Part-Time Daughter

...been thinking a lot about joan didion, how much i admire her...the ability she has for writing what she means and not being afraid of what comes afterward...if only we all had the courage to own what we say...i suppose that's why i write...to take ownership for my actions--no matter how erroneous--and to point out the absurdities of others...i live under the assumption that others will also realize their erroneous behavior...this is not always the case...

...i've written about my only aunt privately, never had anything about her published (to date)...but over the last year i've done a massive amount of writing about my childhood and my aunt keeps coming up...i've never quite known how to publicize that writing...i suppose i've been waiting for "the right moment" and have finally realized there is not a "right moment" for truth...it is what it is...

...joan didion's words: "We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience."

...and: "In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of sayinglisten to me, see it my way, change your mind. It's an aggressive, even hostile act. You can disguise its qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions--with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather than stating--but there's no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer's sensibility on the reader's most private space."

...and my own: 

Part-Time Daughter

Sheila is late, as usual. But this time—instead of delaying Christmas dinner, or the Easter egg hunt, or blowing out candles—we can’t postpone why we're here: to plan Grandma’s funeral. We’re meeting with the Director of the mortuary at 11am. It’s 11:05 and he’s standing in the lobby with Mom and me—that strange piped-in organ music coming from somewhere, the smell of formaldehyde filling my pores. A smell so familiar because of the visits Grandma and I took to Texas to bury her sisters one by one, then her eighty-six-year-old mother. A smell that makes me think she should be standing here, tapping her foot and smoking a cigarette and saying, “Let’s just start without Sheila."

The Universe Speaks

 ...my mother had two miscarriages in her young life--the first between me and her middle child, the second between the middle and the last...after that birth, she decided to call it quits...and good thing too...how might she have survived with more than three girls? what if she'd had a son? what legacy might she pass along to him? her gut instinct was correct...

...i've known only one friend who's had a miscarriage...her story is not mine to write, but i will say that the incident ruined our friendship...the fact that i had a healthy child, that i tried to console her, encouraged her to try again or adopt if necessary somehow drove a wedge between us...she once admitted to me that seeing me with my daughter was painful to her...admittedly, i didn't understand that pain...but i wanted to be sympathetic, so i left the friendship as she wished...

...yesterday, my husband and i spent four hours in the emergency room of our local hospital...granted i was only 5 weeks along and we'd not told very many people, but i still felt as if i'd somehow disappointed a huge cosmic force...i'm not a religious person, so i don't say things like "god is watching" or "jesus is the man with the plan" but i do think that the universe is a powerful force, that there are reasons for things, that spirits of those we once loved watch over us...

...i was in my car driving home from work the previous day...i'd been spotting blood...nothing to worry about, my doctor said, just implantation bleeding...but i knew...i knew it the way i knew i was pregnant the day after we'd conceived...yes, i'm one of those freaky women who "knows" her body...still, i began to speak to my dead grandmother...she's been gone five years and this coming monday, january 16, would have been her 82nd birthday...the smell of her cigarette smoke and D'ior Poison perfume filled my car and i said, "i think i'm a good mother...do what you can to keep this one safe...i want another baby"...the next morning i was in the e.r. ...and i contemplated the ambiguity of that one-sided conversation...

...we'll try again soon...but i'm hesitant to make trying for a second child my third job (or my first or second if my priorities are a little screwed up for your liking)...my instincts tell me that the one beautiful child i have is more than enough...and i'm hesitant to mourn this loss too deeply...it is not the defining moment of my womanhood...my mother has proven to me that great things can come from tremendous loss, but that listening to our instincts is equally wise...

Codebreaker

...one of my all-time favorite movies is The Birdcage...yes (you pretentious movie snob), the American version (big gasp and then an equally large sigh from said movie snob)...

...in the film, Armand and Albert are having a fight (big plot twist there, right?) when Armand suggests that Albert is tired and needs a few days off of work...to which Albert responds, ''You look tired' means you look old. And, 'You look rested' means you've had collagen"...

...i grew up in southern california...you may have heard of it--land of tit soup and surgically altered body parts that outlive the body...so i understood Albert immediately...no one ever says what they actually mean...
...coded language is pretty common...whether or not the message is intended to be coded is beside the point--we all "code" language in our own ways:

Boss: "How was your weekend?"
Employee: "Fine."
...what the employee wants to say is, "I spent my two days muddling through all the shit you piled on me on Friday because you were 'too busy' playing with your iphone and texting about your upcoming vampire dinner theater party"...

...another example: