The Oxford Street Shelter

As we know, I married at 18 desperate to know who was going to love me forever and to have it in writing. I thought we were proving the vast chorus of naysayers wrong until Friday, September 13, 1996 when I discovered all that he'd been up to (in?). It was a month before my 21st birthday and I had exactly zero coping skills for such rejection. A girl so eager to have it all sown up shortly after her 18th birthday was not a girl on solid emotional footing, although I did a decent job of making it appear so.

I quit my resort receptionist job and hopped a Greyhound in hopes of something, distraction, redemption, I don't know anymore. Perhaps it wasn't hope at all, just agitation. I filled 7 journals during this time, all interlocking as I could never find my current journal and would use a new one until an older one showed up and then I'd use that until I lost it and repeat the process until I had 7 journals going at once. I recently took a confusing and white knuckled ride through these journals, screaming at the pages: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING! Oh my god ohmygod ohmygod. And I don't mean the horrifying lack of organization, I mean the terrifying lack of concern for my own safety. I mean, I know that girl survives, but as I read those journals, it seemed beyond unlikely.

***

Making my Greyhound way from Orcas to Chicago, I get out to stretch my legs in the middle of the night at the Spokane station. A man starts up a conversation and I describe him in my journals as wearing satin shirts and being good looking and sitting next to me all the way to Butte trying to talk me in to coming to stay at his place for a bit. I note that he looks so much like a pimp that it was hard to believe he wasn't an actor on a cheesy tv show. OMFG girl, get your head out of your ass, he's actually a pimp. Lucky for me, I want nothing at all to do with any man at this point and his having a penis automatically disqualifies him from being taken seriously.

For a few nights I stay in my sister's dorm, just outside of Chicago. Later, I get a bed at a hostel in the center of the city. The basement is an ocean of pinball machines and I spend an inordinate amount of time drowning in them. I take drumming lessons. I try to sneak in to bars where favorite blues musicians are playing, but am rejected due to my age. I visit every single art museum in the city. I spend several days with the armor exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago, admiring the artistry of impervious garments, the beauty of not getting hurt.

Chicago

New York City seems to call suddenly and I arrive in the late afternoon. I grab my small backpack, the only thing I've brought, that and a purple shoulder bag full of half filled journals and an enormous camera. I emerge from the station into a sunny afternoon. I stand at the door. I am in New York City, BABY! But I don't know where. I don't know where I want to go from the place that I don't know where it is. I don't have a map. I don't have much money. This girl, me, running on the idea that there are no bad ideas (the irony!) realizes that this might actually be one. I turn a 180 and queue up at the ticket counter. I tell the woman at the window that I want the next bus leaving the city. She hands me a ticket for Portland, Maine. As the bus navigates out of the chaos, I promise myself that I'll come back some day and someone will show me around and I'll have enough money to enjoy it all. I have never been back.

In Portland, I begin looking for a place to spend the night, a hostel, a room, something. Parked at the payphone, I learn that there's an elevator manufacturers' convention in town, plus President Clinton is here to bless an oil spill and hotelier after hotelier tells me that this means there are no rooms. The only one I find is at an expensive bed and breakfast 100 miles from Portland. I came in on the last bus and it's too late to leave this town now. I'm stuck here.

I decide to cafe hop all night. A solution so simple there's hardly a problem. I stash my backpack in a locker at the station. The first place I go is a restaurant named Papa's and I think that Lou Reed is mistaken in his cautions against eating at a place called Mama's. After too much coffee and some truly terrible soup, my journals get jittery, difficult to read and confusing. I realize that perhaps this is not the best time in my life to stay up all night writing about my feelings. I move on to a Uni dorm lobby, chatting with students as they come and go. At curfew I'm kicked out. I wander down to the waterfront, where the bars are. I'm days shy of 21 but no one will let me in. I'm feeling so low that I begin wondering about ways I could kill myself. The coffee is making my mind race and it's spinning out of my control. Plus, I really need to pee but the bouncers won't even let me in to do that. It's just constant rejection, up and down the street. I'm crying hysterically now and snot is burbling out of my nose. I have no tissues so I wipe with my sleeve, repeatedly shellacking my cheeks. I decide I need to call someone, someone who might care if I exist or don't exist, but someone not too wrapped up in it to freak out. I grab a payphone and call my ex-ing husband. (I eventually get actual, trained help with this later, so don't worry). He talks me down until I suddenly come to my senses, my olfactory senses specifically. "Ohmygod, what's that smell!! Holy shit! This phone is covered in vomit!" I drop it and run.

I try one last hotel, hoping that perhaps someone no-showed their reservations. No such luck, and also no public bathroom. But they point me to the YWCA up the hill.  As I turn the corner, hours of caffeine and watered down soup just can't be held back anymore and I wet myself thoroughly. It turns cold in seconds and my thighs chap as I waddle up hill to the YWCA.  The woman closing up the Y for the night tells me that tonight is the first hard freeze of the season and so all of the shelters are full, including theirs. I gesture at the nice couch in the lobby but she says she can't allow that. She eyes me, head to toe, and says I better use their restroom to freshen up before she has to kick me out.

In  the bathroom mirror, I see a girl covered in a variety of terrible bodily fluids. I try to clean myself, but it feels hopeless, pointless. I mostly just cry. Back in the lobby, she cheerfully tells me that one shelter has one bed open. It's across town. I'll have to walk miles, at night, through a dangerous area, and across a railroad yard, but they'll hold the door for me. I should be safe because no one will be out looking for trouble in this cold weather. I must leave immediately. I can hardly blame her for not offering to drive me but it's hard to imagine NYC turning out worse than this.

When I arrive at the Oxford Street Shelter, I endure several rounds of paperwork and then am allowed to mingle in the common room for a bit before lights out. A bakery messed up a wedding cake and I eat my fill, as Marie Antoinette suggested. There are only men in the common room now. At first I avoid them, but they are so nice that I move to their table.

