Terrible Mother

Road Trip, Part II

[This is the end of the first chapter, the rest of the "teaser". Originally, I was going to post the whole thing, but it was pointed out to me by many friends that this will making publishing problematic. So, if you want to read more you gotta wait for the book! You can read the first part of this chapter here.]

One of the biggest problems I had committed was not considering the relationship between the number of things I purchased and the space inside my car. This meant that Day 1, the day we were to leave, started late because I had to pack, and repack, the car. The back of my-just- purchased-two-weeks-earlier Volvo station wagon was packed full with cooking supplies and backpacks and a cooler and food. I had to squish our extra shoes between the back windows and the cook stove, and I had double bagged the stove fuel and managed to squeeze it in near the cutlery. That left a small space—about two feet by three feet—for me to look see out the back window. The roof cargo box held our tent, sleeping bags, pillows, and air mattress. I had barely been able to shut it, and it took more than two hours to pack everything because it all had to be fitted together, like the pieces of a complicated Lego set.

By the time we got on the road, it was nearly 11:00 am, and we had to make it to Hat Rock State Park, Oregon by nightfall, some 300 miles away. I had planned for us to leave much earlier, say 8:00 or, at the latest, 9:00. In that scenario, we would have stopped for lunch at a rest stop along the way, maybe near Multnomah Falls. I’d make sandwiches out of the cooler, and we’d eat in a park.

Instead, we got lunch from a Taco Bell drive-thru in Brooks, just off I-5. Only part of the reason was our tardiness. The other was that I realized I couldn’t get to the cooler without unearthing half of the stuff we’d brought along, and this meant that lunch would turn into an hour stop as I would have to unpack, and then re-pack, the car. Driving along I-5 I tried to think of a way to re-engineer the packing so that I could easily get to the cooler.

And then I wondered why the hell I had to “engineer” packing the car in the first place. This does not bode well, I thought.

But we managed to still stop for a bit at Multnomah Falls and walk around. The kids posed for photos in front of the cascading water, and we walked around the gift shop. We’d been there before, but it felt good, sticking to the plan even in some small way.

We pulled into the Hat Rock Campgrounds just before nightfall. The campground was the kind of place we would find throughout the trip: a park-like setting with numerous gravel driveways, filled with RVs of various sizes and escalating luxury. And in one corner, would be a small area devoted to tenters, like us. At Hat Rock Campgrounds, there were 72 RV spaces. And 4 tent spaces. We had one of the latter, campsite #3.

The kids ran to the campsite first, excited about sleeping outside. I followed them in the car. I drove down a gravel drive behind Chloe, the slowest runner of the family, who was yelling at the other two to wait. I could hear the excitement in her voice, the way it lifted in happiness.

And then I saw our camp site. It was surrounded by trees, which was what I always envisioned when I thought of camping. However, they weren’t pine, or even something that looked remotely wild. Instead, they were the kind of tall, shrub-like trees people in suburbs use to line their fences. Each site was defined by these shrubs, like miniature suburban plots of land. In one corner was a water spigot, a fire pit and a wooden picnic table. I looked at the other sites. They were identical. I glanced across the street and saw the restrooms, the showers, and the coin-operated laundry. At that moment, the light in the Pepsi vending machine outside the laundry room ticked on.

I felt a little crestfallen. On one hand, the idea of having to rough it at a real campground—one with wild animals and latrine-style bathrooms—didn’t appeal to me in any immediate sense. I didn’t like the idea of having to wash my hair in the camping sink, for example. On the other hand, what was the use of buying and bringing all of that “roughing it” gear if we were going to be spending our nights at places that advertised pools and complete RV hook ups? And how hard could it be, really? No one will respect me if we keep staying at places like this, I thought. There’s nothing really hard about it.

But then we had to set up the tent. We had done it once before, in our front yard. That time, it took a few tries to get it right, but I hadn’t put on the rain fly, or actually gone inside the tent.

I opened the cargo box, pulled the tent out, and set it on the picnic table. The tent came with a giant bag, and one of the selling points was that the tent and all of its paraphernalia, actually fit. I set everything out, carefully accounting for the tent stakes, the tent, the rain fly. I called the kids over, and said, “We’re going to set the tent up over there, in that clear area.”

“Why?” Ivan said.

“Because it’s flatter there,” I said.

“But what if we put it by the camp fire? Then we’d be warm.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. She was 11 with a sharp mind and, increasingly, a sharp tongue. “Because the tent will catch on fire. Duh.”

“But it would be cozy to be close to the fire,” said Ivan.

“Guys…” I said.

“Maybe we can find out the maximum temperature the tent can take and then measure the right amount of feet, and then we can move the tent just right,” Ivan said. Ivan was autistic, and mildly so. He was much worse as a toddler, didn’t talk until he was 4, didn’t point, and banged his head against every hard object in the house. But now he seemed more like an Asperger’s kid, or like an alien sent to earth with the sole mission of trying to blend in with humans to study them. In Ivan’s mind, the ideal solution to where to place the tent was really about calculating potential temperatures. Which Chloe found insane. And, at least this time, so did I.

“We’re putting the tent on the flatter surface, away from the fire pit,” I said.

Giselle, the youngest, nodded. She was a gregarious kid, and used to her two older siblings’ arguments. She was also a terrific opportunist, and, if the argument continued, would have chosen the side that was best for her.

We commenced setting up the tent. I laid it out carefully, and gave each kid a pole. North Face tents have poles that are made of aluminum, and that are attached by internal ropes. This means that they are easy to put together—you grab one set, and fit each segment into the next. The kids did theirs, and I did mine, and then we carefully threaded the poles through the sleeves.

The first time we tried to get the tent up, it was that we put the wrong poles into the wrong sleeves, which made the tent look like something from a Dr. Seuss book. The second time, one of the pole segments came undone and an entire side collapsed. The third was probably just our frustration manifested in a collapsing tent.

The entire time, the guy next to us, in site #2, watched us with a smirk on his face. I tried to ignore him, which would have been easier had we been able to set up the tent on the first four tries.

The fifth attempt did it. There was a trick to it, of course. We had to each have one side of a pole and then walk together, simultaneously, and then put the poles into the tent’s grommets. It never again took us this many tries to set up the tent, but it also never became exactly easy.

By now, night had fallen, and I still had to cook dinner. It was late, 9:00 already, and the kids were hungry. They wandered the campground while I started the stove, and pulled out the cooler. I dug the ground beef out of the ice, and then found the Garden Burgers for Chloe, the vegetarian. The box was soggy, and I had to throw it away. I made hamburgers, laid a bag of chips on the table, and rinsed strawberries in the spigot. I got the camp stove lit easily, but the pan took a long time to heat up, even with the flame turned high and licking the sides of the pan.

