Saturday morning. It’s already 7:14AM, don’t have much time to write before the babies wake up. Alan is awake and is playing something on the IPAD breaking my concentration. My coffee is boiling, should I add more cream? Yes, good idea, now it’s more drinkable. I can write, for a minute. Thinking about the first time I wrote about Christopher, last year, February, the first month I started my blog. I thought that I wrote a lot, when I went back to read it recently I found a short absent piece. The experience of getting pregnant at fifteen and hiding it for nine months was traumatizing. It deserves so much more than a short, quick, piece. It affected my life in so many ways, it will need to be a series of entries, through time, time to process and respect. The memories first resurfaced when I was trying to get pregnant, Christopher was born without a brain and died six months after birth, I was sure that would happen to me again. The doctor assured me it was an anomaly, the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck in utero, just unlucky. I carried Christopher with me for nine months, he heard all my thoughts, my cries, felt my isolation, my fear. Could he process any of this without a brain? Or was he like a giant worm in my womb? Living off my blood, he kicked me, I hit him back. I punched my stomach, crying, desperate. I had to hide my naked body, seal it off. Four months into the pregnancy, back flat on a park bench, having sex with a boy, he asks me “are you pregnant?” I say no. I feel sick, dirty, I sneak back into my house, down some Nyquil. Next day put on my stretch pants and a big sweater and go to school. Living a lie, hiding everything that was true, revealing emptiness. Only five more months and this will be over. And right now, present time, I have to end this Blog post. I can hear Jack and Fiona, awake, calling “Mommy.” Alan just headed down, I still hear them calling “Mommy” I hope Alan changes the diapers for me! The sun just peered over the horizon line and through the clouds onto my face, I see spots. Now it’s fading back behind a dark grey cloud. I don’t want to get annoyed if Alan didn’t change the diapers, I’ll let that feeling be like the sun and the cloud, fade back. It’s not worth the stress. I will go down now.
Month: January 2016
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6:12 AM Friday. House quiet. Dark. Coffee in hand, almost too hot to drink. As I’m getting settled in to write and eat my breakfast I laugh, I sit on a chair, stick to it, Fiona got into the agave syrup yesterday. I go to move the chair to sit on a non-sticky chair. I step on a broom, cheerios and a spoon. Laugh. I take another sip of my coffee, Mmmmm now it’s perfect. Last night; book time. I grab “Love You Forever” by Robert Munsch. I haven’t read it since the babies were really little, I stopped because I couldn’t get through the book without bawling. I thought, maybe now, maybe now that the babies are intrigued by the picture on the cover, the two-year-old on the bathroom floor with toilet paper everywhere. They can relate. I get through the first several stages, the baby stage, the toddler stage, the nine-year-old. I sing “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, As long as I’m living my baby you’ll be” Just as I wrote that tears started to form, my chest feeling funny. I get to the teenager and start crying, I push through until the part where the boy is now a man, calls his mom and she’s sick. I can’t read anymore, I’m crying so hard, “It’s so sad” I tell the babies. I’m crying again now. Can anyone read this book without bawling? Or is it my own personal experience that makes it so sad? Last night was even more complex, memories surface of my mom, myself as a child, Jack and Fiona, seeing how fast they are growing, that I’m the old lady in the book, one day they will see me die. One day I will miss them when they are teenagers. It’s fucked up. With all the cheerios and agave sticking to my feet I wish time would just stop. This damn book, now I’m feeling very sentimental. I may as well delve deeper, tears and all.
