This is My Body, This is My Blood

Tickled Yellow

Why is it I can remember my childhood phone number, but suddenly I can't remember the name of a client I've seen every month for eight years running? And why do new wounds tend to heal quickly, while the damage from a thirty-five year-old injury can turn me into a snot-nosed nine-year-old in a matter of seconds?

Jack Kornfield tells us, "If it'll be funny later, it may as well be funny now." In order to tell you how standing next to the window of the barn where I grew up re-opened this whole wounded child thing, I have to divulge a secret, one that you could use against me should you ever want to, say, pry the cappuchino out of my prayerful morning hands or fight me for the last pedicure chair at Pretty Nails Salon. I'll risk it for the sake of my art, but I'm warning you, there will be hell to pay should you wield this secret weapon and I cannot be held responsible for my actions, including crotch-kicking, biting, and hair-pulling should you ever...dare I say it...tickle me.

Now, I understand some people find the act of being tickled a real crack-up. I hear there are even those who will pay to be have someone tickle them. But if you so much as hold your hand over my knee or squeeze my ribs an eensy-weensy bit, I'm likely to go all Tazmanian Devil on you. And I'll tell you why.

When my mother took sick, my next oldest sister, N, was given the job of "taking care of" her younger siblings, V & D, and me. In other words, when she told me to do something I could no longer say, "You're not the boss of me," because she, in fact, was. And she liked it. Looking back she probably resented the hell out of having been robbed of her childhood to become a psuedo-mother at eleven, so it's no wonder we sometimes suffered the brunt of that pent up anger, but I do believe she took pleasure in the power she held over us. Add the fact that N would do almost anything to put another penny in her passbook savings account, and you have the perfect climate for profitable exploitation.

In other words, if I did something N knew would make my father angry (often something she talked me into doing like hanging my oldest sister's bra on the church organ), I'd hand over my allowance in exchange for her not telling on me. She even created a "club" and charged my younger sister and I a nickle a week to be in it. If you weren't in her "club," you got the shit chores and she made your life miserable. At some point, I don't know what triggered it exactly--probably a desire to spend my meager ten-cent allowance on candy instead of paying off our mafia boss--I resigned from N's club. N wasn't allowed to spank us, so when I clenched my shiny new dime in protest of her sisterly opression, she did the one thing she knew would break me.

I put up a good fight for a skinny little kid. N may have been older and bigger, but I was strong, and managed to get a few pretty good kicks and hair pulls in before she straddled me on the living room floor and tickled me until I nearly puked. I didn't puke. though. I did, however, pee. When N felt the sudden warmth, she jumped off me and in addition to clawing the coin from my sweaty hand, ridiculed me for wetting my pants.

By now you're sympathizing with me, right? Well, it gets worse. In an act of shameless entrepeneurship, she turned our living room into a Museum of Curiosity and charged all the neighborhood kids a dime each to parade through our house and view the wet spot on the floor where I'd peed. I don't think I left the house for months after that without somebody pointing and calling me pee-pee girl.

How does one recover from such a brutal act of sibling torture as that?

One doesn't.

A few years ago I dated D, a quiet but humorous man who made the mistake of not taking me seriously when I told him that one of the deal-breakers was if he tickled me. Right up there with infidelity and being a Republican, I said. Apparently D took this as a challenge rather than a warning, because one day he decided to test the strength of our relationship.

A few moments later, holding onto his crotch and near to tears, he hobbled to my son's bedroom and said, "What the hell is wrong with your mother?"

J looked up from his computer and grinned. "Did you tickle her?"

"Yeah, but..."

"Did she warn you not to tickle her?"

"Well, yes, but..."

"Then you've got no excuse, man."

Seems my kid has absorbed a few things from his mom about how to treat a woman after all.

D banged on my locked bedroom door and ordered me to come out. When I refused, he threw on his jacket and stomped out of the house. I opened the window and yelled one of the most gratifying sentences of my life.

"You're not the boss of me!"

Sugar and Spice

If you've read about the First Wives Club, it should come as no surprise that I met one of my closest and dearest friends through my wusband while we were dating. The two of them barely survived a short-lived romance yet remained friends, and it was during one of my first overnight weekends at B's that she called.  Before I could object, B handed me the phone, saying I wanted to "meet" me.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Sweetie. What are you doing with this character, anyway?"

"Um, right now I'm making his bed."

