Tangle Me This
Solitude is like a treasure chest waiting to be opened, full of creative nothingness waiting for me to release it. Well, I should probably say that solitude finds me, when it decides to appear. When solitude does find me, I steal it regardless of the time or place, regardless of what I’m dong. Sadly, solitude visits when I must escape. Have I just contradicted myself?
Lately, solitude visits me in my daughter’s room (when she is away) among her mess she keeps: pile of clean clothes, pile of dirty, game and movie boxes sitting about the floor or bed, hair dryer draped from the dresser, personal bedding wadded up on the bed and on the overflow shelf, a type of messy stillness that doesn’t bother me, unlike cups, pates and bowels, wrappers and bags--food keepers that I find about the house, food keepers that everyone believes are decorative ornaments of non-removal. Beyond the messy stillness in this room is a quiet I can’t find in the rest of the house because the mess outside her door interferes with my life. In here, cozied by piles, I write, I read, I thing, I work, I cry, and bring back moments lost to time.
Crying. I haven’t done much for the past . . . , well, since 2004. Recently, during Christmas break, all of it let loose. I had no place to hide; not even my own bedroom. Three days, maybe four, consisted of tears amongst the family that visited; their issues spilling over and overwhelming others, mostly me. I’m about a family being “whole,” about relationships being cordial in public and during holidays, about having ALL my children together for Garry and I, about being gran’ma and gran’pa, about living for love. Maybe all of this has to do with how my gran’ma kept the gatherings going. I miss her; I miss the family gatherings with aunts and uncles, with cousins and their children. The piles no longer separate issues; they become tangled, none able to loosen, no pile able to walk away alone. I knew the crescendo was coming; I knew the crest of the wave would crush me. I longed for the bedroom that I once shared with Ginet when the boys both lived at home. The house has gone through many transformations. When David and Vincent both lived at home, I and Ginet shared the bigger bedroom, the boys had to smaller room, and Garry slept on the oversized couch in the living room. Garry and I haven’t technically had our own bedroom since we bought the house in 1996 (or was it a year later, or a year early, I can never remember). The dining room is our first bedroom within this house. David and Anna have the big bedroom because of William, my grandson. Ginet has the smaller room now. David and Vincent have never moved out at the same time, one or the other having the larger room to the self on occasion, after Ginet didn’t want to stay in the large room by herself, after Garry and I could afford a Futon to sleep on in the living room together; not really a bedroom, just a place to hold our bed--no doors, no privacy. While in the large room, my bed snuggled up to the Northwest window where the falling sun would send its orange glowing message to me and the moon could speak without interruptions. My mind would align, regardless of the problems; what I saw through my eyes wasn’t bleak after a tender talk with the moon. Our room––Ginet’s and mine--had two dressers, two beds, a bookshelf that catered to a cheap stereo system, which interchangeably played five CDs; this all adorned the room I hid in often, paying selective CDs to tune out what went on outside the door.
