Past Tense

HammockI haven’t felt like writing for a while.  You know how it goes.  Funny how I feel this incredibly deep connection to my family, yet never go home.  I was told you can’t go home again.  I took it literally I guess.

My mom has been on a journey these past couple of years.  Sifting through photographs and newspaper archives, talking to long lost shirt-tail relatives about days gone by and listening to their own family stories.  Piecing together a history of a people.  The people who came before me.  The people who helped shape me both physically and psychologically into who I am without ever having known their own reach.

Back on my old blog, I told a couple of stories about my great grandfather.  He seemed the most upright and moral guy I’d ever not met.  He seemed like the kind of guy I would have loved to have been raised by.  I got lucky and was raised by my stepdad.  Mom has fond memories of Great Grandpa.  As Mom sifted patiently through piles of papers in Great Grandpa’s eldest daughter’s attic, she found letters to his children offering advice on how to best raise corn or how their thoughtlessness had hurt their mother’s feelings.  She found newspaper articles and photographs.  Lots of photographs.

I remember my great grandmother as a frail, old woman who wore a hair net, sturdy shoes, and a common-sense day dress.  She was hunched over from osteoporosis and never seemed to find my presence very scintillating.  She died when I was 11.

Something I never considered is that my great grandparents were once young.  They probably thought, as my own children believe, that life is infinite.  But, their time together was too short – he died too young of a heart ailment that these days wouldn’t have been a death sentence.  Their time was only a moment in an endless line of human moments.  Without those photographs and letters, they might well be forgotten.

When I saw this photograph today for the first time, she suddenly became human.  I saw my mother in her face. I felt the love she had for my great grandpa and all of her hopefulness and optimism and sheer joy of being her in that one simple moment, caught somehow on camera, given to me as a gift to my past.

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52 Sundays – #13 – Ruth Roberts*

Six foot tall and “sturdy,” you stood heads and shoulders above your 8th grade classmates.  Somehow, after being introduced through a mutual friend, we became the best of friends and would stay that way all the way through high school. We were thick as thieves, birds of a feather, joined at the hip, partners in crime, BFFs forever.JustTwo200

Though a somewhat intimidating presence to the boys, you had the same curiosities about the birds and the bees the rest of us had.  You met a 24-year-old guy who worked at the gas station down the road from where you worked. You never even told me about your new fascination. Somewhere around the middle of summer between our junior and senior years, you started showing.

One night, just before curfew, we made it to my house, went downstairs to my bachelor pad at my dad’s and turned the music down low.  The image of you, now just over 9-months pregnant, working your way into the beige bean bag chair is one that will always stay with me.  We sat and talked and giggled like we always did.

Soon enough, perhaps from too fervent laughter, my dad descended the stairs and started yelling at me about my rudeness, my inferior intellect, and the certainty of my fated future as one of life’s biggest losers.  Then he said the most insulting thing he could pull from his extensive inventory of self-esteem battering terminology; something so egregious it wouldn’t be forgiven for years.  All sound in the room dissolved, I was blinded by red hot anger as my entire being focused on the words he spewed next, “You two are always together.  What’s wrong with you?  What, are you lesbians?

* Name changed

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52 Sundays – #12 – Mark Kelly

I met you because you were Paula’s next door neighbor.  You were rich too.  You were the baby of your mother’s second set of kids.  Spoiled, charming, swarthy, handsome and wiry.  I always thought of you as kind of a pre-teen James Dean/Dennis Hopper hybrid with your stingray bike with the extended fork and I’m too cool to even be a rebel attitude.  You just had this air about you that other boys didn’t have at the ripe age of 10.

One day, I remember you coming out of the woods behind your house with a mess of dead critters that you skinned for their pelts wearing your coonskin cap.  Who taught you to trap I’ll never know.  Your parendennishopperts seemed to have no influence in your life.  In fact, the only time I ever saw your parents was when your mom would have cocktails with Paula’s mom – most afternoons – they in their psychedelic 60s caftans sitting in the living room with the deep plush white shag carpeting.

