eunice ann

tales of a girl trying to make sense of it all.

the journal.

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Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash

I’m not sure how I knew something was wrong. Woman’s intuition, I guess. We had a ritual, a routine. He would call me at work on his way to work, then I would call him when I left work on my way home. Because of our opposite schedules, we barely got to see each other, so this was our time to have our conversations. Not those big, deep conversations, but the daily ones. The married conversations.

That day, he didn’t call. Always the one to immediately jump to the worst case scenario, I called his cell phone. No answer. I called our house. No answer. My internal alarm started sounding. Something didn’t feel right. I mentioned it to my friend on the other side of the cube wall.

“I’m sure he’s just busy. Maybe he went in to work early. It’s fine,” She said.

“He always calls. Something is wrong.” She tried to reassure me, but the next three hours, I could not help but believe firmly, in my gut, that something was off. My imagination went everywhere, except to the scenario that was reality.

That, I did not see coming.

As soon as I got done with work, I called him. I sat in the parking lot, phone ringing, ringing, ringing, voicemail. I tried the house again and still got no answer. I finally called his store, praying and shaking as the line connected. “Thank you for calling Office Max, how may I direct your call?”

“Um, hi. Is um, is Clint in today?” I wondered if the person on the other end could hear the sound of my heart raging in my chest.

“Clint? Yeah!” the voice on the other end was a little overly enthusiastic. I breathed a sigh of relief. The “freak accident/hospitalized/amnesia/death” scenario could be crossed off the list. “One sec.” I was put on hold.

A few minutes later, a familiar voice answered. “Hello, this is Clint.”

“Hey babe, I was just calling because, well, you didn’t call me on your way to work today and you’re not answering my calls and I’m worried about you. Glad you’re okay. Do you have a minute to talk, or is it busy?”

“You are the last person in the world I want to speak to right now.” The line went dead. He hung up on me. Why did my husband just hang up on me?

I started the car, in complete disbelief at what just happened. I pulled out of the parking lot and instead of taking a left to head home, I turned right and headed toward his store, just 5 minutes away. In the short drive, I racked my brain to think of anything I had done that would have him so angry with me that he didn’t want to talk to me. Nothing came to mind.

I parked the car and walked nervously into the store. One of his coworkers recognize me and greeted me enthusiastically. “Oh hi, Eunice! How are you?!” Whatever he was mad about, he hadn’t told anyone else. I waved and went searching for my husband. I found him in the employee break room, a place I technically wasn’t supposed to be, but he was the manager, so I knew I could get away with it.

He was not happy to see me.

“What are you doing here?” He growled.

“I came to see what’s wrong. I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“I’m not doing this here. You need to leave. And by the way, I’m not coming home tonight.” I looked at him and tried to swallow the lump that had taken over my entire throat.

I fought back tears. “I don’t understand—”

“Just leave,” he cut me off. The glare he gave me was so icy, it could have sliced me in two.

I walked out to the parking lot and peered into his truck. His suitcase was sitting on the seat. I climbed into my car and called his parents, hoping they might know what was going on.

They answered cheerfully, so I knew that he hadn’t said anything to them yet, which left me even more bewildered. Whatever was happening was big enough that he wanted to leave, but he hadn’t yet told his parents, who were his closest confidantes. We chatted casually as I drove home. I didn’t let on that anything was wrong.

When I unlocked the door to our apartment, I dropped the phone and my keys. The framed Pulp Fiction poster we had opposite the entryway was shattered and torn. I quickly scooped the phone up and told his parents that I would call them back. As I stepped into the apartment, chaos and destruction were everywhere. Our wedding picture was broken and laying on the floor. All of his prized collectible movie posters were destroyed. Things were so disheveled, it looked like we’d been robbed. He was clearly really angry and I still had no idea why.

I walked into the bedroom. Unlike every other room in the house, our bedroom was intact, but something still felt off. I opened the closet. I opened the dresser drawers. I opened the drawer in his nightstand. I opened the cabinet in his nightstand. His gun was gone.

I started to panic. My husband had been raging, taken his gun and would not speak to me. Why?

I walked around to my side of the bed and tugged open the drawer to my nightstand, and there it was. My journal. He’d read it. I had never cursed my photographic memory until that day, when I noticed that my journal was in my drawer, right on top, unlike how I’d last left it.

I immediately grabbed it and started flipping through the pages, reading every entry from the beginning. I had started this journal just two months after we began our lives as husband and wife, the same time I am certain was when the first signs of my clinical depression appeared. There were 9 months of entries. I started reading.

I didn’t make it past the first page before I knew why he was upset. I wasn’t happy. I hated that we had opposite schedules. We had moved to a new state with no family or no friends the year before we got married and I was lonely. As an extrovert, it was a challenge for me. As an introvert, he was in heaven.

I kept reading, and things only got worse.

My sex drive had been completely sapped and I didn’t care. I didn’t care so much that every effort he made bugged the shit out of me. He was really insecure, and I wrote about how I faked every day of my life those first few months to keep him from freaking out. He had uncovered my secret. I had questioned his ability to love me unconditionally in private and now he knew.

Every feeling that I felt, but was afraid to say out loud, was now out there.

  • My resentment of his perfect credit.
  • My lack of feeling gratitude to his parents for many gifts they gave me, including a truck (I was so resentful that I refused to drive it and it became his truck).
  • My frustration with the unsupportive comments he made toward me guised as jokes.
  • My crippling loneliness and why I blamed him for it.
  • My crushing fear of getting pregnant.
  • My new friendship with a male coworker (who worked out-of-state).
  • My sex dreams about Eddie Vedder & Matt Dillon and how those were more satisfying than having to have sex with my husband.
  • My hesitation to be honest with him about how I was really feeling.
  • My irritation over how fucking awful our wedding day was.
  • My embarrassment over the ugly ass hat he insisted on wearing our entire honeymoon (I wonder if he still has it—it’s totally hipster now).
  • My sadness over realizing that he was going to be the only man I could ever love again.
  • My melt down over September 11 and my anger toward him for not understanding why I was freaking out.
  • My acknowledging that I had married down in the looks department. (Okay, so my exact words were, “he’s certainly not the hottie I wish him to be. Ouch.)
  • My refusal to believe that I could be suffering from depression, but also, that I really knew my doctor was right.
  • My disappointment in his inability to cater to my hopelessly romantic dreams (Or even my modestly romantic dreams, like being driven to the bus when it was raining).

