December 8, 2006

Sing a New Song

Kids love to sing. Whether it's the random sing-song of what they're doing or going to do ... or think their imaginary friends are doing - or if it's singing the McDonald's jingle in the car as they drive past the cholesterol arches - or singing holiday songs ... there's just no doubt that kids love to sing.

I can remember a particular game my sister and my mom and I used to play all the time when J and I were small. Mom would start humming a song and my sister and I would try to guess which song it was. The person who guess correctly first got to hum a song and have the others guess. It was a very fun game, but by the age of three, my sister was darn good at it. I was seven and I thought I should always beat my baby sis, so I didn't take it too well when I realized that Mom and I could guess her songs much quicker than anyone could guess the ones I hummed. And that's when Mom told me I couldn't hum anymore ... I had to sing lalalala.

Well, I did have the allergies from hell and my nose was always stuffed up as a kid. I had allergy shots once a week, a slew of medications to gag down, and still, if I had a single day without a stopped up nose, that was a freaking HUGE of a day! So, it did make sense that humming was probably never going to be my forte.

Like most little kids, though, I adored music class in school - if we were actually singing good music, that is. And I loved to sing the minor songs of Halloween with my friends at school. (Anyone remember this one: "Old Abram Brown is dead and gone, we'll never see him more ... he used to wear a big brown cape, all buttoned down before" ??)

So, one day Julie, the older girl across the street, and I were singing "Jingle Bells" for whatever odd reason. (It was summer.) Julie, in one of her really bossy moments, was leading a small group of us. She cocked her hands on her hips, turned her head to the side and looked me straight in the eye.

"You can't sing."

My jaw hit the St. Augustine grass. "I can too!"

We sang some more ... but she stopped us mid-song. Pointed at me. "YOU CAN'T SING."

Apparently having a wee bit of a sensitive moment, I tried very hard not to burst into tears ... and I ran home to tell my mommy. (Hey, I was seven, darnit. That's what you do at seven. Well, providing you don't pop the other kid in the mouth ... but she had an older brother ....)

"Mom, Julie said I can't sing!"

Mom, ever the comforter, says, "Well, sing something for me."

I couldn't believe it. I thought moms were immediately supposed to back you up on the important things in life. But, well, okay. I could take it. I would show Julie ... I would show everyone.

And I began singing "Jingle Bells."

Mom got a funny look on her face, stopped me and told me to start over. This time she let me get all the way through the song. When I finished, I looked at her expectantly. I already knew that my sister's voice was better than mine. But I was all right. I mean, I wasn't going to be a rock star, but I could sing all right.

"You can't carry a tune," Mom said and went back to preparing for dinner.

I was shocked. Here was something I shared at school and at home ... something I did at church ... nearly everywhere I went ... and apparently I sucked.

It was a devastating blow for me.

I tried to not play the guess-the-song game anymore. I was terribly jealous of my sister's joyous singing everywhere she went. I began whisper-singing in church ... and if I forgot myself and actually sang at a normal volume, Mom usually elbowed me and told me to hush.

But I kept trying. As I got older, I practiced with the radio. And then my cassette tapes and vinyl LPs. But always quietly and alone in my room.

I went out for the Texas Girls Choir in ... hmm, either fifth or sixth grade ... and my mother was just appalled when she found out I had signed up for auditions. She gave me that horrendous pitying look and tried to talk me out of it.

But the deal was this: I didn't believe her so much any more. I was scared that she was right ... but she was wrong about so very many things, that I thought maybe, if I could quit being so scared about it, I could prove to her that she was wrong about this as well.

Sadly, after Mom's "pep" talk (consisting of trying to talk me out of this because I was just going to get hurt), I was so utterly terrified at the tryouts that I couldn't really do more than whisper. The vocal coach tried to get me to actually sing ... but it was a foregone conclusion. I just wasn't quite strong enough to shrug off all the weight Mom had piled onto my shoulders.