As I set the table, someone said, “Hey, you guys camping here for a few days?” I turned. It was our camp neighbor, the guy with the smirk. He was standing in a space between two shrub trees.

“No,” I said. “Just tonight.”

“That’s a lot of work for one night’s camping,” he said. It was, I realized. In the dark, I couldn’t see his face, but he didn’t sound like he was smirking. I walked over to the shrubs. “Yeah,” I said. “I didn’t really think about that first.”

“You guys headed off a long ways?” he asked.

“Yeah. We’re driving around the country.”

“How far you goin’?”

“East Coast,” I said. “And then down to Florida. And then across the South, through Texas, and then up through California and back home.”

He whistled low. “How long are you planning on taking?”

“Seven weeks.” Seven weeks seemed, at this moment, a very long time.

“How many days you’ve been on the road?”

I didn’t want to answer because I knew I seemed like a rookie, all five attempts at getting the tent up, and the long time it took to get dinner ready. “Today’s the first night,” I said.

“Tent will get easier,” he said. “I’d worry if this was your third or fourth night, but the first few times, it’s always hard.”

“Really?” I said. I felt relief run through my body, a tingling sensation through my hands and feet. 

He nodded.  “You’ll get used to it pretty quick. Me, I’ve been here for a month already.”

“A month?” This seemed odd, that someone would camp for a month at a place like this.

“I’m working over in Hermiston, down the road about ten, twelve miles. Construction. But the hotels are too expensive, and this is cheaper. Makes it worth it to take the job.”

“How long is the job?” I asked.

“’Nother month or so.”

I could not decide how to feel about this, or what to say. He seemed happy with the arrangement, the camping. He had a big truck, and a nice tent and it made sense, camping for a few months instead of staying in a hotel. Still, I imagined it was not easy.

“Hey, good luck on your trip,” he said.

I thanked him, and wished him good night. After dinner, the kids and I climbed into the tent, Ivan curling next to me on the air mattress and we talked, all excitement and tired happiness.

Chloe asked, “Does Idaho look like Oregon?”

“A little,” I said. I had been there before, but none of the kids had. “The western side has kind of dense forests and it’s really pretty. We’re going to drive over a lake on our way.” We were driving through eastern Washington, then through Idaho, and to Montana on Day 2.

“What are we going to do in Montana?” Ivan asked.

“See Keetje,” I said. “And hang out for a few days.” Keetje was my closest friend, a poet I had gone to graduate school with. She lived in a cute bungalow in Missoula. The kids drifted off, and I was close to, listening to the sounds of the other campers around us, when I heard the construction guy next to us talking in a low voice. “Yeah, it was a hard day,” he was saying, and I could tell he was talking into a phone. “But it was good. How about you?” Then a long pause, and I imagined him, sitting at his picnic table, listening in the night for a voice beamed across the Pacific Northwest, down through some tower, and into his phone. “I miss you,” he said, quietly. Then, “I love you, too.” I felt a pang of loneliness, quick and brutal, because I knew there was no one I could call who would tell me he missed me or that he loved me, no boyfriend or lover somewhere, wishing I was back home in bed next to him. No real reason to be home.

*tm

Road Trip, Part I

[In the next few months, I will be posting sections of my road trip memoir, which is in progress, on this blog. They will go up every Wednesday and I'll try to keep them between 2,000 and 3,000 words. Once it's all up--all 80-some odd pages--I'll keep it posted in its entirety for 2 weeks. Then it will all come back down, and you won't be able to read it again until its in print form. So, for now, enjoy).

It was somewhere between Cody and Buffalo, when I finally pulled the car over and cried.  I hadn’t cried on the trip yet, though I’d felt the urge more than once.  We were on Highway 14, two lanes that run east and west through Wyoming.  It was still early in the day, a little after lunch time, and the kids were squabbling when I pulled over.  They were tired of being crammed into the back seat of the Volvo during the day, and then crammed into the tent at night.  Chloe was yelling about Ivan crossing into her seat, and Giselle was whining about a book she couldn’t find, and all I wanted was to be home.  Home.  It wasn’t the squabbling that completely did me in.  It was the fact that we were just six days into the trip, and already everything seemed too hard, too difficult, and my mistakes obvious and famateur. 

For three years I had told everyone I knew, sometimes people I had just met, that I wanted to “someday take the kids around the US—all of it.”  When they’d raise their eyebrows and ask how long I expected the journey to take, I’d say “A month at least, maybe two.”   My plan was that we could do it on the cheap.  We would make our way across the plains, and then cut into the Great Lakes states, before dipping down into Chicago.  We’d hit Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York.  Then we’d drive south along the eastern border, until we made Florida.  Then we’d veer west again, stopping in Louisiana and Texas and Arizona and New Mexico.  We'd camp, mostly, though in the bigger cities we'd find a hotel.  We’d visit family in Southern California, then head back home to Oregon.  Along the way, I was sure we would see every major landmark and attraction, and nothing was too kitschy or minute to be included on the list.  So I planned that we’d stop at the Liberty Bell, and the World Trade Center site, as well as to see the largest ball of twine, and the giant corn maze.  I wanted the kids to eat a real Chicago hot dog, and to see the Atlantic Ocean.  We’d take photos and talk to people.

And then, I told people, I’d write this amazing book about the experience.  When I described the trip, and the book, the word I used most was “amazing.”  “It would be an amazing adventure!” I’d say.  And “The book will be an amazing story!”  I didn’t say things like “It will be amazingly hard,” or “It’s amazing that I think I can easily do this with three kids on my own,” though both of those would have been more truthful, and more accurate, uses of the word “amazing.”  But now, less than a week in, I could feel the pressure of all of those expectations, and the pressures of traveling and the kids, weighing down on me. 

I had always considered money to be the first, and biggest, obstacle because it was always an obstacle in my life.  I was a single mother of three kids, Chloe, 11, Ivan who was 9, and Giselle, 7.  Their dad paid his child support on time, but it was meager, and I worked as an adjunct writing instructor at a local university.  I wrote freelance stuff on the side.  Life was always paycheck to paycheck, and I was forever cobbling together ways to make life better for the kids—scholarships for swim team and chess club and soccer.  For my whole life, money had always seemed the biggest barrier to an easier, better life, and so the trip had remained a thing I could not afford, a possibility I only considered with the daydream of “I get a good job,” or “I win the lottery,” or “I sell a book.”

