Sunday, June 27, 2010

Turning the light on

I took my father to "A Prairie Home Companion" at Tanglewood last night. Now, my experiences at Tanglewood have almost always involved negotiating the lawn, rain or shine, hefting coolers of food and booze, warding off selective swarms of mosquitoes (and sometimes drunken men in golf shirts and boat shoes who have no idea that I'm stone sober and won't even look at a guy without ink).

And, of course, illicit activities in the maze, always.

I've never had a problem with my Tanglewood experience. The masses sit on the lawn and get loaded and watch their kids run around, the rich people sit in the shed on the hard ass wooden seats and thank god they are protected from the rain.

Well, last night, the tables were definitely turned...sort of. Dad and I were dressed the part, that's for sure. He even had the boat shoes ('course his red/brown leather skin and corn cob pipe detracted heavily from middle class milk toast guy). I wore a linen skirt, how "summer in the Berkshires."

But, we are who we are.

First stop on the way up to Stockbridge--the Clown. Yeah, you heard me, we hit McD's right out of the starting gate. After downing a million fries, half of which ended up on the floor of the van because of a "sharp" turn Dad took on the straightaway, we swung into Housy, quick stop at Aberdale's, and voila, Schmirnoff lemonade for all. Sipping the sickeningly sweet poison, we both lit up, he his pipe, me one of my last cigarettes ever (I am cold turkey as of tomorrow, god help us all) and he talked of a time, in the now ungraspable past, that he was young, and reckless, and lived just for the sake of filling his lungs with air.

After the stories were told (many of them I've heard at least 59 times, one for every year of my father's life), after we shifted into our wooden shed seats and guffawed at Garrison Keillor's wit and the melancholy chords of The Wailin' Jennys. After the show I finally took off my 4-inch wedge heels and strolled injun foot around the grounds, after all of that mixing and pretending and remembering, my dad turned to me. He looked almost like he felt sorry for me.
"You know, Chole, what the bitch about your thirties is?"
"I can probably guess at a few things," I said, taking a ridiculously endearing drag. "What is THE bitch, though?"
"In your thirties, you finally might know what you want. The bitch of it is, it takes so goddamn long to get it."
I didn't dare ask him how long. He's almost sixty. I didn't want to know. I still don't.
I told my friend the Sisco kid about this little piece of wisdom. He stopped short in his tracks, and suddenly, his face became wise like my father's. Leathered and wise.
"Well yeah," he said, casually flipping his cigarette in the air, "Because in your twenties you're just fumbling around in the dark, you don't even f*cking care what you run into, or that there's bottles all over the floor. But in your thirties, you're still f*cking tripping on things, bumping into things, the only difference is the light is on, and you still can't make your way around the room without hurting yourself."
I nodded my head, took a very, very long drag and shook my head at the truth of it all.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

My choice

Yeats, in his more meditative days wrote "The Choice."

"The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story's finished, what's the news?
In luck or out, the toil has left its mark;
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse."

I am at a place where I am forced to choose. And, knowing what I know of myself, right now, on this quiet, humid morning, I know what I've always known.

I choose the life, every single time.
I've tried the other, oh trust me. The work...I work all of the time. Day and night, my mind goes to the work. But my heart, my heart is never there. It is always with the bloody, messy, stained, broken, and glorious life that is put before me every day.
The choice is not an easy one, or maybe it is. I relish freedom, I breathe the air in so deeply these days that it is part of my human diet. I cast out lines for hours, never disappointed that I haven't caught a thing because with me is the breeze, the radiating sun on my skin, the sound of birds, the feel of mud between my toes.
I guess that is why I have always been the wild child. The one who strips down to nothing in the middle of the woods and submerges myself into a cold pool of water. The one who pulls over to the side of the road and writes poems on bank receipts, the one who laughs to the point of pain.
The wild child.
No one envies me, I can tell you that. They see the chaos of my life, they see the children in varying states of skin color and cleanliness, barefoot, eating cookies and perusing the knife collection at the farmer's market, and they must think how crazy is their mama.
Not crazy. I've just made a choice; the empty purse.
Leave the day's vanity to other folks. They'll never have to clean the mud off their feet because their floors are too nice for mud. They'll never have to scramble and scrounge to make a meal.
And they'll never know that the cure for all ills, all evils, all brokenness, is right outside, waiting to heal them.
I choose the life.

