07:40:35

 

It didn't occur to me that if you make an emergency call and report that you believe your stepson is not alive, the news blotter might put it in the 'fainting' category.  Fainting... I wish.  

It took Kaleb four months to address me by name.  It was not lack of respect, quite the opposite actually.  This was my Kaleb.  Shy, silly, quiet, and he didn't want to lack the respect of saying someone's name without the familiarity of informal formalities.

In the wildest of horrible thoughts would I have ever imagined a few short years later, the girls and I would be sitting in a cold, laminate, fake wood, booth at Stewarts,  waiting for the coroner to take Kaleb's body away from his bedroom, never to be seen again.  Our Kaleb, ours...

I wondered if the person pushing the gurney with him, away from our home would imagine that just months earlier, Kaleb was gleefully excited when we pulled into a go-kart track in the bay.  He boldly stood at the window and almost ordered up (and paid for) an hours worth of racing for all six of us to the tune of $400 prior to myself interjecting and suggesting that we start small and not be impulsive.  A few months prior to that, he had hosted a day of mini-golf in Myrtle Beach, again, treating his family.  

This kid, this quiet gentle kid.  Best person to bring to the grocery store because he took his job of protecting me so seriously.   I was to carry nothing and it pained me to take that away from him so I would awkwardly watch him carry it all so he could say he did, even though he would never actually say it because that would be taking credit and causing awkward moments of recognition.

Two months prior to his sudden and abrupt departure, Kaleb's dad was sick enough to actually want to seek medical attention.  It scared Isabelle.  She retreated to her room to quietly cry.  I had to go down and collect them to leave and rounded the corner to find Kaleb embracing Izzy.  Calming her down, and for once, she was allowing him too.  Two years later and Isabelle said she forgot about that when I brought it up.  A quiet smile snuck to her lips as she thought about him. 

This is year three.  Three years and the cruel joke has not been undone.  He is still gone.

Kaleb.  His name.  Saying his name... hearing his name... a quiet, sacred prayer.  So much has happened since you left us and I often wonder what you would be saying and doing here in our new house.  Wondering which room you would have wanted and if I'd still find you sitting on Haeley's bed talking to her about things that you would talk to nobody else about.  

There is not a soul in our family that doesn't feel your absence like a dagger through the heart.  Insert soulful and inspirational closing statement here - I'd write it but I can't write something that I don't feel.

The angry little hamster.

I once wrote this poem for a person that I thought I loved.  Saying "I thought" because it is so irrational, me loving someone who was so hurtful and controlling of me.  Constantly in a theoretical jail cell with bars that kept me emotionally paralyzed, making me stay put and continuing on the hamster wheel that I could never bust off its tracks and move forward.

I sometimes look back at conversations and scream at myself for not pointing out the contradictions and hypocrisies of the lies that were being fed to me on a daily basis.  I've lost the time and continue to lose the time when I reflect on all the things...

I try to turn it into something positive in my mind.  How did that experience make me grow?  What did I learn?  How did this help me improve myself?  But the anger fogs my thoughts when I allow myself to go there.

Anyway, I came across this poem and was touched by my own words and pleased that I thought of them.  I wish I hadn't wasted them on someone so undeserving.

This life.

 This things that make me so happy in this life are so funny to me.  Organized spices and powders.  Making dinner for my family.  A glass of wine.  My damn dog, the most loyal being I've ever met.  School.  The epitome of safety, always warm, always filled with people who express love freely.

My grandmother is in her last days.  It is impossible to think about her not being here, on this world, being the center of us.  I was able to be with her last week for a few hours, just us.  I watched her sleep, I fed her some, but the best thing I was able to do, is talk to her.  She listened and it was natural.  Not like talking to someone like they are a baby... or thinking that because they can't respond you need to scream at them and dumb everything you say down... I just talked to her.  Talked about the place at the mall that you can go to, to get boba tea.  How I hate the little jellies but still order it... tapioca seems the most popular because they are black jellies and look pretty in the tea.. how the straw is thick and you never know when one of those big black jellies is gonna come flying up and choke you at any moment.  I talked to her about being a grandmother and trying to dig deep into my memory from when I was little to try and remember if she was as young as I feel as a new grandmother.  She chuckled.  

