Ice and a Needle: Southern Rule #2

     The ice on my earlobe is dripping down my neck and the pain on my lobe makes me pull the ice away.  Heidi is telling me to keep the ice on there so it will get numb.  I put it back on the front of my earlobe and every so often switch to the back.  We're laughing and talking like any 13 year old's would.   About boys and friends.   

     Here I am at one of the coolest girl's house from school.  She has invited me to spend the night and I am just feeling so lucky.  Her bedroom is huge and she has her own bathroom.  Her bedroom is twice the size of my parents bedroom!  Heidi is beautiful.   Long dark brown hair with these big brown eyes.  Really white teeth and an incredible smile.  Her family doesn't seem to hover over her perhaps because she is the youngest with brothers.  I feel like the ugly duckling next to her but I am so happy she has invited me over.

    Heidi wonders if I want my ears pierced.  I tell her my mom won't let me.  She asks why, whats wrong with pierced ears?  Heidi offers to pierce them.  My mom doesn't need to know.  I can hide them.   It doesn't take me long to say yes.  Heidi goes and gets some ice and brings it back to her room.  We have music playing on the record player and she is telling me how she will be doing it.  I need to keep the ice on my ear till they feel really numb.  She finds a sewing needle and some matches.  She is telling me that once my ear is numb that she will light the match and run the needle through it.   That's to sterilize it.  Then she will poke the needle through my ear.  Once that is done she will leave the needle in for a short time and then put an earring on afterwords.  

     Heidi has lots of of earrings.  Long dangling earrings with small beads that look so hippy like.  I want to be a hippy.  If this will get me closer to that status then I will do it.  I want to be cool.  I want to dress like the rest of the cool girls.  She finds some small posts that I will wear for a month till my ears have healed then I can wear any kind of earrings I want after that.  

     I think my ear is quite numb now.  She has marked my ear with a pen so she will know where to put the needle through.  I am a bit scared as I don't like needles.   Then she does it.  I do cry out but then she is done.  My ear feels hot and is pounding but not as bad as the numb feeling.  I don't know how many ears Heidi has pierced but she doesn't seem to think anything of it.  We have to wait now for my other ear to be numb.  She puts the post in the ear while we wait.  I can't believe that now I too will have pierced ears.  All my girlfriends have pierced ears and none of their mom's minded.  What is the big deal?

     The next day when I go home I walk in the door hoping to not see my mom.  I wear my long hair parted down the middle and covering my ears quite well.   So far so good.  It's not like my mom and I sit face to face much or talk if I can help it.  Except for dinner where we all sit together.  The first day I am fine but the second day at dinner I am caught.   She wants to know what I have on my ears.  I tell her there is nothing there.  She persists and then pulls my hair away.  The posts are plain to see.   She is livid.  I am told to take them out, right now!  I am sent to my room, which is a common event at my age.  When all else fails send Ellen to her room.  Grounding was a weekly deal as well.  My mom must have eyes everywhere!   

     I come up with a great idea.  When I leave the house I put the earrings right back in.  When I am home I take them out.  Heidi tells me it will take longer to heal taking the earrings off and on like that and to use alcohol to keep them clean so they don't get infected.  So this is what I do.  This plan works for a week till one day I come home from school and I forgot to take the earrings out.  Busted!  I said she was livid before, well now she is furious with me.  My lesson is I can't fool my mom and get away with it.  I should know this but I keep trying to outwit her.  I stop wearing the earrings and just keep asking her when I can get them pierced.  If I do this long enough maybe she will give in.

     Southern rule about pierced ears.  Pierced ears are what cheap women do.  I guess she is telling me that my friends with pierced ears are cheap women in the making.  No proper young lady wears them.  Clip on earrings are fine and I can wear those.  They don't make cool earrings that clip on!  What hippy wears clip on earrings?  This is the logic I received from my mom.  Looking back at it I can understand her feelings that way based on her upbringing.  She wasn't seeing that styles and opinions had changed or attitudes towards them as well.  For her there was no reasoning of this issue.  When I was 15 she finally relented and let me get them pierced.  It was done by the doctor she worked for who did it in his office.  Yes, at that time you went to a professional to have it done.  Anyone else and there would be problems.  If you look at my ears you can see where Heidi pierced my ears as the holes never fully closed.  It bothers me that the doctor didn't do it in the same place or check to see if an earring would go through the first holes.  My victory was won and proved that one could have pierced ears and not be a floozie.  My mom never did come to approving of them but she stopped arguing with me on this.  Of course I was allowed to only wear small hoops of gold.  Not the kind that dangle.  That came soon enough though.

