Sassistas! Our dish on the social soup.

Bend to Me

Last Friday while walking the dog, my classic 160 GB iPod – less than eight months old and holding approximately 6,800 songs – slipped out of my jacket pocket and hit the sidewalk pavement hard enough to knock out not only the music, but also the backlight. When I got home, I attempted to revive it by restoring it back to its original settings, but alas, the iPod was dead due to something understandably not covered under the year-long warranty. Without hesitation, I ordered a brand new one from Amazon and paid extra postage so it would arrive in two days instead of three.  Why didn’t I agonize over whether or not to make this purchase like I do with other items costing much, much less?

When it comes to music, I’m willing to listen to nearly anything and immediately want to own a recording of what I find interesting . . . just like my mother. Fifteen years ago, when Madonna released her “Ray of Light” album, my mother asked to borrow my copy of the CD.  She had loved Madonna in the movie version of “Evita” and wanted to hear more of her music. Noticing my surprise, my mother said, “Hey, when it comes to music, I can be hip.”

Yes, she can. My four sisters and I grew up listening to my mother’s music. Stored in the living room closet was a pile of piano sheet music measuring at least 15 inches high.  A tower of 78s measuring nearly twice as high stood next to a phonograph in the basement. In that pile were recordings of songs like, “In the Mood” by Glenn Miller, “Sentimental Journey” by Les Brown, “Buttons and Bows” by Dinah Shore and “Mona Lisa” by Nat King Cole. As much as my mother loved these songs, none compared to songs from musicals.  While stirring a pot on the stove, pulling weeds in her garden or hanging wet socks on a backyard laundry line, I would often hear her singing or humming hits such as, “If I Loved You” from Carousel, “Some Enchanted Evening” from South Pacific, and  “People Will Say We’re in Love” from Oklahoma.

She wanted her daughters to love music, too. She believed that driving the entire family 45 miles away to a Pittsburgh movie theater featuring a Cinerama screen was the only way to appreciate The Sound of Music, and she was right.  Watching it today on a TV screen – no matter how large – just isn’t the same.  She signed up her daughters for piano lessons and encouraged us to participate in school choirs and bands. The annual airing of The Wizard of Oz was treated like a special holiday, complete with popcorn and a rare treat -- Pepsi.  Nearly 50 years after I first saw it on TV, The Wizard of Oz hasn’t lost its magic. The original movie soundtrack is in my iTunes library along with the original movie soundtrack to The Sound of Music and approximately 18,300 other songs. 

My mother also wanted her five daughters to believe in the fantasies inspired by her music: that any little girl could grow up to be Miss America; that sisters could sing together like “The Lennon Sisters”; that blue birds flew somewhere over the rainbow; and that you could climb every mountain ‘til you found your dream.

My fantasies, on the other hand, were decidedly darker. My parents did not own many books, but I remember at age 10 discovering the first three volumes of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Ape series in a hidden bookshelf (a birthday gift to my father from his parents) and reading every one several times, intensely riveted by the graphic violence yet strangely comforted that a small child could be raised by apes. That same year, Kennedy was assassinated, destroying the country’s fantasy with “Camelot” and further fueling my deepening perspective that the world indeed was a grim and hopeless place. I lost myself in dark and brooding television shows like, “The Avengers," “The Girl from U.N.C.L.E” and “Mission: Impossible” and breathlessly waited every week for Diana Peel, April Dancer or Cinnamon Carter to save the world . . . and me.

On October 15, 1966, my mother’s fantasy world collided with mine.

That evening, the ABC television network was scheduled to air the television version of the musical, Brigadoon. My mother had loved the 1954 movie and its story of a mysterious Scottish village that appears for only one day every hundred years. All week, she had talked about how much she wished she lived in Brigadoon and how she couldn’t wait for her five daughters to see the musical so we would know why.

That same evening, at the very same time, CBS was scheduled to air the second part of a “Mission: Impossible” episode. Part One of the episode had ended with Cinnamon in great danger, and I was desperate to learn if she would survive.

Fortunately, there were two televisions in the house, a large one in the basement and a smaller one in the kitchen.  Neither my mother nor me would have to give up our heart’s desire. 

The night before Brigadoon was to air, my mother brought to the dinner table her vinyl recording of the musical and read from the back: “If you live in Brigadoon,” she said, “the passing of each century seems no longer than one night. This enchantment is viewed by the villagers as a blessing rather than a curse, for it saves the village from destruction. According to their covenant with God, no one from Brigadoon may ever leave, or the enchantment would be broken and the site and all its inhabitants will disappear into the mist forever.”

She paused, looked up and asked, “Who would ever want to break that enchantment?”

“Is that in the Bible?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?” replied my mother.

“That covenant with God. Seems scary and not enchanting at all,” I said.

“You’ll see what I mean when you see the show. The music is enchanting. Wait ‘til you hear the songs, 'Heather on the Hill', 'Come to Me, Bend to Me', 'From This Day On' – my mother pointed to each title -- 'Almost Like Being in . . . .'”