I can’t get past the teenager. When I was a little girl my mom and I were very close, I was scared to upset her. I loved her. I loved when she took me shopping for school clothes, one year it was Jordach Jeans, they carried at K-Mart. Then when wrap around pants came into style, my mom made me several pairs. When Esprit came into fashion we couldn’t afford it. My mom made me a skirt and top with large grey and white stripes, I thought I was just as fashionable as the girls at school wearing new Esprit clothes. Everyone complimented me on my outfit. In eighth grade It was a pair of 501’s, OP T-shirt, and checkered vans. We still lived in Spring Valley, we just moved from our old house, the house I grew up in. It was dilapidated, I was embarrassed to bring my friends over, which didn’t matter because friends weren’t allowed over. But after school, while our mom was still at work the neighborhood kids would come over, we ran through the house, played Atari, one time I brought my pony Chu Chu in the house and he pooped, steam floated up from the pile of green poop, we all laughed. The roof leaked when it rained, the floor had a thick layer of grime, the paint was chipping off the window panes, the back yard flooded with sewer. My grandma died in the apartment built over the garage, I thought it was haunted. Olive drive started as a hill then flattened out, we rode bikes, skateboards, and roller skates down that hill. There was a field behind our house we rode dirt bikes in. When it rained we built rafts and floated around in ponds, (probably filled with sewer water) During the eight grade, wearing my checkered vans and OP T-shirts, we moved to a duplex. It was nicer than our previous house, it had carpets and heaters in the bedrooms, but the kids in the neighborhood were tougher. My first day there I almost got beat up by Lynette Mc Donald, we ended up becoming best friends. We smoked pot for the first time together, she punched Frida on the school bus for me, Frida had bullied me for a whole year. We had a good run, getting into trouble, sneaking out of the house, stealing mad dog 20/20 from the liquor store and getting drunk. Then Lynette moved to Wyoming. I was devastated. Then my mom got a new job and moved us to Clairemont, sidewalks and parking lots, suburban. No more honky tonk, taco shop, dirt encrusted, horses and flies Spring Valley. This was the beginning of a depressing, troubled, four years. I was entering high school, my mom got a new job, this is where things got really bad, this is where my mom and I drifted far apart, this is why I can’t read “Love You Forever”
It was time to go school shopping for tenth grade. I had spent part of the summer in New York with my grandparents, I was fifteen, still a kid, but my stomach was growing and I waited by the mail box every day for letters to arrive from Dinky, he was in jail at the time. I was sick in the mornings, it was too late to get an abortion. Back in California, mom took me shopping, she missed me that summer and was glad I was home. I was depressed and scared, all alone. We picked a bunch of clothes out, that year stretch pants and long sweaters were in style. My mom wanted to come into the fitting room with me like always and I said no. I felt horrible, I was pushing her away, I didn’t want her to see my stomach, to see I was pregnant. I kept hoping that the baby would die, that I would have a miscarriage and the whole thing could be forgotten. Every time I read “Love you Forever” and get to the teenager this is where my mind goes. I feel the pain of a knife cutting my mom and me apart, sending us both down a dark tunnel, we can’t see each other, “How can I help you” she asks. “I wish I knew what you were looking for” this song comes on the radio. “You can’t help me; I’m lost in the darkness” I cry out. We grow farther and farther apart, crisis mode. I just want to be that little girl again. I just want to be good. I want my mom in the fitting room with me.
It’s 7:34AM now, the light outside revealing a wet January day. Grey skies and bare branched trees. Jack and Fiona will be up soon. Time to come back to the present and get a cuddle from my babies, Tell them I’ll Love you forever.
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Once the babies were settled in, and I walked the dog, ate a tuna fish sandwich, filled my water bottle, ate a piece of chocolate, I entered my studio. I examined five canvases-I decided to tear off the existing paintings and re-stretch new canvas, “should I go get canvas?” No. I took down and examined my nap time paintings from the day before, put them on my ever growing pile of “work on paper” I love. “should I take my work to be framed for Room Gallery Show” No. “should I start organizing my work and studio for my studio visit next week” No.
I start working on my GAP book, no, I can’t show you any pictures of that. It starts to hum. I pull out paper, rip it in half, go to rip it again.No. My papers always too small for what I have to say or show. I set up my press. Tension on. Blankets. I print with fabric I made into an apron last week. Today I cut it up. Use the pieces for collage and collograph.
In between working on things I can show you, I go back to the book. It gets juicy. I can’t wait to pass it on, to begin a conversation with another GAP member.I print, paint, glue. I give myself three full hours, but I end up taking five. I work like a mad woman. I am mad. The book I’m re-purposing is called Lives of the Painters. There is not one woman represented. All Men. Women were ommited from Art History books. Is it because they were home taking care of the children? When I was trying to get pregnant more than one women artist warned me “Don’t have kids, you won’t be able to be an artist and have kids” we aren’t as free as men when we have kids, we can’t spend the whole day and night painting and smoking cigarettes. Then dedicate time to promote ourselves, get into galleries. There’s only so much time in a day. I don’t think our fight is over. This examination fueled my studio practice yesterday. As I write my baby boy Jack is calling for me. It’s time for breakfast, time for mom, the woman of the house. Last night I got in trouble when I said I wasn’t cooking, I was going to get us, my husband and I salads. I just didn’t have time, I needed that extra hour in the studio.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 