The words are stuck, held up somewhere between my brain and my fingers, an activity- and family-induced language logjam.

So here are some pictures, a little holiday filler. I'll see if I can dredge up some writing before the end of the year.

Christmas morning pteranodon, courtesy of Uncle B.


Preparing the cioppino.



The final product.


Homemade Mexican chocolate ice cream.


This year's inadvertent (but popular) theme: dinosaurs.

I'll be catching up on comments here, there, and everywhere in the next couple of days.

Until next time ...

Tags: Christmas, family, Photos, filler

Family will be descending upon our household tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the visits (really!), but may not be posting, commenting, or dropping many cards until the new year.

Have a peaceful and relaxing holiday! If you can, with that guy staring at you.

Tags: Santa, family, Christmas, holidays, Entrecard

By the time the lease ran out, I was barely speaking to Joan and Alistair. I owed Alistair money – someone in a group of kids I brought home from d.c. space had landed on the coffee table in a dramatic drunken loss of consciousness, permanently bending the metal frame. Post-fall, the table sat with one leg propped up on a thick paperback, its glass top tilting slightly to the left, a reminder of my dissolute ways. I started hiding out in my room, emerging only to eat and use the bathroom. Then Joan didn’t invite me to their spring engagement party, bluntly telling me that I had to find someplace to be when Alistair's wealthy Westchester County, New York family met her working class Baltimore clan. When it was time to move, I looked only at studio apartments, determined to live alone this time.

Capitol Plaza Apartments

The studio at Capitol Plaza Apartments was cheap and within easy walking distance to Union Station. On the first floor of an eight-story building, it had a large window overlooking the basement roof and a hemmed-in view of surrounding structures. Small and dark, with parquet floors and “apartment-sized” appliances in the not-even-galley kitchen, it was a cozy cave, the right place to hide out for my final year of college. I moved in August 1991.

To pay the bills, I took out more student loans, got a better paying part-time job working in a library at a high-profile law firm. That’s where I met Chas.

Chas had recently divorced and was trying to figure out his newly single life at 39, the house gone, his routine changed. I was a loner 21, a strange combination of vulnerable and shuttered, talking more to the homeless men who bivouacked on my street than to my fellow college students. We were both in love with DC, with its high crime rate and crack wars and the insane mayor-for-life Marion Barry. The brick rowhouses, the policy wonks, the strange political celebrity, the feel of it all: It was home.

Chas had left Columbus, Ohio in the early 1970s and headed straight for the District. He would tell me stories of growing up the city, where his large family lived in a massive brick Victorian. It sounded exotic in its blandness, the spread-out burg with the solid architecture. “They just don’t make houses here like they do in Columbus,” he would chuckle, and I'd smile as if I knew what he was talking about. Chas got his own apartment at 16, a few years before he moved to DC. Since I’d been emancipated from parental supervision from the age of 14 or so, he felt like a kindred spirit, another concealed soul, self-protective and insular.

Most of our conversations took place on my early evening library shifts where there was no one else in the office to interrupt us. He would discuss the pursuit of church ladies (they were a tough bunch), explain his theories on electromagnetic radiation, how the destructive energy fields from power lines were spreading cancer and causing miscarriages. We would stare out the window at the office building across the street, watch the after hours workers work or not work, watch them watching us. There was one man who was always talking on the phone, standing with his back to the full-length window glass, earpiece pinned between head and shoulder. It was a performance just for us, the man’s hands swooping and slicing the air as though the person on the other end would be persuaded by gesture. On the street below, commuters dallied or rushed, flagged down taxis, spilled out of the Metro station on the corner.

A lone wolf on the streets of Dupont Circle.

I told Chas all about my former roommate Martha, my escapes to visit her in Chestertown, where our evenings at Andy’s were blurred through multiple glasses of Dark and Stormies, a potent mixture of Goslings Rum and ginger beer; he’d get the details of the Bass Ale-soaked nights we had at the Irish Times or the Dubliner. Sometimes I would give him sanitized versions of barhops with Abe, an old friend from Delaware. Abe and I usually mixed our liquor, beer, wining and cocktailing it to the final rounds of Long Island Ice Teas. These evenings generally ended in an argument over something petty. We screamed across disco lights and crowded dance floors, tossed barbs in the back alleys of Georgetown, only to do it over again a month later.

In none of these conversations did I tell Chas about my drunken flirtations, about the Marines Martha and I dragged back from the bar one night, about the make-out sessions with Eastern Shore acquaintances, the booze-fueled pursuit of contact. Alcohol always uncovered the chasm, brought the need for other people to the surface.

