Tell your story walking
It was May and the sun was shining bright. A row of cars sat by the creek, stereos blasting as other people enjoyed the sun. Monkey Hill, a steep road paved in cobblestones, rose above the park. I took off my strappy sandles, so grown-up, by the old fountain. And then I stepped on a bee. As my foot swelled, I hopped the half mile home, dragged myself past the Brandywine Zoo, stopped briefly under the dramatic arches of the Washington Street Bridge. At home, I made a paste with baking soda to soothe away the sting.
I walked home from 213 the morning my mother and I had a fight and she told me to get out of the car, just get out. We were living in Maryland by then and it must have been early spring, because the ground was thawing, had gone from rock-hard to mud, yielding and thick. She couldn't back out of the driveway. Her tires made deep ditches in the mud, but the car stayed in place. We emptied bags of kitty litter underneath the rear wheels; I pushed against the hood while she revved the engine. In the end, we borrowed my grandfather's car, but I had already convinced myself that school was out of the question. We fought. I obnoxioused myself out of it pretty early, right after we made the turn onto 213 from Town Point. Still, it was about three and a half miles back to the Little House, past cornfields on a road with no real shoulder. I remember a couple of neighbors driving by and waving as I picked my way back home, walking in between the road and the gully.
What did I do when I got to the woods? The road there was dark and curvy and any semblance of a shoulder disappeared. Maybe my mother changed her mind and returned to pick me up. Or more likely I clung to the side of the road, walked against traffic. I kept on going.
I have a recurring dream, about once a month, where I must walk from Elkton to Hollywood Beach. I march past traffic, climb up and down the bridge over the C&D canal, stop by the small shopping center closest to home. In dreamland, the store where I used to work is still there, in expanded form, all florescent lights and earnest employees in dark blue cotton uniforms. No one there can help me. I walk out into the dusty afternoon, plodding across brown cornfields where the remains of last year's crop still poke out of the ground and the footing is uneven. At the edge of the woods I discover a path off the road. And that's where I get stuck. I run into D. or I am so scared that I just stop, or sometimes I don't want to walk forward. The trees reach into the sky and it's so quiet that I want to stay forever.
Until now I've never tied the dream to the morning my mother kicked me out of the car, the forgotten fight, the abandonment of those years again, again. It always seemed like a not-driving dream or a stress dream, but now I wonder if it all started in that walk during that terrible time. I wonder what it means, how it ties who I was then to who I am now, whether I should start to peek under the surface of its meaning.
From a writing prompt, a song this time, Tell Your Story Walking by Deb Talan (video above). I spoke to my mother after writing this and she told me that she thinks about our fight, me getting out of the car and walking home, often. She thinks a neighbor gave me a ride home. I think she's right.
While your heart still beats
The pavement was slick and
there were potholes and too many trees by the
side of the winding road. The first to go
were two juniors who were cutting school,
doing what teenage boys do, driving too fast,
maybe drinking or passing a bowl while the
tires screeched and the car fishtailed. They
ended up upside down in the creek that snaked
by the road. They died. There were others in
high school who died in car accidents, too,
though at this point I mainly remember the
names of the survivors (thanks,
Facebook,
with your updated images of people from the
past).
Since my grandmother
died, I’ve developed a
strong sense of mortality, of my own, of
other peoples’, of the various cats and
dogs that have been in my life. Sometimes
it hits me more than others, generally
when I’m feeling low and isolated, when
the sun hasn’t been out in weeks. It
doesn't help that I've been spending an
hour or two a day writing out the details
of illness and death for my novel
manuscript. And I’ll have
dreams about
these people, the dead from high
school, usually as represented by David
Anderson, the last one to die, the one who
made it into the yearbook, a ghost by the
time the book was printed.
There are other “deads” as my son calls them,
like Carolin, a friend from college who had
some sort of birth defect that we never
discussed. She’s been gone for seventeen
years, sometimes still visits me in my dream
version of our college dorm. My grandfather
shows up less and less now as I deal with the
past, though I am sometimes reminded of how
much there is to deal with (another nod to
Facebook, where people who knew me
peripherally during one of the darkest times
in my life show up, and I remember just how
bad it was and I want to die with the
memory).
