Cheese & Crackers.

Is it wrong that my first memories of you are ones of embarrassment? Even at four I was uncomfortable to share a bed with my father when he was wearing tighty whities. Unfortunately where else could I sleep?

He had me on weekends, scarce and in between.

One of my first memories of my father involved my favorite childhood food, kraft handisnacks cheese and crackers. I don't remember who took me if it was grandma or my mother, but I remember waiting in line in the cafeteria. I remember knowing that daddy was sick, he wasn't feeling well so we had to go to the hospital to visit him. I didn't like going to the hospital it smelled funny and I had already spent months in the hospital.



When I was three or four my mother's boyfriend, Steve was shaving in the small bathroom on the first floor of our two story apartment in Bellingham. He had a large coffee thermas on the counter of the bathroom right next to the sponges. Even then I was smaller than most children. I was wearing a purple sweatpants and a sweatshirt outfit. I slowly tried to reach up for the sponge... when the coffee container knocked over spilling furiously hot liquid all over my body immediately melting my clothes and skin.

My screams were blood renched you'd think I'd strained my vocal cords. My mother darted downstairs to see what the screams of her child were about, but the look on Steve's face indicated that this wasn't any normal cry for attention. She wrapped me in a towel and raced down to my grandmother's house merely 7 blocks away.

My mother told me that they took me into a small room and locked her out and all she could hear were my screams. She wanted to be there to hold my hand as they tore the flesh from my body, but the doctors felt that it would be even more traumatizing to have my mother, my protector in a role in which she was helpless to alleviate any of the pain.

She told me this was one of the worst moments of her life. She felt so horrid, so helpless, so small.

I was in the burn ward for months and lived off hospital food and the occasional meal from McDonald's. Mother said I was addicted to "chicken" McNuggets. It was then that I also received my first real teddy bear a pink care bear. It was also then that I began my nervous habit of self-soothing. I would run my fingers across the tag of the bear where the washing instructions were printed. This would later apply itself to my class rings and the fidgety nature of moving it from finger to finger, hand to hand.

I laid in the bed with bars for so long that it became absolutely impossible to get me back once play time was over. Mother told me that one time a nurse scolded me and hit me on my hand. My mother had never been so angry and told the women off. I was a small child confined to my bed for hours on end, I looked forward to my walks and small bouts of play. It shouldn't come off as odd or strange that I would want to stay away from the bars as long as I could.

I learned about the smells of the ointments and bandages. My mother would keep them in a small old Snoopy shoes box. We would need to apply ointments from time to time to help with the healing of the scares. Growing up I never called them scares, I always referred to them as my burns.

It was then that I started to think that I was a monster. The large red daggers lining across diagonally through my torso and up across my arm.

"I'll never be pretty," I thought. "No one will ever want me, if I have children they will be ashamed of me."

This manner of thinking went on for almost decades.




Walking through the hospital reminded me of all this. It's funny that I don't remember any thoughts of my father before the accident. There I was for his accident however, poised and ready.

I remember that he was hard to spot and very different than what I was used to. I hugged his leg and proceeded to sit next to him.

He talked in detail about how he and the rest of the guys were feeling about being in rehab. I didn't know what that meant, all I knew was that my daddy was there and I had a great feast of cheese & crackers to consume.

Dad went through rehab for awhile to get cleaned up. My mother had divorced him on the basis of many things, that being a prime factor, the mental abuse, physical abuse, cheating and lying were all factors to the demise of a marriage built on shotgun values.

He would struggle all my life to keep the bottle away from his lips. He was a horrible drunk! There was a time where he had me for visitations. He took me to my Grandma & Grandpa Seaman's house for a visit. By the time we were ready to leave he was smashed and was not in any place to drive. However I and Tracy his future wife (at that point) road around town while my dad yelled at the both of us we needed to go party, I was eight and I was scared.

It wasn't until I was close to 20 that my dad started to clean up. He started to watch his worlds collide and the respect of me lowering with it.

To Someone Special.

When I met you I wasn't looking for anyone in particular, I was already actively engaged in other possibilities as you knew. However the second I saw you I wasn't interested in any of those. I realized I didn't care about the shows, the bands the music that I had been waiting for months to hear.

I was more interested in getting to know you and seeing if you were interested in getting to know me. I had never felt so drawn to someone and so familiar at the same time. I didn't mean to feel so familiar its just one of those things as cliche as it may sound... "that just happens."

Every other man that I had met was an uphill struggle to get to know and to even eventually care about. You were so forthcoming with anything that I wanted to know. It was as if you wanted to be an open book.

