Writing · on · the · Wall

I am not closing my LiveJournal account. While I do not comment much I so enjoy reading my friends posts. I am however abandoning my journal. I am blogging here- http://www.crystaltorres.com/blog/ instead. Not that I think there is any relevant overlap, but I am also going into a similar semi-retirement on MySpace. Facebook will continue unchanged for now, since I never post directly into my notes there anyway, just an RSS feed from my main blog, which this used to be. That's all.

I'm sure it started in Kindergarten. They must have given us something to color, some short explanation of why we got to take a day off of school. I don't really remember. There was no event by which I became aware of him. He just sort of seeped into my consciousness over the years.

While I'd always had his birthday off I don't think I celebrated it until I was in junior high. When I was a teenager there was a huge march in Los Angeles, every year on the holiday. And for many years I participated in this peaceful act of protest against South African apartheid. We walked and we chanted and shouted and sang and believed just by gathering together, just by declaring our intentions, we could change the world. And then we did. Well, we probably didn't, but the world changed anyway.

It is hard to express in words the shame I feel for the grief I feel at the loss of this cause. Don't get me wrong I feel so much more gratitude and security in the potential for genuine goodness in humanity knowing that apartheid is over. It was a justice long overdue. It's just that there was no other cause I ever rallied for that meant so much. I miss the unity. I miss the marches.

My first born shares her birthday with Rosa Parks. Somehow this has turned to my placing a special connection between her and the civil rights movement. I have always wanted her to understand the meaning of the seemingly simple act of defiance this woman is famous for. Partly because I have a passionate love for the human stories that make up our history and partly because I am a superstitious creature at heart; it is as if some part of me prays the patron saints of civil rights could give an extra blessing of strength, courage and wisdom to this child, if she observes their feast days sincerely enough.

I remember holding my squirming toddler, almost a year old, in my arms on her first MLK Day and reading an illustrated version of the I Have a Dream speech to her. Every year I read the same picture book knowing I could not do it justice, but giving it my passionate best. Now she is almost eleven and my enthusiasm is met with a disgruntled, preteen, "Do I haaave to?" No, she doesn't.

I will not allow my children's associations with this important chapter in our history to be about their overzealous mother inflicting her strange rituals upon them. They want to take the day off like "normal" kids get to do. So I will not let them associate this day or this important man with unwelcome schooling.

It's just that this reopens that void in my life. I am not marching and I am not teaching. I need to find a new way to celebrate peaceful activism towards social justice. I need to find a new way to celebrate the dream. If I cannot teach directly then I can lead by example. I can raise myself into the person I want my children to be. I'm just not sure yet what the expression of that will be. Any suggestions? How do ya'll celebrate the spirit of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?

2010 kicked my butt. I've spent a lot of time hoping and wishing for 2011 to be less interesting. Though having given more careful reflection to the year in review it was harder than it was bad. I am tired, weary to depths I didn't previously know I had. This is not the same thing at all as being broken. I have learned and I have grown. It is not a bad thing to ache a little after a good workout. So I take back what I've said against 2010. Let 2011 be as exciting as it may and let me find the strength and energy to take on the challenges of the new year. Here's to moving forward. Happy New Year!

Earlier this month my ten-year-old daughter made a fair production out of telling her father and I that she knows Santa Claus isn't real. Her father was fairly devastated. He seemed to move frantically through the stages of grief. First hoping she was just testing us and that if he presented his faith strongly enough she would resume her own. Then he was angry, looking for someone to blame. "Who told you there's no Santa Claus?"

For the record, no one told her that outright. Yes, things our semi-resident teenager had said in her presence fueled her suspicion, but no one tried to burst her bubble or anything. The Husband seems to be okay with it all now. I still think he feels a loss, and that he grieves that loss sincerely, but he's peacefully resigned.

What the fa-la-la-la-la? Is it a dad thing or am I a freak? I am not bummed that she doesn't believe in Santa Claus. I am bummed that her father handled it like it was a bummer. Figuring out that your parents put those presents in your stocking shouldn't be a tragedy.

