Month: October 2015

The dark unfeeling cardboard box

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When I was a young child, I never really liked school a lot. Sure, there were some bad teachers, some good, and some everywhere in between. But it really wasn’t that. It was never that. It had more to do with Matt, my autistic brother. Being less than 2 years younger than me, I could never get away. The school really didn’t know what to do with Matt. He was the first autistic child to come through the school district. When he couldn’t function in a regular classroom, they cut the library in half to make it a special ed room.

For a long period of time, Matt was nonverbal. Oh, he did scream and cry but he did not talk. He was uncontrollable. His teacher at school set up a naughty box for him between the library and special ed room. Almost every time we had library, my brother was in the box screaming and flailing around. The box seemed high at the time because I was so little. When my class lined up to look at books, the kids could peer into the box. Most of the time the kids laughed and I hated them. I put my feelings in a big box that seemed even bigger than the box that Matt was in. Many times I would rather be trapped in that empty box devoid of feelings, life, and light than to face the pain of the real world.

For a long time I floated around in my own little world. How could I make friends with my classmates? How could I like the kids that called my brother a retard? I went deeper and deeper into that box. I stopped eating. I didn’t talk to anyone. I started failing my classes. The only thing that touched my heart was music. I had this focal point that I would always stare at so I didn’t start crying in that class. I was so lost. My mom was very concerned, she had the school counselor talk to me. She was a wonderful person who tried to help me make friends and talk about feelings.

My mom wasn’t in much better shape herself. Mother daughter outings with the extended family ended up with my mom sharing with the family how much she hated autism and all of the things that Matt did or didn’t do. The family just wanted relaxation and fun. They were uncomfortable that my mom was crying and needed their support. They stared at me all the time. When I was alone with family, they peppered me with questions about if my mom was ok and how was Matt. I didn’t feel like anyone cared about me. Most of the time they were just trying to help without being very helpful.

One day Matt started talking again. He told stories of how his teacher in the grade school was abusive towards him. She shoved him under her desk and sat down at her desk squeezing him in there. He also said that the teacher would place him face down on the floor and sit on him making it hard to breathe. My mom asked me if this could be true, she was very upset.

After everything that happened, my mom tried to keep my younger brothers sheltered from going to school with Matt. She sent my brothers to parochial schools and schools that were out of our district. I wonder if that had anything to do with me not responding well to being in school with Matt. Did I save my younger brothers some pain? I hope so.

A stranger weekend

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Well I can check sleeping with strangers in a hotel room off my bucket list. Seriously though, I am not sure flippant things count as checking something off my bucket list. Do they? Or do they have to be long drawn out meticulously orchestrated premeditated plans like running a marathon? I certainly find that a lot more enjoyable! Or do I? I mean really, it was a hell of a lot of work. But I don’t enjoy the spontaneous checking things off my bucket list that I just added 5 minutes ago. Maybe these things need to be on separate lists. Maybe I am too structured. Are there rules? Hmmm. 

About the sleeping with strangers….. As some of you know, my best friend Lisa moved to Florida this past summer. She is probably sitting on the beach in the sun right now…ok, I have to stop thinking this way or my sanity will not be intact for winter. Anyway, after Lisa left Cindy came in and took her place. Cindy invited me to a girl’s weekend away with her two childhood friends that I didn’t know. We shopped, went out to eat, and got a massage. It was nice even though throwing an introvert in with complete strangers who know each other well can be a little awkward. I mean, I couldn’t share any juicy gossip. But I am quick with the jokes and love to make everyone laugh. 

Unlike Lisa, Cindy is not a runner. Gasp! Shocking, I know. She said she wants to put a 0.0 sticker on the back of her car just to spite me. She said opposites attract. She is crazy, fun, and carefree. I am excited to see what adventures we will share next. 

Grounded for life, part 5

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A few days later, Randy showed up with a car full of friends in his old boat of a car wanting to go for a ride. But I was grounded. Sometimes if I knew that my mom would say “no”, I would ask my dad. He always said “yes”. I suspect that if I asked my dad if I could go out for a wild drunken night of debauchery he would still say “yes”. But no such luck, my mom was home. Plus she got pretty angry if I went past her and asked my dad. Anyway, there was no getting around it, I was grounded.

