Betty Young, while I've never met her face to face, is someone I own a great many thanks to. She opened my eyes to the dormant skill of literacy and creativity full of dry wit and stark honesty that I had creeping around on the tip of a pen. She fostered my ability to put that pen to paper and create a sculpture of detail and realism. Betty Young was my Intro to Psychology while I was on my way to a nursing degree and constantly having some sort of inner sickness taking over my body.
Her weekly assignments were essay topics that made you delve a bit deeper than the text would take you. One week, while discussing stress, she asked that we write a recounting of a stressful situation in a comical light. It is thought that those who are able to do this have stress managed in a more healthy way. As you are about to read....I had plenty to stress about. And nothing...NOTHING was funny about it. This assignment, written in November 2012, shows you that these things can be so much funnier looking back. What do you think?
So here I am…again. This is your Highness reporting for duty upon the porcelain throne. Yes we are thirty-five days in and still counting. Outlook is grim. This episodic explosive tragedy happens a few times a year in turn leading to lots of “meditative” sitting time. Here I present thoughts from the throne or alternately titled “Potty Mouth”. A Monologue. A one-lady show. A “one-lady” with P.H.I.D.S. (poop hole in distress syndrome).
I’ve had a pretty decent day. No sudden urges….No gurgles from the depths. It creeps up really sudd…OH!!
“Honey! Gotta go! Felix is in the living room!” I bolt out of my seat while trying to also hold on to my seat. Doing the penguin shuffle all the way down the hall I fling my self into the bathroom and almost in one fluid motion I slam the door, throw my pants down and sit all in the nick of time. Whew…that was close…I think I’m done. I get up and take care of business and wash up. Then the sounds from within come as I’m drying my hands. “Gurgle…GURGLE!” Again with the “I gotta go” dance to the john.
“Hmmm” I think to myself, “I thought I had to go…I have to read. I can’t ever go unless I’m reading. Of course, nothing within reach for reading material.” I lean over my lap and try to look for something…anything, to read. I look up on the counter. All I’ve got is lotion….I read.
“Aveeno Baby Calming Comfort. Lotion contains lavender and vanilla – natural ingredients with calming and relaxing properties. Combined with natural colloidal oatmeal, known for its ability to retain moisture and soothe skin, this non-greasy formula helps heal and protect your baby’s skin….” And, release. I throw the bottle on to the counter and it slides into the sink. Done again, and commence the ritual after dropping off the heresy chocolate. Hand washing. I toss the lotion on to the shelf. Dry my hands. “GUUUUURGLEEEE!”
“You’ve got to be kidding…” I fly on to my seat again. Not being able to be distracted enough to just go I clamber my hand over the counter looking for that baby lotion to read again. I look up. There it is, on the shelf. I think “Damn you, Mom!” She got the habit drilled into me “Everything has a place and every place has a thing” she would recite. I can’t find anything to read so I resort to my distraction techniques formed in public restrooms. Counting. You can count ceiling tiles, floor tiles, bolts, the list goes on really. I count the floor tiles. I already know there are 32, but I’m not counting the geraniums on the shower curtain again...and release. And, hand washing ritual.
I have been in the bathroom for 45 minutes. My husband has filled and started the dishwasher, changed the baby’s diaper, put the baby down for a nap, changed the laundry, folded the laundry, and made me some lunch. I secretly think “I should spend more time in the bathroom when I’m not sick…”
End scene.
Open scene. I’m at Toy City. Briefly, it’s a toy store meets fantasy gamer nerd store meets baby supply store meets model train store. It’s bizarre at best. The cashiers are thirty something, over weight, goatee sporting, glasses wearing nerds that know too much about changing tables and infant car seats. I’m here for what my family has fondly dubbed a “baby jail”. Really its just a large penitentiary to protect the baby from unintentional suicide. I mostly use it while home alone with the baby and having a sudden urge to serve up a pu pu platter.
So I locate said baby jail. Price it and read the side panel like a good parent and pretend to look concerned. Really what I’m doing is noticing that I’ve got some gurgles and I’ve never used the bathroom here. I’m searching out of my peripheral vision trying to locate the nearest exit and or powder room.
“Oh man!” I stand up straight, no longer interested in the safety demographics on the stupid box. Rushing like my life depends on it, I run up to one of the card-board smelling men. “Where is your bathroom?” I spout out.
