I don't remember....

I don't remember why mama left. As soon as it was clear to my dad that she was gone, he cut off my hair and made me look like a boy. Gone were my long, cascading curls, replaced by short, ugly boy hair, hair that was easier, he said, to care for. He knew nothing of fancy shampoo or conditioner or detangling spray, he said, so short hair it was.

I hated my mama for leaving. And I hated my daddy for trying harder to let me be who and what I needed to be.

I remember crying when I realized she wasn't coming back. I was stuck with just dad, and Bungee, my crazy grandmother, to raise me. My mama was beautiful, and young, and always smelled good. I think she wore Chanel No. 5, but that is another thing I don't remember.

I can only imagine her now, she is nothing but a blurry snapshot in my mind's eye. Her texture is lost to me; the fine lines that must have crisscrossed her face near her eyes, the swinging, soft hair that brushed against my face when she kissed me goodnight and goodbye, the perfectly almond-shaped nails on her delicate, pampered hands were all just memory, or maybe imagination, now. I can't even be sure anymore. I just accept that everything I think I remember about her was the truth, was the reality of her.

Not being able to remember is too hard, too embarassing, too humiliating to admit. I could never ask my father what my mother smelled like. He would think I was crazy, and then he would fall silent because he, too, had forgotten.

I wonder, sometimes, if she remembers us; if she remembers that she left behind a man and a child who once loved her desperately and now could only picture her outline, her shape, but none of her finer points. I wonder if she regrets leaving me. I wonder if she ever wonders what became of me. I wonder if she herself remembers why she left.

Ambiguous, Nine, Slept

I got a letter from her today, from my long-lost daughter. I never thought I would be that woman, the woman with the long-lost daughter. I worked hard to raise good kids, but I obviously failed. I tried to be a good mother, to be a friend to my kids, to teach them right from wrong and respect for others and the importance of regular flossing and personal hygiene and mental health. I thought I demonstrated charity, and love for others, and a healthy approach to relationships between men and women.

I mean, I never made my kids call any of the men in my life "Uncle" anything, they were just Dan or Johnny or Vito or Cliff or whoever. I never let the kids meet anyone I wasn't serious about. I guess the problem was that it was easy for me to get serious about someone. I fall in love so easily. The men I was attracted to, however, seemed to be a little ambiguous about being seriously involved with a widow saddled with three little kids.

Nine times I fell in love. Nine times I got my heart broken. It was number eight, I think, that almost sent me over the edge. Number nine, though, oh number nine. He led me all the way down the primrose path, right to the edge, and pushed me over into the abyss.

My daughter never forgave me for not being strong enough to come back. She was 17 when it happened, 17 and figuring out life for herself, and she thought surely she would have been strong enough. But nine men in a row, nine men who said they loved me and left me, discarded me without a thought as to what would happen to us next...it was too much. After number nine left me at the altar I was broken. That night I went home, I drank the champagne that was chilling expectantly in the refrigerator and I slept in my wedding dress. I spent the next 6 months in my room. It took a week before I could take off my wedding dress. I abdicated my home to my children, and one by one they left me. I was sad, I was unimaginably horrified and embarassed, and I couldn't function. I drank, I wept, I ate nothing. I lost weight, my skin looked terrible and my hair grew in straggly lengths. I was a shell of the woman I had been. And my daughter, my long lost daughter, could never understand and never forgive.

When I saw her letter in the mail today, I almost didn't open it. I was healing, finally, after years of therapy and medications and a couple of stints in the "hospital" and, well, rehab. I wasn't sure I was strong enough, even now, to read what she had to say, Her recriminations and accusations and complete lack of empathy for me would surely set me back. Did I need another setback? Did I need this daughter who needed a mother I could never be?

I don't know what made me open it. But I did. And a picture fell out, a picture of a bride, my radiant daughter as a bride, obviously taken before the wedding that didn't happen, and a note that said, "A man has done it to me, and I finally understand. I finally forgive you. Come help me, mommy."

So I packed up my car, and I closed up my house, and I found my daughter. And I let her find me, too.

Caught, eager, perfume

Something caught in my throat when the phone rang and I saw that it was him. I had asked him to call, I wanted to hear his voice again after all these years. I wanted a glimpse into that which I was so eager to leave behind.

"Hi," I said. He knew I would know it was him. Who doesn't have Caller ID these days?

"Hey, how are you?"

"I'm good - how are you?"

"Just fine, Shannon. I am so glad to hear your voice, and know that you are ok."

Am I ok? I wonder. I guess "OK" is relative. I am very ok in that I am healthy, stable, cared for, and have achieved many of the things I set out to achieve. I am not very ok in that I am a grown woman desperate to uncover her own past and figure out what is holding me back from doing that thing, those two things, that I most desperately want to do.

"Yeah, hey, I'm fine. Your text last night said you had a dream about me. What was that all about?"

Really, is there anything more delicious than a long-lost ex almost-lover, your first love, in fact, that randomly has a dream about you?

"Well, you were in a house, a 2 story house at the beach, and it had a lot of porches, and someone else was there, someone you didn't know, and, well, it was a bad situation and I was just really worried."

Huh.

"I was at the beach, and in a 2 story house with a lot of porches, but I knew everyone that was there. What a weird dream, and weird coincidence."

I wondered why he dreamt of me. Was he unhappy? Was his marriage stale and boring, his wife shrewish and demanding, his job unfulfilling and his youth wasted? Had he smelled my perfume on another woman, seen a woman who looked like the girl I had been might have grown into, and without even realizing it was happening, begun a process in his mind which ended in a danger dream about me, his very own first love?

He said he wanted to see me, have dinner, catch up.

I need that. There is a hole inside me, a void that opened up when I realized he was gone from me, when the I realized that the promises of a young man can't be depended on. Life changes too fast when you are young. There is too much out there to be felt, done, experienced, learned. How could I have placed so much of my trust in the words he said when he kissed me, the plans we made when he was trying to convince me to sleep with him? I was foolish, and young, and so ready to believe anything he told me. I loved him fully, with the fresh, naive heart of a young woman, in a way that I have never been able to love anyone else.

He taught me what love looked like, felt like, meant. He also taught me what it felt like to have my heart shattered into a million little pieces. It has been years, and my heart is still not the same. Somehow I think he holds the key, the key to this thing that thwarts my dreams. My questions need answers and my heart needs healing. I am not an overly dramatic person, but he shaped the way I see love, he set the standard for the love I need.

He was the first person to properly kiss me. I was 15. He was 16. It was a magic like no other. He was the first person to touch my breasts, to make my nipples harden. He was the first person to slide his hand under my skirt, into my panties, into me. He was the first person I said no to, the first person I could have, should have, but did not sleep with.

Dinner 17 years later doesn't seem like that big a deal, does it?

Day one

This is my place to do writing exercises, a place to open my mind to allow myself the freedom and the creativity to get my novel off its feet - out of the nest - out of my head.

I don't know or care if anyone will read this.

I just know that I need to write it. And thanks to Stacy for helping me get this far.

And thanks to Patrick for his very wise advice - just shut up and write.