Monica

"Hi Monica!"

During my 14th year, strangers in my relatively small hometown started greeting me this way, mysteriously often. The first few times, I felt like I must be imagining it: Did I just get called Monica? Again? After about the 8th time it happened, the mistaken identity began to bother me.

"Who's Monica?" I asked my friend Leah.

"She's that other redheaded girl," Leah said. "She goes to Marco." Marco Forster Junior High School was the public Junior High School in town. I went to the Catholic school. Leah played fullback on the AYSO soccer team where I played goalie. We'd been Brownies and Girl Scouts together in Elementary. We were also in National Charity League together during high school. Incidentally, we also went to the same college, although we didn’t room together. Leah liked nothing better than to hang out and chat with me in the backfield while our forwards were running the ball furiously toward the goal. (I owe much of my former soccer goalie prowess to Leah's sieve-like defense of the goal box.) Leah went to public school; therefore, she knew this Monica. "She's taller than you are, but you look a lot alike," she said.

Instead of playing soccer, Monica danced ballet, which explains why our paths took so long to cross. We finally met when our different National Charity League subchapters convened at a common house. The girls in Monica's subchapter were debutantes. This meeting-nay-party was all about how to give ourselves manicures -- a very useful skill, like typing, for example; how to arrange flowers; how to sit down in a chair properly and what to do with your legs while sitting. My own subchapter did community service together: we candy striped; we patterned a local quadriplegic girl who had been paralyzed since birth; we delivered meals on wheels, read for Head Start students, walked together, along with our mothers, in the Swallows Day Parade. A few times, we met with California stateswomen, like Marian Bergeson. I have to say that as noble as these things were, I remember more from that one meeting where I learned manicure skills (always file in one direction), flower arranging skills (cut the stems under running water), and sitting etiquette (back up to the chair until the backs of your legs brush the seat; sit straight down; fold your ankes around one another and let your legs lean together to one side. Never! Cross! Your! Legs!).

It might have been through our participation in this group that my parents found out about Young Republican Camp, where they sent me when I was 16. But that is a totally awesome memory that I'm reserving for a future writing.

The moment I saw her, I knew I'd met my match.

"You must be Monica," I said.

"You're Christa!" she said.

"We don't look alike at all," I said.

"No," she said.

We stood staring at one another, trying to belie our greedy need to find our difference in one another. Then, recognizing our awkward silence, we tried to start talking again.

"I guess our hair color is kind of similar," I said.

"And it's cut sort of similar," she said. Our haircut resembled the cut that Tracy Austin, the 80's teen tennis star, sported in the 70s: longish, with bangs and slight feathering around the face.

"Yeah," I said.

Monica and I didn't say anything to each other for the rest of the party, and I never saw her again.

Fate and Free Will

Lately, I've been wrestling with fate. That is, I've been contemplating the concept that one's existence requires her to behave in accordance with the life choices she has made. I'm operating here under the understanding that the life choices people make constitute their "destiny" or fate.

Ideally, we make our life choices consciously; for example, a woman may love many, many men in her lifetime; however, when it comes to choosing a mate, she combines as much awareness as she can muster with a generous dose of dumb luck and chooses one man. What results is the life she leads as a married woman to that particular man; i.e., her "fate." Likewise, a woman gets pregnant with her husband (they are poor artists, they are "not ready," they have decided to wait; nevertheless, she gets pregnant the old fashioned way--without "planning") and chooses to go ahead and become a mother, knowing that having children will complicate her life in the deepest way. She lives, in short, with her eyes and heart open to the experiences she's having; she does not crash or thrash through her life, complaining that the life she's creating for herself -- whether consciously or unconsciously -- is unfair. She does not become a victim of her fate.


Sometimes, while contemplating my fate, passages from Milan Kundera's novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being seep into my consciousness, passages like "The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become" (Kundera 5).

Before I became a new mom/shut-in, I enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle: I played in a band; I wrote and produced original performances; I acted in plays; I taught English Literature; I traveled the world. My husband and I spent a lot of time out with our friends. We attended parties -- pool parties, cast parties, democratic parties, garden parties, galas. We even threw a party now and then. Mine was a relatively light existence, a troubled existence to be sure -- whose isn't? -- but free of irrevocable responsibility for the most part.

Not so much these days.

Recently, my friend Jason asked me if I wanted to be in a play -- the world premiere rock opera by Daniel Johnston and Infernal Bridegroom Productions. Jason is directing it. It's gonna be amazing, and I would love to be in the play more than most anything else. But I had to say no. No. No. No. Because not only am I a wife, and the mom of a fourteen month old daughter, but also because I'm carrying another baby in my uterus. These three things are major responsibilities, each one compounded by the next. Being a wife is easy; being a wife and mother is exponentially harder. Being a mother of two, I've heard, is exponentially harder than being a mother of one. Besides the responsibilities to my family, there's the reality that by six p.m., I can barely stand. The only thing I'm successful at during the evening hours is passing out from exhaustion.

Is it worth it? Is giving up this extravagant, seemingly expansive lifestyle for the limited, burdened one of family worth the exchange?

Yes. It is. I think. I hope.

I used to think of the Fate phenomenon as the opposite of Free Will. But over the years, I've learned that Fate is a result of Free Will; there is no versus between the two. They are intimately connected, in the same way all great oppositions are connected: dark/light, male/female, parent/child, heaviness/lightness. There is no one without the other.

There is no extravagance without burden.

Cut Loose

I believe I can come out now.

For years when I've gone to get a haircut, and the stylist asks me how I'd like it cut, I've wanted to say, "like Keith Richards." But I haven't said it, because I was afraid of the resulting look. And also, when I did say it once, the hairperson looked at me like I needed to up my meds.