Then, in the spring of 2009, my mother offered to lend me $7,000 for the trip, “an investment in your writing career,” she called it.  She also gave me $5,000 to buy a new(er) car, since my 1991 Subaru wagon with 220,000 miles was never going to last on such a trip.  I pooled my resources—a tax return, some writing money—and started planning.  I poured over my US atlas.  I penciled lines along highways and scenic routes I wanted to drive, circled places I wanted to go.  I typed, and revised, a 7-week itinerary.  And then I started buying things. 

I bought a North Face 3-season tent (even though we’d be traveling in exactly one season), sleeping bags, and an air mattress. I bought battery-powered fans, and mosquito candles and lightweight cutlery.  I bought water sandals and hiking shoes for each of us.  I bought a portable camping sink.  I bought a tarp and flashlights and a lantern and a cook stove.  I bought marshmallow skewers.  I even bought books on how to camp and camping cookbooks and traveling activity kits for the kids. 

It wasn’t as though I had thought I could buy my way into a successful and easy trip.  Instead, it was as though each item became suddenly important the moment I saw it.  Of course, I would think upon laying eyes on the camping sink, of course we need this.  I had never camped longer than a handful of days at a time before.  I had never even cooked on a camp stove.  I’d never set up a tent by myself, either.  I didn’t want to discover, in Ottumwa, Iowa, that what we really needed was a sink to wash our faces.  At that time, with my fuzzy and theoretical understanding of the trip, the lack-of-sink-failure seemed like the worst that could happen. 

My mother and several friends had bigger worries about us traveling, which seemed to cover two general categories:  the Big City Thug, and the Creepy Deliverance Guy.  My mom insisted that I buy pepper spray or mace, or, if I could get my hands on one, a taser.  My friend Brad agreed, and added that an air horn would be a perfect addition.  I could use it to both scare away either Big City Thug or Creepy Deliverance Guy and signal for help.  I didn’t worry too much about getting mugged or attacked, but the more I thought about the unknown—the streets of Brooklyn, or the back roads of Georgia—the more worried I became and the more likely it seemed we’d encounter one or both versions of this potential “bad guy.”  So I bought both pepper spray and an air horn.  I stored them, unopened, under the front passenger seat of the Volvo.  Maybe I thought I’d be able to, when the carjacker held a gun to my head, ask him to wait a moment while I dug out my weapons. 

I bought all of these things in part because I thought this was the way to plan for a long trip, an immense excursion.  Hadn’t explorers always planned for multiple scenarios?  Didn’t they bring equipment like extra batteries, or weapons, or a portable sink?

But the biggest obstacle wasn’t money or a lack of equipment.  It was that I didn’t understand the very nature of a long road trip, especially one with kids.  I had planned for us to drive hundreds of miles a day, every day.  I planned for us to break and set up camp every day, too.  And cook on the cook stove.  And somehow, still see America.

 It’s not an accident I cried on the side of the road in Wyoming, either.  Wyoming is austerely beautiful, the kind of place where you can look out from the sanctity of your car into western wilderness the way Americans have always imagined it to be—isolated and untamed and lonesome.  We’d pass through miles and miles where the only sign of civilization was the macadam under us, and our own car, a speck amidst the looming buttes and scrub brush and rocky crags.  No people.  No houses.  Not even a telephone wire.  Once, we came into a high meadow, all tall grass bisected by highway.  Sheep were crossing the road, guided by a cowboy on horseback.  I slowed the car while we waited for the sheep to cross.  We watched in silence as the cowboy called to the sheep—“Hi!” and “Hee” and “Comon!”—and got them safely across the road.  I watched how he would take off his cowboy hat and mop the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.  I felt like a trespasser, and I felt awed and desperately sad, as though I were witnessing the last real cowboy in America.  

Hours later, when we’d come down the pass and entered the Wyoming prairie, all I could think about was my incredible hubris—my conviction in my own abilities—and that cowboy in the high meadow.  I could already see the money running through my fingers like water, and I felt like a rookie most of the time, trying to get from Point A to Point B and trying to do so with three kids.  It seemed to me that I was the worst kind of American—the ugly American with the big plans, and the big talk, and the impossible dreams—while that cowboy was the best kind—quiet and unassuming and tough in a way I wasn’t. 

So, on day six, somewhere between Cody and Buffalo, I pulled the car over by a historical marker, got out of the car, sat on the hood, and cried.  I had not understood what the real obstacles in planning and taking the trip were.  While the kids were in the car, Ivan still stubbornly trying to enact his version of Manifest Destiny over seat space, I pulled out my cell phone and called my friend Kari.  The first thing I said when she answered was, “I don’t think I can do this.”  I said this between sobs, because it was embarrassing to admit that I was already suffering when we hadn’t been on the road a week.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “It’s just everything.  I packed too much stuff and Chloe threw up and we missed part of Yellowstone, and then I planned this insane driving schedule, and already I feel like I’m running out of money, and the kids keep fighting….”  I trailed off. 

Kari said, “How did you think it would was going to be?”

“I don’t know!  I thought it would be easier!”

Kari was quiet for a moment and then she said, “Look, people who take long trips are ruined by sticking to some pre-conceived plan.  Re-schedule things.  Go easy on yourself.  You have to get used to this.” 

“But I’ve already paid for camp sites and places all over!”

“Then cancel them.  You’ll lose the money, but you’re going to make yourself insane by sticking to the schedule.  Stop forcing this trip to be what you want it to be.  Let it be what it is.”

Kari’s the friend I called when I needed sarcasm and wry commentary, or a steady voice to tell me everything would be okay, even when it was terrible.  So I took this momentary Zen-like advice seriously.  I stopped crying.  Then I called most of the campsites and hotels we’d had reservations with, and canceled them.  I got back into the car, quieted the kids, and started driving east again, thinking about the previous six days, and I what I could do now to make this trip work. 

 

It was somewhere between Cody and Buffalo, when I finally pulled the car over and cried.  I hadn’t cried on the trip yet, though I’d felt the urge more than once.  We were on Highway 14, two lanes that run east and west through Wyoming.  It was still early in the day, a little after lunch time, and the kids were squabbling when I pulled over.  They were tired of being crammed into the back seat of the Volvo during the day, and then crammed into the tent at night.  Chloe was yelling about Ivan crossing into her seat, and Giselle was whining about a book she couldn’t find, and all I wanted was to be home.  Home.  It wasn’t the squabbling that completely did me in.  It was the fact that we were just six days into the trip, and already everything seemed too hard, too difficult, and my mistakes obvious and foreshadowing. 

