Category Archives: Life’s honest moments

*Don’t be naughty! Cheeky monkey.

This is supposed to be Virginia Beach Dollbaby Week, seven days of ocean music and cake, laughter and writing. There is no beach this year, no beach house, no hugs, but we’ve not let that keep us completely apart. Like most of the world, we’re making due with Zoom. Cyber Dollbaby Week isn’t the same, but it’s enough.

Tuesday night was Medicine Card night. My card was Beaver.

The gist of it was, stay the course. Finish the project. Bring the dream to fruition. This, of course, I attributed to Death and the Mason Jar. But…

I’m working diligently. Every day. 10:00-3:00. It’s taking me longer than past manuscripts, but it’s such a conglomeration of all my skills, all my experiences, all my past writing, that it’s taking more out of me, and more out of my brain. Yet Beaver spoke to that part of me feeling like it’s taking way too long, fearing doors closing before this story gets a chance to walk through. But…

I look for connections. Everywhere. I usually notice when they come up, these coincidences that don’t feel like coincidences. As it happens, last week, Frank and I took a drive up Route 7, past the old house on the river, up and up, all the way to Massachusetts. I was amazed by the number of beaver dams I saw along the way. Granted, in the still-wintry landscape, they stood out more, but I noticed them. I pointed them out to Frank, who hadn’t.

Then this week, before Medicine Card night, a sister Dollbaby put up a hilarious video of a woman reading, Barbara’s Beaver Needs a Barber.** And then, a couple of hours later, I pulled Beaver out of all 48 cards in that deck.

I could have let it go there, as an odd but whatever experience. That’s not me. If there’s a connection, what purpose is there in not thinking it through, right? I take Beaver’s point about staying the course, finishing the project, but that was too simple to leave at that. So I did a little more digging, and found a few more messages from Beaver:

• Seek alternatives to challenges in life.
•  Refuse to be cornered, trapped, or caught off guard.
•  Work together. A team effort. Appreciate that the coming together of minds creates a unification that is far more effective than individual efforts.
•  Family
•  Strengthen the foundation on which you stand, or build a new one. To continue on old foundations could mean opportunities missed.
• Beaver is a symbol of never giving up, even going to far as to change its environment to suit its needs, the needs of its family.

Not everything is about my writing, or Chris, even if those are the two places my brain automatically go. While I will finish my project and be true to my dreams for it, I feel like the message here is one I’ve been mulling over since the world changed.

We are in strange times, and it didn’t begin with the pandemic. It won’t end with it either. As Semisonic sang: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” When 2020 rolled in, I had the overwhelming feeling that this was going to be a big year. One of profound changes. Then wildfires blazed in Australia, Impeachment proceedings began, a Democratic lineup more diverse than any we had ever seen before (even if it did boil down to two, older white men, and then one) came about.

And COVID19.

The pandemic has changed the whole world in a very universal way. It’s not something happening to someone else, or somewhere far off in the world. It’s our every day. It’s scary and frustrating. We miss our families, our social lives, our freedom. It’s worse for some than for others, but that’s nothing new. Despite all the ineptitude, the selfish deciding there is an expendable category of humanity, the waste of resources and hoarding and fear, I can’t help feeling this tremendous sense of hope.

Humanity may have screeched to a standstill, but the world hasn’t. She spins. She grows. She fights. And maybe this is what Beaver was trying to get me to see, to act upon. To seek alternatives, strengthen foundations or build new ones. Not just me, but humanity at large. Nature is warning us to knock it the hell off. We need to change this current environment to suit ALL our needs, her included. Every animal, plant, bacteria is connected in ways most never even consider. We are family. Every one of us.  Our planet included.

We can make this change happen, now. We’ve proven we can make the adjustments, see through this lens. We can adapt. Slow down. Do without. There are those rallying to keep everything “normal,” to keep others down, to diminish and dismiss anything not in their ken, but they’re nothing new. They’ve been rallying since the dawn of humanity, through every culture, every era. There have been times those rallying were able to do horrible wrong. Let this not be one of those times. Let it be, finally, the time we come together, really together. Compromise and compassion. Creation and assistance. We must respect and support one another in every way we can. Refuse hate and greed in all its forms, whether it be politically, socially, or environmentally.

We are the many. The loving, the compassionate, the respectful, the giving. I truly believe that. I’ve seen it, over and over, even from those who don’t believe the way I do, in the things I believe in. The fools fighting hardest against reason are loud, but I don’t believe they are the majority. They’re puffer fish, peacocks, cobras spreading their hoods to make us think so. It has worked often enough to make us believe in their power over our own. It’s time we stopped letting that trick work.

So, yeah…I got more from Beaver than, “Finish the damn book.”