I don't take meds; I am totally serious.

So today I went to a new place. I get my hair cut twice a year. I wash it twice a month, maybe three times. Let's say I'm low maintenance when it comes to my hair. Mostly, I pull it up into some sort of situation. Lately I've been wearing it plaited, but I started to worry that I might end up one of those old women with braids, and with that vision in my head, I couldn't wait any longer to get it cut. I heard from a good friend, a visual artist, that John Chao was the man for long hair in Houston. So I made an appointment with John Chao. Turns out, the rumor that he's the guy for long hair is fallacious. He's also the guy for short hair, medium length hair, curly hair, gray hair, hair color, etc. Apparently, people go to him all the time because they've heard that he's the guy for ______ hair.

John Chao did not ask me how I wanted my hair cut. He simply began cutting it, dry. He said that he was going to cut for a while to get a feel for my hair and then he would figure out what to do. I liked him immediately.

While he cut, he told me tricks for how to bring out the natural wave in my hair. He said, "You must begin preparing your waves in the shower." Then he launched into a step by step description of how to prepare my hair for waves. Only shampoo the scalp -- never the ends. Wash with just water at least once a week. While you're in the shower, separate your hair into sections, and let the hot water hit your scalp while you pull the natural oils that normally live on your scalp all the way from the roots to the ends. There was even more arcane knowledge imparted by John Chao, more than I've ever heard or read before. He applauded me for washing my hair only twice a month. I was charmed. Because he speaks with a thick Asian accent, I had to listen veeeery closely to absorb all his hair wisdom.

To cap it off, I left the salon looking like the rock star I used to be but never was. In fact, I look a little like Keith Richards. A ladylike Keith Richards. It was as if John Chao read my mind, discovered my secret hair wish by feeling his way through my hair.

John Chao cured me of my everlasting bad mood. I heartily tipped him. As I left, he walked me to the door, opened it for me, and said, "Enjoy your new life."

Misanthropy

I am sick of everything: internet forums, blogs (including this one), folk, cars – not only SUVs – toast, whining toddlers, do-gooders, neck pain, grandfather clocks, Baby Einstein, Walt Disney, shiny pennies, romantic comedies, Hollywood video, brick and mortar monopolies, poetry, peanut butter, stale pancakes, public and private schools, oil slicks, pot holes, refried beans. The list, of course, goes on ad infinitum. Periodically, I enter a fog of dense misanthropy, which hovers around my head for a week or so. When it lifts, I feel refreshed, ready to blaze back into the world with an open, hopeful heart once again.

If I were to read the newspaper on a regular basis, the fog would never lift. I don’t know how newshounds live with themselves and the other 6.5 billion people on earth.

Maybe they only live with themselves.

Xta’s Scrap Book

Before I got pregnant, I frequented smoky bars, punk rock clubs, speakeasies, blue-black alleyways. I was hung over nine out of twelve weekends. Today, my daughter turns 11 months old, and I admit that sleep trumps drunk.

Becoming a mother necessitates a dramatic shift in behavior. For example, recently I’ve been ducking into stores with names like “Scrapbooking with Grammy,” looking for a 6x6, linen-covered, elegant number produced by a company called 4 TIMES. Someone gave me this scrapbook as a shower gift, and although I didn’t know what to do with it then, I am a different person now. A scrapbooking addiction has replaced the party girl in me. And like any addict, I will go to great lengths to feed my need.

In order to document the wonder that is my daughter Clara as well as the ineffable love I feel for her, I found myself maneuvering a bright blue shopping cart through the aisles of Hobby Lobby last week. The 4 TIMES scrapbook proved particularly elusive. Not only did I fail to locate this particular brand, but also the whole scrapbooking aisle looked like desolation row. I wondered: Is scrapbooking becoming obsolete? Are craftfolk in high places phasing out this past time just as I am getting into it?

On to Michael’s: another strip-mall acre of dust-collecting crap for sale. I rolled my shopping cart past teetering displays of ceramic deer heads, picture frames, scented candles, Styrofoam orbs, widgets and whopdoodles. I kept asking myself, “Who buys this shit?” If the amount of ceramic deer heads for sale is any indication, people not only buy this shit but they buy of loads of it.

In short: I did not find the 4 TIMES scrapbook at Michael’s either, but I found another brand that would do. As I waited in the checkout line with my books, glue dots, and pack of 300 multi-colored, pre-cut 6x6 papers, the customer in line before me ran to the front of the store, grabbed something, and ran back to the register. She held up a 4 foot Santa Claus fashioned from wooden pickets. “Do you think someone would like this?” she asked me.

“Hmmmm,” I said, “depends on the someone.” I wanted to say “Lady, who in their right mind would like that?” But I knew better.

When I told a friend of mine about the current dearth of scrapbooks in stores, she reminded me that Christmas was coming; apparently, scrapbooks are popular gift items. “Easy does it, honey,” my friend warned. ‘Some people go overboard with this scrapbooking. I know one woman who turned a room in her house into scrapbooking central.”

Already I’m fantasizing how someday I’ll have whole room, a scrapbooking den, if you will. I’ll be a scrapbooking denizen. I imagine I’ll paint the walls of my room a cool, dusty blue….

A (True) Christmas Story

HEATHENS
by Christa Forster

“I’m sick of living in a pig sty,” my mother says. “We’re getting all this crap out of here.” She is standing in the middle of our one-car garage, hands on her hips, surveying the wreck. My brother Antonio kicks his skateboard across the concrete driveway, pretending he can’t hear her.

“Antonio!” I say. "Get in here and help us.”

“Shut up, Stupid,” he says. He scrapes his skateboard on the asphalt.