“Its for employee use only” He states quite matter-of-factly. In that moment its too late. My face flushes red and my brow furrows….”Tell me where your bathroom is now….please.” He points behind him down the hall. I’m not sure if he is afraid of my mama bear energy or if he knows I just crapped my pants. Literally.
I do the penguin shuffle down the hall knowing that more is to come. I’m panicked, I’m terrified, I’m mortified, I think I might cry. I look down at the one year old on my hip and he’s giving me the biggest (pardon me – its just so appropriate) shit eating grin.
A little side about Felix. He is the happiest baby born into this crappy world (I’m pretty sure I pooped on him when he was born). That baby has the most plastically perfect happy face ever and you cant look at him and not smile just a little, at least.
So back to my waddle waltz down the hall. I look down at this six toothed smiling maniac who is giggling from the jostling and he’s looking at my face in a “This is great” sort of way and I loose my grip on reality. I start laughing.
While still slightly horrified, I frantically try to find a safe somewhat clean place to land my crawling baby. And from the gentlemen I described earlier you can imagine the standard of hygiene they hold for this lavatory.
“GURGLE!” I run in a stall. I lock the door and say to hell with the sanitation and the baby goes on the floor in a pile of loose toilet paper pieces. He thinks is great. He’s grinning ear to ear with all six of his pearly whites showing and I’m on the loo slipping off my shoes trying to figure out if I can salvage my pants. I can. The underwear must go though.
While my pants are around my ankles and my soiled panties in precarious positions Felix discovers that he can crawl under the bathroom stall. I reach out slamming my thumb into the…you know what. I extend a foot and my toes entertain him enough to keep him from absconding.
Now I have soiled underwear, a dirtied thumb, and inevitably a yucky thigh. Could this get worse. Yes, Betty, yes it can. There is no toilet paper save what my son is sitting on. I grab some from under him and quickly inspect it clean up my hand and thigh and peel off the unwanteds. I remember the wipes in the diaper bag and clean up best I can. I throw out the undies not caring if they are exposed in the trash or not because lord knows I’m never showing my face here again. I pull up my pants, now flying commando I make a mental note of all of the bathrooms between here and home. I lace up my shoes and gather up the diaper back and the baby. Taking a deep breath I have survived. Felix thinks this is great and looks up at me with his sweet little face, which starts to twist in to strained reddened shapes. He poops. Of course he does. I clean him up and go buy the baby jail. As evidenced by the current event, I’m going to need it. I will never return to Toy City.
As to what’s going on with my body, the doctors and specialists don’t know. I’ve had test after test of every fluid from blood to saliva to stool (that’s a whole different comical essay) taken. I’ve even had a colonoscopy. “I don’t know Melody, you are as clean as a whistle”. Some day I’ll find out what and why this happens butt for now I sit on my throne, pray my babies are safe, count tiles, and rule as the over lord of the little girl’s room.
SPRING SWAN SONG 06.20.13
(A piece of short fiction I've been working on. Hopefully, this posting will foster further ideas and directions for these characters. What's happened? What's happening next? I'm looking forward to finding out.)
---
They met up again, under the bridge this time. There was no other place as familiar anymore. Tension now twisted her everywhere, warping her sense of comfort and ease. There were no more easy moments left in her life, no sense of stillness. Only constant movement, as though she were being spun around, caught in a centrifugal force, her stomach perpetually afloat.
The rain had been intermittent for most of the day. On her walk over, along the cracked sidewalks and wild grasses, the skies began to darken. She caught herself being comforted by this, which surprised her. Perhaps it was the air swelling with potential, and the sure arrival of that potential. She thought of the ease of nature, to shift into its next state, not worried about its outcomes, its savage powers of equilibrium.
...
Safe beneath the bridge, they watched the rain come down on either side in curtains of white and grey. There were dark smells down there: piss and mildew, the rawness of the river, the scent of wet pavement from above. His smell cut through it all. His sweat still clinging, the cool air chilling his skin. She ran her hand along the rising bumps on his arm, put her nose in the crook of his neck. Her finger and thumb loosely gripped his wrist.
...
"How long have you been here?" she whispered.
"Not long," he replied. "I thought I had been early, but I guess you were too."
"I was looking at the time all along, but I found myself lost in it. The hands of my watch weren't making sense...like I had forgotten what they meant."
"Like when you say a word over and over again?"