Your mileage may vary.

**While this one is hilarious, there is at least one other in the series that crosses the line into bigotry, and I can’t in any conscious recommend them because of that.

When I was a kid, a girl was either pretty but stupid, or smart but not-so-attractive. While there is absolutely no truth in that, it was believed by the masses and thus, “true.” I was undeniably pretty; so, by such standards, undeniably stupid. I didn’t feel stupid. Not all at once. But the truth of the masses, perpetuated by the practices of elementary and middle school*, wore me down. By high school, I was a bonafide ditz. Or so I thought.

*Rarely called on in class or praised for right answers, encouraged to take classes like steno and typing rather than science or math. Etc. Those of you in my age-range will know the drill.

It took a huge amount of work to get past all the crap ingrained in me from the day I was born–and this is not a dig against my parents, but society at large. Women of a certain age and older, maybe a little younger, will understand. Some will never get away from the whole “girls aren’t as smart as boys” thing, and all the other stuff girls were or weren’t. I worked hard, and I did it, but it left scars. One of them is being a huge skeptic.

There. I said it. I’m a skeptic. I realize I present as the sort of whimsical being who believes in fairies and ghosts and magic and all kinds of psychic/superhero powers.

I don’t.

But I do.

Because I am a whimsical being. There is magic/ghosts in everything I write. Tooth fairies lived in my rose garden. All the neighborhood kids knew that. We left bread and butter out for the fae folk at key points in the year, read the story of Persephone, Demeter and Hades every autumnal equinox, decorated the trees for the animals at the winter solstice. The kids were taught to never step inside a fairy ring. I made herbal “potions” everyone swore by, and spoke charms while I crafted them. The kids and I made dream pillows every autumn (something I still do, though more sporadically, with my grandkids.)

But I also knew it was the crows eating the bread and butter (the crows in the neighborhood loved me. It’s true! I fed them daily, and ours was the ONLY garbage can on the block that never got torn apart.) I don’t believe in Gods, or Goddesses. I do believe there are some plusses to herbal healing, but the spoken charms were fun wishes akin to those made on birthday candles. And the tooth fairies? Well, I confess now to all those children who left notes for their fairies in my rose garden, I was the one answering them; tooth fairies did not, in fact, live in my garden.

But I don’t NOT believe in any of it, either. Because…who knows?

Round and round she goes. The skeptic comes from never-ever-ever again wanting to feel or appear stupid. I spent too many years negating my own talents, thoughts, and aspirations. Skeptic has a place in my brainspace, because there’s believing in everything with blind faith and utter devotion, and there’s, “Now wait just a minute there, Janet.”

There is a whole lot about our world, our universe we just don’t know; modesty may be for suckers, but no one can ever accuse me of hubris. I discount nothing, not even fairies. I just need proof before I’ll truly believe they’re real. I know where my skeptic was born, and as much as I understand she’s yet another aspect of the scarring done to my little psyche, (and my not-so-little one) her place is to be respected.

I can be whimsically skeptical, or skeptically whimsical. I can take part in a cleansing, burning ritual on the beach and feel the beauty, the bonding without the need of specific oils and herbs. I can watch my words go up in smoke, and know it’s speaking them aloud that eased the burden, not burning them.  I love to read cards (I have several decks) because of how it makes me think, it creates connections I might not otherwise have noticed. I enjoy listening to a psychic tell me all about auras and chakras and speaking to the dead while picking out the holes in her reasoning. I can dream of my son and feel it was more like visit; feel it, but not know it, because what happens after we die is a mystery no one, not even those who’ve died and come back, knows for sure. And I’m okay with that. I like how those dream visits sit in my heart, in my brain. That’s enough. I like imagining it’s fairies eating the bread and butter, even if I know it’s the crows. I like paying attention. To everything.

What I believe or don’t believe doesn’t matter even slightly where the actual truth is concerned. I believed I was stupid. Society saw my pretty and believed the same. But you know what? My mom saved my report cards, and she gave them to me a few years ago. I was mostly an A/B student all through high school. I spoke four languages. It was confidence I lacked, not intelligence. Though, I do admit math was never my strong suit; I was also never encouraged to it, so…yeah. I get a pass.

There you have it. I’m a skeptic who writes about ghosts but doesn’t necessarily believe in an afterlife. Now, pardon me while I go write my story about how Death collects souls in a mason jar. In my pajamas. Where’d I put that tiara? I guess the fairies must have run off with it. They do that, sometimes.

A fairy ring

A couple of weeks ago, I told you the story about a car, my kids, and the parking lot hill they rolled down. It’s true, every word. I did pull the car to a stop–and remember, it was a 1965 Mercury Comet Caliente, not your average light model of today. I was indeed a beast. I’m not proud of the situation that called forth my inner Hulk, but I am very proud of the fact that she appeared as needed. That, however, is not the real reason for the tattoo I got just a few days ago.

