Spiraling

May 5, 2012

Spiraling

Falling

Trying to catch

Myself

Grab

for branches

Hope

for a safe landing.

…………………

The wind has been knocked out of me.

Breathe again.  

It may feel like white hot briquettes are being fanned in your chest. 

My heavy chest rises. 

Breathe.  Deeper this time.

Steve is talking to me.  I try to focus on the words.  Dinosaurs.  Bugging you.  In the back of your mind.

“Hey kid.”  The  sound of snapped fingers, I am back to him.  I look up, meet his eyes.

“Yes?”  I linger on the word, melt it from my mouth.

“You o.k.?”  He asks.

“I am.”  In that one moment I am certain of that.  I am fully aware of o.k.ness. 

Steve smiles, goes back to the orchestra of sound he creates in the kitchen.  Teaspoons dropping on each other in a drawer.  Oatmeal transferred from the cardboard Quaker Oats box into a plastic container.  The whisper of a cotton dishtowel over a porcelain plate.  Water running.  The sound of the tomato flesh giving way to serrated blade.

Crushing the Quaker Oat box, Steve comments “130 years and counting.  That’s cool…………..Way Cool.”

I am 57 and counting. 

Lately I’ve been hearing you, a little voice inside of me.

“I miss you.” 

“I miss you too.”  I answer. 

And I write to you.  Because you always understood, understand.  There is a mother tongue mine, to yours.

Today is Saturday.  I have not seen my dad for two weeks and one day. 

Yesterday, a text. 

Sherry, Dad would really like a visit from you.  Charge nurse said make your appointment with the social worker right away so you may do that.  Oh need to tell, still NO outside foods.  Didn’t want you to bring something all the way from and be told no by the nurses or docs.  So make that appointment, have that meeting and go to go to visiting.

I can’t do crazy.

It took me years to separate from it.

To shield you and your sister from it.

But did I really?  Shield you from it?

My past so much a part of me. 

Always driving me.  Away.  Always running.  Away.

Even in my dreams, I was not safe.

It was hard to see, experience the world around me as I gathered speed for lift off.  My focus always forward, on some point perceived better than where I was. 

I thought motherhood would come naturally.  Instinctively.

The instinct I felt was a fierce need to protect and love you.   What was in my heart I knew.  The rest I had to learn.

Did my mom ever feel the fierce need to protect and love me?  I can’t remember. She died five years ago, and I can’t ask her.

A question haunted me months after your death, did you know how much I love you, loved you from that first moment I knew your cells were dividing, creating you in my womb?

“You should have an abortion.” You yelled at me before you died two months later.

“You never wanted me.”  You sobbed at me through the phone.

“Where ever would you get that idea?”  I asked—core melting down.  “I chose to have you.  I never wanted anything more than to hold you in my arms and see your little face.”

I chose to have you.

Gathering speed for lift off. 

Hoping instinct was enough.

Weaning you from my breast when you were two.  Holding your hand crossing the street.  Making sure your vaccinations were current.  Feeding you, bathing you, clothing you, reading you stories, teaching you, teaching you, teaching you. 

All the time learning.

My focus on points ahead.  Lifting off.  Trying to pay attention to you and Erin.

Montessori, Head Start, Girl Scouts, Blue Birds, Seattle Girls Choir, Dance Lessons, Ski Lessons, Summer Camps.  Disney World, Disney Land, Disney Cruises.  Cabbage Patch Dolls, My Little Pony, Barbie Dolls and Barbie Clothes.

The first time I left you at a daycare.  I pulled out of the parking lot, you at the window lifting a blade of the venetian blind, sobbing.  I could see you calling for me—“Mommy” as a hand appeared, pulling you from the window.  You were two.

I made it up as I went.  Mothering.  With no experiences I wanted draw on.

You and your sister expecting me to know, to be an expert.

Me trying to be mother, father, grandma, grandpa.  Filling in all the blank spaces left behind.

I have not seen my dad for two weeks.  The grandpa you did not know.  The father I ran away to Remann Hall to get away from.  The father I reconciled with and grew close to in these later years for both of us.  Forgiveness has as been as good for me as it was for him. 

          Sherry, your dad would really like a visit from you.

I am tentative about walking back into crazy. 

I can’t do crazy anymore.

And now I have a choice.

Love you—thanks for watching over me.

Mom.

April 24, 2012

You can’t remember writing these, Weekend News, by Andrea. 

My dad remains in the Critical Coronary Care Unit at TG.