One night, the room and the moon were my only comfort as I walked away from Garry’s “shutting out” mode that he would so often display those few years while he worked at a job that he began to hate. I remember this night clearly, because I had finished a book in the Star Wars series dealing with the spirit of an old Sith Lord lingering in a cave on Yavin 4--a small moon that appears in A New Hope, where the first Death Star is destroyed as it comes around the gas giant Yavin, the same moon where Luke Skywalker trains new Jedis, at least in this series that I am speaking of. The moon, Yavin 4, was extremely bright, just as the moon was this night. Luke walked closer to the dark source, the brightness bouncing off the cave walls as he came closer and closer to the source he felt calling him, a dark source, a dark source that he knew he must face. Oddly, this darkness called tenderly, warmly, welcoming him with understanding and grace that he so longed go have. The moon that night, the aloneness in that room that I could call my own, called me in just that manner. There was something genuine in the setting of the book that implied the spirit was not completely Sith. I took this image to the bedroom with me after having a serious argument with Garry, after being tuned out by the television that was used to ignore me. I curled up, wedged a pillow between me and the wall, aligned myself to look out the window. The room became the cave: it smelled of outdoors and the calling of childhood (because the window had been left cracked open, allowing the coming spring to crawl in), sending a lingering desire to climb trees so I could reach the moon, a desire to climb the Weeping Willow to build a tree house where I only existed, where my books and I could dance and laugh, tell stories to each other, where I could write, or dance, or do anything when I felt like it, where my writing was famous to an invisible crowd, and the crowd cheered:
Deep Inside
(Yavin 4)
out my window is black
the hidden moon
painted on by foliage the gray sky the misty eye
what spirit peeks back what spirit asks
will you let me in
warm my sole, warm my mind
(Place poem here: “Wishing Well.”) My writing is all I have when I feel discouraged, when I feel confused, when I don’t know where to turn to make sense of what is happening, or at least to calm em down and see another perspective of what has happened. It never matters if I find an answer. And, I have noticed, I find myself finding myself over and over, as I do now. Growth brings change, continuously, and I have found it is usually grievous change, losing the old is death, and when the new is created, or formed from the dying, joy begins. As I said, it never matters if I find an answer, there may never be one.
Enough of my philosophy. I am rehashing memories, one memory in particular, a room to hide in without ever being kicked out.
Tonight, while I don’t want to pay attention to what is in this room, I sprawl out my work on the Futon amongst the wadded bedding that stretches from one corner of the bed to the center, clothes piled and stretched with pillows shoved into the corner nearest the window and closet. Sometimes the stuffed animals that are shoved in her closet find heir way out onto the bed, as if they can claw their way out; and those monkeys, Monkeys, MONKEYS smiling at me from shelves, the closet, and her post-it board where Bobby Jack, a name brand clothing that always has the same monkey on it doing things, or surrounded by sayings, stares at me from a shirt, stimulates me into throwing them, squeezing them, strangling them, and finally smoothing the fur as the tears swell. I pick up my pen to write, then sit it back down on the bed, some force keeping me from holding the pen. I do know that I must write. I look about the room again, looking fro the greater power within in the free whatever forces me from my writing. It will take time, but it will come, it always does.
I claim this room for the next four hours, before Ginet and Derek, Ginet’s fiancee, come home. I shuffle one of the piles to get comfortable again. I want to make the sign on her bedroom door become mine: “Do Not Enter, Sleeping Nude.” I have not done that for years. I arrange another pile and pull a monkey towards me. A lion snaps out. Its size is better, and conforms to my neck better. I push back yet another pile to lie on my back, lift my knees up to take the pressure off my back. His boxers straggle along, reluctant to move. I remember all those mixed feelings I started surveying after November first of 2008; the poems I wrote; I see them posted on Ginet’s wall. I gave them to her. It’s so hard to explain:
i must keep smiling, even through these tears
i must keep smiling, even through these tears
gathered in my eyes. They cannot fall,
not tonight, not yesterday or tomorrow.
sadness is all I have
to hold as he falls away from me.
buried deep is the boy who pinned me down,
licked my face;
buried deeps is the boy who wrapped my arms
about my chest, held me tight
to bite my neck.
i must keep smiling, even with the pain
gathered in my chest. It cannot subside,
not tonight, not yesterday or tomorrow.
sadness is all I have
to hold as he falls
away from me.
Watching Love
I.
they stand without space
so close the heat melds
their chests into one
my mind wields the memory
as if I am standing in her body
my chest in pain as it remembers
once I was her
II.
they kiss the force molding
a new body
a figure that impedes the work of angelo
i remember molding
the length of her body
into mine
once I was him
III.
she lays in the hospital bed
squeezing my hand
crying as the nurse fishes
for the vein weeding through
to keep the next heart bat
her heart is mine
and it doesn’t want to stay
IV.
his body bends in
curves without muscles
any touch is torture
but his eyes say “touch me”
his body is mine
and it doesn’t want to love
V.
that stare
that lingering look
that finger stroking longingly up the arm
those locking legs
aching to feel more
once we were free
After Halloween, after ISSMA (Indiana State School Music Association State Band Championship, after a few nights of chaperoning the two of them it hit me. I kept the tears at a minimum; I kept all of it quiet while sitting at my Mac. The first few tears of relief to fall: tears of confusion, tears of fear, tears of need, tears of compassion that I didn’t know what to do with––and sometimes still don’t know what to do with. These tears were the beginning of the tangled piles. No more neat tidy separate living arrangements of the heart and mind.