It was all there, plain as day, every negative thought I had ever had about my husband, catalogued like a scorecard and paired with the harshest criticism of him to go with it. He was never meant to see any of this, but now he knew my truest feelings about our marriage.

I felt awful. I called his cell phone and left another message begging him to come home that night so we could talk.

I started cleaning things up and putting our home in order as best I could. As I was fixing things, I started to get really angry. I still had no idea why he read my journal in the first place. I felt incredibly violated. There was no topic that was mentioned in my journal that we hadn’t talked about, but he had gotten the filtered version of my feelings, not the raw, unedited emotion.

As a writer, I would have thought that he, of all people, would understand how much writing helps you process your feelings. That yes, the words on the pages of my journal were the truest reflection of how I felt about things, but I also hadn’t taken the time to work through those emotions and organize them into something meaningful and actionable.

We hadn’t yet been married a year. I had no idea how to talk to my extremely insecure husband about any of the negative feelings I had. He also couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that I might be suffering from depression. His reaction to that notion is a large part of the reason that I resisted entertaining the possibility for ten years. I did not see how we were going to make it through this.

He did end up coming home that night, and we had a long, tear-filled conversation. It was so emotionally draining that I ended up calling in sick for work the next day.

When I asked what prompted him to read my journal, he said that he’d gotten a weird feeling. That feeling was prompted by my trying to understand why people cheat. A friend of mine was dealing with a boyfriend who could not stop cheating and I would talk to my husband about it on the rare nights that we had together. He said that I spent so much time obsessing over the topic of cheating that he thought that I might be having an affair and he wanted proof before confronting me.

He got a whole lot more than he bargained for.

I know that day was the end of my marriage. We never really recovered trust in one another after that. I stopped journaling because I couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t read it. I also stopped talking to him about how I was feeling because I couldn’t trust that he would try to understand and be supportive. He never stopped worrying that I was cheating on him (which is ironic that our marriage finally ended when he started having an affair with a friend of ours). It took another three years before the divorce was final, but we both knew our marriage ended the moment he opened that journal.

This post was inspired by a prompt or theme from illuminate. This monthly membership was created by the editors of The Kindred Voice to encourage more people to write and share their stories.

Please check out these amazing writers and their posts on this month’s theme: Trust

Trust is Hard to Come By by Mia Sutton
My Superhero in the Sky by Sarah Hartley
Pattern Making in Parenting by Laci Hoyt
In How We Trust by Liz Russell
Challenging the Relationship between Trust and Fear by Christi Hurelle

personas.

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Photo by Barthelemy de Mazenod on Unsplash

It’s interesting to me all the different ways we work to understand our identities. I am addicted to understanding what it is that makes me who I am and if I had any influence over it or if I’m simply influenced by when I was born and how I was raised. Of all the methods that have been devised to put a language behind the things that make us uniquely us, I’ve yet to find one that didn’t feel like I was reading a portrait of myself in words.

I am a Two. The Enneagram explains why I desire to be loved and connect with others in an authentic and meaningful way. It is in my nature to help others, which explains why I so strongly desired to be a peer counselor in high school (although one of the most awkward encounters was counseling my ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend after a suicide attempt. I still haven’t lived down the guilt after he dumped her to get back together with me), and why I’m drawn to being a victim’s advocate now.

Motherhood is a perfect example of where I tend to forget to attend to my own needs. I will fall into bed, exhausted, wondering when the last time I ate was. Although I have often fought against the idea that I should sacrifice my desires for my child’s, I still choose her over me more often than not.

In group settings, I have to hold myself back from being the first to volunteer or the first to speak. I was the one in college who carried the group, resenting everyone else along the way while also not allowing anyone to participate.

I have boundary issues. I could go into a whole post on this topic alone. I will say yes before I say no, and I will bring my A+ game (because nothing less is acceptable). I’m actively working on learning to let go of control and say no.

This is how I show up in all of my relationships. I love helping people and my heart bleeds for justice. I supposed that subliminally, it happens because I have a need to be validated, but that’s not my motivating factor. If you need me, I’ll be there, no questions or judgement allowed.

I am African Violet. My color says that I am highly creative, but afraid to share my work because I am easily hurt by critics. My emotions are reflected in my work, and I wear my heart on my sleeve. African Violet is a shade of purple, my favorite color.

I am a Warrior. My Archetype tells me that my divine purpose is to protect the universe and I am constantly seeking justice. A natural leader, I am drawn to create change in this life. Showing up in this way lets me feed my need to Get. Shit. Done. I won’t back from a challenge and I don’t shy away from change.

I have always been best as an entrepreneur. I am learning through my current life changes that I am a terrible employee. I dance to the beat of my own drum.

The downside is that “yes” factor again—I say yes to projects and people that I’m not fully committed to, simply because I enjoy the challenge of something new or exciting.

I am a Taurus. Astrology gives me another layer of identity characteristics. As my mom likes to joke, even though I fall on the cusp, I am all bull. I will stubbornly insist that there are no Aries traits here. A lover of food and inspired by tactile desires, this could not be a more perfect sign for me. I am loyal to my friends (sometimes to a fault), and love to indulge in luxurious things (especially food). I can be a total hedonist and will make decisions based on pleasure before being rational any day.

