Friday Musings

It's Friday morning which is typically a link up with Red Writing Hood. The prompt just didn't speak to me. Jackson Pollock, gallery, security guards. I know the first thing that popped into my head was a Pollock painting that was used for the Olympics back in the '70s, but when I Googled it I realized I must have the wrong painter in mind, so that threw me off completely.

Christmas traditions. That's a fun topic. I don't have the close relationship with my family of origin that I would like. In my immediate family, we've never really established many Christmas traditions. Maybe because traditions felt more like rules to be followed. If I have to force someone to do something how is that a good, fun thing?

This year the tree was decorated in stages. Alan put it up and got the lights on it. My bestie and I put all the decorations on it, except for the pickle. The pickle? Don't you hang a pickle on your tree? My husband is of Austrian descent. When we were first married someone brought a pickle ornament to a swap party, claiming that it was an old German tradition. We were intrigued and took the pickle home. As we had children and they grew, it became a tradition to hide the pickle all over the living room as we were decorating the tree. 

When my bestie and I decorated, we hung the pickle on the tree, but Alan took it down. It's been laying on the dining room table waiting for Alan and Sam to have a chance to play hide the pickle. 

That's it. That's our Christmas tradition. It's not much, but it's almost all we've got. Except for listening the David Sedaris' Six to Eight Black Men, and nearly peeing in our pants.

What are your traditions?

Happy Holidays!

The Deal

He said, "I'll make you a deal. I'll buy the laptop for you, but you have to promise to work on your book."

That was 3 years ago. What constitutes "working on your book"? Do 771 blog posts count? What about the 14 journals in my file cabinet and the 195 journal entries on my hard drive? Do they count as working on my book?

I hope so, because otherwise I haven't kept up my end of the bargain.

I really do want to write the book. For a lot of reasons:
1. to tell my story in a chronological and cohesive way
2. to get it out of my head (at least somewhat)
3. to potentially help some other people
4. (because I'd love to be a famous writer, at least for awhile)
5. to make enough money to cover the "debt" of my laptop, and maybe even get an upgrade.

But how do you put a price on a life story? What if I did write that best selling memoir? Would the money make the abuse "worth it"? And for that matter, what about the punishment the latest memoirists have suffered? It's the same old thing -- I've got no proof.

I thought about writing a fictional account. You know, changing the names to protect me from the guilty parties. But it feels too much like the lies I lived with for so long, and I'm really not good at writing fiction -- especially dialogue.

That leaves me with a debt. 

I am writing. And it might become a book someday. How important is it that what I write gets published by a publishing house, and bound in leather or vinyl or cloth or paper? Is the value of having written only determined by the number of volumes I sell or the amount of money I get from those sales? I don't think so.

Money is a nice reward for hard work, and an even nicer one for doing something I enjoy. But the ultimate reward for me is in putting thoughts into words and phrases and sentences -- in hearing from others that my thoughts and words meant something to them. Helped them somehow.

So I keep blogging and journaling and typing and dreaming about that book, but with no clear cut vision of how it would evolve. And I think that's okay. Because what I'm finding along this path is really so much more than a career or profession. I'm reintroducing myself to me.

Money would be nice, but self worth, now there's a reward.

linking up at Red Writing Hood

Goals and Ambitions

I started writing years ago. That random journaling that girls do all through high school. Writing down feelings, pain, thoughts, dreams, desires.
I gave it up. It seemed silly, childish, and immature. All that whining.
I went into therapy around 30. The counselor suggested journaling, but all I could do was chronicle my days.
I gave it up. It seemed silly, childish, and immature. All that minutiae.
I forged ahead trying to live my life the way everyone told me I should.
I broke.
I started writing again. It was the only way to get the thoughts and pictures in my head to calm down. It seemed silly, childish, and immature. But this time I couldn't give it up. I needed to "tell" someone. 
I vomited out all the horror of abuse, betrayal, distrust, and shame.
Eventually I started to share what I'd written.
I started a blog.
I wanted to share my past, my present, and my dreams for my future.
I questioned my reasons. I wrote anyway.
I dream of writing a book that is cohesive -- that helps other people with similar struggles. 
I wonder about my motivations. Are they pure? 
I wonder if I am setting myself up as a survivor. Am I survivor?
I worry about questions asked that I can't answer.
I worry about memoirs that are discounted after the fact.
I worry about someone calling me a liar, just like they said would happen.
But I keep writing. Telling the story. Sharing the pain. Hoping for the best.
I'm not sure if those are goals, ambitions, aspirations. I just know it's what keeps me moving forward. Because maybe it wasn't ever silly, childish, and immature. Maybe it is just my life. And that makes it worth telling.