I’m at that need, the need where no force can stop the hand from writing; a need that I will not deny anymore because the physical illness that often befalls me from not relieving myself. I start with one of my journals that I keep, each journal with a purpose, and all them used for whatever if the other isn't’ within reach. I questioned my purpose to cry before working on students’ papers, the real reason I came into this room. I lay back on the piled clothes and pillows, re-prop my knees, and remember I haven’t done my therapeutic exercises for months, therapeutic exercises needed to keep my lower back, and my left hip in place. Both are in pain. I can’t sit, I can’t lay, walking is becoming difficult, sitting at school is a squirmy job, and standing on Wednesdays when I reach in the computer lab creates so much pain, by the time the second class is done I’m nearly ill from the pain. I limp to the car. I attempt to put one foot in front of the other with an even rhythm so I will not limp. By the time I get to the car, I can barely bend down and seat myself, the pin in my hip intensifying as I raise my leg to sit in from of the steering wheel.
Oh, the cushion of the pile that has no relief, and those bright orange boxers walking out of the bottom of the pile intensifies the irrational quarrel taking place in me. My pain, my need, the thought of who I was before, the thought of Garry’s pain, who he was before, but my pain cannot be compared to my husband’s. And I can’t deny the young feelings of life that still swell up in me, which still wants to jump onto Garry and wrestle him to the ground, play as if nothing else in the world matters but us. I know that isn’t why I’ve came to this room; not to reminisce, not to work up that hurt. There’s another hurt that is tangled in the aforementioned pile that interferes with Garry’s living more than mine; still, it causes great discomfort for me as well. I’m finally writing in my journal.
Jan 24, 2009
I’ve suffocated the tears I feel lingering due to homework. I’ve locked
myself in Ginet’s room to work & cry, but have yet to do so. So many
interruptions. If only everyone could do their responsibility for fifteen more
weeks, along w/ picking up my slack while I finish the end of my schooling,
EVERYTHING WOULD BE FINE. I’ve foregone my homework to cry, and
cannot. I want to because I need to. At this moment I remember the young
girl’s heart I felt before locking myself fin here.
Hmm. I felt the young girl’s heart when Ginet + I watched the TRJE
today when we visited. I wanted to DANCE, but the pace ism meant for
children.
I’m also hurt by what isn’t being done––the irresponsibility of leaving
without things being completed.
On top of this, is Jessica excluding Anna in activities. I feel for Anna.
She needs her friends. Why does Jessica have to manipulate? She hated done
to her. She hates to see the same done to her girls at school. What examples
is she setting.
Yes. I’m mad at Derek. Not much is asked because he does work. No
different than David.
Yes. I’m made at Jessica. I've already said why.
Yes. I’m mad at David. Pretty much the same reason as Derek.
Although, I’m also worried, esp. After Anna read the note he left.
Yes. I’m mad at Anna. Using Will as an excuse for her not sleeping at
night.
And . . . I’m not please with myself. Still,there isn't cause for me to be
upset w/ me––my need is legit, my reasons acceptable. I’m the major
supporter (all around supporter).
I WANT SOMEONE TO SUPPORT ME!