 

For three years I had told everyone I knew, sometimes people I had just met, that I wanted to “someday take the kids around the US—all of it.”  When they’d raise their eyebrows and ask how long I expected the journey to take, I’d say “A month at least, maybe two.”   My plan was that we could do it on the cheap.  We would as we made our way across the plains, then cut into the Great Lakes states, then dip down into Chicago.  We’d hit Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York.  Then we’d drive south along the eastern border, until we made Florida.  Then we’d veer west again, stopping in Louisiana and Texas and Arizona and New Mexico.  We’d visit family in Southern California, then head back home to Oregon.  Along the way, I was sure we would see every major landmark and attraction, and nothing was too kitschy or minute to be included on the list.  So I planned that we’d stop at the Liberty Bell, and the World Trade Center site, as well as to see the largest ball of twine, and the giant corn maze.  I wanted the kids to eat a real Chicago hot dog, and to see the Atlantic Ocean.  We’d take photos and talk to people.

 

And then, I told people, I’d write this amazing book about the experience.  When I described the trip, and the book, the word I used most was “amazing.”  “It would be an amazing adventure!” I’d say.  And “The book will be an amazing story!”  I didn’t say things like “It will be amazingly hard,” or “It’s amazing that I think I can easily do this with three kids on my own,” though both of those would have been more truthful, and more accurate, uses of the word “amazing.”  But now, less than a week in, I could feel the pressure of all of those expectations, and the pressures of traveling and the kids, weighing down on me. 

 

I had always considered money to be the first, and biggest, obstacle because it was always an obstacle in my life.  I was a single mother of three kids, Chloe, 11, Ivan who was 9, and Giselle, 7.  Their dad paid his child support on time, but it was meager, and I worked as an adjunct writing instructor at a local university.  I wrote freelance stuff on the side.  Life was always paycheck to paycheck, and I was forever cobbling together ways to make life better for the kids—scholarships for swim team and chess club and soccer.  For my whole life, money had always seemed the biggest barrier to an easier, better life, and so the trip had remained a thing I could not afford, a possibility I only considered with the daydream of “I get a good job,” or “I win the lottery,” or “I sell a book.”

 

Then, in the spring of 2009, my mother offered to lend me $7,000 for the trip, “an investment in your writing career,” she called it.  She also gave me $5,000 to buy a new(er) car, since my 1991 Subaru wagon with 220,000 miles was never going to last on such a trip.  I pooled my resources—a tax return, some writing money—and started planning.  I poured over my US atlas.  I penciled lines along highways and scenic routes I wanted to drive, circled places I wanted to go.  I typed, and revised, a 7-week itinerary.  And then I started buying things. 

 

I bought a North Face 3-season tent (even though we’d be traveling in exactly one season), sleeping bags, and an air mattress. I bought battery-powered fans, and mosquito candles and lightweight cutlery.  I bought water sandals and hiking shoes for each of us.  I bought a portable camping sink.  I bought a tarp and flashlights and a lantern and a cook stove.  I bought marshmallow skewers.  I even bought books on how to camp and camping cookbooks and traveling activity kits for the kids. 

 

It wasn’t as though I had thought I could buy my way into a successful and easy trip.  Instead, it was as though each item became suddenly important the moment I saw it.  Of course, I would think upon laying eyes on the camping sink, of course we need this.  I had never camped longer than a handful of days at a time before.  I had never even cooked on a camp stove.  I’d never set up a tent by myself, either.  I didn’t want to discover, in Ottumwa, Iowa, that what we really needed was a sink to wash our faces.  At that time, with my fuzzy and theoretical understanding of the trip, the lack-of-sink-failure seemed like the worst that could happen. 

 

My mother and several friends had bigger worries about us traveling, which seemed to cover two general categories:  the Big City Thug, and the Creepy Deliverance Guy.  My mom insisted that I buy pepper spray or mace, or, if I could get my hands on one, a taser.  My friend Brad agreed, and added that an air horn would be a perfect addition.  I could use it to both scare away either Big City Thug or Creepy Deliverance Guy and signal for help.  I didn’t worry too much about getting mugged or attacked, but the more I thought about the unknown—the streets of Brooklyn, or the back roads of Georgia—the more worried I became and the more likely it seemed we’d encounter one or both versions of this potential “bad guy.”  So I bought both pepper spray and an air horn.  I stored them, unopened, under the front passenger seat of the Volvo.  Maybe I thought I’d be able to, when the carjacker held a gun to my head, ask him to wait a moment while I dug out my weapons. 

 

I bought all of these things in part because I thought this was the way to plan for a long trip, an immense excursion.  Hadn’t explorers always planned for multiple scenarios?  Didn’t they bring equipment like extra batteries, or weapons, or a portable sink?

 

But the biggest obstacle wasn’t money or a lack of equipment.  It was that I didn’t understand the very nature of a long road trip, especially one with kids.  I had planned for us to drive hundreds of miles a day, every day.  I planned for us to break and set up camp every day, too.  And cook on the cook stove.  And somehow, still see America.

 

It’s not accident I cried on the side of the road in Wyoming, either.  Wyoming is austerely beautiful, the kind of place where you can look out from the sanctity of your car into western wilderness the way Americans have always imagined it to be—isolated and untamed and lonesome.  We’d pass through miles and miles where the only sign of civilization was the macadam under us, and our own car, a speck amidst the looming buttes and scrub brush and rocky crags.  No people.  No houses.  Not even a telephone wire.  Once, we came into a high meadow, all tall grass bisected by highway.  Sheep were crossing the road, guided by a cowboy on horseback.  I slowed the car while we waited for the sheep to cross.  We watched in silence as the cowboy called to the sheep—“Hi!” and “Hee” and “Comon!”—and got them safely across the road.  I watched how he would take off his cowboy hat and mop the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.  I felt like a trespasser, and I felt awed and desperately sad, as though I were witnessing the last real cowboy in America.  

 

Hours later, when we’d come down the pass and entered the Wyoming prairie, all I could think about was my incredible hubris—my conviction in my own abilities—and that cowboy in the high meadow.  I could already see the money running through my fingers like water, and I felt like a rookie most of the time, trying to get from Point A to Point B and trying to do so with three kids.  It seemed to me that I was the worst kind of American—the ugly American with the big plans, and the big talk, and the impossible dreams—while that cowboy was the best kind—quiet and unassuming and tough in a way I wasn’t. 

 

So, on day six, somewhere between Cody and Buffalo, I pulled the car over by a historical marker, got out of the car, sat on the hood, and cried.  I had not understood what the real obstacles in planning and taking the trip were.  While the kids were in the car, Ivan still stubbornly trying to enact his version of Manifest Destiny over seat space, I pulled out my cell phone and called my friend Kari.  The first thing I said when she answered was, “I don’t think I can do this.”  I said this between sobs, because it was embarrassing to admit that I was already suffering when we hadn’t been on the road a week.

 

“What happened?”

