9:03 a.m. - 2010-10-12
Ode to Strangers
There was a time I lived inside a can of Picnic potato sticks. Comfortably. I lay on the couch like a cat, ordering people with my eyes. They waited on me, as if by remote control. Treasures accumulated at my feet. Rolls of paper tape, lemons with salt, a small cross with the Lord's Prayer stuck inside and magnified when held to the light, miniature tea sets, ballerina books, bug brooches, a doll with a smooth face and special crayons so I could change her mood with mine. This was routine. I lived in Hollywood, of all places. Five years old and walking the boulevard, in fringe cowgirl garb, with my Mom and Dad. That's just the way it was. Outside the magic circle, strangers marched like Central Casting walk-ons. They had no lines. They seemed unreal. I loved the rain and drew the Roosevelt Hotel, always at the same angle from my damp front lawn. Life was uninmaginably and vividly predictable. Sundays, I genuflected just right. Later, as if on cosmic cue, I'd get nauseous just before Communion. I thought God didn't want me there, but my Mom said the same thing always happened to her at my age. And I knew God wanted her. We moved to Burbank and things seemed to unravel imperceptably, like an old reel to reel where you could swear the voices are too fast or too slow, but can't get a fix on it. The boy across the street was cute in a head-under-the-hood kind of way and my Dad was the first to noticeably change. I don't know when exactly I stopped being his ally, but when I came home engaged at eighteen, not because I was in love or knocked up (I didn't even understand "dirty jokes"), but because I could not say "no" without hurting the feelings of someone I barely knew, I ceased to be his daughter and became a threat. An enemy. I was so scared. I developed a constant flu. Why didn't they see through me? They freaked and I freaked and I walked somberly down that endless aisle and that was the end of safety as I knew it. Family has seemed a nest of thistles ever since. I have uprooted marriages, running from the idea of family. Running, to my own hurt. Leaving trails of those whose crime was attempting to love me, to form a home. Home, for me, was a hive. Alive with unspoken rage. Swarming. The hum of accusations under the breath. Sideways glances with no explanation. Undercurrent. Undertow. Pot shots in the dark. Out of nowhere. Devils unawares. I have since relied on the kindness of strangers, familiarity repeatedly breeding contempt. I am married again, just four years. He is kind and good to me. Good for me. In my mind, sometimes I run like before, but now I know enough to disengage my feet. I simply unplug them, while my spirit floats free. I try not to hate him for loving me. Sometimes it seems impossible. I am in my childhood home. It's a long story. When my Dad died, I came back to be with my Mom. I couldn't conceive of how she could conceive of life without him. And she couldn't. But she eventually did. I fell in and out of the arms of the same wrong man several more times and then married my friend. He joined me there and she loved him unreservedly. And now she has gone. Evacuated this bomb shelter of a house, where we all managed to survive and come out loving the fragments of one another that were left. And it was good. God shakes what can be shaken. What survives is gold. Real gold. It is His. I am shaking in the dark, waking up and putting myself back to sleep whispering His name. It is different than when I was a kid, back in Hollywood. Now I know Him. I know that He wants me enough to woo me hard and daily. He speaks to me, mostly through strangers.
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