Leia Giddens

Pushing Forty

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My little girl turns two this week, and 10 days after that I turn 37. I’m not sure why 37 is hurting my feelings, but it is. More than I remember any other age hurting. It’s not a milestone year. It’s one of those in-between, no-big-deal birthdays. Not sure why it’s rattling me so.

Of course, when I was in my early twenties, I dated a man who was 37. I keenly remember his age, because no one in my life thought that it was a good idea for me to be dating someone nearly two decades older. There was a lot of heartache during that time of my life, and I like to keep the memory of that relationship and its messy dealings with the other relationships in my life crammed into a storage box and covered with a bunch of other crap in the recesses of my brain. Alas, the thought of turning 37 is entangled in the web of that dusty storage box. Like tugging on what you thought was just a single strand of loose yarn only to discover that you have surfaced a knotted up mess.

It didn’t help that one of my uncles asked me my age at Christmas and then had to sit with the information quietly for a minute. I think it rattled him too. I’m sure I’ll have to take a long pause when my brother’s daughter tells me she’s pushing forty.

And then there is the incongruence of expectations and reality to consider. My life, my finances, and the body my spirit inhabits do not look like what I thought they’d look like. A lot of things don’t look the way they’re supposed to look according to the expectations set before me as an elder millennial.

Maybe this is the season of letting go of expectations.

One day while desperately seeking YouTube for a strategy to simplify laundry, I stumbled upon “The Minimal Mom”. Subscribing to this idea of minimalism as a way to prioritize the most important things, decluttering has become a part of my self care. Important note: decluttering of physical items isn’t the only kind of decluttering. Maybe this writing is what I needed in my mental decluttering process. Get all the junk pulled out, throw the obvious garbage away, donate the possibly useful information, and leave a clean space for what matters most.

Now, let me clean and decorate the space with gratitude. Renew a right spirit within me, Lord.

Thank You for this big, beautiful, squishy body that has grown two human beings and nourished the littlest one for two years. This body was slashed open and gutted twice to deliver the new life within it, and so it is fearful and wonderful and should be regarded as such. You have given me fervor for fighting against the marginalization of women, and so I will fight.

I will not consider selfish the desires to care for myself, because I know the result of caring for myself is a person with the capacity to be and give more to others. I will continue to seek help from community, and where community is not there, I will build it.

Maybe this is not the season for a lot of the stuff that I want to do… like writing. It’s taken me 8 days, full of interruptions, just to pen this short and incoherent post.

Maybe it’s the season for embracing imperfection and doing the damn thing anyway.

If you read this far through the rambling, you must take an interest in me and my thoughts, and for that, I’m so grateful. I love you and thank you for loving me.

Camping

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There are people who choose to do this. More than once.

I, too, was enticed by the rustic vision of communing with nature when a friend of ours suggested we all go camping out on family farm land to celebrate his birthday. It’ll be fun for the kids I thought. I looked to see what sort of camping gear we could get from Amazon before my husband stopped me and thankfully, suggested we ask his outdoorsman brother if we could borrow something they had. Little did we know that he had quite the professional cache of camping gear, and Joey came home with a nice sized four-person tent, 35 degree sleeping bags, cute little camping mattresses to go underneath those sleeping bags, and little camping tables to set in between our tailgating chairs. We were all set for our little family adventure.

The evening began peacefully, gathered around a roaring campfire that the menfolk kept feeding and messing with. I think all men are pyromaniacs at heart—tell me of one male who can leave a fire alone without poking at it and rearranging the sticks because its not quite right? Our friends swapped playlists and we listened to everything from The Band and George Strait to Nelly. The kids ran all over the farm and played hard until our friends that had some sense went back home.

I sat up by the fire until my son called out to me to come snuggle with him. This was just a ruse to get my phone so he could watch Power Rangers, but whatever. I crouched down and tiptoed into the tent, handed him the phone, and zipped myself up in one of the sleeping bags. This isn’t so bad I thought, we’ll be just fine. At 2:30 a.m., I woke up shivering, because apparently these sleeping bags are rated on survivability, not comfort. My kind husband unzipped my bag, put a pair of his socks on me, tucked my frigid feet back in, and zipped me back up in the bag like the helpless creature I am.

At 5:34 a.m., I woke up with a strong urgency to get to the bathroom… quick. I laid there for a good 30 seconds, not sure where I was or why my arms were seemingly strapped to the sides of my body like a mummy. I finally remembered that I had actually chosen to do this and wasn’t being held hostage in the woods by a sick psychopath, and I started fiddling with the zipper. I had almost given up hope of getting out of there without peeing on myself when the zipper cooperated and let me out of the nightmarish cocoon. Then there was the tent door zipper to contend with. Once I was out of the hell hole, I searched unsuccessfully for my shoes in the dark. I was already doing the cross-legged potty dance at this point, so I tip toed over rocks, wet earth, and sharp broken limbs in my socks until I came at last to the oasis that was the latrine.

As I relieved myself, I vowed never to do this silly thing again. I mean really. People spend money on all this gear so that they can sleep on the ground. Why would you risk being eaten by coyotes when you could just as easily take yourself to a Marriott? You want to commune with nature? Wonderful! Rent a chalet in the mountains.

My brother owns a nice sized camper, and my Daddy has—for as long as I can remember—wanted to buy an RV. They want to go places and be outside. I want to go places too, but I think I will reserve a hotel room at those places.

As soon as I got back to the tent and found my shoes, I asked my husband nicely for my keys and said Adios. I’ve never been so happy to see the shining lights of Sandersville, Georgia… and my bed therein.

