memoir

Sneak Peek Into My Work in Progress

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HAZEL STREET – From Chapter One of the memoir The Cobbler’s Daughter

Click. I wake to the sound of the light switch. I sit up, look out the hallway windows and see it’s still dark.

“Come on, kids,” my father says, standing by our bed. His black hair is combed back from his face. “We’re going bowling.”

“What time is it?” my brother Tony asks, rubbing his eyes.

My father smiles. “What are you, a cop?”

Tony and I crawl out of bed. We pull on T-shirts and jeans. I don’t remember if we brush our teeth or wash our faces. I doubt we brush our hair.

We drive across town to Brandywine Bowl where a bunch of my father’s friends are already waiting. Inside the walls are cream-colored, the lanes are wood, and everything else is harvest gold. The carpet is a vast ocean of blue.

Before my father joins his friends, he hands Tony a wad of dollar bills and says “Go get something to eat.” We run to the snack shop. It’s like a dream: Wise potato chips, Slim Jims, City Chicken (Turkey on a Stick), French fries, Cokes. We even have enough left over for the pinball machine.

High on soda, Tony and I chase each other back and forth through the nearly empty building. If we bother my father, he throws us more money. We eat and play to our hearts’ delight. We stay until the Pepsi clock reads 1:00 a.m. My father hands back his shoes. Drops his ball in his bag and we leave.

I squeeze in between him and Tony in the front seat of his 1965 red Chrysler Corvair convertible. My hair blows in the wind—free and loose.

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A Torn Raincheck and Definition of Love

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Last night, after working a thirteen-hour day, I tucked myself in bed between my lab/newfie and lab/pitbull. My 22-year-old daughter had been kind enough to look after my nine-year-old son for the evening and had just gone home. “Vinny” was showered and in his pajamas, but was suffering from a meltdown because I wouldn’t let him bring his computer game to bed. It was past his bed time.

“You said we could read a bedtime story,” he yelled.

“But you were playing Minecraft,” I said. “And now it’s time for bed. How about a raincheck?”

“What’s a raincheck?”

“It means I’ll make good on the deal tomorrow night.”

He came in my room and gave me a big hug. “OK.”

I started playing Words with Friends, so happy to see the day come to an end. Then I heard Vinny crying from his bedroom.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I’m sad.”

“Why?”

“Because I really want a bedtime story tonight.”

I sighed and thought of my father. Not once during my childhood did I ever get a bedtime story. My brother and I were told “go to bed.” We tucked our selves in. My father blared music, threw parties, had women over. Our childhood was chaotic at best. But how can I listen to those sniffles and not be moved?

“Pick out a book!”

Vinny brings in The Five Chinese Brothers, one of my all-time favorites.

I am not happy. But I tear up the raincheck and read him the book. After we finish, he kisses me. He says, Thank You. He tells me Good Night. I am too tired to play Words with Friends. I tell myself this is Love.

My House is Haunted and I Have to Sell It

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Eight years ago, my husband Eric and I bought a house. He wanted the perfect place in the package, already put together. I wanted the old place with potential that we could create. Because he was too busy finishing college, I looked at homes with the Realtor. When I walked into the harvest gold living room with hard wood floors on 870 Orchard Ave, I attempted my best poker face. This would be our house. There was no garage, and it had an itty, bitty tiny kitchen, but we had off-street parking and a pantry in a great neighborhood.

Our son turned one in this house, and we had a huge party with family and friends. Eric and I painted the rooms the way we wanted, fixed up the basement room, put a compost barrel in the backyard, and even got TP’d one year. We took gorgeous photos of our three kids backdropped by trees, held Easter egg hunts and trick-or-treated in our neighborhood. I found a great job, and Eric started graduate school. We were well on our way to living what many call the American Dream.

Eric and I had been together nine years, and he had seen me through my bouts of depression stemming from childhood abuse: emotional, physical and sexual. Talk therapy was a huge part of my life. I believe Eric didn’t understand what I went through daily, but he listened and hugged me. After I had our son, my postpartum depression lasted more than a year, and I went on antidepressants, which helped enormously. A few years later, when I turned the big 4-0, I thought, I had never felt happier. But danger loomed on the horizon.

By our son’s fifth birthday, I confessed to Eric that I’d had a three-week affair with a coworker months earlier. It took me five months to confess. Some friends say it was a selfish choice to tell him, but I assure you, no marriage counselor would see me unless I did. I wanted to work things out, not split up. And I guessed the affair was a symptom of my past abuse rearing its ugliness into my wonderful present as it had done before. Never with Eric, but in other healthy relationships. Eric saw my explanation as an excuse for me to “have fun” with my coworker “Leif.”