 

“I don’t know,” I said.  “It’s just everything.  I packed too much stuff and Chloe threw up and we missed part of Yellowstone, and then I planned this insane driving schedule, and already I feel like I’m running out of money, and the kids keep fighting….”  I trailed off. 

 

Kari said, “How did you think it would was going to be?”

 

“I don’t know!  I thought it would be easier!”

Kari was quiet for a moment and then she said, “Look, people who take long trips are ruined by sticking to some pre-conceived plan.  Re-schedule things.  Go easy on yourself.  You have to get used to this.”  

 

“But I’ve already paid for camp sites and places all over!”

 

“Then cancel them.  You’ll lose the money, but you’re going to make yourself insane by sticking to the schedule.  Stop forcing this trip to be what you want it to be.  Let it be what it is.”

 

Kari’s the friend I called when I needed sarcasm and wry commentary, or a steady voice to tell me everything would be okay, even when it was terrible.  So I took this momentary Zen-like advice seriously.  I stopped crying.  Then I called most of the campsites and hotels we’d had reservations with, and canceled them.  I got back into the car, quieted the kids, and started driving east again, thinking about the previous six days, and I what I could do now to make this trip work. 

 

Oregon Spring*

Winter in Eugene is not an easy season, but everyone knows this. Even non-natives know this, people in the Midwest even, or on the East Coast. The Pacific Northwest is known for its gray winters, its long spell of rain and deep-set clouds, and the accompanying depression. We Oregonians consider ourselves rugged for making it through the season, though we don’t say it much. It’s more in the way we nod about the rain, or the way we walk in the spring sunshine when it first appears in late February. We’ll peel off our sweaters and boots, and walk, pale skin exposed and arms slightly away from our sides, as if to soak it all in, and nod at each other, make conversation about the blue sky. I like spring.

Part of the reason I like spring is because it signals the end of winter, the end of the hard, desperate season (it always feels this way economically, too, what with the strain of the holidays). This year, though, it feels particularly renewing, somehow different than springs before it.

And this, strangely enough, is because I’ve lost friends.

By “lost,” I don’t mean that they died, or that tragedy befell them. They are still walking around Eugene, enjoying their lives, but I’ve severed our connection.

For a long time I was someone who had a hard time establishing boundaries with people. Sometimes I could, when the stakes were high enough, though it usually took me getting angry to do so. Other times, when I was able to use my writing ability, I could do it easily. In the written world, my sense of self is so much stronger than in the real world, where it fades into others’ desires and wishes and motivations. It still does at times; I still have to work at it.

But I’m a lot better than I was. I was the kind of person who agreed to any favor any friend, or acquaintance, asked of me. A perfect example is when a neighbor used my washer and dryer without asking several times, and then told me about it, with an air of entitlement. And I smiled, and agreed to let her keep using it, despite the fact that not asking signaled a serious break with the kind of normal boundary I wanted to maintain. In years past, I dated men I didn’t even like because I felt compelled to be deferential, kind, polite (one of these is known amongst everyone I know as “Tony Man-Pusher**). And because I was raised to think, particularly in this situation, that any man who might want you, for any reason, was a good thing, inherently positive, subscribed self-worth.

In my family, too, the women are uncommonly kind and helpful and generous, the kind of people who volunteer at places, are good mothers, are often teachers, or drug counselors, jobs that require dedication beyond the paycheck. My grandmother was like this, while at the same time being distant, a bit cold. For years, I didn’t understand how she could, on one hand, be so generous, while on the other being removed from life, unwilling to share intimacies. I understand it now. It cost her something to answer so many requests, to have so few of her own desires realized.

Not only was I the kind of person who agreed to any favor, I allowed people to manipulate my sense of reality—down to my definition of self. The Man was an expert at this. When we were married, he’d constantly say things like, “You know, you’re really not that nurturing. You’re not really a great mother.” Then he’d pause. “But I love you anyway.”

It was a manipulation beautiful in its complexity. On the one hand, he was creating a characterization that showed me as terribly flawed—someone no one else could possibly love or care for—while then telling me he loved me in spite those flaws. I believed, wholeheartedly—and even while I was nursing babies and cooking meals and playing in the park and managing a life with three small children—that I was not a good mother, not really. Nor was I pretty, and though I was smart, I was too bossy. And I was lucky to have someone who “let” me be “in charge.”

I have photos of family members I have never met, the kind of grainy yellow-brown photos people would dress up for, and pose in front of the house in. I’ve looked at them before, studying the hairstyles or the clothes. But lately, I find myself peering at the expressions of the women, trying to decipher them. I look at one frequently—my great-great-great aunt Zola. In the photo, she stands behind her a passel of children. Her husband’s hand is on one of her shoulders, in a gesture that is both loving and proprietary. When I look closely, I can see, beneath the solemn turn of mouth, the thin layer of powder, what must have been a thin life of packing away every want and desire, like wrapping good china in paper and placing it carefully in a box for some later use.

I lost one of my closest friends this past winter. He and I had been friends for years, and were the kind of friends who made plans together, of where we would perhaps live, or how we would chart our exodus from Eugene. We often saw each other on holidays. We talked nearly every night, knew the particulars of each other’s family. But there was always the sense in him, a kind of way he’d talk about me to others, or even to me, that I was a hard case, someone who took a lot. Took a lot of energy, and time. Or needed too much. Or had too many problems. Single parent. Three kids. Skating on the edge of poverty. But any friendship, any relationship, is a give and take, and he was not easy himself. Late night calls bemoaning his lack of suitable mates, or his lack of publications, or the worry he had over his family—none of it was easy. But I always took it as part of the job because friendship is often difficult and trying, and forces us to consider positions and ideas and circumstances outside of our own.

The implication in our relationship, though, was always that I was lucky to have such a friend, and for a long time I believed this was the case, and I believed that the scales of our friendship would forever be tipped in his favor, that I could never “make up” for my varied inadequacies. He liked to tell me, especially at the end, how I was wasting my talent by not writing, brow beating me into submitting essays. It never felt supportive; it always felt manipulative, a way to make me feel low so I would comply with whatever his request was, for my own damned good. I hated it. And I knew, as he pontificated about journals and magazines, all under the guise of friendship and selflessness, I knew I had to change something. Otherwise, I would allow him to define who I was at some basic level. Who I was as a writer. I was no longer willing to grant him that power.