My mother abhors clutter. Living in a pigsty is not what she envisioned for herself, oh so many years ago.

Where we live on Mission Hill, the neighborhood fences sag under fuchsia and golden Bougainvillea. Hedges of prickly Aloe Vera guard whole front yards. Jacaranda trees, whose fanlike leaves droop with deep lavender flowers, line the streets. And Eucalyptus trees – my favorites -- tower into the blue, emitting their mentholated medicine into every breath I take. To me, our house on Guadalupe Street seems like heaven and smells like the sea, which we can just see if we stand on our tiptoes and look out the picture window at the top of the staircase.

My mother begins directing me amongst the junk: roller skates, broken Barbie body parts, kites, lawn equipment, baseball bats, leather gloves, tool boxes, book boxes, boxes of who-knows-what-and-how-long-it’s-been-in-here. Every few minutes, I hold up an object, confused about what to do with it: an old record player, a stack of opera albums, a lame ukulele.

“Throw it out!” mom says, “When was the last time anyone touched it?"

Sometimes I say “But I want it.”

“Then take it to your room,” she says.

Next door, Mrs. Banda’s goat Mephisto bleats loudly and poops all over her patio. The sound and smell of Mephisto confirms my mother’s conviction that our house is, indeed, a pigsty. Antonio and I love Mephisto. He’s better than a dog because he has horns and tries to butt us all the time and eats the clothes we’re wearing.

“Here,” mom yells, “take this and throw it in the dump pile.” She tosses a large, plastic figurine into the driveway.

“Antonio!” I yell. "Mom wants you to throw that in the truck.” He gives me the finger. “Mom SAID, “ I say.

“I gotta go to the bathroom,” he says.

It's the Virgin Mary figurine from the illuminated lawn Nativity scene that my mom bought at St. Vincent de Paul’s two years ago. When my mom sees me pick it up and hesitate, she yells at me to throw it directly into the back of the truck. “Straight to the dump!” she says.

“Mom,” I say, “you can’t throw the Blessed Virgin Mary away. It’s, like, a sin probably.”

“I got her at the thrift store, for god's sake. I'll get a new one. K-Mart has a bunch of them. I saw‘em there just the other day.”

I look at the Virgin’s face.

“If you want her,” my mom says, “take her to your room.”

Her blue mantel has faded to a hint of its former glory, and her eyes are pretty much gone. “I guess I don’t want her,” I say. I lift her into the back of the Dodge pickup. Antonio appears, zipping his fly.

“Antonio,” my mom calls, “put these in there, too." She’s pointing to the rest of the set: Joseph, Baby Jesus in the crib, the Sheep, the Ducks, “they're all going to the dump.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I say.

That evening as she's cutting up carrots for dinner, my mother stops chopping, knife midair, and stares off into space, as if she's forgotten something. Then she turns to me and asks, "Do you think I should not have thrown that Holy Family away?"

On Christmas day, my family sits in the second row of folding chairs set up in the church’s gymnasium for the 11 a.m. folk mass. Father Esparza, standing at the pulpit, retells the famous “No Room at the Inn” story, the one where Joseph and Mary search the little town of Bethlehem for lodging to no avail.

“There is no room at the end,” says Father Esparza. “And Mary and Joseph must stay in a manger on the outskirts of town. Hence, our savior was born in a pigsty.”

Until he points directly to it, I haven’t focused on the Nativity scene set up in front of the altar. This one's colors are bright and the faces detailed, way prettier than the set we had. Father Esparza explains how a member of the congregation -- Debbie Marshall – arrived at the rectory one afternoon with the same Nativity scene in her car trunk. The figures, covered with black gook and slime, she’d rescued from the city dump. She cleaned and repainted them. She was there to donate them to the church.

“She found them there,” Father said. “cast away, like they were 2000 years ago in the little town of Bethlehem. I want you all to contemplate the question: what would you do if the Holy Family came knocking on your door? Would you invite them in? Or would you, too, cast them away?"

Suddenly, my mom pushes my dad and he bumps into me. I look up and see that they are both stifling hysterics.

On the way home from church, my dad says, “You know she killed herself.”

“Who killed herself?” Antonio says.

“Debbie Marshall.”

I don’t say anything because I am never talking to my family ever again.

“She was depressed,“ says my dad.

“She was an artist,” says my mom.

“Maybe she killed herself because she was depressed that someone threw away the Holy Family,” Antonio says, laughing.

“Highly improbable,” says my mom.

“You know, she probably did,” says my dad.

“Warren,” says my mom, “don't say something like that.”

“What?” says my dad. “I think it would be great if she killed herself because you threw away the Holy Family.”

“Oh go to hell, Warren,” she says. She turns around and looks me in the eye. “When we get home, Missy” she says, “I want that room of yours spotless.”

Critique of Poetry, No. 2

1. If you don't read poetry, you are missing something essential for soul growth.
2. If you read poetry, you have realized why so few people read it.
3. If you don't read poetry, you watch too much television and have allowed Jon Stewart to become your bard.
4. If you have allowed Jon Stewart to become your bard, it's okay because he is a bard, of sorts.
5. Still, you might try reading some William Blake or some...William Blake and, I promise, you will love Jon Stewart even more.
6. In truth, it takes some training to read William Blake in any way that might make deep sense to you. So if you're gonna read William Blake, read something about William Blake, too, helping you understand why William Blake is the father of people like Jon Stewart.
7. William Blake isn't the father of Jon Stewart, metaphorically, of course. Probably Jonathan Swift is. Proof is they share the same initials.
8. I have been considering getting cable so that I can watch Jon Stewart, but I have been holding off because: would it be worth it? Really?
9. I think it really would be worth it.
10. Nine is my favorite number so I'm gonna stop there.

