Pulling Off Crazy-Love

"Hey, ya'll just sit down on the couch over there."
She was racing around the apartment wearing a tight red shirt dress. It was extremely short. Her hair was bleached. She had no make-up on. She waved us over to the lumpy brown sofa sectional.
"Nice apartment," Mordred said. It was one of those things he said that I knew he didn't mean. He might claim he meant it, but deep down he was making some backwards joke about how crappy the place was.
"Thanks, man, thanks." TJ sauntered toward us. He was wearing an oversized shirt with a felt jacket and baggy jeans. The K-Swiss shoes underneath reminded me of 7th grade. All the "bad" kids wore K-Swiss shoes back then. But that was ten years ago.
"Yeah, things done changed since we had the baby and all."
"--Oh my god, TJ, I can't find my shoes!" Crystal looked mortified, before turning to us and saying, "I'm sorry, y'all, things are such a mess over here."
"It's okay--"
"--yeah, we're fine!" Mordred and I said. The couch felt like it was about to eat us both.

Mordred had only come to TJ's apartment so he could give TJ a Consumer Guide to Car Buying he'd picked up at the Krogers. I had never met TJ or his girlfriend Crystal, but I knew that the real reason we were there probably involved Mordred picking something up for himself, instead. TJ wanted to be a rap artist. His white girlfriend, Crystal, was living with him in a two bedroom apartment outside Murfreesboro that probably rented for 450 a month. It wasn't a fabulous neighborhood. Mordred and I were on our way to dinner, and were dressed up. We called it our anniversary, when it wasn't really the anniversary of anything at all. Our relationship had been strained from day one.

"Me and Crystal been livin out here for like 4 months, right."
TJ sat and leaned back in the recliner adjacent us. We nodded at him.
"Okay, so we been here 4 months, and had the baby one month before that."
"--He's 5 months old!" Crystal shouted from the kitchen. Why she was looking for her shoes in the kitchen was beyond me.
"What's his name?" I asked, looking at the family photo framed awkwardly on the wall. The kid had to have been weeks old when it was taken.
"Justin," TJ said. An odd choice, I thought.
"Here, look." Crystal ran in the room, no shoes still, and thrust a picture in my face. It was post-birth, but not by much. "He hurt like hell," she added. Then, "I really like that shirt, girl."
"Thanks." I looked down at my dress.
"Yeah, its a pretty big mess up in here. We're doin pretty good though. It just sucks I can't get blown with you guys or anything." Crystal left me holding the gorey photo, and
Mordred laughed. "TJ, you know she's tired of takin care of that little guy. You need to take her out, man!"
"Nah, man, we don't get out that much anymore. Gotta do tha family thing, ya know." He leaned back and held the Car Buying Guide in front of him. "See, that's what I want right there! A Buick Park Avenue."
I stifled a laugh, and put the birth pic on the coffee table. Face down. "My dad used to have a Buick Park Avenue," I said. "We called it Ole Stinky. It drove like a tank."
TJ wasn't listening. "Put those big rims on it. Killer sound system. Thats tight right there. Thats tight!" He was still staring at the paper. "Man, thanks for bringin this over. I'm gonna call this guy tomorrow."
"Yeah, no problem."
Crystal, red flats now firmly on her feet, came and slumped down on the couch next to me like she was my best friend.
"Have you guys been together long? TJ said you guys were having an anniversary."
"Well..." I looked to Mordred, who was walking toward the bedrooms with TJ. He was seriously going to leave me alone with this girl I didn't know? "Mordred and I don't really have an anniversary date. We just sort of eased into our relationship over time, so we're calling this our anniversary dinner, but its really just a nice dinner out."
"I wish TJ would take me out like that," Crystal said. Her bleach blonde hair was a little stringy. "We're so broke with Justin and all, we can't do shit." She picked the picture up off the coffee table and walked it over to a big book with plastic looking pages next to the tv. She picked it up and carted it back to me on the couch. "This is our family photo album," she said, smiling. "I made it myself."
She pushed it over to me so it was sitting across both our laps, and started pointing things out.
"You look so much younger in all these pictures."
"Yeah, like a year ago, though. Can you believe me and TJ were only together like a month and a half before I found out I was pregnant?"
I looked at her, but didn't say anything. Her eyes were glued to the pages, and things were flickering across her face. She flipped a page.
"See that? Thats me and TJ like two weeks before Justin was born."
They had on goofy faces, and were standing in the snow outside the very apartment Mordred and I had stepped into. TJ had a big puffy downfilled jacket on, with his hands in his pockets. Crystal stood in front, pressing into him and the coat. It covered the both of them, except that her stomach stuck out the front. They were laughing with these big genuine smiles, their mouths wide open, grinning. Crystal's hair was a lot darker in the picture. She had braces on.
"You had braces then?" I asked.
"Yeah. Thats like the last thing my mom ever paid for." Crystal laughed this short, humorless laugh.
"You guys look really happy," I said.
"We were. We are." She flipped the page again. "Isn't he just precious?"
A wrinkly baby stared up at me from an enlarged black and white picture. Its eyes were closed like it was concentrating, and it looked pretty uncomfortable.
"He'd, like, just come out right there. They wrapped him up and gave him to me like that. He's so freakin cute." She stroked the picture with her finger before looking up at me. "Don't you just want one? I mean, I didn't, I thought. But here I am. He's our life. You and Mordred would have pretty kids I think."
I laughed, starting to feel uneasy. "Tell that to Mordred."

