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12:29 p.m. - 2008-05-14
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two out of four ain't bad

12:12 p.m. - 2008-05-13
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fresh flowers

12:36 p.m. - 2008-05-07
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I'm a full time lover with a part time heart

9:06 a.m. - 2008-05-06
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fresh life

7:39 p.m. - 2008-05-05
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wrists, stealing, sunshine

7:31 a.m. - 2008-05-01
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b, b, b excited

8:07 a.m. - 2008-04-30
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flower power

8:14 a.m. - 2008-04-25
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diggy dawg

11:53 p.m. - 2008-04-22
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terrible poetry that an 11 year old could have written...oh wait

9:47 a.m. - 2008-04-22
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absurdism

11:14 p.m. - 2008-04-19
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the old man is snoring

8:08 a.m. - 2008-04-18
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spiger

9:44 p.m. - 2008-04-17
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rambles

9:38 p.m. - 2008-04-14
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fishy face

11:27 a.m. - 2008-04-11
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if you want to be happy for the rest of your life

5:11 p.m. - 2008-04-07
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"If this isn't nice, what is?"

9:28 a.m. - 2008-04-05
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Ani is eight, holy crap

10:29 p.m. - 2008-03-31
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2

7:05 p.m. - 2008-03-28
songbird

My mother was not an easy woman to love when I was growing up - but still I did, passionately, recklessly, with a wounded and clinging tenacity that only drove her further and further from me. I'm still not sure why she she disliked me as much as she did. At my current age, yes, I'm sure there are many reasons for her to sneer. I am undeniably flawed. I am, after all, my mother's daughter. But as a young girl I was a far cry from the sarcastic, moody, drunken, judgemental misanthrope I am today. There is only one word for the sweet, guileless child I once was: heartbreaking. So, it's no surprise that most of my memories of my childhood, and of her in particular, are not pleasant ones; they are more fitting for next month's selection of Oprah's book club, something that everyone can hear about with a dismayed shake of their head and pity in their eyes but never understand at all.

There was, however, one habit of my mother's that never failed to endear her to me. My mother sang. She sang as she folded laundry, as she served sloppy beer mugs to six p.m. drunks at the Backdoor Bar, as she cooked our paltry meals of government meat and powdered milk. She sang as she drove. I loved it. We would often take off on the road to no particular destination on sunny days - the three of us children crammed into the backseat, pushing, shoving, pinching, shouting like the hoodlums we were, and mom belting out Bruce Springsteen lyrics as she swerved at dangerously high speeds around curves and over hills.

She had a little red two door car that she bought for three hundred dollars the summer I was five. She was endlessly proud of that p.o.s. After she married my dad and he moved us into our white picket fenced suburban house of denial, Mom was gifted a set of keys to a minivan, and then to a coupe, and then to a convertible and so on and so on. Yet she kept that red klunker parked out back for years, loathe to be rid of the only car she had ever been able to buy for herself. It was her key to independence. She felt that she could always leave my dad as long as the car was sitting behind the picket fence, the red color flaking off, rust eating at the tire-wells, the black interior fading to gray and then to a near white.

It was in this lackluster vessel that we voyaged to parks far and wide, the smell of pot wafting from the front seat, mom's warbling lyrics streaming out of the open windows behind us. I had a wonderful trick that served me well in those days - the same imagination that causes me so many problems with my relationships now quite possibly saved me from complete insanity in my childhood. I could, with an almost literal flick of a switch in my mind, turn off the outside world and turn completely inward. It was not entirely healthy, I know. Anything that could block my mom out when she was angry was worth it though.

During our sun dappled daytrips I never employed my mind trick. I was content to press my forehead against the warm glass of the window and stare at the blurred world streaking past and let my mom's terrible voice (hey, I never said she sang well) lull me into a state of dazed dreaminess. I was happy then. The rest never mattered.

It's been 20+ years (ouch, I'm gettin' old) and so much, and yet so little has changed. My mom is the same woman she has always been - cruel, bitter, angry at the world for not giving her enough and determined to make everyone else pay to make up for her disappointment. I'm the one who has changed - in more than just height and weight. My mom doesn't intimidate me in quite the way she once did. I no longer follow after her with longing eyes and a painful vice grip on my heart hoping hoping hoping that today will be the day she says those three magic words "I love you" and decided to hug me rather than hit me. I no longer love my mother. This is hard for many people to understand and I gave up defending or explaining myself years ago. It is what it is. She is she, I am me, (koo-koo-kachoo???) and there is no middle ground for the two of us.

I will tell you this though: everywhere I go, everything I do, during dinner, while showering, in the car - I sing.

7:30 a.m. - 2008-03-27
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poem the first & second

6:52 a.m. - 2008-03-27
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baby bumm(p)er

9:56 p.m. - 2008-03-25
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the whole quesadilla

before//after

previously...
- - 2008-05-14
- - 2008-05-13
- - 2008-05-07
- - 2008-05-06
- - 2008-05-05