“Do we have to watch it?” I interrupted.

My mother’s lilting tone immediately became sad and sharp. “You don’t want to watch it?”

All eyes at the table – including my father’s – pivoted toward me.

“Part Two of a show I really like is on at the same time,” I said with as much regret as I could muster, “and since we have two TVs, I figured that I could watch that one for one hour on the small TV and when it’s over, then watch the last hour of Brigadoon with all of you on the big TV.”

“What show are you talking about?" asked my mother.

“Mission: Impossible”.

“You and your dark shows. Of course you can’t miss out on that," said my mother.  "I suppose if you don’t need to watch Brigadoon, then no one needs to watch it."

The next night, bending to her will, my mother sacrificed her heart’s desire to shatter mine. The televisions were kept dark and silent.

In 1967, this version of Brigadoon would win five Emmy Awards – the television equivalent of the Academy Awards -- including one for “Outstanding Musical Program.” The Emmy for “Outstanding Drama Series” would go to “Mission: Impossible” and Barbara Bain would win for “Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series”. Brigadoon -- true to its enchantment -- aired only on that one night and is not available on videocassette or DVD. 

Later that year with babysitting money, I purchased my first album, Wildflowers by Judy Collins. I desperately wanted my own recording of Collins' cover of "Both Sides Now", a song I fell in love with the moment I first heard it on a friend's transistor radio. Yes, life was give and take, up and down, win and lose.  Yes, I really didn't know life at all. I hid the album at the bottom of my school locker, where I could safely reach for it and secretly bend to its dark and silent wisdom.

 

Strabismus

strabismus |strəˈbizməs|noun

abnormal alignment of the eyes; the condition of having a squint.

Flannista's first formal writing assignment was in 1977 for a college senior fiction class: "Write out your first memory," said my professor, Dr. Ann Ferguson. "Always start with what comes first".

Thirty-four years later -- squinting -- I'm starting again.

 When I was six years old, I had an eye operation to correct congenital strabismus -- the only time I've ever been in the hospital overnight as a patient. 

My mother did not tell me I was going to the hospital.  I thought I was going to the Reform School. Sometimes when I misbehaved my mother ritually dressed me in a Sunday School dress, black patent leather shoes and lacy socks, packed a small red suitcase, put me into the back seat of the car and drove seven miles to the Reform School where she threatened to leave me unless I behaved. The hospital was around the corner from the Reform School. The day my parents drove me to the hospital, I was dressed in the same Sunday School clothes and balancing in my lap the same small red suitcase. When my father turned off the car engine in the parking lot, I wailed loudly and promised to be good.

I next remember my father lifting me up to a high bed and setting me down near pillows with unwrinkled pillow cases. My mother then undressed me, placing my Sunday School coat neatly across a chair next to the bed. A nurse came in and took my temperature, holding the tip of the thermometer to make certain that I would not bite down on the glass.

I remember being wheeled into a room with intimidating hot lights and seeing Dr. Brown -- my eye doctor -- in a green smock with what appeared to be a mask hanging loosely around his neck.  I then heard, "This will smell nice," as what appeared to be another mask was placed over my entire face, shutting out the brightness and heat. I remember waking up in the middle of the night, feeling like my older sister was sitting on top of my head in the back seat of the car. The pressure was from a tremendous bandage covering the right side of my face.  I cried and a nurse spoke softly and gently ran her fingers through my hair.

I remember hating the soft-boiled egg. I remember playing cards with a boy, probably my age, who was wearing white flannel pajamas, polka-dotted with red and blue baseballs and baseball bats. Plastic tubing was coming from his nose, and his head was bald and marked with what looked like a blue grid. When my father and oldest sister came to visit me, they brought -- I can't remember specifically -- either a small Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck guitar with four clear plastic strings.  I could turn a tiny red handle on the side of the guitar and play, "Pop Goes the Weasel." I wanted to show it to my card-playing friend, but a nurse told me he was no longer in the hospital. Years later, my mother would tell me that the boy had died and that I, too, could have died. She would also tell me that the expense of my operation prevented my parents from purchasing the lawn furniture they had always wanted.

I do not know if, in fact, the boy died. I am certain that I was never close to death, though I was undoubtedly terrified.

These random, unclear images elicit questions: Why didn't my mother tell me I was going to the hospital? Where was my mother when I woke up in the middle of the night after surgery? Why didn't she come with my father and sister to visit me? Did she have her hands full with my three younger sisters? Were my parents unable to afford a babysitter?

Are answers even important? I don't know. What I do know is that as I have tried to look back at my life, I am still squinting, unable to clearly see. I want my memory to align, to align not only with these random, unclear images, but also with words.  Words that will line up and plainly pinpoint the beginning of a story that unveils what I still do not understand about a mother who has never seen me and most likely, never will.

Feedback

Late yesterday morning, Flannista finally got feedback about that huge writing project that consumed the life of the Sassistas! the past month.

It was good news/bad news.

I've been a professional long enough to know that the news won't be optimal when, at the onset, your client spends an inordinate amount of time discussing the weather. Then the awkward pause.  Then, "The team would like to express our gratitude for what you brought to this and want to be certain that you get paid quickly."

"This" is a made-for-TV movie screenplay about video gaming that arrived in horrible shape.  The producers panicked because the project had already been green-lighted (in fact, they began shooting yesterday). Through odd TRM connections, I got an out-of-the-blue call at the beginning of August to see if I could rewrite the screenplay which was "only 30 percent there".  I was given notes from the producers about what wasn't working in the screenplay as well as parameters about what I could or could not change. I was also given 10 days to complete the revisions.

The good news: "several of your ideas put the fear of God into the director (who is also the original screenplay writer) who is now making his own revisions."  Also, several aspects/ideas I brought to the script were "very creative" bringing "whole other textures" to the screenplay "showing the benefits of living in community."

The bad news: "You had too much respect for the original writer and did not blow up the script.  If we were moving forward with you on this you would have had to tear down the walls of this thing."  

"Blow up the script." "Tear down the walls of this thing."  I never heard either of those phrases from the producer the two times we talked prior to yesterday's feedback.  He then pointed out specific things that weren't working in my revisions which was helpful and, I suspect, beyond the kindness of most Hollywood producers.

Then another awkward silence.

FLANN: Well . . . bottom line, can I do this . . . write screenplays?

PRODUCER: I can definitely affirm your writing skills.  God has definitely given you a gift.

FLANN: Would you use me again?

PRODUCER: We don't know if we'll get future projects.  But do send the invoice.

Some more pleasantries about the pros and cons of joining the Writer's Guild of America and that was that.

Matiss and I are disappointed and not disappointed. We keep going back to the fact that I was never explicitly told "to blow up the script".  Lord knows, I would have done that. That's one of my writing strengths: I am fearless.

A month ago, I was in a dark hole, living with the grief of losing Gwen and Tim as well as a professional incident that communicated to me that I was "washed up."  Then this project fell from the sky.  And now it's gone. 

I'm not in a dark hole anymore, but something seems to be missing. I honestly can't figure out the lesson, the message, the meaning, the moral, the whatever of this.

Got some feedback?

 

The Starfire

Following is a shitty first draft of a story that Flannista remembered after finding a copy of The Starfire -- an adored childhood book -- in one of the attic boxes she discovered last April.

My mother often came to the breakfast table naked from the waist up, her clasped bra hanging loosely around her waist.  “Only mothers have ones like these,” she would say while lifting her sagging breasts toward her daughters.  “These are the only reasons I was put on earth,” she would then announce, or “These are what keep kids attached to their mothers until they suck the life right out of them.” 

We always continued to eat our Cheerios. 

My mother’s breasts were not the large, round, smooth breasts of art books, but more the small, tired, wrinkled ones of National Geographic.  Sometimes as she stood over the stove waiting for her instant coffee water to boil, I imagined a baby attached to one of her brick-red nipples sucking loudly.  Crying.  Sucking louder.  Crying harder.  Then my mother casually opening the refrigerator, shoving in the crying baby and closing the door. 

We lived in a dark jungle, in a house surrounded by dense tangled undergrowth through which my father slashed a path every morning so he could get to work and his daughters could get to school.  A house seemingly hidden from neighbors by trees and laundry twisting on a clothesline.  Every day, my mother opened the door so we could all venture beyond the perimeter.  But everyday, we turned our backs on civilization and returned home not as heroic adventurers, but as her needy creatures hooked on attachment . . . simian creatures who watched and listened in silence as she chronologically and methodically dressed and undressed us, bathed us, washed our hair, brushed our teeth and wiped our asses.

I was the first daughter to interrupt the ritual, to breach the perimeter. 

I was 10 years old.

One evening while bathing me, my mother discovered what she called “Lifesavers” under the skin around each of my nipples.  “It hurts when I do this, doesn’t it?” she asked, pinching my nipples. “Feel those?” she continued, turning my nipples like radio dials.  “Hard.  Hard candies.”  She directed my fingers to my nipples and squeezed them.  “Feel those Lifesavers?”  I felt them, but said nothing, afraid that I had done something wrong.  The Lifesavers had been there for a while, but I hadn’t said anything because lately it had felt strangely comforting to trace the outline of them with my forefingers, the way my mother always did.

“I thought they would go away,” my mother said.  She stood up from the tub and reached for my bath towel.  “Let’s dry you off and get a closer look.” 

The next day my mother kept me home from school, telling me that we were going to see Dr. McLaughlin, our family physician.  I was frightened for several reasons.  One, I knew how much my mother hated leaving the house without my father, and he had already left for work in our only car.  Two, she hated going to the doctor, spurning my father’s admonitions earlier that year that she take my sister to the doctor to treat her ringworm.  “I’m a registered nurse,” she had said at the time.  “I know as much if not more than most doctors.”  Then why was she taking me to Dr. McLaughlin?

