Hericane

Hana was contemplating a pink packet of saccharin while she eavesdropped on the other diner's conversations. As in most places where she stopped, they were talking about the weather.

"The weather man of channel eight said we are looking at another week in the one-twenties."

Hana accepted her eggs and bacon from the waitress with a sad smile. She sprinkled on the salt and pepper, and looked at the portrait of the desert framed by the window. She was in the middle of Death Valley and had stopped for breakfast at the "Last Chance for Food and Gas".

"I swear to god, if we didn't have air conditioning in here, we'd all by frying like sardines in a can. If we don't get some rain soon, this whole valley is going to be nothing but scorched earth."

She had left San Diego the day before with no clear destination in mind, only that she couldn't bare another second inside of her sterile home. She and John had both wanted to have many children, but after two miscarriages and three years of IVF treatments she had finally accepted that she was broken and would never be able to have children. John had said they could adopt, but she knew how important it was for him to see his own eyes looking out of his baby's face. She left because she was the broken piece of the family puzzle.

"The reservoir is 'bout to dry up, if we don't get rain soon there will be no water for the livestock."

She sliced the yoke with a toast corner and felt the first tear burning in the corner of her eye. Rather than trying to suppress it, she thought of the names of the children she would never have--Dennis, Irene, Ophelia, Vince and Katrina. When she thought of the name Katrina, she envisioned what her baby daughter would look like--big blue eyes just like her daddy and jet black hair. The first tear made a path to her collarbone that other tears began to follow.

"Looks like clouds are beginning to form over the mountains."

With the first tear set free, the others rushed to follow and soon she had a double line of tears coursing down each cheek. She was silently crying, the sub-sub's hadn't started yet, but she wasn't worried about creating a spectacle of herself in front of strangers. She knew they weren't paying any attention to her, they were looking out the window.

"Well I'll be goddamned if it ain't raining!"

The first drops fell onto the tin roof where they sizzled like water in an deep fat fryer and vanished. After their entrance, bigger drops bean to fall and soon the rain was sheeting down the windows and dancing on the hard baked earth. Four of the five diners at the "Last chance for Gas and Food" walked outside to tilt their faces towards the sky and allow the rain to wash the desert from their skin.

She couldn't allow herself to think about how happy the people were that it was raining, she needed to hold onto her grief and let it grow so that the rain would continue to fall. She knew that she was responsible for the rain. It always rained when she cried.

She pulled a prescription bottle from her purse and fingered the cap. The pills inside were meant to suppress her "illusions of grandeur", but all they really did was numb her enough to stop the tears. It was true that when she took them she felt less responsible for the people affected by the drought of her not being there, and the weight of the people who drowned under the weight of her tears when she was there. But they also made her feel like a zombie.

At the age of four she thought her name was "No-NO Hana" but after hearing the Hawaiin legend of Noenoe Ua Kea O Hana, she realized that her parents were only calling her by some of her proper name, and that she was the embodiment of the girl who had been turned into a rain cloud by her father. They lived on Mount Waileaila and it was her grandmother who had told her the legend and ended with the words: "Take a nap now Maleah, and dream happy dreams so that when you waken the sun will be out and we can go to the beach."

At the age of ten her family had moved to Ocean Side California. During the first summer they went to Disneyland, and Sea World, and Knott's Berry Farm. She had a new best friend named Susan, and during that summer she was so happy that it never rained. During the Spring of the following year, Susan found a new best friend and Hana was left alone on the playground. Her tears had been so bitter that mudslides had taken out a section of the coast line. Because she was old enough to understand the concept of civic duty, she realized that she was responsible for the devastation and every house that had been lost in the mudslides caused by her tears.

That was when she resolved to maintain happiness. While the families that belonged to the houses talked about the all they had lost to the channel 3 anchor man, Hana was eating a banana split with her new best friend Heather, and the rain stopped.

By the age of fourteen, Southern California was experiencing a drought and Hana knew that she had to be sad occasionally, just until the canals ran with water and all of the flowers bloomed. During the Spring months she lay in bed at night and think of everything that would make her sad, like broken windows and puppies lost in drain pipes. As soon as the tears started forming in her eyes, the rain clouds would gather. She would fall asleep with light misty rains nourishing the land.