I am an Illuminator. My intrinsic motivation is to think in black and white, with no room for gray areas. I stand for justice and will quickly and vociferously speak out when I see injustice. I am most certainly not shy with my opinion.

I will stand behind you to the end of days, if it ensures that justice will be served. I will cheer you on, all along the way.

I am a Goat. The Chinese zodiac says that I constantly look for the best in people, even those that have hurt or betrayed me. I see this a lot in how hard I work to support reunification with Alissa and her dad, even though he’s spent over two years resisting the formal apology process that the court has now ordered him to comply with. I catch myself making excuses for him and being open and supportive if he decides to do the work, which makes Alissa feel betrayed.

I am ENFP. Sometimes I think that Coronavirus might have broken my extrovert because Zoom calls exhaust me and I don’t want to go out into the world, but at the end of the day, my Myers-Briggs type shows how much I desire human connection and am rooted in curiosity. I truly seek to connect with people on a real level, so that I can understand and work to make the world a better place.

I embody love. It’s my power word. My purpose on this earth is to spread love. It can come in many forms, and I have seen it in many aspects in the way that I show up in this world.

I believe that we all have value, and it is my hope for the world that we can all see our own value without waiting for someone else to validate it for us.

All of these things are what make me who I am, and it never ceases to amaze me at how many of these varying persona types have elements that cross over and reinforce one another. I still wonder how much of who we are is tied to our birth date and the experiences we’ve lived since. I don’t think that these assessments really answer that question, but rather, uphold the idea that it is a combination of things that make us who we are.

This post was inspired by a prompt or theme from illuminate. This monthly membership was created by the editors of The Kindred Voice to encourage more people to write and share their stories.

Please check out these amazing writers and their posts on this month’s theme: Identity

Becoming Myself by Jacey Rogel
A Reintroduction by Kristin Rouse
A Rose by Any Other Name Would Not Be Me by Mia Sutton
Shifting Identity by Sarah Hartley
Discovering Identity by Mala Kennedy
The Identity You’re Given by Liz Russell
What’s My Name Again? by Danni EverAfter
Dinosaurs and Unicorns by Jenn Norrell

minute orders.

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Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash

Phone Status Conference. 10:07 a.m.

Petitioner appears by phone with counsel.

Respondent does not appear by phone. What? He asked for this hearing. Why is he not here? Respondent counsel appears in person.

Matter comes before the court on Respondent motion to clarify parenting time. This is such a waste of time; he just needs to write the damn letter and this will all be over with.

Updates provided to the court. He has spent more time trying to get out of writing the damn thing than it would have taken him just to do it. Oh God, they’re asking for a new therapist. Someone who won’t make him write the letter.

The court orders no change in therapist. The judge agrees that would be detrimental to the child, my child. The one he hurt.

Order Respondent to comply with the recommendations of therapist and proceed accordingly. The judge says we should trust the therapist if she says that the letter is an important part of reunification. I breathe a sigh of relief.

No additional matters are pending before the court at this time.

Adjourned. 10:15 a.m.

no finer name.

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photo from Alt Summit 2019, by Christina Best Photography

For easily the first half my life, I hated my name. No one could say it. No one could spell it. No one could go without making a comment about how it was “so old fashioned.”

Yeah, I know. The last time that Eunice was in the top 200 names was back at the end of the 19th century. I’m honestly surprised it ever ranked that high. It is still solidly in the top 1000.

Some would say it was an “old name,” as if everyone named Eunice just changed their name when they turn 65, but before that they were Lisa or Kimberly or Hope.

My name was so unpopular that I could never find it on a pen or a keychain. When my parents would travel, they would bring back a magnet for Erin or a license plate for Josh. I would get some other random shit that made no sense. And yet, to this day, I always look at the rack, just in case. This obsession was rewarded when I came upon a little shop in Leavenworth, WA that had “Eunice” emblazoned on everything—mugs, potholders, dishtowels, bottle openers. I wanted to buy it all, but I settled for two mugs (you know, in case one broke).

There aren’t really any famous Eunices. Hardly anyone knows who Eunice Kennedy is…and she’s a friggin’ Kennedy! I guess that’s what happens when your brothers are John, Bobby and Ted. And major props to you if you know who either Eunice Wentworth or Eunice Higgins is. Seriously, if you do without Googling it, leave it in the comments. I just might send you a mug with my name on it. I have one to spare.

There’s allegedly a Eunice in the Bible. I’ve read a lot of my Bible and I still haven’t found it. But apparently, she was a badass, so of course, I had to buy the book, Giddy Up, Eunice when I saw it. I still haven’t read it, but it looks nice on my shelf. I tell people it’s my unauthorized biography.

Eunice is popular enough though, that there’s a town in both Louisiana and New Mexico that share my name. But not cool enough to be in a more hip state like California or New York.

It wasn’t easy growing up Eunice. I got made fun of. A lot.

Unicorn.

Unison.

Unisom.

Unicycle.

Eunuch.

And don’t get me started on how my trainer could not say my name with a straight face the week I started working at Unisource.

My name has been the source of endless strife.

I was named after my great-grandmother, who raised my mom. My parents originally wanted ten kids, and as such, had names picked out for ten boys and ten girls. The top of the list was Erin Leigh, but when I was born, she said to my parents, “you know, there’s no finer name than Eunice.” And that’s how I got stuck with it (and how my sister got my sloppy seconds).

My whole life, I cursed my parents for being so amenable to please a dying woman. I wanted to be named anything else. I had made a plan to change my name the day I turned 18. I tried on a lot of names. But the day came and went and nothing really sounded right.

As I’ve gotten older, my name has grown on me. People still can’t pronounce it, and they still can’t spell it, but I like being the only Eunice in the room. Except last year at Alt Summit, where, in a conference of 2000 women, there were actually three Eunices in attendance (I only found one). Meeting someone who shares my name is so rare that it’s exciting. And I make people take our picture as evidence (see above).