As I was wrestling again with that long-ago
past, something that I keep thinking should
be a “dead” itself at this point, as I was
having a good cry after washing the dishes
Thursday night, Nora, our Russian squirrel
hound, came clicking into the kitchen. She
likes to comfort the sad and inexplicably
lonely, especially if it involves a pat or
two for her. I knelt down to stroke her chest
and was struck again with memory. There I
was, ten years old, in what used to be my
grandmother’s room, petting Greta the
miniature schnauzer. Greta's fur was warm and
soft. She groaned as I scratched behind her
ears, reached out a paw as if to say "Don't
stop." At the time, I was struck with the
exquisite transience of it all, the way a
heart stops and the lungs give out, the
vulnerability of our soft bodies and delicate
skulls. Disease creeps in. A car slams into a
tree and then into you. You ignore the deep
cough until it is too late. No matter the
trajectory of the story, we all know how it
ends.
Greta was killed by a hit-and-run driver when
I was in seventh grade, about six months
after we left my grandfather's house for
Wilmington. He let her out when he was
getting the mail. As he limped to the
mailbox, Greta trotted to a neighbor's yard.
She was halfway across the street when a car
came tearing past and knocked her into a
ditch. Either the driver didn't see her or
didn't care to stop and my grandfather caught
only a glimpse of the car's tail lights. It
was the violent conclusion of Greta's brief
story.
I knelt in the kitchen, my arms around Nora,
and added up the dead. I felt their hands in
mine, the touch of a gentle paw, the sound of
a meow. Greta and I sat together in the dusty
sunlight, her eyes brown and serious, her
heartbeat strong. Sidney played a game of
capture, batted at the pencil I pushed under
the door. Louise
curled up on
the dining room table, a dog pretending to
be a cat. I brushed against a boy in a
hallway as he ran by, late for class. And
my grandmother croaked out "Tie a Yellow
Ribbon" while I giggled from the swing
that hung from the maple tree. Even the
tree is gone now, but like the rest it
exists in my memory, in the stories I
tell.
I held Nora tighter, tried to appreciate the
moment, knowing I would think about it when
she was gone. And the sweetness of it almost
killed me.
Top photo by Jane
Underwood, Writing
Salon mistress and photographer
extraordinaire.
Bottom photo by Mr. T from Nora's first week
with us in 2003.
After writing this prompt and struggling with
various versions of it for the blog, I got
out my senior high school yearbook (theme: "A
Unique Blend." I had forgotten that high
school yearbooks had themes), just to check
on some of the facts. There was David
Anderson, still in with the living seniors,
but at the front of the book was a dedication
to three other people from our class who had
died, two of them in car accidents: Pat
O'Donoghue, Rob Klaczkiewicz, and Joe
Lombardino. There were others who died while
I was at school, specifically those
upperclassmen in the first paragraph of this
post, though I could have some of my facts
wrong about the accident. They died in the
mid-80s, well before our lives were digitally
monitored, before you could have a Facebook
page even after death. The fact that there
was no trace of these young men made me sad.
It was almost as if they had never existed.
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The slog and drag of the humdrum

Here are the things I don't
write about here:
My son's colds and coughs
Chores, like vacuuming up the fur, dust, and
sand that accumulate pretty quickly in a
house with three cats, a dog, and three
humans
The laborious process of rewriting my novel
(well, I may mention this in passing, but not
in great detail, since that would send all of
you to snoreland, but it is indeed laborious,
like work-on-the
same-three-paragraphs-for-six-or-seven-hours
laborious)
The difficulty of writing something that is
long-term, of continuing through it without
the instant feedback of blogging
Cooking dinner whether I want to or not
How we're figuring out
where the kid will go to school for
kindergarten in the fall
Tips and tricks for keeping
one's sanity after weeks of rain and
afternoons inside with an energetic
four-year-old
Coping mechanisms I use to see us through one
of Mr. T's business trips
My political views
Natural disasters
The pros and cons of having another child
The perhaps impossibility of having another
child
My anxieties about the quality of my writing
and the wisdom of my current career choice
RIght now I'm stuck smack dab in the slog and
drag of the humdrum. The novel is taking
precedence over the blog and I don't feel
like I have enough time to really shine up
any of my short pieces of fiction for this
space. I'm not sure that many people want to
read the fiction anyway. It seems that most
readers are interested in my personal pieces,
either angst from the past or my depressive
musings on current life. Not that my current
stuff is all darkness, exactly, but I think
my views are cloudier than the average
person's, cloudy with a little patch of blue
sky that expands as I examine it, which can
make the whole process hopeful, I suppose, in
a Jennifer Trinkle sort of way.
It feels as if my mind is preoccupied, that
it is working on something. I just need a few
hours with a keyboard to find out what it is.
But who has the time? I'd rather work on the
novel or maybe that just feels like the right
thing to do right now, a necessity, a way to
lose myself in words and justify my
existence.