I did join the school choir in sixth grade ... enjoyed our nine weeks of choir in seventh grade (we didn't have a real elective ... just nine weeks of one thing and then nine weeks of something else). I sang in the shower -- if no one else was home. I sang with my guitar lessons and during practice. But by the end of seventh grade, I refused to sing where anyone could hear me at all.

The past few years, however, I've learned a lot about singing. I've listened to our church choir as it grew from just 6 people to some 20 or more. And after about two years worth of urging, I finally gave up and joined the choir. I'm still terribly unsure of myself ... but I can see now where a lot of those early issues were coming from.

One, my singing voice is in the tenor range ... and my mother truly expected me to be a soprano. So when she played a note out of my range on the piano ... of course I couldn't hit it. But that didn't mean I couldn't carry a tune. Two, I do have something of a falsetto which can reach soprano ... but it's a very soft voice and if I try to push that with any kind of projection or real volume ... ewww ... major suckage and cracking.

It's been a kind of amazing thing for me to be in choir this year. When our choir director plays the tenor part and I know that I'm square on the notes (except once we starting going above middle C ... sketchy territory there!) ... the pride and the pleasure is just ... I dunno. Something I never thought I would have. Of course, after being picked on all those years, I'm sure every criticism and suggestion given to the tenors is directed at me alone ... but I'm getting over that. I've got a lot more confidence about it.

And really, the biggest part of that was realizing that when I sing within my range instead of fighting to sing the range that someone else expects of me ... things go a lot better.

Funny how long it took me to come to that conclusion. In every other aspect of my life, I've always opted to be myself and not even attempt to be whatever it was other people thought I should be. I don't know why I had to fight so hard to make my voice my voice instead of someone else's. But I'm glad I did ... glad I finally got around to taking that risk.

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:04 AM | Comments (3) | Struggles | TrackBack | Stumble

November 30, 2006

Hanging by a Thread

I went for a nice long walk in the woods today ... 65 degrees in Indiana, who'd have thought it? Near the end of the walk, as I was watching the wind in the trees and listening to the distinctive creaking of wood against wood, I saw this stick not quite ready to give up the fight.

Seemed appropriate.

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:14 AM | Comments (3) | Struggles | TrackBack | Stumble

November 29, 2006

The Stolen

It's been a particularly hard couple of weeks. I've been slammed by PTSD for most of that time, my partner's "maybe I'm having a health problem" issues have developed into full-blown pain and for which the appointment with the specialist isn't until tomorrow. (A full month after the regular doctor wanted it.)

I'm disgusted by things I've read in the news lately ... one story, two story, red story, blue story.

And so, I share with you a favourite short reading that's been on my mind recently. For whatever reason as a child, I decided that since my family refused to "own" any ethnicity (well, we were Lithuanian ... but Mom told me they didn't exist anymore because they'd been swallowed up by Russia ... in my child's mind, I decided that meant that ethnicity didn't exist ... hey, I was like six at the time) ... anyhow, since the family wasn't any particular ethnicity, I "shopped" around and learned about a few cultures and picked Irish. I decided I like Ireland and I like the mythos of the island and since they were a better physical match for me than my much beloved Navajos, obviously I was Irish.

What can I say? I was an odd child.

So, in high school, when I discovered Yeats ... keep in mind that I HATE poetry ... I particularly fell in love with this short bit.

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.

It just seems fitting given the last couple of weeks I've had.

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:42 AM | Comments (3) | Struggles | TrackBack | Stumble

November 19, 2006

More Closets

Remember the first time it occurred to you as a kid that the fastest way to clean your room was to simply shove things out of sight? Throw stuff in the closet, under the bed, anywhere so your mom wouldn't see it when she came in to inspect?

Of course, you might have fooled your folks once or twice ... likely when they were simply too tired to deal with anything other than the blessed appearance of a clean room ... but for most of us, at some point they simply opened the closet door, and like the cartoons, all your carefully crammed-in stuff came pouring out into the room.

