10 DOUBLE-SIDES PAGES OF A GROCERY LIST
I come home for Spring Break and it's sixty degrees and sunny,
weather conditions that never happen at school until May, April if we're lucky.
I dress in shorts, a bikini top, and a jacket that I leave unzipped over my barely clad torso,
drape an old bath towel over the still dead brown and yellow grass
and sit down to let the sun dry my just-washed hair.
Looking around in the early afternoon sun,
I can see my whole backyard, and into the yards of other houses.
Maybe because it's winter, maybe because there are less tress than then,
but I remember feeling more secluded when I was younger.
The sparse grouping of trees
over by the fence that lines the yards of those houses on the street that intersects with mine --
it used to be a forest when I was little,
full of dangers, like poison ivy and yellow jackets.
The right corner used to be a near-magical place,
surrounded by those trees and bushes
and filled with a bright emerald green spongy growth
that I would think of as a type of clover.
But the bushes have been beaten down by careless lawn caretakers, the weather, and wandering vines
that are the only greenery there now amidst the skeleton branches.
There's a plastic bag stuck in the bare bush that used to bloom white and lavendar lilacs
and I can't get to it because of all the leafless brambles in my way.
I definitely can't reach the very corner of the yard
where I hid one day in seventh grade when I cut school for the first time.
I had told my parents I'd catch the bus around the corner
but I ran around back and hid behind the bushes until everyone had left for work and school.
A latch-key kid since third grade, I let myself in the house
until it was time for my brother to come home from high school,
then went back in after my bus had passed by,
hoping he hadn't noticed that it hadn't stopped.
And no one ever knew because they hadn't even called home
to say I wasn't in school that day,
because my best friend was in the same homeroom as me
and that was the year people started confusing us for each other,
even though the only physical characteristics we had in common were our height
and the broad label of 'blonde' for our hair color.
But hers, surrounding her round Irish face,
was a thick pale ash-blonde
while mind was a dark golden color that lay more limply against my narrow, oval face
that reflected my Slavic heritage.
No one would mistake me for her now,
especially since we haven't been friends since tenth grade when I stopped talking to her.
She developed into a big, bossomy girl while I stayed slender everywhere,
and her hair remained the same while mine grew darker,
except for times like now when I'm outside and it becomes bleached brighter.
And it's become warm enough now,
in this sun, for me to take off my jacket and lay with my back bare
except for the strap that ties over my spine and lets its ends drift over my side,
like streamers lying limp over the edge of a table after the party is over.
There are sounds of a hammer hitting something
because the neighbors are always redoing their houses these days,
and kids home from school are playing -- I can see and hear them clearly.
And there were never any kids in those yards when I was a child.
But my best friend then lived the next block over
and sometimes we'd meet in the middle and walk back to her house,
filled with older brothers, one of whom was white, like her mother,
while she was Hispanic, like her father.
I didn't understood why John was so much older and paler than she
and I hadn't even known she was what could be labelled as 'Hispanic,'
a word whose meaning I didn't understand until we discussed ethnicities in middle school.
I knew 'white' and 'black' but what actually meant something to me
was 'nice' and 'mean,' or 'smart' and 'dumb,'
and the colors didn't really matter for those distinctions.
There was a boy in AHAP, the program for us 'gifted' children,
who was a little darker than me,
and maybe he was smart but he was in the special ed classes
and had an aide always with him, a woman towards the end of middle-age
who trained puppies to be seeing-eye dogs.
She came with us to AHAP and was one of my only friends
in the small group of us who travelled once a week to the middle school for our special classes.
His last name was Luna, and when I learned that meant 'moon,'
I thought it was beautiful.
But everyone called him Kyle Lunatic because of how he acted,
and I never knew why he was that way until the word 'Tourette's' was whispered around the high school.
By then, I knew about Tourette's from t.v., and I learned more about it
and other conditions of the mind in the psychology courses I take now in college.
