December 31, 2004

2004

So this is the end of 2004.

2004.

Such a year.

When I think back on the past twelve months, I am stunned and amazed-is it possible that I have had so many changes in so short a time? That in this life I am living now, so many incredible, wonderful, painful, jubilous changes can have occured? That the shiny scope and sheen of the life I live now is so different from one year ago?

So one year on, what's my life like?

- I am employed in a company that I love, in a job that I can't stand. But one year ago I was in the cold dark winter of my life, unemployed and low on hope, and now I take a shiny train into London two or three times a week, where I try to live a life less work-oriented, less driven. A shiny locomotive doesn't have to roll over my heart, it just gets to carry it from one place to another.

- I live in a gorgeous and lovely village in England, in a house that I love. For the first time in my life, I feel like I have somewhere to go home to, and for that alone I would pay all my debts in pounds of flesh all over again.

- I have Angus. The going is sometimes incredibly high, and can also be devestatingly low. I find having this man in my bed and in my heart to be more satisfying than I could ever have dreamt all those years ago. Now that we are together, I need to learn how to not fall to pieces when the angel that I have found in Angus falls to the ground with a wing clipping from time to time, and he needs to keep in mind that I am just a bit crazy, that I constantly need a bit of kid-glove treatment.

- I have two sort-of stepchildren that I have learnt to love, and whom I think (and hope) are just beginning to love me. I won't force the issue, but I would do anything for those kids (well, except download Destiny's Child for Melissa. I have limits, after all). Seriously, I would do anything for them, even if they're not my children, even if the teen years ahead will be hard.

And what have I learnt this year?

- Never underestimate the powerful feeling of love and contentment two black and white cats can give.

- I am so far from perfect that I am on a whole other scale...but that I am also so far from the selfish labels I used to have thrown at me.

- Lush and Sephora are things I cannot live without (thanks, Em!)

- Just when you think you love someone as much as you possibly can, they go and surprise you and help you love them more.

- Hurting yourself will indeed make you feel better, but it makes everyone else feel worse. And there are some scars that you just can't look at and reassure yourself with, no matter how hard you try.

- Kim is gone.

- I can make friends. And keep them. And even try to be honest with them, as opposed to lying to them to keep them away.

- Guilt and sadness can sometimes be tangible.

- I can write. I'm no bestseller, but I can write, and if I can only get the courage up, maybe someday I can do something about it.

- My job is not my life. I may not be sure what is my life, but it's not my job.

- Reese's comes on sticks. Fantastic.

- Bacterial vaginosis is about the most unpleasant thing to have.

- Your family is only as close as they can be. Sometimes, you have to let some of them go. And sometimes you have to battle to keep some of them near, no matter how hard the battle.

- Sims 2 is like crack. Pixelated crack, but crack all the same.

- You can find peace at the top of the Highlands. It's there. I tasted it.

- Spankings aren't for naughty children. They're most definitely for naughty adults.

- If you can travel together, you can be together.

- Stilton really is better mixed with a bit of port.

- I'm still crazy, no matter how hard I try not to be. I can change post codes, I can change countries, but I can't change mental illness. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

- I'm in love. It's as simple and as complicated as that.

Happy New Year. May 2005 not be nearly as tumultuous as 2004, but may it bring the same breathless wonder and childish joy that we need to have.

Magic 8 Balls at the ready, folks. Hang on with me.



-H

PS-if you haven't already, please please consider donating money to the Aid efforts for the tsunami victims. I've sent money here and here.

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December 30, 2004

The Boogeyman

As I grow older, my Kafka dreams get only more bizarre and painful in their existence. I reach periods of time when I don't have any of these so-called night terrors, and just when I start to feel comfortable that I may indeed get to live in a relative modicum of normality, my imagination runs away with me and kicks my ass with its karmic destruction.

The dreams are so hauntingly horrible that every time I wake up in a fog, unable to sleep any longer lest I be stuck in the Misery Zone, I feel I am only going to go more mad as I age.

The dreams almost never vary in theme-I am either a child or a protector of children, and I must always try to save myself or the children I am in charge of from some kind of deep black hunger that will skin us alive with grisly graphic violence and party in our fear. And in all of my dreams, I always fail. Always. And the destruction that is left behind is often a wave of dead and suffering, a study in abject misery.

Sometimes I even act them out. Once with X Partner Unit I apparently raced around the upstairs, opening doors to the attic and the storage space, trying to find places to hide kids. Of my actions, I remember nothing. Of my dreams, I remember everything.

See, my nightmares are the gift that keeps on giving.

The horrible monstrous visions stay with me for life.

Last night held another doozy for me. I slept restlessly, tossing and turning. Just before I woke, I was deep into one of the more disturbing dreams I have had in a long, long time. I was a little girl, around 4 or 5. I had curly brown hair and a round pale face. I had a man whom I called my Daddy who tried to look after me and take care of me.

I was also in a concentration camp, and the man I called my Daddy was one of the commandants. He made a special case for me, even though he knew my execution was coming. He looked after me and gave me extras. He let me sit on his lap. I shared a tiny space with many women, including a woman in a red nurses' uniform who tried to look after me, as I had no family of my own.

One day that woman was late to work in the camp. I had gone back to our tiny room to get a doll I had left behind when I saw the man I called Daddy take a pistol and blow the back of the nurses head off, leaving a trail of blood and bits dripping down the wall in a sea of foamy red.

This is the utter rot and vile that lives inside of my head. This is the acid waste that eats up from my ulcer and my esophagus and poisons the floorboards of my mind. These dreams-and are they only dreams?-are my companion and my reminder that I am not quite well. Angus tells me that they are only dreams-and are they only dreams?-but the images linger in my head, ruining the patina of an otherwise charmed room, turning my images sepia.

I've tried every approach-to dismiss the images, no matter how graphic or how full of carnage. To try and reassure myself that I am just the victim of an incredibly over-active imagination. To debate the images and try to decipher what they mean-in trying to protect children, am I trying to protect me? To try to put into context what had me dreaming like that-did I dream about an axe murder since I watched the tail end of Nightmare on Elm Street III in a laughingly drunken stupor?

Or is it just that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar?

And when I wake from the dreams, I am always so tired and so distressed. I feel like laying down and trying to go back to sleep, only my demons can find me and chase me there. I don't think the violence is representative of what I myself am capable of-I deplore violence actually, and am pleased I am something of a pacifist.

Maybe it's just that, for some people, the Boogeyman is real. He's real, and he's right inside our heads, and until we learn to break bread with the little bastard, he's going to rattle his chains and thump the floorboards. In which case, I'd better get baking.

Hope he likes chocolate chips.

-H.

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December 29, 2004

Finding a Quiet Place

It's not easy to have one.

I thought writing a blog five times a week was sometimes tricky, and I'm not even a parent. I don't have children of my own. So imagine the respect I have gained for parenting while fighting to have 20 seconds of the PC while fending off a 7 year-old intent on playing his Incredibles game, and downloading iTunes songs for a 12 year-old girl and trying not to sound like my grandmother. I mean, for God's sake, I'm all ready to be modern, I like Maroon 5 and I think retro 80's music remakes are utter crap, but her music makes my ears bleed. Hemorrhage, really. Kelis, Snoop Dogg, and Oukast. Not only can't these people spell, they can't sing either. I found myself saying: You listen to this? It's just noise! but then realized I would be terribly uncool and so kept my mouth shut.

Gotta' strive to be cool, after all.

So nothing from me today for a few reasons:

1) I am utterly exhausted.
2) Melissa and Jeff leave shortly but until then it's stll MTV Jams throughout the house
3) I have to be getting on with writing my next short story submission since the deadline is Friday. Not like I procrastinate or anything.
4) The tsunami has me feeling blue.
5) I find posts about my Christmas holidays to be stunningly boring.
6) I have little time to get to the PC.
7) My email is screwed up.

So I will sit here in front of the pc in my pink Lola wig tonight and write a story for a competition. Heck. It's just my soul I'm offering up. Not like it's anything grand or anything like that.

Be back tomorrow.

-H.

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December 28, 2004

The Gift of Soap

Christmas Eve I invited my Uncle John, Aunt Carol, and my cousins Nancy and Mary over for dinner. I hadn't seen Carol and Mary for over 10 years, and since they lived up the road, it seemed ridiculous for them to not visit. Angus made an enormous meat lasagne and I made an enormous spinach pesto lasagne, and together with Melissa and Jeff we braced for the American invasion.

And to my surprise, I had a wonderful evening.

It was constant chatter and reminisicing. Melissa and Jeff were a bit bored, but I found it fantastic, albeit a little eye-opening. They told endless stories of my father's side of the family, a side my sister and I never really were allowed to be a part of after my parents' acrimonious split. They told stories that didn't make any sense to me, even though they looked and reacted as though I was a part of them too-constant streams of presents and expensive gifts, endless visits and phone calls. I only hear from my father's parents twice a year, and I never hear from the others.

Mary let it slip then that my father's family sends endless presents to them as well. Homemade crafts from my grandmother's latest fad. Hundreds of DVDs and Ralph Lauren shirts, things and trinkets from all over the world. Once, she exclaimed with wide eyes, they needed two delivery men to carry all the gifts from my father. I think it was about then that Aunt Carol cottoned on to what was happening, and Mary got a kick under the table.

Gifts needing two delivery men to bring in?

What was this?

I'm not saying that it's the quantity of presents that is what counts, I am not remotely that materialistic, but I really felt...well...embarassed...by not being worthy. I wasn't angry or hurt. I wasn't even jealous. I just felt embarassed that I was so not worthy.

But I buried it all and we kept on chatting and talking, and I truly, truly enjoyed their visit.

On Christmas morning Angus brought up a Bodum full of pipingly sexy coffee and my stocking, which was filled to the rim (with Brim). He handed me a Christmas card and was treated to a kiss and my Christmas card to him in return. We snuggled down under the bed, opened the cards and found that we had given each other the exact same card. Out of all the Christmas cards in all the English card shops, we gave each other the exact same card.

Melissa and Jeff came hurtling into the bedroom with their stockings, which we had stuffed to bursting last night (along with eating the mince pies and drinking up the sherry left for Father Christmas. Hey-he needs help controlling his blood alcohol content, surely?) and together we all ooh'ed and ahh'ed over the contents. Including the complete collection of Roxy Music CDs that Angus had given me...which I had also bought for him.

At least I didn't cut all my hair off and at least he didn't pawn the watch I gave him a few months ago.

We only opened two presents here, the rest got packed up to be taken to Angus' brother Adam's house. That's where the entire family would be getting together to laugh and celebrate the holidays. That's also where Angus and I would be cooking the Christmas dinner, as Adam and Terry do not like cooking much, yet have the space for the entire family. I presented Angus with the Abercrombie jacket he had wanted so badly, and he presented me with a heavy burnished silver necklace he had bought for me in Germany.

Jeff was presented with the remote controller propellor (it's not even a helicopter. It's just one enormous propellor) that he had wanted so badly, and so from then on it was endless-when are we going to fly it, when are we going to fly it, when are we going to fly it?