Eric called Leif’s wife and told her about the affair. Then in a drunken rant, he told our daughters. And the next thing I knew, my life spiraled into complete pandemonium. A state of disarray that my therapists warned I was a master at creating. People who grow up in chaotic environments need to learn to like the quiet.

Within six months, I asked Eric to leave our house because he was drinking and being abusive. He filed for divorce on the grounds of infidelity. He destroyed me financially. I quit my job. I tried to seek comfort from Leif, but realized he was only interested in the forbidden wife. My elder daughter lost respect for me. My middle daughter, who was going through puberty, started cutting. And my son said he wished Mommy and Daddy would stop fighting.

My daughters are grown. I am living alone in this huge house, my son coming half time. Leif is a dirty word. I am so guilt ridden about the affair that I cannot have a normal conversation with Eric. He is still angry, and it’s been five years. Our divorce has been final for two and neither one of us can move on. Me, because no one holds a candle to my ex-husband, whom I am still in love with. And him, because he’s bitter. He has a new home, a job he likes. We live blocks from each other. Our son is nine and is well adjusted and tender-hearted.

Tonight, I am signing papers to put our house on the market. I cried for the first two weeks after I realized I had to sell it. I can’t look anywhere without seeing Eric and the kids. Eric playing X-box in the living room. The girls playing Rock Band. All of us having dinner in the sun room. Drinking coffee in the itty, bitty tiny little kitchen. Raking leaves in the back yard. Tearing down the toilet paper in the front yard.

Many of my friends ask, Why are you and Eric not back together? It all depends on how you look at it.

How Young Do Kids Learn Empathy?

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Salt dough

My daddy died, says the four-year-old girl—
squishing and smashing lilac salt dough
into sea stars and snowmen at the daycare
craft table. She licks her fingers. Don’t eat the dough,
the caregiver says. A boy in a blue and green
striped shirt stacks blocks. The girl eyes
other kids’ paintings of mommies, daddies,
kids and dogs. My daddy died, she repeats,
looking around. The boy turns his stringy-haired
head her way, eyes her from her wavy bangs
to her purple fingers. I don’t have a dad, he offers.
Never met him. The caregiver tilts her head,
half-smiles. The boy rests the last block on the stack,
watches the tower weave before it falls to the table
with a boom and clack. He runs to the boy’s room.

The girl lifts a rounded mound of salt dough,
makes sure no one is watching, takes a bite.

Corn is a four letter word.

~ TheCobblersDaughter ~ 1 Comment

Three years ago, I almost lost my son Vinny to his severe food allergy to tree nuts. He secretly ate a piece of toffee and lied about it. While his father and I sat in the E/R crying and watching Vinny sleep off his Benadryl/Epi-pen-induced coma, the doctor came out and said, “That boy needs to be under the care of an allergist.” Within the week, Vinny had an appointment.

We already knew Vinny was allergic to peanuts and tree nuts from an earlier blood test. But now we were requesting a food panel. They would only test for a couple foods, because of his potential for an anaphylaxic reaction. I agreed to be tested, too, to offer moral support. Turned out Vinny and I are both allergic to cats, dust, dust mites, and all the grasses, weeds, and trees that grow in Idaho. He’s also allergic to dairy and corn. I’m allergic to chicken, barley, malt, coconut, and corn.

At the time of the allergy test, I wore a size 10. I was still drinking beer, eating bread, fried foods, including chicken, you name it. I was running three miles a day several times a week and lifting weights. I looked pretty good and weighed about 160 for my five-foot-six frame. The allergist recommended a full elimination diet.

Later, I discovered that if I ate any type of food with corn in it, i.e., restaurant french fries (deep fried in vegetable oil that had corn oil) or enchiladas with corn starch, Heinz ketchup, gravy, within two days, tiny blisters formed on my fingers that opened up into full-blown eczema. And since I’ve taken corn out of my diet, I’m incredibly sensitive to its effects.

Corn is everywhere: dextrose, fructose, modified food starch, Xanthan gum, vegetable oil. I can’t eat at any fast food restaurants or fried foods at sit down places.imin

Vinny’s ten. He eats popcorn, which makes his skin itchy. He says he doesn’t care. The allergy will become worse with age. He cannot eat dairy. It gives him horrible flatulence and the runs. And as one teacher described his behavior after he dairy: he wilts like a flower.