linking up at Red Writing Hood

The Smirk

I hadn’t seen him in months, and it had been so restful.
We lived in the same neighborhood, so of course I worried about running into him or just seeing his car drive by on the road.
I was running errands with my kids – distracted by them, focused on the task at hand. Walking down the aisle of the drug story contemplating buying candy just for the hell of it.
I rounded the corner and there he stood.
All the clichés are true. I froze in the spot. Time stood still. I couldn’t utter a sound. His daughter was with him. My children were with me.
In my head were a million and one things I wanted to say. You liar. You bastard. You ruined my life, my family. I hate you. Why can’t you just disappear off the face of the earth? Why were you even born?
Instead I stood there like a fool, and what I remember is the smirk on his face. He was enjoying my discomfort. He realized he still had power over me.
I don’t know if it was that or the children, but something released. I pleasantly addressed his daughter as the children began to chat. I nodded an acknowledgement to him, and hurried my children along with the mom exhortation of “we have so much to do”.
I paid for the items in my cart. I walked my kids to the car, stowing bags and children in their assigned locations. The whole time wondering how I was calmly going about these routine activities. Angered by a God who lets men like him walk free. Smirking at me.
I wanted to shout to everyone I saw, “Don’t go in there. Watch out for yourselves and your children. There’s a rapist in there.” But that would have been inappropriate, and I’d have been viewed as the crazy one, giving him even more fodder for that smirk.
So I went on my way. I finished my errands. I helped the kids with homework, and cooked dinner, and cleaned the kitchen, and gave baths, and read stories, and tucked little bodies into beds with prayers and kisses. And I tried not to think about that smirk – not to denigrate myself for letting him/it get to me.
I crawled into bed, mentioning the encounter to my husband – downplaying it as I always did. I was over reacting. No big deal, really.
I found a new drugstore. I didn’t go back to that one for a long time, and even still over 10 years later that smirk is the first thing I think of when I walk by that store.

linking up at Write on Edge

Collision

For years I lived in two worlds. In one world, I was myself, most of the time. I thought what I wanted to think. I did what I wanted to do. I breathed in the ease of being myself.

In my other world, I was my parents’ child. I said what they wanted to hear. I behaved how they wanted me to behave. I did what they said. I worried a lot.

The world where I breathed easily was mostly in my head. I thought all kinds of thoughts, but the other world bled over into it too often to ignore. I couldn’t get settled.

Over time it just became so difficult to live that interior life that I began to let it slip away. I was their child, his wife, their mother, the good Christian, the stay at home mom, the baker, the seamstress . . . and on and on.

I broke.

He asked me, “How did you used to feel?” And I answered, “Afraid.”

“Not all the time?”

“Yes. All the time.” But that wasn’t quite true. Sometimes, alone in my head, I wasn’t afraid.

I’ve spent nearly 12 years trying to learn to breathe in the ease of being myself all the time, not just in my head. It’s been a long road. Recently I passed a milestone of sorts.

I sent a letter to them. I told them the unvarnished truth of what they’d done and how badly it had hurt at the time, and how much it still hurts. I never dreamed I’d say those things to them. I was terrified the sun would fall from the sky. I’d stop existing. The world would cease to spin on its axis.

None of that happened. The world is still here. I am still breathing.

Nothing changed, except I wrote the truth. My two worlds collided and neither one ceased to exist.

They still live in their world, but I’m breathing easier in mine.

What happens when you brace for a collision and it’s almost imperceptible?

I’ve asked myself over and over for the past week, why did I wait so long?

