddenly started being irrationally worried about me.  Almost as though he feared I might get in trouble somehow and need him and he might not be able to be there this time…

My dad was not a perfect man by any means. There were a few times in my life he really disappointed me.  We only saw him once a month or so growing up, but often he’d get a babysitter and go on a date… And I’d be bummed because I wanted every second possible with him.  Sometimes my dad would drink too much, usually while playing old country music songs and reminiscing about mother. This made me uncomfortable because mother talked so horribly about him that it broke my heart to see how much pain he was in about their divorce.  In hindsight, I realize my mother was leading him on and sleeping with him long after she left him to marry my step-dad, so no wonder he was so torn apart for so long about it.

Once, he took us to one of his clubs where he socialized and drank frequently and got rip-roaring drunk.  He got so very drunk that around 10 pm when we got in his car, he just sat there with his head slumped over the steering wheel – not saying anything.  I was scared.  I’d seen my daddy a bit drunk a few times but never slumped over his steering wheel in total silence!  After awhile, I felt so scared I said, Daddy are you okay? He didn’t reply.  Daddy?  Daddy??!?  Finally he mumbled, “go back in there and get Bob for me, ok?”

Now, I was really scared!  I ran as fast as I could back inside to get his best friend and drinking buddy, Bob Taylor.  Bob was also very drunk and started teasing me, laughing “What’s wrong? Your dad too drunk to drive y’all home?”

I didn’t think it was very funny and I didn’t think that was very nice to say.

But Bob’s girlfriend got us home and daddy apologized the next day.  You couldn’t have given me a million dollars to tell mother that had happened!  I would have bit my own tongue off before I told her anything she could possibly exaggerate and run around putting my dad down about.

No, my dad said he was sorry and I never thought of it again.  It never happened again either.  Unlike mother, my dad wasn’t ever afraid to apologize or admit when he was wrong.

My dad was an imperfectly perfect human being.   He never made me feel bad when I made a mistake.  instead, he made me feel loved by forgiving me and never bringing it up again. He didn’t throw things in my face repeatedly or act as though he was beyond reproach because he was my dad.  He was human.  He was wonderful.  He was patient (usually!).  He was generous, kind, loving, and forgiving.

My dad never once made me feel like he didn’t have the time for me…not even when I was being ridiculous or when I was depressed and talking nonsense.  He never shamed me or made me feel ashamed to be me.

Toward the end though, I treated him like I didn’t have the time.   And look at me now, with not a single person in the world who has the time for me.  All those important friends I had…catering to my children…too worried about this or too busy with that….

Where’s all that stuff now?What did those “important” things add up to be? Nothing.  And certainly nothing of any importance compared to precious time with my dad. I’d give anything for 5 more minutes to just hear his voice, to sit and drink a beer with him, watching tv and chatting about this or that…

I suppose I deserve to know what it feels like to be treated by the world as though I don’t exist at all or as though everyone’s just too busy for me.  I did treat my dad like that sometimes and he, of anyone in my entire life, did not deserve that.

My dad was most incredibly amazing.  I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to accept or reconcile that he’s gone.

so much nothing

16 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by Graceinspades in Coping, Daddy, Narcissists suck, Nostalgia

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

goodbyes, memories, Miranda Lambert, nostalgia

So ironic that this house of my daddy’s I now live in is more like the “House that Built me” than any other place I lived growing up…even though I didn’t move here til I was 18. My daughter, Lexi loved this song, but she felt it about our house that her  dad took from us “for our own good”.  And regardless of where my children go or whom they choose to love, this house is the only one we have left that “built us”.

He stole that one because he “felt it best” along with all my personal memorabilia…so, we have this one…my dad’s…

I find myself frequently asking for signs… I’ve no clue what that even means, but I ask hourly.  I don’t believe in anything so much anymore, so I don’t even know what I’m asking to send me a sign…

I’m still here.  I have all the ingredients to escape, still feel confident my absence might be best, no one has stepped up to say Oh please don’t, my mind hasn’t changed (if anything it’s more determined and decided)…  Today, I contacted a realtor about listing my dad’s house…this beloved, ancient manor of memories… and immediately after contacting the realtor, the song that most reminds me of my dad started playing on the radio.  It’s a very old song, so I was surprised to hear it play.  And I ask myself, is that my sign?  If it is, is it a sign of yes or a sign of NO DON’T DO IT?  I wouldn’t know.

I have no other safe places.  I belong no where.  I guess I never have.  I only belonged wherever my dad was or where my children were.  None exist anymore for me, so it’s this house.  This house, where my dad helped me learn to walk again at 26, where both my daughters learned to walk for the first time, the place of so many Thanksgivings, so many birthdays, Christmases, family dinners, family giggles…  The only place I ever felt a sigh of relief when I walked in the door, knowing I was safe, knowing I was loved, knowing everything would be always ok no matter how bad it seemed….a real life refuge.