Cat Lady

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I am not a “dog person”. In the South, that’s sort of like admitting you’re an alcoholic, an admission that something is inherently wrong with you. I just read another southern writer I love—Rick Bragg—who was writing about his dogs, actually has a whole book coming out about his current dog. With numerous southern dog stories like Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows, I feel like I’m lacking something essential to being southern. I also don’t like tomato sandwiches, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

I’m fine being around dogs; it’s not that I’m afraid of them or anything. But dogs smell bad a lot of the time, and a lot of them like to lick you, which I’m just not down with. The whole “puppy breath” thing is not endearing to me. Now, I love my niece bulldog, BeeGee, just like I loved my niece pug Penny and my sister basset hound Nugget. Dogs have been in my family for years, some inside dogs and some outside dogs. It’s just that I prefer them to be owned by somebody else. Someone else’s baby you can love on and cuddle until it starts crying, and then you give it back to its Mama. It’s kind of like that.

I guess that makes me the crazy aunt in our family dynamic. The cat lady. I’m cool with that. My husband and I have had two cats, one planned and one unplanned. BeBop, a bobtail girl kitty who looks like a furry bowling ball, was adopted at my behest from a local couple who couldn’t keep their orange tabby from attacking her in his quest for dominance. She is sitting on the arm of my chair now, wishing I would stop what I’m doing and give her a good scratch between the ears. Our take-up cat Noelle was a scraggly, wormy, fearful looking creature who sought shelter at our doorstep during Christmastime. She was such a unique looking cat, and I decided after doing some research that she must have been at least part Maine Coon. Her tail was bushy like a squirrel’s and the fur around her face made her look lion-esque. My husband found her dead under a chair in our dining room a couple years ago; she showed no signs of suffering prior to that, so we’re not sure what happened.

Noelle was a gentle creature who knew she could whoop BeBop’s butt but chose—mostly—not to. She was a ladylike feline who graciously entertained BeBop’s notions of dominance. You see, BeBop is completely and utterly helpless, but you can’t convince her of that. She has always believed herself to be the alpha kitty and was highly offended when we allowed another cat to cross our doorstep. She has no hip sockets, and to be honest with you, I have no idea how she walks at all. Our vet said he had only seen one other case of a cat being born with such a deformed pelvis, and in that case the cat had to have surgery to fix the eventual grinding of bone on bone that occurred.

Our vet makes fun of me. He’s a good country doctor who takes care of animals large and small and writes songs that’ll have you in tears after a few chords. He and his wife, who works in the clinic, are salt-of-the-earth people, the kind of people you’re better for knowing. I’m sure they’re dog people. My Mama called them a few years back asking if Dr. Cullens could see their old orange tabby, Coot, who has since crossed the rainbow bridge. Mama was worried about Coot for some reason, maybe he had gotten into a real bad fight with another country cat or some such as that. She was telling Mrs. Cullens that Coot was basically an old barn cat and trying to explain to her the difference between Coot and our pampered indoor girl, BeBop. “I understand. BeBop is definitely not a barn cat,” Mrs. Cullens said.

My great-grandmother Nan Nan probably had over twenty take-up cats that she would feed on her back porch. I guess I’m a little bit like her, although she always had a dog too. Don’t tell my husband, but I can see myself feeding all the neighborhood cats in my old age. They’re brilliant creatures whose fickle affection you have to earn. They’re not like most dogs, who will blindly adore their owners. Actually, cats don’t really have owners at all. If anything, they own their humans. They certainly own their territory and will ruthlessly defend it.

One of the most difficult things about being a pet owner is that an animal’s life span is so much shorter than a human’s. When BeBop dies, I’ll feel a little lost. She has been here for most of our marriage and all of our son’s four years; she’s basically part of the furniture at this point. Some Christians say that animals don’t have souls and won’t make it to heaven. That it all goes dark for them when this earthly life is over. But I like to believe in the “country side of heaven” that Dr. Cullens, the vet, sings about. “There’s a side of heaven where country people go,” he sings. A side of heaven with red dirt and little winding roads, where you can hear the screen door slap and eat your Granny’s biscuits. A lot of good country people will have their old dog Jake sitting on the front porch. I’ll have a dozen or so cats that I feed outside, and I believe BeBop will be there inside, probably still pooping on the rug because she’s mad at me for acknowledging the other cats.

Little Fat Men

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A rather large ceramic reclining Buddha sits in the corner of my son’s bathroom. I think of this as an appropriate place, because sometimes I am naked in that room and Buddha makes me feel better as I look into the plate glass mirror at my own fat belly. Buddha sits there with a wide grin on his face, naked except for a strategically draped robe.

Another Buddha sits on a shelf with me at school. This guy has his arms up, raising the ancient roof, with an ecstatic smile on his face. He is literally dancing in all his glory, and he makes me laugh just to look at him. He’s a brilliant reminder on those days when grumpy, hormonal teenagers make me forget the joy of the art I’m teaching them. There is an inscription in pencil and three white lines on the bottom of this Buddha, bearing the only evidence from where my genius art teacher friend glued him back together and hid the damage.

Some visitors to these spaces might worry about me when they see the statuettes. I can hear it now. What’s a good Christian girl doing with a Zen Buddhist idol on the bathroom floor? No child of mine is going to be taught by some hussy with a blasphemous relic sitting on her classroom shelf.