The answer is actually quite simple – I had to get to the place where I wouldn’t be surprised by their non-reaction. I had to understand whatever I did was for myself, and I was worth facing the fear of collision.

linking up at Red Writing Hood

The Conflict Sprint

I hate conflict, but lately that's where I've been living. 

Extended family issues. A recurrent theme, but I feel we are on the cusp of something big and different now. Choices are on the line. It's the last tango and I'm pretty sure it's going to be rocky and end badly.

Big conflict always leads to smaller conflict. I get stressed about the big stuff, and just want everyone else to handle their stuff while I get mine straightened out. Real life doesn't work that way.

So I'm taking my big stuff and getting the hell out of Dodge for a few days, while leaving everyone here to handle their little stuff.

linking up at Write on Edge

Longhand

I have to write this letter. I feel as if I have tried to say these things over and over again, so what is the point in trying once more? I usually write on the computer, not trusting my hand to handle the stress of writing these kinds of words. But I’m sitting in the café and my computer is at home on my desk.

I pull out a spiral notebook and my new pen. Writing in longhand is so personal. It puts me in touch physically with the words in a way that the computer keyboard does not. My hand must form each letter, each word. I have to slow down my thoughts to so my hand can keep up. I am forced to think through each word in a more elemental way. This is good and bad.

I start out calmly enough. I am numbering my points as I try to explain (again) the rift and what the exact cause is. I am respectful and thoughtful as I write these words, trying to spare their feelings while still getting the point across. But as my hand moves along the page, it becomes harder and harder to keep the letters well-formed and evenly spaced.

I stop and breathe. I do not want the writing to look like the ravings of a lunatic, but I cannot hide the emotion. It comes pouring out through the tip of the pen.

I arrive at the fourth point, and I cannot control the pen well at all. The letters are jagged and jerky. I am neither weak nor fragile. I am strong. What you perceive as fragility is self-preservation, healing, and honoring myself and my needs. If only my handwriting showed how deeply I believe this.

The words become more and more definitive and deliberate. I will not be in a relationship with people who continue to hurt me whether intentionally or not. I am offended that you consider me so shallow and saddened that you view me in this way. I am appalled that you have treated my husband so thoughtlessly.

I can’t go on any longer. If I were typing this, I might go on and on for pages. But the decline of my handwriting forces me to see the depth of my pain and anger. I cannot continue. My whole body is enveloped in the emotion. The simple act of writing these words has opened a fissure in my calm veneer. I am in a public place and if I continue allowing my hand to express these feelings, I may not be able to keep up the calm visual persona I desire.

I cap the pen. I close the notebook. I breathe.

linking up at Write on Edge and imperfect prose

Surface People

The Secret Sits 

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. 

-- Robert Frost 

Surface people. Some call them shallow. They follow whoever leads, regardless of where they are led. Round and round – with no concern that their path is taking them nowhere.

I followed, confused that I seemed to be getting nowhere. I felt out of step somehow. I followed and followed and followed, but it never felt comfortable, accurate. What was wrong with me? Why didn’t I enjoy this dance? Why couldn’t I find the rhythm?

I couldn’t survive in that vacuum. What happens when one person steps out of the circle? When one person moves towards the Secret?

I did. I moved out of the circle and went toward the Secret because I wanted to know, even if no one else did. I wanted to know why we talked of insignificant things. Why we talked about other people. Why we never discussed ideas and concepts. Why did we not question?

What I found when I moved toward instead of around, was so much more –- pain, sorrow, and angst, but joy, laughter, and peace, as well.

Surface people. They don’t dig. Don’t they want to know what’s underneath? What’s holding them up or pulling them down?

I didn’t just scratch the surface. I dug in like a mole. I didn’t just dig, I excavated. Pushing through rubble and dust and debris and bones. I crawled through sewers. Miles and miles of sewers. All by myself. Until I thought I might never see the light of day again. And yet, when I did come through, it was like Dorothy opening the door into Oz – the light, the color. Amazing, dazzling, inspiring.

I turned back to bring them with me.

Surface people. But they wouldn’t come. They stayed on the surface, and thought I was crazy for excavating. They tried to humor me. They tried to lure me back to the surface. They couldn’t understand why I couldn’t, wouldn’t come back to their black and white world.

