#Free Write Friday, Kellie Elmore

 

Nowhere To Go, In Time Or Place

I felt the tears of uncertainty and dread spring to my eyes. I quickly wiped them away with the back of my hand because if I didn’t they would stick to my face like hot glue. Change hasn’t happened in our lives for years but I know, in my gut, we will be saying good-bye to the world as we knew it, forever.

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Saying good-bye to the past, yet clinging, pathetically, to the memories that I hold dear. Old memories that rust in time but bloom in my brain like day lilies.

Another chapter will be beginning but we don’t know when or where.  Getting older is not easy unless you are a sweet, innocent child. Children love to turn another year older, there is no death in their future, just presents, and  cakes with candles, hope, fun and friends.The aged lack hope universally.

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For us, their parents or grandparents, it takes on a whole other realm of closing a chapter and warily beginning another, the last third chapter or the beginning of the end. We don’t celebrate parties in the same way anymore; birthdays come around, it feels like, every few months. There is no happiness in aging when you can’t go back in time. Even memories become stale, photographs, blurry.

Our bodies hurt, pain clings to us like Saran wrap on cheese, transparent, almost impossible to remove. It holds us hostage in our weary, broken bodies

I hold on to the wooden stair rail, going downstairs slowly, sticky over time, but now I am fond of the predictable stickiness in certain areas. I have walked up and down these stairs thousands of times, with sick babies, and naughty toddlers, with gleeful children and with young adults I was proud to call my children. I walked with my husband supporting me and me supporting him.

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I am not sure of the timeline, of when we will leave. It could be as early as six months but it could be more like a year, maybe two. The jittery nerves inside me says it will sneak up on us like a deer crossing our path in front of our car in the dead of the night.

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I have practiced saying good-bye to everyone I love and have to leave behind in my shaken heart. I will be leaving this home, this carrier of memories. I know I am on my way, still clutching to some false sense of security.

Entering into another phase of my life, of our lives. I have to control myself from me not to sob out loud. I know this tiny, white house which in six months could be painted navy blue or brown. I don’t know, I will never know. But it will never be my house again. My children will not grow up here, the trees we planted for the children will stay and the two big gray rocks other people’s children will climb on.

We are homeless, we have nowhere to go although we can stay for a little time in a few places but never like this again. The locks on the doors will be changed in two days, maybe three, new owners will eventually move in.  The FOR SALE sign on the front yard seems to deface our property. It has already defaced our home.

A chapter in our lives is about to be over, a new chapter has not yet been written, the lines blur together. We are standing, clutching on to memories not yet ready or willing to create new ones. I am not sure I will ever want to make new ones.

We step aside, we cling to the naked walls and to each other with the depths of our depression in our hearts beating slowly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carry on Tuesday, All you need is love

Sad boy (Photo credit: jodiwilldare)

Dear Mama,

It was hard leaving you and Papa when Roger started his new job in Connecticut. You were so kind to have us live with you but it wasn’t fair to you. Believe me, we miss you too and living back in Georgia.

My first impression was not a real good one. People are very different here. They are so loud and everyone is in a rush and in the beginning driving here scared me, those fast cars, horns always honking. Mama, don’t tell Daddy but I used to hide in the bathroom, every night, turn on the shower and cry my aching heart out. No one even welcomed us here, there is no Welcome Wagon like home, no cakes or pies or dinners brought over. People seem cold and unfriendly but I ‘ll get used to it, it’s just their way, I suppose.

We do love our own sweet neighborhood which is wonderful. The summer was great. Kids on their bikes, playing in the streets, moms looking out for each others kids. Once school started everything changed. I guess this town is split in two and I never knew that one side has a lot of money and the other side, like us, well, we don’t. Seems like a lot of kids in Jason and Jeremy’s classes lived in mansions. The houses some of these kids lived in we used to watch on that television show “Dallas.”  Mansions so big like you see on t.v .some with electric fences, some driveways so long you can’t see the houses, some with great big pools or baseball fields in the back. I swear.

Mama, have you ever heard of a live-in nanny? I sure hadn’t. I guess the rich people who live in the mansions have them. The parents get up early in the morning and take a train to work in the City and they stay late into the night. The nannies feed, bathe and put the kids to bed.  Some moms work, others don’t but they still have full-time nannies.  I’ve heard the moms and some dads too go to the gym, or play tennis and go to lunch with each other.  In our neighborhood, we just stay off to ourselves doing regular things: grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, and cleaning. We get our kids on to the orange school bus and we are there to help them off, they get a snack, do homework and then they can play. I had never heard it any other way before.

