Regular Kids and Then Some

Do you think most families believe themselves entirely ordinary most of the time? I know we did - the entire neighborhood of us. I know I did within my family. Of course, I was four. I had no perspective regarding what 'normal' looked like or was. I just assumed that I was it. There is a line in literature taken from a book titled, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing that says it best. It reads:
"It is ever the lot of children to accept their circumstances as universal, and their particularities as general.”
That's one of the best sentences I know of. And it's so true.

From the perspective of my forties, I can see how flawed and blissfully ignorant my viewpoint was. As well, I am fully aware of how delicate yet opaque the protection of this viewpoint is; not only to me but to all kids and maybe including their parents. In pictures and likely in most behavior and thought we were so normal.

We fought lions in the front yards of our neighbors.We built fortresses behind the protection of parents houses. We sailed on voyages of discovery. We made up games where we could be normal tyrannical and flawed grown ups.We commiserated defeat with our leader and rushed to try again. We were explorers to parts unknown. We formed unions and allegiances. We were just kids; hangin' out, going to school, being friends with people around us and playing all the time.
We didn't know that inside the houses of our neighbors lived lives that we could never have imagined; lives that even the most informed gossip columnists couldn't predict.

Granted, normalcy did exist, but it did so along social immorality, domestic abuse, political struggles, race riots, psychological turmoils and addictions galore. They all had to live somewhere. Some of them even lived in my house. I just thought it was all normal.

Maybe it is. Maybe it still is and it's still my perspective that's not focused or defined.
I mean . . . when I think about all the kids that came out of our little neighborhood and find that there are teachers, managers, bankers and firemen I truly believe that I lived a normal life. But there are also psychotic geniuses, disturbed social outcasts, full-fledged convicted felons and most likely members of organized crime syndicates by now. They all seemed pretty normal when we shared a neighborhood.

Miss Match

I remember this dress of my Mothers. I remember seeing it hanging in her closet as a little girl. She made it from a stiff fabric of turquoise and lime green. It was almost a damask-type of material, heavy and thick. The dress was trimmed in soft, aqua velvet ribbons. The fabric was almost shiny or sparkly but not quite. The ribbons were dull and smooth. I still have those beads she's wearing. They were (are) a sort of light aqua blue too. They were the opposite of the dress, very unrefined, uneven, unsparkly and unsophisticated. I was never sure why she chose them to go with this dress except that they were the perfect color. Nothing else about the pair felt right though. Like many things in her life, they were opposites in every way, but she put them together anyway. Her most prevalent and glaring pairings always included one part extreme sophistication, the other part exquisite cottage art. Her way of illustrating how she felt in her world, I suppose. She would have been happy a medieval earth-mother living in the forests with the druids, but life demanded that she be a member of the working middle class and the wife of a notable member of the community. A sophisticated and rough-hewn piece of the same puzzle.

It's funny. I remember the dress. I remember the jewelry. I have no recollection of the person wearing them. My Mother - happy. Looking at this picture of my Mother makes me feel the same way that I do when I think of this dress and those beads together. They just don't match.
I only remember my Mom as a worried and simultaneously absent participant in our lives. She worried endlessly - about everything. Her fear grew as I grew older. At first it was just concern, then it nervousness, then it became depressed worry and a few years ago it blossomed into full fledged paranoia. Finally it left her essentially unable to concentrate on any matronly task long enough to complete it or care that it remained undone regardless of whom might be affected by it's incompleteness. Big tasks, like 'dinner' or 'being at home' were most days just ignored because they presented too much to worry about. It was so much easier to just go shopping and forget about the hard choices in lieu of the much easier ones.

I don't remember her as chatty or friendly or gregarious - but I do remember her attempts to be. Again, constructing misplaced aliegances to take the place of relationships with actual family members. They were so much easier to navigate when the participants didn't demand her attention every minute of the day as children and spouses tend to do.

Christmas began at 10 o'clock

Now that the holidays are over, I can spend some time - as I always do - thinking about how I wish they were different. I wish there were family around, I wish I could go to bed at nine and wake up with everything done, people coming to visit and have it all happen so effortlessly like I thought it used to as a kid. I thought a lot of things 'just happened' as a kid. What did I know?

Well, I knew enough to know that there was no Santa. I knew that my Mom and Rudolph couldn't possibly have the same hand-writing and I knew that if that were the case then it was just as likely that my Dad and Santa also had identical handwriting. I knew that came at 10 o'clock on Christmas Eve. After we got home from Christmas Eve service, we got ready for bed. We wouldn't have dreamed of opening anything on Christmas Eve despite that there were always a few things under the tree. Gifts we'd chosen for one another. I heard him every year. Once we were in bed - too afraid of repercussions to risk getting up to sneak any sort of peaks - Christmas began.
The back door would slide open in it's aluminum track, there would be footsteps out into the yard right past my window and then the barn door would creek open after the clang of the padlock snapping open against the jam. A few minutes later, all these noises would happen in reverse and they would end with a great bustle of paper bags, and boxes. My Dad loved to put things in boxes. He still does.

Santa? Yeah right. I heard the unraveling of reams of tissue paper, the Scotch tape ripping, scissors being set down heavily on the wooden table and ribbons buzzing as they were curled along the blade of a table knife . . . . and martinis. Don't forget the martinis. It all started at 10 o'clock sharp - those weren't no elves.

In the morning there was always more gifts than there was space around the tree. They spilled onto the floor and blocked the doorway. There were so many colors and so many sizes and just so many, many.

One year, as legend has it, I woke up around 4am. I was probably around eight years old. Of course it was Christmas morning so waking my parents up early was allowed this day. I did just that and was summarily sent back to my room - to bed. My Dad finally had to wake me up around eight o'clock when my sister and brother were out of every last shread of patience. It became the family joke at Christmas. How early was I going to wake or how late would I sleep? The one who couldn't wait making everyone wait for her. The one running the show in her own way.

Why do you think my sister is so pleased that I'm screaming? Maybe she just knew I'd be trouble. Or maybe she was just happy to know that I wasn't actually in charge of everything.

Well, someone had to be.