Southern Rules

     I could never have survived living in the south.   I have lived in the very liberal state of California almost all my life and I would have broken every Southern rule that existed in the unwritten book every good Southern girl knows forwards and backwards.  They were taught all this from day one when they were born.  From the moment my mom was picked up and held she became the Southern Belle that one reads about.   It is not to say my mom didn't do something wrong in her youthful days.   Yes, I am sure she too tested her Mama and Daddy but she did it with a sweet Southern smile when she apologized. 


     When I was a young teen in the 70's my mother became   overly concerned about who I was having as a friend.  I knew that when I brought someone over the first thing she would say after she would say "Hello" would be "And who are your people?".   None of my friends could understand this "Who are your people" deal.   What does that mean?  The next thing she would say as my friend would look at me in question not knowing what to say would be "And what does your father do?".  Now that they could answer.  


     For some reason these are important answers to know.  It tells a lot about that person as to "Who are your people".   It means where do they come from or are they from a long line of old family from the south.  I have been in a department store ladies room and my mom would hear someone with a Southern accent and she would ask "Are you from south?".   Nine times out of ten they would be from some southern state.  If they were from Alabama that would be exactly what would be asked after that.   "Who are your people?".   I would listen to my mom ask "Do you know so and so?".   Then they would ask "Do you know the so and so's from Montgomery?".  I was amazed at the connections of the Southern relations!  There was always some family they could connect with or know.


     I can only assume that where you come from is a very important thing to know.  It must be like what station in life you are from.   Pity someone from the wrong area or wrong family.  I never learned the purpose of knowing this and the need to ask this with my friends.  I would usually get around to asking in a conversation where a person lived.  It just didn't sound like the way my mom would do it.  Hers was said in such an important way.  Mine was casual but it was more of a way to develop a friendship and I certainly didn't ask the personal way of "Who are you people"!


     The rudest question was  "What does your father do?".  What kind of thing is that to ask someone?  Apparently that too is an important thing to know.   I guess if your father did not have in important job they may not be a suitable friend to have.  I for the life of me cannot see the importance of that.  Yet to my mom that was what she asked.  Believe me she did try to steer me away from some of my friends upon finding them less than what she wanted for her daughter.  The higher vocation one's parent was the happier she would be.  She would be so polite and gratuitous  when they came over.  Without asking me she would invite them to do something with the family.  This was my friend, not hers!  She made it hard to want to bring friends over with her inquisitiveness and suspiciousness.  My friends thought her stiff, formal and she made them uncomfortable.  If I was not to bring a friend over and she had not met them then she would have to talk to their parent on the phone before I went over.  


     The Southern ways never leave you even if you move away.  Her southern accent did disappear oddly.  I can't remember her having it while I was growing up.  My Nan's stayed till she passed away.  My mom tried hard to instill her Southern upbringing in me and some I do have and I do like.  These though were the top of the list of insane.

The Meaning of Family

     The definition of family is 1:  a group of individuals living under one roof and usually under one head (household)   2:  a group of persons of common ancestry (clan)  3:  a people or group of peoples regarded as deriving from a common stock (race)  4:  a group of people united by certain convictions or a common affiliation (fellowship).


     I have struggled with the understanding of family most of my life.  My mother married three times.  (Household had several heads to live under.)  Most of the family was of common ancestry.  (Our clan was dominate of a Southern Heritage of unwritten but strictly obeyed rules.)  We were all of one race.  (That would be Southern.)  As for the "united by certain convictions or common affiliation" well, I tested that out most of my teen years.  (Fellowship was hard when you have father-figures that changed three times.  It doesn't help fellowship either when you question the female head of household over insane reasons why I couldn't do most things I wanted to do when I was age 13 to 15.)


     My birth father I have scant memory of.   Few photographs as well.   He was in the Air Force and sadly he was stationed away from us during a time when it possibly could have changed the outcome of my parents relationship.  Possibly not though as well.  After their divorce I rarely saw him and heard less from him.  I don't honestly know why.  Seeing him the few times I did brought me to tears and confusion over who and what he was to me.   He was my dad.  I knew that.   But what memories or stories did I have of him in my life?  I could think of none.  When I was in my senior year and having turned 18 he suddenly wanted to be a part of my life.  It shook me to the core.  I was afraid of him because of not knowing him.  My love and I went to meet him in San Francisco at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, a neutral spot I selected.  I could hardly stop from shaking because a part of me longed to have my father in my life but a huge part of me was angry that after all this time NOW he wanted to be a part of my life.  Like he could just pop in and we could be a father - daughter unit.   I explained to him that what I wanted was to get to know him.  What his favorite things to do were, what hobbies he had, what he did with his new family.  We parted with the agreement of him not calling me but to write to me.  I was not yet ready to open my life to him at that point.