They tell me their tales of woe and homelessness. One man tells me about his old factory job and how his coworker with kids got a lay off slip, but he talked the manager in to letting them trade, because he couldn't let those kids go hungry. They are kind and gentle men with super low IQ's or severe looking depression. I tell them I'm done with Portland and I hate this adorable little town. I tell them I'm thinking of trying out Bar Harbor. They erupt in excitement! They tell me I should really go to Bahaba. And I was like, "Bahaba? Where's that? Does the Grayhound go to Bahaba?" Yes, the bus goes to Bahaba, they assure me. They tell me I want to go to Bahaba. And I respond with, "Yes, but what about Bar Harbor?" And they say, yes, I should go to Bahaba. And I say great, maybe after I go to Bar Harbor, I'll try Bahaba. At this they erupt in frustration, slamming the table with their fists. I pull out a map and ask them to show me where Bahaba is. They point to Bar Harbor. And I say, "No, that's Bar Harbor. Show me Bahaba!" But they keep point at that little black dot and yelling "Bahaba!" Suddenly I realize we're doing a Nor'easterner's version of Who's on First. Bahaba is Maine-ish for Bar Harbor. Bar Harbor. Upon realizing the situation, our giggles quickly turn to belly laughs. As I look around me I think, A girl could get used to this. Delicious cake. A warm bed. Total freedom and good, kind company. What more could I want out of life?

It's lights out and I'm ushered into the last cot of Portland. The cot is about 18" wide with less than 12" between cots.  I'm encouraged by the caretaker to brush my teeth before bed and behind her the deadbolt clicks, locking us in, for our own safety.

Oxford Street Shelter looks partly kinda cute on a sunny Sunday morning

The bathroom is tiny and pink. And someone has smeared an oil based ointment on every single surface. The meticulous attention to detail is impressive. It's been q-tipped into the nooks and crannies of every screw and faucet. It's thick on the mirror and I feel fortunate I can't see myself.

I use my purple bag as a pillow. I stare up at the ceiling. It is a the dark room full of women, stacked like logs, snoring. To my left is a plump, short woman who overflows her cot and her thighs touch mine. To my right is a transvestite in white go-go boots and a mini-dress. No one seems concerned about her using this bathroom, but that was a different era. She sleeps so that her feet are in my face. I will wish she'd take off her boots, but then when she does, I'll wish she hadn't.  Every car that drives by wakes her up and she runs to the caged window and yells to the sodium vapor street light that she'll be right out. She always adds a name: Tim, Jim, Ryan.  But she won't be right out, because we're all locked in here.

I recognize that I'm hardly the ideal cot-mate either. I smell of urine and vomit and have a thick crust of snot over half my face. 

The plump woman to my left is snoring so loudly that I can't fall asleep. It is thunderous. I beg for god, who I'm beginning to think is made up or possibly a complete jerk, to make it stop. This, this is the prayer, the single prayer in my life that god answers. "He" could have used his own judgment here, but he passive-aggressively grants my ill-advised wish. Well played, mother fucker, well played.

As my wish comes true, her thunderous snores give way to giggling. And in her giggling she sometimes tells "Paul" to stop it. Stop tickling her. Stop telling jokes. Stop being so silly, Paul! So Paul stops being silly and gets dangerous. No Paul, she whispers, growls, I can't do that. You know I can't do that. Paul, what are you saying! That's not right. I could never. I couldn't harm her. She's getting louder, I wouldn't. You know that, Paul, so stop asking. Paul, NO. NO Paul. NO!!

I'm looking at her from the corner of my eye. I have no idea what Paul is telling her to do but it doesn't sound good. She sits up, her eyes open wide and she stares into my face. Screaming, spit flying, her eyes inches from mine: "DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND!?!?! YOU HAVE TO DIE!! You are going to die!!" From your lips to gods ears, honey.

If you are not crazy before homelessness, we can fix that.

Sleep is obviously out of the question. As soon as I hear the deadbolts in the morning, I bolt. The attendant yells something about breakfast, but I'd had it with the Oxford Street Shelter/Asylum.  In the cold morning light, I see how bad the neighborhoods I'd walked through are. I wonder at that woman at the Y sending me here, alone, at night. I find a Dunkin Donuts and buy myself, what else, more coffee, this time with donuts. Trembling, I am barely holding it together, perhaps only by the brute force of dried snot on my face.  A family strikes up a conversation with me. The mom says running away is never the answer. The dad says I can come home with them, get cleaned up, go to church with them. They say they know a nice shelter for me to stay at. But all I freak: well-meaning people are dangerous, sometimes rules need breaking and these people seem incapable of knowing when. I'd had it with obedient people, bouncers and hotel clerks and YWCA bitches and god and myself as well, getting married at 18, following all the rules and look what shit it all is.  At the word "shelter" I run so fast, I leave my coffee and donuts. I run and run. Running away might not solve every problem but it was very nicely solving the problem of stupid people talking to me, at least for a while.

I run back to the cheapest hotel. The clerk is shocked by my appearance, "Weren't you here last night? What happened to you?!"
"I stayed at the Oxford Street Shelter."
His jaw dropped. "oh. my. god. Not that place? Oh god, I'm so sorry. Had I known, I would've let you crash at my place." Oh great, another fucking pimp.
"We had an early check out. I'll go clean the room for you. I'll give you two nights for one."
I take an extremely long shower in the communal bath. When I returned to my room I open up a bottle of sleeping pills I acquired the day before. And I take as many as I feel like taking. I do not read the directions. I do not care. I want to sleep and if that is for a day or two or eternity, it does not matter to me anymore.

I took this photo just before I finally fell asleep

***

I awoke the next morning, nearly 24 hours later. I called my parents. They suggested a religious commune-ity outside of Boston where I stayed for a few months, safer, healing a bit, but also surrounded by a different kind of nut job and a whole other blog post or two about what happened next.  I am one of the lucky ones, spending only one night at that shelter, not weeks, months, years as was the case with some of the women.

Blue recently bemoaned that she'll never top my adventures (which she's just recently begun asking about) and I said that I hoped she cared enough about her own safety and value to not even try.  There are a great many things I am unsuccessful at; she could try one of those many low hanging fruits.

In my current life, things so look normal and occasionally some people make assumptions about me, about the path I took to get here, about how lock-step it must have been. But the truth is, whatever stability and normalcy I've found, I fought like hell to get and to keep. Maybe it's boring, but to me, now, this normalcy IS my wildest dream.