I think that's the mantra that parents everywhere heard.

Christmas Day Angus, Adam and I spent cooking. I loved being in the kitchen, away from the noise, from the screaming, from the people. I have never in my life been in such a noisy environment-ASPCAs are quieter places. It was such a cacophony of laughter, toys, tears, and above all, love.

It was wonderful and exhausting at the same time.

I wonder if children have a volume control that doesn't include the word ending "-azepam" and "milligrams" in it, and which wouldn't be frowned upon by social services.

We opened presents later, and I had brought my mother's gifts with me. Amidst the turmoil of nearly twenty people opening gifts, I had a little bubble around me of Angus and my presents. Angus gave me many gifts, all of them lovely. Melissa and Jeff gave me numerous homemade gifts, gifts that I love and gifts that adorn my dresser now. My mother had sent lovely sweaters and socks, and a warm fleece Gap sweatshirt that showed me in so many ways just how much she cares. My father sent me a Louis Vuitton bag which I think is real, unless the knock-offs include a supple and lovely suede inside. In which case, I am going all knock-off, all the time.

And there amongst the gifts was a blue bag from my sister. She had written a note explaining that Christmas wasn't for grudges, but that I was no longer part of the family. The note wound up in the fireplace, as only notes that hurt can do. I opened the bag and there was a small box of nice smelling soaps.

Ironic, isn't it. When you don't know the person, don't know the situation, or don't know what to do, you give soap. I gave Terry soap. I gave my nieces soap. Soap is the gift that is nice and perfumed and hides the air of animosity. A little perfumed blobby bit that stays on the hands before it disappears into nothing. freshener designed to ease your senses, if not your heart. Soap is what you give that doesn't give too much of yourself, while at the same time wondering what the other person will think of you, will try to be for you.

I gave my sister soap this year, too.

That night I snuck upstairs where there is phone coverage and found two voicemails-one from my father and one from my mother. My father was going to be busy, but my mother wanted me to call her back. I did, having a surreptitious discussion in the guest room, interrupted often by Ida and Jeff and Ida's new plastic animal hospital being demonstrated, but in the end it was a great phone call, a forgiveness phone call, a phone call that reached across the water and warmed my heart with love.

The next day we went to Angus' mother's house. The 26th of December is called Boxing Day here, and it's a day for more food, more family, more gifts. It was an exhausting day of laughter, food, and children screaming from one room to the next, and so at the end of it we drove home, utterly exhausted.

I survived Christmas. Yesterday Angus' Mum and stepfather came over and I made baked risotto and a banoffee cheesecake (which I hate, but hey-I have eaten enough this holiday season, sitting out the dessert was no biggie). Today is the last bit of it, as Angus' brothers and their families meet with Angus' father. I am going too, as are Melissa and Jeff, and then Christmas is over.

And if I have another mince pie before twelve months have expired, I swear I will beat someone to death with it.


Repeatedly.

-H.

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December 24, 2004

So This is Christmas

Yesterday I had lunch with Karl, and just before he came over the doorbell sounded. A UPS man stood there, hat askew, with a box in his hands. I signed for it, noting (as usual) my misspelled name he had written down on his record sheet, and then I took it inside. In it was a rainbow of Christmas bags, all filled with presents.

It came from my family.

Melissa and Jeff arrived last night, throwing themselves into their father's legs and giving me a smile.

A smile is really ok for me.

I know everything has to be done in baby steps.

We waited for them and watched a toddler, wrapped up in a trendy fleece, entertain himself by parking himself directly in front of the people coming out of arrivals. He looked entertained and mystified. I felt the same, just watching the baby. I thought, Just give me one of those. Just one. That's all I will ever need in my life to be happy.

Angus wrapped himself around me last night in bed and we had silent and quick sex, falling asleep in a haze of sugarplums dancing in our heads. This morning we woke up and played with each other, rolling out of bed with faces flushed with delight and the scent of sex painted on our skin. We made coffee. I made pancakes-American style, thank you, none of this crepe business for us today. Angus made a massive homemade meat lasagne and I made a massive pesto and spinach lasagne, which we will serve to Melissa and Jeff and my aunt, uncle and counsins who live up the road in Swindon. It may not be traditional Christmas fare, but it was the tradition with my mother-we had lasagne on Christmas Eve.

So it is written, so it shall be.

Melissa and Jeff are cute. They find my girls, Maggie and Mumin, to be utterly entertaining. Jeff brought along plastic cat poop which was strategically left at the top of the stairs and-I confess-had me fooled. I even saw it and furtively looked around to make sure no one else saw it, I would do a quick clean-up act, but then I heard the sniggers.

It made me laugh.

This morning, the children fed, bathed and smelling like Lush's banana monkey bath bomb, and watching Harry Potter, I started making my lasagne. I had the kitchen to myself and was humming my favorite Christmas carol. I heard a slight noise, stopped, but then dismissed it. Then I heard it again. I put the spatula down. What was that? Was that what I thought it was?

I heard it again.

Yup. It was. It was the sound of a fart.

I was alone in the kitchen, so I figured it was my imagination. I started stirring. *Blurp* went the sound of a poof of air escaping from a sphincter. I shrugged. Then a long, slow wet one escaped and I knew that no matter how bad my ulcer was, that puppy didn't come from me. I walked into the living room where three blue-eyed faces were trying to portray the picture of innocence.

But I am no fool. Nosiree. I'm going to live to be 103. I look at them.

"It's Jeff." They chime. "He has gas."

"Right." I reply wryly. "Keep him away from the fireplace then, and we'll all be ok."

I walk back into the kitchen and hear it again, along with sounds of the three of them falling about laughing hysterically. I jump Angus and find a remote in his pocket. In the kitchen, he had hidden a receiver that would merrily fart along whenever the button was depressed.

I nearly cried from laughing so hard.

Christmas Eve is getting underway, and even though I still feel a bit lost and out of touch, I have renewed my faith in Santa all over again. I started to doubt the big guy again, I started to doubt the holiday. I felt so shudderingly, utterly lost yesterday and so not looking forward to the holidays. I felt like nothing could make me feel better, but then Santa came to the rescue.

Last night at 10:20 pm the phone rang shrilly.

It was my mother, calling just to talk to me.

We talked for 52 minutes, and when I hung up, I thanked Santa in my head for bringing me something that I wanted very much and even delivering it two days early.

And Christmas has come to Whoville after all.

If anyone needs me, I will be serving lasagne. Laughing at a fart remote machine. Drinking red wine and looking out the window. Watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. And, of course, singing my favorite Christmas carol, which is (and has always been) I'll Be Home for Christmas.

My life is one enormous circle of irony sometimes.

So Merry Christmas to you, to anyone who ever stops by here, to anyone who ever feels alone, to whom maybe feels a little bit crazy or lost. And you know what? I really mean it. I really mean "Merry Christmas", and not in any high-school-Hallmark-card-I'm-just-being-polite kind of way.

Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas.

-H.

PS-many thanks to Larry, who knows what it's like to still be a child and to still dream magic dreams. Thank you, Sweetie.

PPS-and many thanks to the Physics Geek, who knows what it's like to be quirky in a non-quirky world. I have always had a soft spot for geeks, and I love my gift so much. Thank you.

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December 22, 2004

Merry Christmas Rodney

I bought a red pen yesterday, a cheap plastic invention that has a snowman that lights up in the top with a red LED every time you push the pen down. It is a stocking stuffer, a laugh, a tiny item. It is also something that triggered a memory for me. With a smile and a few fingers wrapped around the pen, I remembered a series of letters I had in red felt tip pen. A tiny patch of notebook paper in a field of innocence, I had letters from a nice boy once, a boy I don't often think about.

I lost my grandfather and I lost Kim, and both of those losses tore me apart in places I didn't know I had seams. Bouncing back from their deaths was something that I have only just been able to say I have done. I have jumped that bar, and let my pole go crashing back to the ground as I land on the soft supple pad, laughing and crying from the strength it takes to let someone go.

In 1988 I was living in a small town in Arkansas. My mother and father had split for the final time and we were living with our mother as she worked her way to a new brand of self and a new sense of freedom. The summers were hot, so hot that I actually once tried to sizzle an egg on the sidewalk, only I gave up when the only thing that happened was a load of ants drowned in the white gummy bits.

I had a hard time fitting in there. Not only had I not grown up there, in a little town where everyone had known everyone all their lives, but I didn't have the same set of values of how to fit in-I was a loner, I kept to myself, and since I moved house so often I didn't find it worthwhile to try to make friends, no matter how badly I needed them.

It was a recipe for disaster.

I made one friend, a neighbor who also only just fit in. She convinced me to join her church, a Southern Baptist church that I went to partly for the company and partly because it amused me. There at the church I met a student only slightly older than me. He had a broad, happy face and a horrible haircut. He was wearing short shorts the likes of which had not been seen this side of the Charlie's Angels. He also had a heart of gold.

His name was Rodney.

The first words I ever said to him were: You have a very funny haircut.

The first words he ever said to me, dripping in a strong southern Arkansan accent, were: Do you like it? I cut it myself.

We became friends right away.

Rodney was adopted and lived his life for his church. He was a deeply faithful man who never preached, and this I think was why we got on. He didn't see me as a loft conversion project, he didn't see me as something broken that needed to be fixed. He was easygoing and kind, and I think he saw in me the project of a lifetime, that project being friendship. He took me under his wing and made sure I was looked after. He made me laugh.

I know he fancied me, too, but I never felt that way about him. He once passed me a note in class asking if I would go with him (this being the ambiguous term that contained everything from love to heartbreak, from the person who would sit next to you at lunch to the guy whose ring you wore.) Biting my lip, I met him after class and told him that I really liked him, but I couldn't feel that way for him.

He smiled. I remember his smile. He had sweet white teeth. He said it was ok, that we could be friends. At least if we could be friends, he would have me around. And that kind of comment wasn't something I was familiar with. That kind of comment was something new to me, some way of intimating that I had some proportion of value to him, even if it wasn't what he'd been looking for.

We all were shuttered off to a church camp, an event that was not easy going for me. I didn't like being searched on arrival-they searched everyone to check for alcohol or drugs, and without fail they always missed a substantial stash-and I didn't like evening events that whipped you into a frenzy. I didn't like having to attend these lectures, and I didn't like being force-fed religion (in fact, I still don't, so please don't leave religious comments, m'kay?). But I did like staying in the local university dorms, the first sweet batch of freedom I ever had. And I did like spending time talking to and being with Rodney.

When the camp ended it was back to the town we lived in, the town with little money and footpaths that ended dreams if you walked the wrong direction. It was a close community but my family and I never really fit in, as nomadic as we were, as strange as we were. When we found out we were moving to Texas, I felt relieved-I had no problem with Arkansas, only being there started off the times when I began to understand that something was wrong with me.