I stop here. Something is holding me back. I look at a few of the students’ papers; I look at my own schoolwork that needs to be done. I proclaim I am doing my schoolwork; this is creative non-fiction. I shouldn’t feel guilty for the pleasure of writing for me, but I do. Is that the force that has been holding me back? Guilt? I can't approach an new subject. I say quietly to myself, “Pick up a student’s paper and red it.” I do. I read a short one that I now doesn't need major comments from me, a student’s paper that is nearly competed even in the first draft. It’s such a pleasure not to stumble over sentences that leave me piecing together the information to understand what is being said, and I do mean one sentence. The lion is staring at me. I turn it over, and it rolls to its side, the one eye glaring at me. Why is this stuffed animal talking back to me? I see one of the Siamese cats from the Disney movie smirking, twisting its tail. It looks alive, as if it will jump onto the papers spread about the bed and on the different piles my daughter left behind. I imagine everything flying off the bed, the lion and Siamese romping through and over the mess tearing up the room––i snicker, then sneer back, “Go away.” I look down at the paper before me. So may run-ons this semester, so many pronoun issues this semester; so many words not placed correctly in a sentence at all! Forget it all. Open up your journal.
I go back over what I have written, then begin.
Garry supports my schooling, my writing, and does his best w/
chores––inspite of his disability.
Now I’m crying. That’s what I need. The support I desperately need is
from the adult children.
Maybe they all need to go! I can't take the stress anymore. And the
sad part is, I don’t want them to go.
Support me. What support do I need besides the tending of the house?
I’m crying too hard to write; I take a deep breath; a few tears spread onto the page that is still white with blue lines. Crying is good for me, but not if I can’t function. “Cry hard for a little bit.” the oversized Teddy bear lingers at my side. I grab it up and squish it. I don’t feel like I need to be violent now. It feels good to squeeze and release. I still have to get some work done.
My breathing slows a bit, but my nose is clogged. I get up, unlock the door, sneak to the bathroom and grab a roll of toilet paper, then slip quickly back into the room, locking the door. I bump my purse as I get onto the bed, and real nose tissues spill out. Throwing my hands up in the air, I sigh, and drape the tissues over the teddy bear’s buttocks.
Emotional: Garry has never done well with that. If he can’t fix it, then
he can’t support it. His reply tonight to my anger about the house began
pushed off (by those specifically assigned to chores) was, “Let me stop taking
my pills (happy pills) and I’ll have ti straightened out in a couple of days.”
One, I couldn't’ handle the pot boiling that high; tow, it would only last a few
days. Why can’t they (the kids) regulate themselves?
What other support am I talking about? There’s not enough time to
run-out to a friends and gab. And I’m not looking for that support outside the
house, it won’t solve the inside of the house.
What am I talking about? Yeah, supporting me. Taking care of my
needs instead of theirs. Fix my supper, worry about me, wash my clothes,
check to see if I’m doing well, if I need to talk, do I need assistance––I'm
sounding like an old woman.
Am I becoming my mother? But I was still very young––it was before I
met Garry––when she was put on tranquilizers. Mom would have been about
34. I’m 47. Is it all too much now? Sharon? Grandma? Where are you? Even
Ginet needs you Sharon.
Have I walked too far away from God? I have this sense of God
(neutral sex)––habit makes me want to say Him. Because I refuse to see God
as Him, am I separated? But I don’t feel that. And I don’t feel that God
is . . . , well . . . In charge as so many say. God is, but we still have will. Also,
I don’t think relying on god as people do is conducive. A person must also do
for God to do. I do believe God leads. Ah! There it is; I haven’t been listening.
I stop to think. This thinking isn’t the thinking I put onto paper because my mind rambles on too fast. Have I been listening to those words that sometimes come out of nowhere, like yesterday when I was walking across campus and I said to myself, “You need to go home and sleep, just cancel class.” I wasn't even thinking about being tired at the moment, I was thinking about not having read all the journal entries yet. I must also listen to what I read. God’s voice comes through the strangest places.
Did I hear anything as I read my schoolwork? I believe so was God
speaking to me? I believe so. To stumble through the words + thoughts
previously written, I received information from Elbow that spoke directly to
what I do when I write in my journals. Was it an answer I needed? Not a
compete answer. I don’t think I’m ready for the answer that I should receive,
and I doubt I’ll find it in my homework. The word Bible keeps bouncing
between the words I’m putting down. Still, God can find anyway he wants.