I've never known anyone so receptive to any change in emotions. Even the simplest of sighs is questioned, analyzed and further questioned. What am I thinking? How do I feel? Why did I do that or this or that? Always wondering where my emotions, desires, motivations are derived from. Leaving seldom anything to chance or miscommunication.

With two over analytical people, there is still room for miscommunication.

I fell for you quit quickly. I don't think it's ever been that quick in my life. It all feels so surreal. I think your head would topple over if you thought of yourself even a fraction of the way that I see you. Which maybe why my compliments are seldom taken seriously and are typically fanned off.

Wachumba Pass...

My dad and I used to have a way of getting to my step-mom, Tracey. I never really liked her while I was growing up because when I was in the back seat pretending to be asleep I over heard her talking trash about my mom. She primarily said a bunch of disgusting things about how my mom was overweight. It was sad that she didn't pull the visor down to see that she wasn't one to talk.

My dad had pulled me out of class for a couple of weeks and we were heading down to California. Through the car ride my dad and I would make up bizarre songs and slogans to remember the trip. One of which was hated above all else by Tracey.

"We're going to the Waaaahhhhhh-Cummm-Baaaah Pass.
We're going to have fun at the Waaaaahhh-Cummm-Baaah Pass!"

This was chanted over and over again by my dad. For some reason it made me laugh more than the name Lake Titicaca or Bucharest (for some reason I thought it was boob caress). I'm not sure if it was the laughs of a 7-year-old little girl getting louder and louder or if it was the insistent repetitive nature of my dad saying the phrase that drove Tracey up the wall.

Mercer Island is a bit Premature...

My relationships typically in the past have had me with one foot on the ground waiting for the other shoe to drop.

When you have a dad with four previous marriages and a mother on her third it tends to make you cautious about giving your heart to anyone. There were times I thought I was in love, but at 18 to 23 lust masquerades as love to frequently. I want to think that I meant it every time I said it, but I think that with certain people there were better phrases that could have been used.

George, "I love you."

Matt, "I want to chase you."

Andy, "I want to connect with you to forget about what's happening around me."

Aron, "I want to love you for loving me."

With Aron a great deal of the time I was just comfortable. I wanted to love him for loving me and for being there for me, similar to a best friend. It feels horrible to say that, but when you don't connect with someone and you want your own space 98% of the time, you know that love isn't really where you are at.
My dad adored him, my mom wasn't sure from the moment she met him. He blew up at her poker party and spent the rest of the night on the porch swing in the back and then curled up in the guest bed. He was upset about a private moment we had prior to us dating.
He chased me actively and frequently. I would hold my cat in front of my face when he tried to kiss me to create barriers. I wanted to tell him that I wasn't interested, but I started to wear thin and through this I started to develop feelings for him.
I wasn't happy for a long time towards the end of the relationship and was looking for ways to get out. I would have meetings with my best friend Kyle to look for an apartment.
My mind had shut off to the idea of being in a relationship somewhere around the holidays after I had received a phone call from Jesus-Dave about a friend of mine, Sarah committing suicide. After that I turned off. I was overcome with grief and gave in to depression.
Aron was understanding for the first couple of months, but when I shut down sexually his understanding wore thin. He went off on me on the phone calling me horrible names and taking each of my weaknesses against me. In the morning I looked for an apartment and started making plans of telling him that I was leaving him. He had been mentally abusive before this when he sensed that I was going to leave.
One night I pushed him away from me and his side hit the door knob. He lashed out at me by putting his hands around my neck tightly and tossing me to the floor. I was scared of him from that moment, but it would be three months before I could leave. All the while I was wanting out. I told him that I was breaking up with him and that I had a place lined up. We were close to our one year anniversary, but we weren't going to hit the marker together. He told me that we could go through couples counseling, but I had made my mind up. It was my counselor that was helping me with Sarah's death who had made commented on my relationship being unhealthy that furthered my decision.
He spent the night kicking me out of my home and saying hurtful things to me to try to break me. I packed some of my clothes and drove to my other friend Sarah's house and waited for the day that I could move in.
It wasn't until the night before Aron moved to Washington D.C. that he apologized to me for the way he treated me. He told me that the first 9 months of our relationship were the happiest of his life. I thanked him for that and some how it helped me to think of the good memories of him, which there were many. I really did care about him, but I knew we weren't meant for each other.

Down By The Bay...

After George I had a good year lull of reflection where I had minor flings and fleeting moments.