When I moved, Rodney started writing me. Often. His letters always came in bold script, written by a red felt tip pen. His handwriting was loopy and childish. His letters were always so kind, so inquisitive. He had this optimism that was breathtaking to watch, and I would often tease him and be sarcastic about his ability to find the good in everything and everyone. Once again in my life, I was the shadow. He was the light, and I was the dark. He was the optimist while I was the cynic. He was a healer of hearts, while I was the one stricken with a sickening black cancer of self-hatred.

He would tell me what he was up to-he spent a lot of time and a lot of his own money buying Bibles, which he would go to the local prison and distribute, spending time talking to the inmates and being a friend to some men who had absolutely no one else to go to. He would tell me all of the town news I was missing, and in return I would write to him about things in Texas. He would regale me with tales of what he had been doing to fix up his car, and I would tell him about attending a school of over 1000 people in my class, none of whom I could really ever talk to. He would tell me to never cut my long hair, and that it would be great to see him. I would tell him I was sick of my hair, and that I missed him too.

About a year after I moved, his letters stopped coming. I didn't really think too much about it, I knew he was a busy guy-a guy like Rodney had a lot of friends and family that he spent time with and loved very much. He had a serious girlfriend, too, and for that I was really happy for him. I always pictured him married, a small-town guy with a big-town heart, a youth minister and a hard worker, raising an infant up in the air in a game, his gold wedding band sparkling against the clean white baby outfit.

About a week later, I got a letter from the one other friend I had made in town. Rodney was missing. They had tried to call me, thinking he might have come to visit me, but since we had moved again we had a new phone number. Had I seen Rodney? Had I heard from him?

I immediately wrote a letter back, saying no. I hadn't heard from him. I was sure he was ok, and after posting that letter I didn't think too much about it again-it was Rodney, after all. He would be ok.

But my letter passed another letter in the mail. As airplanes took off, their bellies full of letters demanding money, offering congratulations and happy birthdays, sending fliers offering the greatest deals in the world, two letters missed each other completely and sped off to their destinations, completely unaware of each other. As my friend got my letter saying I hadn't seen him, I was opening a letter from her, telling me what had happened.

Rodney had been found.

Rodney was dead.

I remember where I was at that moment I read those lines. I was walking across the condo complex where we lived at the time, and had just opened the gate around the swimming pool, taking a shortcut back to the house. I remember my legs giving out underneath me and I fell to the ground feeling the bumpy concrete surface of the pool area under my thighs. I remember losing my breath in one foul punch to the ribcage, and my eyes swam with tears that just caught and caught and caught under my eyelids, stubbornly refusing to fall.

Rodney was driving home one night in the car he was always rebuilding. While driving, he saw two hitchhikers, whom he took pity on and helped. One of them started to get sick and so Rodney pulled the car over and helped the guy to the side of the road. As he was bent over, helping the man, the other man pulled a gun out and shot Rodney in the back of the head, killing him instantly. They then stole his car and drove away, leaving his bleeding body by the side of the road.

And I felt like someone had punched a hole into the world and taken the light away. The very definition of a good man had been taken from the world. A hero, a friend, a nightlight that gave comfort and security as it lit up the darkness. He left behind a grieving family, a destroyed girlfriend. And he left behind me, a person that never got the chance to tell him just how much I cared about him and just how much his friendship meant to me.

It was the first time, but far from the last, that I would rage at the heavens and ask why they took someone as great as him and left behind someone as hopeless as me. It was the first time I would choke on the bile of injustice. It was the first time I would see the true loss the world faced in his taking, and the bitter burden they would be shifted with that was me.

I spent a lot of nights crying after that. I took his letters and the pictures I had of him and bundled them tightly with a red ribbon, and I would hold them and cry. The tears would fall on the letters and blur that stupid red felt tip ink through the pages, but I didn't stop. Nothing could make me stop.

His mother started writing me after that, sending me clippings of the trial. She sent me his senior high school photo, a picture of a happy-looking Rodney with his too short wonky hair, smiling slightly into the camera. The two men who killed him were caught-both felons for other crimes in the past, they were facing a lifetime in prison or the death penalty. Watching this all unfold was so horrible-I hated those men with a blind burning passion, a passion brought forth by the utter injustice of the nicest man in the world being taken away. Upon hearing of their guilty verdicts some time later, I wanted them to fry, I wanted them to burn. I wanted them to die a horrible death for taking a gun and lighting up the inside of Rodney's head with a blinding flash.

Rodney's family went another route, however. The two men 'found God' while awaiting trial, and Rodney's family apparently recommended they be given life in prison. The men are, as far as I know, still in prison, and I hope that's where they will stay, seeing as their lives were spared.

I think that's the way Rodney would have wanted it.

About a year after his death, I took his picture, his letters, and all the clippings and sent them to his mother. She wrote back saying I had brought her great joy and happiness seeing and touching his words again, but did I want them back? And why were some of the pages so water-stained, so blurred?

I wrote back one last time and told her to keep them, to hold him in her heart. I told her the pages were subject to a broken pipe we had in the house, which unfortunately got some of the letters. Another lie in a lifetime of lies, another way of keeping everyone at bay and of forcing me to keep to myself: they are blurred because I cried on them. Those words are covered with my tears, and there's no one I want to know about that.

To be honest, I don't often think of Rodney, maybe because there have been two other deaths in my life that take precedence in the grieving category now. The wound of his death has, for me, healed. I no longer rage at the heavens, I no longer want to fight the injustice of death. I like to think that there are many parts in him that live on in me, but that's a little too Hallmark Channel for my tastes.

I don't think that the good guys always get it stuck to them, which is perhaps the most convenient conclusion that a person can come to. Instead, maybe each time a good guy is ripped off the page, it leaves a hole that we have to step up and fill. In the balance of good and evil, despite the cynic in me, I like to think that good is still winning. Because the simple truth is, Rodney taught me to have a little compassion for those who have no one, to hand out the change in my pocket if someone asks, if someone's hungry. If I can help, I will try.

In my memory, I see Rodney as that nice picture of him his mother had sent me. I see him holding an inmates hand and praying with them. I see him laughing at me pointing out his funny haircut at that horrible church camp so many years ago.

I see him as a young man, maybe because that's all he ever will be.

Merry Christmas, Rodney, wherever you are. I hope you have a decent haircut now.

-H.

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December 20, 2004

I Killed Santa Claus, I Killed Santa Claus, Right Down Santa Claus Lane...

So I had a tumultuous weekend, which I won't go into here, but suffice to say this:

1) There's nothing like having a 300-strong choir sing the Messiah at you in Royal Albert Hall, and it gets even better when you are able to make up your own lyrics to it.
2) Just when you think you have had enough depression, life hands you more.
3) Sometimes you don't need a little black dress, you need a long slinky red one.

When I was 6 years old I learned that Santa Claus didn't exist. And I didn't learn it from catching my family out (although I really should have been more clever and understood why it was that one room of the house was off-limits just before Christmas. Jesus, Helen. Put some backbone into that thinking of yours.)

Oh no. I learnt it from my best friend and her mother.

We were in the car, my best friend and I in the backseat. My best friend's name was, actually, the same name as mine, and we had nearly the exact same last name (to avoid mass confusion, let's call her Helen Squared). She too was a military child, although I was an Air Force officer's child and she was an Army enlisted man's daughter. There was a real class distinction there. One group did not associate with the other group. It was some kind of unwritten law, punishable by a lifetime in olive green fatigues if you broke the law. We both lived in McChord AFB in Washington, she and her family living just down the road from me.

Helen Squared had lived for a few years in North Carolina and had a thick maple syrup put-on accent. Her mother, Babe, was also from North Carolina and had an even thicker accent. I thought they sounded exotic, like creatures you encounter at a zoo.

Helen Squared was everything I was not. She was loud, brash and blond. Her favorite show was the Dukes of Hazzard and she wore cowboy boots and a red cowboy hat, like the one Gertie had in E.T.. Her mom let her have those plastic high heels all little girls want (although mine never would, so I nicked Helen Squared's and got in trouble for it. I suppose that's why I love high heels so much today, and also why I have never again committed petty larceny.) And even more so, her hair feathered. For real. This being 1980, it was the thing to have feathered blond Farrah Fawcett hair. Her hair did it. My hair, too thick to have any shape other than straight down my back, didn't.

You just had to bow down to those with feathered hair. It was Darwinism at its best.

Helen Squared had a boyfriend named Justin whom she would allow to chase her around the playground. It occured twice a day at recess, a little blond Southerner interrupting games of dodgeball (now there's a new version of masochism for you) and tetherball as she came screaming though the games, glancing heavily behind her shoulder. He never caught her, which is a good thing, as I imagine she hadn't really thought the whole thing through and hadn't figured out what she would do if he did finally catch her.

Kind of like modern women still think about today.

I never really understod what Helen Squared saw in me. I was dark to her light, in everything from hair color to attitude. I didn't have a cowboy hat and I didn't want one. She had a mental younger brother named Zed whom I thought was a suitable candidate for medical experiments. She had masses of friends, and I never really did. She was sunshine to my gloomy rain. But she liked me, she was the first person I played doctor with, and we were friends for years. She was my best friend, my single source of aggravation and envy, and my competition.

She's also part of the duo that killed Santa Claus.

I'm not sure where we were going that day. All I can remember is Babe was driving and Helen Squared and I were in the back seat. Helen Squared and I were singing along to the radio as we always did-Olivia Newton-John's Xanadu and Pat Benatar's Hit Me With Your Best Shot (the 80's were a very good time to be an obnoxious kid that sang off-key). It was a week away from Christmas, and we were discussing presents.

"I need the Barbie Dream House." Helen Squared said with authority.

"Me too." I piped up. A shimmering pink plastic wonder, the A-frame Barbie Dream House, a town house with it's kitsch yellow floors, white plastic walls and flowerboxes full of tatty purple and white fake flowers was the kind of thing that kept us up at night with longing. A marvel of Mattel magic, it was only the best for Barbie and her androgynous Ken (we know. We checked.) I already had the hot tub that burped bubbles when you pressed on the rubber air button and foamed all over the place. This would be the pinnacle. This was reaching and achieving Barbie glory.

It was the place where Barbie's white plastic high heeled shoes that fell off when she walked were meant to be. It was the place where we could have her hard pink plastic butterfly-covered bed and park her yellow remote controlled (with a wire) Corvette. It was where her striped 70's couch and pink vanity set should go, the vanity set complete not with a mirror, but with a strip of foil. It was the place we could do surgery-Barbies always had bubbles in their legs (which I later learned was due to the imperfection of the plastic molding process) but which Helen Squared and I believed were tumors, so we would always do dramatic emergency surgery on Barbie's legs, hoping she would pull through, with Ken pacing the carpet to and fro in his stiff jointed way worried about her survival.

I didn't know this then, but that architectural marvel would be under the Christmas tree for me that year and would rack up thousands of hours of use before I outgrew it and it got boxed up and thrown away, a broken wonder that captured my imagination and turned me into the skilled bubble-plastic leg surgeon that I am today.

"I want a pony, too." Helen Squared announced. I scoffed at her folly. Just because she had the cowboy hat didn't mean she knew how to ride. Bitch.

"I asked Santa for a bike." I say, smiling.