Randy drove off leaving us behind. That was not all he left behind. As Randy drove off, the guys noticed that Randy’s car was leaking fluid of some sort. Brake fluid! Back in the day, we couldn’t just call him on his cell phone to tell him. I will liken it to my parents stories of walking to school uphill both ways. How did we survive? Sometimes it is amazing that we did. Instead we worried. Randy never came back to pick up my friends. Later that afternoon, we received a call that Randy got in a car accident and was in the hospital. He was going 65 on a back road. As he approached the stop sign he didn’t have any brakes, lost control, and ended up hitting a tree head on. Luckily he walked away with a few bumps, bruises, and glass imbedded in his face and body. It was a miracle that he survived a head on collision with a tree without wearing a seat belt. He remembered wandering around aimlessly in confusion. His Def Leppard tape still playing but the front end of the car was gone.

The next day, my friends and I went to the junk yard to see the remains of his car. It was a pretty dismal sight. We wondered what our fate would have been if I hadn’t been grounded. Would some of us be underground?? I remember getting the call that night and driving my parent’s car to get to the hospital. I was afraid and crying. We were all pretty shook up. I think that God was watching out for us that day. If I wasn’t grounded there is no way we would have all survived that crash.

It has been over two decades since I saw Randy. I don’t think of him all that often anymore. To be honest, if I saw him walking down the street I would turn around and walk away. Some doors are meant to stay closed.

Grounded for life, part 4

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It was the summer right before my 17th birthday that I got grounded. It was the first and last time that I got grounded. I remember being pretty upset about it at the time. I just wanted to hang out with my friends. I never thought on that 4th of July that a spark would set off a chain reaction that ended up saving my life. At the time, all I saw was red from the fireworks exploding in loud angry cracks. 

My mom told me that I needed to come home right after the fireworks. Randy showed up that night in his 1970’s big boat of a car with my new boyfriend and a friend of his. Perfect, I set up my boyfriend’s friend with my friend Connie who I invited to come live with me that night. Connie had a rough life. Connie and her younger siblings spent the summer living with whatever friends would take them in. She never had many clothes to wear, no winter jacket, and her mom would leave the kids for days at time with only cough drops to eat. She never called to look for Connie when she didn’t come home. Eventually, the kids ended up in foster care but for those couple of weeks I took Connie in like a stray cat. Connie had a horrendous upbringing, but that is her story to share. Growing up the way I did, I had a hard time relating to kids whose biggest problem was a bad hair day. 

After the fireworks that night, Randy had every intention of taking us right home. However, he decided to take the guys home first and then drop Connie and I off last as we were on the way home for him. It would be a half an hour out of the way to take the guys home, not really a problem. The problem was that Randy said that he knew a shortcut to get back home. After taking some back country roads, it was apparent that we were lost. We wandered around aimlessly for over an hour, turned around, stopped when the road dead ended in a field, turned around again, and eventually ended up in a town over an hour away from my house. I wish I could say we had a map in the car or a cell phone to call home.

We eventually found our way back and rolled in the driveway after 2 AM. So much for coming right home. How do you explain getting lost for hours when you know the route home like the back of your hand? Oh, and by the way, I brought a new friend home that is going to stay with us for a couple of weeks. I almost felt sorry for Connie, it probably wasn’t the best time to have a new friend live with us. Being grounded that night stopped Connie, our boyfriends, and me from what happened next. It would have been tragic. 

Grounded for life, part 3

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Sometimes I sit and wonder about the things that I haven’t thought about in a long time. Sometimes that bothers me. I wonder why if Randy did some bad things, things that he ended up in prison for, why he never hurt me. He had the opportunity to hurt me, but didn’t. Why was I spared that pain? Was it simply because God knew that would put me over the tipping point of more than I could handle. Randy did some very bad things, but never did anything wrong, illegal, or immoral with my friends or I. Nothing beyond his vandalism of signs and driving fast on country roads without seat belts. Mainly we just joked around and laughed.