I left it big so you could read it

While the first part of the poem speaks to me as a woman, and as a gentle human, it was the second half of it that set off gongs in my head when first I read it. It’s taken me about a year of contemplation before getting this tattoo, because it recalls one of the most heartbreaking days of my life.

When Chris dove headfirst into drugs, it never lasted long. It would be about a month in total, but a solid two weeks of horrificness once, sometimes twice a year. We didn’t know if he’d vanish or die or both. He wasn’t Chris, the sweet, gentle, kind, and brilliant giant of a man. Loving son. Beautiful boy. He was the opposite in every way. He was desperate and scared and out of control. Outside of those horrific weeks, he fought so hard.

One summer day (he was always worst in the summer, a pattern we learned to anticipate) when he was at the end of an especially horrific period, he came home with enough heroin to kill himself. That wasn’t the plan, he said. He just wanted to “use it up” and then he was quitting.

If you know anything about addicts, they don’t tell you they’re going to use. They do everything they can to hide it so you can’t stop them. Chris told us. He was that desperate for us to stop him. But the other Chris, the opposite Chris, wasn’t going down without a fight.

That was the day I unleashed every dragon, every wolf, every monster sleeping inside me. Forty-eight-year old me chased my 22 year old son through the woods, leaping over fallen trees, barreling through bramble, scrabbling over rock and rubble. I wrestled all 6’2″, 230 lbs of him to the ground. Twice. I held closed a lift-up garage door against his body-builder muscles. I ripped his jeans off his body to get the drugs and paraphernalia from his pockets. All to keep him from using. All because I knew it’s what he needed me, wanted me to do, even if he fought me. Because every time he got away, he came back.

When Opposite-Chris finally seemed to give up the fight, I went to clean myself up. We should never, ever have trusted Opposite-Chris. He got into the upstairs bathroom with his drugs. Alone. I was furious. I flew up the stairs, bashed down the bathroom door and mommy-swooped the bags of heroin from his mouth (he’d just shoved it all in) and flushed them. Then 911 was called, because there was no way to know how much he’d actually ingested.

But the calm. My god, the calm in him afterward. When it was all done. When the drugs were gone and the EMTs were taking him to the ER to feed him charcoal and dose him with Narcan. It wasn’t the drugs. I honestly don’t think he got much of it into his system. Chris was grateful. Tearful. We battled, me and Chris against Opposite-Chris, and we won.

It wasn’t the only battle I waged with him. For him. There were many. But the poem…the poem spoke to me of this battle. Again, I’m not proud of the situation that called up my inner-beast, but I’m ridiculously proud to know that dragons, wolves and monsters sleep inside this otherwise gentle human, ready to burst free when needed.

When my two eldest children were babies, I left them in the car while I ran into the pharmacy to drop off a prescription. Scott was sick, and asleep in his car seat. Jamie was playing with her toys. It was a matter of running in, dropping it off, and running out. Thirty seconds, maybe forty-five, tops.

What an idiot.

Somehow, Scott woke up, managed to get out of his carseat, take off the emergency brake (which entailed intricate maneuvers no two-year-old should have been able to accomplish) and put the car (1965 Mercury Comet Caliente) into neutral. I came rushing out of the pharmacy to find my car no longer in the space right there at the door, but rolling downhill through the parking lot, and toward the Cedar Hill exit ramp of Route 208.

I ran after the car, yelling to the kids, “Get on the floor!” Somehow, I managed to grab the driver’s side door handle, and I started pulling. “Pleasepleaseplease.” I can still feel those words crunching in my mouth. I pulled and I hauled and I planted my feet on the asphalt and pulled even harder. Just as the car’s nose rolled into that exit ramp, I managed to pull it to a halt. Cars honked. Drivers cursed at me. My pants were around my knees because they’d fallen down while I did my impression of the Incredible Hulk, but I yanked open the door, and pulled my babies into my arms, and I sobbed.

I am a woman, born in 1964. I’ve been undervalued, overlooked, and marginalized my entire life. I didn’t march in protests. I didn’t climb a corporate ladder and crash through any glass ceilings. But I did raise four amazing humans in a society that didn’t necessarily value motherhood, even if it pretended to. I fought for, and earned my literary dreams. I overcame my own demons to adopt my motto, “Modesty is for suckers.” I survived losing a husband, a son, and still I am everything I ever wanted to be, and then some.

I am a gentle human, but I am fierce. More than fierce. I’m a beast.

Fire, by Nikita Gills, from her book of poetry, Wild Embers.

…other artists speak for me.

