Little Story # 20 - Year Five

Every year I wonder if I want to write a post acknowledging the day I moved into the nest. I mean - I live here now. But this year I realized it was the year I finally settled in. The actual first year I could hardly believe that I was going to live in this beautiful place I remember the first time I left to visit the mommie in NC when I came back the nest didn't even smell like me yet. I still felt like it was temporary. Then the mommie arrived and everything became about her. This was the first year in which it was about having an ordinary daily life.
There have been a few small changes in the nest. The driver series is now up. There's a new chair in the library and a matching ottoman. But things are pretty much settled. I experimented with some furniture moving but ... nothing really works as well as the first arrangement.
I am still enamored with the nest. I still sit and look around loving it and feeling gratitude.
I am still ambivalent about Hood River but I still love things about it. I love the way the seasons changing looks outside the window by my desk. I love the places where people remember me. I love the times when it feels like a small town. I don't love the lack of diversity. I don't love the clusters of people who think they're part of an elite. (Oh they are here.) I don't love the way being a small town is used as an excuse to not fix things or provide good service.
I swim four mornings a week, five when I'm lucky. I get a massage twice a month, which might sound luxurious but it's really more like physical therapy. It can be painful but I feel like it helps me to keep moving. I have all the people - a GP who I trust, a hair person, a dentist, an eye doctor, favorite restaurants, a few good friends. All the people you need to take care of yourself.
I don't get out much and that bugs me but I always have a book.
Grief still knocks me down at random weird moments. I miss the mommie. Me living here and the end of her life are eternally wedded.
Living here wasn't an active choice. It just sort of happened. I still squirm from time to time wondering if I should move somewhere else. But where?
It took five years to emotionally inhabit the nest. Five seems like a lot and it also feels like not that long.

Little Story #19

I met my dad when I was 11 or 12. My maternal grandmother used to tell me he was dead. His mother disowned him for awhile. Divorce really wasn't common and it was a big deal in the family. I'll never know exactly what happened among the adults but there I was one day - in a car with my aunt. She was asking if I wanted to meet him. I asked if he was alive, which was me being a smart ass. He was on his way so I didn't really have a choice.
There was a picture on the dresser of a much younger him. He was very handsome. I stared at that picture trying to see myself in him.
I remember him walking in the door. He'd lost some hair and grown a little bit of a belly. But that dude had charm that radiated. It was subtle. He seemed absolutely confident that everyone would love him. I did. We looked through old photo albums. Me desperately trying to show him how cute and lovable I had been. I was like a puppy at his feet. Panting.
We went for a drive around town. People we saw were all happy to see him. They looked at me and said I looked just like him. I still couldn't see it but I smiled a big wide smile. He bought me a blue record player and an album, Meet the Beatles.  He owned me.
I also remember sitting in the back of the car on the way home from the airport with my new record player on the seat next to me. The mommie sat in front. She never said anything negative about him. I can imagine how it felt for her to have worked as hard as she worked to pay the bills and send me to dance class, piano lessons and summer camp for years. All he had to do was buy me a record player and a Beatles album and he won my heart.
I still didn't see him that much. If you added it all up I probably spent less than a year with him. I was never relaxed around him. From time to time my birthday falls on Father's day. Irony. I'd call him to say happy Father's Day and he'd forget to say happy birthday.
So.
You know.
That happened.

Little Story #18

Despite the many many crushes I had there were really only three that I felt were real. The first being in high school when everything and nothing is so real. Might be another story but the one I want to tell today happened during the whole rebirthing/guru time. I first became aware of the guy when I read  something he wrote about rebirthing and felt connected to him. It was a light fun feeling. I met him on the seminar circuit. The first time may have been in San Francisco. He was hella cute.
After my trip to India I went to a rebirther's convention near Aspen. There were a lot of things that happened during the convention and I was overwhelmed. The last night I was sitting beside a small stream. Feeling so many things. I was always sort of praying/talking to Baba in my head.  I had the thought that I was ready for a partner. I heard a whistle. I looked up and there he was. Standing on a bridge that crossed the stream.
Seriously, there were so many cinematic moments in my life at that time. I'm sitting here shoveling left over cauliflower, chicken and farro from a bowl into into my mouth wondering where the cinematic moments went.
Anyway.
We sat there and talked a little. It was months before I saw him again.
I saw him off an on for about a year. I'm not sure I have the time line down. I remember lots of deep conversation in the time I knew him. There was a spiky quality between us. He was always trying to be the enlightened one. He was so funny and interesting. But he wasn't my guru. He played guitar. I can't convey how intense it all was and how connected it felt. He was really funny. We laughed a lot.
One day I came home. I didn't lock my door at that time. His duffel bag was in my apartment.
OK.
I came home a few days later and it was gone.
We had a terse conversation on the phone and I never saw him again.
I called him once. It felt stupid.
Ouija boards, dates and boys on bridges. Romance can be very confusing.