I began a couple of jobs in 2001 which is when I met Tara Hansen a quirky goth-metal enthusiast with a desire for tattoos and Davie Havoc. Her manners screamed Hot Topic corporate office, but I thought she was fun and awkwardly full of drama. We spent a great deal of our summer nights driving around Bellingham, being those kids you hate with the blaring music and no real destination, but out of the house.
With our cruising ammo blaring and my small 1996 periwinkle Ford Aspire we were set to paint the town if not red, a similar color, fuschia. We had odd run-ins with brief characters at the Ranch Room and the movie theater. We went to the midnight showing of "A Clockwork Orange," at the Pickford. It was that night that I met the boy that would haunt me for four years.
Matt wasn't your typical boy he had baggy pants, blue spiked hair, multiple piercings, and was instantly smitten with me. At the time I thought I was rebellious and punk! I had a deep obsession with blue hair and thought that it was the most aesthetically pleasing feature a boy could have. It was just about the only thing that could really turn my head and he was rocking it with confidence and just enough piercings to come off not as trendy.
When I kissed his earlobes my mouth would be full of four to five different metallic objects. He was infatuated with the type of music I couldn't stand, nu metal. We would stand in line at the grocery story and he'd start belting out lines from Slipknot and I'd bury my head deep into my shirt out of embarrassment. This would sometimes enforce his singing to greater volumes.
He was in high school while I was in college and with the two of living at home when I was on school vacations we couldn't always crash at each other's houses. My small vehicle acted as a portable room. We would sleep by the railroad tracks close to the bay in my car, cuddled up with sometimes just a jacket or two to cover us. The windows would fog up as we laid in the cold. The trains would act as a morning alarm clock (this was during the years before I had a cell phone).
It's true that with absence the heart grows founder and with months between us and hours of distance I found myself becoming more and more intimate with him. He'd visit when he could via bus to my dorm room. These were the times that I craved. No cold car rides, just him and me and an empty room.
There was no way that it would have lasted though because we were three years a part and he was still in high school. I thought that it was wrong for me to even be with him because of this and I told him that I didn't want to take away from his experiences. He told me that none of that mattered to him, but I insisted and with that I broke up my relationship with Matt. It was gut wrenching to find out that after we broke up to further prove his point he enrolled in running start to show how uninterested he was in the follies of high school.
We lost touch for a couple of years, but I still thought about him frequently. I would later come to realize that he had been doing the same thing. We reconnected in 2005 in Seattle. I had just graduated from college and moved to the Greenwood area. He was up for the first time in years from San Diego where he moved to be with a long term girlfriend, the same girl that he started dating after we broke up. He met her in Hawaii while on vacation and they instantly connected a the time and delighted in the fact that they were both bisexual, something I didn't realize about myself until years after.
I picked him up in Ballard outside of Archie McPhee's and from there we went to the EMP and hung out in my apartment reminiscing. The next night I picked him up from Pike Place and we again spent a great deal of time talking. I looked at him and told him how I felt and that I was sorry to inform him. He looked right through me and said, "I'm still in love with you and have been this whole time." He then went on about how he wasn't in love with his girlfriend and that he had been interested in me for years. He said that his current relationship was like a strong friendship, but that was it.
With that unveiling we did the worst thing two people could do when one is in a relationship. He cheated on his girlfriend that night and told me that he was going to move to Seattle to start over and that we would be able to see each other again. I felt horrible and excited at the same time, this was what I was dreaming about for years. I had been playing the "what if" game for so long and finally I had an answer.
Suddenly he began ignoring my calls, things started to get weird and distant. I received a message from his girlfriend telling me to stop all contact with Matt. I never wanted to hurt her so I begrudgingly respected her wishes. I had never engaged in anything like that before and since haven't, but through it all I felt horrible for what he and I did to her.
He would late write me a letter that read, "I've been playing the what if game for so long as well, but I can't have it both ways. If closure is what you need, consider this it." I needed it, I needed to let go of the idea of what he was to me. He wasn't that boy anymore and he wouldn't ever be. What he did to her and how he treated me made that clear.
For awhile though he was a wonderful mistake.

Cajun Christmas.

I remember the last Christmas that my grandma had. I wasn't able to stay the whole day because I had to work at the cinema, but I remember the look on my grandma's face as she read my Christmas card.

Each year I tried to make her cry. There was always one card that would make her do so and that card had to be the most thoughtful and sweet card she had ever received, at least up until that point. I had done it that year and I was so delighted. It wasn't that I wanted to make her cry, but that I wanted to be able to touch her in a way that was special. I knew that she kept the cards throughout the year and I wanted to make sure that mine was closer to the top of the stack.