This pains me to tell you but one day Jason’s new friend came over for the first time. Jason had a new play date with a child from his class the other day, the child came home with him on the bus. Jason was looking forward to this all week-long. I heard them laughing and whispering and going up the stairs to Jason’s room. Then it got quiet. Apparently, the first thing that wretched child said to my son was: “this is worse than I ever imagined it could be.”  My precious boy ran over to me, his face crushed and repeated what the boy said. I told him calmly that it didn’t matter one bit what the boy said, it wasn’t important and was just plain silly, wasn’t it? I got them started on a fun project with rocket ships and special brownies for a snack and they forgot about the room. Lord, as I am standing here, I wanted to cry but of course I couldn’t.

That night when Roger came home Jason told the rest of the family what happened with his”mean” friend.” Mama, It was hear-breaking to see. The boy had behaved poorly and he was rude. This boy’s family had lots of money and did live in a mansion, with a fancy pool but the mom and dad worked really hard all day and night. They had a nanny and a babysitter so the kids didn’t even see their parents very much. The older brother had already  been in trouble with the police. That family didn’t have a mom who stayed home and went to their Open Houses at school or their baseball games; their dad didn’t come home at six pm so that the family could have dinner together.We were all eating my vanilla cake with chocolate frosting AND vanilla ice cream. They couldn’t talk about their days or play games every night at dinner like we did.  We were the ones who were lucky. Money, cars, houses, pools are nice to have if you want them but they are not important.  “It’s not the size of the house that matters; but the amount of love inside that truly counts.” We are truly blessed.

Love, Hope

WRITE RAW: That’s the price of admission (no editing)

“I didn’t want to belon in their stupid club, I told you that, Mom, I said I didn’t want to but you didn’t listen. You never listen. I said NO. why did you have to push me and talk to others to get me in to a place I didn’t want to go in the first place. Why? To embarrass me as you usually do? No, don’t give met hat “I thought you would have a good time” I said I hated that place and you know it. You lied to me because I said I wanted to stay with Dad this summer. He said he might call, so he hasn’t yet, so what? There’s another week and a half, he could call by then. Why don’t you ever give him or me ghe benefit of the doubt?

Anyway, I’m not going there, no chance. So not. I am not going to that obnoxious club with those stupid girls that think the only thing more important than getting a tan is going into Abercrombie and buying 30 dollar tee shirts. Uh-uh, no way.Why are you saying I’m being unreasonable, you’re the one that is being unreasonable. Compromise? Fine, I’ll try it for a few days but that’s it. You can’t force me, I’m NOT being fresh, fine, ok, I’ll go and try to give it a chance but maybe I will hear from dad and then all bets are off. Deal?”

I went into my room and closed the door firmly, I was in enough trouble already for talking back to my mom and refusing to go to the swim club she enrolled me in. It;s not that I didn’t really want to go but I was so hoping I could stay with my dad in San Francisco like he promised this summer. I hated thinking he had broken another promise and that’s what I was really mad about. I brushed the tears away from eyes quickly, my spiky black-blue hair stood up and I muffled my sobs in an old bandana that my dad got me when I was  little. My parents divorced when I was 5. I’ve lerned never to expect anything from him but it still hurts, kinda.

He never called, not that day or even that week. When I called him he didn’t even remember what I was talking about. he was a big deal record producer and he was usually high as a kite so i tried not totake it personally but I was upset and i knew my mom could see it. We just didn’t talk about it. I decided to go to the swim club because I had literally nothing else to do, all my friends were supposedly there and sitting in the house for one more day with my mother and aunt was jsut not an option.

I didn’t even tell them I was going, just drove to the club, with my towel and some food and went in, they didn’t even check my pass, well, because they knew me and I guess my name was written down there. I sat with some of the cool kids that were there, they acrtually iinvited me to sit with them so I did. They were complaining about their summers so I told them about mine and my dad and they thought it was awesome that he was a record producer and all that.When the life guards weren’t around someone brought out a couple of joints and passed them around. I had never smoked them before but hey, I was bored nad my mother forced me to come here so I thought why not? She said she wnted me to come here, well I was smoking dope now, that’s the price of admission, as I lay ther stoned out of my head and lying back in the sun.

I went back every day, smoking every day, drinking beer too. My mom didn’t notice a think except my eyes were red and I told her it was from the chlorine. My friends and I hung our all day and night together, we got pretty trashed but it was something to do. I HAD wanted to go to San Francisco with my dad but I guess he was too busy for me, well, I don’t want to go there anymore. I’m happy here with my friends, smoking weed, every single day.