For those of us who had a room and a closet, this becomes a powerful metaphor for a lot of the crazy stuff we try to hide from ourselves. It's what's made "coming out of the closet" such a powerful metaphor for people finally admitting that they're gay.

But there are loads of other closets, or boxes, that we stuff little bits of our selves and our lives into when we just don't have the time or the energy to really give them the thorough cleaning (and processing) that we need to. Whether we stick those boxes in the attic or the basement or the top of the closet, we put them out of sight to keep them out of our minds.

My subconscious was so concerned with keeping those boxes in their appropriate hiding places, that the closet was never quite so much of an issue for me.

The second life-altering question that I asked in CCD the year I told my mother that Dad was an alcoholic ...
I asked what it was, what it really meant, to be gay.

Again, I knew what the Catholic party line was. But dammit, this was a sex education class and I didn't know anything about gays and I was curious. What was all the darn fuss about?

And, of course, in the back of my mind ... I could see a scene from the summer before when one of my best friends stood in the hospital where we were candy stripers and said that she hadn't really decided if she "liked" boys or girls yet. And my utter shock ... not at her saying that ... not at the concept ... but at her utterly without-fear, matter-of-fact-ness about it.

I was impressed that the Moms and Dads (and the one creepy pedophile) who volunteered to teach this year-long class called Sex Education: The Catholic Version. They tried to somewhat balance the need to be careful of adolescents ... the strictures of the church ... and their own queasy feelings with the societal opinion of queers in the mid 80s (pre-AIDS epidemic).

It wasn't so much that they said anything earth-shattering ... I mean, they pretty well stuck to the party line ... it's a sin ... but the fact that I was finally starting to articulate the thoughts to myself ... that was the real growth and change for me.

Fast forward to December 1987, the end of my first year at uni. I was still living at home as I'd been forbidden to go to any college where I would/could not live at home. Hmm ... but that's yet another story ... tied in to this ... but for another day.

The whole first semester of uni, I'd seen posters up for the GLA on campus ... and I knew I should resolve this suspicion I had about myself. Because the fact of the matter was ... I just wasn't interested in guys. Maybe I hadn't found the right guy yet, I didn't know. But when I thought about the celebrities I was most interested in ... well, let's just say it wasn't the guys.

It's an old story for a while after that ... I met someone ... we fell in love ... we planned on moving out in May and getting our own apartment together.

I didn't tell anyone in my family.

I told my best friend, Andy, whom I'd also dated during most of high school. And that's where the trouble came in ... not from Andy directly, but ... well, I digress. Let me leave out the "who" to this one part of the story and I'll tell that another time.

Suffice it to say that one Monday night, there was a phone call at the house. Mom answered it. We didn't get a lot of phone calls, so I noticed it, but when it didn't directly concern me, I didn't pay it any more attention. Silly, silly me. I was commanded that night by my mother in her "royal highness" persona, to get up early, but not go to school.

Instantly I knew that alien abduction was real. My mother had been probed ... or perhaps replaced with a clone or a robot. Because my mother would NEVER tell me to skip a class!

When I get up the next morning and go into her room, she's seated in her recliner and there's nowhere to sit but the floor. The supplicant before the queen.

She begins her series of pronouncements with: "I got a phone call last night." Pregnant pause. "Do you know who it was?"

I had to literally bite my tongue to keep from saying, "Uh, no, you answered the phone, not me." I managed to simply shake my head no.

"Well, a man said that you and L were 'moving into a lesbian relationship.'"

I just looked at her and nodded. She apparently thought I was encouraging her to keep talking rather than answering the implied question.

"Well are you?"

Now, we have to take a quick time-out here. You see, Mom knew that L and I had been hanging out quite a lot lately and that I seemed very happy. Not two weeks before she grinned at me and said, "It looks like you really found your soul mate." I thought she'd figured things out and was okay with it.

