Ohio Girl

There is a hospital near my place of employment that offers valet service. There is a panhandler just down the way from there with the cough of consumption. He hasn’t seen a doctor in years. Maybe if he had a car to valet?

I bought a shopping bag at a big box store–the canvas, reusable kind. It was only 99 cents and seemed sturdy. While I was digging for change to cover the tax, the cashier placed it in a plastic shopping bag. Who bags a bag?

I often have lunch at a great, little place located next to an abortion clinic. Anti-abortion folk are always outside with gruesome pictures blown up as big as their pick-ups. They have a new sign that says, “All Michael Vick did was kill some dogs.” Didn’t God create babies AND dogs?

A neighbor down the road has a house back a long drive. It sits next to an open field. Deer gather there in the early morning by the dozens to graze. This neighbor put in a mud hut by the driveway. Why hunt when you can just shoot?

She was a lovely young woman. Just finished college. Smart. Willing to do the work despite the awful pay. Only thing is her Dad stabbed her Mom last month. She has to testify next week. Her Mom is not speaking to her because she’s thinking about forgiving Dad. She wants so badly to help others, this young woman, the way she couldn’t help her Mom, I suppose, but I think she is too close to it. I think it would eat her alive.

I paused from the monotony of grant reporting yesterday to have a bit to eat. I had been thinking about my granny smith apple smothered in peanut butter all morning. As I ate I opened up msn.com to catch up on the news.

I think the grim reaper must be freelance writing these days. All of the headlines were straight-up death. There was the man that threw his four, small children off a high bridge. The new details about the finals days of the missing hiker. There was the blogging soldier who posted a piece about his death. An if-you-are-reading-this-I-am-dead blog. And then there was the Prime Minister of Pakistan blaming Benazir Bhutto for her own assassination.

“She should not have stood up,” he said, referring to her waving out of the sun roof of her car.

Damned if those headlines did not ruin my granny smith.

What are we to each other? It feels like a new question, but i think it’s just that I have not asked myself in a while. At some point in my social work career I suppose I felt I understood some of the more unfathomable triggers of human behavior; some of the ways that love turns to hate and vice versa. I have felt insulated by that understanding; protected by the distance of perspective.

A client came around drunk and bleeding the other night. She stumbled around numb leaving a blood trail through the building. A smudge on the pole of the porch, a little pool where she almost fell in the entry hall. She was trying to find her bed as 9-1-1 was called. She just wanted to get some sleep. Her mess was still evident the next morning like a CSI scene.

She made it to court after the hospital. Not yet showered. Still wearing her injuries. Her right shoe–a white one–had gone all brown. As the Advocate stood with her she smiled and waved at the man who tried to kill her. She smoothed her hair and wished she had gotten a chance to clean up.

Who in the hell are we to each other?

Today was a parade of meetings; another sort of man-made misery. At 9:30 it was about getting disabled victims of violence service access. At 11 AM it was about managing volunteers. At Noon it was something about a new policy. At 2 it was a client case review. At 4 it was that lovely young woman who wants to help so badly.

Maybe I SHOULD hire her. It may eat her alive, but it may eat her alive anyway, no matter where she works. And I get the impression she would rather stand up and be shot down, than not stand up at all.

Happy Winter everyone! Can you believe it’s that time of year again? Yes, that’s right, time for my annual Christmas card letter! I know I have been a little out of touch so I’ll make sure and bring you all up to speed.

I should not have fallen asleep during that Anne of Greene Gables marathon on PBS because I think it colored my thinking. The first thing to go wrong was realizing that I don’t bake. The second was realizing I don’t garden. From there the little job in the little town went farther South than I had.

So, I left the little town and, like Anne, got a job in the nearest big town. I spent the first few commutes kicking and screaming which made driving difficult. My vision of a simple small town life had been replaced by the reality of traffic and running a large shelter for women.

I got to know a whole lot about plumbing. The bathroom above my office flooded, not once, but twice. The biggest flood sent fecal matter through the ceiling light fixture where it landed on my computer keyboard. As I threw away files and argued over the phone with the supply lady about why a new keyboard was, in fact, necessary, something happened to me. Some say I finally lost my mind. I prefer to think of it as a Zen epiphany. As shit literally rained from above I decided it was time to let go. Que sera, whatever will be, and all that jazz.