"Yeah...kind of. Though it's not like I was trying to make sense of them. I knew when I was going to come, like how I sometimes wake just before my alarm clock. You ever done that?"
"Not for a while, not since everything's changed."
The sheets of water were breaking up now. Her head on his shoulder, she watched the dappled patterns of rain upon the river rocks. Fat raindrops and their chaotic spray, water leaping into the air, water coming down.
"I don't have many patterns left either," she said, placing her nose back into the crook of his neck. "It used to happen to me so often. 5:59 on the dot, just enough time to reach over and hit the button before it could screech at me."
He laughed and she could feel him smiling: an interruption in his gentle strokes, up and down, between her shoulder blades.
"Leaving the house to come here--it was a like a notch in my day...My days now so much like dreams. Stepping out of my door not because my watch told me to, but because the time finally slid into place and I slipped on my shoes."
SPRING SWAN SONG: Fear 6.19.13
We are masters of ourselves. Oh yes, this beach is ours!
Besides, they are not far away. They've gone just over that bridge, as a matter of fact; the one that leads to the other side of the lake where lines are cast into calmer waters. It doesn't seem far away in the sunshine. They'll come for us when they're done, they said, and we believe them. We're big girls. We've got this. Just look at how much we don't need anyone babysitting us.
It is mid-Summer. The heat is dry and intense, baking our skin to the point of pain, and so we run. Tag, you're it, and the shock of cool water is dulled almost immediately with the sweet relief it brings. For long moments, we know nothing but the sound of our laughter and the deep blue of the clear sky.
The clear sky and the blinding brightness. The holding of breath for handstands, and the eye-rubbing after exuberant splashing. It's all happening under the clear, blue sky. The children squealing, the sunblock-scented air. It's all perfect, really.
A shadow comes and goes, but we hardly notice and our games continue. We dive below the surface of the water, pretending we are synchronized swimmers in the Olympics. When we come up for air, the world has changed. The clear, blue sky has been replaced by a menacing roof of rumbling, grey-black clouds, just like that. The sun is obliterated and we find that we are shivering. What does it mean? It seems like more than could happen in one dive's time and suddenly all our grown-up feelings fall away and we are very, very small.
The beach is cleared in an instant. We watch parents hastily pack belongings, pulling their children by the hand as they run to the dry safety of their cars. There is nothing subtle or gentle about this summer storm. We don't have them like this back home. Must be a mountain thing, but this does not comfort us. We wonder when someone is going to take our hand and pull us along. We are just girls now, wanting our fathers, our mothers...anyone, please.
The rain drives down in hard, stinging spatters, and that's when we begin to cry, our vision doubly obliterated by raindrops and teardrops. We can see only well enough to discover the fear in each others eyes. Why haven't they come?
The beach is desolation now and there are few cars in the parking lot. Why haven't they come?
Lightening strikes, bringing down a tree. We run. We scream. Why haven't they come?
We are hysterical when we make our way to the kiosk by the bridge, the one that leads to the other side of the lake. It had not seemed so far away in the sunshine. We ask the man standing behind the counter if he has seen my father and his fishing companions. He shrugs. Oh! They must have come through so long ago he does not remember them! Oh!
It's been hours, we just know it. Why haven't they come?
We have to face the facts: we are alone, we will be struck by lightening soon and our campsite is all the way across the park.
A strange man asks us if we are okay. We cry harder. When one of us can speak, we explain that my father has left us behind to go back to the campsite. The strange man is very concerned. Are you sure, he asks. Yes, we nod. We are sure he has left us behind.
Do you know where your campsite is, he asks. I can drive you there.
Oh! Deliverance!
Two ten-year-old girls get into a strange man's car.
Some of the terror is immediately relieved simply by the act of sitting down somewhere dry, only to return a million-fold when the we realize, as we buckle in, that we have done the very thing we have been told not to do by every adult in our lives, ever since we can remember.
Never get into a car with a stranger.
With quavering voices, we are able to direct him to the campground we belong to. We surprise ourselves by remembering some important names and landmarks, and soon find that we are parked right next to the family car. With thank-yous, we tumble out of his car and into the familiar station wagon. Everyone who had stayed at camp that morning was there, huddled in the car, playing a card game.
Where is Daddy, they all inquire.
We look at each other, and swallow hard.