We stop at a stoplight. Babe and Helen Squared look at me, Babe's eyes blue in the rearview mirror.

"You do know there's no such thing as Santa." Babe says.

I feel my heart lurch. What is this? An adult decrying the existence of the good guy? A grown-up telling me not to believe in something they always advocated? What was going on? Was I in another dimension?

"There's no such thing as Santa." Helen Squared said patronizingly. "It's just our parents."

They were looking at me, expectantly. Helen Squared's hair was feathered perfectly that day. Perfectly. You could not argue with Aqua Net that good.

"You did know that there's no such thing as Santa Claus, right Helen?" Babe asked again. I feel under intense pressure. On the one hand, Santa is my main man. On the other, why would they lie, why would they take Santa from me?

And all at once, under the intense scrutiny of the feathered hair, I knew what I had to answer.

"Sure." I say, killing Santa Claus with one syllable. "I know he's not real." I didn't know what to do. I feel like the Mafia-someone is alive and breathing, only I hold my hand up and sniff: "You're dead to this family now, Clausy. You are not a part of this family any longer." This would bring into play serious questions about the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, issues I wasn't emotionally equipped to address that day, shattered as I was over the loss of Santa.

Helen Squared tosses her feathered hair back over her shoulder. The light changes and we move forward, and if I swivel my head around I can see out the back window a sadly jolly guy in red, waving goodbye in the middle of the street as I drive away and leave him behind me forever.

-H.

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December 17, 2004

Santa Needs a Musical Number

The thrum and hum of the throbbingly busy Starbucks cheers me up, and I take the enormous mug of gingerbread latte (that's venti, skinny, no cream thanks) and hold it up to my mouth. I like the big mugs Starbucks has. Other than a visit to Amsterdam, it's one of the few ways I get to feel tiny.

I feel a shudder at the table and look up as a man gestures to the empty seat across from me.

It's Santa Claus.

I shrug. Why not? I mean, Santa's more likely than most to need a shot of caffeine right about now.

He sets his steaming mug of gingerbread latte (venti, full fat, and with a glooey mound of whipped cream down) on the table, takes off his overcoat and lays it on the bench, and then removes his scarf which catches on the shiny gold belt buckle, providing comic entertainment for me for a period of time as it pulls up over his shirt and reveals a thick swath of white stomach hair.

I am going to go to hell for laughing at Santa Claus's white stomach hair.

He set his newspaper-I am relieved to see it's the Independent, I like an unbiased Santa Claus, it ups my odds-and sits down, his face red.

"Whew. I never thought I would get to sit down and have a cup of coffee!" he chortles. And he does. He chortles. "Sure it's ok if I sit here?"

"No worries, man." I reply. "It's good."

We sit there in silence before my curiousity gets the better of me. "Why are you here?"

"I wanted a cup of java. And since I knew the only way I'd get to talk to you was via text or on your blog, I decided to kill two birds with one stone."

"I see. Why not email me or leave a comment on my blog?"

He takes a sip. "I would, but those damn elves are always on the broadband surfing porn."

I nod. I understand that elves can be quite randy. "But why is it you here? I mean, this is the land of Father Christmas. I guess he should be here, dressed in his long red velvet dressing gown."

"Don't mention that to him. Call his outfit a dressing gown and you're in for a serious bitch slap." Santa says, raising his eyebrows. "I'm so glad this isn't my territory."

"What, you guys have shifts?" I ask, surprised I hadn't thought of it before.

"More like regions. Picture a regional salesman with a bad suitcase in a Ford and you've got the right idea."

"I see." This explains how Santa gets around the world so fast. Work share. Cheeky bugger.

"Father Christmas has it bad." Santa sips. "Do you know what the English set out for him by the fireplace?"

"Yeah, Angus told me. A cup of sherry and a mince pie."

"That poor bastard is tanked halfway through the Southern coast."

"Seriously?" I ask. I love hearing the goss dished on people.

"Yup. I hear those poor kids in Scotland almost never get the right gifts. How else do you think they thought of deep fried pizza? To wile away the time waiting until next Christmas, hoping to get the right gifts. I hear deep fried Mars bars were thought up by Sean Connery, who got an Easy Bake Oven one Christmas instead of the titanium golf clubs he'd asked for."

"Wow." I reply. Santa laughs and takes a gulp of his coffee. He has a thick ring of whipped cream on his mustache that I want to address, however patronizing Santa Claus is a mistake indeed. That's got "give Helen vials of ebola for Christmas this year" written all over it.

"So why are you here, with me, right now?" I ask. Something is not computing, it doesn't add up. Like why a 30 year-old woman is having a dialog with Santa Claus in Starbucks on a busy London morning.

"You may be a long way from home, but you're still one of mine." he replies, and I swear to God there really is a twinkle in his eye. Like Sanrio or anime, only more sparkly. "You, my little American expat, are still on my list, and always will be. Especially this year, as you decided to believe in me again."

"Then I'm glad I shared a table with you." I replied, hoping it wasn't just all about the loot. "Of course, I could've used you last year when I had lost my job and was under the thickest cloud of depression known to man. But hey. Beggars and all."

He smiled. "The job loss wasn't something I could help with. Not to sound like a Little Golden Book or anything, but that was something you had to do on your own. The Gap sweatshirt you love so much though...now that was me."

He's right. I do love that sweatshirt. Does that mean he really does see me when I'm sleeping and know when I'm awake? Does that mean he knows about the hours of fun I've had with my vibrating pocket rocket? It's disturbing and frankly paranoia-inducing to think of Santa perving like that, so I chase the thoughts out of my head. "So what...you're here to find out what I want for Christmas?"

"Pretty much." he nods. "Well, that and to have some coffee. The doctor told me to lay off the caffeine and Mrs. Claus is being a real pain in the ass about it, so I sneak away to have a cup. I'm only human, you know."

"Ok." I think for a minute and have a sip of my coffee, feeling the nutmeg tickle the back of my throat. "How about giving me peace on earth and goodwill towards man?" I ask.

He looks at me. I look at him. We both break out into hysterical laughter, fists banging on the table. I swear to God he really does laugh like a bowl full of jelly. Well, if people actually removed the jelly from a jar and put it in bowls, that is. As one does.

"Ok, ok." I say, wiping the tears from my eyes. "How about a dose of mental health instead? Like to good, healing kind?"

He sighs. "One of these days you're going to have to learn that you're not crazy. You just have some issues. That doesn't mean you're crazy. I know you've really been through a lot, but one day I need to introduce you to Rudolph. Now there's a chap with issues. Luckily a lot of therapy and the lead role in my team has sorted him out, but seriously. He was really fucked up."

Wow. Santa cusses. How cool is that?

"What do you really want for Christmas?" Santa asks, smiling. And I notice his pnik cheeks and pink ears for the first time. I wonder if it comes from naturally being happy or from sniffing too much wood glue in the toy factory. What I do want? I want a dog. A baby. For Angus to not have so much stress and anger about estate agents. An engagement ring wouldn't go amiss. The trilogy diamond necklace. My family speaking to me and not being awful. Getting an agent and publishing a book. The ability to have a female ejaculation. A successful launch of the project I am working on. Acceptance from everyone in Angus' life. Laughter and happiness on Christmas Day.

That's not too much to ask, is it?

I am being unrealistic, I know.

"I don't want a lot for Christmas." I says slowly. "There's just one thing I need."

"Oh man. Don't do it." Santa groans.

"Don't care about the presents underneath the Christmas tree." I sing.

"Seriously, Helen. I am so sick of this. I hate that song, I swear." he says, putting his forehead in his hands.

"I just want you for my own. More than you could ever know." I sing.

"Seriously, if Mrs. Claus hears this she's going to make me go through relationship counselling again, and I just hate doing that. You should've seen the hassle we had to go through when Mariah did that song, and then when it was re-released in Love, Actually. It made my life hell. Don't think it's me that watches people, oh no! It's her!"

"Make my wish come true! All I want for Christmas is YOU!"

I stand up and climb on top of the table, glad I am wearing my Mary Janes today. The Starbucks guys behind the counter leap onto the countertop, tap shoes clicking on the coffee-stained surface. They swing Santa hats onto their head and grin wildly. A disco ball descends from the ceiling and lights up the brown and mustard walls. Background music starts pumping from inivisble speakers in the wall, the sub-woofer kicking up the floor.

Men in business suits start waving around their newspapers. Women stand up, high heels clacking. They grab bags of coffee beans that are arrayed nicely on the shelf and start gesticulating wildly with them.

"I don't need to hang my stocking, there upon the fireplace! Santa Claus won't make me happy with a toy on Christmas day!" I sing.

The sales people do wild cartwheels upon the glass display of scones. The businessmen are flinging the businesssuit wearing coffee wielding women around the floor like toys. Limited to singing on the table, I just stand there and shake my ass a lot.

"I just want you for my own, more than you could ever know! Make my wish come true! All I want for Christmas is you! All I want for Christmas is YOU! I sing, nailing the top note with a perfection I never seem to have in my kitchen.

With a flourish, people spin around the floor like tops. There are jazz hands abounding, smiles which put to shame toothpaste commercials. It is truly a Broadway moment.

I sit back down. Santa looks grumpy. "Oh no you di-uhnt." he says with disbelief.

"Oh yes I did." I say, tucking my microphone back in my briefacse.

"That's it. You're definitely off the good list." he says, gravelly voice gone.

"It had to be done, Santa. When's the last time you had a musical number? Christmas is all about the carols, right?" I ask, adjusting the buttons of my shirt again. "Hey-I could've really done a number, a la the masturbating Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys. You got off easy."

"True." he downs the last of his coffee. "So what do you really want, Sweetie? I have to get going now. There are a few American Embassy folk to talk to about their Christmas, and they aren't always in the best humor."

I look at the table and smile. What do I want? A colorful coat, a necklace. The ability to laugh at myself. An everlasting supply of Lush bath bombs.

"I want to get through Christmas and be happy without feeling like an outsider." I say finally. "I want people to love the gifts I got them. I want Angus' children to really love their Christmas. I want the Christmas dinner I am cooking to be a success." I look at the table and feel stupid. "I just want the people I know and love to be happy. It's so damn cheesy, but seriously it's the best thing you can give me."

He smiles. "You've really changed, Helen." He stands up and struggles on his coat. "I'll see what I can do about it all. You've been ok this year, Helen." he says, tugging on his scarf. "I think you should know that."

He smiles and walks to the door. As he opens it, he turns to me. "Oh! Before I forget! You know that pony you've been yearning for since you were 6?"

"Yes?" I ask, feeling my heart raise.

"Dream on, kid." he says, and leaves.

-H.

PS-many thanks to Simon. The sweet lovely boy sent me a gift (via Santa Claus). Thank you, babe. Honest.

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December 13, 2004

All I Want For Christmas

Since believing in Santa again, I can honestly say that I have been calmer.

Stupid, isn't it?