One of the last times I saw Randy was right around his 18th birthday. He told Shelly and I that some friends were throwing him a party. He wanted us to come out to celebrate with him. At the time, Shelly was living with me at my parents house. She wasn’t the first friend to live with me for several months. The minute Shelly turned 18, she lived with us until graduation. Her parents weren’t bad per se. They were smothering her with their overprotectiveness. Shelly never really did anything wrong, they never let her.

We showed up to Randy’s party at his friends’ house. It was the first time and thankfully the last time that I saw these friends of his. His friends were in their 30’s, seemed kind of strange but ok. We sat in the living room with the 3 teenage children of his friends. The six of us sat in awkward silence ready for the party to start. The couple throwing the party were in the kitchen behind a closed door. Something was wrong, there was yelling. It sounded like plates were being thrown and smashing against the wall. There was a struggle of some sort, a banging against the wall. Randy went to check things out. The screams continued. Randy came back and said that we were getting the hell out of there, something about someone chasing someone around with a butcher knife.

The three of us jumped into my car and as we were trying to leave the cops showed up. The cops said that we couldn’t leave the scene of a crime. They took us inside and threatened us with blood tests to test our alcohol levels. Our course we said that we didn’t mind because we hadn’t been drinking. I didn’t even see the domestic dispute so I was little help answering questions. Eventually they let us go. We dropped Randy off at another friends house. Happy birthday, it sure was memorable.

When Shelly and I got back to my house her parents called and chewed her out for being at a wild party. Guess they just hung around their house listening to the police scanner until eventually they could tell her what crappy kids Shelly and I were. A big part of me felt bad that day knowing that sometimes life doesn’t turn out like it should.

Grounded for life, part 2

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Sometimes things happen that really aren’t technically our fault, but could be because we didn’t do anything at all to stop them. Guilt by association. Inaction as an action. It is rather embarrassing sometimes to talk about events that happened when I was a child, the age my children are at now. Events that were stupid and childish looking back in middle age adult eyes. 

Today’s story takes place out in a very rural area by Mary’s house. I mentioned Mary previously, she was my friend that had 14 or 15 siblings. I can never remember. Please don’t make me mentally count each one by name. Randy wasn’t an only child either. He had 4 brothers. He shared a father with his oldest brother, each of his younger brothers had a different father. His older brother was along for the ride. Mary’s house was always a zoo, so we decided to take a walk. It was autumn, I remember that because the corn was high and ready for harvesting. Later that evening we were running through the corn fields hiding out. Randy’s brother lifted me up to see if I could see anything over the corn, but it was dusk and the husks were so high I could barely peek over. 

The trouble started when we got to the creek. Randy and his brother found a large sheet of plastic lying on the road near the bridge. It was like bubble wrap plastic. They thought it would be a great idea to burn the plastic. I still remember the sizzling and cracking sound of the burning plastic. To make matters more troublesome, Randy and his brother pulled out the signs for the bridge and threw them in the ditch. Around this time, Mary’s dad drove by on the way home from his third job. Mary told the boys that her dad was going to call the police if he saw the fire and suspicious activity. Not long after that we may have even heard sirens. And that is how I ended up over my head in a corn field at dusk. 

Mary decided she wanted to call her sister to see if their dad said anything. She babysat for the farmer’s kids down the road and said we should walk there so she could call home. I remember walking into her neighbor’s house at night to use their rotary phone. The TV was on and the farmer snored softly in his chair never waking up. I don’t know where the rest of the family was. It seems surreal that night in a stranger’s house as Mary called home. Mary’s dad didn’t see anything, so we walked back to her house. No one got grounded that night. 

Grounded for life, part 1

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The first time I met Randy was on the school bus. The bus was full when Randy got on except for one seat, my seat. He sat down next to me, jumped back up looking for another seat, and after finding none sat down next to me again. He nervously explained that he couldn’t sit by me because I was too beautiful, but there was nowhere else for him to go. He stuttered, chuckled, and wiped sweaty palms on his jeans. It was a couple weeks later in the middle of May that he asked me out. It snowed 6 inches on that day. My first relationship lasted as long as it took the May snow to melt away. But a friendship was struck since that first day. 