In between the pickups and the throw-ups and the work and the studying, I’d occasionally see my faraway half-boyfriend. But most weekends were quiet. “Friday night drinking night?" the corner liquor store owner asked me during one regular visit, to which I gave a weak nod and smile. I’d drink, study, write papers, maybe catch the PBS Saturday night movie on my crappy box of a television. The Capitol Building was close to my apartment and I would walk around its lit-up beauty at night in all kinds of weather, braving bracing November winds, floating through the incredible sweetness of spring, when the cherry trees and azaleas were in bloom. (“I am alive, I am alive” I would think as I walked a path of fallen pink petals, feeling the joy rise up in me).

The week before Martha drove me out to Illinois in a battered U-Haul truck, Chas and I went out for one last round of beers, a temporary goodbye. I had every intention of returning to DC immediately after graduating from library school. But then I met a guy who got a job and we moved to a new town together: Columbus, Ohio. We started to build a life, adopted some animals, and finally bought a house. It was a four-bedroom brick Queen Anne in the Old Towne East neighborhood, a steal at $125,000. When I gave Chas the address, he was quiet for a moment.

“That’s the same block I grew up on,” he finally told me. Almost exactly across the street from our new house was an empty lot, the location of Chas’s childhood home.

Franklin Avenue house and neighbor (we never had a flag up and the neighbor will have to be a story for another day). Photo from Old Towne East Neighborhood Association.

It was a strange coincidence. What were the odds?

Tags: College, friendship, coincidence, DC, roommates, alcohol, Columbus, loneliness, isolation

Here's a little bleak filler for you while I work on a longer post about the tail end of my isolation, my senior year in college (with a cheery story of a strange coincidence at the end! If it fits.).

Two notes: This is fiction. And for a much more encouraging take on "Fake it until you make it," check out the post The Greatest Love from the fabulous Melinda Roberts Tyler of Melindaville.

Image from It is Called Mount Cope.

I’ve been reduced to this, eating cheese crumbs out of my clothes, stepping over the cat puke on the rug, shuffling outside in a pair of de-elasticized boxers and a translucent t-shirt, ancient and holey, to get the New York Times at 10:30 a.m.

Yeah, I’ll wave at you, neighbor woman from across the street. Hello. Hello. I don’t know your name because you never gave it to me. The first thing out of your mouth when we moved here two years ago was “Don’t park your car in front of my house again.” OK. Thanks for the welcome, lady. That was when I cared, when my skirts were crisped by the drycleaners, when I ran a brush through my hair in front of a wiped-clean mirror, when I spent half an hour every Saturday wrestling with that damn morning glory vine on the fence to keep it in line. I cared what you thought then, Neighbor, but I don’t anymore.

No. I don’t give a fuck. I trace these two years gone and if I cared I might wonder what happened. He left, briefly, though he’s back now. We’re back to the marriage bed, so to speak. I still can’t stand the feel of his hand on my back, how his fingers trace their way down to my ass. Fake it until you make it, the expression goes. That’s his philosophy, anyway, and at least he’s here. Says he’ll stay with me through this little setback of mine. This emotional trough. He claims to know what love is. This is it, supposedly.

But I don’t believe him and wait for him to disappear.

Tags: writing prompt, depression, Neighbors, anger, indifference, cleaning, keeping up appearances

Sometimes, even when I’m telling the truth, I lie. The little details – the television show blaring from my grandfather’s headphones, the color of the walls, the phrase my stepmother used on the phone? Mostly made up. I create these details out of the residue of experience, out of an impression left by the unfolding of events. Without them the story is flat, expressionless. Boring.

Fact is fiction, fiction is fact. They intermesh. One informs the other until the words themselves become the truth of the writer’s experience, more real than reality.

When I started my stillbirth story, I was hemmed in by fact. I’d show it to my mother and she would offer corrections to misplaced fictions, give me her version of events. Some facts are important. It is not acceptable to totally make things up, to frame the innocent, or create character flaws or strengths where none exist. I wanted to be fair to my parents, which is a strange impulse when documenting an unfair situation, but why give fuel to the threatened?
 
Then I read poet and essayist Mark Doty’s piece on memoir, in which he describes his sister’s wedding dress. It was practical, a two-piece beige suit with matching pillbox hat. Did she choose beige as a rebellious stand against traditional white? Was the choice a result of parental pressure, the (barely) pregnant bride denied? Was it a beige suit after all? Why is his 45-year-old vision of the dress so strong? Memory is elusive, impressionistic, sometimes dead wrong. Facts are slippery. Doty questions whether these facts always matter in the telling of one's life story. Aren’t the impressions real in their own sense, the memoir a murky middle ground, a product of the "juncture of memory and imagination"? In the end, imagination wins out.