Crystal continued on, with an odd light in her eyes. Her clingy red shirt came up to high and she was sitting so close to me that her bare leg touched my knee. She kept smoothing the hair behind her ear with one hand, and pointing to pictures with the other with she talked. And I started to feel something strange. This girl seemed so sweet and sad. She had to have been only 20 years old. Still, I felt like she and TJ, despite pretty much being textbook stoners who occasionally got drunk and probably fought a lot out of immaturity, were on another level that I couldn't touch. I felt like they shared something huge. I felt like their relationship was probably all wrong, but all right at the same time. They had a baby. They lived together. They loved each other.
Mordred and I were going to the freakin Macaroni Grill and would probably come home to lay on his disgusting couch and listen to each other gripe about the lives we wished we were living. We'd lay there knowing full well that one day we wouldn't be together any more. One day we'd be somewhere else with someone else doing something completely different.
And thats what it was, for us, really. We were just waiting around for that somewhere, that someone, that something. We weren't doing anything at all. We were wasting our own precious time.
Crystal and TJ, I thought, may not have been doing the right things, but they were in the middle of a somewhere, with a someone, working their asses off for a something that was bigger than they'd ever thought it would be. I admired that about them. Even if TJ was in the back selling things to Mordred, I still admired them for that.

"Okay, lets bounce." Mordred appeared from the hallway. "We've got dinner plans, you know." He grabbed my hand, grinning like a school kid (he might have gotten high, but who knew) and dragged me up from the couch. Crystal had to grab the photo album fast to keep it from slipping off my lap.
"Well, it was really nice to meet y'all." She stood up and almost looked like she wanted to hug me, but she reached down and tugged on the hem of her shirtdress.
"It was nice to meet you, too." I smiled at her. She seemed sweet. Even if she didn't look like the classiest person ever, she was really friendly.
TJ and Mordred exchanged faux-thug handshakes and we crept our way to the door.
"Come back some time, and maybe we can have dinner together! Double date!" Crystal was calling out the door.
"Bye!" We called to them.

We never had dinner or double dated. In fact, I never thought even thought about Crystal and TJ afterward until just a few days ago. There was a bi-racial couple in the grocery store the other day, and they seemed so happy and innocent. Their curly headed little girl sat in the grocery cart screaming her lungs out, and the couple was still laughing about something they'd said. It made me wonder where TJ and Crystal are now. Justin would be three years old. I want to pretend they're okay and they're happy and safe like the couple in the grocery store. I want to believe that they are still in love, that they work long hours and pay for daycare, but they still go out to eat with the kid occasionally. I want to believe Crystal still talks to her mom. I want to believe they go to Christmas and Thanksgiving with their families. That the photo album has gotten bigger.

I want to know its possible to pull off crazy-love, no matter what the cost.