I’m beginning to believe there is no such thing as coincident.
I stop writing again. I have to force myself to read my students’ papers and get my homework done. I decide to read a paper that will take some time. I pick up a paper that disgusts me as I see the unformatted pages—single spaced and small font. How many times have I told the students to double space the pages, and to use Times New Roman? And the paper is only a page an a half. Double spaced pages would make the paper about three, not even close to the amount needed for the final paper. This is only the first draft. I shouldn’t worry. I pick up a stuffed squirrel, throw it against the wall, and then apologize, and hear my voice, “the students are lazy this semester.” quickly reading through the pages, I write in the margins, commenting mostly with “transition, unclear, awkward.” This paper done, I choose another. This new paper is written in block paragraphs. I’m not sure what that is supposed to mean. Information overlaps from one section of the paper to the other, characters are not identified when speaking. I must concentrate. I’m half way through and stop.
I pick up a book that needs to be read for post colonial theory. So far, the first novel bored me with the one minded adventure--although, I must say there are paces in some of the novel that intrigued me, captured me for a bit, making me feel like I was there. Maybe it is the superior dribble that bores me. I manage about one chapter.
Don’t feel like finishing my schoolwork. I only want to sleep. Don’t
want to clean up. I’m not. They can when Ginet kicks me out of her room.
That’s all I can put down for now. I’m not going to focus on any homework. I pick up the same student’s paper. I force myself to read; occasionally stop to focus; cry between a couple of pages. It’s not time to write. It’s not time to write. It’s not time to write. I know this. I came here to read my student’s papers, and do my homework. I’ve decided not to do homework. I manage three more students’ papers before my eyes give out, and I close them for a while, and think.
Ginet’s room. Mine for just a short time. I cannot waste it. I’ve finished my schoolwork, read my students’ work, wrote off and on in my journal until I could cry, and did cry. Garry suggested that I lock the door; I did so. Locking a door? Such a simple act. While it will keep people out, it doesn’t keep their words from crashing into, and then flowing under, around the sides, and over the door into the room. This room has the only lock in the house that isn’t there to keep the inside out. My lock tonight. My outside. But for how log? When will the inside get outside? The lock will keep the inside out. Will it work? I lock the door and curl up under a free edge of the blanket, tuck a pillow, or a jacket, something under my head. I cry some more. My work, my journal, my students’ work scattered on the bed. My lap top flashes pictures as it waits for instructions. I turn to the light and notice small bulbs peering through the space between wall and curtain. A light flashes on the X-Box. I hear the hum of the television that has only had the channels switched after the game was left behind. I get back up to shut off the TV. The cold bar of the Futon shocks me from the comfort of Ginny’s warm room--not too hot, not too cool, but there is a cool breeze traveling across that small space, keeping the metal cold. Black metal. Black as the night without the moon and now snow on the ground. Black metal. Black holds this body up off the floor.
This is as dark as it will ever get around here, now. Factories, commercial buildings, trucking companies make my home and a few neighbors a pond. Lights reflect everywhere; even the moon is hard to see some nights; there isn’t a tangled mess here, it is a strangling that takes place, like oil scum surrounding a feather floating in a puddle, like an ameba being attacked by some unknown predator. I remember as a child the nights without a moon, without the snow, being black, except for the stars on a clear night. And when the clouds came, night was night, was real night, was black like the tar smeared on a roof. I’ll never see that again, unless we move far out, far away from any city. Nights with only the stars were solitude. Looking out my bedroom window, looking up through the crack between the curtains, the stars would talk to me by blinking stories. Funny, I’ve just remembered, I would get some strange stories started in my head from just watching the stars. If the moon was there, I would watch it. I would watch for the face of the moon, I would look for the sea, I would look for the craters, I would wait for the moon to wink at me. The last time I talked to the moos was when my daughter and I shared the larger bedroom. I miss the bedroom. I miss the dining room.