From the ages of 14-18, she took the time to be sad every spring so that the world would get the water that it needed. Her parents never asked her why she was said, they never asked her why she was happy either. They were busy with their own lives and they never seemed to understand that their daughter could control the weather.

At the age of 24 she married John--it was a beautiful June day without a cloud in the sky--but over the subsequent years there had been many rain storms. After the second miscarriage, John had thought that a trip to Mexico would cheer her up. Instead, her tears had been so bitter that an entire village was flooded and all of the little cardboard shacks were buried in the mud. The realization that she had wiped out an entire village with her agony was so intense that she fell into a depression that wouldn't be comforted by John's words that they could try again and they would have a houseful of babies.

She explained to her that she wasn't crying because of the baby (Vince) she was crying because of the village that had been destroyed by her grief, he had contacted their family practitioner and suggested that she take a few days at a local mental health facility. The doctor suggested that many women fell into a depression after losing a baby, and that a rest and some medication would be all that she needed.

After many sessions with her psychiatrist, she admitted her secret power over the rain and he had added the little white pills to her daily diet and admitted her to the facility for a more lengthy stay. Her mother had come to visit her and told her that it was all her grandmother's fault that she had the lunatic notion about the rain. She told her to stop telling such crazy stories so that she could go home. After three days of taking the pills she met with her counselor and he remarked that it hadn't rained in three days, and he asked her how she was feeling. She replied that she felt tired and blurry. He asked her if the foggy weather was caused by her blurry emotions and she used her mother's advice when she replied, "Of course not."

She didn't bother to explain that she caused rain, not fog. When she left the facility, she understood that she could never again admit to her power. She also felt rather proud of herself for all of the green that she saw, her previous weeks of crying and shed so much water that the residents of San Diego were able to water their lawns, fill their swimming pools and wash their cars.

Two months after being releases, she missed her period. She bought five home pregnancy kits and all confirmed that she was pregnant. She stopped taking her medication for fear of what it would do to her unborn child. The doctor confirmed her glorious news and for three weeks she imagined Katrina forming tiny fingers and itty bitty toes as cute as corn niblets. She woke every morning to her sun filled room and she would place her hands over her still flat stomach and sing lullabies. When she went grocery shopping, she bought packages of diapers and baby bottles. She began painting the nursery, she planned an under-the-sea theme complete with a mural of dolphins and angel fish.

She was buying glow-in-the dark stars to attach to ceiling of the nursery when her period started, and so did the rain. She traded the stars for maxi-pads and left the store knowing that her tears would cause all of California to slip into the ocean. When she got onto the Interstate she didn't know where she was heading, just that she couldn't face her sterile house or the empty nursery.

She finished her breakfast and then considered the bottle of pills that would give her the blurry feeling that neither hurt nor pleased. Her intention had been to take a little sabbatical with her pills and her broken heart, but the reaction of the diner at the "Last Chance for Food and gas" gave her a better idea. It was a horrible twist of fate that she couldn't carry a baby to term, but with her ability to bring the rain she was the epitome of fertility. Every desert that she traveled through would bloom.

The pride that she felt in that moment was big enough to squash the emptiness of her childless arms. She got up from her booth and went to the restroom where she popped the top off the bottle and dumped all of the little white pills into the toilet. She knew that her husband, and parents, and doctors would be disappointed by her actions, but there were children all over the world living in drought conditions and she alone had the power to change their lives.

When she walked out of the restroom she caught sight of the diners laughing and celebrating the rain and she had to think of think of her baby names to damper the buzz of joy that would stop the rain. She approached the waitress at the cash register with tears trembling behind her eyelashes.
The waitress accepted her credit card and swiped it through the machine. "Look at those damn fools out there, you'd think they never saw rain before, "she said, "I told them it was going to rain this week, weather man of channel six has been talking about the El Nina all week."

Hana walked to her car and avoided eye contact with the patrons enjoying the deluge. She thought of baby Katrina and decided that she wouldn't call John until she reached New Orleans.

~When I Was Her~

When I talk about the Boys Camp, I do so in a tone that makes me appear as though I were wise, or loving, or kind, or cunning. It has been 18 years since I left the place and I have had plenty of practice telling Boys Camp stories in a tone that fits the mood.

