This week I have been sharing some of the stories of my book. A lifetime of stories lived. Some of the stories I have lived will never be shared – for various reasons…some because they are not my story to tell(I am a mother after all) Some because the trauma prevents. So many lives are books stuck on dusty shelves. Never shared for various reasons. I need to share my stories. As a survivor of childhood sex abuse I felt like my voice was taken from me. For me, telling my stories is empowering. For others it is not. I would never try to force the telling of a life.
However, I also want to be clear. I am always willing to hear the story of the lives you have lived. I devour books like the dragon I am…and if you choose to present me with more to read I will revel in it.
Thank you for allowing me to share the stories this week. For me, it is the best form of immortality. I when I am gone will remain due to the book written by my words.
My dad was a plumber. The majority of his friends were blue collar – construction workers, bikers, and truckers. We had cb radios in the house and in every vehicle. My mom met her second husband on the cb. It was a central part of our lives.
That radio has been featured in a couple of stories over the years. Once when I was 10 or 11 Daddy had a bunch of friends over. I was bored and trying to find trouble as all kids do. I snuck into one of the cars and got on the cb. My handle – the name you use on the cb – was/is Sasssy Suzy.
One of the guys who was visiting heard me on the cb flirting with anyone who would talk to me. He proceeded to get on and inform the audience of my age. The radio went silent.
The first time I met my Pop – mom’s second husband – he was talking to me on the cb. He called me honey and I was sure that he was thinking that I was Mama. He chuckled and said that he knew who he was talking to cause he was outside and mama was with him. Man…I miss him.
Remember my handle? The first year I was dating Joe, we were messing around on the cb. Joe has been a trucker for most of our lives together. I started flirting as I was prone to do on the cb. I still remember the response. Some dude I didn’t know came back announcing that he knew Sassy Suzy and she had an ass the size of a 747. I don’t think my backside is or was ever quite so large. It did offend me enough to stop the flirting and caused Joe fits of laughter.
That cb was a feature of so many other stories. Too many for a single blog post. I may tell a few more tomorrow.
A quarter of a century ago I lived in the garage behind my current home. The house belonged to the grandmother of my boyfriend. We have been dating since we were 21. I moved into the garage with him after only knowing him for a week. It never occurred to me that I was being impulsive.
That door covers a smaller door into the small space that was our home. His grandmother put a bathroom on the back porch of the house – where the laundry room is now. We had a fridge and a gas stove. We slept on a couch against the back wall of the garage.
We would play D&d and hang out and live our lives in that garage. One night the boys got me laughing. I threw my head back in laughter. The garage is made of porcelain brick. I cracked one with my head when I threw my head back laughing. (nice little concussion)
Now that garage is behind my home. sometimes the little changes are huge.
I have a huge family. My parents were each from families of five children. So there were lots of cousins. My grandmother wanted my brother and me to know our cousins. So every summer for a few years – I believe it was like five but the memories are so infused into my childhood that I am not sure, she would drive us out to my aunt’s farm to visit. Mom has three sisters and a brother.
Her brother was into cosplay before cosplay was cool. He did his costumes without a pattern. I used to have pictures of him in his spiderman costume with Stan Lee. He was one of my childhood heroes. Mostly because of how creative he was. I had a lot of childhood heroes that I could look up to. Still, he lived close so he was not involved in our trips.
One of the sisters was Navy. She lived in Florida and still does. She did not choose to have children till later in life. My cousins on that front are amazing, but closer in age to my son. So they were not around when we were doing these trips.
The trips, and the cousins, were based in Michigan. A gorgeous small community near the Canadian border…Boyne City. My one aunt had a farm and though I don’t know what the other aunt did, she lived nearby. The farmer had two boys, one close to me in age and one closer to my little brother. The other aunt had a boy and a girl. The boy is elder than I, I am not sure by how much, and her daughter was my age. We stayed at the farm when we went. I remember drinking milk straight from the cow and riding ponies. I remember my cousin telling me dirty jokes in the barn. I remember all of us kids playing in the coal shute – it looked like a black sandbox. Then we were all thrown in the bath together because we were covered in coal dust. The summers there were amazing.
Now this story is about one of those trips. We lived somewhere between Virginia and Maryland. Grandma lived in Alexandria. She lived in basically the same place my whole childhood. That is why I often claimed her place was home. She had a station wagon…much like the one pictured on the top of the post. The trip between home and my aunt’s farm was a long one. We would drive up and back. On that particular trip, we were somewhere in Ohio on the way to the farm. Grandma was having trouble with the car, and she never did…but it was not acting right.
I remember her deciding to get off at an exit that was coming up. She took the exit ramp, and it was one of those that turned around and went in a circle. She was going slow, because it was an exit ramp, and thank goodness she was. I remember her cursing…mind you when I say she rarely did. The next thing I saw looking out the window was the passenger side rear axle and wheel rolling away ahead of us down the exit.
She somehow managed to get us pulled off of the ramp into the grass. This was way before cell phones…and she had two little children with her. My brother was a toddler. I am seven years older than he, and we stopped those trips around the time I turned eleven or twelve. I am not sure but I believe that this was on the last one. If it was I really can’t blame grandma. We walked to the nearest place where grandma could call for help.
She was good at handling emergencies. Obviously, we survived, but I remember it being a huge thing. I remember the fear when we saw the axle and the wheel rolling away. Yes, It was worse because it wasn’t just the wheel. Somehow just the wheel would have been comedic. This felt like we were in real danger because it was more than the wheel.
So many of my memories from childhood are based around trauma, mostly because that is what cemented the memories into my brain. This one is both different and not. Though the fear was there… I knew I was safe. This one has all of the wonderful memories of the trips attached. The cousins that I got to visit and know because of them. Two of those cousins are gone now. The little farm boy who told me dirty jokes lost his life on a snowmobile. The daughter of my aunt passed away as well – due to more natural causes. So all I have left of those cousins are the memories of summers spent in childhood. If you can, let your cousins know you love them. I am lucky enough to still have the cousins on my dad’s side.
Well, this was not supposed to be a dark story. I was trying to tell it for the fun oh my goodness type tale it used to be. Now I am melancholy at the loss of the cousins. So I will leave the blog well enough alone, maybe tomorrow I will go back to posting the normal stuff. It depends on how I feel in the morning.
To start this story I need to explain something. I lived in a two-bedroom trailer with often ten or more people. We did not have running water. We lived a mile back in the woods. There were always animals…dogs, birds, cats…But this story focuses on one cat. The cat that left a lifetime mark on me. B.c. which was short for bad cat. He wasn’t bad. He was amazing. I did not have a bedroom. Mom and Pop had one, and my two stepbrothers had the other. My little brother and I slept on couches in the living room. There was another couch that whoever was staying over slept on. And we had a weird guy in a tent outside for most of my preteen years. Sometimes somebody in a camper outside as well. The people who slept on that couch had a few things in common. Usually, they were male. Often they were seen as trustworthy. They were not always.
We moved in there when I was eleven. I however have had an adult-shaped body since I was 8-9. Many of the men would try to make sure I knew that they wanted more from me than I was willing to give. Well BC was my defender. Those that crossed lines with me would often find that they woke to cat poop on their chests. He did not do it with everyone…and I did not control him. But it felt like He was always taking care of me.
Now anyone who has a cat will tell you that they bring you presents. BC was no exception. I often received dead mice. bird or lizard carcasses. I got very used to just using a paper towel and throwing them away.
I started ninth grade late…it was October when I started school that year because I had my son on the first of September. I was fourteen. So I had a lot of kids who picked on me. I was just as weird in high school as I am now, if not more so. And I had a kid. It was no secret. So one of the freshmen during my sophomore year thought that he could make a name for himself by pranking me. He just choose a poor prank considering my life. He saw a dead mouse laying outside the cafeteria. I had a bad habit of leaving my stuff at the table when I went through the line for breakfast. It wasn’t like I owned anything worth stealing. My purse at the time would have had my nail polish, an electric blue or black color, my wallet which was always empty, my hairbrush, a pen and notepad, and maybe some chapstick. On the rare occasion I would have my prized possession, a mini-cassette recorder my grandmother had bought me. So I would dump that and my backpack on the table and go get in line for my free breakfast.
The boy chose to put the mouse corpse in my purse. I discovered it in first-period Biology class when I went looking for my pen. I just calmly did what I always did with such things, believing it to be a gift from BC. I used a paper towel and disposed of it. The boy had expected a scream. I didn’t. So he approached, apologized, and became a friend. It was decided that I would be called Mouse due to the incident, and it stuck…I am still mouse at 47, the nickname was assigned when I was 15.
Bc left that winter. He never came back. I am aware that cats will go find someplace to die. But we never found him or his body…and I believe in the fae. So I can tell myself that the fae stole him because he was too smart for the human world. And I can enjoy the memories of the cat that got into so much mischief that it became his name.
I am not sure if I will do the proper posts tomorrow or another of my stories from childhood…I will have to decide then. Thank you for your patience with my whims.
Poetry woke me. it is not the first time, likely will not be the last. I have been working on two different projects as my poetry goes…I have been finding that I am writing a lot of political poetry…where I had not been before. I guess as I have aged my heart is just not in swallowing the rage I have been feeling for the way the world around me is. I don’t like saying nothing when I see a wrong being done. I have fought for my voice, so I guess I will have to use it. well not all of the poetry I have been writing is appropriate for this volume.
so I am writing two. I think the first one is either going to be smaller than my usual or take longer, I am not sure. it currently has twelve poems compared to the twenty nine in Handprints. Gathering Teardrops will be released in May and I am not sure if either of these will be available this year. I have a bit of a full schedule for publishing this year.
I will announce when each are done writing. I have another poem that is bouncing around my head wanting to be written, so I am writing instead of sleeping….sigh
oh…btw…I have an interview on Facebook on Friday…will post the link as soon as I get it.
Trying to get books ready for publication, writing more, and recovering from a really nasty infection…means the blog caught neglect. So here is a poem written today titled The White Whale…
I was trying for a sandstorm on a beach at sunset…I swear it looked better in my brain. lol I have found that drawing on a digital medium is more fun, but I am better with pencil and paper. I have more control with a pencil than I do with digital. What medium do you do best with?
Ok. I love Abstract art…mostly as an artist. My personal taste in art to hang in my home is Faeries, pagan symbolism, and cutesy stuff. For creating tho…Abstract rocks. When I was starting to allow myself to play with digital creation…I was struggling. I found myself saying too often “but it doesn’t look like…” and it was not helping my self-esteem and my creative nature. It Bloody hurt. I started lessening the standard I was holding my art to. I started creating beautiful swirls and pieces that I could see several things in. The fun thing about abstracts is that everyone sees something different in them. I have since learned a few things and do abstracts because they are fun, but it is not the only art I can create. Sometimes just changing your perspective can help you to create.
Pattimouse 