These little dudes don’t represent my religious beliefs, but they do remind me to be content and joyful wherever I am, whatever I’m doing. There are times when I desperately need relief from

the bonds of anxiety and depression, and seeing a little fat man rolling with laughter sometimes does the trick. I often wonder what my great-grandmother Meme was thinking when she acquired these Buddhas. Her parents, John and Zada Schleucher, were once vaudeville performers until they saw the light and Jesus saved them from their sacrilegious ways. They founded the Miami Rescue Mission and are famous in our family for guiding a wayward woman to salvation while sitting in the bushes of the whorehouse next door.

Meme wasn’t allowed to take dance classes. She probably wasn’t allowed to do many other seemingly harmless things she wanted to do growing up, rebelling in her later years by acquiring several hobbies disapproved by the Bible-thumping Schleuchers. I was told she took yoga classes while Gramps, retired from the Southern Bell Company, spent time studying photography and collecting rocks and minerals. On one of Gramps’s rock trades, some fellow in Japan sent him a carved Buddha. Meme thought it was the cutest little fat man she’d ever seen and started collecting them. The ones I have are hers, a reminder of the need to travel one’s own journey to spiritual enlightenment.

I am a Christian and believe in Jesus as my Savior and friend. I will preach the goodness of Christ, my resurrected Savior, until the day I die. I will also cherish the little Laughing Buddhas, which, to me, represent contentment, joy, and an open invitation to forge thine own path. The way I see it, Protestant Christians can take a hint from other religious traditions. Take the practice of repentance ashes on Ash Wednesday for one. Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

I had a sweet friend once who made me what she called “prayer beads”. I accepted them with gratitude, saying, “Oh! These are beautiful! It’s like a rosary!” She protested that no, absolutely not, this was NOT a rosary, it was completely different, nothing Catholic about it. But my friend was shortsighted—it was like a rosary, where the holder of the beads fingers each piece as a part of prayer practice. Who cares if the idea came from Catholic tradition? It’s a beautiful practice, and if it helps with one’s prayer life, why not?

I don’t know much about Zen Buddhism, which is where my little fat men come from. The type of Buddhism originating from India is different. My knowledge is limited to a brief overview of world religions in college, but from what I remember of Buddhism, it is sort of the anti-religion, the goal of which is nirvana, a state of being where the mind is empty and the spirit is free. An old boyfriend suggested that I read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse back in the day, which I did. This book, written in 1922, follows a man and his path to enlightenment during the time of the Gautama Buddha. He learns important lessons from the people he meets along the way. If we allow ourselves to, don’t we all?

So if you see my little fat men and feel a smile start to creep across your face, allow it to happen. Lightning hasn’t struck me down yet.

On Dancing, Dying, and the Human Condition

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Dancing is a special kind of freedom, a kind of madness. I used to meet up at the empty dance studio with a few dance friends and improvise in the dark room. No lights on. Just moving. When you care about how it looks, it’s performing. When you don’t, it’s therapy.

When I teach, I sometimes try to get back to that dark room. I try to find the warm bodies that feel it the way that I used to. (I say “used to” because I seldom give myself the space anymore.) There have been a few, and they aren’t the “best” dancers. They aren’t the most competitive, and likely they are the most fragile creatures. But they feel it, like a pulse. Like a heartbeat.

I am not a great teacher. I don’t know that a lot of students will have fond memories of me. But I want to give them the space to feel, hard as that is in a public school setting. The space to find that spirit moving within them. The space to awaken something that has been lying dormant in their soul. This is the source of artistry. It is artistry that propels the technique, I think. It is this impulse that drives effort, like an addict is drawn back to a drug, time and time again. I think that’s why so many artists fall into bad habits—because we try to fill the empty space when we aren’t dancing. Because when we aren’t dancing we don’t feel fully alive. So we might turn to drink or food or sex to fill the empty places. Or we might just fall into a chasm of anxiety and depression and forget everything that ever gave us joy to begin with.

When I was in middle school, my dance studio began contracting with a choreographer from Texas. He would come in once a year and set an original piece on us kids. Later, they brought in other guest choreographers, but he is the most memorable to me. Looking back, you could tell that he had his problems. Rumor has it that he struggled with alcoholism. Such is the flaw in many great artists:  Hemingway, Van Gogh, and too many musicians to mention.

His skin was a dark, rich brown, and he had a big, bright smile and a passion that radiated from his pores. I can still smell the musky hot sweat evaporating from our skin—glorious. He made us feel something –this was the most important thing to him. Each master class he gave included us sitting in a split while we improvised arms and facial expressions. This was always performed to “The Promise” by Tracy Chapman.

Certain songs, even after all these years, make me think of him:  “The Promise”, “My Skin” by Natalie Merchant, “Hanging by a Thread” by Jann Arden, and “Din Daa Daa” by George Kranz. (Will my students remember me from different songs?) His jazz choreography was shaped partly by Frank Hatchett, who he assisted for many years, but his lyrical style was uniquely his own.

All the salt inside my body ruins

Everyone I come close to

My hands are barely holding up my head

This teacher made me feel like something special, and I tried so hard to impress him, like I did all my teachers. He would point to me as an example of emotional expression, even as a young girl. It’s amazing to me how motivating a little pat on the back can be. Even a chubby kid like me thought I could change the world with my dancing. Because of him, I grew up believing the art of dance was important—something to aspire to. “Dance is my life!” I would decree to my mother. “Dance is not your life; dance is part of your life, Leia,” I remember her saying.

He passed away at his home in July of 2007. He was 47. That’s all I know. I haven’t found a cause of death, and I don’t guess it matters. You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead. Or so I am told.