Little Story #17

I had a crush on a guy once.
Well. I had a crush on a guy about eighty gazillion times. But this one was a pretty big crush.
One day we were eating lunch together at the Diner. He said - so Tish, do you wanna go on a date?
Um. A Date?
Yeah. We could go to a movie.
Um. OK.
I went to visit a friend at her hair salon to ask what the heck I should wear. She fluffed me up a bit. I met him at the theater. He brought his brother.
Um.
We were seeing Ran by Kurosawa. I liked to sit in the front of the theater and be overwhelmed by the film. He had a vision problem that required him to sit toward the back. No problem. I'd sit in front and meet he and his brother after the film.
Tish. We're on a date. You have to sit beside me.
Um.
After the movie he said he and his brother were going to a pub to get a beer.
Um.
The next day we laughed and decided that dating was weird and we could just go to movies, or clubs together. That night we went to see Eraserhead. I guess I sat in the back. I don't remember but probably.
We had a sort of spastic relationship. I caught myself sitting by the phone one night (remember sitting by the phone?) and decided I could NOT do that. So I went to a hotel where I often hung out. There was a small bar off the lobby. I went there first. Another in the mezzanine. I stopped there to hear some music. A friend had a samosa shop off the mezzanine. I went into her kitchen to have a snack. Her phone rang. It was my crush. He wanted to hang out. He'd called the little bar, the mezzanine and now her kitchen trying to find me. He didn't want to stay in the mezz to hear the band. He wanted to talk.
As I'm writing this I am aware of how much I had to compromise for a little of his attention. Way too much. And the crush was becoming a deeper and deeper love. I had not believed he would love me and his pursuit of me (albeit weird and passive) was making me think something might happen. We talked about it a few times. He loved me very much but not "that way".
Creepiest thing to hear - ever.
So a few months of this went by. We spent a lot of time together. Drinking, smoking cigarettes, doing lines and talking, talking, talking.
Hard to say what exactly was the last straw for me. I asked him to leave my place one evening. He went to a club and met the woman he married. That was the last time I talked to him. I was shredded. For a long time.
Maybe the worst part was people saying I had to understand his feelings. I could have used a little more - he's an asshat.
What.
Ever.
A mutual friend of ours told me he told her that he didn't know I thought we were dating. I still get mad thinking about that. In fact I thought we were doing something much more real.
Asshat.

Little Story #16

When I was a tween I loved Micky Dolenz of The Monkees.
I mean.
I.
Loved.
Micky.
Dolenz.
Some friends and I did a seance with a Ouija board. The spirits told me I would marry Micky Dolenz.
Swoon.
I kept a scarp book with soooo many pictures of Micky cut from Tiger Beat magazine.
And then. He got married. Not to me.
Snivel. Sob.
I wrote him a letter telling him about the seance and my love. I said I knew I had to let that go. I hoped he'd be happy with his new wife.
Sniff. Choke.
I sent him the (by then) huge scrap book full of pictures.
He wrote me a letter saying thank you and he hoped we could still be friends.
I'd written a few letters before that and always received a post card with a picture of the Monkees and some oblique text. The letter was short but clearly hand written.
HOW COOL WAS THAT????
I don't know what happened to it which makes me so mad at myself! I wonder if he kept the notebook.

Little Story #15

One birthday I had a Hawaiian themed party.  I wish I remembered why. I remember I wore a big woven grass hat and a grass skirt. We all had plastic leis. There were hollowed out pineapples with an orange sherbet punch. I think we bought a coconut and I was sad to discover it didn't taste like the inside of a Mounds bar. I think we had a hula contest. We definitely did hula. Badly.
The mommie said something to be about how I moved when I was doing the hula. Something to the effect that I didn't move like a fat girl. I don't think she said it exactly like that but I do remember wondering what it meant and if it was good or bad. I was fat. I was moving the way I was moving.
Years later I was dancing at a concert and someone told me I danced like a Black person. I don't think they were complimenting me but that's how I took it.
I loved dancing. I went to Wee Teen dances in the big hall at the rec center. Mostly the girls all danced in a mob and the boys stood in the corner trying to look disinterested. We danced until we were drenched in sweat.
If a good song came on the radio when I worked at Dot's I'd dance with stove door, opening and closing it. Not smart because the heat would escape. At the Cafe I had a picture of Don Johnson on the wall (it was the eighties) and when a slow song came on the radio I'd press my cheek against the picture and rock back and forth.
I bought a waterproof IPod last year. I filled it up with bad pop music. I dance at the end of the pool in the shallow water. Even with my bad knees and lack of balance.
I dance.

Little Story #14

When I was a kid my grandmother's gave me the quiz.
What religion are we? That was easy. We were Methodist.
What political party are we? That was harder. I had to remember which grandmother was which. If it was my maternal grandmother we were Republican. If it was my paternal grandmother we were Democrat. I learned early that when it comes to politics you tell people what they want to hear.
Both families had two girls and a boy. In both families my grandmother played the daughters against each other. They told each daughter how much help the other was. I suppose the idea was to spur more help but all it did was cause hurt and resentment. In both families the boys did no wrong.
Cough.
My parents were the babies in both families. When they were married the consensus was that they were too young. I think that was as much about their maturity as it was about their age. I guess it may have been true since they were only married for a few years. In the early fifties being divorced was not as common as it it now. People would tell me I wasn't having a childhood. Clearly I was having a childhood. Just not one with a father present.
My maternal grandmother, Vera, was always on the run. DAR, Eastern Star, WCTU, bridge club. She had emphysema despite the fact that she neither smoked nor allowed smoking in her home. She did live in western Pennsylvania, which at that time had terrible air quality.
My Paternal grandmother, Felice, had glaucoma, diabetes, cataracts. She'd had a stroke. She didn't like to leave her house. She mostly watched soap operas. Her husband had died young. I'm not sure how. Her daughter lived with her.
And,  of course, my mother and I lived with Vera and my Poppop, Jack.
I lived with Vera and Jack until I was 12 (I think) (maybe 13). I visited Felice every summer for a month or more. I loved them all.
Recently I've been remembering Felice bringing my lunch into the living room on a tray. I'm not sure I helped her. I feel like I might not have. I'm just not sure. She was so frail. I hope I did.
I spent a lot of time alone in my childhood. I read books and day dreamed and made little stories with my dolls. Partly because I was raised by older women.
Family structures like mine were not on TV. Really, in those days, not many family structures were represented. We lived in a world of overly simple ideas of normal.