     It still haunts me that we never moved onto the phone calls.  He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1983.  He respectfully honored me all those seven years by not calling me except for a few times when I called him.  I am saddened that he never got to see his first two grandchildren except in photographs.  I think that I am like him in more ways than I realize in that he too regretted not having tried harder to see my brother and I when we were growing up.  My father died on his sailboat, alone, but doing a hobby that he enjoyed.   A hobby he never told me about.   How is it that I never found this out?


     Bill was my first stepfather.  He was a handsome man if you like the tall dark type.  He was a ladies man through and through.  He really didn't parent me as my mother took that role one hundred percent.  Bill was the nice guy with the smile and laugh.   I never had an attachment to him like my brother.  He didn't do much with me except to drive me to my horse or just him living under the same household.  They lasted nine years and then he was gone.  I was surprised how his being out of my life left me without any sadness.  Maybe it was because I had my own personal life that was in need of living.  Having been uprooted from my friends to move to a place I commonly called "a hell hole" I really didn't care about anyone except my horse and our dogs.  I never saw or heard from him again.  


     The man who left his mark in my life was Rock.  He was there for this tribe of three women in a calm and constant way.  My Grandmother thought he was too old for my mom as there was a 20 year difference in age.  She liked him alright but wasn't sure if this was a match for her daughter.  She proceeded to go visit family in the south for awhile and let what would happen happen.  Did she think it would end?  It didn't.   My mom and Rock flourished.   My mom's Southern charm worked magic and before long they were married.   Rock had his own children and then he had me.  We became a part of the same fellowship of family.  We sailed on his boat and skied together.  It was through him I met my love.  He was an amazing Papa to his grandchildren.   There was nothing about him I didn't love and with all my heart wished that he had been my real father.   I preferred calling him Papa than Rock as I felt it was my way of defining him more as my father.  He alone could quiet my mom's stormy behavior towards me.   When he passed away after twenty-four years of marriage I knew it would be a rough sea to sail without him.  He was a gentleman unlike any I have ever known.  Honest, kind, loving, artistic, wine lover, food lover, interested in any new gadget and he never stopped learning if there was something to learn.   He and my mom were a special couple that many looked on as meant for each other or were "The Couple".  For me he was what it meant to have a father.  I felt secure in his gentle bear hug.  His short phone calls to ask about the kids or my love and I.  Going against doctors orders and going on roller coasters with us and laughing the whole time.  His laugh, his smile, his berets, his ascots, him.


     So what is family?  I certainly have had an odd arrangement.  I have more though.  I have left out the part that really is on my my mind of late.  My father had two children with the wife he married after my mom.  Yes, I have two half siblings.  I met them once a couple of years after my father passed away.  An odd visit as I was still so young that I really didn't know what to say or do with them when my father's wife called to visit.  Elizabeth and Matt.  I wanted to know what they knew about my father that I didn't get to know.  What was he like as a father?  What did they do together?   Yet here they were fatherless as I had been.  Looking at it now I wonder what memories as adults they have about him.  They too missed all the years when you remember the most about a life.  Do they have a foggy memory of what they think happened when he was alive?  Does their mother tell them about him and what kind of person he was?  I wonder do they wonder about me like I do about them?  I want to know them.   In some scary way I want to know them.  Then a part of me is afraid of rejection.  Why would they want to know me and if they did why have they never looked for me?  I mean I have tried to look them up from time to time without avail.  Will my life go by never knowing them, they who are a part of my father and me?  Do they resemble him?  Or me?  Just a little bit?  What is family?   I see my life with my love and our children and feel so much.   I feel so much....I feel so much I ache with the encompassing love I feel.  I feel like I can't tell them enough or show them enough of my love.  My consistency of love that I want them to know, I need them to know.  Loss makes you feel this.  As my life moves on I am awash with the swells of love that roll over me, like when Papa would take us out on his boat.  

Christmas Wishes

     Christmas wishes when I was a child...I wish I could remember all the different ones I dreamt about.  Thoughts of Santa who would be coming to my house.   Would I hear the reindeer on the roof?  Those pretty prancing reindeer with the jingling bells on their harness, would I wake up to see them?  How would Santa slide down our chimney?   Did he get smaller on the way down?  How did he go back up?  He was magical, that could be the only way he could do all that he did in just one night.