Walking along the sidewalk in London on Thursday, I past a house dripping with icicle lights and puffy inflated Santa Clauses in various poses, and it made me laugh out loud and wear a grin all the way to the office. I downloaded Christmas music to my iPod-Harry Connick Jr.'s Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Cole's Frosty the Snowman. The first Band-Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas (since I can't stand the modern smarmy remake). Aled Jones' Pie Jesu and Bocelli's Ave Maria (the song I always wanted to walk down the aisle to, but never did). I light the air and my heart up with Christmas music, and I feel all the better for it.

Angus comes home Friday night and I scoop him up in my arms and never want to let him go. We have our champagne bath and tell each other stories from our stressful week. I am so glad to see him-I have been so stressed out and blue, my ulcer gripping my stomach and the bleeding seeping into the toilet. We have a massive picnic of bread and French cheese and then race up the stairs to welcome each other back to the bedroom, which we continue to do all weekend.

We go to a Christening for Angus' friend's new daughter. The event is in a church in Tunbridge Wells and will be stocked with the usual crowd of Angus' friends that we see at the family barbecues, events which have ceased being stressful for me as people begin to relax around me. I actually like almost all of the people in that crowd. As I told Angus, I have no illusions that I am replacing his ex, nor that his friends have any loyalty to me or even like me as much as they like her. I simply enjoy the fact that people can talk with and joke with me. I may still be labeled the Homewrecker, but at least I am human, and approachable.

But this time, I was nervous. Very nervous. Not because the event was filled with people from Angus' life, but because of the very event itself-an event that had one central theme, one goal.

It was about a baby.

And for a person who had just had the week I had, it was a rough time.

Since I started having regular periods in puberty, I never once missed a period. Ever. Well, except for the times I was going through IVF, but then you are pumped up on enough synthetic hormones to feed an Olympic team, and I don't really count that. My period is as reliable as the tide, it is never late and never skipped. In fact, I generally run on a 25-26 day cycle, a cycle I can set my calendar to.

But this time I was late.

Very late.

My period simply wasn't coming.

You can imagine what a psycho like me thought. I thought-this is a sign. There is something for hope in this. There must be a reason why I am late, my plumbing is utterly reliable. And as the days passed, my hope grew. Deep in my heart I knew I couldn't be pregnant, but what if? Just what if? I checked the web-sometimes the surgery "unties" and women become pregnant. Could that have happened to me, despite what the surgeons in Sweden said about my fallopian tubes being obliterated? Could Santa Clause have come early and brought me the single thing I want most? I hadn't even written him a letter, but did he know that I wanted to have a family with the one man that I want to spend the rest of my life with? Could this be a miracle baby, a little cell named Noel?

And as I kept going through day after day of no period, I decided there was only one course of action.

I had to take a pregnancy test, to stop thinking about it one way or another.

In Waterloo Station I go into Boots and peruse the tests, tests I had taken before with Egg and Bacon, tests I took again to try to conceive the next baby (whom I named Twiglet). I was there in the aisle, not sure what I was feeling, when I heard people beside me. A man and a woman stood there, looking at the pregnancy tests and me, looking very smug.

She was enormous with pregnancy.

"Look Ted!" She cried happily. "Pregnancy tests! Think we should get one?"

"I don't know, darling." he replied. "Think you might be pregnant?"

I felt my face flush with shame. Was I on some horrible reality show? Why were they acting like that?

"I think I'm pregnant." the pregnant woman cawed again. "But maybe I should take one just in case." She reaches out and touches a Clearblue Easy test, and the sound of her fingers on the wrapping falls into my ears and grates my nerves so painfully it makes me want to wrench her fingertips away.

Another woman turned the corner, dressed head to toe in a grey business suit and with a briefcase, head down, racing to the same pregnancy test section but, hearing this drama, she turned and fled. I wonder about her. I wonder if she is pregnant, I wonder if she wants to be.

I grab the nearest pregnancy test and want to scream at the couple. You think it's funny? You think this is a joke? You think it's ok to do this to people, you have nothing better to do than run a comedy routine in Boots, while women have hopes and dreams being made and broken in this one section only? You fucking bitch, you should get down on your hands and fucking knees and thank the higher powers that be daily that you are going to have a baby. There are others of us that would sell our souls to have a child, and here you are thinking you have the right to torment other women over your gift!

In the end, I simply rush to the register with the test and some Biore (even possibly pregnant women need clean pores) and then catch my train. I debate taking the test on the train but then I decide I don't want to associate the trains with a loss, in case the test is negative. I don't want to ride the train into London thinking: Is this the train I found out I was being an idiot in? from here on. I get home, unwrap the test, and take it.

It's with little surprise that within one minute, I get a resounding negative. I wrap the stick up and take it outside to throw away, away from my sight, and then dial-in to a conference call and try to stop thinking about it.

I talk to Angus on Saturday night about it all, about how nervous I am about the Christening.

"If it's so stressful," he says, stirring curry on the stovetop, "then don't go."

My eyes well with tears. "It's not that." I say, and a sob comes up from some depth I didn't know was there. My eyes gush and so does my nose, but as I grab a paper towel I see that it's blood running from my nose in a perfect gush on the pale orange tile. I clean it up and continue to cry. I choke out the story of the woman in Boots, of how much I want to be a mother, of how important this is to me. Not going to this event doesn't make the longing go away. I don't know what will, but I'm willing to try anything.

Angus puts his spatula down and hugs me, curling my up against his chest. He's been so stressed and depressed about other factors in our life, I want nothing more than to make him feel better, to make him feel loved, to make him feel happy. I don't want to add my baby woes to his burden, only there are some packages that are too heavy for me to carry alone. I love this man so much that there is nothing I wouldn't do for him, and all I want is for someone to be able to reach inside of me and disconnect the baby wiring, to make this all go away.

And on Sunday, while dressing up and getting ready to go to the Christening with my lovely boy, it happens. One hour before we are due to leave the house my period starts with perfect clarity, mocking me and damaging me in parts I didn't know were exposed. I stuff a purse full of tampons and get ready for the day, a day which goes very well actually and the baby is simply gorgeous, as was my Angus in his suit and tie.

It's official-I am now bleeding out of every major orifice, a fact which has been examined by a doctor this morning as I await the test results, due Thursday.

At least I still have my belief in Santa Clause. Since a baby is obviously off the list (maybe I wasn't good enough this year), I will just ask for mental health. And I will ask for him to help my Angus with some of his stress, since I hate seeing him so upset.

I'm not that depressed, even if that's the tone of this post.

I'm just not sure how to proceed.

I am removing comments from this post, since I am sick and tired of the Jesus lectures and will ban the next person who feels the need to bring that one on. I also feel really fragile when it comes to babies and just need to work on that one in our home first. I post about it since I need to talk about it.

-H.

PS-Santa has already stopped by and dropped off a lovely gift which will be used once blob week is over. Many thanks to my anonymous Santa Clause, who brought a smile to my face.

PPS-and thank you to Scorpy, who made my Saturday with her gift. You're a Sweetie, and a shot glass will be headed your way shortly.

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December 09, 2004

I Believe

After spending an entire day either in a hot and stuffy conference room full of angry, yelling, exasperated voices, or on London transport, I took a very long journey home and finally made it home at 8:30 at night. Which meant, at the end of the day, that I had spent a whopping 6 hours in transit and 7 hours straight in meetings, stopping only to exercise my bladder's rights and to scarf down a thoroughly unsatisfactory baked potato, and that I got home a shattered shell of a human being.

But all that time in transit allowed for something that I needed-a little thinking time. I needed some time to sit down and think about why it is that I was missing the holidays so badly, why it was that the baubles and bangles weren't getting into my heart, why the lights reflected in disjointed pools from my disbelieving eyes. This (for me) has nothing to do with religion and I don't want to get into that aspect with this post, I'm simply talking about the spirit of hope and laughter that the holidays imbue you with. I thought about why it was that I was unable to project myself into my favorite Christmas activities-watching Scrooged, A Miracle on 34th Street, and the old Burl Ives' steadies Rudolph and Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Why couldn't I listen to the whole John Denver and the Muppets Christmas CD? What was happening?

And then it hit me as fast as it hit Susan in A Miracle on 34th Street (not the old one, the newer one with the doe-eyes Elizabeth Perkins and the new lisping Susan who is so damn cute it made my ovaries throb). I realized with a slight smile and a shake of the head why it was that I no longer felt so light and joyous about Christmas. In one moment, a smile spread on my face and I started to laugh (which I was on a crowded train at the time, so at least the guy moved away from me, lest I have something contagious).

The reason I felt so lost was that I didn't believe in Santa Claus anymore.

I had outgrown him and joined the race of jaded adults too afraid to let themselves confess that there might be something just a little bit bigger to life than they would be willing to admit.

Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Sinterklaas, the Hannukah Armadillo. Why had we forgotten them? Why have they become symbols that are reserved only for the kids, for the young, for the little people that are still chock-full of innocence, of hope, that the world really will reward you if you've been good and kind to Mommy and Daddy, that there is someone looking out for you and checking a list to make sure that you are going to get what it is that your little heart so badly needs?

I need to feel like there is a fat man in a red suit who is out there who exists purely to make the hearts of other people lighter. I need to know that the dreams that the children go to bed with on Christmas Eve are not wasted dreams, that the candy cane visions and sugarplum dreams go into a melting pot of something bigger, something that will bind and wrap up the children in little invisible force-fields of optimism as they grow up. I need to feel like there's someone who cares so much about what it is that will make us happy that he's keeping a list, checking it twice, giving me a reason to not be naughty, just nice.

I spend my life in a throng of people shuttling to and fro London. I spend my mornings in meetings with others like me, people who have lost their soul and their laugh a long time ago. I spend my afternoons battling for purchase on the streets, just trying to not get lost in the crush of people spilling up and down the stairs and streets.

I need to know that we're all better than that, that in the hearts of the people around me beats the same pattern that mine does. Maybe we're all not innocent anymore. Maybe we woke up one morning to see a shadow of a family member constructing a bicycle the night before Christmas. Maybe we've been left by people we loved so much. Maybe we've been to war. Maybe we've lost our jobs, lost our luck, lost our way.

But we all know how to love, we all know how to give. Even if both actions frighten us sometimes. We all get a warm feeling watching someone we care about have a smile light up their face.

So I'm taking the holidays back. I'm taking the childlike wonder of the season back. As a 30 year-old woman who has left trails of broken dreams behind me like a trail of destruction, as a woman who has lost faith in almost everything (including myself), as a woman who stopped being a child a long time ago, longer than I should have, I have to say-I need Santa.

This year, I am taking Santa Claus back. This year Christmas is about lightening up, laughing it up, and letting go. I need to believe in Santa again. I need to believe in the inherent goodness of people, the gentle kindness of an old man and his eight tiny reindeer, the invisible life-changing support of a dream. I'm investing myself in believing that there's more behind the glitter and sparkle of Christmas, that behind the fairy lights and shiny glass ornaments, behind the 6 foot puffy snowmen and the ring of cash registers, there's a feeling that one day out of the year we exist to celebrate our love for each other and our willingness to be children again.