I’m so tired of looking at my feet

All the secrets that I keep

My heart is barely hanging by a thread

There was another flawed but memorable dance person in my life. He was a professor of rhythm tap and artist-in-residence at the university I attended until he was fired for reasons unknown to me. I remember seeing him in the parking lot of the Warwick West apartment complex where I lived a year or so after he was dismissed from the university, so he must’ve lived there too. The time that I saw him there, outside of the dance studio setting, he looked terrible—so depressed and miserable, so different from the man who dressed in brightly colored suits that matched his tap shoes.

I loved him so much that I traveled to take classes he taught outside the university, at a little studio in the heart of the city. That studio was run by another passionate lover of dance who has now since passed away, but she is another story entirely. This tap professor even gave me a few private lessons when I could scrape up the money to pay him. I felt a connection with him because he, too, had that something special in his soul. I’d like to think he recognized that something in me.

Because he mattered to me, his opinion could heal or hurt me. I remember once, in his class at the university, he didn’t even look at me perform—he just looked down the whole time. I mustered up the courage to confront him after class, and he told me that “I didn’t look at you because I was listening to you.” This could’ve been just a lousy excuse for not paying attention to a student, but I accepted it. “Bring your feet up under you. Dance like a lady,” he would tell me.

Later, another teacher told me it was alright to “bring that funk” to my tap dancing style. I waver back and forth between the two now.

The professor died of heart failure in the summer of 2015. He was 58.

Oh, look at me, at all I’ve done

I’ve lost so many things I so dearly loved

I miss you all

I wish I was with you now

I wish I was

Do all dancers, like dogs, go to heaven? My faith says that grace is freely given to those who believe, and I pray that’s true. I hope we have believed hard enough. We will need that grace to get to our heaven. And I hope our heaven has a dark and empty dance studio. With space to be free. Mad. Alive.

A Cup of Kindness

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For auld lang syne, my jo

For auld lang syne

We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet

For days of auld lang syne

I’ve just spent the past hour trying to find the same kind of coffee cup my Papa used, which I have now learned is a 70s Corelle Old Town Blue pattern with a D handle. I found a set of two and sent a screenshot of them to my Mama before I bought them. I told her I was pretty sure they were the same but something seemed different. I wanted to make sure I was getting the right kind, because I am convinced my coffee will taste better in them. Every morning will taste like a Saturday at Granny and Papa’s house when I am ten years old. She said they were the same—the only difference was that the ones from Ebay didn’t have coffee stains. I’ll take care of that.

Coffee is a near religious experience for me. I guess it’s not much different than the Navajo and their peyote. It awakens me for prayer and meditation. And as soon as I get my Corelle cups, in a way, it will connect me with my ancestors. For auld lang syne—for the sake of old times.

I wonder what my grandchildren and old students will associate with me. Books maybe? Tap shoes? This reading lamp? A song I choreographed to or something I said? I have two of my Papa’s hats. He was a hat wearing gentleman. I loved that about him. Those hats were a part of his character. He had one that he would wear outside in the garden, that had a solar operated fan built into it. He looked ridiculous with that contraption on his head, but I don’t guess he cared.

Papa grew up poor as dirt, one of nine children who had to pick up and move every so often when the money ran out. He enlisted in the Army and ended up serving as a mess sergeant during World War II. When he came home on leave one time, he wanted to go see his Daddy, and he ended up leading the authorities straight to their moonshine operation. He was arrested along with his Daddy and brother and ended up having to go on another tour with the Army as a part of his agreement with the law.

But my Papa was a gentleman. He held down a steady job, retiring from the Thiele Kaolin company in Sandersville, Georgia. Good credit was important to him too:  “No one can take your good credit from you,” he used to say. Holding down a steady job and having good credit doesn’t make someone a gentleman, but I’m not sure how to explain it to you aside from this. It was in the way he treated people.

I hope I’ve taken on some of these better traits. I like to think I treat people with kindness no matter their station in life. But I am not my Papa inasmuch as I am not all anyone else. I share traits and appreciations with other kin, but I am not them. I am me. Still, they are a part of me, just as I will be a part of my descendants.

There is a song by Nichole Nordeman that is seldom played on the radio anymore called Legacy—”I want to leave a legacy/how will they remember me/did I choose to love?/did I point to You enough?” A few years later, Casting Crowns released a song called Only Jesus that throws shade on Nordeman’s song, claiming “I don’t want to leave a legacy/I don’t care if they remember me/Only Jesus”. I cringe when I hear the latter song on the radio. I think they’re being incredibly rude in their rebuttal, and when you compare lyrics, the message is actually very similar. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to leave a legacy of kindness, compassion, and pointing to Jesus. So there. Put it on the record.

Drink from a warm cup of kindness and then share it with the world. May we bestow such a legacy on this cold and bitter earth.

Patience, Piss, and Corruption

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Patience Easley walked almost sideways, her hip and knee and back holding on to a grinding ache. It helped when she could push the yellow janitor’s cart down the hallway to take some of the pressure off the lower joints. She had no medical leave, no retirement fund stashed away. She’d never had enough left over to save, borrowing money to keep her lights on from the local payday lender and title pawn. She had dropped out of high school at 16 to help her family, and had kept two part-time jobs ever since. With no children of her own, Patience was the one everybody in her circle came running to when they needed something. She paid bail for her nephew every time he got locked up for drugs and probation violations, and she had a boyfriend who mostly stayed away but would cozy up to her when he needed something. Piss and corruption. I’ll have to work until the day I die was the mantra that replayed in her mind all day.