To Whom It May Concern:

"Love grows in me like a tumor
parasite bent on devouring its host
im developing my sense of humor
til i can laugh at my face beneath your feet
til i can laugh at my heart between your teeth.
Skillet on the stove, its such a temptation
maybe ill be the lucky one that doesnt get burned...
What the f*** was i thinking
what the f*** was i thinking.
Love plows through me like a dozer.
Ive got more give than a bale of hay
and theres always a big mess left over.
With a what did you do
and a what did you say
What did you do? And
What did you say?
Skillet on the stove its such a temptation
maybe ill be the special one that doesnt get burned...
What the f*** was i thinking?
What the f*** was i thinking.
Oh its so embarassing.
Im in this awkward and uncomfortable thing
and im running out of places to hide it.
Im running out of places to hide it.
You know that ive got what you want.
You know that ive got what you want."

To Catch Them in the Rye

There were chickens in the background. I could hear a rooster crowing.
"Hello?... Who is this?"
It was sushi boy.
"Hi..."
"Oh, wow, How are you doing? I thought we weren't talking any more?"
"I'm in Mexico."
Now the chickens and roosters made sense. He sure was in Mexico. Rural-as-hell, Mexico.
"You're calling me from Mexico? Why are you there?"
"My Mom got sick."
"Oh my god, is she okay?" I suddenly remembered little details about him. I remembered the awkward way he darted his eyes away from me when I looked at him. I remembered the way he flinched when I picked a leaf off of his shoulder. And I remembered he had told me he was the ninth of fifteen children, all born to his same father and mother.
"She's okay," he said. "I think she just wanted to see me."
I laughed, and a rooster crowed again in the background.
"Well how are you supposed to get back?" He didn't respond right away, and I remembered his limited English. "How can you come back? It must be difficult to go there, and back, from here."
"No. I flew. Its not hard."
"Oh..." I smiled, "You have a visa. I forgot!"
"Maybe I'll see you in... one month?"
"I thought we weren't going to see each other any more."
"So what are you doing? Are you working now?" Clearly he didn't understand me. Or maybe he had selective hearing.
"Yes. I'm working. Are you sure you're okay down there? How's your family?"
"I'm okay. Well, everybody here--"
And the line went dead. I knew what it was. It had this little click to it, and I knew it meant his minutes had run out. I put down my phone and stared at the weird looking number flashing on the screen.

"Do you like kids?"
He had asked me, halfway through his taquitos, three months prior.
"Yes. I think I woud like kids. After I'm married, you know."
"You should have one." He grinned sheepishly, like he was embarassed, and looked down at his plate.
"Oh," I said, one eyebrow cocked. "So you mean I should have one with you."
He grinned wider, his eyes flickering up at me, and nodded.

He seemed so pure, so innocent, with such a simple outlook on the world. Thats how I had seen Daniel long ago. It was the same innocence that made me think I could shake all the things I didn't like about myself. Sushi-boy and Daniel didn't see the same grit, the same heartbreak to the reality of life. They weren't hardened, they were open and soft and maleable. Easily broken, I thought. And with them I felt so much like Holden Caufield, wanting so badly, with such intensity, to Catch them in the Rye. To save them.

And I still don't know what that is. I mean, I'd probably call it a waste of my time, now. But living the fantasy, while its happening, living that simple love-filled life, is just so sweet. God, I think I'm going to cry.

Secret

"No one will ever know but us."
And so, we hold
it deep inside ourselves
like awkward weight,
tying us together with strings
we couldn't sever if we tried.
We have watched each other cry
and promised never to forget,
never to doubt,
never to lose sight of
what happened,
what will happen,
what we know.
"Do you realize that in the same month and year that your life changed forever, so did mine? God sent you to me, then. You felt like you were running away from something, but you were running toward something else. You were sent to find me. It took you a long time, but here we are. And thank God. Thank you, God, for that."
"What would have happened if I didn't wave you over. What would I be to you? Nothing. And I would still be lost. We would have been in the same room and never known."
Deep beyond the surface, all the mess,
We have faith, and we trust that this is bigger
This is stronger.
This is better than every other time we wanted these things because
this
SECRET
binds us tight.

Ew.

Remy on the other side of the office keeps hacking up a lung. It is really nasty when you can actually hear someone's lung rattling around in their throat.

And I'm not one of those people whose gag reflex is super strong. I hawk stuff up all the time. So when I hear Remy's lungs crackling through her coughing fits, I just want to hawk them up for her! What color will they be? How big?

Unfortunately, I think Remy is just a smoker. And she needs to stop.