It's so insane-as I sit on the train writing this, I am crying, but in a good way (although secretly, I wonder if it's my hormones). I have copied John Denver and the Muppets Christmas onto my iPod and listened to it twice. I have laughed each time Beaker sings his ninth day of Christmas. A man across from me is wearing a Santa-bedecked tie, and we looked up and smiled at each other as we got on the train. I finally feel like there is something to my Christmas this year, and when I head home, I am going to sing carols at the top of my lungs and dance on the coffee table.

It's time we took back Santa Claus. It's time we set aside the hurt and anger and pain we feel at our everyday lives, it's time we forget-for just a moment, for just a drop in time-that our lives are sometimes difficult, sometimes lonely. For just a moment let's put aside the sadness and anxiety of our adult lives and live one day in the pure bliss of being a child. There is one day a year we get to claim our lost childhoods back again, and we can't be so blind as to let it slide. I once wrote about seeing a TV program as a child of a community living on another planet where it rained every day, only once every so often the sun would come out and everyone would race outside and rejoice in the warmth. It's like that-we can't forget that there is one day every so often where the sun can come out.

I'm asking you to join me and not leave me alone in this one, since I might feel a bit silly if I go about this on my own. This holiday season, let's remember what it was like to laugh and get excited as we did when we were kids. Let's remember that there is nothing so powerful as the feeling of waking up in the morning, wondering what that one day would hold (not socks, dear God, please don't let me have gotten socks).

I believe in Santa.

Again.

I believe in Santa, and this year I am going out on a limb asking you to believe in Santa, too.


believe.jpg


-H.

PS-If you like the graphic created by the incredible Ems and want to help spread the word, then just click on the extended entry below and you can cut and paste it and put it onto your blog sidebar, or else you can right click on the picture, save-as, then upload it to your blog. Many thanks to the cool newlywed Ems.

If you don't have a blog...maybe you can just let me know if you want to try to believe...

PPS-also thanks to the lovely Jen, who got me thinking about white-haired men in red velvet suits. more...

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December 08, 2004

So This is Christmas

For some reason, this year Christmas isn't touching me. The red bows and the gold baubles, the lights and cut-outs and brightness. It isn't getting into my ears and under my skin. The decorations and possibilities of the holiday are escaping me, and my Martha Stewart Christmas fantasy is rapidly fading. I have bought all the Christmas presents, and mailed nearly all of them. Christmas cards were whisked into the post. Stockings will be hung by the chimney with care and the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners fall to me, which I actually want. I drink Starbuck's gingerbread lattes (without the whipped cream, thanks) and warm the lining of my stomach with allspice and nutmeg.

But something isn't getting inside my heart.

The big bright Christmas lights are leaving me cold. The thought of a tree exhausts me. I haven't sung any Christmas carols at the top of my lungs in the house or car, which I usually have to restrain myself from doing all throughout November. To tell the truth, I simply want to curl up in my home and stay inside.

Our house even has decorations-an Angel we bought in Palma hangs on the front door. A garland of cute pink angel lights from Amsterdam lines the kitchen wall and in every window are Swedish lights we brought back from Stockholm. Our house is a blaze of gorgeous and comfortable Christmas light, but recently I saw we have a few dark corners of the house and I wonder what lingers there.

The fact of the matter is I love Christmas. I love it, love it, love it. I love the lights, the bustle, the dreams of Santa Clause (yes, Virginia, I believe!) The single greatest part of it is I get to buy presents for people without coming across as weird or needy. I love giving people things even more than I like getting things. I like feeling like I paid attention and took note of what they wanted and needed.

I'm missing something this year, and I don't know what it is.

I know work is getting me down. It just doesn't seem to be going any better. I spend so much time on conference calls that I think my ear has turned into a funnel shape.

I got a call on Monday, a call which made my mobile phone squeak and squak awkwardly, punching the silence of the Dream Job quiet atmosphere. I decide to pick up the phone (I don't always, half the time I simply don't feel like answering the phone. Yet another reason why I am totally unsuited to be working in telecom) and answer as I usually do.

'Hello, this is Helen.' I say rapidly into the phone, so that it's really a brusque 'HellothisisHelen'.

I heard only music.

What the?

'Hello?' I ask again, demanding.

Music. So I listen closer. Is that? Could that be?

Yes. It is.

It's John Denver and the Muppets singing 'The Twelve Days of Christmas'.

I laugh and feel my eyes mist over as the phone is taken away from the radio and the comforting sound of my friend Jim's voice pops onto the phone. 'They were playing it on the radio and I just HAD to call you.' He says proudly.

I needed that, Jim.

I really did.

I know that almost everyone around me hates my John Denver and the Muppets CD. I have a hard time trying to find words to explain that although I have had my strings to my family cut, it's a long-standing tradition from as far back as I can remember that we played that CD. It isn't Christmas without that CD. It can't be. I'm not sure the first time we played that tape in the car-I think my mother likely bought it at a rest stop as we drove from our house to visit our grandparents for Christmas-we did this every Christmas, we always drove, and it always took days. Driving across country, I have no idea how many times we listened to that tape-enough times so that every word, every nuance of that song is stuck in our heads to this day. As an adult, I saw the CD in Target one day and I bought it, and it has journeyed around the world with me since then.

I tried to play it last night while I was preparing dinner, waiting for Angus to come home. I tried to play it, and even danced around a little bit to it. I bought a sparkly headband with two puffy Santa heads on springs at the top and I wore these, much to the cats' consternation. I thought: I will be ok. Things are getting better, this is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. I tried to find my Muppet groove but then something went wrong, as things have been going wrong, and I turned off the CD at the wall and took off the Santa heads.

Christmas is coming and I don't know where I am going wrong, but I feel a bit lost. I think I spilled my cup of Yuletide cheer all over the carpet and have now poured salt on it, soaking up the stain. It hasn't helped that I have had to schlep my ass across the country today, heading through London and out the northern side of it to get to a meeting. A three hour journey for a full day of aggressive meetings, now there's something to look forward to. Angus got up in the black hours of the morning and headed off to Aachen until Friday, so I will get home late tonight-likely around 8 or 9 pm-to a too-empty and too-quiet house (the house is always so much lonelier without Angus in it). I will make myself Mexican breakfast burritos for dinner and I will curl up on the couch with my cats under the warm glow of the Christmas lights we have up in the house, and I will soak up the rays like a tanning bed, hoping to get the warm amber glow into my eyes, into my pores, into my feelings. I want Christmas. I need Christmas.

Christmas is coming.

I just wish it felt brighter than it does.

-H.

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December 07, 2004

Eyes, Lies and Illusions Meet Fairy Lights

Sometimes I look around me and think that I am so incredibly lucky, that my life has turned out to be something so wildly different to anything I could have ever hoped and dreamt it could be. Even with the splashes and dashes of insanity, I have surpassed even the dreams that I could have ever had for myself on those lonely and indifferent nights I spent dreaming of what the future could hold. Somehow I clawed and fought and dreamt and cried my way to a life that I often stare at in wonder and want to put in a little snowglobe, to shake up from time to time and stare in wonder as the tiny sparkles drift around me.

And then there are times that I feel I am so small and insignificant that I can't even be distinguished from the paneling in the room around me. That even though I have been finding my voice and figuring out what it is that I truly feel inside of me, it doesn't really matter since nothing I say or do really matters anyway. The world has no time for the crazy, even if the crazy do a good job of cleaning up and hiding among the sane. The world has no place for someone like me, someone who finds that quite often every little feeling, thought, and stimuli hurt and sting and cannot be washed away no matter how much bleach you throw on the stain.

In England, they call those twinkly little Christmas lights 'fairy lights', which is a name that I love. I think of them now as little fairies, dancing their way around Christmas trees and store-front windows. We have them in several rooms of the house just because we love looking at them-some of them behind a net curtain, some of them in a net funnel that seems to be a container for tiny fairies, all dancing their way around the shape like lightning bugs in a jar.

Sometimes I wonder if I am a set of fairy lights-I twinkle a bit, but I give off no real warmth, there's nothing behind the sweet façade of light. That if just one bulb is off, the whole set stops working, and if I become a tangled knot that people either scream at to untangle, or else they simply throw me away. That the light doesn't light up the room, but doesn't let you hunt out the dark corners either, and at the end of the day no one remembers how many sets of fairy lights they saw that day.

This life that I am leading now is the only one that I want to lead, and yet I know life doesn't work that way, that someday I will be thrust into another life whether I like it or not. When that day comes I will try to accept it with grace, although the truth of the matter is I have always been good and handling change. It's a perk that you get when you compartmentalize your life into boxes and cartons that get sealed and stored on a shelf and left, lest you cut your finger or your heart ripping open the tape.

Walking back to Waterloo yesterday from the office, I started thinking about it. Maybe in the past I have been good at change because I have had to be. The truth is, I am no stronger or more of a survivor than anyone else-I had to adapt before simply because there was no other choice. I could adapt'¦or I could adapt. The list of options wasn't great.

But now I think I have a problem. I have adapted and grown and survived, but now that I have been in this life, now that I have known what I could have, what I could be allowed to live with, I can't ever go back to just surviving. Before there was adapt or adapt. Now there is adapt and mourn the loss of the greatest life I have ever had. And that's just not something I think I can go through, no matter how well-prepared for boxing up my heart I am.

Someone commented once here that maybe I simply seek out the sorrow because I am not equipped to deal with the good, and I think there has been something to that. In the past, I have put myself through hell and ripped myself apart simply because that's all I thought I deserved. People in my life may try to punish me, but I am the world champion at hurting me and I will never relinquish my title. I have always had this image of myself sitting cold and alone in a tiny dark apartment in New York, hiding myself off from the world and working in a job that gave me minimal comforts and minimal interactions. Angus tells me that I am the most caring person he has ever met, but in this vision I have of myself I have crumbled in on myself and I no longer care about anything.

I walked to Waterloo yesterday since I hadn't done it in ages and I missed the beautiful sight of the bridge over the Thames, of Parliament and the London Eye, of the hopes and dreams of a million people that walk over the bridge, too. I walked to Waterloo despite the fact that I was lugging my backpack full of laptop gear, a projector, and a bag full of Christmas presents I need to mail off. I walked to Waterloo even though it was freezing and dark and walking would mean I'd miss the fast train and be forced to take a slow train that would get me home relatively late.

Tightening my scarf around me, my boots making a firm sound on the pavement, I walked and thought about my life. I work for a company I like and-even more-that I am grateful to for saving me when I needed saving more than any other time in my life.

I live in a village that I love heart and soul and that I don't want to leave-when I leave the office, I take the train home. I get in my car from the station and drive home. I put my key into the antique lock and open the door to the warmth and inviting vanilla smell of home. Our home, a home, for the first time in my life. I can't give it up. I have a man in my life that drives me crazy and that I love beyond all great loves, a man who I stress about when he gets angry or depressed, a man who knows my routines and patterns, a man who I never thought I'd have, a man who makes me freeze when he gets angry (not because he'd hit me). I have my girls, my beautiful lovely girls that I love more and more everyday and can't imagine how I survived 8 months without. And I have Christmas coming, a holiday that I love and adore and want to celebrate within an inch of its life.