Trip of Fools

April Fools Day 2016: We leave at dawn. April Fools! We leave right after school. We are headed out on a rare spring break trip. Fresh off our August Yellowstone trip, I'm ready for another one already. I've been hankering for my first trip to Arches National Park for decades. Huck was against this 100%. He's a road warrior wuss and can't handle the idea of 14 hours of driving. Since I, a former road trip goddess, can't drive much anymore, I concede to his tolerance levels. I show the kids photos of Arches instead. They get excited and show Huck whose resolve starts to crack. I note that the park will be closed in 2017 and that the best time for us to go wouldn't be summer (because Blue faints and I wilt in heat), but spring. Yes, the nights may be freezing, but I buy a case of hand warmers and we will fill our sleeping bags with them.  Then we will roll on them while sleeping and leave burn marks on our tummies.

Blue at Arches

And here we are now, tetris'd in to our tiny SUV. We stop in Butte, Montana again. It's only been 9 months but the hotel we revisit has taken a serious dive. It's 10 pm, Coyote wants to swim and we'll be in a car for 9 hours tomorrow (haha, April fools! But we don't know that yet), so we swim. Despite huge signs that say no alcohol, there are piles and piles of empties. There is also food flung everywhere: chicken, tortillas, chips. It is disgusting. I get so grossed out that I run out of the room, even though the signs clearly say "No Running."  This is the perfect start to our trip, a deep, dark foreshadow of pretty much the whole thing.

Day 2: Today is our biggest day of driving (oh, we have NO idea!) We start the day singing the raggae classics at top volume and new sunglasses all around. We stop in Salt Lake City to see the Mormon temple. It is not nearly as beautiful as it looked on the 431 pictures of it hung in Coyote's piano teacher's living room. But as an historic structure, it's fascinating. There's some kind of conference here and the cherry trees are all blooming. It's is beautiful and vibrant. We are not Mormon, nor considering Mormonism, but we try to respectfully tour the grounds understanding that for many, this is a place of spiritual sustenance, though we don't understand it. The Mormon's do have a lot of great ideas about family that are worth cribbing.

We enter a visitor's center and peruse large paintings of the Old Testament, the New, and then the book of Mormon where we see dioramas of blond Jesus ministering to the Native Americans. At this point, it's really hard to remain respectful, but we rise to the challenge. We head up a spiral ramp into a stunning and trippy space-painted dome which houses a 20 foot tall Jesus. We take a family photo in which I look hot. I have to post it to Facebook immediately, despite not wanting to tip off possible thieves of our out-of-town-ness. But in the moment, being fleeced of all worldly possessions seems like a small price to pay for showing the world the only known decent photo of me. I am stunningly non-photogenic and no one believes me until they try to snap one themselves, then it's all "OMG! WTF, SARAJOY?! What the hell is wrong with you?!"

Space Jesus! Maybe not the best photo in the cold light of day.. but better than most

Testimonies are ringing out over the loudspeaker. One man describes his search for "the one true religion," an oxymoron. Another declares that we "know, in fact, that families are forever." This, in fact, involves zero facts, as most of us define that term. It's a phrase that will haunt us, especially in the later stages of road-tripping fiascos.

In the bathroom, I discover I've been blessed with the panty-stigmata. great. It's what every woman wants on a camping trip. I try to be grateful we aren't camping in bear country this time.

After the temple, I'm exhausted. I need sleep. All navigators, human and GPS, are silenced with sleep. I awake 2 hours later. We are nearly to Nevada. We are not supposed to be anywhere near Nevada. Turns have not been made. Directions were not clarified. No one realized the GPS was muted. We back track and cut across southern Utah, taking a back road that is windy and steep and makes me sick with it's spinning and lack of air. But it's beautiful. 14 hours of driving now. We roll in to the only camp ground I could make reservations at on such short notice, the short notice of three months. One has to plan far far in advance to get a campsite in Arches. I can't imagine the hubris in thinking you know what's going to go on in your life, what you'll want, so many years into future. This site is well reviewed, in the middle of Moab. Unfortunately, we can't drive up to our tent site. It's 11 pm and we have trek it all in 5 miles 1/2 a block. Trip after trip. This campsite will torture us for two days. When we car camp our car is the 5th family member, only much more useful. Perhaps, with much time, we could have figured out how to camp like this but in the two days we are here, no one sees anyone else, as we all make endless hikes to and from the car. We are not allowed fires in town, so the next night we will make s'mores over hurricane candles. Also, we live in the country and this city spot is much louder than our home.

Double Arches

Day 3: We enter the Arches. We peruse the maps, make a plan of attack and then abandon that plan on the first pull out. We are too excited. Everyone wants to hike, but the hike is too hard for me. I have only circled the hikes that say "perfect for families with young children." I drive to the pick them up point at the end of Park Avenue. Here I stare up at the red towers and I am so overwhelmed by awe that I ugly cry. We stop at every damn stop. Perhaps due to heat exhaustion, Huck gets REALLY excited over green dirt. He can't stop talking about it.We begin to plot his demise.

When you regret buying her climbing lessons

Day 4: We move to a more remote spot outside of town. It's got pit toilets, no running water. It's on the full and muddy Colorado River, in a deep gorge. After setting up our tent, we begin our second day in Arches. By the end of the day, I wonder if there isn't something wrong with us all, if we haven't gone soft after a winter of video games and "New Girl" binging. I'd have given us two days, tops, on the Oregon Trail back in the day. Other people's kids are running and climbing and jumping. Coyote is dragging.

Evening. We start our first real fire. Coyote's always pranking us so when he starts not making sense, I'm sure he's just messing with me. He "eats" dinner, but lets it all mush out of his mouth on to the ground. I'm getting annoyed with this "prank" 11 years in. When he starts mumbling incoherently, we discover he's got a fever. We give him ibuprofen. But he gets worse. He tries to eat Huck's shoulder and leg. He tells us he needs help and we tell him we are trying to help him. He says, "But then why can't I see you? Why is this wall here? Why can't I see anything?" I say, "E.R." Huck nods, grabs him and my phone. The ER is only 4 minutes away.

Before they get there, I roast my hand on an open fire. There's a starburst attached to it and i can't get it off and it continuously burns me. I'm screaming and running and I realize Huck has taken all of the ice and water and ibuprofen to the ER with the car. I soak my finger for an hour in the 1/2 cup of water left on the picnic table. A blister grows to the shape and size of California. For the rest of our "vacation," I will lick it over and over, thinking it's the last bit of chocolate from the Theo bars we eat every day after lunch.

