Family is so important. It’s where you come from. It’s who will care about you, no matter what. We all need that. We are lucky when we have that and now, my own daughter to be torn away from me by these terrible times. Why should she suffer and be called names and have stones thrown at her. But why should she have to leave to have a decent life.
I wasn’t at all sure of getting the rules right and (I) relegated myself to a subordinate tier in some popularity system that I sensed and continued to apply to all situations in my life. As uncomfortable as I might have been at school, I treasured my time away from home.
The life she crafts—unconsciously and with fierce determination—is Goddess at her core. She is that composite we never really see in our lifetime, that we often don’t trust to be there—that vast well-spring we might not even dare to be. But we are here, anyway, in spite of ourselves or with calculated assertion.
She was no longer a staff problem but, rather, a staff favorite. She turned her annoying judgments based on people’s looks and clothes into a non-stop stream of compliments to the female staff.
When my parents were still here for me, I asked and avoided, I listened and ignored. When I became a parent, all that programming poured from my firmware and wanted control. Would I live the legacy or change it?
From an early age, I gave my daughter expert coaching in ice-cream cone management. I knew iced cream would be an important part of her future, so I approached this as a valuable skill to be handed down and practiced. You circle the cone, working the meeting of cone and ice cream…
“Laura was a free spirit. I wasn’t like that; I was very traditional. But Laura could do anything. You’re like her that way. I admired her.” These words were from Madeleine, a friend of my Mom’s from Gimbals’ days, circa 1945. Laura the free spirit: I had never thought of her this way. I knew [...]
[H]er familiar expressions floated, untethered by subject. I would strenuously try to form and turn conversation. Stumbling through my own midlife tangles, I still needed nouns.
I’m barely taller than my half-sized cello. School lessons and orchestra begin in a week. It’s not so heavy, really, but it’s kind of hard to carry, especially since I live at the end of the school boundary. I walk it a mile to school and then back again. When the wind blows a lot I have to stop walking and throw my weight over the top to hold it down.
First, the sandwich bag was all wrong. It could be any plastic bag that found its way into the house, usually cradling my Dad’s stiff shirt or the Tribune. These bags were huge, unwieldy and, by the time they reached the cafeteria, sticky inside and out. The sandwich didn’t float out— often the bag would have to be removed from the sandwich.