My mother wore a dress she normally wore to church, along with a hat and mink fur wrap designed from three whole minks biting each other like they were chasing each other’s tails.  I wore a dress I normally wore to Sunday School and church.  Hand-in hand, my mother and I walked to the doctor’s office, about a half mile away.

The cigarette hanging from Dr. McLaughlin’s mouth distracted me from his hands on my budding breasts.  “This is nothing.  She’s just growing up,” he said curtly to my mother, whose relief was palatable.  Leaving his office, she said:  “You were such a good girl today.  I’d like to buy you something.  What would you like?”

I pulled her toward the stationery store a half a block away where tablets and pens of all sizes awaited.  When we walked in, the first thing I saw -- next to the cash register -- was something I had wanted for a very long time: copies of the book, The Starfire by Kenneth Edgar.  My fifth grade teacher, Miss Koller, had been reading portions of the book to us every day, and I had desperately wanted my own copy as I was completely smitten with its heroine, 11-year-old Mary Ruth Anderson.

Without hesitation, I told my mother that I wanted a copy of the book.  I then explained the story to her.

“Mary Ruth is the best friend of two brothers, Bobby and Leroy Martin, who are in junior high school.  They spend four years building a sleek rocket called the Starfire and plan to travel to the moon.  They launch the Starfire and land on the moon and then decide to travel to Mars with a projector that fires Bobby and Mary Ruth to Mars.  A glitch wrecks their return trip to the Starfire and Bobby and Mary Ruth wind up in a really dangerous world, where  . . .”, I open the book and read out loud to my mother:

The ground trembled, and the thundering sound increased in volume until they were forced to hold their ears.  Then they heard a strange cry, deep-throated and pained.  It echoed from the distant hills.

I continued to tell the story.  “It really is a strange and violent world with all these dark jungles and dangerous dinosaurs.  Mary Ruth and Bobby battle triceratops, tyrannosauruses and pterodactyls as well as volcanoes with fires and stormy seas with lightening.  In the meantime, Leroy gets back to earth and fixes the projector to fire Mary Ruth and Bobby safely back to earth.  When they get back home, they discover they have been gone eight years and seven months!  Can you believe it?” 

I then read aloud the last page:

Bobby broke into a trot, Leroy at his side, Mary Ruth bouncing happily on his shoulders.  Suddenly, the lights went on in almost every garage.  At the end of the alley a cluster of people waited and wondered at the strange, shouting, laughing trio bearing down upon them.

“Mother!” cried Mary Ruth.  “Mother, I’m home!”

Moments later, with screams of joy and shock, the cluster of people at the end of the alley recognized the two strange children in olive-green tights, and bore them tearfully, joyfully, triumphantly into the Martin House.

“Isn’t that great, mom? I asked.  “Isn’t that a great adventure?  I sure would like to be Mary Ruth!”

“You already are Mary Ruth, ” replied my mother.  “And if her story is what you want, I’ll buy it for you.”

We walked home hand in hand.  That night at the dinner table, my mother invited me to share the story of the Starfire with my sisters.  Later, putting on my pajamas, she told me to not wander too far from the planet during the night.  “I have a hard enough time keeping track of you here in the house,” she said.  “Besides, there's only one Flannista.  We don't want to have to get a new one." 

She picked up The Starfire laying on the bed and placed it into my hands. “You’re going to go far, kid,” she said as she turned and walked out the bedroom door.

The Rock

 

The first time my father said, "I love you" to me was at my sister Karen's funeral on March 16, 2001.  I had gone up to him as he stood alone, looking lost and unmoored, outside the door of the funeral home chapel.  I said, "We probably need to greet some folks."

"The only person I want to greet isn't here today," he replied.

"I'm sorry, daddy.  I love you."

"I love you, kid."

My father never talked much when I was growing up.  Instead he seemed to fret a lot, which reduced his conversation to one-line commands like, "We leave in ten minutes" or "Where are your boots?" or "Watch how you're carrying that plate, you'll drop it."

He was a traveling salesman whose days began at dawn and ended in time for dinner.  The dining room table was the only place I saw him during weekdays.  Like my mother, he never asked what was going on in school.  I assumed he got caught up on everything from snippets of conversation among my sisters and me.  Behind the daily newspaper, he was as alone sitting at the dining room table as he was sitting on the big rock in the back yard.

How that rock got there, I don't know.  But my father often sat on it for hours, facing the woods, not the house.  He looked as though he was keeping it incubated -- waiting for it to hatch.  But the rock never changed.

His favorite time to sit on it was Sunday afternoon between television football games.  I was the only one of his five daughters who watched the games with him because I was determined to get to know him; to actually talk to him.  He never specifically explained to me how the game was played, but I persisted in asking a lot of questions.  By the time I was eight years old, I not only knew what a "first down" was, but also how to get one.