I, on the other hand, recently cleaned out my car and vaccumed it. I even put another Little Tree on the mirror to make it nice and fresh. I threw out all trash, and practically rubbed my face into the apholstery, it was so clean. I do not want to go back to a smelly ride. I am considering it a fresh start.

And I certainly don't want to sound like Remy.

Ew.

A Real Wedding

He stared back out at me, with his arms wrapped around this other girl all dressed in white.
She'd picked a strapless dress. It was perfectly complimented by a sheer veil with lace trim. A bouquet of pink roses were bunched in her left hand, her right was pressed to his chest.
I hadn't even met her. Though I'm sure it would have been perfectly inappropriate if I had.

I hate pink. I will never do a wedding in pink. Brandon Cole's wife had chosen a pink wedding. And I mean it was PINK. It looked like a Barbie doll had thrown up all over everything.
I don't think I even want a wedding. Every time I go to one, I get so freaked out I can hardly breathe. I mean, I've performed in front of hundreds of people and done the news in live television broadcasts, but the idea of walking down an aisle and having everybody ooooh and aaaah in approval, frankly, disgusts me.

Its so damn cliche! If I know I love someone and they know they love me, who cares if everybody backs me up by showing up at a wedding where I pledge my undying love in front of them just so they can nod and say NOW they're official. NOW its real. They did this BIG thing by getting MARRIED and NOW its final.

I just don't think weddings mean anything these days. They're all for show. They're just something the brides have been dreaming about since they played with their sickeningly pink Barbies and dressed their Kens up in tuxes for the "big day." Weddings are the result of two people settling on the outcome of their young lives. Weddings are negociations. Weddings are promises for the forseeable future. Weddings say, "YOU GUYS SAW US DO THIS, SO WE ARE NOW HELD ACCOUNTABLE." Weddings make me freak out.
I could just never be that hokey.

Russ Walker kept laughing it up with his wholesome, skinny, brunette on my screen. They held hands and laughed into each others faces. They cut the cake, which must have also been HILARIOUS.

I could still remember going to his sister's wedding when I was nineteen. The wedding had been tiny. It was held in an enormous church, and the groom's parents had disapproved of the bride's religion. They showed up, though. No one cried. Everyone drank non-alcoholic punch and watched the two of them dance awkwardly surrounded by parents, aunts, uncles, and other related old folks.
Terror had ripped its way through my gut throughout the entire ceremony. It felt wrong! How could some ceremony that everybody has done over and over and over like a patterned tradition really prove anything about the way you loved someone? Who was the ceremony for? Was it for the bride and groom? Was it for their parents? Was it for the government, so they could recognize the union? What was the purpose of the whole thing? Was it really supposed to feel like the Cinderella stories from the Disney movies I'd watched? Was it supposed to be lovely and right and like the heavens opened up and the stars were aligned and all that? I just didn't feel any magic. I felt a little... sad.

The only other wedding I'd been to was my aunt's when I was thirteen years old. She'd married a business owner, and she was supposed to be set for life. I watched her tearfully walk towards him down the aisle. He smiled back at her, not awkwardly at all. The place was full. It was beautiful. We blew bubbles at them as they ran outside toward a black limousine.

It was three years later before he turned out to be a crook and did jailtime. Needless to say, they divorced. Russ's sister toughed it out for five years and two children before she divorced her mama's-boy of a husband.

Since those two weddings, I've witnessed my former best friend's wedding, Brandon Cole's, and most recently a friend of a friend's. The last three haven't ended in divorce or anything, but I never feel all butterflies-and-rainbows when I see a bride walk down an aisle anymore. I feel scared. I feel scared because I don't know what it means anymore.

I mean, I know what I want out of a marriage for myself anyway. I want trust. I want so much trust that an ocean of crazy-bad couldn't separate us. I want love. I want the kind of love that doesn't get lost when the money runs out or when somebody gets a bad haircut or eats onion soup before going in for the kiss. I want faith that we are both working toward the same points in our lives, simultaneously. I don't want a debbie downer, I want the faith that says we can get there. No matter how long it takes, or how many times we have to go to plan B, I want to know that we both have faith in getting there. I want someone to talk to, who will talk to me, too. I want a romantic. I don't know if I'll find all these things. But it seems like its possible.