      Looking out the living room window, searching the sky to see if I could spot Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.   Our news channel would say where Santa was in the sky.   As he would get closer to our town my mother would tell me it was time for bed.   Santa wouldn't come till I was sound asleep.   Off I would run to my bed.   I would hurry to fall asleep so that I wouldn't jinx him coming.  

     Here's wishing that Santa makes some of your wishes come true. Mine this year would be peace on earth.  How timeless that wish is...still.   

    Merry Christmas to all!

     

Reflection

  
  I was looking out the window when I noticed my reflection looking back at me.  It made me think of when I was growing up and feeling uncertain of myself.  That feeling that I was not pretty enough compared to the girls with the peaches and cream complexion while mine was covered with bumpy teen skin.  Or the awkwardness of my chubby child body during my grade school years.  I had a hard time in grade school.  I dreaded having to do anything at the chalkboard where my back would be to the class, trying to answer a math equation or an English breakdown of a sentence.  The feel of all the eyes of my classmates watching and waiting for a correct answer or a wrong answer.  If it was wrong then I would have to go back to the front and be subjected to the class and teacher doing it with me.  I feared the times that my teacher would assign us to mesmerize a poem or read a report we had to write in front of the class.  P.E. was terrible as I was one of the those in the last pick line-up.  What a cruel decision for those teachers to set the popular girls to choose who they wanted on their teams.  You wait in a line as one by one the favorites were picked first, laughing and smiling, while I cringed to see the unhappy face they would make when the last of us were chosen.  


     Nicknames haunted me.  My mom use to call me Ellie which wasn't awful but when kids at school took to calling me Ellie the Elephant during my chubby stage it hurt.  Those taunts don't leave your memory.  In my early teen years I was called PT, which stood for Pyramid Tits, as I had nipples that stood out but no boobs.  Pretty insulting for a young teen girl.  I hated being called Ellie and my mom did stop calling me that.  It's a shame a nickname could evolve into a dreaded name as Ellie is a sweet name.  PT faded away thankfully.  


     That reflection followed me through most of my first 18 years.   I felt so ill equipped to participate in conversations.  I didn't feel educated enough or confident in what I could say.  While dating, my love brought out the best in me.  He encouraged me to make eye contact when speaking and to try to engage in conversations.  I found comfort in his genuine interest in me and who I was.  I had an overpowering mother who had a tendency to make me not feel good about myself.  I didn't dress the way she wanted, I didn't have friends she wanted me to be friends with, I didn't have the brains like my brother or the talents he had with sports and extracurricular activities.  When my love came along she really liked him.  It was like suddenly she saw I was there!  She still didn't appreciate the person I was or take interest in my pursuits but for once she talked to me like the young woman I was becoming. 


     I still can see the reflection only now I see the person I am is on the right side.  She is not the one trapped in the image on the other side of the glass though at times she tries hard to come out and take my place.   I still listen more than I talk and I do love being behind the camera rather than engaging in conversations many times.  I enjoy watching a good conversation going on, hearing the laughter, or raised voices of determination in their talk.  I always have learned much by listening.  I appreciate my quiet side who doesn't feel I need to engage in every conversation.  I tend not to put my foot in my mouth.  I listen more with my heart and try hard not to say what may hurt but to say what I feel that is more loving.  It is a can be a struggle to not say the wrong thing when you feel angry or are in a bad mood.   But I keep trying.  I want to look at myself and know that I am honest of my intentions and that I don't bring the hurtful words from my past out to my loved ones who don't deserve them.   I want my actions to be of loving open arms and that the return towards me are as open, loving and honest.  My struggle is that I take too much personally.  It is hard to let the vain, hurtful, dishonest words roll off me like drops of water that can evaporate from my heart.  Yet when I do it affects me in such a rush of peace and joy that I believe it helps when the next time those words come my way.  

Fall In Sepia

           A peaceful walk near meadows where young calves

and their mothers grazed

           

Trees stood barren and dark

as the sky lay a drizzle of misty rain

upon us

    

It all looked as though this land was under a settling 

sleep that we should not disturb

Our voices echo off the hills

"Hello over there!"

Hush, 

Let the quiet enter again

When leaves fall we see

the gracefulness of trees

Crossed trunks seem to be

in embracement as their

roots clasp the earth

tightly

Dream....

     My love put this beside our bed last night.  He 


has been working in the home of a elderly couple 


who no longer live there....the mother deceased and


 dad is in a memory impaired home.  He found it


 amongst some newspaper on tattered paper.   He 


copied it out while he ate lunch on their floor...a 


quiet house filled with the memories of a life now 


gone.  Which of them found this and clipped it for 


the other?  My love thought of me and it filled my 


heart thinking of him while he sat alone and wrote


 it down.