They turned on me. I was the traitor. The one who abandoned them. They weren’t able to stretch from their rutted circle. One little step, but they couldn’t, wouldn’t.

Where is their longing for depth? Can it possibly be enough to just keep dancing in a ring your whole life long?

I want depth, authenticity, reality. I want to know the Secret.

linking up at Write on Edge

Freedom

The truth will set you free. I was promised that truth would lead me to freedom.
I’ve spent a lot of time truth-seeking. But how do I know if it’s led to freedom? 

Webster’s says freedom is:
a: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action
b: liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another
c: the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous 

I like all of these. I’ve been constrained, literally and figuratively. I’ve been restrained by the power of others. And I am being released from something onerous. It’s interesting. Usually I’m drawn to a single definition of a word. Freedom, though, is a loaded term for me. I didn’t know anything about emotional freedom until 12 years ago. I’ve spent the past few years learning about freedom – what it means and how to apply it to my life.

Years ago I sang a song auditioning for a show --

You can't get to freedom by riding on a train

The only way to freedom is right 

on through your brain 

Freedom is a body's imagination

Freedom is a full-time occupation

Freedom's in the state of mind

--“Freedom” from the play Shenandoah

The older I get the more that song means to me. Here’s what I’ve learned. Freedom is choice for most of us. Sure, there are people who are physically incarcerated and there are people, like me, who are or were emotionally incarcerated, but ultimately freedom is a choice. The only way to freedom is right on through your brain because freedom’s a state of mind. So I can choose to remain constrained and restrained by others, by events, by memories, or I can choose to believe I’ve been released from those onerous situations. It’s mind over matter. Belief in myself. Trust in the work I’ve done. 

Austrian novelist Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach once said, “In youth we learn, in age we understand.” 

In my youth, I learned a lot of lies and falsehoods. In middle age I’ve learned about truth and freedom. In age I hope to understand.

link up at Red Writing Hood

Active Anger

The words coming from his lips devastated her. How could he sit and calmly speak these things. “We’ve had to accept that you are very sick. It is the only explanation for your behavior.”

So that was how he organized this situation in his head? She was “sick”. She looked up the definition of sick -- mentally, morally, or emotionally deranged, corrupt, or unsound. Really?

Well at least she knew where she stood with him now. She was enraged by those small sentences. What was it about that one comment? The anger poured from her in a palpable current.

link up at Red Writing Hood

Red Writing Hood -- Fate

(photo credit)

She met him picking up her script.

Later he saw her upset over the death of a friend. He didn't know her, but he reached out to her and offered compassionate support. Not answers or solutions, just a listening ear and a willingness to sit with her.

Rehearsals began. She had the lead, and he was a minor player. Drama ensued as it always does in the theater. He was a port of calm. She found herself drawn to him. Totally out of character, she went straight to him and poured out frustrations, while he listened and wondered about this girl/woman.

He wished her luck on opening night, nearly breaking her ritual bottle of Perrier. She didn't care about any of that with him.

After the show they saw each other on campus. He helped her return some stage equipment. Later he asked her out on a date. She said yes. Why not? 

He wasn't who she expected to fall in love with. In fact he was everything she wasn't looking for. He had that one quality though -- absolute honesty. He was guileless.

She didn't know it at the time, but it was what she needed more than anything else. And she fell for him. Even though her sister said he was controlling. Her dad didn't like his lack of convention. That scared her too. She'd built her life around fitting in; being what she was supposed to be. He scattered that concept to the winds.

She was pulled to him. Was it love, or was it just a change she so desperately needed? 

She went out on a limb and said it was love. She said yes when he asked her to marry him. He let her have the conventional wedding her parents wanted, but he didn't understand why she couldn't tell them it wasn't the wedding she wanted.

Years of marriage and children. Confusion and pain for both of them. They were so right together except when they weren't. And then the light bulb moment. He pressed hard for introspection; for discovery; for answers. And when they came -- the repressed memories of horrible abuse -- he stood by her, when her parents fell away. When they failed her, he stood taller than the rest.

