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justrose

you all know what today is, and before i start writing massive tributes, etc. to my mother, know that as usual i am exhausted, one of the cats is acting weird, work is intense, i feel fat, and i never get enough time to ride my bike. also, my credit card balance is burgeoning and i would like my own personal federal bailout.

p likes st. babka but i feel seven cartloads of guilt every single day when i have to drive all that way to get her, making her wait, and s is still drinking all the bourbon. since i last wrote to you, i've had a breast cancer scare, five other tubes of blood removed for various purposes, and a nightmarish sinus infection for which i had to take the kind of antibiotics that plunge me into emotional (not to mention digestive) despair, and you know i'm always ungodly depressed in september anyway.

so, not much has changed since august 9th. if anyone still even reads this.

maybe i've changed. not likely. here's why.

okay, so, not blogging, i have started reading books again and that's kind of nice. otherwise, work and other obligations have come to hog the time so it's not like i've taken up a new hobby or anything.

but all that aside. you know what today is.

my brother sent me a text last night asking did i want to come for breakfast today and see the grave. of course, i said. and i was at his house by 10.

he cleaned up the grave, we talked, we came back to the house, we ate french toast and bacon. there were seven boxes of crap he had removed from my dad's attic -- my wicked stepmother has finally decamped from the disney castle from hell, and it's someone else's problem now. halle-bleeding-lujah, we thought this day would never come.

twenty three years since my mother died and here all this stuff i thought had been stolen out of her storage locker at the one apartment she had was partially in my dad's attic. so there i was digging through 1980's newspapers and pulling out tchotckes of yore, all of which defined the edges of my childhood: the ceramic piglet named zeke, on his walnut display shelf; the cut-crystal basket with the rose design, the fingerbowls and tiny brandy glasses. and along with that pictures, many pictures; s's and many other peoples' letters from the college days; my mother's high school yearbook; a picture of she and her sister when they were girls.

me in third grade. me in fourth grade. me holding supergrover at christmas and looking unflinchingly happy. of course, i was always a worried little soul; but i wasn't always a ruined one.

and then there were the diaries.

insipid, the one from when i was ten; but the handwriting is abysmal and so is p's now, so it gives me hope, because my handwriting improved immensely. stupid beyond belief the one when i was twelve. and boy crazy and makeup wild, the one from the summer before my mother died.

my mother died on the last day of summer.

i barely mentioned her in the diary, so wrapped up was i in my boyfriend and whatever else. an eighties relic, with my boyfriend's name carved into the cover, along with "rose" in lower case letters and the word "CHILL!" in even bigger, silver ones. ROSE WRITING FOR LUNATICS says one inscription. YOU ARE A DECREPIT CHUNK OF HUMANITY says another. on the back:

1 ZEP
2 FLOYD
3 YES

and BEATLES written in giant letters over that.

underneath, in ink, it says

THREE CHEERS FOR THE WRITER OF THE YEAR

(i was so modest)

and then "19" in one balloon and "85" in another.

and over all that, the words WRITE FOR SPITE in big black marker letters.

inside,

8-7-85
DOUBLE SHOT TUESDAY
9:22 AM

Dear Diary,
What a totally wild day! First off, it started out okay, I wore one of my famous tight jean/tank shirt/high heels outfits ...

it goes on.

SHORE SATURDAY
My first day in Ocean City started with a bang, or should I say a wheeee! My cousin Maidink and I were in a kite shop at about eleven AM ...


TUESDAY 11:15 PM
To continue and put in a capsule so I can get along with today's happenings, Jimmy worked his way over to me and I wound up walking with him to the beach up to 15th...


sure. goddamn. know what else? i won't get my school clothes on time. bet you anything. i have psat's this year, my mom is SO SICK, i have to move, i have no school clothes, i have to LEAVE MY VACATION AND GET BACK TO REALITY AND I DON'T WANT TO!!! i'm such a liar when i say i don't need anyone. i need EVERYONE. too bad, drifting sand, all of them.

the very last page was from september 19, 1985, two days before she died.

it said:

school daze. already. it sure did creep up. right now i'm sitting in advisory. i kind of wish it was still august. kind of?

and that's the end of the diary. we all know what happened next.

well, i wasn't freaked out today, until that. you see which parts of me are still frozen in time in august of 1985 (obsession with clothes, distaste for reality ...) but oh god. my poor little self. i wish i could go back and give her a pat on the head, or i wish she had gotten enough of what she needed back then so she wasn't such a lost soul now.

but she is.

so i went and got a pirate girl costume for halloween.

and then i cried a little standing in the kitchen, ostensibly because i dropped a bagel on the floor but really not because of that.

and then i went and rode my bike.




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