Friday, June 18, 2010

It just be's that way sometime'

I think that there are some folks out there, some friends, some not, who think I'm joking or "upplaying" when I mention the folksy ways of the Duponts. I've had clipped conversations here and there about how things really were and how things really are in our little world of native dysfunction.
Here's the deal: It's all true. All of it. Even the bit about killing chickens and driving down some back country road to go to the "doctor."
The more I tell the stories, the more hesitant I am to tell the stories. I see some crumpled looks of doubt, some eyebrow raised up in disbelief (or horror, I can't tell) and that's when I think I should bring these folks to the house sometime. Just to see, or to feel the way we are when the clan gathers.
There is good strong coffee, always. There is quiet smoking in the driveway, shooting the sh*t about climbing spikes and good deals on log trucks and who's drinking what, or too much, or too little. There is the absentminded tousling of hair when one child or another runs by. There are beautiful, barefoot women basking in the heat of the noonday sun. There's tater salad, hot dogs, rare burgers if my brother is cooking, ripped up jeans, bitten fingernails, raunchy jokes, wiffle ball games, ice cream, yelling, near-dead trucks...you name it. Name a cliche, and it's there.
I never minded it, in fact, I don't know what I'd do without it.
It's hard, sometimes, to strike a balance between the smart girl, professional persona with the girl who could sleep in jeans, wears a plaid granddaddy hat and still says "ain't" and "crik" and "anathang." I think I even used "ain't" in a text or two to a near-friend. He didn't say nothin' about it, maybe it was too confusin' fer him.
You get the point.
Yesterday, and this is my lede, I think, I made a stop on the way home from work. Wearing my fancy shoes, my black skirt and my "professional" top, I flew down the rutted cul-de-sac of a trailer park, threw the car in park, and was greeted at the door by a pregnant woman drinking coffee, a little boy with bare feet and a mangy, ribby dog.
I was there to get groceries. See, the boy is my adopted nephew, the woman is my sister-friend, the baby is another Dupont in the making and the dog, his name is Duke. This is my family, who, despite all, won't ever turn their backs on me. They know when I run out of air, and they show up with a life raft, an oxygen tank, a smile, and bags of food so that I can feed my babies. And they with so little themselves.
And yes, I do call a lot of people "baby." Consider yourself lucky. It means you're making your way into the fold, whether you like it or not.
Blessings, baby, blessings.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Sweet oblivion

Today I decided that worrying about money isn't worth the hassle. The steering wheel-gripping, waking up with a sick stomach, holy sh*t hassle.
I decided this in the grocery store, with two kids in tow, at around 8 p.m. Brought the reusable bags in, knowing that I only had enough cash to fill two, and that we needed enough cash to fill six. Anna carried one bag and we all fine-toothed it through the produce section.
"Pick two fruits each," I said, practically shaking.
"How about a bag of apples," Lucian asked.
"Nope, half of 'em will just go to waste. Two fruits."
I continued to walk briskly as they chased behind me. We whizzed by the cheap-o toys and useless muscle mags, didn't give the meat counter a second glance, and headed right for the basics. Milk (a pint), cereal (one box), cheese (one block on sale), bread (buy one get 18 free), veggies (one pepper, two celery stalks, one crown of broccoli), and so on.
"Ok," I said, noticing that the kids were winded by the speed of my nervous pace, "We got everything we need?"
It wasn't really a question because the answer had to be yes.
Lucian looked at our two bags, looked at my tight face and asked "When do you get paid again?"
"Not soon enough," was Anna's reply.
Smart girl.
Not soon enough. I can't pay these bills soon enough. And yet, they flow in like river water down a mountain. I can't stop it with a dam, it won't dry up and go away, it just keeps flowing and rolling and yanking at branches and rocks and whatever it can sweep in.
The only thing to do is raft it, and try and brace yourself for the dips and froth, and waterfalls.
And, being the somewhat dark, sick person of humble parentage that I am, I can't help but feel the adventure of poverty. It's not like this would be the first time, but for some reason I feel smarter, more edgy about being broke. Somehow, I know how to handle it, I know what's important and I know, I have to know, that like everything else, it'll all work out in the end.
It has to.
Once, when my father was stressing about money (which was always), I, in my sixteen-year-old wisdom, pulled out a tiny beat up Bible and frantically searched the pages. Back then, I knew that book so well. A line from Joshua appeared and I read it to him.
"Have I not commanded you, be not afraid?"
My father still reminds me of that day, when I actually knew something. And he says he won't forget it.
"One breath at a time, Chole, that's all you can do."
We're gonna be eating a lot of eggs this month.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Keeping cool

