LJ Idol Week 3 - Smile
My smile is like a corsage that your date brings you for the graduation dance, or that you wear when you're the mother of the bride. You pin it on your best dress or pantsuit and for a while it's fresh, orchids announcing their expense, roses on the cusp of budding, lilies little trumpets of celebration. They all fade. You unpin them from your bodice and throw them in the trash, or if the occasion has meant something important, you dry them, store them with a programme, with photos, with a cork from that champagne bottle. I wish I could store a genuine smile in a keepsake box, a smile from the days before that day in June dimmed it forever, made it a gesture I tack to my face, a rictus that causes me guilt.
All days, especially on the 28th of each month, I smile, for my family, for the customers in the store I work in, for the few other people that I see. I keep my teeth polished to a whiteness that advertisements would envy, remembering years of braces, retainers, my fear of dental chairs. And in bathroom stalls and my bedroom en suite I let it crumple, sit a moment longer to rest my aching face, covet my free time when my family is at work or at school and I needn't pretend to be happy, and can curl up to our large dog who sympathizes with my woe; I sit on the high chair of the lab at work with my face in my hands and pray for a respite between customers, when everyone is asleep I put a pillow over my head at night and silently weep, smile long gone, a night of evil dreaming and restless wakefulness awaiting me. I'd rather nightmares and insomnia than the pretense of a smile.
There's no one I can talk to. That's the major problem. No one who truly understands. People have taken sides as if the issue is a football match, or more accurately, a darts game, and I'm the target glued there waiting for everyone to throw a barbed arrow my way. I suppose it is a blessing that most people are supportive, telling me that asking our daughter to move out was the best thing to do, that her temper, her abuse of our younger daughter could not be tolerated, and that she had to go. They're right. We listened. All that advice helped us make our decision and stick to it. No one knows that being part of that decision was the hardest thing I've ever done, that I feel like I was pinned to a dartboard with arrows of kindness and advice kindly meant. I'd rather be tied to the tracks and waiting for the express train than feeling like I am now; at least with the morning train you know that there's an end to it.
Other people, especially my father, think that my husband and I have made the worst decision that any parents could possibly make. Abandoned by his own parents in war-time Britain when he was only eleven, he spent our daughter's teenage years actively and avidly poisoning her mind against her parents, we who had committed the twin crimes of poverty and obesity, and now that she has been cast aside, funds her university education, and will do so, I believe, until she finishes law school in several years' time. His arrows and darts are ones of utter contempt and hatred. He is blind to the faults of his granddaughter. If she does have problems it is because we did not raise her properly. He does not speak a word to me now. In many ways it is a relief.
I feel guilty when I find something funny. Reading Terry Pratchett yesterday, there was an hilarious passage at the beginning of Guards! Guards! I shared it with my husband, who knew the lines by heart, and then realized that I was laughing while my daughter might be hungry, lonely, alone. My son and I watch Two and a half Men regularly; while I laugh at Charley Harper, and his humorous relationship with his nephew, I find myself stopping, wondering what being shown the door by her parents has taught Diana about relationships, whether she'll ever be able to trust enough to have a partner, a marriage, a child, close friends, or if all of her relationships will be superficial. Smiling at babies in the mall where I work, which is something that I simply cannot help, as I adore babies, reminds me that my daughter was once small enough to hold in my arms, and that if I had it all to do again I would. Differently. Better. The smile dims from my face then, and I feel sad as the mother or father wheels their baby away, as I want their as-yet unblemished future, their chances.
November will be a doubly difficult month for me, I think. My daughter, my Diana, will turn twenty on November 19th, and November 28th will mark the 5th month since the last time I saw her, the last time I hugged her, looked upon her lovely face, said goodbye. I cannot be with her as she begins a new decade, she would not, anyway, want me near, not believe that I love her, that I miss her, that I want to see her again more than I want to visit the Hagia Sophia or Olduvai Gorge. Every day, I use that psychological superglue and paste on a smile for my customers, for my family, for random passersby and shop-keepers, for I fear to show anyone the emptiness that lies behind the white teeth and the neatly lipsticked grimace that is meant to be a smile.