The view on the bridge opens up and I am treated to my favorite view of the dark water, the lit up imposing Big Ben. A nearby museum offers a chance to glimpse at a show called "Eyes, Lies and Illusions", and I realize that could very well be the title I have given to my previous lives, to my inability to see the forest for the forest. There are lights everywhere, big bright Christmas lights, illuminating the world and my heart. This life is my life, and maybe the single greatest salute I can give it is to stop worrying that I will lose it. Maybe I will lose it, but I like to hope elements of it will always be with me, twinkling and turning my mind and wrapping me in a blanket of security.

Passing over the bridge, I am overwhelmed by the number of fairy lights I see, and even if I can't remember how many of them I saw, I am reminded of the incredible brightness with which they light up the night, even if they do get boxed up at the end of the month.

-H.

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December 06, 2004

When in Amsterdam...

Brace yourself, this is a long one.

Angus and I went to Amsterdam.

And big fun was had.

I realized I had been in Amsterdam almost exactly a year ago, staying with an old friend trying to forget the fact that I was a complete and utter failure to myself as I coped through the early days of being unemployed. I had only ever been through Amsterdam's Schipol airport en route to somewhere else (although I had been to other parts of the Netherlands before), and I always bought the requisite tulips to plant and to send to people, proof that I had been in the largest city in Holland. I remember my stay last year as being torn from a life that I had known with Company X and thrust into the unknown. I was unwilling to spend any money since I didn't know when more would come in. I was unwilling to try things, in case they permeated my tough shell and got inside of me, showing me how to feel again.

And right from the get-go, Angus and I vowed to do things differently. We had a few goals:

1) Shop
2) Eat these doughnut type things I'd had there before
3) See the red light district
4) Try some of those organic natural herbs I'd heard so much about

We left Thursday evening. We boarded the heavingly full BMI flight from London to Amsterdam and observed, with a wry smile, that we were in the very last row of the plane. Passing a number of people to-ing and fro-ing in the aisle, I passed a smiling flight attendant.

'Doing all right, my dear?' he asked, English accent in place and living life firmly to the left of 'very gay' land.

'Just fine.' I wheezed, squeezing past more chattering Englishmen in the aisle. 'I haven't had this much contact with people I have had sex with before.' I muttered.

He threw his head back and barked laughter. 'I hear that, my love!' he shrieks, and I swear I loved him right then and wanted to take him home and make him my new gay best friend, the type that would tell me if my ass looked too large in my new jeans.

The flight was uneventful until the landing, in which Captain Kangaroo decided to bounce us into the terminal just to ensure we would be drinking that night. It was so bad I gasped out loud, and grabbed Angus' hand. The Englishman next to him turned to us.

'That landing was dodgy.' He said, looking pale.

'Absolutely.' I replied, still shaken.

'I almost yelled for my mummy!' replied the Englishman.

Right. Too much information, mate.

Angus and I took a train to the Amsterdam Centraal Station and then a tram to our hotel. It was a tiny hole in the wall, but it was simple and clean and did the job. Not yet willing to go to sleep, we decided to take a walk. To get to know the shape and feel of Amsterdam, to see the sights.

We headed straight for the red light district.

As one does.

Walking hand in hand in the freezing weather, we noticed the streets were heaving. There were throngs of young men, all out of their minds on alcohol and the wacky tabbacky, all of them ogling the women in the windows with ghoulish delight.

And all of them were English.

Those that weren't were Scottish.

And the tiny portion of those that weren't English or Scottish were of some other foreign ethnicity who would offer us, in a very low mutter, the standard phrase: 'You want ecstasy, cocaine?'

Neither of which appealed.

The red light district is exactly how the documentaries portray them-women in white white bikinis under black lights, dancing in red-framed neon windows. A nubile Asian woman motioned to a spiky-haired Englishman querying about her price that she charged 50 Euros, which naturally led to Angus and I debating what 50 Euros gets you. The women were all framed in the windows-some dancing, some smiling, all with a bed, a sink, and an enormous supply of paper towels beside them. Some of girls were of Asian descent. Some of them were young and blond-looking Dutch babes. Some of them simply looked rode hard and put up wet.

I thought it was a surreal experience.

We went back to the hotel room, downed a bottle of wine, shagged like rabbits, and went to sleep.

The next morning saw us getting and getting moving relatively early. We walked around Amsterdam, a beautiful city that has more character than a number of European cities. The houses that survived the war are fantastic tall monuments to times gone by, with magnificent windows and doors that seem to dwarf the people the dwelt in them (except the Dutch are tall. Freakishly tall. They are, in fact, the tallest ethnic group in the world. It's one of the few places in the world where I can feel like a short chick.)

We bought some breakfast and coffee and walked through the streets. We bought Christmas presents and some Christmas decorations to delight our new home. We walked hand in hand and spent time enjoying the quiet and the company.

And then we went into a coffeehouse, which in Amsterdam is a euphemism for a place that you can buy coffee and goods with a kick.

Since we were in Amsterdam and since-believe it or not-I have never in my life tried any drugs, it had to be done.

We went into a coffee house, a dark, smoky den playing mind-disorienting techno, and bought some goods, which are legal in Holland.

I was keen to try it. I had never been able to try anything before and since we were there, it was legal, and I was with a boy I loved, it had to be done. We bought a cup of coffee, a pack of specific chemicals, and a space cake.

Let the party begin.

Angus partook of a third of something, and then had to go outside he was so dizzy and in desperate need of fresh air.

I lit up.

I went for it.

And I realized I was an utter failure.

In high school I tried to smoke a Marlboro once-I was in a cool crowd that smoked and I felt the need to try. The boy I fancied at the time lit one up for me in one smooth move from his own mouth (while lighting his own at the time) and handed it to me. And all I did was have paralytic coughing attacks. I just couldn't do it, no matter how hard I tried. My lungs simply seized up and said: 'Uhn-uh. That shit's not getting down here, babe. We don't do the smoking thing.'

It would be a legacy-there I was huffing and puffing and genuinely trying, but all I was doing was launching into coughing fits. I couldn't smoke it no matter how hard I tried. Not a single puff of air got through the vise-like mechanism my throat had on my esophagus. I had the opportunity, but it all boiled down to me being like Bill Clinton-I didn't inhale, although not for lack of trying.

I literally can't smoke.

Angus and I were promptly thrown out of the coffeehouse due to his severe reaction, and after attempting to force a kebab down his throat (and make conversation), we went back to the hotel for a nap. Angus was gorgeous-full of love, devoting, and decidedly off his head. I was also full of love, devoting, but stone-cold sober.

We napped for a while until our batteries were recharged and Angus' pupils had gone down, had a shag, then went out for dinner with some friends in Amsterdam. We went to a floating Indonesian place and gorged ourselves full of food. Then we walked back to our hotel room, and in order to get there, we had to walk through the Red Light district.

And it was there we decided to try something new.

On various clubs and doors in the district, you would see these signs: 'Live sex! Real couples!' We passed one such club and the doorman called over to us: 'Want to watch a live sex show?'

We looked at him. Did we? Want to watch complete strangers on a dark and smoky stage?

Absolutely we did.

'How much?' Angus asked.

'35 Euros.' Called the guy. Angus looked at me. I smiled. He smiled. We thought-we had to see this.

'20 Euros.' Angus countered.

'25 Euros and 2 free drinks each.' Doorman said. I never thought I'd ever be bargaining to watch a sex show.

'Done.' Angus grinned, and we slapped money on the counter and were escorted up some very dark stairs. At the top, the landing opened and we saw a massive stage, a bar the length of the room, and more Englishmen present than in the entire county of Surrey. We took some seats on a bench near the stage, grinned at each other, and ordered some drinks from the harassed looking waitress.

The show soon started, and the first two acts were the usual strip-type of show that one sees at any strip joint. The third act came on, and at the same time an American couple sat down next to me. She was wrapped head to toe in fleece and looked a little bewildered. He was bedecked in Arctic-type gear and looked enthusiastic. The woman on the stage stripped, danced, wiggled for the Englishmen, and then took a volunteer from the audience and dragged him onstage. She then proceeded to show him how to use a vibrator on her and then laid down and he used the buzzing toy on her using only his mouth.

The American chick looked like she was going into shock.

The Englishmen were going wild.

I found the whole thing hilarious.

The fourth act came on, and it was a couple-she had bizarre 'I Have a Crimper and I Love It' hair, and he was graced with wildly pouffy Charlie's Angels hair and danced like someone who had never once before perused the 'Women Seeking Men' newspaper ad category. They danced and strutted to and fro for a while before whipping off their clothes and getting it on. And to my horror, I saw that the overly proud man had a winky wanky woo that headed at a full 90 degree angle, before ending in an embarrassing pink point. They had full-sex on the stage then, to an audeinece of maybe 100.

The American girl next to me looked like she would shatter if someone touched her.

The audience was going mad.

The acters looked bored.

My hand in Angus' crotch, I found the whole thing wildly amusing.

At the end of the song, the couple on stage just stopped, standing up and bowing, expecting applause. There wasn't even any "crossing of the finish line". The audience looked confused but applauded gently. I couldn't help but feel I absolutely couldn't applaud someone that had such an unappealing penis. It was as though he wasn't even aware that it was a mistake, a bizarre appendage with a mind of its own.

We left, giggling and holding hands, and made our way back to the hotel. I ate a space cake on the way, hoping to feel some effects from the pharmaceuticals on offer in the country. Once back in the room, we promptly fell into bed and had rapid, urgent sex before falling instantly asleep. I only awoke once, feeling all of my skin tingling and burning, but the next morning I awoke to a nuzzling Angus and realized that I had slept right through the high I would have had.

Score: Mary Jane: 2, Helen: 0.

But I do have to confess that in the morning I woke up so hungry I could have eaten an entire pizza. And the thought did occur to me, only not even the Dutch are that hungry in the morning.

We took the flight home, enjoying the Dutch holiday 'doughnuts' (called oliebole) at the airport, and then flew home.

But what an adventure.

-H.

PS-I have been nominated for a best blog award in a tiny category of blogs. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but you can vote for me once every 24 hours if you want.

PPS-Broadband on Friday! That means access to blogs, email, and IM! Most blogs are inaccessible from work, so hopefully I'll be a little more vocal shortly.

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December 04, 2004

Thank God No One I Knew Was There With A Video Camera

...cause in Amsterdam, I was naughty.

Like....really naughty.

The kind of naughty where I hope my departed Grandfather wasn't watching me from wherever he is, as it has "Lecture Your Ass" written all over it.

Personally? I had a fantastic time. I'm mad about my boy.

And a few boxes got checked off this weekend on the "Things I Want to Do Before I Die" list.

Details Monday.

-H.

PS-oh, and apparently I have been nominated for a best blog award in a tiny category of blogs. Go ahead and give me a shout if you want. I never win these things, but that's likely smptomatic of me being just a little bit crazy.