Paula, you and I spent most of the summer between 3rd and 4th grade together.  We plotted various mischief and went fishing or swimming in the sand pits or chased down snapping turtles in the murky water.  You had a mule to ride.  His name was Eli.  Paula’s pony was named Sparky.  We’d ride all over town, me on the back of one or the other.  You were nice to have along because you would deal with the road apples.  And, somewhere along the way, you and I found ourselves falling into easy conversation whenever we met.

At the beginning of 4th grade you declared me your girlfriend, kissed me full on the mouth, then put me on the back of your bike and rode me the long way home.  Two days later, Jenny Ball caught your eye and I was history.

I could never understand what you saw in me for even those couple of days.  But, it made me realize I must not be as weird as I thought if I had caught the eye of the coolest kid in the class.

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52 Sundays – #11 – Kay

I never understood how you put up with your parents.  Talk about a chain around your neck.  You couldn’t even go the nearby park to hang out with friends because your dad was such an ass.  Something we shared, though in different ways, having those brothers for fathers.  For you it was worse.  Couldn’t talk on the phone, couldn’t stay over at friends, couldn’t go to school dances.hustle

We’d play Doctor and House at family gatherings.  I was always the doctor and you the nurse to our patients, our younger sibs.  I was the Dad and you were the Mom.  We’d sneak through the old, dank basement and see if there were any treasures to find.  We’d argue and bicker when sharing was harder.  We’d yell at each other, “You aren’t my cousin anymore!” and sulk for five minutes or so then race out the screen door at Ma’s forgetting in an instant whatever slight had come between us.

Later, Dad would load up our bikes and send us to your place for a week every once in a while during summer.  We’d ride the trails, our little sisters clinging to us like the Velcro that would someday be invented, until we’d see a chance at losing them and hide out like silent, unbreathing commandos, amid the thick forest, just waiting for them to pass by and give up finding us and ride home.  We’d sit in the woods and talk.  Maybe take an innocent puff on a cigarette if we could steal one.  Feel as though we had gotten away with the biggest con ever until we returned to your house.  Freedom.  You never got to experience much of it.

Then it was time to teach me The Hustle.  We both know how that went.

But time would tell.  The very things that strict control was intended to avert became a certainty.  The tighter you pulled the more they tried to reel you in.  You dropped out of school and got involved with someone who wasn’t so good for you.  Eventually, you came to your senses, after having experienced some of life’s harder knocks.

Now, 30 years later, 25 of those married to your guy.  Three kids launched successfully, your story belies your upbringing. I bet you can still do The Hustle.

You are me with rougher edges.  Same passion, same anger, same feelings of responsibility for the world, same blood.  And, you are still my favorite cousin.

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Dear Joe

I found you in my darkest hour. The day after, well, you remember. The worst haircut of my life. I tried that place outside of the capitol building that had been there for 40 years. I think the stylist had been there the entire time. It was a fateful decision that changed the course of my hair styling destiny.fos_haircut

When I was done, I was butchered, too short on top and standing straight up like Spanky. I immediately began calling around to places in my area to fix it somehow, any way – immediately and when I heard your voice, I found immediate comfort.

I made my appointment for that very afternoon. I walked in, with big sunglasses and a Berka on so no one would recognize me going in. I looked like a very butch Hollywood Muslim, but nonetheless, I slithered into the chair.

Up and down you looked. You shook your head. Put your finger on your chin in deep thought. Touched the hair. Stood back and looked at it again. Sighed heavily. Then, you said, “I’ll do what I can at no charge, then come back in three weeks.”

It was the start of a beautiful relationship.

But what do I do now? Like any of the transitory relationships in my life, now it is time for you to go. I have to go somewhere else. I can’t even remember how we got to this place in our relationship. I need less Dorothy Hamill and more Rachel Maddow.

Do I just disappear like a Flock of Seagulls haircut or (wo)man-up and tell you I need to find someone who can satisfy my needs. I know, I know, you think I’m going through a mid-life crisis, but I’m not. We’ve just grown apart and I think it’s best for us both if we see other people.

In the words of my son, “It’s not me, it’s you.”

Yours in Barbering,

Al the Letter Writing Lesbian

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