My baby girl is growing up. Isn't that our goal as parents, to shepherd them from the strangely addictive, but largely useless, lumps of infancy into real live grown-ups? She made a point of telling us when her little brother wasn't around and she told us largely because she didn't know if it was appropriate to accept the Santa loot as a nonbeliever and she was trying to let us know before we'd invested ourselves in said loot.

She's still enjoying preserving the illusion for her little brother, and I'm enjoying her transition from magical thinking to magic making. Santa is a game we play, and one that I enjoy, but it's not the be-all and end-all. I'm far more excited to see her grow up than I am about picking out stocking stuffers (though, of course, her stocking will still be stuffed).

My children are not my pets to aimlessly lavish with affection. I have three dogs, three ducks, a cat and a python. I don't need any more pets. My job is to raise these kids into grown-ups that will make this world a better place for their presence. I'm looking forward to sitting at the grown-up table together in the future. Am I such a horrible Scrooge that I'm more excited about seeing glimpses of the woman my daughter could be than I am about playing Santa?

Be gentle with me. Lend me a shoulder to cry on and a hand to hold. Tell me it will be okay, as if you believe it, even if you don't. Except, of course, when I need a kick in the pants. Then give it to me straight.

Tell it like it is. Stand me naked in front of the three-way mirror of my soul and let the harsh lights' florescent flicker sting like a mean girl's laugh so easily denied. Don't let me look away from the truths I need to know. Push me to be better than I have been before. Except, of course, when I need a little fun. Then give it to me in good humor.

Play with me. Don't let me take it all so seriously or waste my life responsibly. Remind me that there's a great life happening all around me and now is the time to participate in it. Laugh with me. Without a hint of self-consciousness, snort, guffaw, lose your breath and let the tears roll from your eyes. Except, of course, when I need nothing in particular. Then let me give to you.

These Lips Are Powerful

These lips are powerful
One kiss can take the hurt away
can close tired eyes for sleep
can make the world safe again
One kiss can make a grown man weak
can steal a virtuous soul
can spin my world upside down

These lips are powerful
They drip poetry
like sweet honey out of bitter nectar
These lips have uttered
in carelessness, and in spite
barbed, poisonous words
that cannot be pulled from their wounds
These lips have bled
from biting back the obscenities
I did not scream

These lips are powerful
the keepers of secrets,
kisses and souls
speaking in passwords, or passion
burning bridges and opening doors

These lips are powerful
They are the fire and the light
stolen by the trickster from ancient gods
They are my wings
and how you can soar with me

for G.Z. (without innuendo, for his inspiration and support)

Going into my son's spinal cord surgery I was remarkably positive. Things were as they were and fretting wouldn't change anything. So I was positive, I was deeply and sincerely positive because I didn't think I could give him confidence if I didn't have it first.

My year has been absorbed in crises and finding the strength to deal with crises. Things are okay now. Now I get to fall apart. I feel like I've finally stolen a moment just to breathe deeply, but it turns out that I'm under water and holding my breath wasn't so bad after all. It should go without saying, except that the not saying has been part of my coping and I need to get from coping to dealing and say the things I don't want to say, I wish my son didn't have spina bifida occulta. There was a great relief to getting a physical diagnosis, because it absolved me of maternal failure. I couldn't teach him skills that the nerves weren't physically up to fulfilling. I'm glad it's not my fault.

Parents try so hard to make everything better for their children. When I was pregnant I took my prenatal vitamins and ate so many grams of protein I thought I'd never want to eat again. I continued when I was nursing, resisting the desperate desire for caffeine after sleepless nights because I wanted to give my babies the best. I couldn't prevent this.

Around the time of the surgery my barely eight-year-old asked me why he had this thing wrong with his spinal cord. I told him that it wasn't really "wrong," it just was. Some people have blue eyes, and some people have brown and nature is always trying out new things. His body put together its spinal cord differently and it doesn't really work the way he needs it to, so we needed a doctor to fix it, but it was just a variation, like blue eyes or brown. He accepted that explanation.