Her life, an amazing life.  Her house, built by her and her husband, her summer house, same.  They built their life from the ground up when it was the only way to do it.  They figured things out, knew what would happen before it happened, had a butt load of kids, created something from nothing.

Here she is, trying to stay comfortable until she meets him again, almost 40 years of separation.  I wonder what it would have been like had we been girlfriends rather than grandmother/granddaughter.  Would we have sipped on old fashions rather than her serving me buttered bologna sandwiches while I lay on her couch on my days home sick from school?  Would we have bowled together and I shared her trophies which would eventually find their way to dusty shelves in the basement?  Would we have digressed about our husbands and life's trivial situations, and laughed until we cried and pee'd a little?  I think so.  I have those kinds of friendships.. they are the only kind I look forward too.

So she lays there, and I sigh.  Will I lay there while my granddaughter talks to me?  I fucking hope so.  I really, really, fucking hope so.  I feel like my one day of presence isn't enough but I put myself in her shoes and can only hope for a nice day with my sweet granddaughter talking to me about boba tea and being a grandma herself.  I CANNOT even imagine it... but... I hope for it.

Indigo DeMarse with her great great grandmother Eileen Morrison

Danielle, Tracy, Bridget DeMarse with their grandma Eileen Morrison

Riding in cars with boys.

While perusing the options for a movie to watch later, I came across one of my old favorites, Riding in cars with boys....it has Drew Barrymore, so...nuff said.

I started it tonight after dinner and it took mere minutes before the entire family was captivated.  This movie covers a wide span of time of a single mother and her son and there are so many things that I relate to. 

uncanny resemblance, right?

Sometime I forgot significant moments and tonight's movie brought me back to a stray memory from when Luke was a toddler and I felt compelled to get it down before I forgot it. 

Jaime and I decided one evening to drive to Syracuse with our friends David and Jaime's now husband Jessie.  We were going to a battle of the bands soiree.  Tracy, as usual, was the dependent babysitter.  She never went with us anywhere during those times because her boyfriend was in county lock-up and she felt the need to sit next to the telephone 24-7 in case he called collect.  

We had an uneventful evening right up til we pulled up to Jaime's apartment at the end of the night where everyone's cars were parked on the street.  This clip in my story plays out in my memory in slow motion.  For some reason, as we were getting out of my car, I happened to be looking at David because he had a really strange look on his face.  If I could compare it to something it would be that moment between calm soda and the when the menthos hits the surface.  I hadn't even noticed that there were police cars by where we parked our cars.  I look back at Dave and follow his gaze down and across to the tires of his truck.  Every single rim on his truck was surrounded by a thick, yet flaccid coat of rubber.  In better terms, his tires were all devoid of air.  Jaime's Nissan Pulsar with the T tops.. her tires the same.  The police approached us inquiring on whether or not we owned these vehicles to which we all vacantly shook our heads yes.  We got lucky because people called the police.. two people, walking by, saw what happened... thank god.

Turns out Jaime had a slighty crazy neighbor, who we had the pleasure of watching be walked, cuffed, to a police car.  The neighbor, a woman in her 40s, completely random and definitely not a convict looking type woman, decided to take a knife and stab all of Jaime's tires along with Daves.  She told the authorities that her and Jaime had a disagreement about the level of noise coming from Jaime's muffler.  Jaime... the non-crazy one, let the police know that she and this neighbor had never said two words to each other and she had no idea what she was talking about.  

48 hours later, we are packing Jaime's uhaul.  Thats right.. she didn't feel safe, how about that?  The neighbor back at home from a short stint in jail didn't quite sit right.  Jaime and I, along with toddler Luke (3 years old), completely packed and loaded her things in and evening and a day.  Luke and I spent the night so we get get up early and finish up.  We went to bed exhausted and I woke up, slightly groggy, Luke got up before me.  Jaime is stirring, Luke is not with her.  Where, the fuck, is Luke?  Luke.... is outside.  I have zero idea what would compel Luke to do what he was doing, but, he was in the process of dragging lawn toys from behind the crazy neighbors house to her front lawn.  He must have made at least three trips before we found him.   There are many unknowns in what led up to this as Luke wasn't a reliable teller of his actions.  Like.. how did he get out of bed while sleeping with me without me knowing... or.... how did he get down the flight of stairs that required a bit more than toddler mobility and dexterity... like how the heck he was able to pull all these lawn toys to the front of a crazy ladies house without grabbing her attention enough to give Luke the same fate as Jaime's tires.  Holy, good god, grabber dabber, fricken scary.   