It was later that I learned more about the real Randy, but I will never know for sure. He never told the same story more than once. He loved to laugh and have fun. That was part of the problem. I learned later that he was in foster care for stealing a car for joy riding. Randy never caused me any harm, however trouble seemed to follow him everywhere he went. 

As a teen, I never had any boundaries. I was treated as an adult at a young age. I guess it was a benefit for having many adult responsibilities. For the most part I was trustworthy. There were times, however, that I wished I was grounded. Like the time Randy came over with a couple of friends to go out. For some reason, I was afraid of Randy’s friend. He was downright shady. There was something bad about him. My mom told me to go out and have a fun time when I really wanted her to say that I was grounded for life. I remember sitting in the back of this guy’s car. The floor was rusted out in the back seat. If you sat in the middle, you could see the ground. I was afraid that a bump would cause the whole back seat to fall out. 

There were other outings with Randy. He went to meet up with someone to talk about things that future felons probably discuss. I was offered a beer. Being the goodie two shoes that I was, I did not drink it but put it in my trunk. My dad found the beer. He told me I could get in a lot of trouble for that so I took the can and smashed it against some rocks. But I didn’t get grounded. 

The time I did get grounded though probably saved my life…

“Acting” my age

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When will I be too old to wear a bikini? Will it be next summer? About a year ago, I gave up wearing liquid foundation. I didn’t like the way it caked in the lines of my face. One good thing about getting older is that I really don’t need it anymore. My complexion is flawless now. Although I never had issues with acne, I did have rosacea. I used medicated cream to tame the redness. I even bought a green base coat to put under my liquid foundation to tame it down. If I didn’t wear foundation, people asked if I got a nasty sunburn on my face. My face isn’t ruddy rudolf reindeer red anymore. 

When will I act my age? Is age only just a number? Are you only as old as you feel? When will I no longer do all of the things that I didn’t get to do when I was young? It seems like my friends don’t go out as often anymore. When they do, they don’t stay out as late. They don’t dance to every song anymore. They look old. Do I look old? Do I look ridiculous pretending to still be young?

I feel like I was never able to be young, to make mistakes. Probably because I never was. I worked hard to earn the love I got. Love was not unconditional. It was earned by being perfect. I didn’t make mistakes because I never lived. I was encouraged not to try something new so I wouldn’t mess up. I had to be perfect or I wasn’t lovable. I had to care for my disabled brother without complaint because I was perfect. I was expected to have perfect grades, but couldn’t live up to it. The women in my family were perfect. My mom was perfect, she was a saint. Aunt Grace was always right, even if she was…gasp…wrong. Grandma was perfect, I could not find one single fault in her. Her love was unconditional. My first born is a perfectionist. She is so easy to love. Love shouldn’t have to be earned, my younger two children remind me of that. They are not always as easy to love. 

I never got to be a child. I was too mature, too shy, too serious, and way too perfect. Is it too late for me to be imperfect? I’m sure it is not. I do have one thing to say. I have absolutely no regrets. None. I just want to grab on to as much youth as I can, experience everything I can before it is too late. Before I have to start “acting” my age. Maybe the desires of youth will eventually fade. Until then, I am not ready to give up the fight. 

Gramps, his later years

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My grandpa’s life interwove with mine for a total of 26 years. I wish I could weave a story that makes the last half as magical as the first half, but I can’t. Right at the midpoint, the summer of my 13th year, my grandpa developed a rare form of polio. One morning while trying to get out of bed, my grandpa fell to the floor. My dad and great uncle tried to lift him without success. An ambulance came to the house and took him to the hospital where he spent the next couple of months learning how to move again. It was a scary place to go as a child. I saw many people struggling to make simple body movements. The scariest was a teen boy who became paralyzed after a deer went through the windshield of his car. 