Many hours later (and this time, it may really be hours), he returns. And when we see his face, we know that he has experienced a terror that we could never imagine. That the hardest thing in the world he has ever done was to come back to the campsite without us. We shrink until we feel like nothing, and I find myself wrapped in arms so tight around me, hot tears on my neck and I know I will never forget that he will always come for me.
Spring Swan Song: Love and Thanks 06.18.2013
Inspired by Luminous Traces, I decided to start my own version for writers. I asked Andee to help me and within 2 weeks we were up and running. I finally had a place to practice and be amongst my peers.Watching this idea blossom and unfurl into the beautiful site that it is now has been breathtaking. It has become bigger and brighter than I ever imagined.
As I sat down to write this week's post, I became blank. Overwhelmed. Blocked. The more frustrated with myself I felt, the more blocked and uninspired I became. This was supposed to be my spring session swan song. My piece that would really show who I am as a writer. Instead, all I could think about was how I couldn't think.
Just as the seasons are slowly shifting so are many aspects of my life and family. Even though the change is good and exciting, it is still overwhelming. It has taken up every corner of space in my head, including the places where my inspiration and words live. They are been squeezed out and in their place is the unknown.
I took a step away from my computer. I looked around. Inspiration was everywhere. My daughter. My husband. The love I feel for them both. That it is, I thought. I would write about love. How it is the vein that runs through everything I do. How it inspires me and lifts me up. So, I sat back down and started to write.
It didn't work. As quickly as the inspiration flowed in, the overwhelming stress of a whole lot of changes swept it away.
I trashed the three lines I wrote and stared at the blank page in front of me. I had nothing to say. I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath. This project, this website, was something I dreamed of. Something that brings me so much joy. I am surrounded by incredibly talented people. People who, every week, make me laugh, make me cry, make me inspired. I refused to let it make me frustrated. I love it here.
There it was. So simple. My inspiration is them. It's you. It is everyone who made Literary Traces happen.
It is everyone who believes in me.
Everyone I believe in.
Everyone who loves me.
Everyone I love.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
As I sat down to write this week's post, I became blank. Overwhelmed. Blocked. The more frustrated with myself I felt, the more blocked and uninspired I became. This was supposed to be my spring session swan song. My piece that would really show who I am as a writer. Instead, all I could think about was how I couldn't think.
Just as the seasons are slowly shifting so are many aspects of my life and family. Even though the change is good and exciting, it is still overwhelming. It has taken up every corner of space in my head, including the places where my inspiration and words live. They are been squeezed out and in their place is the unknown.
I took a step away from my computer. I looked around. Inspiration was everywhere. My daughter. My husband. The love I feel for them both. That it is, I thought. I would write about love. How it is the vein that runs through everything I do. How it inspires me and lifts me up. So, I sat back down and started to write.
It didn't work. As quickly as the inspiration flowed in, the overwhelming stress of a whole lot of changes swept it away.
I trashed the three lines I wrote and stared at the blank page in front of me. I had nothing to say. I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath. This project, this website, was something I dreamed of. Something that brings me so much joy. I am surrounded by incredibly talented people. People who, every week, make me laugh, make me cry, make me inspired. I refused to let it make me frustrated. I love it here.
There it was. So simple. My inspiration is them. It's you. It is everyone who made Literary Traces happen.
It is everyone who believes in me.
Everyone I believe in.
Everyone who loves me.
Everyone I love.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
SPRING SWAN SONG: INTIMACY 06.17.2013
Intimacy is learning the middle name of your favorite crush in high school. Even though he wouldn’t cheat on his depressed girlfriend to be with you, he chose to share his much despised middle name late at night while listening to Liz Phair.
Intimacy is craning your neck from the exam table at the doctor’s office, to see if the doctor was coming back from testing your pee sample, and not seeing his flesh, but seeing the silhouette of his face in the cheesy painting of the southwestern sunset. You catch him reaching his nose down to the pee cup and sniffing it. You see his face resurface with his nose rising above a big cotton candy pink cloud.
Intimacy is noticing the blue elastic band around a stranger's wrist with her springy hairs tangled up in it. You watch them twirl through the air as she gesticulates in front of a man she's on a first date with. You are fixated on how much hair she's lost to the blue elastic band and you wonder if he notices too.
Intimacy is staying until the end of the party, to have a real connection with the host while washing dishes, which is what you were looking for the whole night in everyone else, but you were just everyone else. In the end, it’s just the two of you.