That was also the year that my uncles thought they could create Christmas dinner. My grandma had converted from making a ham dinner to making a taco dinner. She said that Thanksgiving was to close to Christmas and that she had already cooked a huge meal, why not cook something simple that we'd all enjoy. That year my uncles put the shells in the oven and forgot about them. They were placed in the oven to warm them up, but instead they came out black.

First Comes...

There are only a small handful of guys that I've ever said I loved and thought I meant it at the time outside of my current relationship: George; Matt; Andy & Aron.

George Pardington was my first real boyfriend. He was in all honesty my high school sweetheart. Our relationship was the type that offended people when we broke up. More people were made at me after I broke up with George than were when I announced I was moving off the island. I had people inquire about him a years after we had been broken up.

He messed up really bad when he met my dad though. George had a temper and with it he had an anger problem. Many people speculated that he would use that anger against me, but he never once raised a hand at me. He was so in love with me that there was never a thought in my mind that he was capable of hurting me. However my father asked him, "How are things going with you and my daughter?" Mind you this is the first time I've ever brought a boy to meet my dad.

George said, "Things are going well now... I used to have an anger problem, but it's getting better."

My dad looked at my uncle and then back at George and while gritting his teeth together he mustered out, "That's good to hear, I have a bit of anger problem too, George."

George and I were inseparable with him spending a great deal of time at my house and I at his. His family had adopted me by giving me my fake nickname, Margo as to not get confused with George's sister Jennifer. Margo was my fake nickname for our high school advice column.

The liked me so much that after we had broken up and I had been in college for a year, George's mom was still trying to find ways of hooking us back together. It was sweet, but a bit odd at the same time.

He was a year younger than me and I knew it couldn't last after graduation, because I would be across the state in Pullman.

However this didn't stop my next boyfriend Matt from pursuing me while living outside of Bellingham.

The Rambling "Love" Life...

enough

Do You Know What That Means???

They say that you go into middle school as lambs and come out as lions, well in the spring time of 1992 I was no longer a lamb.

I began to have real crushes and I got my first razor and a gaggle of girlfriends when prior I only really hung out with Trenton. My skin was bronze from the La Jolla sun and my ear drums rattled from the plans of Top Gun over head ever day and every night. My hair was golden and my eyes were just starting to fade into a hazel glow.

My best friend at the time was a toe-headed girl named Kimberley Morgan. I absolutely adored her for her sweet demeanor and golden long hair and the fact that she had two little sisters that I had adopted as my own. I was a regular member of the Morgan flock as she was a member of mine. We seemed to always be in each other's company. I taught her little sister CJ how to ride a bike, granted my step-dad hadn't taught me until I was near 5th grade. Perhaps I was stubborn and didn't want to learn at first but I was dying to teach.

Her mom and dad had divorced like many military families, but her mom was quit different. I didn't know at the time that she liked the company of other women and I didn't care. You don't understand those things as a child, or at least you didn't back then. I would joke with Kimmy saying things like, "When I grow up I want to be like your mom and have slumber parties all the time with my girlfriend." Remember, we had no idea? This was before there were any real gay icons and even then what child is really going to understand Richard's Simmons?

She told me years later and even then I didn't care. I always subscribed to the notion even as a small child that if you loved someone, truly loved someone what's to stop you from being with them. I remember asking a grown up when I was little, "If I loved my best friend and she was a girl why couldn't I spend my whole life with her if I loved her?" The idea even then seemed limiting.

As most military brats we did mockeries of our parents profession in the backyard. Games of fort and military tactics seemed routine and based on age as rank with Jorge always the commander and chief. It was Jorge, Kimmy & Me, Felipe, Emilio, Pamela, CJ and whatever other kids wanted in on the turf. There wasn't much in terms of forest, it was Miramar for goodness sakes and this was before it got handed over to the Marines, back when Top Gun was still on everyone's lips and all eyes were on the sky.

My mom was a newly wed and she did try to make my dad happy. He drank, but she didn't care he was young like she and bound to make some mistakes along the way. He did, but I never found out until I was 18. It was like that in a military town the carpet had so much swept under it that you wondered how you could walk at all or if you even dared.

Kimmy would always accompany me to family outings and I with her. I won a trip for four to Universal Studios off of a Fox Kid's network promotion for a film I've still never seen, Backdraft. We went up when the whether was less than desirable. We ended up pulling over frequently on a count that the rain was harder than anything we'd ever experienced in the Northwest.

San Diego had better schools and actually had two extra levels for advanced placement. I was in the GATE program and enjoyed and relished in the idea of excelling. When I moved to Oak Harbor I was told that I didn't need to finish the last month of 6th grade and that I would be far ahead of the 7th grade class.