Every Person in My Dream is Me

A few mornings ago, I dreamt that I was skateboarding up a mountain, wearing a formal gown the color of ashes. I had a windbreaker on over the gown. At the top of the mountain, I found a man-made lake surrounded by RVs full of elderly people; it was like a Good Sam Club Convention. Deciding this was no place for a girl like me, I turned and started skateboarding down the mountain, which was A LOT harder than going up the mountain. I kept having to go off the side of the road to stop myself from losing total control. On one of these forced stops, my skateboard landed in some grass next to a python-length of dog poop. My right front wheel was touching the poop, but I hadn't actually run over it, into it: what a relief. At some point down the mountain, I pit-stopped at a girls' college and picked up Clara, who was a baby still. We went to the gross cafeteria and tried to find some food, but all they were serving was fried catfish and two day old french fries. The cafeteria's ambience was like a Vegas cafeteria -- cigarette smoke-coated carpet, weird 70s chandeliers, and wine red padded wall paper. We left the cafeteria and wandered through the girls' dormitory to find our way out of the college. As we were walking through the the dorm, I noticed that all the girls were fat and just sitting around on their butts getting fatter. "I don't think any of these girls are good babysitters for you, Clara," I said. Then I woke up.

Critique of Poetry, No. 1

Like many other evacuees-who-who-couldn’t-actually-evacuate during Hurricane Rita, I have been suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. My friend Shannon has been suffering, too (30 hours to Lufkin). I know it's pantywaist of me to complain, living as I do in the realm of Katrina victims, so I haven't been complaining. And I haven't been writing.

But in the interim, a bunch of interesting things about me (what else is this blog about? Remember I'm an Aries) have arisen. Some of these things are physically dramatic; some of them psychologically dramatic; some of them spiritually dramatic. Some of them all those things simultaneously.

Note: every other critique I've ever read about poetry inevitably capitalizes on the word simultaneously, annoying me to the point that I avoid critiques of poetry as often as I can. Even though simultaneously is how poetry works in truth. In poetry, all these different meanings about life occur simultaneously. It's uncanny.

That's what has been happening to me: all these different meanings have been occurring simultaneously.

Syllogism: In my life, all these different meanings have been occurring simultaneously. Poetry is meaning that occurs simultaneously. Therefore my life is poetry.

Note: See the John Malkovich/Gary Sinese version of Sam Shepard's play True West. It's unforgettable.

Note: This is not a critique of poetry.

Note: I sort of hate the word simultaneously.

Exhibit !

CHEERLEADER

In high school, I was a varsity cheerleader. There was a football player with hair the color of scrambled eggs who loved me. I couldn't love him because his hair reminded me of food, which was too gross, and because we didn't have sustained chemistry. I did make out with him a few times in my 67 Blue Ford Ranchero, but then I had to call him finally and give him the spiel that it wasn't he, it was I. And that was true. Cliché as it may sound.

Girls who are cheerleaders inspire all sorts of stereotypical thinking, which is why throughout college and graduate school, I kept the fact that I was a varsity cheerleader for two years in high school under wraps. I sat by and listened while people made fun of girls who were cheerleaders; more specifically: made fun of cheerleaders. I don't think they thought so much about the girls, only the word labeling them. Some of the stereotypes I heard included "dumb" "perky" "loose" "fake" "popular", etc. I might have been all of those things at some point in my life, but I was never all of them simultaneously.

Recently, I visited an old high school friend who lives now with her husband and three children in Cypress, TX. She finds herself worrying, like any valedictorian-cum-mom who finds herself living in the Dante-esque world that is a Houston, TX suburb, about her three year old's impending obsession with cheerleading. This is the land, folks, of "Friday Night Lights." It's the home of Wanda Holloway, the cheerleader's mom who conspired to kill another cheerleader. I am not surprised my friend worries.

She wanted to know about my experience as a cheerleader. Normally, I'm embarrassed to talk about it because of all the group-think/resistance around this lifestyle choice. But I talked about it, because Kim was my best friend in High School.

In the 9th grade I found myself thrown into the cauldron of PUBLIC SCHOOL. Capistrano Valley High School, unlike the catholic high school 45 minutes away on the freeway, was a 10-minute car ride up the road. That's where my parents sent me because, they said, it was closer to home; therefore, I wouldn't end up dead on the freeway. Really, they sent me there because it was FREE. I went from going to elementary and middle school with the same 30 characters for 9 years, to going to my freshman classes with 30 different people every 50 minutes. There were so many kids at my school, my graduating class held 754 students. At my high school, the dress code was FREE DRESS. And I learned early on the primacy of first impressions and the power of clothes to speak meanings about one's self to other people. There was an atrium "mall" area in the middle of our classroom hubs, where live plants grew and the buzz of WASPs dominated the lunchtime feedings on chimichangas, soft pretzels, and one another. In truth, I felt the same way Mephistopheles felt when asked by Faust how he'd gotten free from hell; Mephisto looks at Faust in surprise: "Why this is hell [my friend], nor am I out of it." CVHS = Hell.

Note: In The Historical Tragedy of Dr. Faustus, Faust does intimate that "hell" may not be such a bad place to be, especially with a friend like Mephistopheles. It's bad, don't get me wrong; but it's not a damnation to be completely dismissed. There is no love there, true. But there is a lot of diversion otherwise.