I'm not doing well not knowing what is going on in the ER. My imagination is not built for this reality. Huck's phone (the one I have) runs out of juice. They get back around midnight. Coyote had a temperature of 104F, after Ibuprofen. He's got Influenza B and a strict medication regime that we will need to "religiously" (I'm not sure that's the term for us) follow for the next four days. It involves waking up at 2 am every night.

Day 5: A slow day. Everyone is tired. Huck insists I will not be happy with a slow day. He is remembering old Sarajoy, type-A traveler. My itinerary usually went:

-run before breakfast
-breakfast
-early morning activity
-late morning activity
-lunch
-early afternoon activity
-late afternoon activity
-dinner, evening activities.

I remind Huck that I now travel like a toddler with copious naps and very short, easy hikes, if any, and lots of crying. We decide to do a short river drive, checking out dinosaur prints and petroglyphs (but not from the same time period. You know that, right?)

Newspaper Rock

But before we go, I want to brush my teeth. In all our moving about the toiletries have gone missing. The bag is here, but the items are gone. No one has brushed their teeth for days. I keep thinking it will all show up, but it doesn't. We go to the grocery store in town, home of the world's most messed up parking lot maze. We buy everyone tooth brushes, toothpaste, dental floss, everything. We head to the bathroom to shave our teeth of all the hair they've grown. A pushy manager follows Blue and I in. She yells at us, "No bathing in the bathrooms!" I say, reasonably, we aren't bathing, we are just brushing our teeth. I show her the bag of stuff we just bought. She is super belligerent. It is obvious to her that we are trying to fuck with the store, disobeying rules I've never heard of. I'm confused. She marches us out of the store as if we are shoplifters. I feel humiliated and angry. Certainly there are better ways to inform people of your odd rules. We brush our teeth in the parking lot, leaving huge chunks of toothpaste to dry in this crazy maze. Perhaps their Minotaur will find his way here and freshen up a bit. I go back into use the toilet for it's actual purposes and hear her loudly bragging about her bathroom victory to her underlings. She says, "They won't look you in the eye. That's how you know. And THEN you're doing your job." ... as if that even makes sense. I just wanted to brush my teeth. I'm not "they." I'm not a criminal. I just didn't know you had rules like that. It puts me on edge. I'm grumpy now. I feel trapped in a town that hates the hands that feed it. I've lived in tourist towns before and it's easy to hate "them." But unless you are independently wealthy, "they" are the only reason you get to live where you do.

Back at the car, I discover the toiletries are actually in the toiletries bag, just in a side pocket I forgot existed. 

Now Huck, understandably tired, is being an asshole. An argument ensues along our drive. It is unpleasant. But in therapy I'm working on not caring what others think and I decide to REALLY apply that work at a populated picnic spot along the Colorado River. We're all sleep deprived and stressed out and hurt and those parts of our brain that make sense of the world have run out of juice and shut down. But we work it out eventually and all happily eat at a diner in town because Blue says she's never eaten diner food. I get a salad with nothing on it because everything is soaked in wheat here... even the fucking milk shakes!

Day 6: Mesa Verde, the cliff dwellings of the ancient Pueblo. It's a bit of a drive, but at least it's not a bit of a hike. The "open" cliff village is actually closed because it's collapsing and no one knows why or how to stop it. The other villages require guided tours, which start in 4 days, when we return home. I'm sorely disappointed. I've wanted to visit since seeing photos in a Social Studies book 30 years ago. I've called and emailed, begging for maybe a practice tour. I settle for seeing the 1000 year old dwellings from across the canyon. Everyone loves this day and this trip, although I'm certain it could have been better.

Mesa Verde: closed

2AM: Huck wakes me up, "I'm going to barf!" He runs from the tent. And he ralphs, hard and loud into the concrete pit toilet. It echoes, through the campsite, through the canyon, the entirety of Southern Utah. We have attached sleeping bags and I speedily unzip us apart and toss his bag out of the tent. He sleeps in the car. We all use the pit toilet at the other end of the campground for the rest of the trip, though he swears he cleaned up.

Camp ground in echo-y canyon

Day 7: Blue and I buy showers at the local gym. Due to dryness, lack of showers and a profusion of bandanas, my hair is supremely flaccid. My family barely recognizes me and my hair, cut for uneven and uncontrollable waves, is now uneven and odd. None of them knew about my Dennis the Menace cowlick, camouflaged as it was among my curls. But it sticks out now, like a hoodoo in the desert. When we leave the gym, we walk across a park that appears to be covered in dog crap. COVERED. Every square inch has a round log on it. I panic, run back to the sidewalk, and wonder about this crazy ass town and where the hell they got all of this dog crap. I realize that they've just done some aeration/plug thing and the dirt is red/brown and we proceed across the lawn safely.

Jumping Needles: Coyote is back!

We drive to the Needles District of Canyonlands. It's incomprehensibly beautiful. I ugly cry again. It will be 4 times before this trip is over.  On the way there, I see a raven gagging. This is not a good sign from my totem bird, but I dismiss it because totem animals are stupid superstitious crap. In minutes we realize that the lighter fluid (not something I usually use but the firewood we picked up in Moab was so green it looked like Kermit's dismembered body) had leaked all over the back of the car. The next three days will be spent driving with the windows down.

Day 8: My god, someone shoot me. I'm so over this trip. We decide we need a laundry day even though we're very near the end. Some members of this family smell like rotting flesh and need showers. The boys shower while Blue and I tend to the laundry. The laundromat seems fine on the outside, but inside is an alternate universe from the 70's. Most of the gold and avocado green machines are broken. There is no change machine, you have to go to the window every time. An grody old man runs the place. He checks me out creepily. He chain smokes and everything smells. Everything is dirty. He has about 7 women working for him and I can't figure out what they all do here. I conclude that it's a super dysfunctional harem situation. Blue and I sit on a filthy couch while we wait for the dryers to literally melt the spandex in my favorite jeans. We get to brush our teeth in the damn bathroom.