Kimmy and I discovered boys quickly and I had my eyes on two of them. A young man named Corey Matthews (no relation to the popular sitcom of the time) and another boy named Randy Edwards. Corey had tried to ask me out a couple of times, but I wasn't sure what that would really entail in all honesty. I had gone on chaperoned dates with Kimmy and Felipe & Emilio and their parents. Felipe was younger than me and was always my date and Emilio was far to young to even think of going out with Kimmy, but she did so anyways.

Felipe was a sweet heart from the start. My mom would often poke fun at his loyalty. I remember one year he dragged his baby brother with him to my door and handed me a large Valentines card with a pink heart and a smile. I kissed him when I moved but he twisted it and told all the neighborhood boys that I slipped him the tongue which simply wasn't true!

Slow To Bury...

We lined the trailer with friends, family and relatives. The room was divided between the four children of my grandma: Roland aka Willie; Debbie; Mike and my mom. My mom and Mike are from the same father and Willie and Debbie from my grandma's first husband, but it's odd as to how one child out of each marriage had managed to connect and disconnect from her so.

My mother didn't receive the type of attention she probably should have had growing up. She was the youngest and trapped in the midst of my grandma's fourth marriage which would ultimately be my grandma's fifth and final marriage. The type where you divorce only to realize that you want to be back together and then only to realize your first instinct was correct not to be together at all.

My Uncle Mike wouldn't have known grandpa Don, because he was in and out of juvi through the majority of his teens. Grandma always wanted to reach out to him, but it never seemed to take much of a hold on him. He went from town to town panhandling as a clown and using his amazing artistic skills as a tattoo artist a trade he learned more about when he was locked up for paralyzing a man in a bar fight. I found him on the stoop of grandma's trailer crying and regretting the things that didn't seem to go right between them and the things that had. I ended up walking towards my mom to notify her that someone should probably talk to him.

The house was sold and split four ways, but it was only supposed to be split in two. Grandma originally didn't want Debbie or Mike to receive anything. I believe after watching the bloodletting that was my grandma on my dad's side's death, she knew that writing someone off or out of the will would end messy and would be more trouble than the message it intended to say.

Debbie was always on the move or so I was told. I looked at many pictures of her from her youth and she was a gorgeous girl. She could have been a model if she wanted, beautiful hair, skin and smile. She looked almost angelic, but somewhere beneath the brown eyes harbored a wild side of gambling and addiction that held with her all through her days.

She's been missing for about two years now and no one really knows where she is.

She had aged after she had jumped out of a two-story window do to a fire that was consuming the building. She was terribly broken and lost some of her teeth from it. I feel that it probably drove her to drink more. She handed her boys Gabe & Jerry to their father and barely saw them while they grew up on the other side of the country. She kept her daughter who was two years younger than me, Amy.

There were several times that I'd wake up and hear my mom on the phone with Debbie. She'd go for months without phoning only to pop up with some form of ailment or problem that she wanted her little sister to send some money to help alleviate. My mom has since stopped with the aid knowing full well that any form of income she garnished for her big sister would surely end up in the casino.

My Uncle Willie was the oldest and always took the blame if something happened with the kids. He was the watchdog, the protector and never moved away from grandma. They were only 15-years apart and I often thought that they probably raised each other much to the same extent that my mother and I had.

Uncle Willie had always intimidated me from the first memory I had of him. He told my mom that if I had ever gotten out of line to use a paddle on my butt and he handed my mom the biggest wooden paddle I had ever seen and it was painted a bright red. Since that day probably more than twenty-years-ago I've always been scared and anxious around him.

I walked into the craft room where my mom was going through all of the fabric that was neatly organized against the wall. She told me that grandma had asked us to give a great deal of the fabric to a woman in need that would use it properly. That was when my aunt Debbie walked in and started to go through all the fabric and declare what her fair share was. This set my mother off, which is a very hard thing to do. She knew that Debbie was just going to sell it and go against grandma's wishes and she said what I thought was the worst and most horrid thing she had ever said to someone.

"You know Debbie, mom didn't even want you in the will," my mother remarked.

With emotions on high I retreated to grandma's room and went through the one artifact that I knew I could find comfort in, her cedar chest. Each of the woman in my family owned a cedar chest that we kept our secrets, papers, memories and trinkets in. I'd often go through her cedar chest looking for old pictures that I had drawn as a child.