My father never invited me to join him between games to sit on the rock.  Many times, he left the rock and disappeared into the woods for what seemed like hours -- long enough that I had to tell him the score of the football game already in progress when he returned.  I often wondered what he did on his long walks in the woods.  What was he thinking about?  Was he stalking students from a nearby university who often did drugs in the woods?  He did fancy himself a patrolman, and I'm certain he said something to students he came across like, "Obey the law," if they were, in fact, breaking it.  Or I imagine he engaged them in conversation like he did with gas station attendants and grocery store clerks.  It was always easier for my dad to talk to strangers than to his kids.

My father was not a smart man; not even a particularly clever one.  He was, however, well-meaning with a memorable sense of humor.  Our family once vacationed in Washington, D.C., and I remember standing on the Capitol steps, looking down on the National Mall toward the Washington Monument.  My dad was right next to me.  I had recently been fitted with new eyeglasses, so I poked my dad and said, "Hey, you see that fly on top of the Washington Monument?"  He didn't look down at me, but continued to stare straight ahead and replied, "You mean the one with the green eyes?"   I wondered if I spent more time staring at things, I would be able to see those green eyes, too.

This past May, when Matissta and I visited my hometown and explored the backyard of the house I was raised in, I found the rock.  Overshadowed by the birch tree and partially embedded in the ground, the rock had changed.

A month ago, on Father's day, I sent my dad a card that featured a photo of a Navy sailor looking down and talking to two young kids dressed as sailors, a huge battleship in the background. During World War II, my father was in the Navy. I do not know where he was stationed, but I do know that he loved to watch large ships -- so much that we often vacationed to the Welland Canal in Canada, a canal in the St. Lawrence Seaway that allows ships to avoid Niagara Falls.  We would spend hours watching ships pass through the locks, my father admonishing us not to get too close to the edge because, "I'd have to get a new Flannista."

A week later, I got an email from my dad:

The Father's Day card brought back some very special memories of our visits to the Welland Canal -- Flann and [name of oldest sister] with belts around your waist so you wouldn't wander too close to the edge.  Thank you. 

I love you, kid -- Daddy

 

The Way It Should Be

Last week, Flannista published a post called "Debris Field" about the memories that came to her when she walked the perimeter of the house in which she was raised.  One of those memories was the time her father backhanded her in the yard.  Following is a shitty first draft of the events leading to that moment.  This draft, as you will see, is unfinished and includes only the facts, as though the scene had been covered by a reporter and not, per se, a writer.  Flannista realizes there is still much to finesse and would appreciate any suggestions and/or feedback.  Special thanks to Matissta who took the photograph below, designed this post, and offered her own thoughtful opinions about this first rough draft.

The first time I heard the song, “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard it Should Be” by Carly Simon, I was alone, leaning against a rustic rail fence in the woods behind my parents’ home.  Through the earpiece of a small, black transistor radio my parents had given to me for my birthday the year before, the song -- like Joni Mitchell’s, “Both Sides Now” -- seemed to stop my heart. 

“How does Carly Simon know?” I thought.  “How does she know how life really is?  How does she make painful stuff sound so beautiful?” I knew my mother would call it “deep music to match Flann’s deep thoughts.”  I also knew I would never be able to listen to the song in her house.  I scanned the radio stations so I could hear it again.

Within a week, I was hearing the song all the time.  Within months, Carly Simon released another album.  I was in love.  I wanted to write like her.  I wanted to look like her.  I wanted to be her.   With my babysitting money, I purchased both of her albums, “Carly Simon” and “Anticipation” plus a floppy green felt hat to match the ones I had seen Carly wearing in newspaper and magazine photos.  Atop my straight, long brown hair, the hat really brought out the Carly in me.  I too could write sad songs that told the truth about life.  I too could make a lot of money.  I too could be a star.

My mother hated the hat. 

“You don’t stand up straight when you wear that hippie hat,” she said.  “You’ll get curvature of the spine.  Besides, that hat doesn’t look good on you.  Why do you want to hide your face?”

I continued to wear the hat until one of my sisters reported to my mother that she had seen me on the Slippery Rock University campus “wearing that hippie hat with a bunch of hippies who were all wearing hippie hats.”

I had, in fact, hooked up with what could only be called a tribe of flower children led by the tall, mysterious, always-clad-in-black, Hank, whose hair fell to the middle of his back.  He never failed to pepper his perspectives and observations with quotes from William Blake, Simone De Beauvoir or John Lennon.  Hank could also play piano and sing Carly Simon tunes though he found her songs “a bit mawkish.”  “Leon Russell –- now there’s a poet,” Hank would say.  “You want ‘Carney’ (Russell’s album at the time) not Carly,” he advised.