Those antics aside, this crazy neighbor did actually end up going to jail for years, but it was not for slashing tires.  It was for being an arsonist.  She started breaking into houses in the neighborhood and starting fires.  One of the houses being the one that housed Jaime's apartment, the day after she moved out.  She had a feeling, glad she trusted it.  The neighbor ended up getting caught when she was trying to start a fire at the house where her kids were spending the night.  The tires were nothing compared to the true scope of what she was capable of.  

Yep, so that happened... 

All it takes is one.

Imagine you are a sixteen year old teenager.  Lets make you female... You are attractive, street smart, book smart (but you have to work hard at it), and the child of a single mother.  Your upbringing was quiet, no drama.  Although your dad uninvolved, your mother always made it work to put a roof over your head, food on the table, and was consistent with her expectations.

Now imagine you met a boy, a really nice boy.  He works hard, brings home a steady paycheck, is skilled with fixing cars, and is a volunteer village fireman.  He is very sweet, likes you very much, and after you decide to enter into the boyfriend/girlfriend stages, he is all you think about.  Buying him the perfect birthday and Christmas gifts was a thing.  You spent hours upon hours at his house, get to know his family pretty well.  His siblings become your siblings, his friends become yours.  If this is how it is, and nothing changes, then you feel lucky enough to know that you might have found the person you might end up being with for life.

Several months into the relationship, there are some stumbling points.  He doesn't acknowledge your birthday, he starts to act jealous if he perceives any boys as 'checking you out', he demands to know the passwords to your social media as a requirement for trust.  You comply, why not? you have nothing to hide.  He starts talking about his ex-girlfriend, telling you stories about her, even describing events where she has spoken about you.  He wonders aloud if maybe she should be taught a lesson.  These hints start becoming more direct, some laced with the idea that you would be proving trust and devotion by teaching her a lesson.  It is not how you were raised and you are uncomfortable with his requests and choose to not comply.

The scale that balances happy times with stressful times begins to collect moments, stressful times is the heavier side.  You start to withdraw from the relationship.  Your mom is noticing what is going on and questioning you about it.  You decide that maybe you should step back, take a break, get things back on track in your life.  He doesn't agree.  He contacts your mother to speak with her about convincing you to stay with him, no luck.  This is where it starts to get complicated.  There is a point where the nice route doesn't get you what you want.  Your mother is not receptive to helping him convince you to stay in the relationship, after all, you are now seventeen, this is normal.  You are slightly horrified that he contacted your mother and decide to make a clean break.  He begins to panic, he starts tracking your location using social media, showing up wherever you are and acting as if you are still together (to which presents the situation that you feel that you have to reiterate that you are no longer in a relationship) and each time this happens, his reaction is more severe than the last time.

He begins messaging your friends.  He tells them that you talk about them behind their back.  He gives specific fabricated examples.  He describes text messages that he cannot provide screenshots, or any other physical proof of, but the seed of doubt has been planted and some friends decide to distance themselves from you.  He begins to call you and threaten to commit suicide.  You alert his mother (who tells him to go for it? you decide to give her the benefit of the doubt and chaulk this up to reverse psychology).  At one point his suicidal threats are so bad that you tell him you will stay with him out of fear of being responsible for his happiness, thus responsible if he chooses to hurt himself.  Two days into the renewed relationship, he starts demanding social media passwords, you end it for the second time.  He contacts you and tells you that he is going to crash his truck because life is meaningless without you, hours later he gets into an accident and blames it on icy roads to anyone who asks what happened.  This did not persuade you to go back to him.

At this point, he has started writing things on a social media platform (Facebook/Snapchat/Instagram, all of them).  Sad quotes about not being wanted, about girls who are not faithful, about broken future plans.  Although you have blocked him from seeing any of your social media, people start sending you pictures.  There are comments upon comments under his quotes, people that don't know you calling you a cunt, comments saying that you are a cheater (this one was written by his grandmother), it is completely out of hand and out of control.  You are now stressed enough that you barely can get through a day of school without bursting into tears over a new revelation that someone has brought to you about your ex boyfriend, stories he is telling them about false things that you have done.  He starts telling people that your mother is strung out on drugs, there is no stone left unturned for every faction of your life that he has impacted in some way.