I also sold my Cleveland house, finally. My new house it almost ready. And of course, it’s my favorite time of year. Who could ask for more? 

Remember friends, some years are better than others, but it isn’t all bad until you’ve got shit on your head. Hope 2008 is a good one! Merry Christmas!

In the second grade I had a teacher named Miss Roush. On lucky, Friday afternoons, when she was as inpatient for the weekend as her students, she would abandon her lesson plan and hop up on top of her desk. She took this time to talk about a trip she had taken the previous summer. Her and a friend and a beater of a station wagon spent three months road-tripping around the country.

As she talked about the trip her legs would start to swing. She talked about eating nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to conserve funds. Something that sounded great to us second-graders. She talked about sleeping in the back of the wagon at roadside stops and all the strange people they met and all the sights. As she talked she got more and more excited. As she got more excited her legs swung faster and faster eventually thumping against her desk-front.

The thumping matched my heartbeat. I was excited as she was. And there was something about the look on her face—a Buddha sort of bliss–that made me want to follow in her tire treads more than anything.  I made a promise to myself that I would road-trip to all 50 of the United States.

I am as excited as a second-grader to report I have now reached 48! I still have Alaska and Hawaii (for which donations are gladly accepted), but 48 out of 50 ain’t bad.

1-If an administrator in a work meeting says the word “exciting,” or “dynamic” enough times that means the meeting IS exciting and dynamic.

2-If i use Xenical–the diet drug now available over the counter–exactly as directed i will not only lose weight, but i will be able to ROLLER BLADE by the beach. I am not sure which beach.

3-If a construction company buys up foreclosed farmland and names the new subdivision they build “country estates,” it still FEELS like you live in the country.

4-If the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) erroneously deports a US citizen with diagnosed mental disorders to Tijuana, they have not committed an error as long as they THOUGHT they were deporting a non-citizen.

5-If the President of the United States breaks  US law but has written a letter describing why he does not LIKE that particular law, he has not broken the law.

If a redneck’s head explodes in the woods and there is no one around to hear it does it still make a sound?

Hell yes it does and it was confirmed just a few minutes ago with that collective, high-pitched, whistling sound followed by a loud, quick “pop.” I know, you thought it was a car backfiring, but it was the exploding heads of thousands of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. fans. Well, hundreds anyway. Those without internet or cable hook-up out in the trailer parks and backwoods will find out a little later.*

Junior announced he will be driving for Hendrick Motorsports—will be teammates with whiny, pretty-boys Gordon and Johnson–in 2008. He has gone to the other side. He has joined the enemy. My, how the world does turn.

I must admit I had hoped against all odds and gossip that this would not happen. Part of the fun of NASCAR is transferring the frustrations and annoyances of the everyday to the race rivalries on the track and I have gotten a lot of therapeutic, mileage out of the Gordon-Earnhardt divide. It will take the punch out of the family betting pool too which has largely fallen along the same lines.

I must also admit I am excited for Junior. This is his chance to race in the best equipment available and to do so without the shadow of the Intimidator always one step behind. He will prove his skill once and for all, or he won’t. That’s all a fan can ask for.

*I am 100% hillbilly on my mother’s side and 75% on my Dad’s. Hillbillies–being the kissing cousins of the rednecks—are therefore permitted to make fun of fellow hillbillies AND rednecks safely, without being offensive. You know, just in case you were wondering.

There are epiphanies of all kinds. Mine started as I exhaled. I let my breath out and could SEE brain cells coming out of my nostrils and ears likes so many dancing bears. And then the family seated next to me all in camo—the mom’s a nice pink with rhinestones, the dad’s a complimentary, but manly grey, the kids in traditional green–they joined the dancing bear parade while the announcer announced we would have to take a break due to air quality issues.

We were being gassed and willingly at that.

I pulled my scarf around my nose and worried about the baby with the mohawk two rows down and then let go; let the carbon monoxide take me where all those weekends of acid-dropping never did.