The temperature was such that she wasn’t sweating, but she could feel a viscous oil coating her face and scalp. Her bra dug into the fat under her arms and she had to stop every few minutes to fix the shoulder straps that were stretched out and slipping down. It was Monday, and she longed for the day to be done. As soon as she got home to her single-wide trailer, she would shower the day away and watch it swirl down the drain.

Bump bump bump went the wheels of her cart over the tiles of the high school floor. A fetid odor came from the dirty mop water that needed to be refreshed, but that would mean another lap around the building to the spigot, and she didn’t have it in her today. Tomorrow she would do better. The boss man, Darius, was all over her ass anyway. Why not give him something to gripe about? It was sort of a fun past time at this point. It’s not like they’d fire her. They wouldn’t be able to get anyone else to come to work every day at these wages. Used to be, you could get benefits working for the school system and that would make it almost worth your while to bust your butt. But now that the school had outsourced all the custodial services to this private company, they worked the meager crew like mules. They didn’t even get invited to the employee Christmas dinner anymore now that they weren’t technically school personnel. Piss and corruption.

She passed by the young, first-year teacher’s classroom, the tall long-haired blonde still busy at work. It was nearly 7:00. Better her than me. Patience had seen her share of first-year teachers in her 43 years at the high school. They cared so much about their work. They were on a mission to save the world every day, and when they hadn’t, they’d stay through the late night hours trying to figure out where they went wrong. Patience wanted badly to shake the girl, to tell her she couldn’t save them all, to go home and get a life while she still had the chance. Instead, she simply asked, “Mind if I get your trash, Miss Vanloo?”

“No problem at all, Miz Patience! I keep it right back here behind my desk.” She carried the can over to the door.

A little voice in Patience’s head told her to stick around. “Thank ya, Miss Vanloo. Say, your floors are looking pretty dirty. I’ll sweep up for ye real quick.”

“Alright. Thank you, Miz Patience.” It mildly irritated Patience for uppity southern white people to call her like that. She found it condescending, but she knew they were just trying to be polite. Think they’re making up for Jim Crow calling me ‘Miz’. Piss and corruption.

The young teacher kept her nose down, flipping through papers and every so often turning to click-clack on her computer. It occurred to Patience that Miss Vanloo probably felt just as trapped as she did sometimes.

“Ya oughtta call it quits here soon and head ta the house. That work’ll be waitin on ye tomorrow. It ain’t goin nowhere.”

“You’re rrrrriii!” Elizabeth Vanloo started to say as a powerful thunderclap shook the schoolhouse. A couple seconds later, the power went out. “Did you know it was supposed to storm tonight, Miz Patience?”

“No’um, I hadn’t watched the weather report in a good long while.”

The emergency lights in the hallway flicked on. Piss and corruption.

“Let me check my phone… oh rats! My phone’s dead, and I left my charger at my apartment.”

“We had better hang tight til all this passes over. I’d rather be in here than on the side a the road,” Patience said.

The young teacher sighed a slow, deep breath. Patience finished up her sweeping and rolled her cart back to the janitor’s closet. The emergency lights cast eerie shadows on the walls and floor. She felt like she was walking through a passageway into the Twilight Zone.

She picked up a flashlight and an old hand crank weather radio off the back of one of the closet shelves and headed back to Miss Vanloo’s room. On the way, she stopped at a window and watched a torrent of rain and hail coming down. The sky was a witchy green color.

“We don’t need to go nowhere, girl. Best get com’terble and stay put. There’s hail comin down the size a quarters, and the sky looks like a tornada could touch down any minute.” Elizabeth grimaced at the thought of her new car out there in the elements. She had worked so hard to get to the point where she could afford monthly payments, and now it was out there getting battered.

The weather radio confirmed Patience’s suspicions:  a tornado watch was in effect for their county until 3:00 a.m. There’s one—and probably only one—advantage to being a janitor though; janitors get master keys to every room in the building. “Let’s go fix us somethin ta eat,” she said.

The cafeteria, known to be filled with the overwhelming noise of lunching teenagers, was chillingly quiet. Elizabeth held the door to the walk-in pantry while Patience searched with her flashlight and started grabbing this and that. They were coming to the end of the month and the nutrition lady hadn’t yet stocked the shelves for the coming weeks. But if Patience knew nothing else, she had learned how to put together a stick-to-your-ribs meal off foraged ingredients.

They tried one of the gas stoves. Yes! It worked. Patience set out to prepare their supper, mixing a bunch of mayonnaise packets with instant potato flakes and water in the smallest pot she could find, which was still way too big for just the two of them. She had Elizabeth open a can of stewed tomatoes while she chopped up some little breakfast sausage links into bite-sized pieces. After the fats from the sausage coated the pan, Patience took a little bit of flour to make a roux and poured the tomatoes in, making a sausage and tomato gravy that smelled so rich you could taste it through your nose. Patience felt the touch of ancient memory blessing her hands, as she did anytime she cooked, of ancestral kitchen maids and fieldhands and hunter gatherers, all unlikely survivors. They ate the comforting meal off the kids’ plastic trays using sporks to scoop up the luscious potatoes and gravy. “How’d you learn to cook like that, Miz Patience?”

“I got hongry,” Patience said with a straight face. Nothing had hit Elizabeth Vanloo so funny in a long time. They both shared a genuine belly laugh like old friends.

Patience took a large scoop of food into her mouth when she remembered something funny her baby brother had said years ago. As the wind rushed in through her nose and mouth to produce laughter, it caught the blob of potatoes and sausage and hurled it deep into her trachea. She couldn’t cough it up. The viscid comfort food stuck like glue.