I tell the story of the ghost "Mary" that I made up to scare the boys, and when I tell that story I want people to appreciate my ability to improvise in emergency situations.

I tell stories that are religious in nature, in which I used some verse of the bible to explain a truth to a boy, and when I do that I want the listener to believe that I was once a twenty-two year old girl on a mission to share the word of the lord with young boys who might never ever hear it otherwise.

I tell alot of stories, and most of them are true to the best of my recollection--but I don't often tell the truth about who I was when I was working at the Boys Camp.

It is 100% fair to say that I went into the job believing that I could make a difference in the lives of boys. It is also 100% fair to say that I had no idea what it was that those boys needed. I pretended to be what I felt I should be for the eight days that I was a housemother.

The picture that I have posted was taken six months before I went to the camp, and that is the look that I tried to emulate on those nights when I was not a house mother for twelve boys. When I was at the Boy's Camp, I braided my hair and didn't wear a smidge of make-up. I did this for two reasons:
1. I had to wake 12 boys up at 6:00 am, and I didn't give a rat's ass what I looked like.
2. I recognized that at the age of 22 I was only five years older than some of my 'kids'. I didn't want them to think I was cute. I wanted them to think of me as a guardian.

But there were nights when I took the braids out of my hair and got out the aqua net.

When I was the girl in that picture, I requested an evening off so that I could go to a wedding with Martin. My request was granted, with the stipulation that I leave after the boys had been tucked into their beds for the evening and that I would be home before midnight so that I could preform my House mother duties at 6:00am the next morning.

I completed my hair and make-up while still at the camp and left wearing pants that were to big and a gray t-shirt. I drove my red Trans Am the hour and a half that it took to get to the local JCPenny where I purchased a green dress with pearl buttons from the collar bone to the hem,a pair of white pumps and thigh high nylons that I attached to a white garter belt.

I dived into the gas station next to the church to change into my wedding reception finery, and I met Martin just as the keg was getting tapped at the reception.

When he met eyes with me in the doorway, he walked across the room and wrapped his arms around waist, he sniffed into my hair and then whispered that he was so happy to see me that he would open all of my buttons with his lips.

The reception was grand, we danced and we ate and he introduced me to everyone I had not yet met as "Miss Idaho".

Because I am telling a story about When I Was Her, and She was me an entire lifetime ago, it seems only fitting to admit that we left the wedding reception inside of a Catholic church, and we went to a basement with a bed covered in animal hides and while we were there we partook of illegal substances and we listened to Ac/Dc at full volume and Martin proved his promise to open my buttons with his mouth.

Many hours later I was covered in sweat and panting on a cowhide, and I realized that I had missed my midnight curfew.

By many hours.

Many many.

I fact, I had been fornicating for so long that I had less than an hour to get back to the Boys Camp before my job began for the day.

When I was the girl in that picture, it felt like a challenge and I believed that my red Trans Am could take corners like it was on rails and I was just young enough and immortal enough to get out of town and then stomp on the gas pedal like it was a cockroach.

There is/was a spot along the road in which it was a Missouri double letter road that had hair pin turns and little hills. There is a special sweet spot that has three humps in a row, and I had always taken them a bit fast so that I could get the roller coaster butterflies--but on that particular day when I was racing the clock and listening to "back in black" at full volume--I hit first one so fast that I sailed over the hump and landed on the top of the second hump. I goosed it at the top and sailed to the third hump and I did a fist pump out of the absent T-top when I didn't crash.

When I reached the turn-off to the camp I squealed to a stop and reversed to the trail through the trees. This was when I remembered who I was supposed to be, and so I turned off the music and crept through the woods to the driveway. There I turned off my motor and coasted to a stop, just as the sun was creeping through the trees and I knew the wake-up call would be issued soon.

I snuck into the front door and made a bee-line for my room where I stripped off the dress and put on my pajama pants and size XXL t-shirt. I had to piss like a Russian racehorse, but I thought that if I went to the bathroom it would alert my partners that I had just gotten home and so I chose to pee in a coffee can in the corner rather than leave my room.