Couch in Landromat, Moab, UT

The rest of the day is spent at the incomprehensibly beautiful overlooks of Canyonland's Island in the Sky District. I can't even describe it. And photos can't get close to the feeling of being in that landscape. I'm overwhelmed and nap and cry and go numb on picnic tables while they hike.  Everyone else is back to being energetic and I'm relieved to see it was just sickness, not softness, that made them so lethargic for the first 2/3 of the trip.

Canyonlands. Don't even imagine this is what it's really like.

Day 9: On our way north we stop by superb dinosaur tracks and put our hands in them to feel the 150 million years between us. I'm feeling like I'm in a good driving groove and could go all the way, but I've made reservations at a KOA in Eastern Idaho. We make our way 10 miles off the highway and find ourselves in a little heaven called Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. Hot springs are required for every road trip of mine. In Yellowstone, we hiked in to wormy, slimy Huckleberry Hot Springs. By contrast, this was tastefully developed and 100% less wormy. We wished we'd stopped here at the beginning of the trip. Everyone is relaxed and happy. Finally. We ran into the people we camped next to in Moab. We eat the best Thai food I've ever had. When I ask if the dish I want has any wheat (or soy sauce with wheat) in it, I'm waiting for the eye roll and annoyed huffing. Instead the waitress asks if I have Celiac's. She then enthuses at me about all the many many dishes I can have and how careful they are with cross contamination. The last time I accidentally had wheat, I was in the ER for most of Christmas Eve. I have to take it seriously. And I'm relieved someone else does too.

sitting in Camararus tracks

We play poker with Starburst ante back at the cabin. We do indeed bribe the kids on camping trips by feeding them everything they never get at home. Coyote wins so much that everyone starts gobbling their ante before he can win it too.

Day 10: My only hope is that we meet the Donner party and they eat me first. please. why did we do this. Nine more hours on the road. The kids eat sandwiches in the car and by sandwiches I mean Oreo lemon sandwich cookies. We arrive home. Everything has bloomed and our home feels perfectly wonderful. Why do we ever leave? Huck and I hug. We are alive, reconciled. The Mesa Verde tours finally open, 17 hours away. I sleep for three days.

 

Let's Pretend We're Zombies!

It's brain injury awareness month, don't ya know! They call this an invisible injury and usually it is. Some of us are in wheel chairs and drool or sport skin scars. But far more walk among us, pretending to fit in, memorizing social cues and trying to remember when to apply them, trying to function as best we can with an abundance of naps in between. We work very hard to not let anyone know how hard we are working. When our weaknesses do spill over into the public eye, we find that some people can't understand and cause problems for us. This tempts us further underground, hiding our issues even deeper.

Because of the invisibility of my injury, you just have to take my word for it. There are no scars, no drool, no medical tests, and less and less now is there even a cane, which you think I'd be happy about. But recently at Coyote's basketball game, a woman told me that the seat I was sitting on is reserved for moms with kids and old people. Her stink eye told me that she thought I should stand with the other grown-ups, not act like such a prima donna, hogging one of the few seats. Meanwhile, I was just happy to finally be able to sit through a whole game, no ear plugs, no sunglasses, no crying. But I'd didn't have my cane, the one visible cue, and she had no way of knowing. I smiled and stayed in the damn seat. The hell if some stranger, no matter how well-meaning, is going to tell me what I should be able to do.

I expected to be back at work by now. I was looking for work when the exercise equipment walloped me thrice, lo these three and a half years ago. This is not the life I envisioned. I once saw a very a different life ahead of me. I'd postponed graduate school to put Huck through school and support our family as we transitioned through all of our moves. But I thought I'd be back at it by now. I always knew I'd return for graduate school. 

funny, random thrift store find completely unrelated to blog post

I've bemoaned the squandering of my youth with travel and adventure minus any semblance of setting up my future. While my peers ground through college, I partook of the pleasures of the world and amassed a lifetime of wild tales up until the point I had a child. Around 30, I began to realize that perhaps I'd made the wrong choice. The careers of my peers were beginning to show fruit and some of them were even starting to travel with their jobs, staying in hotels, not just camping tent-less outside the gates of Palenque. Someone recently called that time in my life "eventful," and it was. I could not have crammed in more events. I had all of the events.

Sometimes now, post TBI, I'm grateful that I chose adventure over career. I could not do those wild things now and what memories I have, I cherish. If I'd pursued a career, I would not be able to do it now and all of that work, that sacrificing of doing what I really wanted vs. buckling down and following the more certain path, would have been for naught, not that I recommend this path.

Now I can't pursue a career. At least not any that I envisioned for myself. I can't imagine taking a GRE or LSAT. I can't comprehend how graduate school would work. And that future I saw so clearly for myself, the career and it's monetary rewards, is vanishing. It's a ghost. I still see it sometimes but it's image is blurred, beyond the veil. I reach out, but feel only a chill in at my fingertips.

There's a grief process. Every few months it raises it's angry head as I grieve my future. For a few days I feel worthless, useless, pointless. Even if I could just contribute to our family's struggling finances, I could feel better. But the answer to this grief is never going to be outside myself. There's nothing out here that's going to make this go back to what it was "supposed" to be. The work, my job, the fix, it's internal, and slow going.

There's something about hating my situation which seems to validate it. I don't think that's a great way to think but it happens. Because my disability is invisible, because it means you just have to trust that I feel the way I say I do (although most friends can see the good days and bad days written all over my face), it seems that the best way to prove that I didn't chose this, don't want it, and am not just making it up, is to hate my life.  

So, this crazy plan, when we look at it closely, is to hate my new life as a way to seek validation from others. The fear is that if I consent to love my life now, as is, people will forget that it does indeed still come with limitations. They'll call me a "kept woman" or a "domestic prostitute." They'll forget I have limits and demand more of me and when I don't deliver, they will be angry with me and will let me know, making my life unpleasant because I am not performing in the way they feel they are owed. This is not merely an academic question; it's real. The solution to their anger at not getting what they want or imagine they deserve from me is actually inside themselves, but they don't know that and will work to make me miserable until I deliver, which is never going to happen. Entitlement to my time and energy is no longer anything I'm willing to consider as real. The what-other-people-want part of my hatred for my new life is less and less relevant.