So I'm not sure what to put in this space at
the moment, but I know my mind will crack
open again and offer itself up for material.
In the meantime, I may be posting more short
writing prompts, or perhaps reposting some of
the oldies but
goodies. We'll
see.
Image: Everyday me, as
recorded by my computer.
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The low spark of a high-heeled boy

Every day at preschool, my son dresses up in costume. It might be as basic as a police officer hat. Sometimes he adds bat wings or an elephant nose. At home he puts on his batboy costume and flaps his wings as he takes flight in the living room. Playing with the concept of name and identity, he uses aliases at our Music Together classes. The alias used to change weekly depending on his book-obsession of the moment -- Art Dog, Mrs. Grizzle, etc. -- but now his chosen identity lasts for months. After weeks of singing "Hello to Chipmunk" one of the summer session parents had assumed that was his name. "You know, Berkeley," she said with a shrug after I set her straight. "You never can tell here." Last week he went to class in full pirate regalia, from scarlett hat to skull-and-crossbones vest to sword. "Nobody will know who I am," he told me with a sly smile.
Part of his dressing up and taking on identities, his love of costume, has something to do with shyness. These are ways to be in public with being totally seen. But I also think he has a bit of the dramatic in him. Like all children, he has a rich imaginative life. He makes a set of bike wrenches into a train, builds a boat out of a pile of sticks, creates robots out of spare toys and junk. My son truly believes that if he runs and jumps fast enough, he can fly. I remember flying, too, that heady moment of lift as I raced across my grandparents' family room and landed in the dark green chair in the corner. It happened. I can't deny it.
I worry about the future of his imagination, about the coming imposition of what it means to be a boy. When he goes to school full-time next year he will be immersed in the culture of the group, where rule-happy children and adults start forcing kids into slots. I remember school as a place where creativity isn't valued and anything different is quashed. I want to protect him, to take his imagination and cover it in gleaming armor, to let him know that flying will always be possible.
The change will happen. It is inevitable. But I hope that he will hold tight to his creativity, protect himself when he needs to without smothering his imagination. The further he gets out in the world, the less control I will have. All I can offer is my love and support.
Image: The high-heeled boy at home, October 2009. Photo by Mr. Trinkle.
New selections from the back catalog of the blog in Best and Rarest!
"When are you due?"

I was not going to be that
girl. I was not that girl, marked by
pregnancy, announcing my mistake and
stupidity to everyone. Most of my friends
didn’t know about it. Even my new boyfriend
was clueless, in more ways than one: all that
direct contact with my ever-rounding form and
he never asked a question. I was going to
spend my last trimester in hiding, living
with my father and stepmother. Everyone
swallowed the story, my need for a little
time away.
It seemed to be working,
the baggy clothes campaign, the stony denial,
but one incident brought doubt. A friend,
Lynne, and I were out skipping school at the
usual place, a shopping mall near school. We
stopped in a boutique where Lynne bought a
pair of earrings. As she was ringing up the
sale, the salesclerk gave me a friendly
glance.
“When are you due?” she
asked.
I blushed. She blushed. We
were both briefly, awkwardly silent, before
the clerk quickly covered for me. “Oh, no!
You’re too young! I’m so sorry!”
Thank you,
lady.
Later, at the food court, I
asked Lynne “Am I getting fat? Do I look
pregnant to you?” gently patting my belly,
camouflaged by loose-fitting clothing. Lynne
dipped a French fry in ketchup, gave me a
quick once over. “You look fine,” she said,
and shoved the fry in her mouth. That was
that.
People stop and stare
Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster
I had a nickname name for him, a code word really, so that I could write it in my notebooks without fear of discovery. Bertie Wooster. It’s embarrassing, but 100% true: I was a 12-year-old P.G. Wodehouse fan, with a huge crush on my ash-blond, hazel-eyed classmate. Even in high school, after the thrill was gone, after Bertie had metamorphosized into a six-foot tall pothead, after I fell hard for a senior basketball player (another unrequited love), I would blush when we passed in the hall.
Crushes, I’ve had a few. They have ranged from the silly (the hot dog stand guy, summer of 1984) to intense (first husband, early days). These infatuations have been distracting, fun even. Nothing, however, has persisted like my 14-year obsession with Mr. H.