"What? Don't you dare! You're not his domestic queen, Peaches. Make him do it."

"I don't mind, really."

"He'll take you for granted, Cupcake. Trust me."

She let out a giggle that infected me from my ear to my mouth, cracking it into a girlish grin. I flopped on B's bed, laughing and chatting with this strange woman who called me by a full menu of desserts before we'd hung up.

A few weeks later I skipped my weekend with B to spend it with I at her home on twenty acres in Kalamazoo. There, I learned one of the reasons she and B never survived. Although B takes pretty good care of his health, I, a bodyworker and recreational therapist, takes health to the crunchiest degree of all nut varieties. Vegetarian. Feminist. Only wears natural fibers. No metal in her mouth. Wears makeup made from flowers crushed by organic feet. She's the one you see at Whole Foods, questioning whether the sprouted wheat is grown with 10 miles of non-organic fields and downs no less than  28 varieties of herbs and minerals at every single meal. Although I abhor cigarette smoke, God save the Marlboro Man who gets within 100 yards of her.

Because I've always been pretty flexible, it wasn't that difficult for me to tolerate I's control-freaky habits.  We had so much fun together laughing, sharing music and massage, exchanging books and tapes, it was more than worth the trouble. When I moved to California eight years ago, I mourned the loss of her proximity almost as much as I did my daughters'.

Then last week, the two of us plotted to surprise my daughter at her graduation from a massage school in Kalamazoo, which meant I had a day and a half to bask in I's presence. Wthin moments of my arrival at the airport where she picked me up, it was as if no time had passed at all.
   
But eight years is a long time. Although I used to be a vegetarian myself, still take several supplements, and consider myself to have fairly healthy habits, I've become a lot less attached to puritanical hippie-hood and a lot more grateful for convenience.  So when my Secret underarm antiperspirant fell out of my bag, I didn't think much about it until I gasped.

"You're not using that poison on your body are you?!"

"Oh, just for the trip," I lied.

"But it's toxic!" She threw it in the wastebasket. "Here," she said, shoving a hunk of yellowed crystal at me. "Use this."

When she left the room, I recovered my deoderant and hid it in the bottom of my suitcase next to the flouride toothpaste that would surely push her over the edge.  I met her on the deck overlooking her beautiful yard where she sipped a green liquid, going, "Mmmmmmm," and pointing to a glass on the table.

"Thanks, anyway, but I'm not thirsty."

"You have to drink it, Honey Pie. It's green food to help your system adjust to the time change."

I took a sip, gagged, shook my head.  "Sorry.  I can't."

"It's delicious!"

"It tastes like my pond smells. You mind if I make a little coffee?"

"oh, fine. There's some goat milk in the fridge."

"You know, on second thought  I think it might keep me awake."

I leaned back in the wooden Adirondack chair next to hers and closed my eyes. I sighed, then reached over and took my hand. We sat there like that, soaking up the sun,  sopping up the humid Michigan air for a few quiet minutes before my friend spoke.

"You want some sunscreen?" she asked.

"Nah. I'm fine."

She giggled. "Me either, Patty Cake."

Doxology

I don't believe in astrology to the degree that I measure my actions by it, but every once in a while I stumble upon my horoscope and feel as if Brezney has been peeking into my soul's window. This week was one of those times. The day after I returned from Michigan where my younger sister and I made a pilgrimage to the little town in which we grew up, I picked up the New Times and found these words pushing against the silky surface of a freshly-picked scab:

Joan Borysenko is a medical researcher and psychologist who has written several books on how to synergize the efforts of mind and body in cultivating good health. I respect her work, but was appalled at a statement she made recently to an interviewer. "The most sobering discovery," she said, "is that we will never truly heal the wounds of our past." My own experience suggests that some people have suffered some irremediable hurts. But on countless occasions, I've also seen brave, dedicated souls completely fix what had been broken in them. In fact, that precise possibility is now looming for you, Pisces. In the coming weeks, you will have the power to make dramatic progress toward a spectacular cure that will put you in better shape than you were before you were wounded.

Last Sunday V and I parked her car at our old elementary school and walked the streets of the little village that raised us, a village that remains relatively unchanged in the thirty years since I last visited. We swang on the swings, stopped at the Babbling Brook where we used to catch frogs, wandered through the cemetery where our baby sister is buried, and ended up on the sidewalk in front of the house we shared with our parents and five siblings. As I stood looking up at the window of our childhood bedroom, I felt a sudden urge to walk through those rooms, allow myself to pass gently through the last membrane of my childhood rather than being yanked like split thread through an ill-fitting needle. Maybe my edges wouldn't always feel so frayed if I were able to reunite the child who still lives in these bones with the one who stayed behind when I went missing at sixteen.