Elizabeth’s mind was on an old flame from college. The handsome fellow was strong but a little soft around the middle because he loved to eat. He had cooked for her at his duplex many times before his wandering eyes had drifted from her long blonde hair to some black-haired beauty that reminded him of his mother. Patience was slumped over and nearly unconscious before Elizabeth realized she was choking.

In a panic, Elizabeth patted Patience’s back like she was trying to console a hysterical child. Finally coming to her senses, she went to perform the Heimlich Maneuver but couldn’t get her arms around the old woman’s thick waist. Patience fell to the floor and Elizabeth began beating on her back as hard as she could. She did this for six full minutes before giving up. In one last act of desperation, Elizabeth rolled the poor woman onto her side and kicked her square in the back like she was punting a football. Patience was already dead, her eyes rolled back into her heavy head and every aching muscle limp as wet noodles. A puddle of feculent urine began forming on the floor underneath her and Elizabeth jumped out of the way in disgust.

The young woman’s heart raced but her legs wouldn’t take her anywhere. Her eyes fixed on the old woman, but her pretty head was empty. She felt a tingle in her manicured fingertips and toes that graduated up her arms and legs toward her center and made the fuzzy little hairs stand up. The foul smell of the dead woman’s shit woke her from her trance, and she backed away. She went to her desk phone and dialed 9-1-1.

“9-1-1, what is your emergency?” the dispatcher answered.

“We are stuck, me and this janitor lady, we’ve been stuck at school in this storm, and we got something to eat, she cooked us this food, the janitor, and she choked and I tried to help her, I tried but she’s not breathing and I really think she’s dead. I need some help. I think she’s dead. Please send help.”

“Ma’am, my GPS tells me you’re at the high school, is that correct?”

“Yes ma’am, the high school.”

“And you’ve been stuck there in this storm and the woman with you has choked, is that correct?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Do she have a pulse?”

“Ugh, I don’t know. I didn’t think to check for a pulse.”

“Okay, I want you to go back to her and feel for a pulse.”

“Okay, but she’s all the way in the cafeteria.”

“I’ll wait for you here on the phone. Don’t hang up. Go check for a pulse.”

“Okay.” Elizabeth ran back, knowing she wouldn’t find a pulse, and sure enough, the blood in the old woman’s veins was stagnant as pondwater. She walked back, tears trickling down her cheeks.

“There’s no pulse. There’s no pulse at all. She’s dead.”

“Okay, ma’am? I understand you’re upset, but I need you to listen carefully and stay calm. We are under a severe weather advisory and we cannot send anyone out right now unless it is an active emergency. Since the lady you are with has already passed, we will not send anyone there immediately and risk the well-being of our first responders. We will send them out as soon as this weather clears and we can safely send someone to you. Do not go anywhere. Do not leave the school until someone arrives to help you, okay?”

“Yes ma’am.” Elizabeth gulped air in between sobs.

“Would you like me to stay on the phone with you for awhile?” said the dispatcher.

“No ma’am, that’s okay. I’ll be alright. Thank you.”

“Okay, you stay safe. Take care now. Bye-bye.”

“Bye.”

A chill ran up Elizabeth’s spine. She stood up and walked to the double doors at the end of the hallway, where she watched rain come in sideways and pound on the glass. A puddle of rainwater was seeping in under the doors and she remembered the putrid puddle beneath the corpse. She gagged and fell to her knees. She wanted to go home.

She sat with her back against the cinder block wall and pondered her existence. Maybe it was this brush with death or the wind whispering to her through the double doors. Maybe it was the walls closing in on her or the memory of wasted opportunities, but at that moment, Elizabeth had to get out of that building. She needed to feel the rain on her skin. She needed to feel anything other than everything on her mind.

She wanted to forget everything and for a moment, live. She forgot many things walking out those doors, including her keys to get back inside. She remembered them when the door slammed shut.

She had always done what she was told. She was always trying to live up to someone else’s expectations. No more, she vowed to herself, walking off the walkway and into the soggy grass, wind whipping her wet hair around like a cat o’ nine tails. She walked back in the direction of her apartment, willing the storm to lift her from the ground and carry her. To hell with this place. Live or die, I’m going home and I’m never coming back.

The moment of madness was temporary, and Elizabeth soon found herself inferior to the elements. She stopped at an old abandoned gas station, the only building remotely close to the rural school. She beat on the front door to no avail, so she went around to the back to find an unlocked door banging open and shut with the whipping winds. She went inside for some shelter. How am I going to explain myself? she thought in a sudden panic.

Patience watched the girl from the other side. “Piss and corruption. She gone and left me laying there like some dog. Shoulda left her there, crazy heifer.”

The wind slammed the door shut behind Elizabeth.

A Dead End

/ leiagiddens / 1 Comment

When I was in college, sometimes the only private place I had to go was in my car. I drove all over Oklahoma City that first year, getting lost and finding my way back again. Sometimes, I even ventured out into neighboring towns, depending on the breadth of contemplation I was undergoing at the time. I came upon many crossroads, forks in the road, and endless highways. At dead ends, I had to turn around and go in a different direction altogether.

People don’t talk about miscarriages. Much. Maybe its something they want to keep private, or maybe there’s some external pressure to keep it under wraps. For me, I’ve been quiet about it—for the most part—because I didn’t want to make anyone else sad and I fell in line with the notion that ladies don’t talk about such things. But I’m ready to talk about it. In a way, I need to talk about it. There’s a pull inside me to find out and connect with other women who have shared a similar experience, and how can I do that unless I put it out there?

