I Want To Tell You
I want to tell you:
About the day during my 15th year, my mother tried to tell me the facts of life. She ushered me into her bedroom and closed the door. Not normally a person to display emotion, she was tremendously nervous and tearful as she tried to explain. Her voice was catching and she stumbled. She started to cry. I barely understood a word she said. Her unease was catchy. I was hugely anxious myself. I made her stop, by saying “I know. I know. I know, mom, I already know.” I did not know. But saying that I did over and over was enough to end the torture for both of us.
About my husband Ken who has a tabby cat he mistakes as his son and sometimes calls Baby Jesus.
About my first job at age 14 in the dark, deserted basement of a Catholic hospital, washing out blood-filled glass test tubes by hand, in a sink, with hot water, dish soap, a skinny brush and no gloves.
About the day in 1985 when my dead father “sent” me his WW II G-I issued New Testament through a baffling set of circumstances that I have never been able to understand or explain.
About the Saturday afternoon in October, 1991 when I realized I didn’t want to be married anymore as my husband sat in his recliner in the den, beer in hand watching This Old House. I went upstairs to our bedroom, closed the door behind me, picked up the receiver of the tan Princess phone and called my friend Anne. Don’t talk, just listen. I don’t want to be married anymore. More later.
About the 7:30 am morning in 1999 that I arrived at work in Mountain View, sat down at my computer and laughed out loud with great confusion when I realized I was falling in love with a man I was certain I didn’t really like.
About a dream I had where my dead dad was a wizard, dressed in wizard clothes including a wizard’s hat. He sat on a stool and his pockets were filled with candy for the children gathered around him.
About a dream I had where my dead mother, dressed in white with a head full of cascading dark curly hair, was sitting up in bed busily directing a room full of people who were moving to and fro in some sort of important activity and when I wandered in to the room and saw her and said, “Mom! Wow! Look at you. I thought you were dead!” she looked at me with a smile and said, “Yeah, how about that!?!”
About the month of June, 1980, when at age 34 I grew up as a mother and discovered through a frightening accident that your children are not your possessions. Your children do not belong to you.
About the late morning Sunday in 1981, when brown-eyed and breathless five-year old Peter rushed in to the blue-walled kitchen where I was washing dishes at the sink and pulling on my leg said, “Mom, mom guess what? We live with animals. WE LIVE WITH ANIMALS!!!” This after five years of his living with two cats and two turtles. Yes, we do Peter. We do indeed live with animals.