And now it’s spring, and I feel a sense of buoyancy and renewed faith in myself. The friendships ended, as they should have. And lately, it has been easier to say no, to tell people that I don’t want this or that. To demand respect in ways I’ve never been able to before. I surprise myself at saying no, even when it’s hard. Often it is; often I feel panicked and fretful, and I cannot sleep if I know I must lay down some rule the following day. I worry that whoever I establish a boundary with will tell me how unworthy, ungrateful, and terrible I am. This has happened more than once recently, too: people telling me that I’m a horrible person I am for saying no. Last week, my therapist*** told me, “I want you to write, on a sticky-note, ‘I am not going to let crazy people**** decide my worth today.’”

It seems like a worthy goal, an easy enough thing to accomplish. Especially in spring, when everything is blooming, and the world feels fresh again with promise and light and relief.

*tm

* This title is really from a poem Friend One wrote, and I lifted it. It's a beautiful poem, though, and you can find it (and many other wonderful poems) in Friend One's first book of poetry, which was just published! This is a total plug, but seriously, you should buy it.

** Tony Man-Pusher is the name I gave my boyfriend Tony who was kicked out of the Navy for pushing a fellow seaman off a ship. In the Persian Gulf. During the First Gulf War. Over a bag of Doritos. I feel compelled to add that once I had this tidbit of information, I broke up with him, but it took me finding that out before I felt “justified” in dumping him. Crikey.

*** My therapist, Scott, is a great guy who specializes in alcoholics and people who have grown up with alcoholics (like me). He’s mostly a listener, as he calls himself. He’s also great, being able to say things like “You know what you should do? You should tell him to fuck off!” at exactly the right moment. Every once in awhile, I go in for “a tune-up,” as Fatally Hip Single Mother calls them. This was one of those times.

**** “Crazy people” not being quite a clinical term at that moment.

Miscellany: The Righteous Indignation Edition

Before I launch into my typical miscellany-type post, where I bring together disparate scenes of my life, I would like to welcome you to the newly redesigned Terrible Mother.  And I need to give credit for the design to Sweet Blog, which did a bang-up job. 

I tasted the big, outside world, and decided I wanted to come back home.  You know. Like Joseph.  Or maybe not so much like Joseph.  Aside from that, the new characters and the main characters, the settings and locales and the like, will all be redone, and all of the entries from both Offsprung and Open Salon will be posted and archived here.  In essence, from here on out, Terrible Mother will only be found here.

Anyway—on to the miscellany.

A conversation with Friend R:

Me:  Do you have that recipe for no-knead bread handy?

Friend R:  Yeah, I can send it to you.

Me:  Does it work?

Friend R:  It must because all the hipsters have had the chance to go from "I love it because I'm the only one doing it" to "Everyone's doing it so it's not cool anymore” to "Damn, that's some good bread. But don't let my cool friends know I'm using it."

Me:  I didn’t know hipsters ate.  I thought they rode single gear bikes and bought uncomfortable furniture.

Friend R: Do you know what the newest trend in self-righteous hipper-than-thou cooking is?  Grinding your own wheat to make bread.

Me: What. The. Fuck.

Friend R:  The name dropping is insane. "My grinder's Danish because the Danes know some shit about grinding wheat." Right. They've been grinding wheat for centuries. When they weren't out raping, pillaging, and stealing other people's flour because grinding it yourself is a pain in the ass.

(pause)

Me:  The Danes stole flour?


***

I was invited to this potluck wherein parents from Thing Two and Three’s elementary school are together and discuss the merits of changing the cafeteria offerings to healthy (and likely organic food).  We’re each supposed to bring a dish that’s something we’d like our kids to eat at school.  I am totally behind this idea, but I keep thinking of making some anonymous-looking casserole and labeling it “Trans Fat Sprayed with High Fructose Corn Syrup!”

Am I a bad person?

***

A conversation with my mom, about her upcoming wedding:

Mom: So, my colors are off-white, champagne and…mermaid blue.
Me: “Mermaid blue”?  Is that a color?

Mom: Yes.  Sort of aquamarine.

Me:  I see.

Mom: So the girls I’m gonna get dresses for in the mermaid blue color.  But you can pick whatever color you want out of those three.

Me:  Okay.

(in the background, Thing One starts pantomiming choking herself).

Me: Thing One is really looking forward to that.

Mom:  Well, good!  And tell her we’re going to attach seashells to everyone’s dresses too!

***

Excellent Swimmer (a new character!) and I have three kids between us that go to the same elementary school.  It’s a new school, having been a combination of two other schools--Westside and Potter--with two different demographics.  One day, we started talking about those demographic differences.

ES:  Yeah, I worry sometimes about the Westside parents because they have more money, and you know how that goes.

Me:  Yeah, I know. 

ES:  Do you know anyone from Westside?

Me:  Sort of.  There’s this one guy. 

ES:  How do you know him?  Work?

Me: Actually, we dated for awhile, I guess. 

ES:  You dated, you “guess”?

Me:  Well, he eventually came around to telling me he wanted me to be his “second wife” or something. Maybe second girlfriend?  I don’t know.  He’s married.

ES:  What?

Me: Yeah, I’m not kidding.  We went on three dates before I even knew he was married!

ES:  Oh my God!

Me:  Right?  So you’re worried all the Westside parents are going to all be classist. But mostly I’m worried they’re gonna be polygamists.

(pause)

ES:  Which is worse?

Me:  Good freakin’ question. 

*tm

Cautionary Tales

My mom is a drug counselor, but not just any kind of drug counselor. She doesn’t work with potheads and alcoholics, or spend her time at a lovely rehabilitation unit housed in a hospital, but made to look “homey” with quilts and prints of ocean waves. Instead Mom counsels people who are, in the common parlance of rehabs, “dual diagnosis.” These are people who have a serious mental health issue, like schizophrenia, and a serious drug addiction, like methamphetamines or heroin, at the same time. She spends her working days at a halfway house, with people whose teeth have rotted to the gums, who have lost all manner of basic jobs and families, who have been prostitutes and drug runners and have done a number of terrible, dehumanizing things in order to maintain their high.

That paragraph, to be entirely accurate, should be in the past tense, because my mom was a drug counselor for a bunch of high risk, dual diagnosis drug addicts. And then she was laid off when the economy tanked, the halfway house losing $50,000 a month in grants and funding. But this isn’t a story about the lack of adequate funding for drug programs for those who are too mentally ill to maintain a job, or about the fact that such programs help communities lower crime and domestic violence rates, or that the first casualties in a recession are those on the bottom of the economic totem pole. This is a story about my mom’s need to provide counseling and advice and guidance. And when she can’t provide it to the people who really need it—meth heads who also hear voices—she provides it to the people who needed her almost as much as those drug addicts: her kids.

Witness this scene, circa two weeks ago. The setting is Bakersfield, California, where my mom lives. The kids and I are visiting, and we’ve decided to drive to Lake Isabella for the day. My mom climbs into the passenger seat of the car, buckles her seatbelt, checks the buckle not once, but twice—twice!—and then says, “You know, the highway can be kind of hard to drive.”