And I think everyone has something wrong with them, to one degree or another;
I might have some aspects of ADHD and a Peter Pan Complex,
the first because one thought won't stay in my mind and my body can't sit still,
and the other because I don't want to get old and have everything go downhill,
the way my professors and developmental psych text book told me it will.
I wish too often to be a kid again, when these trees did isolate me from the world;
when things were more simple;
when my cats' deaths didn't mean as much loss, and hurt so deeply,
just enough that I cried a bit and swore I would always hate the number eight,
because that was how many months old my first cat who died was when she was hit by a speeding driver.
But now I know that however tragic her young death was,
it pales in comparison to the loss of one who has been a constant presence for nearly eleven years,
his beloved life stolen away by lung tumors
we never even knew were there until he was dying of them.
His freshly dug grave is over by the left side of the yard, next to hers
and a few others who have died through the years.
There's just enough shadow from the trees in the next yard over to cover them,
while I sit here in the sun still shining strongly.
And now that my body is upright and the wind hits my bare skin to goosebump it,
I consider going inside.
But I can't because I hear my older brother shouting at someone,
the brother who was home for me in seventh grade
but whose presence I can no longer stand to be in.
But I want to go in and put this stream-of-consciousness somewhere
other than a grocery list pad three inches wide.
It's not done and it's not edited but maybe I'll post it online
and hope someone in one of those internet writing communities I belong to
will say something about it.
And that concept must seem so strange to even recent generations past,
who didn't grow up with the internet as such a daily part of their lives.
But, I wonder, is it really so different from past centuries
when all the great writers would gather over their brandy's and ports and pipes?
And is the past really so dissimilar to now?
I know I've changed in my life, and my yard and schools and friends have changed,
but is the timeline of my life that different from someone who lived, say, a century or two ago?
I learned in one of my psychology books that even though people's lives can exist at extremes with each other's,
everyone's happiness is at a similar level
because our minds adapt to whatever situation we're placed in.
So I know that one day, I'll adapt to the loss of my cat,
and to the losses I know will come in the future.
And I'll adapt to the changes in my neighborhood and home, and in my life,
and that there will always be changes to adapt to.
But maybe that's the beauty of life:
it always changes.
weather conditions that never happen at school until May, April if we're lucky.
I dress in shorts, a bikini top, and a jacket that I leave unzipped over my barely clad torso,
drape an old bath towel over the still dead brown and yellow grass
and sit down to let the sun dry my just-washed hair.
Looking around in the early afternoon sun,
I can see my whole backyard, and into the yards of other houses.
Maybe because it's winter, maybe because there are less tress than then,
but I remember feeling more secluded when I was younger.
The sparse grouping of trees
over by the fence that lines the yards of those houses on the street that intersects with mine --
it used to be a forest when I was little,
full of dangers, like poison ivy and yellow jackets.
The right corner used to be a near-magical place,
surrounded by those trees and bushes
and filled with a bright emerald green spongy growth
that I would think of as a type of clover.
But the bushes have been beaten down by careless lawn caretakers, the weather, and wandering vines
that are the only greenery there now amidst the skeleton branches.
There's a plastic bag stuck in the bare bush that used to bloom white and lavendar lilacs
and I can't get to it because of all the leafless brambles in my way.
I definitely can't reach the very corner of the yard
where I hid one day in seventh grade when I cut school for the first time.
I had told my parents I'd catch the bus around the corner
but I ran around back and hid behind the bushes until everyone had left for work and school.
A latch-key kid since third grade, I let myself in the house
until it was time for my brother to come home from high school,
then went back in after my bus had passed by,
hoping he hadn't noticed that it hadn't stopped.
And no one ever knew because they hadn't even called home
to say I wasn't in school that day,
because my best friend was in the same homeroom as me
and that was the year people started confusing us for each other,
even though the only physical characteristics we had in common were our height
and the broad label of 'blonde' for our hair color.
But hers, surrounding her round Irish face,
was a thick pale ash-blonde
while mind was a dark golden color that lay more limply against my narrow, oval face
that reflected my Slavic heritage.
No one would mistake me for her now,
especially since we haven't been friends since tenth grade when I stopped talking to her.