Hank lived in what we all referred to as his “pad”. Hanging in the front living room window was an upside-down American flag. Decorating every wall inside, including the bathroom walls, were psychedelic peace symbols. Marijuana and other drugs were in abundance, though I never partook. I might have looked like a flower child and talked like a flower child, but I could not partake like one.

News of my hippie associations undoubtedly unnerved my mother.  A year earlier, during my senior year in high school, I had conjured a very elaborate tale of being an undercover cop for the Slippery Rock University police who were trying to nab the person responsible for dealing drugs at the high school. I often implied that I was doing drugs and working for the university police as part of a “deal,” the deal being that if I squealed on the drug dealer, the police would not squeal on me. None of this was true and my high school friends -- wise in the ways of bullshit -- knew it. Once I opened my hall locker and discovered a plastic bag filled with white sugar labeled, in embarrassingly large black scrawl: ILLEGAL DRUGS!!! An attached note said, “You are such a liar.”

Yes, I did lie all the time, but really wasn’t very good at it. Still, my fantasy life was a safer place than my real life, and Carly was my latest fantasy.

After hearing my sister’s report, my mother forbade me to wear the hat. “You are not a hippie,” she said. “So you cannot look like one.”

The next day, I stuffed the hat in my knapsack and put it on once I was out of sight of the house. Later, unbeknownst to me, one of my sisters saw me with Hank on campus, both of us in our hippie hats. My mother was waiting for me at the basement door when I got home later that day.

“What did I tell you about wearing that hat?” she asked.

“I didn’t wear that hat,” I lied.

“Let me see your knapsack.”

I handed it to my mother. She reached inside and pulled out the hat along with the two Carly Simon albums I only played at Hank's pad. She held the items up in front of me.

“What are these?” she asked. “Looks to me like this is your hippie hat. And looks to me like this is your deep music. Why are you always doing this to yourself? This hat is ugly and these songs are deep. Deep songs, like those deep thoughts of yours, will get you nowhere. You only listen to them to feel sorry for yourself.”

“I do not,” I replied.

Yes, you do.”

“I do not,” I insisted. “I listen to these songs because they are beautiful. They are not sad.”

“Yes, they are sad. I hate songs like this,” said my mother, fanning my face with the albums.

“And I hate you,” I said, walking away from her.

“What did you just say to me? What did you just say to your mother?” asked my mother, her voice rising. “You may hate me, but I don’t hate you. I don’t hate you because my blood is in you. So I have to love you. But by god, I don’t like you. I don’t like you at all. Wait until daddy comes home and hears about this. Just you wait.”

Several hours later, I heard my mother meet my father in the driveway. He entered the house and yelled for me.

I didn’t budge from the edge of the bed in my bedroom. A sister said, “Dad is looking for you. You better go.” She then shouted, “She’s in the bedroom, daddy!”

I got no further than the backdoor entrance way when my father grabbed me, my hat in his hand.

“Did you wear this today after mom told you not to?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Why do you continue to upset mom? Why can’t she have any peace at home?

“How can this hat upset her when everything I say upsets her?” I asked. “Stop yelling at me! Yell at her!”

I remember little after this except worrying that the backyard grass would stain my white sweat socks.  Trying to pull away from my father.  My father continuing to flail at me with the hat.  My father hissing, "Why?  Why? Why can't we have any peace at home?  Why don't you ever listen?  Why?"

I didn't know why.  I never knew why.

Looking Down

The dead are always looking down on us, they say,

while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,

they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven

as they row themselves slowly through eternity.

One month ago, I received a letter from my father that included the images in this post, "prints of snapshots taken over 50 years ago," he wrote in an enclosed note; snapshots that had been sent to him by the daughter of George Nick.  "Many years ago George gave you kids each a plush toy," my father revealed. "George was the best man at our wedding."  My father may have sent the same set of prints to my other sisters, but I received them as though he had reached out especially to me.  He had not heard from me for awhile.  He missed me.  He didn't want to lose me like he lost his daughter, Karen, nine years earlier on March 14, to complications from multiple sclerosis.

Pictured in the snapshots here are my oldest sister, me and Karen. I look at them and realize how little I know of Karen.  How seldom I saw her or touched her.  How much I think and dream about her, but never see her entire face. How afraid I was of her when I was growing up. 

Back then, she was the fiercest enforcer of my mother's code.  At the dining room table -- the scene of many confrontations between my mother and me and the place where I often conceded defeat in silent shame -- Karen served as both jailhouse informant and unwitting collaborator.  "Today in school, one of my friends saw Flannista with Gail. Flann's not allowed to spend time with Gail, right mom?" she would announce in front of all of us.  Or leaving the table, Karen would hiss, "How many more times do we have to hear you want to be dead?"  Then precisely parroting my mother, she would add, "Just look at yourself. You ought to be ashamed."  Though I tried to stay clear of her, Karen always had her eyes on me.

After I was asked to leave my mother's home in 1972, I saw Karen perhaps once or twice over 28 years.  We did not call each other or exchange letters.  Our relationship passed from view.