Still, if I do, I'm not sure I'll be rushing out to share it with everybody else when it happens. I don't think I want or need anyone's approval. Its a bond between God, and me, and whoever I marry. I don't need a whole church full of judgemental people nodding their heads because of our happy tears and PDA.

I always said I'd cry when Russ got married. I said it would break my heart. See, for four years I'd thought that stupid skinny girl was gonna be me. But now I realize that seven years has passed since those four ended, and I don't even know who Russ is any more. We are two completely different people now.
Still. I can't stop looking at that girl in that dress with that hideous bouquet and thinking to myself that I could have been right there. I could have been so different.

But. Obviously. I'm glad I'm not. I want more than Russ was. And I don't even want a real wedding.

The Shredder

Amid extreme cramping at work, I looked up from my knees to see the document-shredder people emptying the to-be-shredded bins.

It was just two guys wearing uniforms, emptying an overloaded blue sack into a large gray rolling bin that always makes a lot of noise every time its pushed. One of them was red headed, and had an odd looking tuft of beard. His hair line was greatly receding, leaving his forehead oversized. He looked all wrong.

And then I realized why I thought he looked all wrong. It was because I knew what he looked like ten years ago. Ten years ago, we were in tenth grade together. Ten years ago we shared a PE class.

I forgot about my cramps momentarily and focused on what the red headed shredder should have looked like. He was a wannabe thug in high school, I suddenly remembered. His pants were always sagging. Boxers peeking out the back, but you'd only see them if he bent over, due to his affinity for oversized shirts. All of his clothing looked like it could have come out of a Big and Tall catalogue, which unfortunately were two adjectives he was not. He had the same red hair then, though it had been longer and constantly looked greasy, like he needed to wash it. He was pale, just like now. His lips were always too red. It might have been from drinking too much fruit drink out of the school vending machines. Just thinking about those machines I can smell the stink of the vending room. I can remember those little shrimp baskets and chicken baskets filled with food that always seemed to taste like paper and plastic. I can remember the pizza, delivered from Papa Johns every day, that somehow also started to taste nasty, and the evil lunch lady who always pulled you the slice that was smaller than the one you wanted. I remembered sweaty Bob Johnston walking me to the caffeteria from his earlier PE class, so we could eat together before I went to mine. I remember holding his class ring for him while he dressed out, and then just holding it all the time. I remembered giving it back one day, too. I remember Shaniqua Curtis sitting with her friends at a table across the lunch room from us, in a folding chair, because she was too pregnant to sit at one of the little stools. I remember the screams that erupted, three months prior, in the room across the hall from my science class on the day they announced that over fall break Shaniqua's boyfriend had been shot and killed. I remember the taste of cherry vanilla coke. I remember when they hiked the price of bottled drinks by 50 cents at the vending machines. I remember when the principal announced he was leaving. I remember Nazi-saluting his replacement the next year. I remembered Chris Foster calling me on my home phone to tell me we should go out. I remember telling him I had a boyfriend. I remembered wanting with every shred of my being to win a state championship speech trophy.

I remember it all like it was simple. And clean. And I don't even think it really was, but it was for me. Because I was. When did things change so much?

And I looked back up at that shredder-guy and I thought, this is what we become. We're adults now. We're not grand. We didn't get famous. You're not a rapper and I'm not a poet laureat. Rebel or not, straight-A student or C-average, we're doing work in the same building right now.
I print documents, and you shred them. Its as simple as that.

Too Much

Can't write now.

Too.

Much.

Drama.

What the Hell This Blog is About

OK.

Apparently there is some confusion about WHAT THE HELL this blog is about.

JUST SO YOU KNOW: This blog is what is known as BLOG FICTION. BLOG FICTION, friends, is a blog written by a fictional person or individual. BLOG FICTION means that the author is actually a fictional character.

Now, you might be thinking, Ms. Edna! If that IS your real name, Ms. Edna, doesn't a whole lot of what you write come from the author's author's life? The creator of Ms. Edna who in turn created Lesser Known Works?

Well, friends, yes, authors' lives often do make it into their writing. How would Twain have known to write about the South? How would Dickinson have know to write about death? How would Romance novelists know to write about Romance? But PLEEEEAAAASE, people. Does that mean that Nabokov actually molested children? Does that mean that Harlequin novelists have fallen in love thousands of times and been happily married to bare chested Native Americans? NO! Does it mean that Poe ever actually killed anyone because of their milky colored eye? Certainly not. It just means we have good imaginations, and we have the freedom to embellish.