When I first held my babies in my arms, they were perfect. I think every mother, possibly every parent, experiences that flood of unconditional love at the very onset. Parenting is not taking a broken thing and fixing it, it is taking a perfect thing and guiding it to apply the right strength to the right task and to find the strength in what might appear as weakness. I am trying to help them express, preserve and nurture what is best in them. I am trying not to screw up these precious people I've been blessed to have in my care.

Just between you and me, it's really, really, really hard. My daughter reminds me of all that I hate in her father and the venom in that hatred reminds me of all I hate in myself. She can be a brutal mirror. The spina bifida specialist is optimistic that my son will be able to learn bowel control, maybe two years from now. So optimistically I can have him fully potty-trained at ten years of age. The catheters substitute for bladder control, which he will probably never have. Yeah, you know what? That kinda sucks. I mean it's way better than hearing that he'll be wearing pull-ups forever. It's way better than having him in a wheelchair or on a waiting list for new kidneys. It's way better than having his mind locked in a body that can not express it, or mostly blank. I'm mostly grateful.

It's just that, to be completely honest, some of this situation bites. There are definitely days when I don't want to be the grown up anymore. But there's nobody waiting outside the ring for me to tag them in. Which is the other point of my despair this week. Life wasn't perfect before the diagnosis. I had problems in 2009 and they've been patiently waiting for me while I dealt with all things spina bifida. So I have the sucky parts of the new normal and the sucky parts of the old normal and frankly I'd like to get off of this ride now because I feel like I'm going to be sick.

I appreciate the friends and family who have given me so much support. Believe me I do. It's just that there's not a lot other people can do. So I plod along, bearing my burdens, more or less alone, and trying to convince myself that I'm lucky to have the opportunity to make my legs so strong. Forgive me for being whiny this week, sometimes the only cure I have for loneliness is to say the things that nobody wants to hear. And right now I am ready to scream from mountain tops. This sucks!

Alcohol does not change my inner nature, just how I express it. It does not change the things I am willing to do, just the ineptitude with which I do them. Alcohol takes the filters off. If I am sad, it makes me sadder. If I am angry, it makes me angrier. If I am lonely, it makes me lonelier. It amplifies the Now. Which is to say, any time I feel like I need a drink, I shouldn't.

For the most part it's okay to be who I am without censor. Anybody who has spent time with me sober knows I am no pillar of restraint. At my most out of control I am still basically a kind person. What I lose is the ability to hold back the part of me that wants desperately to be the center of attention (even though the rest of me only blushes and fumbles in that spotlight) and the part of me that is disturbingly hyper-sexual. So yeah, having too much to drink brings out my inner attention-whore and, well, my inner whore-whore.

Most of the western world has seen my breasts at some point or another. If you haven't, I'm sorry, it's just an oversight. If you have, I'm sorry, I'm seeing a therapist and plan to get this under control soon. Beyond that I am surprisingly protective of the cellulite, stretch marks, and other scars that might be revealed. There is no amount of alcohol that will make me want to enter into dubious business transactions with tragically dethroned Nigerian royalty nor enough to make me have sex with strangers.

I am hyper-sexual, but in my own, oddly chaste, way. I love to throw myself at safe targets. Nerf seduction? My version of sloppy drunk is something like an ADHD rhesus monkey on ecstasy. I get clingy and cuddly, deliberately provocative and so easily distracted by the next sparkly, especially if it's the ice sparkling in my next drink. I drink more when I've had too much to drink.

Saturday night I had too much to drink. I can generally handle two drinks gracefully, and am only amusingly out of it after a third. Beyond that, I'm just pathetic. I'd had one drink before we went out, and two at Los Toritos. I coulda, shoulda, woulda stopped there. It's just that we needed to finish the pitcher before we left for Wrightwood. I hate lager, but I can be a team player, even if it leaves a foul taste in my mouth. Who knew that yucky tasting drinks can get you drunk too. The beer pushed me from silly drunk to sloppy drunk. So of course when we got up to the mountains I had another drink, and helped to finish off another pitcher so we could go home when they closed.