After a couple of months, my grandpa came home in a wheelchair. He no longer drove. He didn’t walk and he didn’t leave the house. He spent the early years making Christmas ornaments and clocks.  He also carved fish and ducks. His carvings were so life like that people mistook them for a taxidermists work. Then one day, my grandpa became so frustrated that he told my grandma to put all of his carvings in a box and burn them. She didn’t. I think at this time his arthritis was making it painful for him to continue. It bothered him to not be able to do anything anymore. He would sit in his wheelchair and instruct others how to do their work properly. 

To make matters worse, he needed surgery for prostate cancer, lost his vision due to cataracts, and developed diabetes. My grandma never once complained about being his caregiver. He was very demanding. At times, I would sit with him so grandma could get a ride to the grocery store. He was very panicky if she was not back right away. He wanted me to call the police to see if something happened to her. 

After time, most of my grandpa’s friends and family passed away. The only visitors he got were the Jehovah witnesses. They were kind to him and shared fishing stories. I visited at least once a week. Many times I would sit with my grandpa in silence. After I had kids, he loved to visit with them. He would smile, hold their little hands, and cry. He loved visits with my dog too. 

After 13 years of sickness and struggle, my grandpa went to his final home. He was ready. A few years after that, I was waiting to sing my first solo in church. I saw a man who looked exactly like my grandpa sitting in the back. For a few minutes, I imagined that he was still alive right there with me. I miss our time together. 

Gramps, my young years

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If my grandpa was still living, he would have celebrated his 95th birthday today. He was a good man, but full of piss and vinegar. He spent his working life as a mechanic for his parent’s business. Before my time, he owed a Harley but had a hard time with it because he was so short. His friends called him stub, not because of his small stature. They called him that because he was a very stubborn man. A trait that I also have. 

For the first two years of my life, my parents lived with my grandparents. My grandpa was always up at the very crack of dawn drinking his coffee, clanging his spoon on the side of the mug. Rumor has it that he would wake me up and carry me around. But that is not a trait I possess, being a morning person. My grandma and dad were extreme night owls, so it seemed like someone was always awake in that house. I have always been conflicted in this area, I hate getting up early and don’t like staying up late. What does that make me? 

I want to tell you that my grandpa was the most influential man in my life. But for good or bad, my dad probably was. My dad never spent any time with me, but my grandpa did. He took me fishing. He always told me to quiet down or I would scare the fish away. It took me many years to find out that wasn’t true. 

On Saturday morning, he would pick me up and take me to the dump with him. The dump man was his friend and he would always ask if anyone dropped off any bike parts. Then my grandpa would take home the parts and make bikes for me. It was quite impressive. One day my grandpa took me to a store with him to pick out a bike kit. He put together a lovely new bike for me. This meant a lot because my grandpa did not go to public places. This was the only public place I remember him going to willingly, not out of obligation. My grandparents did pick me up to go out to eat, but we always went through the drive thru and ate our meals by the lake. He always drove 10 mph under the speed limit, he was never in a hurry. His life was simple in those days. My grandma didn’t drive so my grandpa would take her into town and wait for her in the truck. 

My grandpa owned a little tree nursery. One day he was going to throw out a dead tree. I wanted to rescue it. I watered it a lot hoping to revive it. Then one day a healthy green tree was there. I saved it. Or so I thought at the time since grandpa put a healthy tree in its place. Too bad I still think overwatering is the answer after a long period of not watering. I don’t have grandpa’s green thumb. He also picked ground cherries for grandma to can. He would take us in the woods to go berry picking. 

My grandpa made an ice shack with Mark. He also made a waiting house for us so that we wouldn’t have to wait at the bottom of our long driveway for the bus in the winter. One day when I was supposed to be in it, the waiting house blew into the ditch from the strong winter winds. I was feverish, mom thought I was hallucinating. Sure enough, it blew into the ditch right before the bus went by. Later this became a cat house for my cat colony. 

Some days I wonder what my grandparents would think of the busy life I created. At times I covet the simple life of the unhurried. The time to sit and talk over a cup of tea. Or other things that don’t happen anymore…unannounced guests. My grandparents always had friends or family stop by to visit. I can’t remember a time where I stopped by to visit someone unannounced. I could probably get together with you in January. Oh wait, sorry my weekends are fully booked until March. Perhaps it will be this way some day when I am a grandparent.