I stumbled across a plethora of holiday gift cards, each one kept hidden after she had taken them off the mantle. There were ones that had my chicken scratch penmanship from the age of five and ones from recent years as well. There were birth certificates for each of the children as well as one for my uncle who died as a child. There were old clippings from articles published by friends and ribbons from state fairs. If ever there was a more cheerful way to express the life of someone this was it, not the rustling of properties out in the other rooms, or the tears of memories past on the stoop.

I would have rather us talk about her and her fascinating life instead of pawing through her possessions. That's the one thing that I always hated after death was the act of prying through ones things in the search for, "what you want..." It's a disgusting practice.

Receptions...

The night before I found out about my grandma's death I spent it with my new boyfriend Andy. Looking back at our relationship I feel pretty bad for him, because he really didn't know what he was getting himself in to. I latched on to him and convinced myself I loved him to dull the pain of my loss. In many regards I did love him, but not nearly as much as it seemed.

This was the exact opposite of the way I acted when I was with Aron and Sarah had committed suicide. I retracted. I wanted to be alone, in the dark away from anyone I didn't want to feel comfort, because she had none. I pushed Aron away, pushed him away for loving me. Then pushed him away for wanting me to forget her. I couldn't so, he had to go.

You can't control someone else's grief.

Andy and I were cuddling in my dorm room. I felt so comfortable, we were both of small stature and felt like children nestled up in the patchwork quilts with my teddy bear that a high school friend had given me dangling off the side of the narrow bed.

My phone rang. I went to get it as Andy rolled over on his side holding a pillow against him, keeping my spot warm. It was another update about my grandma only this one was a week overdue. Apparently she had been taken from her home... a senior trailer park community, hardly her home. Her home was the lovely pink house on the corner of Cedarwood with the billowing tree which carried the large white circular flowers, the rhubarb bushes and overly harvested pear trees. The house where my mother took a photo of me as a toddler from an ancient Easter where all the grandchildren hunted Easter eggs... not a trailer park community.

My mother informed me that she had been taken from this place and put in a retirement home. I was outraged. My grandma was barely 60 and had already been put into a home! She was an incredibly independent woman, never allowing anyone else to take care of her, always on her own. Where most woman would have bent over or wained for a man to comfort them, my grandma strict to her convictions held fast and alone making her own form of comfort, not needing anyone else to harbor her feelings or desires.

I was so angry, so petrified, so helpless. Why didn't they tell me? Why did they leave her a week out to tell me. I could have come home. I could have done something. I could have taken her!

My mother kept making it sound as if she didn't want me to come home.

"You wouldn't want to see her like this Jen," she said.

I don't care how she looks, this is my grandma. The woman who held me on her knee reading Dr. Seuss' Red Fish, Blue Fish. The woman who'd wake me up and make me giant Belgium waffles with strawberries and whip cream. The woman who never scolded me, but once and then I really had it coming. I was the child that even in my late teens would rush to her lap and lay my head on her knee to have her welcome it by stroking my hair. I loved this woman regardless of any disease or situation that had fallen on her.

My mother would later come to explain this as her not wanting me to see my grandma in such pain. She said the memories she held from the experience were ones she never wanted me to have. My grandma's mind was fading and with it her gentle temperament. She would be violent for no reason and forget things and they all knew it wasn't her but the cancer, but it still hurt to see the sounds of the devil springing from the voice of an angel.

I laid my body back down on the bed with Andy and sobbed into his chest until I fell asleep.

The next day I started to think about plans to visit my grandma as soon as school let out which was just a couple of weeks away.

I received another call.

My mother had bought me a ticket to come home to Bellingham, only it wasn't for a visit. She told me that grandma had died and that the funeral would be soon.

All I remember is slamming the phone and a horrible sickness rushing my body. I thought I was going to be sick. I ran to the bathroom holding my mouth. After a moment I got my bearings and walked sulking to my room. There I nestled myself in my bed in a ball and wept holding my pillow and teddy tightly.

I remembered a visit I had with my grandma around summer time last year where she walked through the entire house with me like a curator. She must have known things were going downhill because she started to point out each item of worth in her home. She said she didn't want us to be fooled by how much they could be sold for. The whole thing felt a bit warped to me and every time I'd tell her she'd just smile and proceed.

She looked fine to me, she had just visited me a couple of months prior in college during our Mother's weekend. Everyone thought that she was my mother and my mom was my sister. Not a hard one to mistake, age-wise I could see how most people would be correct. All of the boys on the floor above mine loved my grandma, because she had crocheted pot holders for all of them. She would often laugh about this saying, "I don't know why those boys were so in love with those pot holders." She had sent several more to my dorm room after she had left at the request of the boys who hadn't received one, do to lack of time and string.