“I know Mom,” I say. It’s true that Isabella sits at the end of a serpentine two-lane highway, high above Bakersfield. It can be a treacherous drive because the highway is narrow, and hemmed, on one side, with the Kern River, and on the other, with walls of rock that, on occasion, fall into the roadway. But I also know this, having lived in Bakersfield for years.

“So,” she continues, “sometimes people who live here drive that road a lot. And they like to drive fast. And so if someone comes up behind you and wants to get by, you need to look for a place to get off the road.”

“Mom…”

“And that is called a ‘turn out.’”

I put my head in my hands. Luckily, we were at a stoplight, so I didn’t have to wreck the car.

My mom has done this in some fashion for as long as I can remember. Years ago, as my mom and my aunts were planning some family gathering, my mom said to my aunt Merri, “You know what we can do? We can brain storm ideas for the party.” Then she added, “‘Brain storm’ means that we all sit down and write any idea, and no idea is bad!”

Merri said, “I know what brain storm means, Lisa.” Merri, it should be noted, graduated from Reed College, where, presumably, no one had to take a remedial class on how to brain storm. My aunt was annoyed, but my brothers and I laughed. Take that, Aunt Merri, we thought. We grew up hearing a constant narrative of explanations and reasons, and it’s high time some of the misery was spread around. But no explanation can compare to Mom’s use of the cautionary tale.

Last month, the kids and I bedded down in Gardiner, Montana, readying to spend the following day in Yellowstone National Park. We’d never been there, so we were excited to see the hot springs and Old Faithful and the bison and elk. On the phone with my mom, I relayed the route we planned to take, what we would stop at.

My mom was quiet for a moment, and then she said, voice lowered in that dead-serious tone, “Heather, you have to be sure not to let the kids go into the geysers.”

Into the geysers. Into the geysers.

“Mom,” I said. I stopped there because language was escaping me. How would you even get into a geyser? How, for the love of all that is holy?

“The geysers are very hot,” she said. “And so are the hot springs.”

“I gathered that, from the fact the word ‘hot’ is in the title,” I said.

“You have to make sure they stay on the boardwalks.”

“Mom…”

“They will have signs saying where you can walk and where you can’t*. And so they have to pay attention to those.”

In her hands, the simplest of adventures, the safest, the most mundane, can become potential, life-threatening excursions. “Have you thought about getting a dog,” she asked before we embarked on the road trip, “or pepper spray?” Or, “you know, wasp stings can sometimes be fatal;” “bats carry rabies and you should never be around them;” “tampons cause toxic shock syndrome.” In her view, the world is a place where potential death awaits around every corner, and where you have to be on your guard at all moments.

Her worry has always rubbed off on us kids, though, my brothers and I, which generally means we have overactive imaginations for disaster, and have to check ourselves regularly. I called my brother David during the swine flu outbreak just so we could channel Mom for a few minutes. Which made me think, fleetingly, that we were on the brink of some real life version of The Stand. The only way to counter-act the cautionary tales and constant advice is to remind her that you are, in fact, not a heroin addict who hears Jesus and that you do, in fact, know that geysers are hot and that bad things can befall anyone.

“Mom!” I shouted into the phone. “I know the geysers are hot! I know to follow the signs! How the hell do you think the kids managed to survive this long? I know how to keep them out of danger!”

“I just wanted to make sure you knew what was safe,” she said. And she did. She genuinely shows her affection and love through constant reminders of the world’s danger and apathy towards individual people. Her warnings were like the grown-up versions of “look both ways in the crosswalk.”I felt, for a moment, a twinge of guilt.

Then she said, “You do know that you should never feed a wild bear, right? Heather? Don’t feed any bears!"

*tm

*The following day, while the kids posed for a photo in front of Mammoth Hot Springs (on the boardwalk, following all rules. And wearing sunscreen, even.), a little boy tried to climb the fence. His mother immediately saw him and yelled, in an English accent, “Rufus! What are you doing?” while she ran over to grab him. “We talked about this,” she said. “You can get scalded! Do you want to get scalded!” My kids looked at Rufus and the mother, and then Chloe said, “that kid needs Grandma Lisa.” “And stat,” I said.

Much Ado About Tripping

I’ve been gone for some time, I know, and had pretty much given up blogging for the most part. There are many good reasons for this, not the least of which was the fact Friend 2 ran into trouble getting something published in a journal because the editors found a small, very small, part of it on his Myspace blog. While that worked out for him in the end, I worried about losing the ability to publish on other, bigger and “more legit,” venues if I continue to publish here. I also worried that I wasn’t spending enough time revising my work, because writing a blog, even a good blog, isn’t as demanding as writing a kick-ass essay. There is no built-in system for revision, for example, and nothing to push a writer to keep getting better.

I still have those worries, but I am, for the moment, bypassing them in favor of posting about a new going-on. Mainly, that after several years of discussion and pie-in-the-sky dreaming, it looks as though my desire to take a long road trip with the Things through the US, and then write a book about it, will come to fruition. Because, as of right now, New Slang Philosopher and I are planning a 6-7 week journey through much of the contiguous United States, beginning around July 6.

It’s a huge trip, and it won’t be easy. Right now, I’m teaching an overload of classes in order to save money. I took my tax refund, and a bit of savings, and paid my entire rent for the summer, too, as a means of avoiding the terrible dwindling of cash flow that always hits around August. I’m actually doing mildly okay this year, primarily because I’ve been so careful.

So, I’m reviving my blog here to chronicle the planning, the purchasing of many and sundry items, and the actual execution of said event*. So far, we’ve decided to go as far Chicago, but we’d like to make it to Pennsylvania, and then head down to Florida, cutting across through to Texas, then up through Utah and Wyoming and Colorado. I’m excited about sharing it online with you.

*tm

*I think “execution” might be the best word. Holy crap, what am I doing here?

Back--with a conversation con Thing One

Last week, Thing One asked what a bachelor party was.

I had to think for a minute before coming up with something that would both quench her curiosity while still being PG-13. "It's a party a groom has before his wedding. His friends get together and they drink and they go to different fun places. Women have them too, but they call them bachelorette parties."

"They just drink?"

"Well, sometimes there are strippers involved."

Thing One screwed up her nose an then said, "Why do they have these parties anyway?"

"Well, it's sort of a last hurrah before getting married," I said. "After that, you're expected to not really do that sort of thing anymore."

Thing One thought for a minute. Then she said, "So, you mean a bachelor party is like Marriage Mardi Gras?"