We met at work, my first week at my first real job. Mr. H. was cute and asked a coworker if I was attached. And so the internal churning began. I was attached – soon to be married, actually – but I couldn’t shake the butterflies, the deep blushes, whenever Mr. H would show up in the library. There he’d stand, feet away, hovering over the fax machine (the only one in the office); or he’d actually stop by to (gasp) ask me a question. My heart would race: it races now, as I remember those chance moments. Knowing he spent time in our neighborhood, I would survey the sidewalks evenings and weekends, on the lookout. The soundtrack for that year was a strange mix of Morphine and Holly Cole. Her version of On the Street Where You Live, with its stalkeresque undertones stirred up the ironic obsessive in me.

Today I am a happily married woman. Over the years, the crush has been mainly dormant, with a few volcanic moments. At this point, it’s academic – what meaning does this person hold for me? why do I continue to have those frustrating dreams? – but I am tired of it. And so, today, needing a new writing project to fixate on, I thought: why don’t I write a letter to Mr. H? You know, lay out my feelings in a literary sort of way, show them the harsh light of reality; get them out of my system. Maybe I send it, maybe I don’t. If I don’t, maybe I get it published. Everyone’s into reading about other peoples’ sick love obsessions! I can take this useless, ridiculous feeling and parlay it into art.
Yeah. I’ve been working on it for much of the morning, and I find that the writing process doesn’t purge the feelings: it makes them more intense.
My crush has morphed into a middle-aged thing, a yearning for escape from quotidian existence. I am ensconced in my (relatively) safe life, a housewife wannabe writer, parent to one tiring preschooler. Not much excitement here, though things are quite comfortable and loving at home. Maybe I need to take up bungee jumping or fencing, something to liven up the system.
So: Jennifer, let sleeping crushes lie. Oh, and Mr. H, if you are reading this (do you read this blog? I doubt it.), write me back, OK?
Only joking.
It's not easy being green
Elk River, Winter of 1977-78
The year before, my mother had decided to go back to college. In order to save money, she moved in with Jim, her future former husband, while I went to my grandparents’ house in Maryland. It was a year scented by cigarette smoke and coffee fumes. Mornings were my favorite time of day, sitting in the warm kitchen, a tray of food prepared for me by my grandmother, usually Eggo waffles dabbed with Parkay squeezable margarine and dripping with Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup, cartoon-character shot glass of orange juice on the side. That winter the snow kept coming. It piled up and formed five-foot drifts in the driveway, places to dig out forts and make snowmen. Snuggling in my grandmother’s bed as we listened to the radio school closing announcements became an almost-regular ritual.
Mom scored a one-bedroom apartment in student family housing in the summer of ’78 and I moved back in with her. She took the couch in the living room while I slept on a full-size mattress on the floor in the bedroom, a wooden orange crate for a bedside table topped with a flowery ceramic lamp, a clock radio, and an “I Love You This Much” figurine -- a robed, potbellied man, arms outstretched – that she had given to me in first grade.
1978-79 was the first year
of court-mandated school desegregation for
the Wilmington city schools. We were bused 34
miles roundtrip from suburban Newark, a
predominantly white, middle class community
at the time, to an elementary school in the
middle of the inner city. It was the fourth
school I had attended since kindergarten.
The dark, institutional halls smelled of
ancient gymnasium mats and cafeteria pizza.
Because I didn’t like sandwiches, Mom would
pack things like crackers and cheese or the
occasional hard-boiled egg, cooked until it
was sulfurous and the exterior of the yolk
was green. I’d display the egg to my friends
and toss in the trash can to a chorus of
ewwwws.
After lunch, students were herded over
crumbling asphalt to play outside on ancient
metal jungle gyms and rusty swings. Murals
with selected scenes of black history covered
the exterior walls. At night the surrounding
neighborhood leaked into the schoolyard;
people left behind their bottle caps and
broken glass, empty lighters and plastic
bags. The atmosphere became more unwelcoming
when I acquired the nickname “Kermit,” a name
given after I came to school in a kelly
green, polyester, three-piece suit (worn with
white turtleneck!). Think Saturday Night
Fever meets Annie Hall meets the Muppets, a
well-meaning gift from my grandmother, who
had become accustomed to choosing my clothes.
The teachers weren’t happy either and went on
strike from mid-October through most of
November. Much of that time is lost to me. My
third grade teacher brought me back to
Chesapeake City Elementary for a day or two;
I read a lot of books from the small
children’s section at the University of
Delaware library, spent many hours staring at
the ceiling of the Malt Shoppe. The ending of
the strike coincides in my mind with reports
of the Jonestown massacre, images of children
lying on the ground beside their parents, as
still and peaceful as if they were asleep.

April
1979
By early March, 1979, my grandmother was dead
and Mom, Jim, and I had moved back to
Maryland to watch over my grandfather.
Our grand experiment was
over.