That meeting. Walking up at the same time from opposite sides of the building to pick up scripts that held their roles? Was it just coincidence or was it fate?

link up at Write on Edge

Security

Climbing the big stairway was the entrance to a wonderland. Wide pine planks and a handrail that was just a little too high for her to reach comfortably. It was okay, though, she knew those steps and had no trouble navigating them.

At the top of the stairs, she always stopped and just looked around. The stairs came up into the middle of the big room. Looking to her left through the railing that surrounded three sides of the staircase, she saw the sewing machine cabinet, a chifferobe and some slipper chairs. Straight ahead were the windows and window seat, and on either side of them the little slanted doors that led into the attic – fairy doors. As she rounded the top of the stairs to her right, she saw the two beds, one on each wall, facing one another. There was an oval braided rug in the middle of the floor and an antique lady’s dresser on the far wall. Two more windows covered in sheer white curtains let in voluminous sunlight.

This was the happiest place on earth in the daytime, and the safest at night when all four of them snuggled into bed, Auntie and Lucinda in one, Uncle Horace and she in the other. Nothing bad could ever happen in this enchanted space.

She wished she could live here forever.

link up at Write on Edge

Choices and Consequences

“How are you?” she asks. 

“Not very well, I’m having a hard time,” I reply.

I’m on the phone in my workroom, standing over my computer, too tired to be having this conversation.

“Another flashback? Is that the problem?”

“I have remembered some other things. I just can’t talk about it right now.”

“I’m sorry you’re still having trouble,” she says, and I wonder if I can really say what is in my head.

“I’m going to need to take a break for a while. Not permanently, but just for a while. I just can’t handle talking with you, knowing he’s still a part of your life,” I say it calmly, as if I have the right to say these things to my mother.

She inhales, and says sadly, “Okay. Whatever you need.” The hesitancy and pain in her voice make me think of taking it back, but I’m just too tired. And she always says that, “whatever you need”, but it’s a lie.

“I’ll let you know when I can talk again, but for now if you need something or just want to check in, call or email Alan.”

“I love you.” She never ends a conversation with that. She never says that at all. She’s scared.

I hang up the phone, knowing I’m glad for what I’ve done, but terrified by it.

That was four months ago.

I wasn’t sure about the consequences. I wanted to believe it would be a wake-up call for them; help them come to the realization that I needed more. That things were never going back to the way they were before.

What I’ve gotten is the realization that my mother is sad and scared, convinced that I am in a fragile state – one step away from shattering. My father is angry and it’s impacting his health. What I haven’t gotten is anything different. No efforts to reach out via my husband. Some inappropriate quizzing of my daughter. And a really bad case of martyrdom about my son’s high school graduation.

Those are their consequences.

Mine are different. I’ve had some deep depression. I haven’t questioned my choice, but I have been saddened by the results. And angered. Which my therapist says is good.

It’s been a long time coming, this choice, but I had to get to the point that I could handle the consequences.

link up at Write on Edge and imperfect prose on Thursdays

Red Writing Hood -- Saying without Saying

This week, focus on dialogue and body language to set a scene or move a story forward, limiting your use of narration. You have 450 words, beginning with the line: His crossed arms answered her question before he spoke.



(warning: adult content)
His crossed arms answered her question before he spoke.

“Of course, I believe you. I have to. You’re my daughter.” Not exactly the answer she’d been looking for. Was it better than having him say, “No. Absolutely not”?

She hadn’t expected denial, but she had hoped for compassion. It didn’t occur to her that she would get obligation.

Watching him sit with his arms covering himself, she said, “So you believe me when I say he raped me?”

“I believe you believe that’s what happened.”

A knife twisted in her heart and she began to shake.

“Oh, you’re so cold! Here’s a blanket,” her mother said, pulling a blanket from the back of the sofa and wrapping it around Mel, as if a blanket could soothe the gashes in her soul.

She hated that these conversations always left her speechless, but it was as if the connectors between her brain and mouth had been severed. She couldn’t utter any words.

Her husband jumped in with suggestions. “We are going to have to do something about this, because it changes everything.”