Then on Monday, October 23, 1989, I received an anonymous package in the mail.  Inside was a hand mirror.  Scrawled on the face in pink-red fingernail polish was this message:  "When was the last time you took a good hard LONG LOOK at yourself?  Shame, shame, shame on YOU!"  I immediately suspected that Karen had sent the mirror, as I recognized the condemnatory tone.  My suspicions were soon confirmed by my youngest sister who had also received an anonymous package containing a mirror scrawled with the same message.  "Is Karen my wounded child in action?" I wrote in my diary that night.

I did not see Karen again until Good Friday, April 21, 2000.  She was confined to a hospital bed in her husband's study. My diary entry that day began with:

Karen is beautiful.  She's really beautiful.  "You're so beautiful" were the first words I said to her after so long.  The second words were, "You don't bite your fingernails anymore." But of course, she can't, even if she wanted to.

Over the next 11 months, I would visit Karen when I could, determined to know and to touch the sister who for so long had watched me, but had never really seen me. 

Now that Karen has -- in Charlissta's words -- "moved through the veil," does she see me in a new way?  Does she see the top of my head as I write?  Does she see these words?  These snapshots?  Will we ever see each other again?  Or has she eternally passed from view?  I do not know.  Still, in my heart's eye, I often see her racing past me, then looking back and grinning in impish approval.  She's really beautiful.

 
They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,

and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,

drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,

they think we are looking back at them,

which makes them lift their oars and fall silent

and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.

-- "The Dead" by Billy Collins

NaNoWriMo Anyone?

The Sassistas! would like to acknowledge and thank half-a-sista who dished today's sass.

Have you ever wanted to write a novel but lacked a reason or the encouragement to do it? I have a solution:  NaNoWriMo.

National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 with 21 participants. The goal was to complete a novel of at least 50,000 words during the month of November. The idea proved very popular.  By 2008, 119,031 adults from all over the world participated. 21,683 of them “won” a certificate for writing 50,000 words or more during the month of November. And the best thing? It’s free.

The organization collects tax-deductible contributions to cover costs and to fund specific programs like NaNoWriMo, the Young Writers Program (YWP) and Script Frenzy. YWP offers young writers (17 and under) a place to set reasonable goals for writing during the month and to receive support and advice on writing which has been tailored to their needs. Participants from ages 13-17 can also sign up for NaNoWriMo and the goal of 50,000 words. Script Frenzy is about writing a script in the month of April. To date 4.8% of the Wrimos (event participants) have contributed $418,010. With 6 days left (a countdown clock on the web site ticks away the seconds), the collective word count is over 1.6 billion words.

For the third year I joined. I have written 73,147 words and will reach 100,000 by today, November 30.

The first year I wrote a novel about compassion and reconciliation, a modern day story of Job. Year Two I wrote a novel about a drag queen who becomes the earthly incarnation of the Blessed Virgin. I’m working on revisions and edits and hope to have it to an agent by the end of March 2010, or sooner.

This year I worked on four pieces:  the vampire novel (24,962 words), a story of revenge (12,879 words), a novel about a woman who decides the only way out of her marriage is to die a natural death (10,156 words), and the memoir of the last five years of my mother’s life (16,461 words). I write on one story until I get bored or can’t think of what to write next and then work on another piece. I’ll have over 50,000 on vampires by the end of the month and maybe over 50,000 on the memoir.

Maybe you’d like to join next year? For more information on the organization, check out the website (linked above) and take a look at what it offers.  Have you ever participated in NaNoWriMo?  Have you ever wanted to write a novel, a memoir, or anything else?  Please share!  Write on!

Bubbles

Following is an excerpt from a working draft of a longer piece called, "Sclerosis," a story about Flannista's sister, Karen, who died eight years ago today from complications related to multiple sclerosis.  I had not seen Karen for nearly 22 years when I reunited with her about 11 months before she died.  At that time, she was confined to bed and under the care of Marcia, a full-time health-care provider as Karen could only raise her right arm.  Once a month until she died, I drove from Orlando (where my largest client is located) to Jupiter, Florida and visited her for a weekend.  My favorite day with Karen was Saturday, July 15, 2000.

I hit the Wal-Mart Toy Section early, hoping to find that one thing that would immediately light up Karen's eyes, now her most expressive and endearing way of communicating.  Into the shopping cart went Mr. Potato Head, followed by "Way to Glow" stick-on stars and plastic Groucho Marx nose and glasses.  Finally, the mother lode: a plastic, multi-colored bubble gun, complete with batteries and soap bubbles.  Stick in the batteries, fill the barrel with soap, pull the trigger and VOILA!  Hundreds of perfect bubbles without blowing!

