Sunday, Jan. 25, 2004 @ 9:40 a.m.

Apple

I spent the best and worst parts of my childhood in a two story house out in Baltimore County. It's hard to believe that the bright, rain-fresh Easter Sunday memories belong to the same house that contained a mother with sour wine on her breath, bursting with hours of raging, incoherent, self-pitying lectures addressed to a child pulled from her bed a 2 a.m.. I remember us waiting up at the top of the steps for my parents to open the door and tell us it was all right for us to come down and start our morning. I remember my father standing at the bottom of the steps,(when my parents were still together) waiting for us to launch ourselves at him for a morning hug. He was an oasis of stability, my sanctuary in a white terry cloth robe. I also remember a glaring absence when he left and the feeling that when he walked out the door for the last time, that he took saftey with him.

I also remember frequent fighting; my father would spend long periods of time in his "study" behind shut doors. He had this chair, a leather armchair, with dime sized brass tacks around the perimeter, where leather met mahogany. The seat was a shiny carapace, trampoline bouncy that made a popping noise when it was sat upon, much like V-8 lids that spring up when the hermetic seal is broken, only to be pushed back down again by my curious fingers. He took that with him too.

I spent most of my late teens and early twenties drinking and doing lots of drugs. I don't mean I would go out and party on the weekends, or smoke some pot. Being intoxicated became a career. After I became pregnant and got married, sobriety was the key issue and I found myself more coherent than I had been in many years. Only then did I realize how close I had come to paralleling my mother's life and habits. I've heard that people only do what they know, like children of alcoholics bartending and victims becoming abusers. There I was, well on my way to becoming everything that I despised. This realization was a painful gift and it has been my salvation.

The current mood of tagamii at www.imood.com

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******************************************************* Incontinence - Friday, Mar. 10, 2006

Winter - Friday, Nov. 04, 2005

Greetings from home - Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2005

OCEAN - Sunday, Sept. 18, 2005

More Potty Talk & Ground Zero - Tuesday, Sept. 06, 2005