Her father continued to purse his lips, as he removed his glasses – a sign that he was annoyed. Removing his glasses was his “tell”. He did it when lecturing if something was distracting him from the moment. He did it when he needed to buy time. Her mother sat across the room wringing her hands in her lap, glancing frantically from Mel to her father. Like a spectator at a tennis match.

“Oh, are you sure, Mel?” she said.

“Yes,” she responded, although in reality she wasn’t sure of anything right now.

This is not the way a script would play out on a tv show.

A daughter would tell her parents that she had been raped by her sister’s husband, and they would be horrified – jump to her defense. It would fall to her to calm them down. Keep them from doing anything they might regret. There would be shock, anger, grief, panic for what this would mean. The rapist would be verbally assaulted. Lambasted. His character denigrated.

But no, not in this house. In this house her father just kept sitting there waiting for her to tell him what to do. Saying without saying, he didn’t believe her at all, but rather felt obligated to placate her.

“I felt that I should tell you. I don’t know what the answer is.” What she didn’t say is how she was counting on him to have an answer. That she thought it was his job to address this horror.

But his crossed arms said everything.

link up at Red Writing Hood

Red Writing Hood -- Core

Last night my son and I cut up a fresh pineapple – the old fashioned way – with a sharp knife. As we slice the top off, we debated which method to use for removing the core. He wanted to use the knife to work around it, and then slice the pineapple into rings. I suggested just cutting the pineapple in half and then removing the core in sections.

This process got me thinking about life. About healing and recovery from trauma – specifically abuse.

There are a lot of similarities in preparing a pineapple and recovering from abuse.

First you have cut off the top – all that non-essential, frou-frou stuff, so you can get to the real stuff. Then you have to slice off that rough exterior – the protective layer.

Now you’re getting to the good stuff. You can see the fruit, and the juice is starting to ooze out, but there is still the hard core in the center, and it will inhibit the flavor of the pineapple if you try to eat it without removing the core. 

Pretty much like recovery. Get rid of the façade and the protective shell, and you can work with what’s real and good and sweet. Life is a lot better, but if you don’t get to the core of the problem, you'll always be inhibited by the abuse.

I’m still working on getting the core out of my life, but I’m learning to enjoy what’s real and good and sweet at the same time.

Pineapple anyone?

link up at Red Writing Hood

Red Writing Hood -- Makeover

I’d like to lose some weight. Not just a pound or two, but serious, double digit numbers. But then again, I’d like to get rid of the grey in my hair. Permanently. Not just by coloring it every 4-6 weeks. I’d like to be an inch or two taller – just enough to reach things in the kitchen without the step ladder or calling for my son. I’d like to know how to put outfits together that make me look younger, thinner, and taller. 

The truth is what I’d really like is an attitude, self-esteem makeover. I’d like to find a way to consistently feel comfortable in my own skin whether or not I’ve got weight to lose or grey hairs to hide (or embrace?) or I'm not tall enough. I’ve found out over the past 50 years that I can lose weight (albeit, it’s tough), exercise, color my hair, buy new clothes, and even put on heels, and yet none of it really matters if I can’t embrace who I truly am.

I grew up a chameleon. I took on whatever persona was required of me at any given moment. Abuse will do that to you. It’s an act of self preservation. Try to figure out what it is the abuser wants and be that person, and maybe, just maybe he won’t hit me, yell at me, humiliate me, or sexually assault me. That’s a lot riding on a momentary choice/decision. Not to mention the mind reading aspect.

I saw this quote the other day:

Life isn’t about finding yourself; it’s about discovering who God created you to be.

I don’t disagree with this, but at the same time I can’t help but remember the confusion I felt all those years ago. I really believed I was being who God wanted me to be, the problem was my picture of God and His wants was so skewed from being abused by “good Christian people” that I was in a state of constant disorientation, anxiety, and denial.

The makeover I’m looking for goes more like this: be who I am – who God created me to be. Recognize that health -- physical, emotional, and spiritual -- is what really matters. Take care of me as well as I would take care of my children and husband. And trust that those people in my life now don’t want anything from me but that.