At any rate, with all the snottiness of a 19 year old who knows she's moving out in a month anyway, I nodded and said, "Well yeah."

Mom promptly burst into tears and announced, "Now I have to divorce your father."

What, you say. You didn't quite follow that? No, I didn't leave a sentence or paragraph or event out. Upon discovering I was gay, Mom's first words were "Now I have to divorce your father." One of the many extraordinary proclamations she's made over the years. "Now I have to divorce your father."

Her next words were, "You can't live with me if you're going to be that way." And it was said in a rather threatening tone.

I simply shrugged and pointed out that L and I had signed a lease, and I would be moving out of the house in a matter of weeks anyway.

It was as if she didn't hear me.

"You can't be that way and live under my roof, and I know you don't want to live with him."

"I. Signed. A. Lease." Blank stare from Mom. "I. Am. Moving. To. My. Own. Place."

Sometimes saying simple words slowly actually works the details into her brain. However, this time we must have gone round and round for nearly 30 minutes before she looked at her watch and announced that she'd set up an appointment with a counselor at the Catholic renewal center in Fort Worth. And that we needed to leave now to make the appointment.

And then ... "Is it because your dad ...." and she trailed off.

Again, my mind made a very brief trip to the box in the top of their closet ... and despite feeling like I was going to throw up ... "No!" I told her.

The meeting with the Catholic counselor was essentially anti-climactic. She also asked me about Dad ... and the now familiar cold pit of my stomach ... but she didn't chastise me for "thinking" that I was gay ... or for moving out. She was quite cool, actually.

Over the next month before I moved out of the house, I repeatedly heard the threat ... "What are you going to do? You can't live with me if you're going to be this way. And I don't think you want to live with him."

What I have come to understand over the years is that this really odd obsession that Mom had ... repeating this little mantra over and over ... had a lot of meanings that I missed at 19.

If ... as Mom and even I believed at the time ... if things weren't "that bad," why did she keep saying "I don't think you want to live with him"?
Why could she not retain the knowledge that I was moving out?
Why did she insist on divorcing him after 25 years of marriage ... just because I didn't turn out "perfect"?
Why was it the only time that she realized I was moving out ... was when she thought about me living with him.

The sad conclusion fitting all the puzzle pieces that I've presented here, in other posts ... and additional puzzle pieces that I haven't written about here ... it all boils down to this:

Mom knew.

She knew what had happened. She knew ... and she knew that once I finally escaped from that house ... that the protection she had enjoyed for years ... the protection that she and my sister had enjoyed for years ... would be over. He would be forced to pick a new victim. And she couldn't stand that thought, so she knew she had to leave to protect herself and my sister.

I'm glad she protected my sister finally. I'm still furious that she didn't ... that she couldn't do the same for me.

And that's all of the story behind the picture that I can tell you today. I can tell you that it doesn't fully explain all of the imagery in that picture ... but I'm not sure that story is fit for public consumption.

But that should be enough to explain the need for the photo and its timing ... even if that ever-so disturbing skeleton isn't yet explained ... I don't think you really want to know that ... I'm not sure I want to know ... to articulate that.

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:02 AM | Comments (3) | Struggles | TrackBack | Stumble

November 18, 2006

Skeletons in the Closet

In Why 67 & Counting I said that there were two life-changing questions I asked in CCD the year that I informed my mother that Dad was an alcoholic. The first resulted in my going to Alateen.

After Mom got over the shock of my pronouncement of the obvious, she was horrified that I'd told my CCD teacher and after that first trip to Alateen, Mom insisted on driving me and waiting for me in the parking lot. Never mind the Al-Anon meetings for spouses and the like took place at the same time as Alateen. Mom was not looking to talk to anyone, thank you very much.

The day after I'd been that first time, when she let me know that she'd be taking me from now on ... she said something very very curious. "I can trust you to go, because you won't tell any of the family secrets. I can't trust your sister to go. She'd tell everything."