I rang the bell. The door opened and the current pastor and his wife welcomed us on a tour of the parsonage.

My sister and I held hands as we moved through the rooms, pointing, commenting. "There's where Mom's water broke before they took her to the hospital and she delivered a dead baby," I said.

V stared at the floor, sighed, then pointed toward the kitchen. "And that's the place the mangle stood. I remember it hissing as she ironed the bedding, steaming up the kitchen windows."

We paused at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor. "That's where I found Mom when she fell with the laundry. I was upstairs, weaving potholders on the loom I got for Christmas when I heard her moaning. Nobody else was home, so I ran next door and got the neighbor."

V grimaced. "Yeah. I remember the ambulance taking her away. "

We peeked into our parent's former bedroom. "They hooked traction up to her bed. The room was much bigger then."

"Everything was bigger then, " I said. "Except the tree in the back yard. Can you believe we used to climb to the top?"

"You did. I only went about halfway up. You were always the risk-taker."

We thanked our hosts for the tour, then walked across the street to the church where, as children, we'd spent unbearably long hours counting ceiling tiles to pass the time between my father's first prayer and the last low note of the doxology. I took pictures of the organ pipes, the stained glass windows, and the wooden plaque with white hymn numbers resting in the carved grooves. While V stood at the back of the church talking to a woman who was readying the sanctuary for the evening service, I walked up to the familiar podium, stroked the wood, feeling my father in every curve of the grain while feeling the proverbial wound lick itself clean.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow....... Praise him all creatures here below....... Praise him above ye Heavenly host....... Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.... Amen....

"That's my sister standing at the pulpit," I heard V say.

The woman tugged on her sleeve, seemed somewhat uncomfortable with our intrusion. "What's she doing up there?"

"Oh, I don't know." After a moment, V smiled, leaned toward the woman. "She's a writer," she added, as if that explained everything.

And in a way, I suppose it did.

Need I Say More?

Okay, I do probably need to say more, and I will, but here is a photo from my visit with grandbabies while I catch my breath. The one above is of Ella & Ely, whose mommy, Andrea, graduated from massage school last Friday night.  I will post an album in the next week or so rather than slowing down the page load here. I can't thank all of you enough for making it possible to kiss these precious babies (and their mommies) over the past week.  I've got a lot of writing to do. But first, sleep....

Big Hairy Deal

I did it again. Remembering how much fun my braids were last summer, I decided to pay another visit to Betty and have her turn my boring cut into a head full of exotic braids. It will make my Michigan trip to see my grandchildren next week easier because I won't have to bring a blow dryer and I can go a week without washing my hair this way.

At least I thought it would be easier.

Last year Betty wove 168 braids into my hair. When I mentioned that I'd like a few more this time so my scalp wouldn't show through, she took me seriously. Really seriously. Thirteen hours (!) later (I went home after nine hours with about a third of them half-braided and spent another four hours finishing them the next morning) my head sported 315 braids, including several pink ones I had her weave in, just for fun.

As I mentioned in my previous post about this hair-raising process, Betty always begins and ends her sessions with a prayer. This time I had her daughter take a photo as we put in the last braid. I hope she was praying my butt wouldn't stay flat after sitting all those hours. And I hope she blessed my head so it won't fall off from all the extra weight because I think I heard a couple cervical vertebrae take leave of their positions over the past week. Maybe I should hire a couple bridesmaids to walk behind me, carry my plaited train.

When I sent a picture to my daughter in Michigan, she said I look like an aging porn queen. And she won't stop calling me Shaneequa. Such a funny girl, that one. Haha. Shut up.

I think I'm going to make a sign that reads:

13 315 Prenatal Vitamins

That way I don't have to keep answering the same three questions every time I go out in public. Yesterday when a woman asked if it was my real hair I told her only the pink ones. Then I looked at her volleyball chest and said, "Do I get to go next?"

Last night I fell out of bed when my hair slid over the side while I was sleeping. As I lay there staring at all the dustballs under my bed, I was thought about scooting around the room on my back, do a quick dusting, but then I'd have to wash my hair and if you think it's heavy now, add a few gallons of water and I become Egor, hands trailing along the floor until my knuckles bleed.

I am getting creative, however, in finding ways to stack the braids on my head in order to take some of the weight off the back of my neck. I could give Marge Simpson a run for her money in a big-hair contest. In fact, I could probably smuggle her whole family into Crustyland.

The good news is that with all this newly developed neck muscle, I'll be able to tote my luggage and still have hands free to drink coffee while traveling though airports next week. The bad news is I won't be able to drink it because I can't tip my head back without falling over.

Poor Louie

I think I've been successful in my recent anti-mouse policy. I haven't seen so much as a single turd since we plugged the hole in the wall around the dryer vent. But the whole pest thing reminded me of my brother's little mouse saga a few years ago...

A horde of ants paraded single-file across my brother's living room in a direct line from the recycling bin in the kitchen to the front door as I visited with D and his wife one summer evening. 

“We can’t get rid of them,” C remarked from her vantagepoint on the sofa.

“I’ve tried everything,” added D.

“Well,” I said.  “It could be worse.  It could be mice.”

A look passed between my brother and his wife.  C shuddered. “We had a mouse once…” she trailed off.

D sighed.  “Poor Louie.”

I nestled into my chair and readied for a good story.

“Call me a wimp,” he started. “But I can’t hurt creatures.  Even when the spider in the front doorway was giving the kids nightmares last summer, I just moved her into the woods behind the house.  It was a shame because she’d built such a magnificent web.”

“I wanted to poison the mouse,” C chimed in.  “But he wouldn’t let me. He went out and bought this little cardboard trap.

“I caught the mouse,” D continued, “but it chewed through the box and escaped.  I went out and bought a plastic one.  Chewed through that one, too. Finally caught Louie, as we'd endearingly named him by that time, in a sturdy metal trap.  I was going to let him go in the back yard, but C insisted he’d find his way back into the house.  So I took him along with me to work figuring I’d let him loose on the campus grounds.”

C looked at me, shaking her head, rolling her big eyes as my brother went on.

“That night when I got home, C asked if I’d gotten rid of the mouse.  Panic struck as I realized I'd forgotten about Louie and he'd spent the entire day in my nearly airless trunk.  I raced out to the yard with the boys trailing behind me, expecting to find him dead, but he was alive, albeit a little sluggish.  I told my boys to follow me across the street and we'd release him into the meadow.”

“When we got to the other side, I ceremoniously set the cage on the ground and the three of us watched as Louie tentatively crept through the metal door to find freedom in the grass.  He hesitated for a moment, sniffing the air as if contemplating his best directional move.  Then suddenly he scampered into the ditch and up the embankment onto the road.”

“Now, I have to tell you we get one, maybe two cars at the most in an hour’s time passing by our rural house.  The one that flattened Louie was just pure rotten luck.  Or maybe he had a death wish, I don’t know.  In any case, the boys and I just stood there in total astonishment.”

I looked at what was left of Louie imbedded in the gravel. “Let’s go eat,” I said.

C sighed as my brother finished retelling the story. "Ain't that just an ass-biter," she said, stomping on a wayward ant. She looked at my brother, sighed again.

"Poor Louie," they said in unison.

The Singing Bowl

Of all the things I've bought and sold on eBay, I've yet to find the one item I wish I could steal back from my childhood. Made of cherry wood, with grape leaves carved into the sides, The Singing Bowl sat on a base with a tiny key that, if cranked, played music while it turned the bowl in circles.

On summer nights when my sisters and I "camped out" in the back yard, we'd fill it with popcorn before tip-toeing out of the house like tiny ghosts in our hand-made nighties. The humid air was always pregnant with Lake Michigan just two miles away, and our nighties clung to us like gum to a schooldesk as we huddled inside our makeshift tent--a mish-mash of blankets thrown over a rusty swingset frame. N, the oldest, took command over the one flashlight we were alloted. She used it sparingly, knowing full well the power of ownership that light gave her over V and me.

Under the magical spell of overhead stars, we told stories, giggled, and plucked popcorn from the Singing Bowl as it turned in front of our six scabby knees. With our bellies full, we'd sneak the two blocks into town, sit on the curb in our bare feet and count the minutes between passing cars on U.S. 31. Eventually we'd tire and make our way back home. "Step on a crack, break your mother's back" we'd chant, taking giant leaps from one sidewalk square to the next.