Sure the exterior impacts the interior. I want people to think I look nice. And sure a good hair day can make everything else better, but to be dependent on the exterior for how I feel about my value as a person? Well that just can't end well, because what happens when the hairdresser has a bad day and ruins my hair? Am I going to hate myself for the next 4-6 weeks? No. I’m going to choose to value myself for what I believe, say, and do. 

I’d just like to be cute while doing it.


link up at Red Writing Hood

Red Writing Hood -- Barracuda

Like sharks, some species of barracuda are reputed to be 

dangerous to swimmers. Barracudas are scavengers.

Mel wanted a normal life. A husband, a house, children, all kept nice and tidy in an immaculate home. But he kept getting in the way. It wasn’t just him, of course. There were the other memories, but she felt if she could get the grown up part right, then those would just fade away.

Bradley showed up in her life the year she was 15. After school Mel would look for her older sister Cindy, and invariably find her sitting in his 1970 Plymouth Barracuda listening to music she felt sure Cindy didn’t even like.

From the first time Mel laid her eyes on him she hated him. She didn’t know why, but she did. Cindy could do so much better.

He became a fixture in their lives. Eventually, after dating 4 years, Cindy and Bradley married, much to Mel’s chagrin. By then he’d been showing his true reptilian self for quite awhile, but Cindy refused to acknowledge it. Bradley was crude, vulgar, and low class. He cornered Mel in the kitchen making a pass at her. When that didn’t work, he began denigrating her for the clothes she wore and anything else he could come up with as an insult.

Their parents heard his remarks, but never came to her defense. Cindy even told Mel that Bradley had admitted his attraction to Mel. What Mel couldn’t figure out was what Cindy saw in him. She would have cut him loose so fast his head would have been swimming.

He was Mel’s thorn in the flesh. That was until the night she stayed at their house. Bradley and Cindy had been married close to 2 years. Bradley had behaved badly on a few occasions since the wedding, but Mel had kept these episodes to herself. She generally kept her distance from him, but this night she couldn’t bear being alone in her parents’ house. They were out of town, and Mel hated staying in that big house by herself. When Cindy invited her to spend the night, it seemed the perfect solution.

Mel woke in the middle of the night to find Bradley stroking her thigh. He was whispering about wanting her, about knowing it was wrong, but not being able to help himself. Then he was on her and she was frozen in panic. There was something terribly familiar about this scenario, but Mel knew she couldn’t think about that now. Instead she just removed herself from her body until it was over. Later, when she returned, she saw him sitting in a chair across from the sofa she was sleeping on. He just stared at her. No words were ever exchanged.

The next morning she was ready to leave early with Cindy even though Bradley had been planning to take her home.

As Mel stood in the shower, she boxed the incident up, all the while recognizing he was no longer just a thorn.

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Red Writing Hood -- It Might Just Save Your Life

The day they married it was hot and sunny. The Power of Love by Huey Lewis was the number one song. She remembered because it was one of his favorites. Looking back now it was comforting in a way. She couldn’t have known it then, but there was a bit of prophecy in that song. As she listened to the song on the radio now, it made her think. There’s a line in the song -- 

It's strong and it's sudden and it's cruel sometimes 

But it might just save your life. 

She certainly believed it (he) had saved her life.

When they’d met she didn’t even know her life was in danger. But then no one could have known. Looking at her then, she seemed to have everything together. Good grades, good friends, lots of extra-curricular activities. She wasn’t unattractive. Petite with thick, dark hair, and a big smile, she didn’t think much of herself and tended to be a little bit aloof – snobbish, he’d told her.

He wasn’t what she thought she wanted in a husband. She’d dreamed of wealth and glamour. He was more hiking and comfort, but he’d won her over in time. No one was more surprised than she was.

Now looking back and listening to that song again, she realized what a gift he had been. Without him, she might have lived in a box and never lifted the lid to see what she was missing. Without him she might have stayed a victim her entire life. Without him it might have been a very short life.

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Red Writing Hood -- Dusseldorf

It was a rainy night in Dusseldorf, and she knew no one here, and what was even more important, she had no idea why she was here. 