So PLEASE. Seriously. Do not think that this is real. If you happen to know the author's author, please just acknowledge that some things were meant to be escapes, not rants. Not memories of actual events. Not truth. Fiction. Isn't that what BLOG FICTION is all about?

Honestly, I'm impressed if you're getting freaked out. It means I'm doing my job. To you, reading it, it's real.

Score one for the author's author.

Oh yea.

The Serpent (Excerpt 3)

"You don't trust me." He was doing that thing again. That thing where he looked directly into my eyes and I felt like he was touching me. He was! It felt so strange. No one had ever done that to me before, and I'm not even kidding.
"Its so early. Do I have to trust you with everything?"
"I just..." I could feel him pull back from me a bit. But he didn't move. It was all in his eyes. They drove me insane. "I want to know you love me as much as I love you."
"But I do love you." His face was pained, just a slight little bit.
"You just said, though..."
"There are different levels of love," I said.
"Well what level am I on?"
"Look," I started, "Don't rush this. What we have found is not meant to be rushed."
"And yet I've lived all my life without you. I have so much time to make up for."
YOU DON'T KNOW WHO I AM! My head shouted. I shook it off.
"Then we have all our lives to do that. Don't. Rush it," I said. He clearly wasn't accepting this. I could see it in his face. "Haven't you been hurt before?" He nodded slowly.
"Yes, I've been hurt."
"Well I was hurt a LOT. Okay. I was hurt a lot, and I don't rush in with my eyes closed any more. I told you my parents divorced, right? Well thats NOT going to be me. I won't let you rob me of determining what is best for myself." No matter what forces of good or evil were propelling him toward me, toward my freaking soul, apparently, if it were up to those probing eyes, I could not let myself be washed away in it. I had lost too much of myself too many times before. In fact, what did I even have to give him?
And if he really was what I had been looking for all this time, why would he rush me to make a declaration that meant nothing because it was clearly impossible to make.
That thread, though. That thread that ran from his eyes deep down into me, drew me back away from my mind.
"I do love you," I said. "And I will love you more, later. Be patient with me."
"Yes..."
He leaned in closer. His face was inches from mine.
"Please be patient with me."
"I will."
"Please don't hurt me."
"No..."
It occurred to me, as I got out of the car, that he could really be a serpent in disguise. His eyes and his voice and the set of his gaze all making my skin hum and pushing my consciousness into a near coma. It kinda scared me, just thinking about it. I wrapped my sweater tighter around me before running inside.

American Family

I forgot my Dad's sixtieth birthday last week.

"I was surprised when you guys didn't call me last Thursday."
Doh! I mentally slapped myself on the head. I had even told Nestor I didn't need to forget that my Dad's birthday was coming up. I clutched the phone tighter to my ear and looked away from the tv.
"Oh... yeah..." I gave one of those nervous laughs I do, "because it was... your birthday?"
"What's so funny."
My dad, as always, was deadpan. It suddenly dawned on me that this was the purpose of his call. To remind me that I had forgotten his birthday. His 60th birthday.
"Nothing, I just-- um... I'm sorry, Dad." What do you say when somebody calls to say that? "You know, we just don't talk to you that much, and we don't see you... I don't know. You know?"

When I was in grade school, I can remember being so excited to go on what we called Father-Daughter days. My Dad would take me to the science museum, or the park, or for ice cream, and we'd just hang out together. I liked Father-Daughter days. I loved having his attention on me, and only me. Not on my brother, or my mom, or his radios, or the tv. Only on me.

"Dad, guess what!" I was sitting in bed, reading some science book from the Antioch library. The house was dark and everybody was asleep but me and my dad. I wanted to be a scientist. It may have been the last time medicine interested me. Blood weirds me out too much now.
"What?"
"I found the cure for cancer!" I pointed to a passage in the book I was reading. It was much too big for a normal ten-year-old to be interested in. That's why I was so interested in it.
"You did?" He laughed, and I was a little insulted.
"Its right here. I found it. It says 'large amounts of calcium and potassium can counteract some effects of cancer and have previously been suspected to reduce or eliminate its spread.'" I looked up at him, after following with my finger. "I found the cure for cancer!"
"Well, you know, its in that book, right?"
"...right." He was going to disprove me. He had that 'you're so sweet and innocent' tone of voice.
"Who wrote that book, do you think?"
"Scientists."
"So... scientists found something that they think could cure cancer in some cases, maybe, and they put it in that book for you to read."
"So... I know. I didn't find the cure, really. But. I found it in the book!"