I am done with that. If this is my life now, if this is it, I AM going to figure out a way to enjoy it. If you don't believe me, that's not my problem. I AM going to love my slow and empty days. I AM going to enjoy not signing up for a billion meetings and groups. It makes no sense to be stuck here, in this life AND on top of it all, refuse to enjoy it so that I can prove something to people whose opinion I can no longer value while also valuing myself.  I'm going to have fun here, not being "too busy" all of the time, not having 1000 projects pulling me in a 1000 directions, not saving the world. It sounds a bit like a pointless life, but if a pointless life is what I get, then that's what I'm going to enjoy. I will likely continue to have days where I feel lost, but as the poet Ahunnaya says, "I'm on a road with no destination...I'm not lost. I'm on my way."

In that spirit, I auditioned to be a professional zombie extra. That's right. I'm embracing both my "extra"-ness and my zombie-ness. I've spent three and a half years training for this, talking about brains, moving like a zombie and being background in other people's stories.

I think it might be fun to see myself if a movie or show, to yell to my kids, "Look! That's me! I'm right behind the main actor. No not that guy, but I'm behind him. Look look look! That's my hair sticking out there!" I think it would be fun to do something with no need for it to be something more, not as a rung on a ladder, but as it's own thing, a side thing, not the main thing. And perhaps I want to see myself as an act-or, part of the action, initiator of action, just a little bit.

Noel Coward's Elvira!

I don't know if I can act now. I once could.

My first audition ever was the worst thing ever. It was a cold read. I stood on our high school stage with a real actor, my soon-to-be boyfriend who was already making me jittery and full of nerves, and everything came out of me wrong. I was so embarrassed. I was opening my mouth to ask for a redo when the director clapped and yelled, "Excellent! Excellent! I'll let you know!" I was shocked. It was not in any way excellent! But what did I know? I was just a kid. Based on his response, I fully expected to get the part. But when call backs were posted, I didn't even get to be an usher. I have hated that man ever since. Such a fucking liar.

But I kept auditioning and eventually got rave reviews and even the offer of a private jet to fly me to rehearsals which I had to decline because life is full of impossible choices, always. I once played the female lead opposite Bob Jackson Paris, 3x Mr. Universe and a once-famous soaps actor. But now, I can't memorize hours worth of stuff. I can't do the dramatic storytelling. I can't do community theater. But my emotions are very close to the surface, if a little wild. I'm not sure I can command them and express on cue, but it's worth a try. Plus, I have resting-bitch-face and it seems like that might make a good base for a scary zombie, at least that's what my kids say.

I had the idea to sign up and within a week I had my audition. 

A cattle call, hundreds of us lined up. Our names were entered into a computer and we were assigned a number on a sticker: "Hello, my name is 179." We queued up in the children's church room of a suburban church which seemed appropriate since Jesus could be classified as a zombie after he rose from the dead. This church had a complete stage set up for the kids with a little house, a giant tv, and a car. This is a far cry from the reservation church I attended as a child where the double-wide we lived in doubled as the children's church.

Once assembled, 50 of us filed into a yellowish gymnasium that smelled of rancid floor polish.  We were called up in groups of five where we had five minutes to display our best zombie. There were three types of zombie and we were asked to cycle through the types very quickly, according to the music, as we "chased" a "director." There were slow zombies, fast zombies and mind-controlled zombies.  After the zombie dance was over, we filed up to the judges and screamed our best and scariest screams at them for a minute or two. And then we returned to our seats to suck on some cough drops and sooth our raw throats.

There were all sorts of people there. ALL SORTS. There was a super tall lady with a high pitched voice. There was a man with no arms or legs. The woman next to me was heavy set, 41, and her eyelids were loaded with hot pink eye shadow. There were old, cougary looking women and a girl wearing thin, see-through leggings. It was, however, mostly men and they all look alike to me. The one in the rainbow unicorn sweatshirt talked constantly. Another had been an extra on the last season and everyone grilled him for details.

There were a lot of smokers and it was annoying to be enclosed indoors, even if it was a gymnasium, with that smell. And a lot of people looked like zombies already, even without the make up. I may have been one of them.

These groan-ups (har har) would then basically play tag as a group for 5 minutes, tripping, groaning, squealing (in one case), their butts sticking out at jaunty angles, their shoulders cranked up to their ears like they're talking on the phone and doing dishes. The energy was wild, silly. And the judges kept yelling at the auditioners to stop smiling and giggling. But you couldn't help it. You're running around, chasing someone for the first time in probably 40 years and your grunting, what's not to laugh about?

My turn came and I basically remember nothing, it went so fast. I remember coming up to the half court line, feeling stiffer and more nervous than seemed logical. I took my position and then it was go time, a blur. I felt like a zombie. I WAS a zombie. I had no consciousness about where my body was and what it was doing.

Yes, I'd practiced at home. My kids had critiqued my zombie, helped me find the right face. I'd even watched the tv show, filmed here in Spokane. Whereas it was fun to see Fish Lake full of bodies and the local hotels and businesses, I hated the first season. The camera work was straight out of the porn industry, as was the acting. It was all an awkward set up, everyone just seemed to be killing time until the "money shot," which in this case was things like zombies on fire. The second season was awesome, the campy sense of humor finally hit my funny bone as the acting and directing seemed hit it's stride. This show now seems to know what it's doing.

I was as prepared as I could get and I can only hope that came through. I remember making eye contact with a few people at some point, but other than that, I was so utterly in character (at least in my mind) and beyond caring about how I looked that I have no idea how it went. They kept yelling at our group to stop smiling. I don't know if that was directed at me or any of the other 4 people I auditioned with but was utterly oblivious to. I do not think, when I can, that such absorption in to character is the best way to "act." Obviously being in character is good, but perhaps an actor should keep a little bit of self-consciousness about them, at least to the degree that they know what their limbs and face are doing and can pull some convincing moves. It is, after all, called "acting," not "being." I could have been the worst thing they've ever seen, causing them to later laugh so hard they choked on Lay's potato chips and required the Heimlich while peeing themselves. I might have been okay. I won't know for several weeks and I'm not holding my breath. The point is, I tried something new and that's pretty damn cool.

I like the story line where I get the job, despite it being minimum wage. It has a nice completeness and humor to it. I don't know if I get that story line, but it amuses me to imagine it. If I get the job, I can't talk about it! (No one said I couldn't talk about the audition.) What could be funner than having a secret job, one where you don't kill spies and take down foreign despots?


