The Last Love Letters: September 2012

Before picture. Don't have an after picture.

I just gave myself the most horrible haircut. I had it cut in a cute Liz Taylor style like this:
However, it grew really fast and became too long, and unruly. I am extremely low on cash right now, so I cut it myself. Big mistake. I don't even want to leave the house because my hair looks so bad.
It is way too short and has an unattractive shape. Ugh... what to do... what to do.....

Me, the ugly duckling.

Well, this morning I was thinking about when I was growing up, and I grew up in church. My mama was the church piano player, my grandfather the music director. My grannie a quartet and shape note singer. I mean I was always in church. I grew up in rural Arkansas. So I had a little flashback this morning of my childhood, today being Sunday. I can remember my Sunday school class. We had flannel boards, and the teacher would have these cut outs of characters pertaining to the story for the week, that she would stick to the flannel board. For instance, if the lesson was about Daniel in the lions den, then she would put up an image of Daniel and a lion and a king or whatever. So we had these Sunday school lesson books, but we also had a "make and take" book. It usually had some sort of punch out paper craft project that we would work on while listening to the bible story. After Sunday school we would run out to meet our family in the church auditorium and show off our make and take project. Oh wow, good job, did you make that? My grandfather would always rattle inside his coat pocket and hand me a peppermint. (He used those to stop smoking). What a strong minded man he was. He just always seemed to do everything right, as if he had no weaknesses at all. So I would usually sit next to my grannie in church, and scribble during the service. We would always sing 3 songs, then the preaching began. My grannie sang alto, and you could hear her unique voice over all the congregation. She always wore high heels, and she loved wearing black. Though she would swear to you her favorite color was green. Well, she did drive a green Buick. Her hair was always big and she had it done once a week down at Jewel Jordan's. She dyed it black for a long time, but all I ever remember of her was the gorgeous gray/white hair. She was and still is my idol. She made me feel like the most important person in the world. She didn't work, although she did sell Stanley Home Products. She would throw Stanley parties, similar to Tupperware parties. She was a genuine 50s housewife. She would cook roast, and chicken dumplings, and casseroles. She was famous for her coconut cake. She was humble and quick to serve others. She loved God. She had a statue of Jesus in her bedroom that was a nightlight. It was Jesus knocking on a door, and she would tell me that that symbolizes Jesus knocking on your heart, and for you to let him in. I always felt so safe and holy sleeping with that nightlight on. What disturbed me as a child is that the rest of the world wasn't like this. When I would leave my grannie's house and go to school, all of the sweet peace and love and holiness suddenly disappeared. It was replaced with teasing and name calling, little girls telling me about sex on the school bus, teachers putting me down, "Why aren't you as smart as your sister?" I had a hard time being a chubby, ugly, poor kid with frizzy hair. So at a certain age your little ego starts to settle in, and you try to be cool. You know even as early as third grade, you try to be cool. It's funny. So our thing at my school (this was the early 80's) was who had the biggest boom box. We would take out our boom box from our cubby holes during recess and go outside and put them on our shoulder and strut around. I guess we saw it on tv, I don't know why we did that. So I remember playing Whodini's "5 Minutes of Funk" and knowing every word. I would stand there on the basketball court watching the older boys. One boy made fun of my boom box and said it was too small, and I was too poor to afford one with dual cassettes and an equalizer like his. So that was the end of that. Kids are so mean. Santa Claus brought me that fucking boom box on Christmas morning, you dick. That kid rode my bus, too. One day I was getting off the bus and these boys yell out of the window, "Go home to your shack". Well, true that, it was just about that, a shack, and I was going home to it, but damn. I did manage to have a few friends and we would play Barbies. I loved Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears, but Barbie was the best. I think because you could really use your imagination and act out scenes with your friends, and you could dress her up. It's like for a minute you escape being an ugly kid, and you become this tall beautiful perfect blonde, who the world loves.

My frizzy hair and my skinny friend.