That day went from there--I pretended to have just awoken and herded boys to their various school activities while I was still feeling the after-glow mind blowing orgasms and drugs and booze. As soon as they were gone, I went to bed and slept the afternoon away.

When I talk about the Boys Camp, I usually do so in a way that makes me look like I was being selfless and doing things for others.

But ahhhh.....when I was her, I also did things because I wanted to know what freedom felt like.

~Forgetting The Swimsuit~

Martin called last night and accused me of purposefully forgetting to pack his swim trunks.

"How was I to know you would need a swimsuit? You are forty five years old, if you don't like what I pack--pack for yourself."

Then I changed the subject and we talked about kids and what the new job was like and how many days it would be before he was back. He brought up the trunks again, and again I deflected by asking him if he thought I was clairvoyant and just knew he would be in a position to get into a swimming pool.

Between you and me: I knew there was a pool, and I did purposefully leave out the swim trunks. I am not clairvoyant, but I did google the hotel in Montana and I know there is a hot tub and a swimming pool.

I left out the trunks for the simple reason that I am not interested in my husband walking around in his trunks because he looks damn sexy in those trunks. He is 45, but his mid section hasn't gone to flab and his upper body is finely sculpted--pecs, shoulders, biceps--don't even get me started on the muscles of his back. He is a fine look specimen and his trunks ride his hips just enough so that there is a peek of where his side muscles attach to his hips and it looks like a prime piece to nibble.

There a a couple of other things I "forgot" to pack for him: toothpaste. deodorant. a razor.

What can I say, when he is far away from me, I have ideas about how I would like him to appear to the general populace. I assume he will get toiletries from the hotel vending machine, but I am banking on the fact that he won't bother to shave and when he is far far away from me, I prefer for him to appear woolly.

And not particularly well dressed.

I packed all of his favorite hoodies and long sleeved shirts, and threw in all of his favorite t-shirts. I picked the work pants that weren't full of holes, and forgot to put in the pair of pants that are stain free and craddle his ass perfectly, and I passed right over the shirts that he wears on date night. I have been packing for him for 18 years, I didn't forget to fill it with clean socks and underwear--but not the underwear with the perfect ball cup.

I like to think that I pack for him out of love, so that he will be comfortable when he is far away from home. But it is fair to say that I also pack for him so that he isn't looking like eye candy all alone in a hotel hot tub.

~Christmas Carol's Weeper~

For the seventeenth Christmas in a row, we took the family to Crown of Life Lutheran Church for the Christmas Eve service. I ironed clothes for every member of my family with an element of red, and I spent an hour applying Christmas Party make-up. I wore my favorite outfit--tight black sweater, a-line grey skirt and nylons that look like tattoo's of coy fish.

I cried off the first layer of sparkles during the opening song. My daughter was sitting next to me, and at first she was amazed and perhaps compassionate, but as the songs wore on and snot started dribbling out of my nose she lost her compassion and began to started to mock me. She made her dad trade her seats after I used her hood to clean the snot/tears off my cheeks (she spent years using me as a napkin, she owes me.)

I was completely fine during the sermon and the speaking parts, but as soon as the music team started singing, my eyes started weeping.

For many years, my family was the music team--my mother, my aunts, my uncles--beloved friends I have known my whole life. When I was a kid, we sang Christmas Carols and I was overjoyed, when I reached my teens I was so cool that I was bored with the sounds of my family. And now I am an adult and the people singing the Christmas Carol's have been replaced.

The primary crying problem is that Dave and Rudy and Ken playing together harmonize so well that it sounds like my Uncle Roy is in there singing. Which of course he isn't. And recognizing the abscences of his voice, I begin to recognize the absence of all of the voices that sang to me when I was a little girl who still believed in Santa Claus.

The voice that I miss the most is the voice of my mother.

My mother is very much alive and kicking, but she gave up the singing when Roy died. She doesn't sing with the church choir anymore, and she doesn't sing at home and she didn't set down to the organ to play demanding that my sisters and I sing along with her.

My eye's weep during Christmas carol's because they have been very much absent this year--I didn't even fill my cd player with the collection of cd's that my mother made for me back in the days when she was still making music. I have a collection with over 50 Christmas cd's--music of every genre and all of the classic's sang with every composer that you might suspect had a Christmas album.

