Starting from Scratches 11/10/2007 Saturday at Panera in Denver, CO.

sponsored by Lighthouse Writers [updated by Jeffrey Ethan Lee 11/13/2007]

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from Victoria Gruda:

 

I moved from the dorm to a rented room in a house on Laurel Street. I didn’t ask my family for help and not knowing anyone well I started to move my grandmother’s old desk with the wooden legs chewed by our black lab, my books in metal milk crates, clothes still on hangers and electric Brother’s typewriter by hand – walking the 10 blocks with arm loads until a janitor asked if I wanted to borrow a two-wheeler. I moved the rest of my things that way.

At the end of the day I ran into one of my new roommates who asked in astonishment why I hadn’t asked for help. “I have a truck,” he said. “We could have moved you in one trip. Did you walk here with all your stuff from the dorm with that dolly?” I avoided his answer and went to return the dolly.

My roommates were all older. They grew veggies in a big garden in the backyard and had interesting dinner parties where I gnawed my nails and tried not to sound naïve. Sometimes they’d invite me down for dinner but I didn’t like to keep eating their food so I’d cook when no one was in the kitchen and eat up in my room.

I didn’t live there long. I met a senior in one of my classes and started going to his basement apartment after class. I’d listen to him play guitar and sing Paul Simon songs while I drifted off to asleep. There was a young family who lived upstairs -- mom, dad, son and daughter. They let the son pick a new name while I was there. I had to get used to calling him Superman after that instead of Sam.

I didn’t visit my family much then. My dad drank a lot. My mom lived in a world where dad was sleeping instead of passed out. My oldest sister was married to a man no one in the family liked. My middle sister who I’d been closest with growing up had married a man who hit her and threw her around their duplex. He tried to kiss me one sunny afternoon while I read the Sunday funnies and my sister was at the store. He whispered how pretty I was and that he knew about my history teacher and me -- the history teacher who made me his girlfriend when I was 15 and he was 35. I didn’t go to my sisters for dinner after that. I didn’t tell my family I lived in a basement apartment. I didn’t tell them about the man who played the guitar and sang to me.

I went home for Thanksgiving and after the long bus ride I was eager to get back to the basement apartment. He had graduated, would be leaving soon and I was needy of my time with him. To know what our future plans would be. When I opened the door I knew something was wrong. When I turned on the light I noticed the things that were missing. Old furniture, faded bowls with places inside where the plastic had grown hairy from the scrape of metal spoons. These were the things he left me.

The lady upstairs found me on the floor. Her husband shot me a disgusted look, blocked the kids from the door and took them upstairs. She helped me up, made me drink a huge pitcher of purple Kool-Aid I threw up with all the pills. She stayed with me until eventually the ringing in my ears, the nausea and the feeling like my head was stuffed with cotton stopped. When she went upstairs I got up to look through all the empty places he had left.

I was too embarrassed to tell my parents that after the rent, the theatre tech books and the huge volumes of Shakespeare, even used, there was very little left to buy food with. I’d go to class, come home, and listen to Paul Simon sing about old friends and Bob Dylan sing about seeing a movie called Gunga Din. I didn’t have my rented room any more. I put my things in the spaces his things left. I’d hear the TV from across the hall. The upstairs family had made the furnace room that smelled of damp and dust into their TV room. They’d put an old easy chair in there, a rug on the floor and a 19” TV on a wooden chair. Sometimes I’d hear their washer filling or dryer spinning or the kids playing in the yard. Their lives so full as mine grew smaller and quieter in the basement. I’d avoid them coming and going

One night I heard a tap on the door. My heart leapt – could it be him? Returned to tell me what happened, that it hadn’t happened, or even goodbye. I opened the door. It was the woman from upstairs. “We’re going to start watching Roots,” she said. “Would you like to join us? I heard it’s going to be pretty good.” Then Superman poked his head in the door “we have popcorn.” I learned that popcorn made a pretty good alternative when the cream of wheat grew old. I sat on the floor with their daughter in my lap, watched Roots, eventually grew legs, learned to walk, dropped out of school and moved away.

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From Janet Chamberlain
Starting from Scratches Lighthouse Writing Class
November 10, 2007

 

It was a beautiful late, May day when I got the call at work. I had recently gotten a job in the Membership Department of the Denver Botanic Gardens. The work wasn’t challenging. I performed mostly menial tasks such as putting out bulk mailings and placing follow-up phone calls to lapsed members. I had gotten this part-time job to help support my theater addiction. Managing the local, non-profit, ensemble theater I worked with brought in minimal income and I just couldn’t take waiting tables to support my habit any longer. I didn’t love the new job, but it had its benefits.

The old Victorian building, in which the administrative offices of the Gardens were housed, was dark and cool. It had high ceilings and the densely filtered daylight struggled to make it through the tree branches outside its tall windows. But just outside, across the small gated parking lot, were the magnificent gardens in wild, spring bloom. The paths meandering through the grounds were graced with the varied colors and textures of bush and blossom, enticing you to continue ambling to see what was around the next bend. I had made it a habit to take my lunch breaks out there in the middle of all that light and life, as the busy grounds crews worked frantically to keep up with the changing season.