It seems I had been laboring under an illusion. This was my next thought as Vyper interviewed awkwardly and as another driver commented on his tour of duty in
Iraq.

“Were you thinking about coming back here to drive monster trucks?” the announcer stalled.

“No, I just wanted to make it back,” said the driver.

“Duh,” said the dancing bears in harmony.

I had been laboring under the illusion that I had seen everything. Certainly everything in the redneck repertoire.

I can be so full of myself.

I like Vyper, I thought, with his round belly and his shy, lack of interview skills. I like that while other drivers ran out and athletically jumped atop the massive tires of their massive vehicles that Vyper had to struggle up from below his beast.

I like Twisted Dragon and his southern drawl and his cute story about taking a blow torch to his corvette and crafting the MONSTER VETTE. The dragon.

And I don’t hate this spectacle, I thought, but was not clear if it was me or the bears talking.

Sure, there was a rough patch at the start.

When I saw the massive trucks in the tiny arena. When the lights went down. When the announcer said, and i mean actually directly said and I quote, “Let’s thank all the troops fighting for our right to have Monster Trucks here in Ohio.”

I mean, Jesus H. Christ.

And I never even say that.

NASCAR certainly carries the same message but it’s polished and buffed beneath corporate logos and glitzy fly-overs. Those boys have been trained not to say it right out like that.

But then came the fumes and the bears and the reflexive squeals when the Monsters began catapulting up and over junk yard cars to “catch some air.”

High Voltage went up so fast and so high it seemed certain he would go all the way over. Instead he became stuck on his end atop an old buick. My hands to my head I gasped and giggled and turned to see my nieces and nephew doing the same.

And just then the girls stood and shouted, “This is better than NASCAR.”

I do not agree, but the kids have a point that was punctuated in the autograph line.

Every driver stayed until every kid got to shake hands and get an autograph. Every kid got a sincere smile and every grown up a thank you. A very specific thank you.

“Thanks for coming out here and letting me have this job,” this was said to me, directly, by a driver.

As ridiculous as his job is, as much as I would trade his job for, you know, drowning polar bears, I got it.

I got that the same guy was changing the oil in my car last week and for not much more money he gets to travel and to meet people and to giggle and gasp right along with the crowd as he crunches atop discarded school buses.

“We get it,” sang the bears as they danced into the night.

Grandpa and Great Aunt Cleo and Grandma are staring at one another when I arrive. They’ve all known one another for a long time. What else do they possibly have to talk about?

“You” Grandma says pointing into my chest—clever avoidance of my name which she cannot recall.

“Wellllllll,” Cleo remarks. I am not clear if she remembers my name either.

Grandpa manages a few more syllables with a “Looky here.”

“You are just in time for the New Year’s party,” he continues, signaling my arrival will mean his escape.

Cleo is fidgeting in her chair and is ready to go as well. She’s older than Grandma and has already had her car keys removed from her custody. She’d rather not risk being confused for a resident by hanging around too long.

At the party down the hall the New Year has come a couple days early. No one cares. Grandma reviews her party favors and puts on the aluminum foil tiara. It is a suitable piece of party finery. The plastic lei, on the other hand, will not do. That is going too far. A man at the end of the table blows his party horn early and Grandma laughs. Someone else covers their ears with their eyes squeezed shut reliving some bad moment.

Charades gets the party started. One man acts out being a spider. Another does a passable bear. What do you mean by that one woman glares upon being told to be a cat. When Grandma receives her assignment she turns to the table and says, “I’m a puppy.” Everyone claps for the effort.

Soft pretzels and cheese flavored dipping sauce are passed around while the staff pours sparkling cider. “Is that wine?” one man asks with the same face the kids approached their presents on Christmas morning.

“I sure as hell wish it was,” I whisper. Grandma jabs me with her elbow. She caught that one.

Next the staff turn on that song; that same song that is played in every scene of every movie when old folks get together. I know the name but cannot place it. It is too old for most of this crowd who are younger than the WWII set, but did not have enough education or free time for war protesting and free love.