The music was absent this Christmas, and I am not the only person who has noticed it.

There are a whole lot of new things present:

Jacob has been making paper cranes for the last two Christmas' and the tree is covered with them. They are made out of envelopes, and newspaper and Kid's homework papers and colored paper.

It is the sixth year that we have had Christmas dinner in this house, and the Christmas table is decorated exactly as my mother would have it be made. I know this is true because the Christmas china, sivlerware and candleabra's are all from the gifts that she has given me. The tablecloth is the linen one that she purchased, and the silk damask napkins go into the silver napkin rings that she picked out.

I can't make the music come back, because I can't sing the music without crying--but what I can do is create the picture of the Christmas meal cooked to perfection and placed about a table set for twelve.

The gift my mother gave me when I was a child was the music and the imagery of a beautifully made Christmas table.

The gift that I give my mother is that imagery set up exactly as she had imagined it might be.

~The Answer Isn't in a Bottle~

Yesterday, the sheriff came to my house with a Writ of Execution, he needed me to give him $2218.94 or he would have to take some of my stuff.

He reminded me of my first husband, with his sandy hair and the fact that his face was flushing. He stood on the door step with papers in his hands, looking official and a little embarrassed at the same time. I told him I had $20 in my wallet, and then I invited him into my house.

My boys were obviously curious and I allowed them to stay in the living room, Jake stood next to me--I think he was manning up by standing next to his mother. Ike was watching from the couch, I read the papers and realized that this was because of that credit card that I had oh so many years ago and I never paid it off.

The officer was explaining the paperwork to me--he asked me to give him the $20 that I had in my wallet and he said that if I didn't file a claim of exemption they would be back to get some of my stuff--he told me that they could take just about everything, even the couch.

I invited him to come into my home because having a sheriff at your house does cause the neighbors to wonder. We have had plenty of sheriff's in the last couple months--some kids broke into the Durango in July and the police got them, I have been getting subpoena's to testify.

And I, the woman who walks at night so that no one can see her invited him in to get him off my doorstep, and into my home.

When I left the living room to get my purse, I thought about that me that didn't want the meter man to ask to come inside her home, she had an officer of the law standing inside her home...her home that had clean floors and dinner cooking and two clean health boys. I left my bedroom door open so that he could see that my bed was made and I wished he would notice that there were not shoes and backpacks all over the floor.

I wanted to prove to myself that it really was okay to have a stranger inside your house, because their judgement of you would be good, even though he was coming to collect money for a debt that I had not paid.

When I came out with my wallet, I discovered I actually had $23, and asked him if I had to give him my extra three bucks. He blushed and hung his head and said, "Yeah, I am sorry I have to take all the money that you have."

Jake stood next to me and asked what was going on, and I reached out and brushed his hair: "this is from a credit card that I didn't pay many years ago and they are here to get their money. It is my fault--I am responsible for the money."

When I said it, I really meant and I--the woman who is afraid to talk to people in the grocery store because she might say the wrong thing--realized that I was telling the absolute truth, and accepting responsibility relieved me of the burden of shame.

The officer wrote me a receipt for my $23 and told us that he hated this part of the job--taking people's money--and that he was having to do it more and more because many people were defaulting on credit cards. He had also defaulted on a credit card, and he gave me paperwork to file for exemptions--I can keep $750 worth of furniture, and $1000 of jewelery and my tools.

He left on a friendly note, letting me know that there were ways around having my personal stuff taken and as he left I shut the door and understood that the woman who had panic attacks at the thought of answering the phone because it might be a bill collector was perfectly calm and collected when the sheriff came to my house to get some of what I owe.

My boys, of course, were a little bit shaken up. I suppose that having the cops inside of your home is disturbing for a youngster, probably one of those memories that get so permanently embedded that not even Alzheimer will shake them free.

"What are YOU going to DO?" my daughter asked when we set down to dinner using that voice of panic that I recognize so well because it uses the same tone as the thoughts inside my own head.

I think it is telling that she didn't ask me if I had called her dad to see what plan her parents had devised. She wanted to know specifically what I was going to do, because she holds me personally responsible for all of the big problems in life. She holds her dad responsible for acquiescing to her desires, and she holds me accountable for making sure that home and hearth are secured.