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December 02, 2004

I See Your Bull In a China Shop and Raise You a Mammoth at the CDC

Got my leg caught in the laptop cord and it was pulled off the table, killing it.

Starbucks cup of coffee split down the seam and spilled all over the laptop, killing it.

I am now on my third laptop, and it was with little surprise that my manager very apologetically-and a little bit wearily-told me that the next time it happened, under Dream Job regulations I would have to be written up as being careless. Can't say fairer than that, I suppose. I look at my new laptop with a supreme reverence-one of the managers in my meeting today sat next to me with a large steaming cup of Costa coffee.

'Ike,' I growl under my breath before the start of the meeting, 'if you spill that coffee near my laptop I swear to God I will rip your guts out and dance naked in the spilled steaming intestines.'

He looked horrified and moved his coffee away from me but at least my point was made.

And I felt I made huge headway in the category of quality threats, which you can never have too many of, even if that one tipped the supreme repulsion scale.

I have a reputation as being a klutz.

It's actually a massive reputation, more of a place-card holder really. My yearbook should have read 'Most Likely to Trip and Crack the Rest of the Liberty Bell' or 'Most Likely to Bump Into a Table and Drop a Vial Of Ebola While Touring the CDC and Kill Us All' or something like that. I am not on the level of Bridget Jones, more like Bridget Jones with two left feet, a second head, and the inability to form complete thoughts in a single bound.

I've always been clumsy. When I was a little girl I was constantly walking into walls. It happened with mind-numbing regularity, and because I have such a flat face, I inevitably got a black eye from it. A number of my childhood pictures show some kind of bruising, and it honestly was from the sheer degree of clumsiness that I was possessed with. I simply never could figure out which direction my legs were headed in, and still can't.

Once when I was about 6 I fell off a jungle gym. Boom! went my forehead as I landed directly on a pebble. I got to spend a week wondering if the hole in my head was ever going to close or if I would spend the rest of my life making sure I didn't sit near the pencil sharpener, in case someone mistook the perfect round hole in my forehead for the space in which to file their number 2 pencil. I actually half-hoped it wouldn't close when it came to dealing with bullies-I wanted to be able to have my eyes fill up with tears (I used to be able to do that on demand, however I lost that important ability some years ago) and point to my leaking forehead and say: "Why are you being mean to me? You wouldn't want Old Faithful to start gushing, would you?"

Another incident happened when I was 7, playing tag on the playground. I was running from the It person and turned my head for one second, and when I turned back around, it was to the grim realization that I was sliding across the pavement with alarming speed. On my face. I slid for a little while before coming to a comic stop, and I turned my head to realize that I had tripped over a bench.

I tripped over a fucking bench.

Not even Goofy is that clumsy.

I spent Christmas with half of my face bandaged, and to this day when I cry you can see marks of where the old scars are.

I did it all. Tripped over a cord and broke my wrist. Had a bicycle accident and broke my knee. Had stitches a number of times for getting my fingers caught in doors or slicing the bread knife just a little bit past the carbohydrate it was focusing on. I was constantly bruised and banged, a very white girl with very purple patches.

Apparently, social services called on my mother due to my constant bumps and bruises, which hopefully she can now look back on and laugh about.

Something was always going wrong with me. In high school I had a bloody nose one day in the girls' bathroom. It wouldn't stop, so I made my way to the nurses' office. There, the blood flow still wouldn't stop. The principal called my mother and decided to take me home to meet her there. As he was driving me, he turned towards me.

'You have some blood on your cheek.' He said, pointing to a cheekbone.

I flip down the visor and open the mirror. 'Nope.' I say slowly and calmly, sounding like a chipmunk with my nose pinched shut. 'I'm bleeding out of my eyes.'

He looked at me and floored the car.

I think I took years off of his life that day.

Seriously, not even Tim Burton is this ghoulish.

I met my mother at the house and she rushed me to the hospital where, lying on a gurney with blood pouring out of my nose and mouth and little rivulets of blood tearing from my eyes, I had lots of attention as it was revealed I had a broken artery in my head. I could turn my head from side to side and I was pretty sure that I could hear the liquid in my ears as well. It was a rocking good time, up until I passed clean out from blood loss and soaked a whole supply of towels. I was really trying to figure out what exsanguination would feel like, if it was perhaps a new liquid diet for the 90's. When I came to while they were cauterizing my nose (they gave it to me after a quick dose of liquid cocaine to numb the nose but it clearly wasn't a dose large enough. Like Robert Downey Jr. large enough. I have never in my life felt pain that badly. Surgical cauterization while awake? I'll take a colonoscopy without anesthetic over it any day.)

It did the job though, and the next time I was back at that hospital I saw the room I had been in was now a supply room. I asked about it, and it turns out I was rather famous-they pointed out the pink stains still on the ceiling that was my blood that they couldn't get out. I felt cool that day, let me tell you.

A few years later I was in the prop room of a theatre when someone moved a bit of backdrop, hitting the string of lights and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. An enormous iron chandelier loosened and fell directly on my head, knocking me out and punching a hole in the back of my head. I was taken to the hospital, awarded stitches (amongst me tearfully pleading for them to please not shave my hair, I heard that blood is the new black and all) and a concussion. To this day, I try to avoid walking under chandeliers.

In the course of my life so far I have broken nearly every finger. All of my toes. My knees, my foot, my wrist. I have had three nose surgeries to repair a congenital defect (and it didn't change the shape of my nose, not at all), the final one of them culminating in removing cartilage from behind my ear and transplanting it in my nose (what the hell, my head is already more perforated than a notebook anyway, it's not like it will be missed). My nose still bleeds all the time anyway. I wonder if the image I project is that of a retired boxer or of rock star chick from the cocaine 80's, neither of which is true but is way more interesting then the truth-it bleeds just because. I have had hundreds of stitches and a few broken ribs (but that was my fault. I had a bit of an anger management problem and took it out during ice hockey).

To this day I am clumsy and I think it drives people around me crazy. I hate it when I get yelled out to pay attention, chances are I was paying attention and simply didn't think my foot would land on someone's crotch, or I didn't know the display of Lladro figurines was really that close.

I am still clumsy. I will always be clumsy. I still have no idea what my ridiculously useless long legs are doing, where I am in terms of space and time.

I just have to hope that Angus will just always remain insured for as long as we both shall live.

-H.

PS-It's been a rough week battling estate agents, dealing with the relative inability to access the internet, mails and blogs (although we have been given the firm date of having broadband working by next Friday), and coming down from the supreme stress that was Monday's bringing my babies home. And since we bought tickets months ago (BMI's £4 per person each way deal) we are off for a day and a half, leaving tonight for Amsterdam.

You know.

As one does.

See you Monday.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:03 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 1598 words, total size 8 kb.

December 01, 2004

One For My Baby and One For the Road

This is a 988 word love letter.

If you don't like love, maybe you'd better not read it. Then again, maybe you should read it-there are some things in life that help us remember what we've forgotten.


***********************************************

I am sitting on the train on my way into London Waterloo. Across from me is a couple, perhaps early 40's. He is decked out in a suit with a sparkly orange tie, and she has a black business suit marked by the vivid slash of a purple shirt beneath it. They are sitting side-by-side on this packed commuter train, this train full of sleeping men in business suits and men standing in the aisles, trying to balance while reading the paper. Periodically the air is punctuated by the sound of a mobile phone plinging off or the typing of a keyboard (like mine).

The couple across from me is holding hands, fingers enmeshed.

And even more than that, their thumbs are roving, aching, pushing, striving to massage and find purchase in each other's hearts.

Something about their thumb rub makes me think they are a new couple, and I want to tell them how much I am cheering for them. Life is hard on love. I hope that in ten years' time that thumb rub will still be in use.

The big wide world is so scary and difficult sometimes. A glance out the window at Woking shows two men arguing in the parking lot, an Audi sat askew, clear signs of a fender bender. The headlines on the Daily Telegraph the man across from me is reading show nothing but gloom and the bitter destruction of life. The sky is dark and grim, a foggy freezing morning that promises to hide the sun for the entire day.

And somewhere across town is my lovely boy, stressed and tired. Somewhere in a car, listening to Radio 4, is the single greatest light in my life, the one person that has more influence over my sadness and happiness than anyone has ever had before. I want to be a ghost and curl up on the seat next to him, whispering words of encouragement and love, words that he cannot hear but can only feel, words that will hop into his soul and warm him from the inside out.

Life with you, my darling boy, is everything I hoped it would be. It's lots of hours in the bedroom, it's lingering glances over the wine. It's also going to the airport to pick up your bouncing children. It's filling the dishwasher. It's arguing over the holidays. It's feeling utterly depressed when we argue. It's learning how electricity works and what your favorite train stations are.

My life has always been a roller coaster but at least the carriage that you built for us is much more secure and comfortable than any other car that I have been in. The obstacles and aggravations thrown in the path of our clickety-clickety roller coaster seldom get me down, simply because I have never known a calm life. I hadn't thought they existed, until I learned that was what your life used to be like.

If you stay with me, I can promise a lifetime of difficulties, not the least of which are the ones that exist in emotional ties and barriers in my head. I can promise you tears and sadness. I can promise occasional disappointment.

I can also promise that they way I love you will never lessen, it simply grows in foundation, filling out the giant mushroom cloud I feel for you into a stable base. I can promise that I will want to go new places and try new things with you. I can assure you that no matter where you are, chances are I am thinking about you. I can promise that I will never make you slay windmills on your own, that I will bring my donkey and my lance to try to help out. I can promise that if you ever get seriously ill I will drop everything and be with you no matter what. And if the illness isn't serious, I can promise to try not to make fun of the despair you approach a head-cold with and to buy you paracetamol.

The couple across from me is doing well. In a gesture that makes my heart swell I see he's buttoning her coat to protect the throat he loves so much from the cold. They smile in fondness and love and will, I assume, part company at the tube stop. But they will be a hidden specter in each other's hearts and confidence the rest of the day.

And that's what love is for me. It is the air on fire, the 'I can't live without you' feeling. It's the utter despair at the thought of being alone, the inability to keep hands off of each other in the kitchen. It's the willingness to cross oceans to be together, to uproot your life to be able to breathe the same air in the same space. It's the incredible ability to spend a day in bed and finding out that orgasms come in six packs.

Love is also knowing that I get to go to bed every night with my most favorite person in the world. It's knowing that if I am running late one evening, you will make us dinner. It's you knowing what my favorite foods are and predicting what I will order in a restaurant. It's being willing to love each other's children and cats just because we know how important they are to the other person. It's not just moving oceans to be together, but the willingness to possibly keep crossing oceans to stay together. Love is knowing that you worry and care and sometimes take me for granted but that you never, ever stop loving me.

It's you, baby.

Love is you.

-H.

PS-no broadband until next Friday. I know. Depressing state of affairs. But at least I have a working laptop now, and I was given a Blackberry thingy but have no idea how to use the damn thing. Good thing I work in telecom, eh?

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 08:56 AM | Comments (26) | Add Comment
Post contains 1051 words, total size 6 kb.

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