I'm sure I don't have the words exactly, perfectly correct ... but that was the gist.

I felt a nasty, cold, terrified feeling in the pit of my stomach at those words. The roar of rushing blood was back in my ears. And to be honest, I felt a little bit dizzy.

I was going to Alateen to talk about Dad being an alcoholic. Wasn't that the family secret?

For a brief moment, my mind flashed to a box that I'd once discovered in Dad's side of Mom and Dad's closet while looking for Christmas presents one year. It was a long and deep cardboard box for storing blankets or something. I thought that was a good place to start looking for presents. I pulled a chair into the closet and lifted the box down, stunned at how heavy it was. Obviously there weren't just blankets in this box. I lifted the lid ....

And my mind snapped back to the present, Mom telling me that we'd leave at 6:45 and that we'd not be telling Dad or my sister where we were going.

Over the course of the next few months, I went regularly to Alateen. The facilitators were great ... the kids were cool. I wanted to fit in, but I found that most of the time I simply couldn't talk. I was stunned by how many of the others were also alcoholics. And more often than not, they tended to talk about their own struggles with alcohol more than how they dealt with their parent(s).

And, there was the weekly struggle with Mom. "Do you really need to go again?" "Do we have to do this every week?" and the particularly disturbing "What do you tell them, anyway? You're not telling any of our secrets?"

That question gave me the cold pit in my stomach every single time ... as it was supposed to.

Finally, the benefit I might be getting from the program was far, far out-weighed by the struggle it took to get there every week. Much to Mom's delight, I finally told her one night that I was tired of listening to the other kids talk about their own alcohol issues and that I didn't want to go anymore. She was not only ecstatic, but she tried to tell me that our family didn't really have any problems and that Dad's alcoholism was just "not that bad." I didn't say anything. It was that bad. But that was an argument not worth having with her then. I let it drop.

So ... asking about how to deal with an alcoholic parent was one of the two questions I asked in CCD that year. I'll post about the second life-altering question tomorrow.

Same Bat-time ... same Bat-channel ... same batty me.

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:33 AM | Comments (4) | Struggles | TrackBack | Stumble

November 16, 2006

Why 67 & Counting?

MsDemmie asked:

I guess asking here is out of the question ?

Hey, you guys can ask a question any time. ANY time. About anything. At worst, I'll email you back and say no. But I won't be offended or upset or ignore you or something. Of course, knowing me I might forget about it and leave it in my inbox for a month before going ... Oh crap, I KNEW there was SOMETHING.

So, no, it's not out of the question at all to ask for an explanation ... but it's probably not a comfortable post ... well, neither was that photo, actually. At any rate, this will be a split post. If you're curious, click through. If not ... i'll try to have more interesting stories by the weekend.

Well, I changed my mind, and I've edited this post to NOT be a click-thru for more type of post ... because I'm continuing the saga in a series of posts ... and I have no intention of "hiding" all of them. If I'm gonna talk about it, I'm gonna talk about it.

When I went back to Texas this summer so my other half could visit a prospective seminary and so I could get some time back home finally, I visited with my mom a couple of days. We have a rocky relationship at best.

Actually, sit back ... this is going to be a long post and will probably be a series over the weekend.

An example of my mother's and my relationship:
at fifteen, I was struggling a lot ... like most fifteen year olds, really. But I'd reached a point where I was seriously struggling with the fact that my dad was an alcoholic and that Mom, whether she would admit it or not, was terrified of him. There were no big sunglasses and "hidden" black eyes ... no broken bones ... but we were still always awaiting the eruption of violence. I couldn't deal with her denial and his drinking. It was driving me crazy.