I no longer mind the awkward pause before the inevitable, “um, how do you spell that?” I only huff slightly when I correct people’s pronunciation—although the huff is louder and more pronounced when I say my name and then you say it wrong. And I’m still amused that not only do I find other Eunices, but there was even another Eunice Brownlee. Although she died in 2017 and her obituary is still ranking on the first page of my Google search. I guess I can share.

After all, there’s no finer name.

marlene.

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Tamal y pipa fría

For my 40th birthday last year, I traveled to Costa Rica. A friend of mine owns a house and she invited several of us down for a visit over Easter weekend, which happened to coincide directly with me transitioning into another decade.

Although we had started planning the trip in October (and my birthday was in April), I wasn’t fully sure that I was going to make the trip until very near the end. Money was incredibly tight and I just didn’t think I could swing it. My desire to go was so much stronger that I told myself there had to be a way to make it happen.

There was.

I had been selected as a speaker for Alt Summit, the creative & influencer community version of summer camp (but better) and I invited a couple of my dear friends to join me. One of them was invited to a private dinner that was hosted by Alaska Airlines, and she chose me as her plus one.

The dinner was the stuff of dreams. It was an intimate engagement, set up in the back yard behind the Gene Autry House at the Parker Hotel in Palm Springs. We had a watercolor portrait artist (also named Eunice!) doing our portraits as we arrived while the cocktails and conversations flowed.

Dinner was amazing. It was a four course meal, served by butlers in white coats. I had never felt so bougie in my life. My friend and I kept trying to understand why we had been selected for this very intimate event because it seemed like everyone there had made it already, and here we were, just getting started.

The conversation was just as delightful as the food. I sat next to a couple of women from Phoenix, where some of my family lives, and across from another who grew up in the neighborhood I live now. The coincidences were uncanny.

But the best part was our third course meal: a plane ticket to anywhere that Alaska serviced. I immediately thought of the trip I was hoping to be on just a month away. As soon as I got home, I checked the terms on the ticket and to see if by any chance, Alaska flew to Costa Rica. They did.

There were a few small hiccups. The blackout rules meant that I could only fly Monday through Thursday and our vacation was planned Saturday-Saturday. I also had to fly on segments that were operated by Alaska and not one of their partners, so I had to fly DEN-SEA-LAX-LIR. I left at 4 pm on Thursday and arrived in Costa Rica at 7 pm the next night (btw, I hate layovers that are long enough to need some sleep, but too short to leave the airport and come back). In the true spirit of Pura Vida, I didn’t care. I was headed to Costa Rica for 12 days and it cost me almost nothing.

I stayed at an Airbnb just outside of Liberia on Friday night, and met up with my friend David at the airport the next morning. We spent my birthday taking a long, leisurely drive down to Tambor, where we stopped for pipa fría, chicken wings, and a candlelight Easter procession (we didn’t really have a choice about that last one—they blocked the entire road and we had to wait for the whole thing to pass). We arrived at our host’s house and so began my Costa Rican adventure.

The week we all spent together was a blast. We got to meet the local friends that Amy had made, eat amazing food, go on some fun excursions (except spelunking, I did NOT enjoy that as much as some of the others did), and enjoyed plenty of beach time. It was a great week. By the time David dropped me off back in Liberia a week later, I was beat.

I had picked a different Airbnb to stay my last two nights, partly because of the cost, and partly because this one was closer to town and I wanted to explore Liberia my last day in the country. Unlike my first host, Marlene spoke almost no English. And my Spanish leaves much to be desired. She met me in the town square, and had a friend pick us up in his cab to bring us home. I was grateful because it was hot and humid and I was beat.

I got to my room mid-afternoon and laid down to take a short nap. I woke up close to noon the next day. Marlene had gone to church and I saw a text from her that said she’d made me breakfast, but didn’t want to wake me. I felt awful.

Alone in the house, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. Walking the ten blocks back to town no longer seemed enjoyable. So I curled up in the hammock on the porch and read until she returned home.

Mid afternoon, she and a friend came by, and she warmed up the breakfast she had prepared. They sat and chatted while I ate awkwardly, not sure if it would be rude to open my book and keep reading. They hurried off again a while later and I decided to walk into town. I made it about two blocks and stopped in a bodega for some ice cream and a soda and then I went back to her house and up to my room for a nap. It was too hot to do anything else.

I woke up a few hours later, after it had gotten dark. I started in on my usual ritual of repacking my suitcase for traveling home, trying to move as much from the oversized purse I travel with as possible.

I went downstairs to say goodnight and she was squeezing mangoes into a blender. She told me that she’d made me a smoothie and I couldn’t go to bed until I sat down with her and enjoyed it. (It took me about 15 minutes to understand this is what she was telling me.)

As she worked, she told me what she was putting in it—mangoes from her tree in the yard out back, some oatmeal, milk, and some essential oils. She’s a soapmaker by profession, so this cocktail sounded like she knew exactly what she was doing.

We sat together, in silence for a moment, and we each pulled out our phones. I opened Google Translate and asked her about herself. She lit right up. She opened her Google Translate app and started to tell me about herself.

She’s a single mom with two daughters, and has never been married. The girls have different fathers. When she was still pregnant with her first, her fiancé was killed in a car accident. A few years later, she got pregnant again and that guy took off as soon as he found out. She had raised the girls all on her own.

The older one had severe weight issues as a child and ended up with an eating disorder. She said it was the hardest thing to watch her child go through because she felt so helpless. Her daughter has recovered and is an artist and teaches yoga and lives near San Juan, CR.

The younger one is a spitfire and was motivated to get a degree in immigration law after the 2016 election. She goes to Georgetown University and Marlene was certain that her daughter’s boyfriend planned to propose on their upcoming trip to Italy.

