It’s a hot summer day, we’ve been playing outside in the water, my night-shirt wet from sitting on the ground. Fiona has gone into the house, is standing on a chair pushing the button that turns on our speakers, but the music’s not on. She’s singing really loud and moving her shoulders and arms. I walk in the house, take off my top, and turn on some music, I flip through a few stations and when I get to teen beats both babies ears stand to attention. Fiona doesn’t have her hearing aids on, I turn the music up loud. The doors are open, they are filming a Netflix movie down at the park, I wonder if they can hear us. We all start dancing, Jack and Fiona run out onto the deck and back in again, I’m tempted, but I would be seen for sure, not that I really care. After the first song is over Jack says “More”. We listen to three more songs dancing away, arms, legs, bodies flowing with the beat, the Teen beat. The music’s not bad for this sort of thing. I’m enjoying this, my naked body four decades old dancing with babies, boobs bouncing, I catch a glimpse of my reflection on the glass door. My body looks pretty good, I watch myself dance, I started watching myself dance in Elementary school. I would pretend I was sick, stay home from school. After my mom and brother were gone I’d dress up and dance. I don’t know where I got the idea, but I loved doing it. In my twenties I went out dancing every chance I got, especially to REGGAE. I loved dancing, since getting married I haven’t gone to see music and dance very much. There’s been family parties where everyone started dancing, my body wouldn’t dance, it’s as if the dance was buried, like the words sometimes, or the creativity. A self-consciousness takes over. But as I’m dancing naked, my oldish body, bouncing boobs, in front of my two-and-a-half-year-old twins, as they dance naked with me I feel a freedom that I haven’t felt in a long time. I almost danced naked out on my deck, I can hear the neighbors now, “Mommy they’re naked” I heard this the other day as some neighbors walked by and Jack leaned up against the railing naked, pushed his body up against the railing as if he was showing them his willy or going to pee on them. I was laughing so hard, I guess I wanted to do the same thing today, then I thought what if we all just walked down to where they’re filming, naked, with shoes on only and hats. We’ll just sit and watch with the other neighbors like nothing is unusual. Tempting. I realized last night at dinner, having so much fun with my sister in law, great conversations, then seeing an artist friend I haven’t seen in forever, who I look up to, love her work, she tells me she was a teacher for seven years and it was the best, she loved it. If you can help one person, if you can make a difference in one person’s life, that is the theme. What I realized was we may not be able to change anything, the people with the guns and the anger and the hate will always win over peaceful people. I used to get mad when I saw people posting on Facebook to pray for Paris or pray for Orlando or Sandy Hook, or the Refugees from Syria, or the kids being shot in gang crossfire, praying won’t do anything I said. But now I get it, all we can do is pray. We can try to change laws and make the world a better place, but it seems like there’s fifty percent of any given population that wants guns, or are racist against this group or that, that aren’t peaceful people. I can’t change them. I can only be myself, I can only help myself, and maybe a few more along the way. I want to go to Pride today and dance naked in the streets of San Francisco.
Category: growing older
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“Look, a dove” I say to Jack, holding him in my arms, turning to watch as the dove flies into the pepper tree. I notice a second dove already in the pepper tree. “Doves stay with one partner; it looks like the other dove is making a nest, collecting sticks, leaves and other things. They are going to have baby birds. First they will lay eggs and sit on them until the little baby bird pecks at the egg and it cracks open. Then the mommy bird will go get a worm and feed the baby bird.” I show the sign for bird, I have one beak going inside another beak. Jack wants to hear the story again. He asks me several times during the day and last night at bedtime. Fiona was already in the car so she didn’t hear the first version of my story. I still feel bad about that right now as I sit here and type this. I don’t feel like Fiona and I share as many moments in story. We share many moments where she wants to just be held and cuddle, which I don’t get with Jack, he always has to be moving. It could be a personality thing, but I always wonder if it has to do with her hearing loss. I wonder about the connection between language and imagination. I wonder should I be doing more alone time with Fiona. I find myself directing questions and statements to Jack. “Look Jack, there’s a dump truck” as we drive. Fiona doesn’t usually have her hearing aids on in the car, I know she can’t understand me, but Jack can. Mmmmmm. These are things I think about.
I am distracted now by the sky this morning, it’s fire red over the horizon line, the valley dark, with silhouettes of still bare trees. But if I was up close I may see a few tiny green leaves or flower buds on the California Red Bud. Spring is upon us. Last night, I made it out the door, out of my studio, just in time to take Billy for a hike up the trail before dark. The light on the trail was muted, but I could still see the blue bottles, Blue Bells, and Beardtongues. I had a strange day in the studio. It’s been strange for weeks now. I have the figure curse upon me. I am obsessed, but my ideas are murky. It looks like this happens to me every year around this time. Is it the transition from winter to spring? Is it about birth? Death? They say your body never forgets traumatic events. Christopher was born in February. This time, 1987, I was almost sixteen years old, nine months pregnant and no one knew but me. My stomach hard and big, I would walk my dog Rutger for hours, down a trail at the bottom of a hill, along pepper trees, crying. When my mom got home from work, Danny and I would make spaghetti, I remember that plate piled high, I couldn’t believe how much I ate. But my legs were still skinny, everything was still skinny but my stomach and I figured out how to hide it well with big baggy t-shirts and sweaters, and tying sweatshirts around my waist. Habits dressing I carried with me for most of my life. It transitioned into hiding my boobs because they were big and I hated the way guys were always staring at them. Jack and Fiona were both born in February. I thought they were going to die; I was so scared. Even after they were delivered I couldn’t believe they were going to survive. How? I wondered. They were so small. And I only had experience of dead babies, not ones that survive, that live and thrive. In two weeks Jack and Fiona will be two years old. They are such good babies. I could never have imagined this happening to me.
Next month, in March I was born Forty-Five years ago. My birth was traumatic, I almost died. I was very sick my mom told me. I was born with a kidney infection, I had to have an operation and was in the hospital for a while. She didn’t tell me this for most of my life, then one day it came up. What she did tell me was I was born with a third kidney. It doesn’t work, it’s not fully formed. But it’s in there. When I had my appendectomy I told the surgeon just before I went under, I was afraid they would open me up and my insides would look odd, I was afraid they might take out the wrong organ. February, scattered with hot days, birds and blossoms. Memories of loss and trauma mix with memories of birth and life, new beginnings. The smell of the wet ground and fermentation, slimy mushrooms popping up. Spring.
Now the sky is slate grey. It’s 7:19 AM, babies still quiet. I’m on my second cup of coffee, this morning it’s just as good as my first cup. It’s time to start getting ready for the day, making breakfast for the babies, making lunches. As I looked at the date, 2/11/16, I was just reminded of Valentine’s Day, another February, sometimes traumatic, event. But I’ve decided that from now on holidays are going to be just for fun, I’m not going to get all deep about how Valentines days puts too much pressure on couples. How it alienates people, or makes people feel sad. Or how it’s another commercialized holiday just to get people to buy stuff. No, I’m going to have fun on valentine’s day, maybe I’ll make valentine’s day cookies for the babies and my husband. Maybe me and the babies will make Valentine day cards. If there’s one thing I’ve learned during my forty fourth year of life, it’s that life’s way too short to think too deeply and too politically about every single holiday. I’ve decided from now on holidays are holidays, nothing more.
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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.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 