The moon has meant much to me. While my daughter and I haven’t shared the moon from either room she and I have shared, we’ve shared the moon from within a vehicle. Our discussion one evening, after making a stop at an ice-cream shop wasn’t dull; in fact, the discussion was quite spectacular, was engrossing. She came away with as much as I did: our special night with the moon was my space and her space, was solitude shared without interfering with the other. This is how that night went:
A spoonful of moon.
“Open Sesame
A teaspoon of stars fall
Far from grace” — Cathy Young
An accident of words
Spilling over my lips
: “A spoonful of moon”
When attempting to say the moon can’t be
Spooned, after daughter said,
“The spoon dipped into the moon,” instead
Of “The spoon jumped over the moon,”
When she just finished an ice cream dipped, singing
: Hey Diddle Diddle with a hesitation: “I want
Another cone dipped.” I went to correct her on the line
: “The cow jumped over the moon;”
And instead I said, “A spoonful of moon.”
Or was it that we talked about
Spooning over a love, and the moon didn’t
Romance, when my daughter asked
About spooning the moon?
The subject that night
Was the moon, all the way home
From a girls’ night out. There was that discussion
Of the big dipper that fell
Somewhere between the dipped
Cone and the spooned lover, of which
In the sky, the dipper appeared
To be dumping the moon.
Grace of grace, the space shared was a solitude I would like to have with her again!
The door! The door! Did I lock it after I returned from the bathroom! Yes? No? I’m too tired to know if the door is actually locked. The room is dark except for those few peeking lights. I lie back down and wait for Garry to wake me up by saying my name because Ginet has to get the key from him.
I hear Derek’s voice: “Your mom’s on the bed sleeping.”
“Mom,” my daughter whines out the overused name, “get up, we’re tired.”
I didn’t want to wake up the moment they came in the room. I hate that I sleep lightly most of the time. The lights come on and I cover my eyes, hide my eyes enough to let them know I’m not moving yet. It’s after midnight. I’ve been asleep for about a half hour. I don’t want to move. My bed has been causing serious back pain. Sleeping on the couch is less pain, but the living room was left a mess by all the adult children: dishes, clothes, wrappers, no enough room for me. I linger, peering under my arm to see how serious they are. The door stays open. Derek’s legs scoot back and forth as impatience sets in. Yes, he sleeps here. Am I wrong to allow such a thing? Ginny’s door stays open; I walk in whenever I want; the door is NEVER allowed to be locked; and if they wanted to do something, they’re together enough in so many places, I wouldn't be able to stop them.
I move into the living room, and before I start to fuss, I write.
Fell asleep in her room, and the door wasn’t lock—don’t know why. Oh
well. Neither asked any questions. Yeap; I’m looking for some attention.
Tomorrow, I’m lockign myself in her room to get my work done, regardless of
her protest. I’m disappearing for about 4 hours.
I feel the tears. I also feel the hunger of not having supper. Where’s
Ginet’s and Derek’s responsibility?
Again, I want to be taken care of during the 16 wks, especially. 4
grown children can’t do that? I guess it is time to get out. The tears are there
again, well they’ve been there, just below the surface—and not only tonight,
but for at least a week, probably more.
I want to hug love on Garry; I want to be hugged and loved. I miss
him touching me. I miss him. He’s in the next room and there’s nothing I can
do except make the pages wet w/ my tears. I’ll have to leave this open a bit
to let it dry, or else the words will smear. What does it matter; who’s going
to read it anyway?
I really need a room with a door!
My room.
No, my daughter’s room: I must remember that I share a room with Garry, a room that was once the dining room. Yes, the dining room. I miss that room. The room where my computer used to be, the room where four large windows allowed the beautiful sunshine to stream in, even during the winter—this is the morning room, rarely the evening room for me. This is the room I went to when getting up in the morning, because it would be all mine—the room where I would listen to the raccoons chatter as they attempted to take the lids off the trash cans, and finally succeed. Bricks and large pieces of concrete wouldn't keep the raccoons out. I miss the dining room. Bu the dining room became less mine as Garry’s body deteriorated, causing him to do less and less of what he loved. With an old office chair that he has been able to adjust, he left the room less and less, until now . . . Where he leaves to only use the restroom, get his cups of coffee and tea, and on occasion, walk out to get the mail—on good days. The ex-dining room, now our bedroom, is still dominated by him, even at bedtime, the television going on and on and on. I shut it off and he wakes up. He goes from the bed to his special chair and back again all day long (with a few steps into the kitchen to refill his cup of coffee or tea, which—for either drink—are often spilled due to his hands). He yelled at me for years about never having his own space. I didn’t go into the garage, and still don’t, unless my presence is absolutely required there. Garry’s place of solitude has been abandoned for mine.