Grandma walked all through out the house pointing out old crock pots and pickle jars, citing that the old crocks to make pickles were worth a lot and don't get fooled if someone says otherwise! She then went through some of the photos with me, the old photos ones from before she was born. Slowly going through our families history. It's now that I wish I had recorded this information in some form, I just never thought that she'd be gone.

I was envious of my cousins who had children even though they were my age. I wanted my children to have known her, felt her touch, been held by her if only once. Now I don't know if I want them at all and I know that this won't ever happen.

I've always pictured her as the ideal woman, the most beautiful woman based off of her kindness and soul. She would tell me that if someone came to her door asking for shelter regardless of his or her state that she would let them in, because it was the right thing to do. I often wonder if I'd ever be so trusting.

Auction Tours...

My forehead pressed against the cold passenger window as I stared off into space. My hands cupped together across my lap, with legs crossed forward. The car was silent, no music, not even the sound of breathing.
Like a ghost I saw my ex-boyfriend, Matthew walking through the cold morning his hoodie concealing his spiked blue hair. I was stunned that he would even think of attending and knew that my uncle would taunt me for it. My mother concealed her emotions but held her pale white hand out to her boyfriend for some form of support.
We parked.
I slowly stepped out of the vehicle trying desperately not to get soaked by the morning dew. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I clasped on to a handwritten note. She often told me that I was a wonderful writer. Many times I tried to make her cry with poems and papers. It was her emotions that brought me strength.
She told me that I would regret it if I hadn't written her a month previously or if I hadn't called her more often. She said I'd regret it.

The summer prior I begged her to let me stay home to let me look after her.
"College is more important, you need to live your own life, I wouldn't want you to put it on hold!" she said smiling appreciative of the gesture.
It wasn't a gesture, I would have gladly done it. She was my favorite person, she is my favorite person. She was my godsend.

I made my way through the crowd of family and loved ones, begrudgingly ignoring Matthew. It wasn't right to do so and he was merely looking out for me, but I couldn't face him. I wanted him back and I did for years after, but there was no discussing it... not then.
There were a handful of chairs all in row in front of the large casket adorned with a handmade quilt which held the remains of my grandmother, my Grandma Rose.
I felt like I was crying more than anyone and more than ever before or since. Big well tears shooting out and down my cheeks. I kept my head down as if in prayer, but mostly because I didn't want her to see how upset I was.

She had told me once before that she was dying...
My parents had recently divorced and I was stricken with hatred towards my dad for cheating on my mom multiple times, selling our home and becoming bankrupt. My mother lived in a small two bedroom apartment merely blocks from where she lived on welfare when I was a child. Square one never looked so close.
I came home knowing that my dad was there visiting waiting for me. I walked into the living room the Scrabble board game was laid out on the coffee table. They would often play rounds upon rounds when they were married. I made my way to the bathroom to find my dad's clothes draped all over the floor.
In a flash of rage I pounded on the door violently and with such force I thought it was sure to break. My mom answered in a long night shirt.
"Fuck you, don't even try to explain. How could you?" I screamed.
Grandma Rose lived about seven blocks away. I drove there balling. My world didn't make sense; how could she have done it? Why didn't she loathe him; like I did? All I wanted was to hold my grandma and to feel some comfort.
I leaped into her arms. My mom had already phoned over to give a "heads up" on the situation. I explained to her how upset and disappointed I was. I couldn't stop crying. There was a pause as I pulled away from my grandma I peered into her eyes and she was sobbing also. In my 20 years, I had never seen her cry outside of sappy greeting cards and gifts.
"I can't take it when you hurt so," she cried.
I held her for holding me and whispered to her that I didn't want her to cry either. We both drove to my mom's house where we found her waiting and fully clothed. There were no words only actions as I ran past her and into my room, slamming the door behind me.
A gentle knock followed. Grandma walked towards me and picked me up from the bed and hugged me as I tried to let my anger go.
"I can't have you acting like this Jen, I don't have much time and I won't have you to fighting while I do," she stated sternly.
"What do you mean?" I questioned, knowing that she was most likely referring to what I was dreading.
"Well, Jen the cancer's back and I don't have a lot of time and while I'm here I need you to promise that you will get a long with your mama." she said.
I hit on her chest lightly and cried into her shoulder.
"It's not true! It's not true!" I sobbed.
"It most certainly is and grandma needs you to accept it and do what she asks alright? Now go make up with your mama," she said.
I made up with my mom, but I hated her that night. I hated her for going back to him even though I knew she wasn't going to mend their relationship. I hated her for making me cry and most importantly I hated her for making grandma cry and for letting me find out that way.