Most of the staff in the old Victorian were elderly women who had supported and worked for the Gardens most of their adult lives. They did things the “old way” and found the new computerized records system scary and unmanageable. This was why I, and another young woman, Beth, were hired. We were there to bring the department up to the new age technology and to inject a bit of youthful energy into this aging arm of the business. I wasn’t all that young at 36, but Beth was in her late 20s, and compared to the old guard were both young pups.

The call at work came from my Brother, back in Indiana. I rarely got calls there, and never from family members. At first, I couldn’t understand what he was saying to me. But it finally sunk in that this wasn’t a good call saying he and his young family were planning a trip to Denver. He had called to give me the bad news that Mom had succumbed to Cancer. I must have looked odd because Beth came over to me right away and hugged my frozen shoulders. She knew. I had told her previously that my Mother was sick, but also that she was receiving radiation treatments, which seemed to be making a difference.

Mom had told me her prognosis after she had gone to The Mayo clinic to get a second opinion about her Cancer. But they had concurred with her local doctor. She had about a year and a half to live. Now time was up. She was dead at age 68. I couldn’t wrap my brain around that. I had spent that entire time, thinking she would lick this thing. She was always so positive and upbeat. It was denial on my part, pure and simple.

Now it was time to go to her funeral, but I wasn’t sobbing, only a little shaky. Beth rounded up my personal belongings and led me out of the office. We passed by the edge of the Gardens and the tree branches seemed to dart out at me. The colorful flowers were too bright, nearly riotous. The crystal blue sky appeared brittle and the sun was blinding. The sheer beauty of this place and this perfect spring day were actually painful to see. It was wrong. It was all so very wrong. Sweet Beth drove me all the way home and made my flight reservations while I aimlessly went about gathering some clothes for my trip. It was hard to keep moving. My limbs felt stiff and awkward. My mind was numb.

Since I had moved to Denver 11 years earlier, I seldom visited my home town back in Indiana. I didn’t miss the small-minded Midwest, with their loud prejudices against anything “foreign” and their chronic lack of ambition. I had been encouraged since I was a young girl to go for things and to believe in myself as strong and capable of anything I set my sights on. My Indiana peers thought I was willful, wayward and downright weird. After all, even if you left Lafayette, Indiana, you would quickly see the rest of the country was crazy. You would surely come home soon enough to where you belonged…

Not that I was grateful for how I came to have this belief in myself. I totally took it for granted. In fact, I still bristle at the memory of my Mother dragging me to dance, piano and singing lessons when I was a kid. Over the years I began to hate her for pushing and prodding me to do things I didn’t want to do. Everyday I lived in her house she would nag me to, “For heaven’s sake, stand up straight, sit with your legs together and pull in that stomach!” It was a constant litany drilled into my head. I began to wonder why she bothered to harangue me so, since I was obviously not concerned with how I appeared. But she was relentless.

When it came time for me to graduate from high school, I fully expected that, since I had good self-discipline and was a good student, I would automatically be going to college. The fact that my parents were offering to foot the bill for my education was something I never thought about. The most important thing was that I was finally going to be free. When I look back now I see how thoughtless and arrogant I must have seemed to them. At the time it just meant I was escaping from home and particularly from the woman who drove me crazy with her constant criticisms.

My Mother’s funeral was surreal. There were lots of old friends and family there all looking sad and shaking their heads. Some I barely recognized. It had been over 15 years since I had seen many of them. Most of the women were crying softly into soggy, frayed tissues. Wiping their eyes and clearing their throats to give their condolences and a gentle touch on the shoulder. But I still wasn’t crying. The whole thing was too unreal.

The thing I remember most about that day is the moment I looked into the casket. I was appalled! Not only did she not look like herself with her wig placed too far forward and her face painted and waxy, but she had on a bright pink running suit! Good God. Who picked that out for her to wear? She, who always dressed perfectly for any occasion, was much too classy for this getup. I knew she, literally, would not have been caught dead in it. This wasn’t helping me get the gravity of the situation. It turned out my Dad had picked it because she looked pretty in pink. He somewhat defensively assured us kids that she loved this outfit. I had my doubts about both of those statements.


Now, seventeen years later, the pink suit stands out as odd, even funny, but no longer appalling. I know how much Dad loved his pretty, strong-willed Alberta. Dad was a hard working electrician, who dutifully earned the bread for our family, and satisfied the sophisticated tastes of his beautiful wife. When it came to taking care of those difficult funeral preparations, he had done the best he could without his daughters around to help.

Through the benefit of time and grief therapy, I have learned how to cry about the loss of my Mother. It has finally become apparent that she was not really trying to drive me into the ground. She was trying to give me the best chance to make something of myself. She didn’t want me to be like the other people around us who were stuck in their lives, chained to the familiar and afraid of anything and everything different. She wanted me to stand tall and proud and use my wits and talents to propel me out of our small hometown and into the bigger world. She had invested all she had to nurture me into a beautiful flower. I am just beginning to enjoy the fruits of her labor.

Thank you Mother.

 

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