Solitude has left me again. The living room will be toned down after my feverish quick pick-up.. Solitude will return briefly, and then the noise of dogs’ nervous licks that we have been unable to cure will resound through the house. The refrigerator hums. The stove light set on low soften the dark. My Mac has fallen asleep and doesn’t glow. I leave the bedside light on that I attach to the coffee table before laying down. My work lays gathered in a pile at the edge of the couch, my lap top shut off by my daughter lays on top of Anna’s hope chest, my journals gathered up by me to stay by my side if the urge strikes me, keeps me awake—I want to do something with them. Journals: write in which ever one I have nearer. Tonight I have all three. I read through each of them briefly. I cannot believe the dull stench of denial for the last four years: Garry’s inability to become better; the children's need for us to always be there; my need to have my children around; Garry’s hiding act—so much like his father, his crazy father, the father that he hates to love; Jessica's inability to cope with her own children; my need to have Garry physically in contact with me, to touch me, to make love to me—not sex, to make love; his anger that is sweltered by a happy pill; Anna’s inability to deal with physical closeness—she was a lover before meeting David, but David is loner as well, just boxed in by a family that isn’t; Ginet’s depression, she calling herself EMO—a term is used to describe a person overly depressed who cuts his or her body; helping her through a bad relationship with a so-called friend; the backstabbing gossipy garbage that I cannot stand. A slat in the blind isn’t closed all the way and lights from the trucking company creep through. It doesn’t matter; I’m playing Sudoku on my cell phone. I need to lull myself back into sleep. I want to start crying again. The orange light on the surround sound flashes. The word VIZIO on the TV is orange. An orange light from the Time Capsule flashes—I have to find time to get it talking to my computer again. I only want to go back to sleep. My green throw blanket wraps my feet. They have turned to ice while laying here. The refrigerator stops humming and Garry’s television takes over. The repeating music of X-files will make me get up and shut everything off; he’ll get up and ask twenty questions, one of them being why are you up, and then “Are the kids home yet?” Well, duh! I’m not locked in Ginny’s bedroom. I want to go to sleep, but so much annoys me: dirty dishes, unfolded towels, sweeper not ran, . . . . Can I go back into Ginet’s room where my responsibility stops?
I remember my words: I want to be taken care of. I’m not only tired from lack of sleep, I’m tired from aiding and abetting children that don’t want to grow up. But this isn't’ right either. Ginet is still under age. Will, my grandson, begins to cry. This goes on for several minutes until I hear David or Anna mumble and stumble from the bedroom. I realize Anna hasn’t been asleep because the glow of her lap top streams through the open doorway. She allows Will to cry, trying to get him to stay in his crib and sleep the night through, attempting to “not” get up and take care of him with hugs he craves continuously. I haven’t had the heart to tell either of them that William is showing signs of retardation. I hope I’m wrong; I hope it is mild. Ginny has recognized it as well. There will be no solitude now. It will be noisy for the next hour as Anna keeps putting him back into his bed with a bottle or his Elli (a squishy, squeaky, crumbly sounding toy that looks like an elephant).
I work my way out of the game, close the phone, position my pillows and shut off the small light that is clipped to the rolling printer table that I use as a coffee table. I curl around a pillow, place one between my knees and ankles, plop a small pillow under my left arm and fold the sheet and blanket up to my chin. Garry’s television repeats, Will cries off and on, and I can’t go to sleep in my car—it’s too cold!
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