I won't go back.  I don't do crazy very well anymore.

So, I start the slow process of sifting through the legal size boxes in my garage.  The ones I found in your storage unit last summer.  The ones that smell of mice, mildew and aging ink.

I pull out a handful of files, a red binder with your school work.  I work on piecing together our history.  Yours and mine.

Andrea

9/19/88

1988, you were 6 years, 9 months.  You were learning penmanship, spelling, story telling. 

Sunday I woke up and played inside and then I Went to Sunday School then came home and played outside and had my onw club And went inand ate dinner and took a bath and Went to bed.

Andrea

In the same folder, one line written by me on a pink sheet of notebook paper in that same year, 1988, my second year of law school. 

“In my family, the poverty and abuse stops here.”

A folder marked Welfare, full of  Recipient Information, Action Requests, Planned Action Notices, Requests for Fair Hearing, an old Medical Coupon.

1984 I was a welfare mother.  Had been for a few years.  No child care.  No child support.  No job skills.  Minimum wage jobs. 

In January 1984, you’d just turned 2.  I walked onto the University of Washington campus for my first day of classes.  I was pushing you in front of me in your fold up stroller.

Recipient Information or Action Request

3-22-84

You must register with the Work Incentive Program (WIN) since you are out of the home on a regular basis while in school.   Please take enclosed registration form to the WIN Unit for completion at time of interview.  Call 872-6310 for an appointment for interview with WIN Worker.

Please register before 4-3-84 to avoid having your 5/84 warrant held.

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Notice of Planned Action

April 2, 1984

To date, we have not received verification that you have registered with WIN.  As you are a full time student, you are a mandatory registrant for WIN.  As such, your needs to be deleted from the grant, and grant will be just for the two children.  Please supply verification of registration by 4-12-84 to avoid being deleted from the grant.

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Recipient Information or Action Request

April 27, 1984

Hurrah! Hurrah! WIN now has a way to register people like you and put them in a special status so they can go to school even tho’ the program exceeds one year and not to re required to actively seek work while they are attempting to better themselves.  SO if you get registered with WIN and put in the special status you can continue your education and be on assistance also.

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Recipient Information or Action Request

February 26, 1985

When you began working last fall WIN somehow got the idea you were employed full time and off assistance.  Therefore they deregistered you from WIN.  This is in error.  You should’ve remained registered with them but in “student status” if possible.  Call WIN at 872-6310 make an appointment to re register and take enclosed form EMS 587 to the appointment.  Since you are a full time student, as defined by the school you attend, you can NOT be exempt as the primary caretaker of child(ren) under age 6.

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You can't be exempt.  That meant I had to quit school.  

With laser focus, I was going to school.  Nothing was going to stop me.  It was my only way out, my children's only way out of a past that continued to grab at my ankles, hold me up, trip me up.
 
My sister Kathy remarked I am only where I am today "because I worked the system."  Got something for free.

It is easier to believe in that than to believe someone can get someplace by working hard, never losing focus and something others call luck--I call synchronicity.  Taking risks.  Putting yourself out there and having faith it will work out.

A Notice of Award and Acceptance from the University of Washington.   Autumn, Winter, Spring 1984-1985.

College Work Study                                      2400

Univ Tuition Exemption                                 1308

National Direct Student Loan                      1100

Suggested Guaranteed Student Loan        2500

Estimated Pell Grant                                    1675

DAWN NEWSLETTER                    MAY 1987

Domestic Abuse Women’s Network.  DAWN.

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HARVARD BOUND

(see Page 4)

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Page 4

* * * * * *CONGRATULATIONS!!* * * * *

To Sherry C. for getting accepted to Harvard Law School.  Sherry has worked long and hard to achieve this goal.

Sherry has been a DAWN Volunteer for 3 years.  She attended the U of W (graduating in 3 ½ years!), served as Chairwoman for the Office of Minority Affairs Student Advisory Board, and was student representative on the ASUW Child Care Advisory Committee…AND she has two daughters Erin 11 and Andrea 5.

We are proud to have had Sherry as a DAWN Volunteer and will certainly miss her.  We know she will be very successful at Harvard and we are in full support of her next goal after graduation from Harvard – “I’d like to become the first woman President.”

Sherry, CONGRATULATIONS – and thank you for all you’ve done for DAWN.

In 1987 I had dreams of being the first woman president.  You wanted to become the Tooth Fairy.

I love you Andie.

Mom.