I didn’t actually grow up here. Although, I sort of did.  My daddy bought this house when I was 18.  My first boyfriend beat me here several times.  Two primary doors were replaced by him from when he busted them down.  I moved away to live with my aunt awhile to escape him and came back to be with my real first love/best friend.  And there are so many wonderful memories here of how he loved me, how he was my best friend ever.  There’s an ancient father’s day card, tucked away in a drawer, that he gave to my dad, so sure he was that he and I would be married.  He and my dad got along very well, except for my endless long distance phone calls to him when he went away to college in Chicago.  Long distance!  It’s such a foreign concept now.  In hindsight, I feel so badly for my dad.  It was actually cheaper to drive to Chicago to see him than those 4 hour long distance phone calls were!

My dad had every right to be furious, every right to not even allow me to use the(his!) phone after countless outrageous phone bills I couldn’t pay for!  He did get mad…often…but he never once beat me or shamed me or punished me or kicked me out for being so childishly selfish.

Every single thing inside this house has meaning to me.  The chips in the paint over the hall? Those are from the bouncy swing we got for Lexi when she was only 4 months old. Oh, and how she’d bounce!  Bounce and shriek with laughter…  She was the center of the world right then!  Then, Savannah came and I was so handicapped that I couldn’t hold her as much as I did Lexi…  but we had the bouncy swing and she’d shriek with joy.  And even as I’d watch her, single handicapped mother of two amazing girls, worrying about what our life would be; worried about what they’d need and if I could provide it always, my dad would just laugh watching her bounce and I didn’t know what our lives would be, but I knew it would be okay whatever it was, so I’d laugh with them too, no matter the depth of my uncertainty and fear.

Anyway,  that’s why the center of that entryway has some chipped paint that was never repainted.  In the tiny drawer of the library?  There’s a child’s tiny notepad where my dad must have been helping Savannah when she was learning to write and Savannah first wrote the word “Mommy” and her own beautiful name.

In those fun little drawers, there’s also the first portable Britney Spears playin’ CD players my dad got for my kids when they wanted them but I couldn’t afford to buy them.  One was red and one was yellow.  The yellow one is in there, haphazardly left behind at some point when my daughters transitioned to iPod music.   Those fun sized drawers hold baby sized hair ties and barrettes, some fairy tale storybooks, some 25 cent bubblegum machine jewelry that made their faces light up, tiny little child-sized sparkly nail polishes… they are a virtual nostalgic treasure chest!

A million teeny-tiny worthless, priceless little whatnots that no one on the planet would think a thing of throwing in the trash, but which flood my heart with happy, useless, hurtful memories.

So much nothing that means so much.  I bought this house when my dad died.  I confess it was only because of my dad’s memory and hoping that my children might someday feel happy that it was still in our family, holding all those memories of their childhood and their papa.  They have no need for nostalgia, nor memories…  so I really just wasted the money wishing on a star, hoping to preserve a million happy memories that my children have committed to forgetting.

I still feel like this is my refuge, even while the memories simultaneously refresh my hope and destroy it.

Sonia Leigh song

30 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by Graceinspades in music, Nostalgia, Sonia Leigh

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

music, Sonia Leigh

 

sonia

Photo borrowed from Sonialeigh.com

 

Here is a link to Sonia singing this terrific song.  It’s badly recorded by a cell phone, but I’m so grateful I have that recording since I can’t find this song anywhere!

She came in on a Greyhound

a sight for sore eyes

gave me a smile

then threw her luggage down

and stood there

like a song without a sound.

 

They both always had a travelin bone

she roamed from town to town

she don’t ask for nothing and she never stays too long

but it’s a good time every time she rolls around

 

Use my shower

Sleep on my couch

you can keep my old blue jeans with the bottoms all worn out

rest here a while I hate to see you go

but remember me when you’re out on the road

all the colors you leave behind
we got stoned on a Sunday afternoon

just watching the trains roll by

I had my chance and somehow it fell too soon

so I just threw salt at the sky

 

She showed me freedom

she made me wild

and all I knew seemed so small that day

we hitchhiked down town

and that’s the last time that I saw her

but I whispered before she flew away…
Use my shower

Sleep on my couch

you can keep my old blue jeans with the bottoms all worn out

rest here a while I hate to see you go

but remember me when you’re out on the road

all the colors you leave behind
…of the places you know I’ll find

….and the colors you leave behind…
She came in on a Greyhound

a sight for sore eyes…

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