Anyway, high school was hellacious. Specifically, it was for me because I had to come up with something different to wear every day. I'd been wearing a uniform for the past eight years; I didn't know how to construct myself yet in a good enough superficial way to communicate truly the meanings that I carried inside me. It required much thought, much artistry. And honestly, I didn't want to care that much about the surface. I wanted the uniform, so I could concentrate on other things, deeper things-- like boys and God and when I was gonna get my first kiss. When you haven't yet been kissed, the question of when you will finally be kissed is an all-consuming question. I don't know what I learned in school until I was kissed. It's like the academics before that moment in high school are a blur....

Syllogism: Cheerleaders wore uniforms; I wanted to wear a uniform; therefore, I wanted to be a cheerleader.

I tried out at the end of freshman year. I didn't make it. I cried for a day.

I tried out again at the end of sophomore year. I made it. I got to wear Adidas sweat pants and my cheerleading polo shirts to school nearly every day for the next two years. And I even learned to like wearing the cute little cheerleading skirts. They made me look cute, dammit. And I had boys I wanted to kiss! So many boys. I knew enough to know that boys know the cute when they see it.

But I was a good girl, which means, I was a virgin well out of high school. I'm glad, too. I think.

Ultimately, I think cheerleading helped me. I was painfully shy when I was young. PAINFULLY. Shy. People who know me now find this hard to comprehend. You can't really be a painfully shy cheerleader. Cheerleading helped me develop my social skills so that I could negotiate things like my virginity. I could use my very large brain to woo the boys, I could use my cute legs, too, but ultimately my very large brain would be the thing they saw, the thing they wanted to know in the Biblical sense.

I could be wrong.

Regardless, now in this time, I am simultaneously all the things I've been in my life: three-year-old, cheerleader, poet, mom.

"The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person," said Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish, Nobel Prize Winning Poet, in his poem "Ars Poetica."

Note: Read Czeslaw (Ches-lahv) Milosz (Me-lohzh). He died last year.

Milosz, too, was a kind of cheerleader. A spiritual one. May he rest in peace.

Retarded

While Hurricane Rita was gearing up to become a category 4/5 storm, our slumlord warned us that we would probably need to evacuate because our house would blow away in such a storm. This was six days before Rita was slated to hit the Gulf Coast. I went to Target that Tuesday to prepare the evacuation kit. I didn't fare too well, because, well, I am Hurricane-retarded. I guess I'm a hurricane retard because I grew up with earthquakes, which, as far as natural disasters go, have the good manners NOT to announce their impending doom.

Retarded: for example, for twenty minutes, I stood in front of the shelf of unaffordable clock radios, looking for something affordable that would work on regular batteries. I was pissed that there were no regular "transistor"-type radios. What the hell happened to transistor radios? Are they obsolete or something? As I'm picking up one clock radio after another to check what type of battery each one uses, this woman walks up to the shelf and grabs this box that was sitting right there -- a portable transistor type radio. All along I thought that the picture on the box was a video camera, so I hadn't looked at it closely. PISSED! I watched the woman handle the box, turning it over and around to look at the features, and I know she could feel my foaming at the mouth for that radio. I wanted to say, "Um, excuse me but I was here before you were, and, like you, I am looking for a transistor-type radio. And, uh, I saw that box earlier, but I thought it was a video camera, so I didn't pick it up, but now that I see that it's a radio -- the exact kind I've been wanting the whole time, the only reason I even came to Target in the first place -- I think you should let me have it."

R-e-t-a-r-d-e-d.

Destiny's Child

When I was in third grade, Sr. Mary Roch allowed us to complete our schoolwork at our own pace. When we were through with the assignments, we could go to the classroom library -- a shelf of mostly religious books underneath the windows. Always, I'd rush through my work to get to the books. Handwriting was the main subject of my early education. And even more than I loved the endless handwriting assignments, I LOVED reading. Any my favorite books were religious stories, tales about gods and saints.

I will not forget the day I plopped down on the purple rug in front of the shelf and filed my finger along the spines of books to choose from. I hit upon an arresting title: Superstition. Knowing that the Catholic religion denounced superstitious beliefs (we'd been told religiously during Religion class that superstitious beliefs were "evil"), when I found the book, a thrill ricocheted through my brain. I opened the book, skimmed the pages. A phrase caught my attention: "Hair Color."

The author of the book classified hair color into three categories: Blonds, Brunettes, and Redheads. It said, and I quote: "Blonds are vivacious, friendly, pretty and talkative; Brunettes are deep thinkers, loyal, and they make good wives; Redheads are witches and should be burned at the stake."

I did not understand cliché, nor was I developmentally ready to understand stereotypes. In third grade, I was still pretty literal; I felt slapped, stabbed, diminished and discovered by this verdict. I hadn't CHOSEN to be a redhead. Why should I have to suffer so?

I wondered, "Does Sr. Mary Roch know this is here?" I shoved the book down the front of my jumper and stole back to my desk, intuiting that if Sr. Mary Roch caught me reading it, she would take it away. I really wanted to see what other truths about the world this book held. I would immerse myself in Superstition at home. I sat back down, picked up my pen and resumed practicing penmanship.

I can remember walking home from school or from Shorty's market, and some of the public school kids would pass me and mutter under their breath, "I'd rather be dead than be red." It happened so many times, I now realize the absurdity of the situation (1970s Orange County, post-communist anti-communist sentiment, weirdly enough) Sometimes an older guy -- a teenager -- would ask me as he passed me, "are you red all over?" which sounds totally evil to a 11 year old.

Believe me, I asked God for a lot of help and a lot of forgiveness for my inherent evil nature. Original Sin is a piece of cake compared to the fate of hair color.

Learning to Take a Compliment

Many people have told me that my writing is upsetting, not specifically here in this blog, but in general. I take that as a compliment.

Some people have told me I'm a genius: most vociferously, my mom. I take it as a compliment.