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This is my entry for Week 2 of therealljidol. Thank you for reading it. I would undoubtedly be back towards the end of the week to solicit votes for it!
I would like to dedicate this entry to my wonderful husband, John, for his continued support.
All days, especially on the 28th of each month, I smile, for my family, for the customers in the store I work in, for the few other people that I see. I keep my teeth polished to a whiteness that advertisements would envy, remembering years of braces, retainers, my fear of dental chairs. And in bathroom stalls and my bedroom en suite I let it crumple, sit a moment longer to rest my aching face, covet my free time when my family is at work or at school and I needn't pretend to be happy, and can curl up to our large dog who sympathizes with my woe; I sit on the high chair of the lab at work with my face in my hands and pray for a respite between customers, when everyone is asleep I put a pillow over my head at night and silently weep, smile long gone, a night of evil dreaming and restless wakefulness awaiting me. I'd rather nightmares and insomnia than the pretense of a smile.
There's no one I can talk to. That's the major problem. No one who truly understands. People have taken sides as if the issue is a football match, or more accurately, a darts game, and I'm the target glued there waiting for everyone to throw a barbed arrow my way. I suppose it is a blessing that most people are supportive, telling me that asking our daughter to move out was the best thing to do, that her temper, her abuse of our younger daughter could not be tolerated, and that she had to go. They're right. We listened. All that advice helped us make our decision and stick to it. No one knows that being part of that decision was the hardest thing I've ever done, that I feel like I was pinned to a dartboard with arrows of kindness and advice kindly meant. I'd rather be tied to the tracks and waiting for the express train than feeling like I am now; at least with the morning train you know that there's an end to it.
Other people, especially my father, think that my husband and I have made the worst decision that any parents could possibly make. Abandoned by his own parents in war-time Britain when he was only eleven, he spent our daughter's teenage years actively and avidly poisoning her mind against her parents, we who had committed the twin crimes of poverty and obesity, and now that she has been cast aside, funds her university education, and will do so, I believe, until she finishes law school in several years' time. His arrows and darts are ones of utter contempt and hatred. He is blind to the faults of his granddaughter. If she does have problems it is because we did not raise her properly. He does not speak a word to me now. In many ways it is a relief.
I feel guilty when I find something funny. Reading Terry Pratchett yesterday, there was an hilarious passage at the beginning of Guards! Guards! I shared it with my husband, who knew the lines by heart, and then realized that I was laughing while my daughter might be hungry, lonely, alone. My son and I watch Two and a half Men regularly; while I laugh at Charley Harper, and his humorous relationship with his nephew, I find myself stopping, wondering what being shown the door by her parents has taught Diana about relationships, whether she'll ever be able to trust enough to have a partner, a marriage, a child, close friends, or if all of her relationships will be superficial. Smiling at babies in the mall where I work, which is something that I simply cannot help, as I adore babies, reminds me that my daughter was once small enough to hold in my arms, and that if I had it all to do again I would. Differently. Better. The smile dims from my face then, and I feel sad as the mother or father wheels their baby away, as I want their as-yet unblemished future, their chances.
November will be a doubly difficult month for me, I think. My daughter, my Diana, will turn twenty on November 19th, and November 28th will mark the 5th month since the last time I saw her, the last time I hugged her, looked upon her lovely face, said goodbye. I cannot be with her as she begins a new decade, she would not, anyway, want me near, not believe that I love her, that I miss her, that I want to see her again more than I want to visit the Hagia Sophia or Olduvai Gorge. Every day, I use that psychological superglue and paste on a smile for my customers, for my family, for random passersby and shop-keepers, for I fear to show anyone the emptiness that lies behind the white teeth and the neatly lipsticked grimace that is meant to be a smile.
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This is my entry for Week 2 of therealljidol. Thank you for reading it. I would undoubtedly be back towards the end of the week to solicit votes for it!
I would like to dedicate this entry to my wonderful husband, John, for his continued support.