Marlene is an esthetician by trade and started soapmaking when she realized how many toxic chemicals were in the products she was using. She’d committed to getting into clean beauty before it was even a thing. She didn’t have a website or I would have become a loyal customer. She gave me a small brick of soap for my face and it was delightful.

I shared my story about being a single mother and we talked about deadbeat dads and how hard it is to do this on your own. She beamed with pride about her girls and gave me a free pass to take a yoga class with her oldest on Udemy.

I told her about being a writer and sent her a couple of my stories from Kindred that I had written about Alissa. She lit up to learn that, and asked me to keep sending them to her so she could learn English.

She talked about doing Airbnb to make extra money, but she wasn’t sure if she’d keep doing it because she was trying to sell her house to move closer to her daughter. She enjoyed meeting the people, but it was getting to be a lot of work, even if it was her main source of income.

On my final night in Costa Rica, we spent two hours talking and laughing, enjoying our smoothies and connecting as women. If not for our phones telling us what to say, you never would have known that we didn’t speak the same language. I spent 12 days in Costa Rica and that last night was, by far, the most memorable. My only regret is that I didn’t take a picture with her.

I’ve tried to stay in touch with Marlene since I left. I’ve texted her a couple of times on WhatsApp, but haven’t yet gotten a response. I guess I’ll just have to go back and see if she still lives in that little blue house next to the school, making soap and connecting with her visitors.

surprising.

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I’ve thought about my identity my entire life, always confused at how to define it. I’m a mish mash of things and people are always surprised about a few when they learn more about who I am. These are my favorites.

I like country music. I credit that to my high school boyfriend, who listened to it almost exclusively, but eventually, it grew on me. When I got married years later, “Breathe” by Faith Hill was the song my husband and I recognized as our song—in spite of his hardcore dedication to all things grunge, he said the words spoke to him so deeply and described exactly how he felt about me.

I enjoy going to the theater. This probably has to do with my love of music, but some of my best memories are those where we would get dressed to the nines and go to the symphony. My favorite is still getting to see Bill Conti conducting the Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra in a John Williams medley performance when I was 12.

I love box lacrosse. I have always been a sports person, so when I attended my first major league lacrosse game, I expected to enjoy myself. I did not expect to fall in love. I love the loud and rowdy vibe and a pace similar to hockey, but these Canadians still have (most of) their teeth. Eli McLaughlin is my stud.

I like the rodeo. This probably has something to do with watching TJ Fryar, one of my first crushes, attempt his first 8 second ride when I was 11 years old. I’m not sure. But take me to the rodeo and I’m a happy gal. I also love the smell of the barn.

I can get down with hip hop. I’m no Kris Kross, but I can bust a move that makes me proud. I even got called out by a DJ at work when I was 8 months pregnant. I was breaking down the Roger Rabbit for my teenage crew in the middle of a wedding.

I love food. I once wanted to be a chef until I learned that the rate of failure for restaurants is ridiculously high. I still appreciate great meal and nothing (yet) has topped my dinner with my friend Pam at Seven Lions in Chicago, which I’m sad to say, no longer exists.

I pursued a degree in biophysics. I begrudgingly got stuck taking physics in high school when my favorite biology teacher retired and his class was canceled. It quickly became my favorite subject and I wanted to study it forever. And then an 8 am calculus class was my undoing.

Our experiences make up so much of who we become, it’s hard to deny any of it. It I’m always amused when I share these tidbits with people and the response I get is surprise. I never really thought much of any of them, or what the surprise was rooted in.

self made.

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When I started fifth grade, only one thing mattered to me: it was finally time that I could join the school orchestra. I had been dying to learn violin since the third grade, when a sleepover at my friend’s house introduced me to the smell of rosin. I couldn’t wait.

I knew that as soon as the day came, I would march right into that orchestra room and lay claim to a spruce beauty so that I could learn to make music with it. I knew my family would dismiss me as just making noise as I squeaked my way through my scales each day and night, but they wouldn’t mind because someday, I would play a solo on stage and get a standing ovation. My violin and I had big dreams.

Those dreams were dashed when an ill-timed job transfer moved us to the middle of nowhere New Mexico to a school so tiny, there was only one class per grade. I still hoped for an orchestra program and a violin with my name on it, but the school and its budget only had room (and people) enough for a band.

I couldn’t tell you the name of the band director any longer. She instantly became my nemesis. Since I couldn’t have my dream of someday being a concert violinist, I was hoping to get to learn flute. She greeted me and smiled as she grabbed my by the shoulders, looked into my eyes and said, “you have lips that were made to play French horn.”

I had no idea what on earth she meant by that comment. Was she saying I had no lips? Every brass player I knew of (which, let’s be honest, at the age of ten wasn’t that many) left much to be desired in the lip department. Except maybe Dizzy Gillespie, but he also had that cheek thing going on.

I was relegated to the brass section. The only thing that could have been worse would have been percussion.

I hated the French horn. It was big and awkward. The bus driver always gave me the side eye because I couldn’t lug it home with me without taking up a whole seat if I wasn’t going to block the aisle. He’d get so angry about it, as if I had a choice in the matter. Seriously mister, I was aiming for the flute. I’m just as disappointed as you are in this.

Not only was French horn big, it was gross. Although it has a little valve on it to let out all your spit that’s congested the pipe, you had to spin it around a few times to get it all out. God knows what would happen if you didn’t do that.

It was incredibly hard to learn. It has three paddles to change the pitch of the notes you play. Everything else is controlled by your embouchure. The slightest shift in your lip position makes all the difference. In addition, unlike Dizzy, you’re supposed to keep your cheeks nice and tight. It hurts.

Unlike most things in life, I never desired to get any better at French horn. I constantly tried to get the mean band director to let me change instruments, but she kept insisting that the French horn and I were meant to be.

I gladly left it in the band room when summer rolled around, happy to have it out of my sight for a few months.

When school resumed in the fall and we headed to band class, I was delighted to see that we had a new band director, Mr. Smith. (It’s funny that I remember his name and not the other one, but you’ll understand why in just a moment.)