Fortunately, I am coming out of that awkward, self-loathing phase (the first thirty-five years, or so, of life). The morning-after remorse has not been debilitating. I was flirting when I was six months old, and I hope to be flirting when I'm ninety-six. What a delight it is to see and be seen with simple joy. At it's core I think flirting is just a way of saying "I see you and I like what I see." Who doesn't need more of that in their lives? I do not regret my intention to flirt. Sloppy drunk flirting seems to say "You're here and I like sex," before trailing off after the next sparkly. All the good parts get lost in translation. I regret getting sloppy.

Drinking has never made me pass out, puke or experience a hangover. It has never made me do anything contrary to my character. It only amplifies the socially awkward, emotionally needy, sensory seeking being that I am. I'm just about strong enough to handle being me, and I can fake enough control after two drinks. I just have to remember to stop there, and that beer, even yucky lager, counts as a drink.

"So, don't you cry,
it'll give you lines around your eyes
You gotta try not to live so much of life alone.
And if you see me getting crazy by the bottom of the bottle
take me home, take me home, take me home"
-Concrete Blonde

I have the most unfortunate habit of finding myself conspicuous. It's at these moments I relate to my mother's quiet reserve. She almost never finds herself conspicuous unless I lead her there, but boy is she uncomfortable when I do. So am I, really. I'm ten shades of red and ready to crawl under a rock and not come out again until I've found a time machine. I'm enthusiastic. I sometimes forget that not everybody is as exuberant as I am. I've learned lots of nice words that start with e (e is for euphemism) for when I'm trying to apologize for being a spaz.

So my most recent stumble into the spotlight landed my name in a book. I love the author. There was this support opportunity that came with an acknowledgment in the book. Even if I never have a significant byline of my own, I can show my grandchildren that I skirted the edges of greatness, by association. So the book arrived today. I love the arrival of a new book begging me to read it. If only I didn't have those dependents begging to be fed and tended to, I could do a lot of reading. I will admit to the vanity of flipping to the back and then to the front and then to the back again. Somewhere in this book I was expecting to find a page of fine print with my name sandwiched in among other fans and friends of the author. I wondered if it was alphabetical, would I be among Cs or Ts? I couldn't find it. Oh well, that wasn't the point of my support. Now to skim the brilliance that awaits me when the kids are in bed and I can do some serious reading. I found the acknowledgement I'd been looking for.

Hunt Press Would Also Like to Acknowledge the Following Supporters:
Crystal Torres
As well as several Anonymous supporters
Your support means the World to us.

Doh! Why didn't I get the memo that we were all going to be anonymous? I feel like I'm suddenly singing solo when I signed up for madrigals. If you've ever heard me sing you'd know how bad that is. While changing my name and moving to a non-English speaking country is tempting right about now, there are logistical flaws in that plan. So here's where I'm different from my mother. If I'm in for a penny, I'm in for a pound. I'm still proud to have my name associated with the author and her work. So as soon as my cheeks regain their customary pallor I'm taking the position that I meant to do that. Yeah, I am that special. Clearly my feeble support was the most meaningful. I may be off key but dangnabbit I'm gonna sing it loud if I'm gonna sing it at all. I may not be able to cover my backside with the grace I'd hoped, but I'm gonna bow deep anyway. Yeah, that's the ticket.

I occasionally participate in The Word, a writing exercise from the blog of brilliant author, Janet Fitch. This is my most recent effort along those lines.

Part of a weekly series of short short stories based on a writing exercise, The Word. "Inspired by a simple word, chosen at random, write a two-page double-spaced story, using the Word at least once.”

The Word: Stamp

All Dressed Up
( Read more )