Other people have told me that they hate my work, that they have no idea what to make of it, no idea what it's about. I take that as a compliment.

One time, in graduate school, the writer Rosellen Brown told me that an essay of mine about my dad -- called "Weapons" -- was, for her, harder to stomach than a Sam Shepherd play.

I took THAT as a total compliment.

Here's a poem I wrote in 2000

Pretty, Soon

Pretty soon if we don’t do the thing
we need to do, the windows (they might shatter)
will implode. And all the lights we would
have lit inside our homes will find the shadows
we’ve become. The falls and rises, things
which flipped our hearts, will fail to thrill
us anymore. The winds that spank wisteria
spores around the driveway -- all will end.
Rain corpuscles and cloud-pimpled skies
will cough up helicopter carnage.
Little boys will suffocate and die.
Women’s flesh might melt from bone;
cunts will crumble. There’s a girl named Thursday
downstairs. Her boyfriend lives with her (a whore
the neighbors say, siren, femme fatal).
Hell has a special ring for her, we’ve heard.
Lucky girl. I wonder if she knows
the thing we need to do. Pretty soon
if we don’t do it, they might turn us in
to law-abiding citizens. Why
do they abide? And who are they, besides?
Might they be those whose dumb philosophies
despise the chaos that’s erupting here?
What is there to fear? Every thing
is everything. There is nothing so dear
it can’t be rent and made more beautiful
than it was when it first began. All
my little pretty ones, and ugly ones,
too, take off your shoes and socks, your shirt,
your pants, your underwear. Take off your skin
and peel the sinew from your bones. Go back
to being less than everything you have
become. It must be done. You’ll see.

Damn Bitch

Grace Hemingway disapproved of her brother's foul language. Her brother liked to use foul language to suggest his toughness. But, really, he wasn't that tough. Anyone who's read enough of him, especially the short stories, knows that Hemingway was soft, actually. He ached for sincerity, for passion, for care, motherly care. I know men like this, and they're usually deeply talented. It's as if the art is an effigy for the loss of their boyhood, when they were the center of their mother’s world, the recipient of her sincerity, her passion, her particular kind of motherly care. Sometimes the making of art equals the desperate pursuit of unconditional love.

"Mr. Hemingway," asked the young writer, "what is the key to becoming a writer?"

"An unhappy childhood," replied Mr. Hemingway.

There are stories that Hemingway's mom dressed him up as a girl when he was a young boy.

As Dorothy Parker noted: "He was a woman, masquerading in men's clothes."

Some people hold the attitude that Hemingway was somehow an asshole. He wasn't really. But there's no doubt that he was a total bitch.

Mom

My mom and her husband are returning this very moment from their vacation in Germany. They're flying in the air above me, on their way to California. They were in Bavaria for two weeks, at a miliary resort near Garmish. My step-father, The Colonel (which is all my siblings and I have ever called him, and with much love), was stationed in Germany in an earlier life, and he loves the area around Garmish. I have never been to Garmish, but I sure do enjoy saying the name: Garmish. Gaaaaarmish.

I have only been to Germany once, a Frankfurt airport stopover on the way to Barcelona.

"So this resort," my mom says, "it has a spa, three restaurants, entertainment centers...."

"Sounds pretty nice. Could David and I stay there sometime?" We're not military, but I wonder if it's like USAA auto and property insurance, which is the BEST, meaning anyone connected to the military in any familial way can benefit from the perk of a military resort. The price is what makes it so desirable: $75.00 or less a night. David and I were in Europe last October (David photographed a wedding on Mallorca, and I was his assitant! Clara was there, too, in utero), and it was freaking expensive! We paid $75 a night for a run down, but uber cool and well-located -- corner of Ave Diagonal and Paseo de Gracia -- two star hotel in Barcelona. That was cheap, too. So a resort, well that sounds pretty swanky for the price. Although, it could turn out like the "five star" Texas Hill Country resort where David and I spent our Honeymoon, which shall remain nameless because it was a wedding gift. The one restaurant only served a bowl of demi glaze with some type of meat in it for dinner, and for breakfast they served cold, reconstituted eggs. We had to leave the resort by the third day to find something to eat. We were starving.

Plus, "military resort" isn't an oxymoron, but it's close. Sounds like a little slice of hell, doesn't it?

But then you don't know the Colonel, my mom's husband, who is probably one of kindest men I've ever known. He's also full of great stories (about the military), treats my mom like a queen, and tolerates her crazy children. More than tolerates -- cherishes.

My mother likes the military men. My dad was a military man, too, and like the Colonel, he went to West Point Academy, too. However, my dad defines himself as a West Point Grad, and this fact means everything to him, maybe even more than his children. Just Kidding.

Not.

My point here is that the military, besides using our tax dollars to subsidize the lives of the people who join it, besides serving the purpose to train people to kill other people, is full of wonderful folk. Like the Colonel. And, okay, like my dad, too.

"I don't know. Maybe you could stay there," says my mom. Her tone means exactly what she says, which is her normal tone of voice, in general: Sincere.

I love that about my mom.

Clink

I've just coined a new word: to clink. To clink is to "click the link," as in clink the title of this blog post to see photos of Clara on her summer vacation. The first photo features Clara just moments after Lou let fly the pee onto her ankle.

Naked Time

I remember hearing somewhere that it's necessary for babies to have naked time every day. It allows their skin to breathe, which is important, it being their biggest organ. Ours, too, for that matter.

Baby skin is so sensitive, and its regenerative power amazes me. Whenever Clara lightly scratches herself (because no matter how hard I try, keeping her nails short is a Sisyphean task), her skin repairs itself, flawlessly, in less than 24 hours. For a deeper scratch, it might take the cut as long as 80 hours to heal. Still, her SKIN! O.M.G. Gorgeous.