The woman who could barely make herself walk into a parent teacher conference set at the dinner table with the sum of her daughter's worry and she realized that her daughter was looking to her for a path. She is learning how to be a woman from me, and her disappointment in me stems from the fact that she believes that it is possible for her mother to take care of everything because SHE will be able to take care of everything in the future.

I told my daughter that I was going to fill out the exemption paperwork so we wouldn't lose our furniture or our computer and I told her I would let them have the four TV's that were in the garage.

"They are all broken" she said.

"I know. They can also have the refrigerator and the stove in the garage."

"Neither works"

Jake chimed in, "They can also have the hide-a-bed and the two recliners!"

I looked out the window at the stuff piled in the backyard and began naming things that were in less than perfect condition--"They can take the red transAm, that must be worth something, and the trailer and those two lawnmowers."

She brooded as only a sixteen year old girl can, her disappointment stinging my nostrils and making my eyes water.I have felt the weight of her panic and disappointment in me for losing my job, she was most thrilled when I was earning enough money to support this family. She liked to take me for drivers so that I could tell her about the insurance, the 401k savings plan and the commissions that were automatically added to America Express cards. Many times during my physical illness, she asked me why I wasn't back to work yet and many times she asked me what we were going to do if I lost my job.

The fact is, the sheriff would have shown up last night even if I had not gotten sick and lost my job--but I wouldn't have been there to greet him, I would have been at work and the children would have been here alone. The truth is that even if I had stayed my course that I set on Independence Day, Pay Up day was still coming.

Last night, after feeding my kids brownies and washing the dinner dishes the woman who has been hiding inside house lying to herself when she believes that she needs to start taking pills to balance her endomorphines so that she can function in society.

I am not panicky and anxious and despondent and sleepy because of something that is imbalanced inside of my body--

It isn't something that I need to start taking to make me the woman I want my daughter to someday be--it is the things that I need to stop taking.

~I Prefer Hermit~

After my youngest son was born, I went through a phase where I didn't want to leave the house because I didn't want people to see me. I remember having logical conversations with myself and trying to figure out WHY I didn't want people to see me.

I told myself that I didn't have any disgusting deformities that would make people gasp and point, I did't have a speech impediment that would cause me to say foul things to people, I did't smell bad. In a nutshell, there was nothing wrong with me that would make me a sideshow if I were to buy groceries.

I went to great lengths to stay in the house for an entire fall and winter, and I did so in very devious ways. One more than one occasion, I let air out of my car tire so that I couldn't go to the grocery store, I made up grating sounds on the car that made it impossible for me to stick my babies in the car.

I was very good at never stepping out of my door, and the more days I stayed inside, the more panic I felt at the idea of going anywhere. Even to the mail box at the end of the driveway. The pinnacle of my avoidance of people was the day that the meter reader came to read the meter, and I hid in my bedroom closet.

It was in that closet that I realized my cheese wasn't even close to my cracker and I reminded myself that I had no reason to be afraid of the meter reader--I didn't have a meth lab that he would discover, my children were not being abused, there weren't stolen goods in my house.

Looking back, I have always assumed I was suffering from Post Partum Depression and that time of the crazies was done and gone. In fact, I have spent most of the last eight years very much in public, where anyone driving by could see me. I went to school, I found a job in a cubicle, I made friends, I went places, I went to the grocery store everyday!

The creepies snuck up on me this time, and it started with the telephone attached by a three foot long cord that tethered me to a computer. Talking on the phone has never been one of my things, but I did it for nine hours a day and I was pretty damn good at my job.

It started slowly, with just a jolt of panic when the calls were piled up back to back. There were days and days when I could answer the same question, offer the route excuse, sell the mandatory product. But then, one day, the jolt of panic happened with each beep of every call.

In my cubicle, with my headset and my earnest attempt to sell a product to a person who was trying to cancel their service, I was acutely aware that all of my calls were recorded and that there were people walking around with headsets listening to me at anytime--all the time.

I did talk to that panic and explain it didn't matter because I was great at my job, and they were probably recording me specifically to use as a training aid.