As the service ended I walked up to the casket and kissed the wooden top. I slowly slipped the letter down the hole and onto the cool cement casing. I hoped she would read it. This continued a trend for me, I'd often bury notes by her grave in the hope of her reading them or seeing them in some capacity.
There were people surrounding the funeral that I didn't recognize, a gaggle of woman all in their Sunday bests who boasted about how vivid and extraordinary my grandma was. They brought an array of mylar balloons and a flower arch with something about "Sunday Gals" written on it. Even though I had never met them nor they me, they all seemed to know who I was straight off the bat.
"Oh you must be Rosalie's granddaughter , Jennifer. Oh we've heard so much about you," one of the ladies grinned.
"Really?" I questioned. I was slightly confused because I had never heard nor knew of any of the woman. I had only known a couple of my grandma's friends and sadly none of them were there.
"Why yes, your grandma would always go on and on about how you were her angel."

The necessary notes

In the house next door, the one with the missing shutter, the old woman had begun dancing again. Adi could feel it, the woman’s feet shuffling across the floor, along the run of his back. A thousand steps in an old softshoe shoving him further into the sheets as he lay in bed, waiting for her to stop, flip the record, again begin. Sometimes it felt like there was no end to her dance; she went on for hours, playing god knows what as her toes walked the valley of his ribs.

This was Thursday.

Friday, Adi awoke to an odd hambone in his lungs. It was a step- a stomp, rather, he corrected himself, that kept knocking about in his chest. He coughed twice, involuntarily. Twice more, voluntarily, hoping to dislodge it, but the stomp, which had now transitioned into a stately promenade, didn’t waver. His breaths, when they came, fluttered rhythmically; his abdomen felt full of shoes.

For one brief moment, Adi considered telephoning the old woman who was dancing inside him at her residence on his left, but decided against it. Once, some months ago, when the dancing had continued for hours, eventually reaching a tempo that made Adi too nauseated to stand, he had called her. It took minutes longer than he would have liked; information was hesitant to release her number based solely on her address and although Adi hadn’t her name or the wish to argue, he also could no longer stand the leading steps that slid into his throat.

When she answered, the dancing stopped. Adi nearly cried.

“Yes?” she had asked. Her tone was reedy, featherlight and flexible. “Hello?”

He hadn’t considered what he’d say to her, this woman whose legs kicked at his heart. The unanswered query hung between them on a breaking thread; his answer, his request unspeakable. She hung up. Muttering, he followed suit and began to wait for her to begin.

Today, Friday, he looked at her number hanging on his wall where he had pinned it above the phone and called in instead to work.

“No. I’m sorry. Terrible cough. I can’t,” said Adi to his supervisor once she had been fully apprised and picked up the phone. It was as little a lie as he could possibly tell. Soon, possibly tomorrow, they would fire him for his absences. He could hear it in her voice, the “Feel better, Adi” closing the call.

Around nine, after almost an hour of quiet, he could feel her stretching, preparing for another go with her infernal music, the counterpoint he never heard. The dance came quickly, a rough tarantella that softened up his kidneys with pointed execution. He felt vomitous and quickly dashed to the bathroom to make space for her.

For two hours it went, the steps a mixture of slows and quicks, a sketch of the dance’s line wound between his organs and through his bones. Adi lay completely still on his bed, dressed in clothes of two days ago, his bare feet straight, and his eyes open. He tried to picture her, this practicing coryphée.

She was beautiful, her face only slightly weathered with age, wrinkles of concentration and laughter; her arms and legs strong from a thousand days danced beneath the ceiling of his skin; her body clothed in a dress of simple cut that emphasized her length.

On his bed, the mattress sponging sweat, Adi closed his eyes and gave himself the escape of the vision.

Before him now, beneath red draperies and beside the tall unmarked columns, she stood, a model of poise and grace. He could see her in his head, standing motionless and ready. Ever deaf to what moved her, he could tell when the music began only by the fragmentary smile that broke through the wall of her face and the flutter, the involuntary seize, of his diaphragm.

Then she moved. Fluid, strong steps that took her away and then back to him as he watched. She hopped nimbly across the floor, flinging her hands up over her head, her dress billowing softly. Sometimes she moved out of the light into the darkness at the edges of the floor; he could only feel her then, moving in spectral precision, but he waited patiently for her return. And there she was, in front of him again, her hands on his. This dance was for him, if he wanted it.

Adi escorted her to the center of the floor and waited for the music to begin.