If you know me well, then you already know that I grew up and learned to drive in a very rural area. My father tried to teach me to drive, but quickly gave up on that idea. Even so, in the short weeks we spent side-by-side in Mom’s blue Plymouth Sundance, Dad taught me the MOST important driving lesson EVER:
How to NOT run over roadkill while maintaining my lane.
In my opinion, there is almost nothing worse than driving over an already-very-dead animal. Dad taught me to fight my swerve instinct. He said to aim the car so that the roadkill travels directly under my feet (ew!), thereby avoiding the carcass and further smushing and smearing without having to make an emergency lane change and creating a potentially dangerous situation.
This tip may not be in the most recent defensive driving guide, but I bet AAA would approve of Dad’s strategy. Thanks Dad!
I spent the first two decades of my life reading. I spent the next two decades wandering, having the adventures I had read about. For the next two decades, I plan to return to reading. Should the universe grant me two decades after that, maybe by then I will finally have something worth saying, and write.
I grew up in a place where I was regularly reminded that nothing was actually “mine” – not the clothes on my back, not the food I ate, not the bed I slept in, not the books I read. Not the dog, not the TV, not the very ground I walked on. Nothing.
When I was at college I changed off campus apartments every year – a habit I continued for at least a decade after graduation. I sublet, crashed in basements or closets, or agreed to short term leases. I never settled in anywhere.
I moved so often that I decided to make moving easy by limiting my belongings to one duffle bag (a large one at that).
I was somewhere around the age of 30 and I still owned nothing. I told myself it was all part of my Zen plan to have as small an impact as possible on the world. I was a vagabond, a wanderer following the whim of the moment. I gathered stories the way other people gathered tchotchkes.
Everything changed when I decided to fulfill my lifelong dream of owning a dog.
When Lola arrived, I had already lived in my apartment on Clinton Avenue for 4 years and hadn’t hung anything on the walls. The kitchen cabinets were empty. I used my apartment as a place to sleep, even though there wasn’t an actual bed – just a ragged couch. Lola, for the first time in my life, gave me a reason to want to go back to my apartment after work every day. And that was the beginning of me knowing what it meant to have a home.
Lola and I have been together for 8 ½ years now. I won’t say I “own” her as it is more likely the other way around. It took me a long time to get there, but now there is furniture in my home, and the cupboards are full of coca and spices. Now there is art on all the walls, and more throw pillows than necessary.
I spend all day, every day, looking forward to coming home. My family has grown over the years, Dylan, my partner; our two cats, Jack & Elvis; and – of course – my anchor, my horcrux, Lola. Home is where my family is, and there is no place I’d rather be.
DISCLAIMER: This bout of sentimentality was triggered by my friend, Arnold, linking his FaceBook page to a 4 ½ minute animated technolounge remix of The Wizard of Oz, titled Mellow Brick Road (really!).
I’m trying very hard to leave the terrible memories of my mother’s passing behind. Watching her die, knowing she was in pain and not being able to do anything for her, seeing the fear in her eyes – those were simply the hardest things I’ve ever had to endure and they haunt me.
But I have a fantastic memory that I’d like to share with you, if you don’t mind. I feel like if I share it, maybe the memory will get stronger; and eventually I will be able to use it like a beautiful handmade blanket, and throw it over the bad memories to hide them.
The day before my mother passed away, my sister, my niece and I were sitting on the living floor in my sister’s house eating ice cream, right next to Mom’s hospital bed. Her bed was higher up, so we couldn’t see her but we were close enough to hear her breathing and ready to jump up if she seemed distressed in any way.
I put something from the carpet into Clarissa’s ice cream bowl when she wasn’t looking. When she dramatically discovered it, we all laughed for the first time that day. I couldn’t stop laughing, and when I couldn’t breathe because I was laughing so hard, I blacked out - just for a second.
When I regained consciousness, there was ice cream all over my face and clothes.
Within the next half hour something else that we found particularly hilarious (I’ve forgotten what at this point) got us all laughing again, and I laughed until I blacked out again. By this point I had a terrible headache and decided it was time for bed.
I laid awake in the spare room for hours, thinking about how ridiculous it was to be sitting next to a dying woman, my mother, and laughing like nothing was wrong. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was what everyone needed, Mom most of all.
One of her very last memories will be of her family sitting around her and laughing. Laughing until we choked, cried and peed our pants (in my sister’s case).
I know if she had been at all able to, she would have been laughing too.
