Going braless

~ Christi ~ 2 Comments

He liked the girl without the bra. I could sense it, could literally feel his animal attraction to her.  The three of us were standing around after class, waiting for the elevator. They were talking and laughing. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and opted to hike down the stairs.

I met him in grad school. We both studied American lit, neither of us had made the cut for the PhD program. We made due with our master’s studies.

I arrived ten minutes early to my first meeting with my advisor. I found her door closed, blurred voices escaping from inside the office. I sat outside, on the floor, reading a copy of the first book on the syllabus. I waited forty-five minutes before I worked up the nerve to knock.

He showed up thirty minutes in. He was hot. Tall, dark hair, nice smile. I did say hi, so at least there was that. I smiled. But, you know, I was already married. Year one. So I didn’t show interest. But he was perfect. He wore his button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a messenger bag slung across his chest.

Who knows what would have happened if I had not already been taken. But honestly, I had no clue. I was 24, and I was only beginning to invent myself. Going braless was not on my checklist. Marriage was, and so was grad school. I was new, awkward, and in a rush to get things right.

Finally I stuffed my book into my bag, stood up, and said, “I guess I should knock.” I didn’t laugh and I don’t remember properly introducing myself. I knocked on the professor’s door and interrupted her meeting. Afterwards, the tall guy and I glanced at each other as I held her door open for him.

Here’s the thing: Doing things right made me unhappy. I thought that I wanted to quit my job and start grad school. I thought that I wanted to rush home each night after class. I thought that I didn’t need to be all that friendly to my single schoolmates because I had my real married friends. I thought that one misstep would bring my whole life crumbling down. I thought that things that made me uncomfortable were bad.

But you know what? I was wrong. I wanted to flirt. I wanted to forget my bra. Have I ever mentioned how much I bombed at grad school? I did all of the assignments, but I completely missed out on the experience. I still graduated, though.

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Is that weird?

~ Christi ~ 6 Comments

When I was a kid, I had an imaginary friend named Hippa Zakka. She lived in the wall under the dining room window.

I used to plan imaginary feasts with her as my guest. I’d set the table for the two of us and prepare our pretend meal. Hippa and I would set out on grand adventures in our Winnebago. We’d read together. She shared all of my toys.

Hippa Zakka was always ready to play with me. She was up for anything. I played with her for many years, even after I’d started school and had real friends.

Hippa never let me down. She never ignored me, never broke a promise. She was always fun, never mean. She was just right.

Hippa Zakka taught me a thing or two about how to be a good friend.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/daily-prompt-memento/

Mask

~ Christi ~ 11 Comments

The soldiers came on a sunny day with red leaves falling on the grass outside. The soldiers asked for Mrs. Samuel Baylus and mother turned to us, her smile like a mask, and told us to go play outside.

I wanted to stay. “I hope your husband is dead,” I thought in angry not-words. “I hope the soldiers make you cry,” I thought. Then I went outside with Norman, sat down in the tree house, and cried because I knew that daddy would never come home.

Maybe I hated her, too

~ Christi ~ 20 Comments

I was almost 18 when I knew for sure that my Bubbie hated me.

I was visiting her on a sunny Saturday at the end of summer, days before I started college. Earlier we had gone shopping for dorm room supplies: pillows, a trash can, a shower caddy, that sort of thing. The purchases sat by her door still in their bags.

We had just returned from lunch and my mom and my aunt were talking quietly in the kitchen.

“Come with me,” Bubbie said. “I have something to show you.”

“Okay,” I said and followed her as she shuffled into her bedroom. The bedspread laid smoothly over the bed, her knitted afghan over top. Her rocker sat in one corner. Sun streamed through the lace curtains.

“Sit here,” she said, motioning towards the bench at her vanity table.

I did. She opened her jewelry box sitting atop her vanity, her hands shaking slightly. “Look at these,” she said, lifting out a pair of gold earrings.

“They’re pretty,” I said. Bubbie loved jewelry almost more than she loved shopping. Ever since my grandfather died in World War II, she had saved carefully to buy herself rings, necklaces, earrings. At 82, her large collection was her pride.

I ran my fingers across the rows of pretty necklaces. I loved when Bubbie showed me her things like this; sneaking off felt secret and special.

“I like this one,” I said, lifting a large ring with a swirling pattern of diamonds out of the box. I smiled and looked up at Bubbie, expecting her agreement.

No. Suddenly something was wrong. Her face had turned stony.

“Don’t touch that,” she ordered. “That one belongs to your sister when I’m gone.”

Her words froze me. The ring dropped back into the jewelry box. For a long minute I tried to make sense of Bubbie’s words.