Or it does most of the time. When I found out that my mother's Aunt Ruth had a spinal condition and couldn't wear high heels − one of her legs was shorter than the other − I had to rewrite a scene (since totally excised) from the Florence Crittenton Home portion of my stillbirth story. The sound of her heels clicking against the linoleum floor, keeping time with my infant mother's screams was almost irresistible to me, a summing up of institutional efficiency and a baby's wordless pain. But I had to change it, especially once I discovered that my mother was a generally silent baby, calm, and apparently tearless. The soundtrack of nothing, no tears, no outward display of emotion, the image of Aunt Ruth limping as she exited the building with my stony-faced mother, was much more compelling than a newborn wailing against metronomic heel taps. Here was an infant who was already accustomed to being ignored, a child who grew up under a heavy coat of suppressed and private pain. This presentation of the silent child − from my mother's memory of stories her adoptive mother told her − deepened my understanding, explained the emotion underlying her explosive temper, the avoidance adapted early in life. Though, of course, this is all my interpretation informed by imagination and experience.
 
I’ve started to let go of the hard truth. I can’t recreate the world of my childhood, but can remember the feel of it. Does it matter if the house was truly cavernous, whether the bathroom had mint-green tile, whether it was Johnny Walker Red or tequila? It does not, but the story doesn’t develop without description, without a sense of the reality of place and time. Many facts don’t change, of course, and those facts are the bones of our life stories, fleshed out with language, given new life with words.

The events I write about here (outside of my fictional pieces, and even then the lines are blurred) happened. When I can't remember something, I take my impression and create a reasonable facsimile of reality.

And that’s the truth, Ruth.

***For thought-provoking writing on writing and a great Julian Barnes quote on creating fact out of fiction, please check out this post from Scottish writer Jim Murdoch's fine blog, The Truth About Lies.***

Tags: fiction, memoir, writing, Mark Doty, truth, reality, lies, facts, imagination

Obviously, Victoria wasn’t planning on falling down the stairs, tumbling like one of her son’s Lego creations, a gymnast gone wrong, cracking and popping along the way. She landed on her back, squinted her eyes at the upside-down view of the chandelier hanging in the stairwell, noticed two burnt-out faux candle flame bulbs. The stairs were in need of a good vacuuming. Two weeks’ worth of animal and human hair had been forming into angry mobs along the corners. They were threatening to rise up and cover the entire surface of the steps. The left wall had a series of equally-spaced gray marks made by her toddler son’s hands as he supported himself while climbing up and down. This vantage was a good reminder to vacuum more often, much like retching into a toilet bowl rimmed with stray hairs and old drops of urine was a push to get out the scrubbing brush.

Photo from apartment therapy.

“If only I was drunk,” she thought, remembering those tales of drivers fueled by alcohol miraculously surviving car-totaling accidents, their floppy limbs and carefree attitudes rescuing them from death. Extricated from smashed tin-can cars, they get up and walk away with a sprained wrist or broken toe while their sober counterparts are Medivaced and rushed to emergency surgery. Then she remembered: she was drunk.

This wasn’t normal. “Really, this is an outlying event,” she pictured telling the paramedics. “This is not my standard Tuesday afternoon.” Her stressful weekend had bled into the week and she couldn’t stand the muscle tension, her shoulders pulled tight, the way her tendons held her limbs at awkward angles. Victoria couldn’t even hug her husband properly. Unconvinced by his warmth, by his beating heart so close and welcoming, her body maintained its stiffness. She felt like an impassive observer as her hands thumped him on the back, a prelude to withdrawal.

When Laura suggested sharing a bottle of wine with lunch, Victoria thought: why not? It beats valium. The crisp Sauvignon blanc complemented her crab salad. They each had a tiny glass of Port at the end of the meal over a shared piece of chocolate cake. She felt marvelous.

No. Not drunk. Just a little tipsy, a little loose. Maybe she wasn’t hurt after all. Victoria slowly raised her right arm, then her left. She moved her head from side to side, bent a leg. Sore. Bruised but not broken. Her tailbone ached, and her left hip was probably turning purple, the broken blood vessels leaking into her muscle fibers. She turned around, pushed herself up. How would she explain this one to Barry? Oh, it was easy enough. Chris was in the habit of leaving his toys right by the stairs and both she and her husband had almost tripped multiple times. Maybe this would convince her son to be more careful. Even though he had nothing to do with it.

Once she was off the floor, Victoria inched her way up the stairs, favoring her left leg. To better assess the damage, she went into the bedroom, stripped down to her underwear and stared at her battered image in the mirror. Years before she had fantasized about taking up boxing as a way to get out built-up anger. Intrigued by the idea of sanctioned violence, she wanted the thrill of knocking her fist into another human being, but had never worked up the nerve to sign up for lessons. Victoria balled her freckled hands and took jabs at the mirror as she danced and swayed. Her hip was as dark and soft as a ripe plum. One of her cheeks was yellowing and there was a thin line of clotted blood coming from her nose. Her back ached. But the tension was totally gone.