Intimacy is watching a teenage girl on a train furiously pick at and slough off her blue nail polish onto her lap, and then feeling her search your eyes inside of your sunglasses, looking for a connection. She's desperate for approval from a stranger. You smile and give it to her.
Intimacy is getting so close to a beet in attempt to take a picture of it, that the tip of your nose, the corner of your eyebrow, and a bit of your top lip stain purple.
Intimacy is clipping your toe nails over the toilet with the bathroom door open so both of you can hear every line of the movie.
Intimacy is letting him kneel down at the bottom of your teeny shower to scrub the callouses off the bottom of your rugged feet with a pumice stone, cause you’re sick of feeling like your feet are manlier than his, and though he doesn’t judge, he wants to do what he can to help you feel better about yourself.
Intimacy is aiming to hug everyone so tightly that you can feel the flesh and fat melt away. You hug like you’re two skeletons unencumbered by age or narrative. Just the simplest parts clutching at the simplest parts.
Intimacy is vulnerability illuminated.
Intimacy is at a young age teaching your friends how to pleasure themselves because you wanted them to experience the amazing sensation you discovered and were over the moon about.
Intimacy is letting the tape roll for a few extra minutes at the end of an interview when they’ve answered all of your questions, allowing the deeper little bubbles and gurgles to come to the surface. Allowing their breath to imprint the recording.
Intimacy is being loose enough to surprise yourself.
Intimacy is choosing not to give a speech at your dad’s funeral. Instead, you played a cassette tape of him singing an eery and beautiful version of ‘Don’t Let it Bring You Down’ making those that simply thought he was a drunk, weep in front of you, and then allowing yourself to weep in front of them. Your uncle had tears caught in his red beard and momentarily hid his face, and the guy who was just jealous of his voice turned around and paced.
Intimacy is staring at someone who just stared death in the face and hearing how scary and painful it was, and though they are usually very positive, they are transparent about not being sure if they will be able to pull through. You look at them and you savor the light still in their eyes and you tell yourself to remember this moment under these awful florescent lights around this round gray kitchen table.
Intimacy is learning that the people that you thought had it all figured out... don’t.
Intimacy is sharing your scraps and cracks.
Intimacy is sharing an idea that you think is potentially really stupid with someone you really admire.
Intimacy is closing your eyes and taking five deep breaths with a friend in the middle of a city street.
Intimacy is curiosity engaged and awareness directed.
Intimacy is going to a friend’s house two days after their home birth and helping to clean up and hold their new teeny heap of life.
Intimacy is discovering what makes a person feel the most alive and then contributing to that aliveness.
Intimacy is watching a parent suffer, and witnessing the moment that they become aware that you see how deep their suffering is.
Intimacy is being aware that someone else is becoming aware of some part of them self for the first time in front of you.
Spring Swan Song: Y2K 06.16.2013
During the day I sold shoes for minimum wage-- a job that was better than it sounds-- but I lived for the nights, when the kettle was whistling on the stove of my closet-sized studio apartment. I called him most nights, as my tea steeped and I burrowed deeper and deeper under the blankets, privileging the long-distance phone calls over the heating bill.
We talked late into the night, often circling back to the state of the world, the end of civilization, and a potential technology-mandated return to simplicity. Over time, the fear of the unknown turned into excitement as we dreamed, awake and aloud, about what life would be like without computers. We fantasized about the world returning to its natural order and nature taking the opportunity to thrive unscathed.
As our dreams became lofty, so did our plans. Before we knew it we were buying camping gear, studying edible plants and working out the logistics of moving him to my small town in Vermont-- a location we deemed more apocalypse-friendly than where he was living in Indianapolis. On my days off, I hiked deep in the woods, searching for hospitable camp sites-- just in case-- and returned home long after my cheeks were ruddy from the cold.
The apocalypse, of course, never happened. The year 2000 rolled in with no glitches, no crashes, no simplicity. But as my new sub-zero sleeping bag sat coiled up in a corner of my closet, our friendship unfurled with the realization that if the world was going to burn, we wanted to stand on a mountain and watch the flames rise, together. The clocks, for us, had reset.
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This story is about my dear friend, Scott, who was recently diagnosed with stomach cancer. To support him while he's out of work for treatment, I'm selling one-line drawings of animals! To learn more about Scott, visit his blog. It's incredibly honest and insightful. Visit my blog, too, if you'd like to support this great cause and receive a one-line drawing of your animal friend! xo, andee
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