They’d parted in Bad Ischl, Austria. The time together had been magical, but her expectation was to never see him again. Then as she was leaving the B&B that morning, Christa had handed her the envelope. Inside was a train ticket to Dusseldorf and note from him asking, no begging, her to meet him there.


She really had no idea why she’d come. There was nothing left to say. Bad Ischl had been wonderful. It would always be a treasured memory, but that was all it could be. There was no future for them. She had a family in the States and he, well she didn’t really know what he had. 


They had met by chance checking in at the same time at the b&b. Gracie was there trying to recapture a memory of love and happiness from before it all fell apart. Christa was family by marriage and had extended the invitation for Gracie to escape from it all for awhile.  It had seemed a good idea at the time, but once she arrived, she was flooded by memories of the last trip to Austria. It had been with her husband, before the accident had turned everything sideways.


But now she was in Dusseldorf. Waiting in the train station for a man she’d only known for 10 days. She’d left family and familiarity to strike out to an unknown city with a virtual stranger. She sat in the bistro sipping tea, torn between hoping he would show up and wondering if he wouldn’t.


And then he was there -- standing right in front of her as if he’d materialized from thin air. He smiled and held out his hand to her. She was caught off guard by the way her heart skipped when their hands met. It had been so long since she felt that way. It seemed awfully early to feel with such intensity, to trust so completely. Really it wasn’t like her at all. Gracie Newstead was nothing if not sensible.


He sat down at the table and ordered a kaffe, and then began to tell her what had happened. How he’d wound up in Dusseldorf when Salzburg had been his intended destination. How he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind and he was determined that they should try to make it work. There had to be a way. He was willing to try. Was she?

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Red Writing Hood -- The BLT

Summer is officially defined by tomatoes. Not the grainy, flavorless ones they sell all winter in the grocery store, but those plump, beefsteak tomatoes that you buy at the roadside stand, or if you’re really lucky, your neighbor hands you across the fence straight off the vine from his garden and still warm from the sun. I learned to eat tomatoes by picking cherry tomatoes in Auntie and Uncle Horace’s garden. She told us to go pick cherry tomatoes for dinner. All I heard was cherry, so I ate almost as quickly as I picked. They weren’t cherries, but they were wonderful. 

My maternal grandmother always peeled tomatoes before serving them. I never understood why, but because she did it I always assumed that was the way civilized people ate tomatoes.

But I digress. I’m stuck on the "T", and we still the "B" and the "L" to discuss. Not to mention the bread and mayonnaise.

So the lettuce must be iceberg. I don’t care that it has no nutritional value. It has the requisite crisp and crunch. It’s not really there for flavor anyway. It’s there to add texture, and if it’s very cold with just a few droplets of water from the rinsing, all the better.

The bacon must be freshly cooked. In an iron skillet preferably. It should be very crisp, maybe a little darker than usual. None of this wimpy microwave bacon, please! Some people will tell you that thick cut is the way to go, but I prepare the regular slice. It’s a texture thing again. The bacon should crumble as I bite into the sandwich. I want to gather up those little bacon bits and stuff them back into the sandwich.

I’m reasonably flexible on the bread. It can be white or wheat, but homemade is the key. Sliced just right. You don’t want it too thick or it takes away from the other flavors. I’m also flexible on toasting or not. If it’s the heat of summer, I’d stay with untoasted bread. Why heat anything you don’t have to? Plus then you get the benefit of watching and feeling your fingers press into the bread to hold the sandwich together as you devour it.

I’m a Hellman’s mayonnaise girl from way back when. Miracle Whip is no substitute. If you don’t have mayonnaise, butter (the real stuff) is the only acceptable substitute. When I was a girl, my mother used to make homemade mayonnaise and that is, of course, an excellent alteration, but there’s that whole salmonella/e coli thing about not eating uncooked eggs.

So there you have it. The perfect BLT. The first bite must be taken with closed eyes, slowly, showing awe and reverence for the perfection this sandwich represents. After that wolfing or savoring are equally acceptable. No side items are really necessary with the BLT, but potato chips or potato salad do offer a nice variation and offer the benefit of making the process take just a little longer. Of course, you could always just have another BLT instead.

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