Tags: writing prompt, falls, stairs, cleaning, boxing, violence, alcohol, wine

Many in the park are reading the white butterfly.
I love that cabbage butterfly as if it were a fluttering corner of truth itself!
Tomas Tranströmer, "Streets in Shanghai"

Photograph from Wired New York

Many in the park are reading the white butterfly. Or worshipping the wrinkling God, exposing their winter-white limbs to the sun. Backs against thin towels, resting on hodgepodge quilts or supported by near-dead grass, they lie among the remains of dog shit and crushed beer cans. Four months of relative darkness, of travel wishes: the sea and sky clear, the beach unpeopled, a tropical drink supported by sand. Stuck in the city for the long haul, they celebrate the coming of spring.

They travel from studio apartments, from many-windowed penthouses, stream in from the train station, form in groups released from grubby cubicles. Maybe they are cutting school, calling in sick. It could be that they don’t have anywhere to be in the first place.

She props herself up on her elbows, surveys the landscape of bodies. Across a line felled by desire, a white butterfly floats, a promise fulfilled.

Tags: writing prompt, Tomas Transtromer, Streets in Shanghai, Poetry, sunbathing, Central Park

At my grandparent's house during the John The Murderer era.

It was a dark place, with a cavernous bathroom, small squares of mint-green tile above the white, a pedestal sink, the tall window adjacent to the toilet covered by a pullcord shade. Outside of the bathroom, the rest of the old Wilmington rowhouse loomed: shadowy rooms; marked-up walls in need of paint; hardwood floors scratched and worn from decades of footsteps, the worst places covered by faded area rugs; a raggedy couch there, a threadbare recliner here; the folding tables with chipped veneer. Because the windows were painted shut, the air was stuffy, smelling of overcooked food.

I don’t remember other kids. I don’t remember playing. I do remember lying on the floor (or was that a cot?) for my nap, but not sleeping. Maybe that’s why the bathroom is so solid in this elusive memory – those that don’t nap are made to stand in the bathroom. Bad girl.

Tears and stubbornness. It wasn’t fair. No one could make me sleep in this place.

The woman who ran the home-based daycare knew John the Murderer (click here for more on him), my mother’s ex-boyfriend. So when he showed up after the breakup, after we moved out, when he came by to pick me up during naptime, she let me go. I was quiet and polite – this was important, to go along, to not make him angry, to stay safe. He took me to a store, had me pick out a huge stuffed animal to take home, and returned me without harm. It was a somewhat threatening attempt to get back into my mother’s good graces. When that didn’t work, he pursued us to my grandparent’s place, "kidnapped" my mother for a brief time, another sketchy story of violence that isn’t mine to tell.

Recently, when my little one, my sweet, sometimes maddening almost-three-and-a-half year old was behaving just like a preschooler should, testing boundaries, being frustrating, I felt the anger flame up inside of me, the low boil going immediately to steam. After calming down, I thought about my life at his age and how small and defenseless and maddening I must have been myself, a little person in the midst of some very bad things, trying to protect her mother, to keep it together. The past was reaching out to slap me in the face again, the suppressed anger of long-ago, the abuse I both witnessed and experienced.

I’ve asked my mother to tell me what happened while we were living with John. Some of it I vaguely remember (or know from past conversations)– being made to stand at the table for meals, his physical abuse of my mother, his tendency to drink – but there are gaps in my knowledge. I need to know, to confront it, to feel the suppressed feelings. It will be another step toward emotional wholeness, a step toward being an aware parent.

My mother has agreed, apologetically, guilty, worried that I will be angry with her. There is no cause for worry. I just need to know.

It's the next hurdle.

Tags: John the Murderer, existential angst

Careful to leave dust of longing undisturbed, for fear that it might rise again— up my nose, induce fits of passion; or worse: contentment.”
— from Clarity, a poem by Candy Tothill

Candy Tothill of Inside Candy

I am officially jealous. Well, not exactly jealous, just dumbstruck with admiration. South African blogger Candy Tothill is a business owner, a mother to three, and one hell of a writer (who in her spare time is working on a book). Her blog, Inside Candy, is an enticing combination of poetry, rant, and keen observation.

Candy’s writing is evocative. Her poems dance around sadness and loss as she captures the elusive nature of a moment or a fleeting thought, the glimpse into someone else's window, a view into another way of being. In between the poems, she mixes it up with critiques on South African politics and thoughts about life. And while there's a lot of good stuff on her blog, she's written for several publications, too.

So, what are you waiting for? As Candy says, "Be not afraid. It will only offend readers to whom life itself is offensive."

Tags: blog of the month, Reviews, writing