Naked time is a concept my sister-in-law, Celine, reveres. It was she who reminded me of the importance of naked time while we were visiting at my mom's house in Southern California.

David and I were aimlessly wandering around my mom's house, normally bored, as all parents vacationing with a new child for the first time are bored -- occupational hazard. It was around 3:30 p.m., the devil hour, and, of course, we could not figure out WHAT to do. I looked through the sliding glass door, into the back yard and saw Celine and a naked three month old Lou playing on a blanket under a tree. The sky was blue; the grass was warm; the shade was cool.

At the sight of them, I perked up. "Let's go play with Celine and Lou!" I said.

David, Clara and I tromped across my mom's back yard lawn, the ocean breeze caressing (I swear) our arm hairs. "Can we join you?" David asked Celine.

"You have no choice," I said, plopping Clara down on the blanket beside Lou. I took off her clothes and set her on the quilt a couple feet from her cousin.

Celine and Lou might have been bonding, but they were gonna have to do it with me, David and Clara, too. This is exactly the attitude that David would call my clueless one. Like maybe Celine wanted to be alone with Lou? I assumed she didn't want to be alone, which is what David might call my teacher attitude.

Anyway, we had a great time, the five of us. Clara and Lou sunbathed in the So Cal sun/shade, in their birthday skins. They looked as adorable as two naked babies on a heirloom quilt can look. Believe me, the look is the epitome of adorable.

Lou peed, and it got on Clara's leg. Celine wiped it off with a blue baby washcloth and Evian. Adorable. A memory for family gatherings in the future. Love it or leave it: That's family. My family -- we're of the loving-it/hating-it genre. It's an awesome mix -- the love/hate duo. Simultaneously those two feelings. Feels better than drugs.

Lately, I've been giving Clara naked time in her crib. She loves it and always chooses that time to let fly the pee. I don't think it hurts anything, really. But today David said, "You mean you've been letting her pee all over her mattress?"

"Yeah," I said, "but it's okay. There's a mattress pad waterproof underneath and the mattress underneath it that is plastic." Even I hardly understood what I'd just said. "Plus it's baby pee," I continued. "Baby pee's so pure you can drink it."

I guess I convinced him because the conversation went no further.

I've never actually tried baby pee, but I've contemplated it. And, I only let her pee in the crib three times before I make sure to remove the sheet and wash it. Oh yeah, and she doesn't actually sleep in her crib; she only plays in it. She sleeps in the king size bed with us...or in her swing. She's gonna grow out of this swing, soon, and I need to break her of the habit anyway. I'm sure that the swing has a narcotic effect on her. CAN'T HAVE THAT, now can we? No narcotic effects! VERY, VERY BAAAAAAAD.

Anyhooo. Soon we're gonna have to use the crib for sleeping. At that point, I will make sure that Clara has taken care of business BEFORE naked time in the crib rolls around.

Queen of the Swallows

In eighth grade, I was voted Queen of the Swallows.

Queen of the Swallows meant that on Swallows' Day, the biggest annual event in my hometown, San Juan Capistrano, I got to dress up in a long white dress, don a red velvet cape with a faux ermine collar, and more importantly, wear a CROWN. I presided with Luis Aguilar -- the King -- over the festival celebrating the return of these small birds with the wedged tail to their North American home. Every year on March 19, the swallows came back to Capistrano from Argentina, where they wintered.

And Capistrano partied: had town barbeques, parades and communal drunk-ins.

March 19 is also St. Joseph's Day, a big feast day for Mexican American Catholics. On this day, the Mission courtyard was decked out with a platform stage in the center of the rose garden. The Old Mission School children performed a variety of folkloric dances for the locals and tourists, from rhythmic Juaneno Indian stomps to colorful twirls around a Mexican sombrero. Locals gathered around the stage, as an Irish community might around a boxing ring, gawking at the children earnestly dancing in celebration for these mudhut feathered twerps. And for St. Joseph. And for the public -- tourists from Nebraska Idaho Wisconsin Argentina Australia Germany, etc.

In my day, all the spectators had to stand; but the Queen and King of the Swallows got to sit at the top of the only bleachers in the courtyard. No heads blocked our view. Best seats in the house, as it were. And the spectacle lasted three hours. Fucking Royalty! It was awesome.

All my life, I'd dreamed of this moment. I'd spent the previous 8 years of my K-8 Catholic education longing to sit at the top of the bleachers wearing the crown and the red velvet cape. I didn't dream it was Mario Gonzalez next to me, though. Mario  lived in the section of Mission Flats that smelled like lard and beans. The streets in Mission Flats smelled that way; the houses in Mission Flats smelled that way, and all the Mexican kids from Mission Flats smelled that way. However, the way they smelled was better than the way WE smelled -- my brothers I. We smelled like shit, literally. Given my family's affinity for flatulence, this should be no surprise. It seemed like everyday I'd have to fluffdry my red plaid polyester uniform jumper in the dryer just to TRY and rid it of stale farts fumes, pre-pubescent sweat, and whatever lunch detritus had dribbled over it at the picnic tables that day.

To console myself, I'd spend evenings fantasizing that I was the most popular girl in the world, as popular as Dee Dee Mechmachen. Dee Dee was blond, tan, nice, and she wore black horn rimmed glasses, and blinding braces in her mouth. When I was in second grade and she was in eighth grade, she was the Queen of the Swallows. I tried to emulate her look -- first by crossing my eyes for 10 minutes every night so that I'd have to get glasses, and then by creating my very own homemade set of braces.