The benefits of my food allergies are that I have been turned on to clean eating, and my body has shrunk four pants sizes. I’ve lost 30 pounds because of healthy eating! I have to watch every bite I put into my mouth, not because I want to lose weight, but because these foods I’m allergic to quite literally poison my system. The effects of chicken on me aren’t even worth discussion. Once you stop eating poison, your body loses inflammation. It’s that simple.

When I go to barbecues, restaurants and gatherings with friends, some say, “Wow. I’m lucky. I’m not allergic to anything.” I’m like, “Really? Have you ever had a food panel done? How do you know?” Plus, I didn’t ask for this. A little sensitivity goes a long way, folks.

This Scary, Evil Dog of Mine is Still Just a Puppy

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About three years ago, I started researching good family dogs. Again and again, labs showed as the number one choice. They didn’t howl, they could be trained easily, and if you worked eight hours a day (as I did) they could be crate trained. At the time, my son was six, and it was very important to me to choose a dog that would not harm my child.

gussypuppyI’d never owned a dog before. My father and brother are allergic to almost every animal you can name, so our family pets were a rooster named Sam (another blog post, perhaps) and a few rabbits. After I finished researching and decided on a lab, I visited our local pound. As luck would have it, they had two black lab/Newfie pups, 13 weeks old, and as cute as could be. I chose the feisty one who bit my finger.

Gus is an alpha male and stubborn. He’s been to obedience class. He’s learned sit, shake, lie down, stay, and leave it. He still pulls when I walk him. He barks when he meets other dogs, because he’s a big chicken and tries to establish dominance. He nips the dog’s ears and has been nipped himself. When people see all 5’4″ and 97 pounds of him, they freak out. I have been screamed at more than once by terrified folks at the dog park, dog swim, and off-leash parks. One man said Gus bit his son’s leg. It was a pencil-tip nip with no blood, and it was after the boy and the man screamed because Gus came running over to them.

Alas, as Gus moves into his third year, he still acts like a puppy. I’ve spent at least 500 dollars on gimmicks to make him behave. And I research constantly (which is what I wish everyone would do). When I say, “Walk,” Gus leaps like Rudolph the Red-nosed reindeer or humps our other dog Ginger. I’ve been acting more assertive with him lately, taking him on more walks–trying to burn out his puppy-like aggression. He is not a mean dog. I love Gus, and people who know him think he’s wonderful. He’s a lab and a newfie, for Pete’s sake. I chose him for his attitude. Maybe in my next life, I’ll choose a slug.

Horrific sibling games–what did you invent?

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My stepmother used clear plastic runners to protect the carpets in our house. My older brother Tony invented a game called “Torture,” employing said runners.

In order to make the runners stay on the carpet, the underside was affixed with sharp points. These had another purpose. After my father and stepmother left for the evening, Tony pulled up the runner and flipped it upside down. He cradled my little brother Jack and swung him back and forth over the runner. Tony chanted, “torture. . . torture.” Jack giggled with delight. The older kids version of Torture involved Tony and me, wrestling to see who could knock whom to the “mat” first.

Tony also invented the Food Contest. The first sucker, usually me, had to close her eyes and plug her nose and guess which food Tony shoved in her mouth. A giant hot pepper. Him: a salt-coated cucumber slice. Me: a spoonful of baking soda. Him: peanut butter on popcorn. Me: an old match. And we’re done.

The games always ended once the ‘rents came home. I love that Tony gave the games a name. He was structured that way. Maybe it’s because our real mother was born in Germany, right after WWII. I wonder what games she played with her brother. I’ll have to ask.

The Cobbler’s Daughter-a Memoir in the Making

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For more than a decade, I have been writing my childhood memoir, The Cobbler’s Daughter. Keep in mind, a memoir is a “slice of time” from an author’s life, i.e., this is my first twenty years. And since I hope to live to at least 100, I have four more books in the recesses of my brain. Ha!

But seriously, sometimes you hear a person say, “You’re 45? You’re too young to write a memoir.” Not really. It depends on how much has happened in your life—and how much time you have had to reflect. I know a writer who could have written one at age 30. And you should, Alisha.

Why do I think anyone cares about my life story? Because I have cared so deeply about the lives of others: Autobiography of a Face. This Boy’s Life. The Glass Castle. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Hungry for the World. Mommie Dearest. To name a few.

Every one of these memoirs touched me in a profound way, and I will be channeling these authors as I write. I will also channel the hearts and minds of my beloved father and brother, who have gone before me, and who played such significant roles in my life before I turned twenty.