I didn’t want Bubbie to be gone. I never wanted any of her jewelry if it meant that she was dead. I hadn’t asked for the ring, I hadn’t even wanted it. But even if I had, why would she choose to reward my sister over me? Why reward a no-good drug addict who deserted her family and not me? I had always worked hard and received a scholarship to college. I visited her each Saturday, not Kim. I always did the right thing, unlike Kim. I loved my Bubbie.

All of a sudden, a blinding rage came over me. I jumped up, pushed over the bench, and ran out of the room. I ran to the front door and grabbed my new pillow and a few other shopping bags and slammed the front door behind me. I could hear my mom calling me from the kitchen, but I ignored her. I ran to the bus stop and sat, clutching my pillow, crying.

A few minutes later, my mom arrived. As we waited for the approaching bus, she told me, “Whatever you just did, Bubbie will never forgive you for it.” I looked at her in disbelief.

You know what? My mom was right. I apologized many times, but my Bubbie never did forgive me. You’d be surprised how old she was when she died.

I know a monster who lived in Scranton

~ Christi

When my sister, Kim, was about 13, if I remember correctly, she and my mom took a trip to Scranton, Pennsylvania. Now, this was five years before I arrived, a few years before my mom even met my father at the pawn shop where they both eventually worked.

By this point in her life, my mom, a divorcee and mental hospital survivor, was searching for redemption. She arranged the trip to meet with a priest, I think. She was working towards her conversion from Judaism, studying the New Testament and Catholic scriptures, as her story goes.

Scranton isn’t all that far from Baltimore, but for my mom it was a big trip. She was never much of a traveler. I’m not sure why she brought my sister along, and I can only imagine what a 13-year-old Jewish girl from a broken home would think of spending a week in a monastery. That’s another story itching to be told.

In any case, Kim was there when my mom received some kind of bad news. Was my Bubbie sick? My aunt? I can’t remember. Something happened that drove my mom to return to Baltimore, alone. Her friend the priest suggested that she leave my sister there with him while she went to sort out the emergency. At least, that’s how she told the story. So she left her 13-year-old daughter alone in a monastery in the care of a priest.  Today, the thought of doing such a think strikes me as almost comical.

It wasn’t. Something went wrong, of course. I’m hazy on the details, but my sister spent three days by herself at that monastery in Scranton. After my mom came to collect her, she was broken. Now, my mom used to say that Kim was always a difficult child. She struggled even when she was a baby. But whatever happened in Scranton set her on a downward spiral.

My mom never forgave herself. Her guilt ran so deep that she had another child – me – and dedicated nearly the rest of her life to keeping me safe. For my sister, whatever trauma she experienced in the care of the priest became a pivot point in her life. By the time I was born, she was receiving treatment for bipolar disorder. Later, when things began to get really bad, when she first began to have flashbacks and emerge from her room talking like a little girl or an angry truck driver, the first thing that came up in therapy was Scranton. Scranton. I remember overhearing so many horror stories about Scranton that I came to hate the entire state of Pennsylvania.

I have no idea what really happened there. Could the priest have molested my sister? Possibly. Yet I can’t help but wonder if all that really hurt my sister was fear. Fear – a cold, dark, mysterious monster that invaded a troubled girl at a crucial point in her life. Fear can do terrible things.

 

Meditation on a mug

~ Christi ~ 14 Comments

My mom was an artist. She studied art in college and taught herself much more. She drew, she painted, she did beading and weaving. She liked very much to dabble. My mom, who spent much of her life suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, found an outlet for her pain through her art. Her disease fueled her creativity, and vice versa, in ways that I have only begun to understand.

When I was twelve, my mom bought me a sketchbook and sat me down at the dining room table. She put a cup in front of me and told me to look at it.

“Look closely,” she said. “See how the light hits it here?” she asked. “See this shadow?”

I did. As my mom broke the parts of the cup down one by one, I could see each part singularly. She taught me to notice difference.

“Now draw what you see,” she said, handing me her special charcoal pencils. She showed me how to use heavier and lighter pressure to make the drawing textured. She showed me how to blend, how to highlight with the eraser. She showed me how to re-create reality.

“Take your time,” she recommended gently. “Work on one part at a time.”

I drew slowly and carefully. When I finished, I had a lovely two-dimensional rendition of a mug, instantly recognizable. I’d like to think that I had real talent, but I think that anyone could break down a simple object like this and make something beautiful from it. In any case, I loved drawing. My mom’s lessons showed me the way to one of my earliest passions. I remember counting the days until art class, waking up early and full of excitement on Wednesdays and Fridays. Those were the days when I felt special. Those were the days when I got to do what I loved best.

My mom’s method of drawing was entirely rooted in the present. She taught me to be mindful, to make art a meditation. She taught me to overlook nothing. She showed me how even the simplest object can open you to creating beauty and can teach you a truth about yourself. It’s funny — you probably don’t think of drawing as a survival skill, but for me, it is.