I fashioned my braces from the wires inside the "twisty" of an Alligator plastic sandwich baggie. Each morning in Sr. Grace's second grade classroom, I'd reach into my desk, pull out my lunch, undo the twisty on the sandwich baggie, and proceed to denude it, pulling all that gummy paper off until only a thin, flimsy wire was left. I'd wrap the wire around my two front teeth so that it stayed there. Then I'd turn around and show my best friend Mary Young my "braces."

"Those aren't braces, stupid," she'd say (honestly, I did this more than once, and IN EARNEST.)

"Yes," I said, "they are. They're a new kind of special braces. I have an overbite."

Dee Dee had an overbite, whatever that was.

As stupid as I might have been, Mary still loved me -- loved me so much, she'd grab my arm and interlock it with hers, pulling me all over the playground during recess and lunch. I felt guilty when, at about the time I felt I might throw up, I would have to yell: "Mary: Let. Go. Of. Me!" I wanted to go play kickball or butts up with the boys, and she just wanted to gallivant around and CHAT.

Kickball and Butts Up were where I'd find Robby Mitchell. Robby Mitchell Robby Mitchell Robby Mitchell. Robby Mitchell.

Robby Mitchell was the third son of Maureen Mitchell, my mom's dearest friend. Robby and I had grown up together -- we were in cribs together, so say our moms. The intimacy we shared as a result of spending so much time together was palpable to me even at the tender age of 5. There was an erotic energy between us, I swear. One time in his bedroom at La Casitas we handcuffed ourselves together while our moms were having coffee downstairs. We were four years old. We weren't thinking as we did it; we just did it because the handcuffs were there. I remember this feeling of darkness descending when I realized that we might be stuck together for a very long time. "WHERE IS THE KEY?" our moms yelled. Key? What's a key? We searched the condo for over an hour, and we could find no key. Finally, Mrs. Mitchell called Old Mission School and asked the secretary, Sr. Cleo, if she could talk to Tommy, her second son. The handcuffs were Tommy's. Tommy was lean, wiry and hyperactive. And tricky. The key was on his keychain, which was in his pocket. Apparently, Tommy not only knew what keys were, but he OWNED some. Mysterious, for sure.

After three hours of being handcuffed together, Robby and I were finally unhooked. Mrs. Mitchell had driven to the school to get the key from the hoodlum Tommy. I remember that when the darkness lifted, with it went a small part of my heart. It was my first inclination that darkness could be sweet.

Mario Gonzalez was the opposite of dark.Mario  -- King-to-my-Queen-of-the-Swallows -- was jovial, sweet, and little boy cute. His only problem was that he smelled like beans and lard.

Robby Mitchell left Old Mission School in the sixth grade and went to Marco Forster Junior High School, the public school named after my grandfather. I felt like we were still connected somehow, even though I never saw him again. Which is weird because my mom and Mrs. Mitchell stayed friends throughout all these years.

Robby was a "surfer boy," although in actuality he mostly boogie boarded. He had sandy blond hair, dark brown eyes, dark eyebrows, smooth tan skin and high cheekbones. Even as a boy, when he pulled his wetsuit off after getting out of the water, his sculpted hipbones gave way to defined groin muscles. The thin white line of untanned skin peeking over the neoprene suit was enough to drive me to distraction for years. Throughout elementary and middle school, I included him in my "I'm the queen looking for the right king" fantasy that I played out before bed each night.

In my dreams, it was he sitting next to me at the top of the bleachers. In truth, he disappeared, got swallowed up in the darkness of real life.

I wonder about him sometimes.

Pinky Hurricane

My friend Raquelita, aka Pinky Hurricane, started a blog that I think is totally groovy. It's called My Pointy Ears Are Up. Check it out if you have the time.

Pinky and I met in San Francisco in 1989. We bothed worked at the Exploratorium there, the Museum of Science and Technology that Frank Oppenheimer (the lesser known brother of Robert) founded in the 1970s. What a great job it was, too. Not only did I meet one of my dearest and most favorite friends, but also going to work was like going to play on the playground everyday. There was one exhibit called "the tactile dome," a geodesic dome designed by August Coppola (another lesser known bro) that sat inside the Exploratorium and was open for "tours." A tour meant you showed up at a prescribed time -- reservations were required -- entered a pitch black atmosphere where you made your way through entirely by using your sense of touch. There were chutes and ladders inside this thing that you had to climb up and then fall down (without warning!). My favorite chute was the rope ladder one climbed up only to fall down at the top of it into a bin of pinto beans.

There were rumors of Exploratorium employees going through the dome after hours, in the nude and tripping on acid. I never did, but I wish I had!

Anti-Anti

By now most everyone knows about the danger of anti-biotics: that if one overuses them, one builds up resistance to the very thing one was trying to resist -- bacterial infections -- and the infections ensue with a BRING IT ON! attitude. This bring-it-on attitude is the phenomenon known around the hypochondriac universe as the "super virus."

It's also big news that anti-bacterial soap is bad for you.

Hahahahahahahahaha. Joke's on us, I guess.

Anyway, Clara has been on anti-biotics for an ear infection that cropped up over a week ago. When I told her that I'd rather not put Clara on antibiotics, the doctor said it was better to be safe than sorry. "You never know what it might develop into," the doc said. What am I supposed to say to that?

I'm not even sure Clara is "on" anti-biotics since whenever I try to give her the teaspoonful of Amoxicillin twice a day, 3/4 of it ends up on her onsie, because she spits it all out, which sucks because now all her clothes have pink Amoxicillin stain swaths all over them.

It's an exercise in futility -- this medicating against the unknown -- and I just hope my daughter isn't developing resistance to that which is supposed to help her.