(Thank you, Jen McConnell)

Spoon Theory: A disability metaphor and neologism used to explain the reduced amount of energy available for activities of living and productive tasks that may result from disability or chronic illness.

I typically have an abundance of spoons. Even through the worst of the worst in my life, I’ve always had spoons to spare, spoons to hand out to others. It’s just who I am. But once in a while, my subconscious tells me when I’m running low, that maybe I should just stop. Rest. Be kind to myself. I’m not always savvy enough to heed, and then my subconscious gets serious.

Those of you who know me have probably guessed that when my spoons are running low, I go quiet. I pull away from here, from friends, even from family. It’s not necessarily that I don’t want to worry anyone (though there is a bit of that in there) and more that I just can’t deal with “it” (whatever “it” is) taking up any more of my energy. But going quiet is the opposite of who I am, and it only works for so long.

We’ve been dealing with a lot here, chez DeFino. Frank’s consulting gig ended, and we are once again on that precipice. My uterus tried to kill me again. Let me tell you, losing that much blood over the course of four weeks takes its toll on body and mind.

And it was Christofer’s 29th birthday last week.

“Everything’s fine.” My stock phrase. I know, logically, that just because others have it worse than I do, suffered more, have less, struggle with issues far beyond my white, middle class world, doesn’t mean my experience isn’t valid. It doesn’t mean I have to smile through it all and thank my lucky stars. Here, my friends, there be dragons. And not the fun kind.

Everything is fine. Until it’s not fine.

I had a dream last week. Kind of. It was a memory, tossed out and clear as the moment it happened in striking, horrible detail. One that has blared through my brain, danced behind my eyes ever since. I suppose it’s my own form of PTSD, this flashback. It’s one that comes to me when I’m at my lowest in the spoon department, because it takes a whole fuck-ton of spoons to keep this demon at bay.

Eleven o’clock, and Chris still isn’t up. We have an appointment with the guy who makes the braces for his leg. I finish up an email and go to his door.

Knock, knock. “Hey, buddy, we have to go soon.”

No answer. He usually at least groans.

Knock, knock. “Hey, you alive in there?”

I take the “key” we keep over his door (he’s slept with it locked since he was a little kid, to keep the monsters and night-time robbers from getting him) and pop the lock.

The light is the first thing I see. That god-damn-fucking light. My heart bucks. He’s on his back, feet on the floor. There’s a needle on the bed beside him.

No. No, no, no, no, no.

I detach from myself. He’s cold. There is foam on his lips. The smell…sulphury. His skin feels greasy. I’m screaming. I don’t hear the screams. They’re out there, someplace, still echoing off those walls. I’m alone. Just me and my dead son.

I call 911. I’m still screaming. Into the phone. My son is dead! My son is dead!

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I went through the same thing last year. I’m so sorry.”

These are the first words I remember. I must have given her the address, because the police officers are already at the door.

Since “dreaming” this last week, when my spoons were so low and I was still giving them out to others, this demon has come back to me and back to me. When I’m cooking. When I’m in the car. When I’m in the movie theater. Just creeps up on me, smacks me in the head and dances off. It leaves me shaky and teary, and I’ve been pushing it down and pushing it down. I don’t want anyone to see me cry. I don’t want anyone to know. Frank has it hard enough, right now. I don’t want my kids to worry, to know this demon lives in my head. Even now, as I write this, I’ve already texted them all to say, “Don’t read today’s blog post.” But they will.

So here it is. I don’t write this here so you’ll feel bad for me, or to make you cry. My demons are masochistic, and require a stage before they’ll leave me the fuck alone. I acknowledge this, because this is the consequence of going silent. I should know this by now. Maybe next time I’ll remember before my spoons run out.

This house feels like home

Like it’s where I’ve been all along. All

these years, all this life.

Passing strange, the log house and

all that happened there was

a dream I’m just waking from. Like, “Whew! I’m so glad it wasn’t real!

But it was.

Of course it was.

Yet that feeling has me in thrall right now, and

I’m not entirely sure

I want to disabuse it.

It feels a bit like betrayal,

on so many levels,

My dream. My home. My son’s painful life, and oblivious death.

A dream, a dream, a dream. And now,

I’m awake. Now,

it’s a bit of solace

I’d like to hold onto. I need

to hold onto.

*

All the curtains are hung, pictures,

in place, word art, (Q: What is a wall without a quote on it? A: A blank page!)

stuck to walls. My magic. My sparkle. My home.

The dream wasn’t all good, or

all bad. It simply was, and now it’s in the past. I don’t

long for it; how could I long for such sorrow?

Like a dream, let it fade into something less frightening, less

rending. Let the joy rise up and out, let it

follow me home.