In November, I joined a club I never wanted to be in—the pregnancy loss club. My loss is minor compared to what some women have gone through. I was only seven weeks along when I had a D&C to take care of it. It’s easy for me to compare my loss to others and feel the need to get over it. I’ve been sucking it up all this time, but, as trauma tends to do, my not working through it has compromised my emotional well-being.

We all have our own unique ways of dealing with things, and I don’t mean to suggest that women should or shouldn’t go public when they have a miscarriage. But through therapy (yes, I see a therapist—loud and proud therapy participant right here), I’ve discovered that I need community. And it helps me to tell my story.

In my case, I was pregnant with a “blighted ovum”. You can look it up, but my doctor told me that there was probably going to be something wrong with the baby, so nature took its course. The problem was that my body still thought it was pregnant, so I was going into the doctor sick as a dog and happy to be so, thinking that the raging hormones making me sick was a good sign. “This is a loss. You’re going to grieve,” my doctor told me. It’s true, but this has been a strange grief. It hasn’t been anything like the losses I’ve experienced before. In all of my other confrontations with death, I grieved for what was. Now, I grieve for what could have been.

From the moment I learned I was pregnant, I knew it was a little girl. We even picked out a name, which I will keep to myself since I might like to save it for a living child one day. When I called my Mama to tell her I was expecting, she said, “Well my, my, my!” and was so excited that her words started getting ahead of her on the phone. We started calling the freshly fertilized egg “Lizard” as a code word, because when we asked our four-year-old if he would like to have a little brother or sister, he said without hesitation, “I want a lizard.”

I called my doctor and we formulated a plan to titrate off my meds. I stocked up on prenatal vitamins and cut out all of the things you’re supposed to cut out when expecting:  wine, soft cheese, raw sushi, cold lunchmeat. We made an appointment with the obstetrician, and Joey made plans to go with me. Even though I was sick as a dog, I gained fifteen pounds from eating bland carbohydrates. I could see the weight gain in the mirror at the gym, but all would be well once I was able to announce my pregnancy to the world. Then everyone would understand the extra pooch over the waistband of my pants.

In the waiting room at that first OB visit, Joey and I began to formulate what we would say in that first Facebook post. A second child wouldn’t warrant the same type of announcement as our first child—where we shared the news via a family event and a special email out to all my co-workers. A Facebook post would be sufficient, but we wanted it to be worded just right. The child might look back on it years down the road, and we would want that child to feel loved right from the start. They told us it was probably too early to see everything in that first ultrasound, so they had me come back in for bloodwork a couple of times and scheduled a follow-up ultrasound. The bloodwork came back with good levels of heightened pregnancy hormones, and that made everyone in our small circle confident that everything was just fine. I was so confident that I told Joey he didn’t need to come to the second ultrasound.

In the waiting room that second time, I watched a teenage girl with a nervous smile—a girl that I had taught a couple years before—go back with her boyfriend to be seen on the OB side of the office. I had been pregnant the first time alongside some of my students, and I found it strange. Here I was, once again, sharing in the maternal journey with someone half my age.

The rest of it went by so fast it is almost already a blur in my memory. I remember being told by the ultrasound technician that she did not see the fetus, and I took a deep and accepting breath. My doctor said, “It’s not working out”, and I cried. Afterwards, I went to the bathroom and overheard an excited mother breathing a sigh of relief about something and talking to the same doctor about next steps in the pregnancy. It occurred to me then how strange it must be to work in a profession delivering devastating news to one person, then turning around to deliver happy news to the next in line. I felt sorry for everyone who had to care for me through this process. How awkward it must be for them, I thought.

There was certainly a great deal of pain initially, but a prolonged suffering has been in the aftermath. I can’t bear to open Pinterest right now because the social media gods have decided to fill my feed with baby stuff. It’s not so bad when a friend posts that she’s expecting; for the most part, I’m genuinely happy for an expectant mother. It’s hard to see the medical bills from the procedure I had to undergo, so I’ll be triumphantly glad when I can pay those off. Medical jargon is what it is, but the fact that the type of miscarriage I had is referred to as a “missed abortion” gets under my skin.

The most surreal part of the whole ordeal was signing a document that designated where the fetal remains were to be sent. In my case, the embryo was absorbed back into my body; of course that didn’t stop anyone from taking the other tissues to a lab and charging me for it.

I’m here at this dead end and it is time to turn around. I’ve been sitting here for months trying to figure out a way to forge a path through, to pave over uneven, rocky ground and get over it. But sometimes getting over rough ground just tears up your car.

Desires of the Heart

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Aunt Ruth wasn’t really an aunt at all, we just called her kin because she was more than kith to MawMaw. Her hair was fire engine red, and she always wore cat eye spectacles with a beaded chain that would hold them around her neck. She loved Jesus as any good country woman would and she knew how to behave herself in mixed company, but she liked to dip snuff and she cussed a little.

Aunt Ruth had grown up poor like everyone else in Sparta, Georgia, at that time, but she had managed to get by picking cotton and eventually got a job as a secretary for a businessman in town. She never took a sick day and held her boss man in the highest regard, as women were wont to do in those days. He had given her a job that didn’t require breaking her back in the fields; he had been the reason she didn’t have to worry about food on the table or paying a bill. She retired at 65, but continued to talk about what a nice man he was for the rest of her life.