A month after the break up you start to form a potentially new relationship with a boy you have known for a long time, it goes nowhere after your ex finds out and contacts him to fill his mind with more seeds of doubt.  This happens a second time a month later.  Few more months down the road, you start talking to someone but do not tell anyone for fear that it would get back to your ex and he would sabotage yet another connection that you hope to pursue.  Your ex finds a new girlfriend, she is the sister of a close friend of yours.  He starts showing up to your sporting events at school with his new girlfriend.  At these events he doesn't break his stare as you try to focus on playing basketball, it is palpable and people begin to notice.  Your coach mentions possibly having an administrator ask him to leave (it never gets to that - thank god).

Your close friend (and her sister) start to withdraw from you.  They both act angry towards you and your friendship become a shell of what it used to be.  They end up breaking up.

At this point it has almost been a year.  He begins dating a new girl (another person that goes to your school - he graduated from a different school district), at your graduation ceremony as you are walking down the hall, there he is walking towards you along with her family, you change direction and manage to avoid him.  The new girl he started dating and you are familiar with each other and have never had negative interactions.

After graduating, with no school events to be concerned about, your mother and you move to a new place out of town and things settle and the quiet is most welcome.  Your new relationship is still going strong and you have a great summer together.  You start working at Walmart as you attend  school full-time at the local community college.  Months go by before one day while working, you look up and see your exes girlfriend video recording you on her telephone while you work.  You turn and walk away.  You need this job and confrontation is the opposite of enabling yourself to keep it.  This happens a second time a few weeks later.  Then, a month after that, you are working and your exes girlfriend approaches you and begins to physically attack you.  She strikes you several times, some in the face, has you backed into a corner, and then disappears.  You have no means for defending yourself without risking your job and nowhere to go physically.  The police are called, a report filed, and thats it.  In this process, you are allowed to look at the video footage of the attack, standing about 10 feet behind your attacker is your ex with a cheshire grin on his face.

Less than two weeks later, before a court date or any notion of legal action happening, you arrived at the mall with your boyfriend when a truck comes charging directly towards your car.  At the last moment it swerves and then parks next to your car.  It is your ex, and his girlfriend.  Your boyfriend and you start walking towards the entrance of the mall with the girl yelling in your direction to stop so she can "talk to you".  You go into the mall and are followed from store to store by your ex and his girl.  The police are called, your  mother, horrified and worried, gets in her car and starts driving towards the mall.  They leave before either entity get there.

At this point it is nearly eighteen months since you had been in a relationship.  It took several weeks to happen before a stay away order is in place.  The court would only grant an order against the person who physically attacked you and not against the person who has instigated months and months of harassment with no signs of stopping.  With the physical attack being behind you for about 4 months, you recently noticed a couple of people at your work, vaguely familiar, watching you intently and in a peculiar way (again, yeah I know...) off in the distance you notice your ex and his girlfriends brother laughing hysterically.  The people were her parents.   With all of this being said, you have no idea when this will stop, you have decided you cannot keep recreating your life to work around any opportunity that he has to 'get you' in whatever way he can convince people to do it for him.  You would love to say this cloud has a silver lining.  "don't do what I did..." "really get to know a person..." "check for these signs...." none of those things sounds like things you would have listened to when you first starting dating him almost two and a half years ago.  You are sure at some point you will stop having to look over your shoulder or endure strangers calling you a "pussy" for not attacking this girl back at your place of work.  In a way, you feel bad for her, you know the things he says to manipulate people.  God knows what else he is having her do.

Now.. imagine those non-specific thing happens to you.  Your Aunt would be very shocked, horrified, and amazed with the decisions of several adults in this scenario.

The edges of Mother's Day.