She developed into a big, bossomy girl while I stayed slender everywhere,
and her hair remained the same while mine grew darker,
except for times like now when I'm outside and it becomes bleached brighter.
And it's become warm enough now,
in this sun, for me to take off my jacket and lay with my back bare
except for the strap that ties over my spine and lets its ends drift over my side,
like streamers lying limp over the edge of a table after the party is over.
There are sounds of a hammer hitting something
because the neighbors are always redoing their houses these days,
and kids home from school are playing -- I can see and hear them clearly.
And there were never any kids in those yards when I was a child.
But my best friend then lived the next block over
and sometimes we'd meet in the middle and walk back to her house,
filled with older brothers, one of whom was white, like her mother,
while she was Hispanic, like her father.
I didn't understood why John was so much older and paler than she
and I hadn't even known she was what could be labelled as 'Hispanic,'
a word whose meaning I didn't understand until we discussed ethnicities in middle school.
I knew 'white' and 'black' but what actually meant something to me
was 'nice' and 'mean,' or 'smart' and 'dumb,'
and the colors didn't really matter for those distinctions.
There was a boy in AHAP, the program for us 'gifted' children,
who was a little darker than me,
and maybe he was smart but he was in the special ed classes
and had an aide always with him, a woman towards the end of middle-age
who trained puppies to be seeing-eye dogs.
She came with us to AHAP and was one of my only friends
in the small group of us who travelled once a week to the middle school for our special classes.
His last name was Luna, and when I learned that meant 'moon,'
I thought it was beautiful.
But everyone called him Kyle Lunatic because of how he acted,
and I never knew why he was that way until the word 'Tourette's' was whispered around the high school.
By then, I knew about Tourette's from t.v., and I learned more about it
and other conditions of the mind in the psychology courses I take now in college.
And I think everyone has something wrong with them, to one degree or another;
I might have some aspects of ADHD and a Peter Pan Complex,
the first because one thought won't stay in my mind and my body can't sit still,
and the other because I don't want to get old and have everything go downhill,
the way my professors and developmental psych text book told me it will.
I wish too often to be a kid again, when these trees did isolate me from the world;
when things were more simple;
when my cats' deaths didn't mean as much loss, and hurt so deeply,
just enough that I cried a bit and swore I would always hate the number eight,
because that was how many months old my first cat who died was when she was hit by a speeding driver.
But now I know that however tragic her young death was,
it pales in comparison to the loss of one who has been a constant presence for nearly eleven years,
his beloved life stolen away by lung tumors
we never even knew were there until he was dying of them.
His freshly dug grave is over by the left side of the yard, next to hers
and a few others who have died through the years.
There's just enough shadow from the trees in the next yard over to cover them,
while I sit here in the sun still shining strongly.
And now that my body is upright and the wind hits my bare skin to goosebump it,
I consider going inside.
But I can't because I hear my older brother shouting at someone,
the brother who was home for me in seventh grade
but whose presence I can no longer stand to be in.
But I want to go in and put this stream-of-consciousness somewhere
other than a grocery list pad three inches wide.
It's not done and it's not edited but maybe I'll post it online
and hope someone in one of those internet writing communities I belong to
will say something about it.
And that concept must seem so strange to even recent generations past,
who didn't grow up with the internet as such a daily part of their lives.
But, I wonder, is it really so different from past centuries
when all the great writers would gather over their brandy's and ports and pipes?
And is the past really so dissimilar to now?
I know I've changed in my life, and my yard and schools and friends have changed,
but is the timeline of my life that different from someone who lived, say, a century or two ago?
I learned in one of my psychology books that even though people's lives can exist at extremes with each other's,
everyone's happiness is at a similar level
because our minds adapt to whatever situation we're placed in.
So I know that one day, I'll adapt to the loss of my cat,
and to the losses I know will come in the future.
And I'll adapt to the changes in my neighborhood and home, and in my life,
and that there will always be changes to adapt to.
But maybe that's the beauty of life:
it always changes.