Small town living is a double-edged sword. It's always great to walk into a cafe where everybody knows you, knows your name, knows your kids, knows that you always sit outside, even in the rain and will drink a giant latte as slowly as a turtle crosses the highway. It's good that someone is paying attention. You always see folks in the grocery store, they say hi, how's the kids, Oh my god that baby girl of yours is nine. Their voices get low if they ask about "the other stuff," I guess they don't want the specialty cheeses to hear about your love life.
It is comfortable and tight in a small town.
And as people watch out for your kids, sit down with you at random to chat over lunch, shoot the sh*t at the farmer's market and show up at your place with buckets of mint and chives for you to plant, you start to ease in, to relax, hell maybe even to get comfortable.
That's when you see the back end of the small town sword. It usually starts with a whisper. The whisper was your own, it was a good whisper to a friend, about how things are going well, you're happy, slow is good, etc. You could almost feel your heart lightening a little. But then, the whisper comes back, a black boomerang, sharp and hissing through the air when you sent it out as a balloon.
And then, it starts. The awkward faces avoiding your gaze when they tell you to "be careful," or to maybe "think it over" you don't know him that well. And, if you're curious, and you should be, you ask, "Why?"
The braver ones will answer you straight up. The kinder ones will wait. The awful ones won't say a word.
The answers come in different waves and forms, and somehow you have to piece them together bit by bit so that at almost every juncture your gut gets a little kick that you try to shake off.
"While you were buying bread I heard him ask someone out."
"Yeah, um, I saw him walking down the street with another chick, they looked happy."
"I think that was him, he was with some twenty-something."
And, mind you, I didn't even ask. Of course, the humor, at least to me, is in the various descriptions of happiness and levels of physical beauty and, of course, activity engagements. I guess the details do matter if you want to knock the wind out of someone. The crowning moment of all of these murmurs and whispers is when you yourself see something "funny" and have to play it cool, god knows why, do an about face even though you were so looking forward to that latte in YOUR cafe (you were there first!) and walk away quietly with the questions burning in your mind, but you're just too damn cool to ask.
Or, and this is the revelation I had that freed me up from my "mental f*ckshow" as my friend Shiver pointed out, you make a choice. Right there in the street. What's it worth? How much do you care? Are you after the truth? Will you get it? Do you want it?
Click, click, click, walking away from the cafe empty-handed, eyes fidgety behind the giant sunglasses, I'm not worried. There will be a new whisper soon, there always is. This time it won't be for me.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Bubble trouble

Got a bit of cut and dry wisdom today. I knew it was the kind of wisdom I needed to hear, so I put the giant piece of sushi down that I was about to devour and took off my glasses, leaned my face against my hand and listened...hard. The wisdom, which would have seemed pessimistic to anyone else on the "outside" was a gem. Something that I will sort through long after this day or this week or this year even.
"Nichole," my sage of the day said, her quiet authority on the subject blasting through the hum of the central air conditioner, "there are two kinds of people in this world. The ones who live in a bubble and the ones who don't. That's it. Two kinds."
That's when I popped the sushi in my mouth, and chewed loudly and a little reflectively. Mostly loudly, though.
"You mean the people who've been through sh*t and the people who haven't?"
"Yes. The people who've had the worst possible scenarios played out in their lives and the ones who watch the news and the movies and say, 'Oh no, that'll never happen to me, that happens to other people.'"
"Can the bubble people be with us non-bubbles? Can it ever work out?" Even as I was asking this the answer already presented itself.
"Well, probably not because the bubble people will just think you're a pessimist for thinking the worst. And, and this is the bad part, they'll judge you all of the time."
"Judge me for not having a bubble?"
"Yup. Or judge you for losing it."
"But how could they..." Never mind, I know how.
It sounds more depressing than it actually is. In fact, being able to make bubble distinctions is a skill, and a handy one at that. It might even save you from that Claymore you were about to step on. Bubble people need to be shielded from people like me, but so too do I need to be shielded from them. You can't tell a bubble person something horrendous about your life or your past and feel good about the look on their face. You know the look I'm talking about, the holy f*ck this girl is messed up. You can't joke about drinking hemlock with a bubble person. Or about the time you flipped a car and left it on the highway because your boyfriend from Kuwait had so many drugs in the car you'd go to jail before you ever saw the light in the emergency room. And you definitely can't tell a bubble person how you and your brother joke about the time you forged his ex-wife's name on the hospital release form after he tried to step into the afterlife.
It's funny to me. And him.
I guess we non-bubbles do have our own little dysfunctional bubbles we live in. Sure, they're not made out of crystalline soap swirling out of a magic wand. Most likely they're made out of tinted glass, the shards of which we clutch in our hands every time the bubble breaks. Still we have a place, too. The nightly news doesn't scare us, reality is blunt and grappling, and (and this might be the optimist in me) there is always the possibility that we have clearer vision because the bubble disappeared so long ago. The horizon is my bubble.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Full up

Ever eat so much and not realize you did until it's too late? And by too late, I mean, that food drops to the bottom of your stomach about 30 minutes post-consumption and you are left with the literal sinking feeling that it's gonna be a tough afternoon...and that maybe you shouldn't have had that second serving of, say, taco salad, or, say, coconut cake.
Or maybe the second beer was a bit much...
Well, I'm stuffed. I haven't actually been stuffed, and I sh*t you not, in years. I've never been relaxed or unharassed or happy enough to just take in the people, the food, the kids, the dogs, the sticky heat, the flowers, none of that. Before (before meaning in a former life in which my spirit was near extinction due to unhappiness and worry) there was none of the chatting...the lighthearted easy way people balance plates on their laps and catch up on kids, love lives, tragedies, separations, jobs, you know, the basic fibers of life. But "before" has leaked out of me (somewhat slowly) almost completely, so that I do smile at random and play tricks on the kids and sneak off with the old timers to smoke a butt behind someones truck.
I live for this. I need to be reminded of how sustaining these moments are. It sounds idyllic, almost cliche, and it is without a doubt. But you gotta admit there is something to be said for balancing a beer bottle on a tree stump, holding someone's baby to give her a break, chasing a bunch of rough and tumble boys and black labs through a creek, and licking the last bit of coconut frosting from a fork.
It takes the sting out of being the lone duck. I'm not talking about the whole fifth wheel thing, I'm talking about watching. Watching pairs of people watching their children grow, fixing plates for one another, sharing a beer, resting a hand lightly on a knee, whispering some long-known secret, scowling at each other for eating too much.
And as I am watching them in the the thick of their lives, taking a moment to enjoy the company of others, it dawns on me that I'm in the thick of mine and I can only imagine what they are thinking about the tattooed mother with a camera in one hand and an empty plate in the other, no shoes on her feet, smiling with abandon at this whole scene framed by love, and damn good food.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Choking