As the class filed in, he called us one by one into the equipment closet to check out our instruments for the year. When it was my turn, he asked what I played. This was my chance, I knew it. I looked him dead in the eye and said, without hesitation, “clarinet.”

“Well I don’t have any clarinets left for you, but I do have a bass clarinet.”

“I’ll take it.” I smirked as I turned away, praying that no one would rat me out and I’d be stuck with French horn again. Thankfully, no one did. They probably knew how much French horn sucked too.

The problem was, I didn’t know how to play clarinet–bass or soprano. Before class ended, I swiped the fifth grade fingering charts and lugged my giant clarinet home, determined not to have my fraud uncovered.

Unlike with the French horn, I practiced day and night. The bus driver disliked me less because I could get my instrument into the seat with room to share. I really came to enjoy it and I was excited to continue learning this instrument.

When sixth grade was over, we moved back to Arizona and I enrolled in band as a clarinet player. I had missed the auditions to get into the honor band, so I started the year as fourth chair in the intermediate band.

I quickly moved to first chair, and embarked on a constant battle for the title with my friend. That summer, I attended my first music camp and I ambitiously double majored–I played both soprano and bass clarinet (and secured a spot on the handbell choir).

That summer was when I really fell in love with my clarinet. I practiced for hours every day, and I was proud of the performances I gave. In 8th grade, I took second chair in the All State band, and I remember being so excited I burst into tears trying to tell my mom.

I spent most of my high school years in the band hall, whether it was marching band or concert band. I was section lead, still playing tag for first chair with the same girl from seventh grade.

Our band director was a hard ass and often had us playing college level music so that we could challenge our skill set. I appreciated it (until I got to college and we were playing the same exact music) because he always pushed us to be our best, even if he was a huge dick about it (I have no doubt that some of my former band mates have PTSD from dealing with him). We traveled a lot and were one of the top bands in the state. So many of my best memories happened on those trips. Even the one where we got mooned by the cheer squad after a football game in Kingman.

I surrendered my first chair seat my senior year to become a peer counselor. The classes met the same hour so I had to choose. It was a tough choice—setting my love aside to explore a different passion was not something I was prepared to do.

I continued practicing every day and selected one of the most technically challenging pieces I’d ever played for my college audition. I taught myself the whole piece, practicing for hours upon hours for months.

When the day came, with nerves in my belly (and a raging hangover from my first adventure with alcohol the night before), I stepped in and played my last audition ever. I’m still amazed I was awarded the scholarship.

I haven’t played since those days in college, over 20 years now. Sometimes I wonder if I could pick it back up again. One thing I know for sure is that my dad was right: I can do anything if I put my mind to it.

the courthouse.

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Until 2017, I’ve only had to appear in court once. It was for a traffic ticket, and it wasn’t one I could just pay the fine and be done, I had to appear. I had a little bit of anxiety when I arrived, but only because I knew that the ticket I was there for (driving without insurance) could have meant jail time and/or a huge fine that I couldn’t afford.

I arrived and crammed myself into a tiny elevator with six other people, all headed to the third floor.  I waited my turn to speak to the prosecutor; we made a plea deal. I sat in the courtroom until it was my turn to be admonished by the judge for my poor choices. I entered my plea, she let me off with a small fine, and I was sent downstairs to cash out.

It was all fairly simple, and a day I haven’t thought about until today.

Showing up at court when you’ve been the victim of a crime is a completely different story. 

I arrived at the Jefferson County Courthouse, known in Denver as the Taj Mahal because it is a huge six or seven story building with a round atrium at the center and two arms stretching to either side of it. It also appears to have this pinkish hue when the sun hits it just right. You wouldn’t know looking at it, that a structure so beautiful would be the place where I would experience the most pain. 

I walked up with a feeling of anticipation. You know, the kind that you have before a job interview that you’re really excited about, but you’re not sure if you’ll be impressive enough to get? I have butterflies in my stomach, but I feel confident. I have my favorite boots on and I walk through those front doors fully expecting a positive outcome for the day.

I had been in this building twice before—once to procure property records from the building department and once to ask the sheriff to serve legal papers on the father of my child. Both of those departments are in the wing to the left of the entrance, beyond the coffee shop and up a couple floors. 

To the right, a pair of metal detectors secure the entrance to the other hall, the one that all of the court proceedings in the county take place in. I set my bag on the conveyor belt and passed to the other side. The detector beeps and the officer stops me to wand me down. “It’s probably my boots,” I laugh. They have a lot of buckles, of course it’s them. He makes me remove my boots to run through the x-ray machine and go through the metal detector again. It was the boots. “They sure look dangerous,” he jokes. 

The first officer that responded to the call after the incident is going through the adjacent metal detector. “I know you! I bet you’re here for me!” I smile. He doesn’t return my smile. He didn’t when I made the same joke three months prior. We both turned to walk down the same hall. I stopped and feigned adjusting my boot to let him get ahead so we didn’t have to walk together awkwardly. 

The hallway was lined on one side with windows. It was bright and cheery. You could see into the courtyard as people waited anxiously or nervously smoked. The wood paneling on the opposite wall shone in the sunlight. Dockets were posted along the wall. I glanced at them. Not mine. 

I arrived at the victims’ advocate office, which was unsuspectingly tucked in between two courtrooms. I caught the eye of the second officer that responded on the day of the incident. She smiled when she recognized me. I immediately felt better. I announced myself and an admin ushered me into a waiting room. It had ugly chairs and ugly carpet and was sadder than a doctor’s office waiting room. The admin brought me a cup of coffee that would make gas station coffee feel like gourmet. 