Grandma would rather hear Dion. I know this because back when I was a teen and talked about Bono, my future husband, Grandma brought up Dion—HER future husband. Ick, I thought. The guy across from me, whose mind went well before his body, would like to hear a little Megadeth.

The staff starts handing out strawberry pie and 18 year-old nursing assistants walk by giggling. They still say “Eewwwwww” when they have to change a diaper and have not caught on yet that aging is something that happens to everyone. Unless, of course, you die first.

Finally, the residents are asked to go around and share their New Year’s resolutions. The woman to my right says, “To just keep going on.” A couple folks name weight loss. It seems that quest is never ending. The rest are perplexed into silence which is precisely how I feel about it.

I keep thinking about a shiatsu massage cushion that I tried in the store causing me to melt into the chair and remain there for several more demos to the annoyance of the other weary shoppers, but screw them because it felt almost like the real thing, real hands, and my neck was really hurting. So I decided to buy it, because I deserve it, right, and I took it to the price scanner only to discover it was a little pricey, too pricey. So I put it back because it was expensive AND excessive. There are people starving and I need to be rubbed by an electric-powered mass of plastic every night? And speaking of excessive, I thought, how many Hummers WERE there in the parking lot? But then I thought about how much I love NASCAR and hating Hummers while loving NASCAR is a little hypocritical from a polar-ice-cap-melting perspective, but the people I know who love NASCAR are good people and like it because it is good entertainment and is still in reach as a family vacation for the working and middle class so long as you camp and pack your own food. And because NASCAR has a sense of inventiveness and danger that are precisely the elements needed to raise a family on a working class income. And because I know people who work with hands that never get completely clean after years of grease collecting in the crevices and what is NASCAR but folks who worked with their hands and ran shine in a rather inventive and dangerous way to raise their families and then got lucky. Lucky and rich and what a fantastic fantasy to be a part of, whereas people in Hummers just seem stupid, right, and are usually wearing overpriced J. Crew stuff even though they could get the exact same polar fleece at Target. And then thinking of people looking all round and puffy in their layers of winter, polar fleece for some reason reminded me about that commercial I kept seeing while in Europe last fall about international hunger and American obesity, linking one to the other, and finally putting to rest the old parent-child argument about how you should not waste your dinner because children in China are starving and then the inevitable, well, go ahead and mail my broccoli straight to them. The kids were right, we should have been sending the broccoli AND the ho-hos and then thinking of junk food made me feel guilty, but not quite as guilty as being a fat American with a shiatsu massage cushion while people are starving. And thinking of all the greed and gluttony and the assorted deadly sins I started to think about Oprah who like all the other gurus—and I paused to note that I had said gurus in my head the way Zappa says it in that one song I like—says one must care for the self in order to care for others and maybe she is right and I have after all dedicated my working life to helping others and so maybe I would be a better helper if I had a guilt-free, shiatsu massage cushion and I could share it with everyone I know and then they would be better helpers too. And once we start doing a better job of helping maybe we will feel less guilty and then won’t be as hungry and will at the very least reserve the ho-hos for the less fortunate and then my brain ran out of breath. So I took a few deep ones and decided expensive and excessive HAD been the right assessment and I left the store without the shiatsu massage cushion and as I passed the row of Hummers in the parking lot it felt even more right. But that was days ago and I am still thinking of that nearly-real shiatsu massage and now that I think about it a little more maybe if someone presented it to me as a gift it would not be quite so excessive and I would still share it with everyone I know. I promise. 

Desperate haiku from a long, wrong meeting about “helping” people:

Eyes with furry roof

Soft but styled words that

emerge from hair hedge

-dedicated to the hairy bureaucrat wearing suspenders

Fat women all here

to give what cannot be had

Small, kind attention

-for all the givers aka fat social workers

Who knew poverty

has fiscal year calendar

to meet key deadlines

-dedicated to the poor folks who do poor the right way

Two hours are gone

Who will remember meeting

Talking, not doing

-dedicated to my dwindling patience

Dreaming of cold bleach

Like lemonade on hot day

Pain from brain to gut

-an homage to sanity