When you are that age, your goal for the entire week is to find a friend who can spend the night with you on Friday, and to get your mom to say "YES". Did your mom say "Yes"? and we would call each other on the phone. A lot of the times my friends would say they are spending the night with someone else, and that meant a lonely weekend for me. That meant no-one to go to the movies or the skating rink with , and no fun watching cartoons on Saturday morning, eating Captain Crunch, no showing off dumb things around my house. It just meant hanging out with my sister. Ahh... my sisters. I had one who was 6 years older than me, who treated me like a dog. She was just the typical teenager that never smiled and insulted everyone and everything. Then I had the younger sister, 2 years less experienced than me. She was adored by the world. She managed to blessed with good looks and tan skin, silky straight hair, an adorable cute face with a pug nose. She had the world handed to her on a silver platter, and I had to watch it all take place. Once my aunt had a brilliant idea to enter the two of us in a Little Miss Sweetheart Pageant. So my sister won and I didn't, and meanwhile my older sister made fun of my interests. You know how they announcer will say, "This is Amy. Her interests are Candy Land, Barbies, watching cartoons and playing with her cats & dogs." It was a horrible self esteem explosion to be judged at such an innocent age by a panel of egotistical pricks, who think they know what makes a person beautiful.

Me and my grannie, and my little sister.

Oh, take me back to my grannies house where the air is holy and pure to breathe in and there is no little girl pain. Just love. Just love. Summertime comes and my mom being a banker, would drop me and my little sister off around 7:30 am at my grannies house, while she went to work. Sometimes we would just stay home with my dad, who was a mechanic out of our backyard. But that's a whole 'nother blog. He was a sweetie pie. I'll tell about him later. So "jump & run" my mom would say every morning, which meant "get your asses out of my car so I won't be late for work". So we would walk into grannies door under the car port which led right into the kitchen. There would always be a full spread of "biscuits butter and syrup". That's what grandad wanted every morning "biscuits butter and surrup" he'd say. So I mean, hell, I loved that. It was sweet and delicious. They worked together like some sort of team. He would make eggs over easy, while she made the biscuits. So tradition goes like this: We drank half coffee with half milk and a packet of sweet n low. We had one beautiful egg which was bashed. "Grandad will you bash my egg?" I don't know where the term came from, apparantly it doesn't exist in any other world, but he would take the egg and mash it with a fork until it was just all mixed together, the yolk and the egg white. As for the biscuits, well.... as soon as they come out of the oven, she would pat butter inside each biscuit and close it back up. So while the butter is melting, she is placing one or two on each of our plates. Now our job is to open the biscuit, so she can drizzle syrup over them like little pancakes. So there we are. We're all eating. Somebody sneezes and my grandad says "Scat cat your tails in the gravy". He said that every time somebody sneezed... well not to just anybody. If it was some dignified person he would probably say "Consuntite" or however you spell that word. I don't know what that means either. These are beautiful people of rural Arkansas. My grandfather had been in the same area since he was a kid. My grannie, too. She was the daughter of a sharecropper who grew up during the depression. All she ever had was love, cause her family couldn't afford anything else.

My great grandparents: The sharecropper & his wife.

She told me at one time her family lived in an abandoned boxcar. She had a sweet mama and daddy and one brother. One day her dad came walking down the dirt road after getting off work, and he was carrying a broom. She said her mother got so excited and was dancing around with joy that her husband had thought about her enough with whatever little extra money he had left, and was finally able to buy her a broom. So there she was with her new broom and as happy as any lady who would have received diamonds would be. That is pure and beautiful love. My grannie said on Christmas she would get an orange. I guess that was a rare treat for them. She told me that one time a real fat man gave her mama a pair of his pants, and her mama was able to make both her and her brother a new outfit out of those pants. Isn't that something?