I saved my son today. Literally saved his life in the middle of the pizza place while Anna was next door learning her martial arts knife sequence.
He inhaled a mozzarella stick and the cheese got stuck in his throat for what felt like 10 minutes. In actuality, it was about a one minute ordeal. Ever see a grown, tough-skinned woman cry like a baby? It happens. The owner, a big Greek fella, patted me on the back while I wiped tears and snot from my face with the sandpaper napkin. He pointed to me and he spoke to Lucian.
"It's always the mother," he said to him. "It's always the mother who will save you."
Of course, Lucian's mouth was too full of cheese to respond.
After the ordeal, while we killed time and I tried to regulate my heartbeat through steady breathing and not replaying the scene over and over again in my head, we went for a walk in the cemetery.
I know, I know.
Lucian darted between the old, moss-laden monuments.
"Wow, it was okay for this guy to die. He was 65."
I just nodded, still stricken, looking down at my fancy work shoes sinking into the grass.
"Oh, look at this one. That's so sad. He was only 2. I think this little one here is his brother's grave. How do children die?"
They choke, I wanted to say, they f*cking choke on mozzarella sticks and kill their mothers in the process.
Instead I just nodded my head. "Disease mostly," is what I said.
"It's a good thing you were there to get that cheese out," he said, stopping, finally realizing what had happened to him...to us.
"Yup."
"Mom, if you choke, who will save you?"
I didn't know what to say.
"I won't choke, don't worry."

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Rent, not the musical

I think the kids are on to me, big time. Yesterday, after my first day at the new job (let's just say this week is a baptism by fire kinda deal), I picked them up at like 6. We'd all had a long day. Lucian's eyes were bloodshot, his limbs sagging a little and Anna was giving me lip (enough to slap off if I wasn't afraid she would call DSS, or worse, her Nana). Thank god, my angel mother fed them dinner. Unfortunately that dinner included pudding. I actually have no idea how they can stomach the senior citizen-esque texture of that sh*t, but they did. So, tired, sassy, we're all ready to go home and of course, I need to deposit a check at the bank so that I can pay my rent...late.
"Ok, you guys, don't kill each other, I need to stop at the ATM and you're staying in the car."
"Ok." Lucian already has his Memorial Day flag poised above Anna's face.
"I'm not kiddin', Lucian. You guys so much as breathe on each other and you're done."
I frantically deposited, the whole while peaking out the door to make sure there wasn't any blood flowing freely out of the car. I must have looked stressed when I got back in.
"Mom, why'd you need to deposit a check? For toys?"
"No, Lucian, for rent."
"What's rent?"
Even Miss Know-it-All piped up. "Yeah, what's rent?"
"It's the money you pay to live in a place."
Lucian's voice became disbelieving, almost indignant.
"You mean, you have to pay MONEY to live somewhere?!" He was appalled.
"Yup."
"How much do you have to pay?" Anna is all about numbers.
"800 bucks a month."
"Holy sh*t!"
"You ain't kidding, buddy."
What could I say? He's right. Once we were all settled in (i.e. totally whipped and the kids had been yelled at more than 80 times) Lucian got very introspective.
"I don't want you to die, Mom."
"I don't plan on dying right now, so don't worry, babe."
"Will you be alive in heaven? Will you be able to walk?"
That's when Smarty Smurf offered her overrated two cents.
"She's not going to heaven, Lucian. She swears too much. Mom, you'll probably be reincarnated as a soldier."
Or a cigarette, I thought to myself.
"What's reincarnation?"
Holy sh*t, does he ever stop asking questions? Apple, tree, Nichole.
"It means you come back as something else after your body dies. Your spirit lives on in something else."
His gorgeous blue eyes got wide and he smiled a little.
"So, you won't ever die. Phew! Your spirit will be around to talk to. I can talk to soldiers. Maybe you'll be an owl."
I sucked in as much air as I could. I was looking at his face, and Anna's face, both raised and expectant, and two thoughts came to mind.
My, god, I can't leave them, not ever.
And...
Please, god, I hope I never have to search for their spirits while I am still trapped on earth in my plain body. My shoulders fell, I sighed again. Suddenly, paying the rent seemed so trivial.