Then came the viral infection that landed me in bed for a couple weeks and by day ten the idea of leaving the house caused my heart to pound, my brow to sweat and my chest to heave.

And now I am Unemployee of the Month and once again I have no desire to leave my house and I make up ingenious excuse why I can not: "I am painting the basement. I am looking for a job. I am cleaning the house. I am babysitting someone's kid. I am Writing. I don't have enough gas to go anywhere."

I recognize where I am right now, even though I haven't hid in the close from the meter man. I know the panic that wiggles in when I must go somewhere.

Yesterday was my children's Parent teacher Conference, and I told them all that I couldn't go--to busy painting and writing and not enough gas and it would be just fine if I didn't go because they are all doing great.

Baby Girl insisted because she wanted the extra credit, and she cried and begged so that I shut down the panic voice and put on clean clothes and brushed my hair and reminded myself that there was nothing odious about me, the crazy was all inside and no one would notice.

When we arrived at the High School, the parking lot was packed and I suggested we just go home, since there was no place to park. Kate explained she was doing so good at school and she wanted me to hear it from her teachers, and she wanted them to see me so they would know where she got all of her good looks.

We found a spot and before getting out of the car I said, "I am currently experiencing a Social Anxiety Disorder and being around people makes me feel panicky."

"Get Over It" she replied.

Which is great advice, that I shall work on.

But between now and then, if you see me in public and I don't acknowledge you, it isn't because I am ignoring you. It is because I didn't notice you, I am concentrating on what it is that I need so that I can get back to my house.

If you can't get ahold of me on the phone--it isn't personal, I am avoiding everyone. To be honest, I have turned off my ringer because when the phone rings I get the jolt of panic and I would prefer not to feel that.

The root of this problem is obvious: I don't want to talk about how I am doing. I don't want to admit that my degree is in an envelope in my closet and I am not doing anything with it. I don't want to have a conversation about my habit of staying inside of my house until I gets dark, I don't want you to know that the job hunt is not going well because not many people are looking to hire people who would prefer to be invisible.

~Twelve Boys~

I have three favorite things about this blog:

Before you can access it, you are warned about adult content and you have to acknowledge that you understand you are about to trip into some adult language. This means my kids can't access it from their account, or from their school.

When I was a compulsive blogger years ago, I ran into some flack because of the things that I was writing about the people in my lives. It isn't that I was writing anything particularly salacious, just that they were being mentioned at all, especially not in a less than favorable light.

My girl wasn't thrilled when her teacher read the blog and laughed about something that I had written about her. my husband was adamant that I not write about him ever--EVER--and my outer family gave me suggestions to write about them and began prefacing every conversation with the words, "before I tell you this, you have to promise not to put it on your blog."

Towards the end of my blogging 'career', I removed content per request of people that I love and I began to think about privacy. Afteral, the people in my life do have the right to privacy, and I can understand that some of the stories that I shared were pretty personal and I didn't expressly get permission to write them. I agreed with my kids when they said it wasn't cool for me to write about their tantrum or growing pain in a public forum where their classmates could access it.

I stopped blogging when I realized that I could really only write about myself, and what is of interest about me if I omit talking about the people with whom I interact?

My second favorite thing about this blog is that it has been dead and gone for so long that nobody is reading it, it gives me the freedom to write without believing I am offending someone that I am close to.

And now I can commence with writing a blog that has adult content and thus, it is banned from all school computers, most work computers and certainly my home computer. I can write about anything I want...

and I want to write about those twelve boys at the boys camp. I spent an afternoon driving in the mountains with my dad, and he asked about the boys camp experience and I realized that I had never really talked about those twelve boys with my father. I always planned to write that story--because it is a good one about a twenty-one year old girl who goes to work at a camp for abused and neglected children believing she is going to make a difference.

I spent two summers and a winter with those boys, and I always meant to write about them, but I was reluctant because telling my story meant revealing their story--and I didn't feel as though I had the right to violate their privacy. Now that twenty years have passed, it seems okay to talk about them--wherever they are, they are far removed from who they were at the ages of 12-17.



My third favorite thing about writing this blog is that I am writing at all and that I can legitimately say to my kids, "Give me a moment of Privacy, I am WRITING!"