I can remember in surprisingly sharp detail all the things that meant my family was falling apart.

We were standing at the foot of the stairs and my mom and my brother and I were calling up towards my parents bedroom,
"Dad! Get up! Its time for church!"
We called and called.
"Come on! Lets go!"
We were fully dressed. We were waiting by the door to the garage.
"Dad, its time to go!"
But he wouldn't come. I remember that as the day he stopped coming with us.
Church itself isn't that important to me now, and it wasn't necessarily important to me then. It was just a pattern in my eight-year-old life that got broken. It was something I expected to be there, and then suddenly wasn't.

At fifteen, I didn't know why my parents had moved their bedroom into the laundry room. I didn't know why my mom dressed herself out of the hall closet. I didn't know why the master bedroom had been turned into a man-cave. And I had no idea why my Dad always seemed so distant. Why my mom always seemed so frazzled. Why my brother became a brooding or emotionless shell. I didn't connect any of this to my outbursts years later. I had goals and aspirations. I had speech and debate. I had a boyfriend. I focused all my energy on those things.

The official move happened on my mom's birthday. A moving truck was hired and some random guys took all of the man-cave essentials out of our living room (which was doubling as man-cave) and drove them to my great grandmother's old house an hour away. She had died about one month earlier. Three months after that, I "left" Lavery.

The American Family isn't a family anymore.
Define FAMILY, someone says, and you get a thousand different answers.
What are American Values? What is American Family?
Foreign people ask me things all the time about why Americans are the way we are.
Here is the answer:
We are not a RELIGIOUS country. We are not based on RELIGION. Nobody came here and said THIS IS WHAT WE BELIEVE. Nobody determined the norms and mores. Everybody protected our right to seek answers, and eventually too many of them ended up being thrown in our face. So when you ask a question here, you will always get five thousand different answers. And its confusing. Its like those search-overload commercials, only unfortunately, in our subconscious. Its true. Look at Google. Watch television.
COMMERCE drives us. Ads are everywhere. America is made of money. Why do you think thousands of immigrants come here, illegally, even, and make more money than they do at home? Americans are in it for the money. What makes money is what runs this country.
And I know what you're thinking: its like that everywhere, JLEd. It's not a new thing.
And you're right.
But there's a difference in America. It has to do with entitlement. It has to do with swagger, and arrogance, and the idea that we are "clearly" the best.
Watch Fox News and it will be rammed down your throat that we live in a Christian Nation. That we were founded as a Christian Nation. Guess what? We were founded as a FREE nation. Yet when an entire country of people is basing their values and beliefs and ideals on the principles of individual freedom, all group identities get thrown by the wayside. There is no value in the collective family. Only the individual inside the collective. There is no value in community, only what the community can do for you. Why idenitify with anything unless it gets you somewhere? There is no concrete cultural identity. Aside from commerce, anyway. Americans are muts. We are melting pots of races and backgrounds and religions and we're just so confused!

Who am I? we ask. Why am I here? we muse.

Our families grow further and further apart because we don't think about them. We are individuals. We make ourselves happy. We think about money, and how much of it we can make for ourselves. Halves of families are poor and the other halves are rich. City folks and country folks. They are FAMILY. But they are not really FRIENDS.

"So how are you, Honey? What have you been up to?"
As I heard my Dad say this over the phone to me for probably the seventh time all year, I wondered whose fault it was. Was it his fault? Was it mine? Whose job was it to bridge the gap? How did one even begin to do that? Or was it meant to be this way? Was it my culture to be distant? Was it my culture to answer the phone and be polite, to call once a week out of politeness, as I had once been told I should do. What was broken? Was it broken at all?
"I'm fine, Dad. Nothin much is happening here."

I refuse to allow myself to create this. I am aware that there are no fairy tales. No fooling yourself. But I want the real deal. And I won't settle for sleeping in the laundry room. Whoever-it-is can be sure as hell about that right now.