Let me tell you a story

~ Christi ~ 14 Comments

My mom always prefaced the story with,”You were such a sweet little Catholic schoolgirl,” as if that meant that I should always and forever be above such things. That fact was the crux of the story, for her. I had, in my defense, only just started kindergarten at Sacred Heart Elementary. And I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

The way she told it, it was dinnertime on a weeknight. I guess that made it a school night. She was in the kitchen preparing dinner. I was outside playing with a neighbor boy. Commuters made their way home from work, passing by our house and slowing down for those three — yes, three — speed bumps in the road by our apartment building.

She turned away from the stove for a minute, or maybe she looked up from setting the table, and she saw us. We were lying on the grass, atop a hill behind our house, immediately next to the street. Cars were passing inches from us. I was underneath him, he was on top of me. We both had our pants down. Undies too.

My mom dropped her spoon — or her napkins — and came running outside. This, I remember. “Chris!” she yelled. It had that particular ring to it, that tone that can only be articulated by one’s mother, that pitch that can only be reached in anger. In seconds, the neighbor boy was up and off of me, our pants were pulled up, and our deed was forever set in stone.

My mom had a dark sense of humor, and she found this event to be really funny. She liked to tell the story, and she did tell it, over and over again until its telling became more real than the real thing. I don’t remember that day on the hill, only my mom’s rendition of it. But I’ll tell you this: I do remember that kid next door. His name was Matthew, and he was a lot of fun.

Present tense: Kindergarten, day two

~ Christi

Gabe came downstairs dressed and ready for kindergarten this morning, his second day of school. That’s my paycheck and my yearly bonus these days. Especially since I had been prepared for the worst — he just as easily could have woken up grumpy and crying, right?

“Good morning, sweetheart,” I told him. I hugged him and tousled his hair. “What do you want for breakfast?”

“Cereal,” he said, happily.

As I poured Shredded Wheat into a bowl and got him a glass of milk, I asked, “Are you excited about school today?”

“Yeah!” he said, obviously really happy about school.

I’m so excited for him. I can literally feel how ready he is to be at school, learning. When I look at him, I can clearly remember being in kindergarten myself. I was thrilled with my teacher, with being taught.

Kindergarten had a different effect on my daughter, Anna. She loves to learn, but she reacted badly to the demanding full day of school. Each afternoon she turned into a little monster, calling me names, hitting, and generally falling apart at the seams. Most days she ate dinner in her pajamas and went to bed early.

Gabe is calmer about school. He is more settled than his sister and generally just a happier guy. I wish that I understood exactly why. After school yesterday, he gave me a full play-by-play announcement of the day. I loved it. He spent ten minutes trying to figure out the pronunciation of his music teacher’s last name.

This morning, on the way to school, he and Anna had an argument. “Anna called me an idiot,” he called, a few steps ahead.

“Idiot?” I asked. “Anna, did you learn that word at school?” Great. “You guys, idiot is a terrible thing to call each other. Let’s not start the day that way, okay?” I asked. They laughed.

At school, a friend with a son in Gabe’s class stopped to say hi. “Gabe’s translator is here!” she said cheerfully. “Gabe whispers everything, so Evan calls out what he says,” she explained.

“That’s funny. I told Gabe to do the same thing for Evan,” I said, laughing. “Whenever Mrs. C. says something in Spanish.”

“Great idea!” she said.

When I hugged Gabe goodbye before the bell rang, I told him to use his loudest voice today at school, to pretend he’s yelling at Anna when he talks in class. He said he didn’t want to.

 

Edit me, a revision

~ Christi ~ 2 Comments

I haven’t always known how to edit. I have a master’s degree in English lit, but my education did not prepare me for my career as an editor. No, I learned to edit afterwards, on the job. My process is one of many, I’m sure, but I want to tell you about it. It sheds some light on what I’m seeking from this blog, I think.

Before I begin to edit something, I try to learn from the writer what they expect in the final product. I gather the appropriate style guide, dictionary, and any other reference materials. I find a quiet place to work uninterrupted. I take a moment to clear my mind and focus on my work. For me, editing is almost meditative. I need to completely focus on the writing, turning each word, each phrase, over in my mind to ascertain its meaning and clarity. I try to make my queries objective, to be minimally invasive in the writing.

When I edit, I pay complete attention to the writing in front of me. The words become the most important thing in the world to me, if only for the brief time that I am editing them. I seek to understand the words, in the smallest sense – of spelling, punctuation – to the largest – of theme and message. As an editor, I care more about being present for the writing than about changing it in any essential way.

So, edit me: Read my words. Give them your undivided attention. Offer me your constructive criticism or your compliments. Am I who I think I am? Or, as I suspect, is there more to me than that?

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