It's a job I think I could do. If I mess up, they'll let me know right away. One of my fears is that if I got even a part time office job, I'd fuck the paperwork up terribly but no one would know for several months because I look competent and I should be competent, but sometimes I'm not and I don't even know when that's happening. In this scenario, the office has few windows. Everything is beige, even the printer. The bathroom requires a key on a large rubber chicken. One day I'm tired, I'm not making sense, but dammit: deadlines! I push through knowing that I can recover with some chocolate and weed later. I forget to check my work the next morning, as I usually do, as I must. Months go on. The pay the people we well products to and bill the people we get parts from, but they don't pay because they aren't stupid. (Days later addendum: OMG! This sentence! It's the perfect example this fear of my incompetence going unregulated. I wrote it and it made sense then. I read it several times before posting and it made sense. But it doesn't. Oops. But at least now you don't have to just take my word for it that my brain vanishes from time to time and doesn't even know it. Back to the scenario:) The mistake goes undetected for months, years. It's worming it's way deep into the financial innards of this small company, like blood flukes. And then BOOM! Bankruptcy! It's not just me out of a job, it's EVERYONE, the whole world. But in the end, I'm sort of relieve because it was a really boring job and too taxing anyway, I just felt like I had to take it because that's what people expected, because I was too happy with my nothing life that people got suspicious. Plus, I wanted to send my kids to college.

If I were a zombie, they'd tell me right then and there if I was messing up.

If nothing else, the audition was an adventure. It was fun and funny, all those adults running and grunting. And my favorite part about it is that I expect nothing. There is no part of this that was in my visions of my future. There is nothing here that is a critical piece of a master plan. And that makes it fun. And that's what I want, to enjoy my life step by step, day by day. Fuck the master plan. That's never been my bag anyway, no matter how badly I've wanted it to be.
 
So I think I just celebrated Brain Injury Awareness month by auditioning to be a zombie. Be aware. Be very aware.

My Gift

Here it is her birthday, the queen of our tiny, backwards Christian school's sixth grade class. We must bear gifts.

I love our queen, god bless her, and consider myself honored to be her side kick. She is flashy and brilliant and shiny and feisty and fun, unless she isn't. It didn't seem a big deal, the way she'd make fun of every thing I wore, every single day. At home my mother would be scolding me to not be so picky, "Life is NOT a fashion show." Except in Naomi's class it is, absolutely. But at least she isn't boring.

Power

She is THE class artist, she declares, and we all know it's true. Her parents buy private art lessons for her while the rest of us muddle through Ms. Reinstra's painful, exacting, occasional drawing classes. Naomi is very clear that her work is the best, always, no exceptions. She laughs, "Remember in third grade when you all drew jack-o-lanterns with straight vertical stripes! Haha! So stupid! I was the ONLY one to draw them curved, with PERSPECTIVE." (This turns out to not be true. Much later, sorting though the piles of school papers my mother saved by the ton, I'd spot mine. The lines were not artlessly vertical.) This legend is true to Naomi and that's all that matters in our class.  The class is so small, no one can hide from her narratives.

At home, I am "the artist," although later I will not appreciate this old fashioned sorting and labeling of children. It's possible we were all good artists. But it was the one thing I am recognized as at home. I am not allowed to be that at school. At school I am just "the."

We are both young for the grade. I've turned 11 and now it is her turn. November. My mother told me there is no money to buy her a gift. Perhaps we try, but nothing in our price range is good enough for the queen of 6th grade.

"You'll just have to make her something. Draw her something! You're good at that."

Incredulous gawking.

"You'll have to think of something else then."

She tells me that home made gifts are the best anyway.

The other thing I do, always, is write. I will write for her.This gift is of the heart.

At 7, I'd asked my dad where the stories he read to us came from. He'd said "Out of the writer's imaginations."

"So, it's someone's job to make up stories and write them?!!"

"I guess. Yes."

I was electrified. THAT is what I would do. ONLY THAT.

The next day, driving through Eastsound, Orcas Island on our way to "our" summer cabin (a place rented out to pastor's families for nearly nothing, a perk of ministry) my father parked the sedan at Darvill's Bookstore. If I am going to write, I need to start practicing now, he advised. He bought me a journal then. I pick out a tiny, child-sized thing covered in tiny burgundy flowers and a Bible verse. And I was off, utterly certain of my path. My daily entries throughout vacation were shocking revelations of monotony: played legos, played on beeech, ate macaroni, plaiyed on beech, did puzzle, et dinner. In these simple statements, I felt there was a secret that would be revealed to me with time. And later, I filled it with the plans I had: work at Cookie Cafe (did it!), join Navy, marry Miles.

I moved on to larger spiral bound notebooks and a horse-covered trapper-keeper. I filled these with  novels and short stories and poetry. I hated reading, (until 7th grade, at which point I burst forth like a stop-motion flower, consuming the works of Shakespeare, the journals of Christopher Columbus, a tome of Naval stories, and every single thing by L.M. Montgomery) but I always loved writing. And I wrote prolifically and spontaneously and constantly, a volume which sprung straight from the artesian well of certainty within. I believed I had a gift and my job was to give it.

So, I write for our queen a novella. At first my gut instincts balk, but as I begin writing, the narrative carries me off and I begin to believe this is a wonderful idea. I won't remember much of the plot, except for the parts that become well known in our class. It is an over-wrought tale of high drama (much like this one), perfectly suited to the imagination of a middle school girl. There are star crossed lovers, perhaps a triangle of unrequited loves. There is a suicide, jumping off the cliffs of Ireland, realizing on the way down how beautiful the white cliffs really were, the soaring birds, the waves below, undulating, pulsing, all of it full of life, and there is so much more to it than the love of this one man. But oops! What has she done? Splat. A tragedy, every word of it.

I am consistently pulling F's in penmanship, although I spend my summers practicing. I am more concerned with ideas than the look of them. I complain that my hand-writing is more legible than most of the boys'. But our sixth grade teacher, Mr. Langford, tells me that it doesn't matter for them. They will be doctors and lawyers. I will be their secretary and my hand-writing matters and that is why he grades me so harshly. He's just looking out for me.