Next stop: KFC -- Karen's favorite food.  Though her ability to chew was slowly diminishing, she could eat KFC if the chicken was cut small enough.  And her mouth would always open extra wide for KFC mashed potatoes and gravy.  I ordered the 15-piece Original Recipe bucket and paid more for an extra large portion of mashed potatoes.  Last stop: a liquor store to get Karen's favorite beverage -- really fine champagne . . . champagne that cost three times what the cashiers had rung up at Wal-Mart and KFC.

By 8:30 a.m., Karen and I were savoring the first of three KFC meals that day.  As we ate, we watched "Bringing Up Baby" on Karen's favorite TV channel: Turner Movie Classics.  Next came Mr. Potato Head, me sticking his arms where his ears should go and his mouth where his nose should go.  Karen's eyes widened.  Then I stood on a chair and near the ceiling, spelled out and affixed Karen's name with the "Way to Glow" stars.  I told Karen she would be able to see her name better if she wore "special glasses," and I put on the Groucho Marx specs.  Karen's eyes widened more.  We watched "The In-Laws," with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, and when it was over, I giggled, "Serpentine!  Serpentine!" as I took a ridiculously circuitous route from Karen's bedroom to the kitchen for a second round of KFC. 

After a nap, Karen and I began to watch the remake of "Godzilla" with Matthew Broderick.  In the middle of the havoc Godzilla was spawning in Manhattan, she abruptly stammered:  "When I get to heaven, I'll find out from God if President Clinton is lying about Monica Lewinsky." 

I laughed.  "That's the one thing you want to know?"

"I also want to know if O.J. did it," she replied.  "Because I know he did."

"Anything else you want to know?"

"I want to know forgiveness."

"I promise you will know that," I said.

"Thank you," she replied.

"Here's to forgiveness!" I said moments later as the cork on the champagne bottle flew off and the champagne bubbled out.  Sipping from a crystal flute with one hand, I held Karen's plastic cup with the other as she loudly sucked her champagne through a straw.  Then I told her I had a surprise and she needed to close her eyes.  I aimed the bubble gun, pulled the trigger and filled her room with bubbles.

"Open your eyes!" I said.

Karen opened her eyes, as bubbles alighted and silently popped all over her hospital bed.  I pulled the trigger again. 

"Bubbles!" Karen said, her eyes wider than I had ever seen them.  "Bubbles!  I love bubbles!  Thank you!"  I placed the gun in Karen's right hand, aimed it toward her name in stars and helped her pull the trigger.

"Bubbles!  I love bubbles!"

Over the next hour, we finished off the bottle of champagne, cleaned out the KFC and manufactured hundreds and hundreds of bubbles.  "It's the Lawrence Welk Show!" I said.  "No, it's our show," Karen replied.

The next morning, I drove back to Orlando and once there, called Karen's home and asked Marcia to put the receiver up to Karen's ear.

"I had a great time with you this weekend, sweetie," I said.

"Me, too!" Karen replied.  "I have something for you!"

"You do?  What's that?"

On the other end I heard soft, breathy whooing sounds, then Karen's voice:  "I'm blowing you bubbles without the gun.  Can you see them?"

"Wow," I replied.  "They are coming through the phone! They're floating all over my hotel room!"

"I'm glad," Karen said.  "When you need bubbles, call me."

A month later, Karen could no longer make the sound of blowing bubbles.  On the table next to her bed, lay the bubble gun, empty and untouched.  I would not hold it again until the morning of her funeral when I discovered it in a plastic bin of her belongings, next to Mr. Potato Head.

I Made It!

Last month, the Sassistas!^TM introduced a new topic category called "Shitty First Drafts," the title of one of the chapters in Anne Lamott's book on writing and life called Bird by Bird.  To remind the sassosphere, this is what Lamott believes, "For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts" (p.22).

In that spirit, Jerseysista has submitted a piece she considers a "shitty first draft."  Let's review it and offer her our candid feedback.  Also, once you read this shitty first draft, be certain to click on the hyperlink at the end of this post.

My grandmother died at the age of 99. To her last days, she loved to tell the story, many times over, of a day when I was about four. I had been pestering my parents to go visit Grandma and had been repeatedly refused. Instead, we called Grandma and I told her my plight. In fact, contrary to my parents’ clear statements otherwise, I told Grandma that I was, indeed, coming to visit.

Apparently, somewhere along the line my parents relented and the visit took place. Upon our arrival, my grandmother opened the door to me tromping up the front steps announcing “I made it!” This was the tableau that was so memorable to my grandmother over a span of 45 years.

What was it that made my grandmother admire that so much? It wasn’t something intrinsically admirable about my behavior. (My other grandmother would have been aghast at my arrogant pig-headedness. My parents often viewed it as contentiousness.) For those who knew her, it was easy to see that it was because she had the very same traits, which she proudly viewed as independence and drive. And, now, I look back and admire those traits in her.

I, to the last of my days, will love to tell the story, many times over, of the times my grandmother found delight in the actions of a four-year old tromping up her steps. What is it that makes me admire this so much?

Click here to view a photo of Jerseysista's grandmother.