I waited impatiently, not sure if I should pick up a magazine to read or journal. I’d wished I had thought to bring a book. My advocate, Linda, appeared in the doorway and motioned with me to follow her. We walked back down the bright hallway to the elevator bank and ascended to the floor our courtroom was on. We walked down another hallway that had windows all on one side like the first, but it wasn’t nearly as bright and cheery. She asked if I would prefer to sit in the courtroom or in the conference room adjacent to it. She told me that it could be a while before our case was up, and she didn’t like to make victims face their perpetrators if they don’t feel comfortable. 

I hadn’t seen the face of the man who had hurt my child since the night I had slammed the door in it two weeks prior to the incident. I was in no hurry to look him in the face. I chose to sit in the conference room. It was a small room, cluttered with stacks of forms. There were so many filing cabinets lining one wall that it made the room feel even more cramped. My advocate popped in and out while I sat and journaled she told me it would be a while. The longer I waited, the more sick I felt. I wasn’t sure if I could will myself into the courtroom at all.

The DA came in to talk to me about our options and to hear a little more about the case. She was prepared to offer a plea deal. I just hoped he would take it. When it was time, my advocate brought me into the courtroom and we sat a few rows behind the father of my child. I liked that he didn’t notice me. The DA whispered to his attorney, a man I would come to loathe, and she pulled me back into the conference room. 

“They are going to ask for a continuation,” she told me. “They are claiming they have new discovery.” 

“What new discovery could they possibly have?” My boots were no longer holding me up. I got flushed and nauseous and I had to sit down.

“I have no idea. But this means we have to continue. You never know, it could help our case.” She made an attempt to be encouraging, but I wanted to get out of there. I knew that I could leave at any time and it wouldn’t matter, but I knew it was better for us if I stayed. 

We went back into the courtroom and waited some more. My advocate held my hand because I could not stop shaking. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t want him to see it. I was furious. I was scared. I was heartbroken. 

As he stood before the judge and was giving the continuation he asked for, I took the deepest breath I could muster and put on a neutral face. As he turned to walk out of the courtroom, he locked his eyes with mine. As my heart raced inside my chest, I didn’t dare blink. He needed to know that he didn’t scare me, and that I would fight every step of the way. 

I walked into the building that morning for justice. I expected that I would come and go the same way that I did when I dealt with my traffic ticket. I left without an ounce of relief.  I did not know that building would change me forever.

pen pals.

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Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

I grew up as a forestry brat, moving every few years to whichever sawmill my dad was managing at the time. It was never easy for me to leave the friends that I had made. I was only in elementary school, but I constantly felt like my peers were being ripped away from me, never to be seen again.

Long distance phone calling was expensive, so that was reserved for family members only. My dad was on the road a lot, so he would often send postcards to me and my sister from wherever his travels took him that week. They always included a short anecdote about something funny that happened and a reminder to obey our mother. 

As a kid, getting mail is so much fun. Whether it’s a birthday card (hopefully with a crisp $5 tucked inside), or a package, there’s a delight to getting something in the mail. I honestly don’t think that elation ever goes away, now that we also get non-fun things like bills and jury duty summonses.

My friend Amy moved to Nevada in fourth grade. I was devastated. My mom suggested writing her letters. We wrote back and forth regularly for a while. I really enjoyed it and was sad when I noticed that I no longer got any letters from Elko, Nevada. I was never sure if she had moved or just had nothing to say. 

When we moved to New Mexico at the beginning of 5th grade, I was determined to stay in touch with my friends. I left everyone with our new address and sent updates from the middle of nowhere, sharing how weird it was to live in such a small village, and going to a school that had as many students in the whole school as the entire 5th grade class I had left behind. I got a packet of letters from my entire class at one point, and that was delightful. After a period of time, those letters stopped as well.

When we moved back to Flagstaff a couple of years later, I left again with two pen pals—my best friend Odelia and my 6th grade teacher, Mrs. T. Given my previous experience with pen pals, I didn’t expect that either of these would last for too long. I think Odelia and I kept in touch through 7th grade and when her dad passed away, I stopped hearing from her all together.

You might think it’s weird to be pen pals with a former teacher when you’re all of twelve years old. But Mrs. T. and I had a very special relationship. I never felt like I belonged in Reserve. Compared to where we were living, I was a “city kid.” I had a group of friends, but even that seemed to change from week to week. Although I’ve always been in advanced classes, in Reserve, I was hailed as some sort of genius. The reality was that I had already learned most of the things the school was teaching when I arrived.

Mrs. T. saw that. She always made sure that I was challenged by the work that she was assigning. She definitely noticed my affinity for books and was always suggesting new things to read. She was really cool in that she was always encouraging us to follow our natural curiosity. I have to say my most memorable lesson was when she caught a scorpion at her house and brought it in to see how it would fare against our classroom vinegaroon (Vinny). I’m sorry to say that Vinny put up a valiant fight, but ultimately succumbed to the sting of the scorpion.

Basketball was a big part of life in Reserve, so we spent a lot of time at basketball games. From what I can remember, I usually sat with Mrs. T. and her husband (which may or may not have had anything to do with the ginormous crush I had on their son, who was on the team). I had come to see her as more than a teacher, she was a friend and mentor.

When sixth grade was over, both my family and the T’s knew that we would no longer be in Reserve. When I moved, I sent letters to their ranch about the books I was reading and she would send postcards from home or wherever it was that their vacation took them. I’d send letters about school and marching band and she’d send letters about teaching at the University of New Mexico.

I still have one of my favorite postcards she ever sent me: a slab of redwood that was imprinted with the quote, “We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” It had gotten completely destroyed by the post office in transit and showed up at my house in a baggie, splintered to bits, but it was nothing that a little wood glue couldn’t fix. 

We’ve shared our life’s moments over the years. She sent me pictures from her son’s wedding. I invited her to my graduation, which was the first time I’d seen her since the end of sixth grade. We exchanged letters when I went off to college, and when I moved to Seattle. I heard about each of her grandchildren when they were born. When I moved to Denver, they happened to be in town for March Madness and UNM was playing, so we got together for breakfast. We hadn’t seen each other since I graduated high school, but it was like no time had passed. 