So my mother offers to type the manuscript. I bind it with my favorite ribbon: satin and velvet and seafoam green. I am proud of my work. I am certain it will cause tears and I am sure they will be the reader's.

Her party is at a house that was not hers. It is a darker house, with shag carpet. I have never been here before, nor will I ever be here again. I will dream about this house for decades, not remembering how it is I know this house. In these dreams I will be annoyed: Why are we at this house? Why is Naomi always in this house? This isn't even her house! I will forget this house in my early 20's when I will feel that this memory is behind me. But the house will continue to haunt my dreams. Nearly three decades after this party, I will pick up a book called The Gift and before I can start reading it, the entire memory is fully engaged, crushing me. The Gift, indeed. This is the house.

She takes my gift, wrapped in white tissue paper. Delicate, I think. I am beside myself with excitement. I have spent all of my spare time in the past two weeks working on this. It's the best story I've written to date. It's going to be the most unique and special gift ever (Naomi hates that word, "special," although she constantly strives toward the concept herself, it is, as a word, banned from our class.)

She opens it and things go wrong. I can predict it now. You can predict it too, right?

She screws up her mouth, recoils, "What is this?" she asks as if I've just handed her dog shit. She knows very well what it is, she just doesn't think it should be in the house.

"A novella!" I announce, proudly, trying to turn the situation around, trying to sell it, sell my gift. I pretend I don't see what I see, I don't hear what I hear.

"Why would I want this?" She is angry. In her voice you can almost hear a scream, "OFF WITH HER HEAD!"

"I wrote it for you!"

She tosses it aside.This moment, this disgruntlement at her party, will not enough for her. But I don't see any of it yet. I am confused. I am still trying to be enthusiastic. I am still trying to believe what my mother said, that home made gifts, from the heart, are best.

All weekend I anticipate her accolades. She will read it, I know, and she will be moved beyond imagining. Just wait and see. She will return to school on Monday raving about my abilities. Yes, she is THE artist, and she will crown me THE writer.  I even imagine that someday my novella will really be worth money. Someday, she can sell the original and buy herself the birthday present she deserves. Someday I will have value. Someday she will love me. I can hardly sleep, I'm so excited for the wonders that will unfold before me. I see my life as a spool of golden thread and each year a glittering moment will unravel itself into the world and it will be glorious.

Monday morning I ask if she read it. She smiles. Yes, she had. She spends the next several weeks making fun of every phrase and idea. She finds plot holes and announces them too our class, how stupid I was.  How do we hear the thoughts of the woman as she falls off the cliff? She dies and so we CAN'T know her thoughts. Plus, suicide is just stupid. Who doesn't want to live? What's wrong with you that you'd imagine such a dumb thing?

It occurs to me that perhaps I'm the only person that has felt that way. Later, I will see that it is  mostly when I'm around her, which is every day, for years and years. But I don't say that. It would be mean. I, for one, am not mean.

I no longer believe that the world inevitably wants and needs my gifts. I write anyway. I can't stop, though it hurts some times and I have to slaughter a million demons, half of them Naomi-shaped, to do it.

***

It's silly to have put so much power into the hands of 11 year olds, her and me. And yet they call them "formative years" for a reason. We cannot erase these things. We do not just "get over it," advice some people toss off so easily. I find these people bury, deny, and stuff rather than truly heal. True healing, for me, takes time and at least one honest glimpse at the depth of the wounds.  Like any healer, we examine the wound for a moment, we clean out the debris, get a good look, and then set to work with the antiseptics and the stitches and all of the time it takes.

Relating

I wish I had known better than to give her something she was obviously so unsuited for. Perhaps I should have. Oh, and she should have too. But she was not just any 11 year old. I don't know an 11 year old that would have responded like that to any gift: not me, not my kids, not my kids' friends. A three year old, maybe. At 11, despite my urgings not to, my daughter made gifts for her friends. And they loved them. They still exchange home made gifts and they agree they are the best. There's always one that can't bring a gift and no one even notices. I can see now that this story of mine was not inevitable. It did not have to be this way. The flaw was not with my naivete or my gift. There is not only one way to respond to home made gifts.

My consolation is that I am not her, nor will I ever be. I may be scarred, but I do not cut to the bone every person who loves me.


I don't use her real name here as some twisted revenge, tattling on what a disgusting child she once was. I used her real name here because I'm telling my story with as much truth as I can. This is my story and I'm entitled to it. And why should I take pains to prevent accountability? I have wasted too much time falling on my sword for people that seek to hurt me. I have searched my heart and I have no desire to protect her from the truth. Truth is not an enemy. And anyway, she will not read this blog. I don't even want her to. I hope she's better now. I hope she became human along the rocky way. I understand she was just a child too. Those were her formative years as well, and no one was apparently helping her grow or holding her accountable.

This story would be so wonderful if I'd found success in writing.  If I was now a well-published author, or even a mildly published one, this would be an uplifting tale of courage and bravery and triumph of the human spirit. People would look to it for inspiration. They would say, oh but maybe my dreams are possible too; did you know that Sarajoy Van Boven had to overcome the wicked witch of middle school, plus a high school creative writing teacher who declared she had no original ideas and then with no sense of irony accused her of plagiarizing her short stories because they weren't about highschool the way everyone else's were.  (Particularly one about a naval pilot who abandons his sinking ship and then is dragged down to his death anyway as the boat sinks, amid a sea of burning oil, losing in the end both his life (inevitably) and his integrity (his choice). Perhaps I'd never drowned in the South China Sea, but I had read an entire volume of such stories, plus The Black Stallion, which did inform my original story, but I did not copy.)  But I'm afraid that this tale, as is, is too familiar. That moment everyone endures in childhood, the crushing of dreams, the unrequited love, the death of something within. The struggle to make none of it matter, in the end.

I know, again now, that my gifts are for giving, although I am clear that one can never be sure of they're reception. It is my job to go to seed, it is not my concern upon what soil, fertile or hostile, these seeds fall. Although, as any flower, I can't help but long for some of my seeds to take root and thrive.

Coyote is 11 now. I wonder what he's going through, what feels normal to him but isn't. What will take decades (if ever) to heal from? What does he not even know he needs to talk about? What minor seeming incidents are wounding him today? What poisons is he ingesting that will take decades to kill him? What can't I protect him from?

A mouse ran this question mark in the snow.