"Holy Christ," I said. Because she was right. And that, that my friends, was a damn brilliant comparison.

I'm back, at the ol' homestead. Missed it, missed you guys, too.

*tm

The Move is Complete

Okay all, the move is done and I'm (mostly) in my new digs at Offsprung. I'm still working out a few bugs, and the site here will be up for awhile, but all new content will be posted at the new home of Terrible Mother.

In case you people didn't know, the readership and comments are the thing that makes this blog what it is. So I hope I'll see you over there.

*tm

Marching Toward Insolvency

Last week, I opened a letter from the Oregon Department of Revenue. I had been looking forward to said letter because I knew it meant my state tax refund--which was to be $3845--was on its way to my bank account or my hot little hands. And who doesn't like tax refunds, I ask, especially when they come close to 4 grand?

The letter, however, let me know exactly where my money was going: directly into the rather deep pockets of the university where I finished grad school last year. I owe them money: two months' rent, three months afterschool care for Things One and Two, charges from the Health Center, and a short term loan added up to just over $5,000. I've been paying on it every month. Some months, that's $150, some months it's $10. It didn't occur to me that my refund would get applied to my account, and in some ways, it's entirely fair. I owe that money; those charges are legitimate. But I desperately needed that money and I'm not sure I can make it through the summer without it, and this is why: summer care for the Things Three runs just over $1500 a month.

For comparison's sake, my car cost $1200 and is still running strong (knock on the drywall that surrounds my desk).

$1500 sounds excessive, doesn't it?, until you do all the math: divide 1500 by three, then divide by the number of hours each child spends at the center, then calculate the pay for each teacher and assistant, the cost of the fieldtrips and snacks and meals, and suddenly it becomes all too clear why it costs so much. This is a fairly good price for high-quality childcare, and if the center hadn't decided to continue charging me the student rate, I'd be paying over $1800 for the same service.

But this is the truth: after rent, childcare, electricity and car insurance, I'll have $112.60 left over. That's including John's child support (which he has started paying on time this month), and including the SSI Thing Two collects because he is autistic. Though because I recently received a fifty-cent an hour raise, the latter may be cut.

And that is $112.60 left over each month, not each week. I don't yet know how I'll cover gas and phone, or anything else we'll need like laundry soap and shampoo. I can't even begin to think how I'll pay for food. I've emailed the account manager at the childcare center (aka "Guido The Collector") and asked if an alternative arrangement can be made where I pay $1100 a month and roll over the rest until the fall so I can at least have money for food and gas.

That was yesterday. She hasn't responded yet, but I'm hoping for something because otherwise I don't know what I can do.

*****

Friday night, I drove the kids to Portland for their weekend with John. He has moved into Sara's house recently, and this was the first time I would see the place. It was lovely, a two-story row house with hardwood floors and plush carpet. In the kitchen there were granite counter tops and dark wood cabinets--something like cherry wood or mahogany--and it felt warm and inviting. The house only has two bedrooms, and the guest room is where the kids stay. When I took their things in, I noticed the furniture was the kind fashioned from pine logs and made to look homey. In the dresser, Sara had put the clothing she had bought the kids--four summer outfits and a swimsuit each. There was a credenza with new books on it, and there were flip flops and slippers. Opening into the bedroom was an immense bathroom with glassware decorating the counters and those little lights framing the mirror.

Sara's mom was visiting from Pennsylvania and though the two of them had already headed to the coast, she had bought new pajamas for the kids before they left. The kids were happy, ran around the new house excited and gleeful. John showed me around and was proud of the place, I could tell, and I worked at not begrudging him it. Outside, in my little car that cost less than one month of summer childcare, the gas tank measured just under half a tank. The drive was two hours back. I had $1.88 in the bank, no cash on me besides pennies, and I didn't know if I'd make it back. There was no way I would have told John this, walking through that house, him showing me the master bedroom covered in red and orange and black. He had just handed me the child support check, though I had asked for cash, because I knew depositing it in an out-of-town branch might result in a hold on the funds and I needed the money, I needed it Friday night and Saturday morning for gas and food.

There's something particularly unnerving about the minutiae you have to devote yourself to knowing, the institutional rules you learn, when you're poor. I hadn't known about my bank's specific rules regarding deposits until one weekend evening when I was in Portland, depositing a check, and needed that money. The protocols around these things are banal, and the banality can drive you, or the person you have to explain it to (aka, "the fanbase") insane. Is it very interesting? No. But this is where most of us who deal with some level of being poor* learn pretty quick: the only way of managing it is to learn the tedious ins and outs. It is sometimes the only leverage you have.

Thing One, the girl who is smart beyond her years, somehow knew about the gas, and I think guessed I wasn't going to say anything, and so she looked at John and said, "Mom doesn't have enough gas to get home." She said it flat, matter-of-factly, and I loved her and hated myself at the same time. If I had known she would have said anything, I would have swallowed my considerable pride and said something myself. Who the hell am I to put an 8-year old in that position?.

John, though, did what he needed to, drove to the bank and took out $20. "This is for my share of Thing One's medication this month," he said. He acted like it was an act of generosity. I did, too. Because I've learned a long time ago to be grateful even for what you should expect.

I cried on the way home (big surprise, I know, me, the girl that says Crying Is Okay). But it was hard to see John living so well, hard to know the kids had all those things I couldn't give them. Sara is great, and the fact she bought them clothes and books, found ways to make their living space there comforting and welcoming--that's not a small thing and I'm sure it wasn't easy, either. And Lord knows that John could have ended up picking a crackhead who didn't like children and chain-smoked and watched reruns of Bonanza (though, frankly, I am highly suspect of his Dating Prowess. How can anyone explain landing Sara AND me in the same lifetime, hmmm?**).

I used to believe that my intelligence, my ability to think and analyze, to teach, to write, to work hard, to raise bright children, my education, somehow these things at long last would earn me a living wage. But none of them do.

*tm

*It's hard to talk about poverty and being poor in part because the language itself is so absolute. I don't think I'm poor the way some people are. I don't, for example, qualify for welfare, and I live in a good neighborhood. I have a car. But worrying about food and electricity? That automatically gets you into the poor category, or at least the lower-middle class category. Period. End of argument.

**I know, totally self-promotional and egotistical there. But if you had just admitted to the Internet that you were poor, I would let you slide. I'm just sayin'*.

*"I'm just sayin'" is, seriously, the best reason ever. You can use it all the time! It supports any argument! It's genius!

New Blog

So, I've been working with the new blog at Offsprung, and it's quite pretty. I'm posting here and there for the next week or so, and then will start posting there only. I'd love it if some of you would go check it out and comment, help me experiment with it a little.

*tm