When I had Alissa, my life got increasingly more chaotic. We moved around a lot and I stopped writing letters for a few years. One Christmas, I was home visiting and my mom gave me a stack of mail. In it, I was quite surprised to find a Christmas card from Mrs. T. The familiar handwriting brought a smile to my face and I was excited to respond.. 

We exchanged email addresses and sort of kept up our correspondence for a bit that way, and then she retired from teaching. We had connected on Facebook when it first began to get popular, but it never really became a way for us to keep up with each other. Sending letters always had a special magic to it that digital communication just doesn’t have. 

Several years passed and we lost touch. When my parents got divorced, I was going through a box of photos and came across an old letter from Mrs. T. It brought me a sense of joy I didn’t know I needed to feel at that moment. Knowing that she was retired and probably traveling the world, I took a chance that maybe, just maybe, the address I’d had memorized for 20 years was still good. I dropped a letter in the mail to say hi and send a few updates. 

A few days later, I received a response in return. I couldn’t believe it. I was overjoyed. We caught up on life’s changes over the previous years and have stayed in touch ever since. Although it’s been somewhat irregular on my part, it’s nice to be in touch. In fact, we’ve exchanged several cards and postcards since the pandemic rocked our world, and when I heard that the theme this month was letter writing, I knew exactly who I was going to write about. 

Susan and I have been exchanging letters for nearly 30 years now. Over the years, her letters and postcards have ignited my love of travel, helped me discuss world events, and most importantly, maintain an unlikely friendship. I never expected that, after all this time, my sixth grade teacher would be my best pen pal. 

This post was inspired by a prompt or theme from illuminate. This monthly membership was created by the editors of The Kindred Voice to encourage more people to write and share their stories.

Please check out these amazing writers and their posts on this month’s theme: Letter Writing

Everything is “A Lot” Right Now by Kristin Rouse
A Letter to Who I Used to Be by Mia Sutton
To My Son by Sarah Hartley
To the Man Who’ll Carve My Headstone by Liz Russell
An Open Letter to People of Color by Amy Clark
The Lost Art of Letter Writing by Amy Rich
Returned Letters by Jenny Surgenor
A Letter to You by Mala Kennedy
When I Remember This Summer by Ashleigh Bowling

i always wanted an abuela.

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Nonna. Babushka. Grams. Oma. Yia Yia. Bibi.

I never had a grandmother.

Sure, each of my parents were borne from their mothers, so genetically speaking, I have two grandmothers in my lineage. But I never had someone that I related to as my grandma.

My dad’s mother was taken away and put into a mental institution when he was eight years old. This was in the sixties, when those who struggled with mental illness were hauled off and hidden from society. In the beginning, she was allowed to come home on the weekends to see her kids, but eventually, she was tucked away and forgotten until her death in 2007. My dad didn’t even get so much as a phone call when she passed.

My mom’s mother chose a life as a free spirit instead of motherhood. She often abandoned her three children to run off with her flavor of the month for a time and would come back and collect the girls when she felt like settling down for a moment. My mom decided she’d had enough at the age of 12 and stayed with her grandparents from that point on. My grandmother was a void in my life until I was about 8 years old, when she moved from the east coast to our small town in Arizona with my two cousins in tow. She died about a year later and my cousins moved in with us until we could reunite them with my aunt. The official cause was a heart attack, but what really killed her was the fact that diabetes and alcoholism just don’t mix.

I always envied my friends who had deep and meaningful relationships with their grandmothers. The Nanas that taught them how to sew while they shared stories from the war. The Bombas who would sit and go through old photographs, passing on a piece of the past to future generations. The Amá Sání who would help a girl learn the intricacies of beading a bracelet. The Abuelas who would pass down a tamale recipe that had been perfected over generations.

I wanted an Abuela.

I ached to learn more about my roots–not because closest thing I have to Hispanic blood is Portuguese, but that’s because that’s what Abuelas do. They teach their kin about where they come from and share stories and recipes. I wanted to sidle up next to her, my tiny legs boosted by a dining room chair, while I watched her wrinkled fingers work through a ball of tortilla dough, kneading until it became smooth and supple. I would help her roll each one out, and she would say, “thinner, míja.”

I wanted to hear her stories of how she met mí Abuelo, and how maybe it wasn’t love at first sight, but they grew to love each other over the years. I would watch her stir a pot of red chile, deeply inhaling the aromas and adding a little more seasoning to highlight the flavor. She would mumble something in Spanish and reach for the spice rack. She might have been adding more cumin, but I was certain she was sprinkling in a little extra love.

We would shuck corn together as the air filled with the scent of pork roasting in the oven. With every yank of a husk, she would tell me tales of being a little girl in Mexico. She would share funny stories and heartbreaking anecdotes. I would drink every sentence in, thirsty for every colorful detail of my family history—even the ugly ones.

I would memorize every story she told me, one after the other, so I could savor them the way I savored her empañadas. I would hold every detail of every word so I could savor it, just like the flavors in my mouth. Her stories and her recipes would be catalogued in my brain so that I too, could pass them along to my children and grandchildren when the time came.

Our relationship would be forged in the kitchen, where she would share pieces of herself, one recipe at a time, while I helped and watched and listened. I would hang on every word, even after Abuelo would come in and say, “that’s not exactly how it happened,” before embracing her in a warm hug and delivering a soft kiss to her lips.These memories would bring me to tears as we said goodbye to her and laid her body to rest. Mí Abuela would continue to show up every time I was in the kitchen, cooking through the recipes she taught me, she would be whispering over my shoulder, “a little more salt, míja.”

This post was inspired by a writing prompt from Writers in the Woods. Follow them on Instagram and join the community every other week where readers from all over the world share the written word in a virtual open mic format.