So, at CCD (that's essentially Sunday school for Catholic kids ... usually on Wednesday night ... the night all my Baptist friends were also at church), we actually had a "sex education" year. Essentially, a year's worth of what the Catholic Church thinks about sex. Yeah, I thought "not unless you're married and procreating" would take perhaps ten minutes, not a whole school year, but there you are. Our CCD instructors instituted a box where we could anonymously place questions.

I placed two in that box that year. And they both were pretty life-changing ... not necessarily for the answers I got, but for the fact that I finally allowed myself to really articulate my thoughts.

The first was what to do with an alcoholic dad.

The teacher I was most comfortable with was the one fielding the questions at the end of the evening and she talked about AA and Alateen and the fact that there were options ... but if whoever asked the question was ready, they really needed some face to face time with the person who asked the question. I was ready. After most of the other kids had gone, I walked up to her, as I did most nights, really, and said that I'd asked about the alcoholic. We sat down and she agreed that she would drive me to an Alateen meeting and bring me home.

I was ecstatic.

I didn't tell my mom.

But, I was also never allowed out of the house for any reason or for any length of time without Mom know where, when and with whom. I had to tell her.

Ten minutes before my ride arrived, I walked into Mom's room and asked her if I could go to Alateen. The blood was absolutely rushing in my ears and I could barely hear her. She was shocked. Horrified. (Denial is a powerful thing, you know.) But what she said was:

"Oh my God, are you an alcoholic?"

Other than the very rare sip of beer when I was four and five, I had never even tasted alcohol. I was one of those ultra-square kids who never did anything wrong (except cut up in class ... but usually stopped just before the teacher got irritated). I reacted with as much shock as my mother had. And, with all the stunned and snotty hauteur of a fifteen year old, I said:

"No, Dad is."

Our relationship was always like this. She didn't see what other people were doing ... right in front of her eyes, but I was obviously a rebellious and problematic teen.

I didn't talk back. (Other than the occasional bouts of teenaged snottiness)
I never once snuck out of the house.
I was always home before curfew.
I didn't drink and I never even tried illegal drugs.
I also never smoked.
My friends had to convince me to actually skip on senior skip day.

And yet I was repeatedly told what a horrible teenager I was.

So .... now ... back to the photo. (Oh yeah, this all started with yesterday's photo, didn't it?)

I have been pestering my mother for photos since I moved out of the house at 19. She has refused and gotten terribly angry with me every time I've asked. I don't know why.

Several years ago, I convinced her to go with me to Kinko's and get a few run off on the colour copier. But this year, I took my computer and my scanner to Texas with me, with the full intention of scanning huge chunks of the photos. As many as possible.

Mother was both confused and furious. She tried talking me out of bringing the scanner. She pointed out my laptop might be stolen while I was traveling. She told me repeatedly that I couldn't have the originals.

So the day we spent at her house, I brought laptop and scanner. When I pulled them out of my backpack and began looking for a good place to set up, she was horrified.

I don't know why she doesn't want me to have the pictures. It's not just the originals that concern her. She was horrified that I wanted the pictures at all.

My guess is that she's afraid somewhere in these pictures there's a skeleton key that will unlock things she doesn't want to look at. And I think she's afraid that if I ever unlock those doors behind which my whole family has stuffed our various skeletons ... I think she's afraid I'll tell the whole world.

She's right to be afraid. I'm sure I probably will.

So I'm curious. Why did she now want me to have the pictures? Why did she cut out the background of the one I used yesterday (and one other picture). I remember those pictures ... she didn't cut any people out ... she cut the background out of it.

As for superimposing the skeleton over my father and use the gravestone morphed onto the birthday cake ... that's another story. One that most people can probably guess given this post and the locked doors post. All I can say is that creepy as the picture might be ... I'm not sure it really begins to describe the creepiness that went on.

I guess it was my way of saying to Dad, "Wow. You made it to 67. Huh."

(All of that explanation ... and you learned more about me and my Mom than about Dad ....)

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:50 PM | Comments (4) | Struggles | TrackBack | Stumble