Our goal was always to stay up until midnight, the hour when all scary things happen, though nothing ever happened. When the second hand ticked by twelve on N's watch, she'd turn the flashlight toward her face and say, "Boo!" We'd squeal, then yawn, before lying down on our musty-smelling bedrolls. Once last crink- crink of the wind-up bowl, followed by the lilting notes that filled the sticky night air and I'd fall asleep with that song in my head, trying to forget that our mother's back was already broken.

What I wouldn't give to be eating popcarn from that Singing Bowl right now. To look into the innocent faces of my sisters when we didn't yet know the value of simple moments that get lost like a haunting melody you can't quite remember but permeates your dreams.

Please, Sir. I Want Some Moore.

J and I stood in line for ninety minutes at the Palm Theatre to see Fahrenheit 9/11...and still didn't get in(thanks in part to the nice people who melted into the line ahead of us with people they recognized). Granted they're only showing the movie on one screen and that room only holds 160 or so people, so when I saw the line winding around the block, I didn't get my hopes too high, but still, come on, people, it was rude.

All was not lost, though. Heard a great story from the gray-haired and ponytailed guy behind me about how he dodged the draft but got caught two years later. Luckily he ended up working in forest service instead of being shipped out. We enjoyed a good conversation about Moore's films, among other things, so the time passed quickly. At least it did for me. J, on the other hand, sat on the sidewalk reading Uncle Johns Bathroom Reader, looking up at his over-optimistic mother every once in a while to ask if we could go home since we were obviously not going to get into the movie.

Back home, I was aware of the energy I brought back with me. I've missed feeling connected with my  community and meeting new people. Too often I stay holed up at home--writing, working in the yard, doing house projects, etc. instead of socializing. Note to Self: get lazy ass out of the house more often.

We went back downtown at 7:45 to try for the 9:15 show. Normally I would just wait until things calm down but history was being made this weekend and I wanted to be part of it while the crowds were so full of enthusiasm. J was a good sport about the whole thing. On our second attempt--after hanging out in lawn chairs for 90 minutes,  we were number 18 in the line of predominantly college-aged kids. The energy was different--I'd have preferred the middle-aged crowd--but we got great seats in the middle of the theatre.

I handled the violence better than I thought I would, likely because I had read enough about the film to be prepared for it. Moore was very successful in his mission to show what we don't hear in the media, and it was mostly good filmmaking IMHO. My only complaints are that he went on too long with the mother who lost her soldier and that some of his voiceovers interfered with allowing the viewer to come to their own conclusions. Other than that, I was very enthused about the film.

Due to the younger crowd, there wasn't as much yelling at the screen or clapping after the movie as I'd expected, but there was a lot of uproarious laughter--including J's. He was very amused by the "Bushisms." I left feeling optimistic yet helpless to anything more than vote, encourage others to vote, and hope for the best. I hate bitching--would rather DO something about the problem than sit around complaining.

Then yesterday this beautiful girl with ebony skin and silver hoops in her ears walked up my driveway as I was getting out of the car with groceries. She was with a busload of people from Santa Barbara who'd come up to recruit new lobbyists for the Peace Action lobby. I signed up on the student rate ($5 per month for five months) to help pay her $7 hour wage so she and others can sign up others who can afford to subsidize ads and other "bigger" lobbying projects that encourage congressmen/women to use our tax dollars toward education instead of bombers, prevent above ground nuclear testing, and promote peace instead of war.

As India and I sat at my kitchen table, she addressed the envelopes for my hand-written letters and told me about growing up in foster care. The flawed system is what motivated her to become an active participant for change. She just graduated from USB as an English major."There's going to be a revolution, Ellie," she said. "You wait and see."

About the time we finished, her friend knocked on the door after visiting my neighbor, who I doubted would contribute, but at least he wrote a letter. India stood up to leave and looked at me, smiling. "I feel I like I want to hug you," she said.

We stood in the middle of my kitchen with our arms around each other, these two women who had just met, and it felt like a prayer. I thanked her for using her time and energy to do this important thing, gave her a couple of my books (we'd talked about journaling) and watched those two back-packed girls walk up the street to where I knew she'd get more icy stares then hugs, but I feel better. I am part of the revolution. And so, I dearly hope, are all of you.

*Photo courtesy of Michael Moore's website.