I have learned to dislike Mother's Day greatly.  It is the day that I spend way to much time anticipating, what used to be, crazy amounts of disappointment.  It's so weird because if Mother's day was disappointing, you would think it would be due to the lack of acknowledgement on the part of my children, but that actually is not a thing - my boys are awesome and love freely and openly and do not neglet me in any way.  I don't speak of it much anymore, but I am effected deeply from a relationship I was in for many years, where the person used Mother's day as a platform to hurt me.  It sounds pretty dumb on paper, dumb that I allowed it to happen over and over, but - a few years back on this day, I would wake up and hope to hear a simple phrase come from the mouth of the person who was supposed to love and cherish me.  It took some years before I finally broke down and admitted that I was deeply hurt that he would not acknowledge or say "happy mother's day" on Mother's day, but he did admit (towards the end), that I wasn't the mother to any children of his, so why should he? 

I don't know how to explain what it feels like to have to cry and explain to someone why they should not just acknowledge the day as a celebration of motherhood, but that it might be even more important to teach the biological and non-biological children how to celebrate it also.  It is ruined when you have to ask for it.  It is embarrassing to have to ask for it.

I find myself trying to avoid the day all together because it is a day where there lies a pit in my stomach that feels like lead weight, because I have somehow allowed this negativity to evolve into the underlying feeling that I do not deserve it.  I can't seem to erase it no matter how hard I try to forget. 

The last Mother's Day prior to my hasty exit from said toxic relationship, (as i'm sure that it was also being anticipated that we were coming to an end), in an attempt to win me back or get me to rethink my impending departure, it was decided that we now celebrates Mother's Day and together with my younger son, put up a sign and got a couple gifts.  Despite what was to come, I betrayed myself and expressed happiness and acted as if this was normal.  It wasn't.  A few hours after my surprise Mother's Day acknowledgement, it was then inquired as to why I didn't acknowledge the efforts to make my day special by posting it to social media.  When I acted perplexed as to why this should be a thing, the response was "you mean I did all of this for nothing?". 

As I said, at this point, I just wish this day wasn't a day.  Last year, my older son living out of town and my younger son being on a trip with his dad, I was actually not as anxious about Mother's Day as I normally would be.  I began a new relationship with a person who is completely genuine and expresses love in the way that it should be expressed.  He took me on a day trip to Syracuse, we went to my favorite Market and had lunch, and it literally was one of the best days ever.  I don't know how many of these trips we will need to take for me to stop recoiling inside every time I hear the phrase 'Mother's Day'.

On the part of the other party, I hope, for the sake of any new relationship, that something was learned so that this is never a thing that is done to a person again.

the best Christmas

It wasn't because there were many gifts or much money.

Just Luke and myself in our two bedroom subsidized apartment.  This place was freedom to me because I could afford it, but at the same time, that was about all I could afford.

Now it is Christmas and Luke is maybe three years old.  I had one gift for him, cowboy boots.  That was it.  They were very, very nice cowboy boots.  I had guilt and sadness because I was failing him in the present department, but, he just did not seem to care.  We spent the morning opening gift, ok maybe it was like five minutes.  Then we headed over to my dad's house to spend Christmas morning with my family.

My dad was known for buying gifts for us girls that were, quite frankly, bizarre.  Crazy kitchen appliances that one would have very small use for, like food dehydrators, or waffle irons, or... I don't know.  Anywho, my dad's mother would send gifts for us to his house (she lived out of town) - and we also had a gigantic breakfast every Christmas.  If it was a breakfast food, he made it.

We sat down and ate breakfast around the living room floor (pow-wow style).  My dad would start handing out gifts.  This year, my grandmother sent us comforters, big, thick, soft, comforters.  How exciting, honestly, all of my blankets were dismal in comparison.  Tattered remnants of my childhood, too old to be amazing and too old to get rid of.  Then, my dad gave me his gift for me.  It was AMAZING.  No avocado scooping, coffee grinding, potato peeler.  No, this was far better than anything he could have ever purchased for us.  It was a 13 inch, television VCR combo and it was FABULOUS.  I didn't have cable, I didn't have a TV, I guess I didn't really have much of anything now that I think about it.  But I had this...

Usually on the way back to my apartment, I would be fighting the exhaustion of getting up so early and the carb fest at my dad's.  We got home, dug up a VCR tape, set up the TV in my room.  Unfolded that luxurious comforter from my gram, and fell asleep to the sounds of Ferris Bueller.  It was literally, the best Christmas ever.  I cuddled my Luke on my bed in this heavenly blanket and slept for hours... just to wake up and head to my other grandma's house for dinner.