Never married, she lived in a small A-frame house, always neat and tidy since there were no children. Her front porch was cute as could be—daisies in pots next to the porch swing with daffodils and hyacinth in a perfectly placed flower bed. She mostly came to visit with MawMaw at her house, but on the occasions that we visited her, we could always expect a treat out of her cookie jar. Ginger cookies were her favorite. And a cold Coca-Cola to wash it down with.

She liked to play gin rummy with MawMaw, and when they weren’t playing cards, they were looking at the Simplicity catalog and gushing about the outfits they’d like to make if they could just find the right material. Aunt Ruth was very stylish in my eyes, a very put-together lady, and she loved fashion.

“Ruth, you ought to make that dress. Might getchew a man in that ‘un!” MawMaw would say.

“I reckon it’s too late for me to get a man now, Louise.”

“Hogwash. Any woman your age still wearing heels and not a lick of gray hair? You’ve just got to wait for the right one to show up.”

“Louise, it’s called Clairol. You should getchew some. And I been waiting 83 years. If he shows up today, he sure don’t care about punctuality.”

“All in the Lord’s perfect timing.”

At 83 years old, Ruth didn’t really care anymore about finding a husband. She did, however, want a child of her own. I think she doted on us to make up for it, spending time with us playing dolls and having tea parties. She loved tea sets and had a large collection of them in her china cabinet at home. Since she didn’t have wedding china, she filled it with other things.

In those days, there was a filling station as you came into Milledgeville, just over the river bridge. A dashing young man named John worked there as an attendant, and it seemed that the station was always busiest during his shift. All the ladies’ cars ran low on gas at the same time, when he happened to be available to fill them up.

John had a head full of dark hair and stood tall at 6’1”. He kept his shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal his defined biceps, and the material across his chest pulled a bit at the buttons. His brawny physique came from early mornings on his father’s dairy farm, pulling calves, hauling hay, and anything else his parents needed him to do in lieu of paying for room and board. His Mama fed him a good meat-and-potatoes diet, and she prayed he would find a good Christian woman to do the same for him one day.

John wanted to go to college, so he saved every dime he made at the filling station. He had hoped that he would get a football scholarship somewhere, but senior year came and went and well… here he was.

In April of 1969, John had finally saved enough to pay for his first semester of school. He applied to the University of Georgia, saying a prayer over the envelope as he stamped it and placed it in the box at the post office. He had a plan. He would move in with his Uncle Horace and Aunt Christy in Watkinsville and work at his uncle’s auto repair shop until he could afford to move all the way into Athens on his own. Three weeks later, the mailman delivered a letter addressed to him from the Office of Admissions.

His mother laid it at the foot of his bed so he would see it when he came home. She had a bittersweet moment, thinking of him as a little boy, now grown up and moving off to start his own life. A life better than theirs, a life of more comfort and wealth. Her baby was going to be a college educated man.

With bated breath, John opened the envelope. “We regret to inform you…” it began. He laid down on his bed for a good long miserable hour, and then an indignant anger started to rise up within his chest. He sat up. The anger continued to rise like a fever into his head, and when it did, he stood up, took all the money he had—stored in a shoebox in the back of his closet—and stormed out the door. They didn’t want him at their school? Fine. He was going to buy him a motorcycle, dammit.

It was Aunt Ruth’s 84th birthday. She got up at 4:45 a.m., as usual, and spent quiet time with the Lord on her mustard yellow settee in the sitting room. She propped her slippered feet up on the coffee table, turned to the Psalms and settled on number 37.

Trust in the Lord, and do good;

dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.

Delight yourself in the Lord,

and He will give you the desires of your heart.

She made herself a breakfast of two eggs, a piece of smoked sausage, and grapefruit. She normally wasn’t so hungry first thing in the morning, but today she wanted a fortifying stick-to-your-bones kind of meal. She would skip lunch, she thought, and hold out for the big birthday dinner at MawMaw’s that evening.

She piddled around the house for awhile, watering her flowers, working on her cross stich sampler, and watching Andy Griffith. She decided she would go into town—it being her birthday after all—and finally get that pretty dark pink silky material she had been eyeing for months. It was expensive, but she couldn’t remember the last time she treated herself. She figured it was a good a day as any to splurge a little.

She pulled her Buick into the A&P parking lot first, remembering that she needed to replenish her coffee canister. When she got out of the car, she met John in the parking lot. He was coming out of the store with a brown bag concealing a six-pack of Schlitz beer.

“Hello, young man.”

“Hey Mrs. Ruth, how are you doing today?”

“I’m doing just fine, thank you. It’s my 84th birthday. I’m happy to be seen and not viewed!”

John gave her a courteous chuckle. Then he got a notion. “Mrs. Ruth, how would you like to go for a ride on my new motorbike?”

“Oh, I don’t think so, sugar. I might fall off or something.”

“No ma’am, I wouldn’t dare let you fall off. Let me give you a ride. I just got it. 1969 Harley-Davidson.”

“Well…” She thought for a moment. She thought of her simple life and all the chances she hadn’t taken. She thought of her heart’s desires. “Why not!” she said to the handsome young twenty-one year old.

They rode for miles that afternoon. All over the county. Everyone they passed stared at them, puzzled. This old woman on the back of a motorcycle with her hands around the waist of the most eligible bachelor in town.

When he got to the river bridge, he accelerated, and she felt the bike lift in the front. “Yippee!” she cried in his ear. They felt a rush of wind, his dark hair waving freely and her perm and set gone to all hell. All at once, something radiated out of their chests and rose from their shoulders. John laughed. Ruth smiled and squeezed him tighter.