But I loved my grannie so so so much. I think she is my favorite person that I have ever met in this lifetime. She has definitely had the most influence on me and I admired her so much. There's a song by Tom Waits called "Take it With Me" and I cry everytime I hear that song because it reminds me of my grannie. Her name was Beulah. You know everybody had nicknames from that era for some reason. Like my grannie's nickname was "Bootsy". Her brother's name was Earl, but everybody called him "Mutt". My grandad's name was Truman Elvis but everybody called him "Jack". Isn't that strange? I think it's interesting. We would go to the peach orchard and pick peaches and grannie would can them. My grandad grew black eyed & purple hull peas and so we shelled peas a lot until our fingers were stained purple. But what I would give to sit out under that shade tree again and shell peas with them and listen to all of their stories. They met in singing school. Which was some sort of local shape note singing class given by a church. My aunt Ruby, (one of my grandad's sisters) just passed away 2 months ago. She was just telling me when I went to Arkansas to visit her in her last days, that her brother, Pete or Roy, (?) taught the class and that she was too embarrassed to go. She thought everybody would think she would be so good at it because her brother was the teacher. I guess she felt like she wasn't that good at all. My mama plays the piano on shape notes. I couldn't tell ya any more about it other than it involves do re me fa so la ti do and each sound has a particular shape. Quiet interesting. So I'm sitting here smoking and drinking coffee with an ugly haircut. My fingernails are chipped with black polish. I have a lot of old mascara build up going on and I need to wash my face. I might be a bit hungover from the night before, and I got so sick last night that I swear I'd never drink again. Not for a while at least. I look at myself thirty years ago and think what would that little girl think of me today. I thought I was going to grow up and look like one of those models in the JCPenney catalog, and marry a rich man, and drive around in a nice car, and cook pleasant meals for my family. I never realized that you don't grow out of being what you are, you know the fat, ugly, frizzy headed person I have entered this life to be. So I make the best of it with haircuts, hair dye, lots of make-up and thousands of diets and exercise programs. I admire my daughter and my mom. They are two people that never spend more than 5 minutes on their hair, do not wear make up, and just slip into whatever is comfortable to wear. I wish I could be like that. But here I am so distraught over my hair. I want to be free and happy and beautiful like them. I guess my own thoughts make me ugly. I manifest and invite insults from others, somehow. I remember this teenage girl from church telling me when I was a kid, "Don't worry after you get into high school and college, the insults will stop." I counted on that lie. What kind of jive was she talking about because I just got made fun of at work on Friday. Which was one of the reasons I tried to cut my hair this weekend. It's like I'm always trying so hard, that it boomerangs on me. Well, it'll be about 2 or 3 weeks before this hair grows out again. I can make it. When my grannie died, I was on a pill called Paxil for anxiety and mild depression. I regret ever taking the Dr.'s prescription. It only made me live in a falsified world and act like I don't give a shit. I must've shocked and hurt a lot of people while on it, with my care-free attitude. Thank god I was able to get off of it, and the withdrawals were hell, like rice krispies popping in your brain, and severe brain fog for like 2 years afterwards. That's some bullshit medicine. I can't beleive they prescribe that to people with just mild anxiety, like it's nothing. Anyways, when my grannie died, I don't think I even cried. I went to her funeral, and it was huge. They had to hold it in a big church instead of at a funeral home, because she had touched so many people's lives. My aunt and her husband sang "Look for Me" which was written by Rusty Goodman, a real good songwriter that I admire. In the eulogy her hair was mentioned. I know it sounds miniscule as she is lying there so beautiful in her pretty silver coffin. But how she loved her big beautiful hair being so perfect was a memory that made us all grin. She died of lymphoma and went through radiation and chemotherapy. She was so sick and hurting. I said "God, grannie I can't hardly stand seeing you like this. I'm so used to seeing you in your high heels prancing around the kitchen. It's bizaare." So the next time I saw her she came rolling in her wheelchair with her high heels on just for me.

My grannie, and other people that I love.

She was so self-less. After everyone left the auditorium, I broke down when they had to close the coffin. I mean that was it. Feast your eyes, hunny, because that is it. That's the last time you will ever see her, and it hit me like a ton of bricks all at once. We went and got in the limo and then to the burial site. I just remember sitting there looking like a punk rocker amongst all of these perfect people. It may or may not have rained. I can't remember. But when we all went back to her house. I hid away in her bedroom next to the Jesus lamp, because my older sister yelled at me for some reason. She always yells at me when somebody dies. Well we have never got along that much anyway. It's like she is Alex P. Keaton and I am Mallory. That sort of thing. Anyways, I just wanted to leave and catch the train back to Austin. My heart was broken. The only love in this whole world that I have ever felt to be real just left me forever. I didn't feel bad for her, she was free. I just felt sad for me. Like Ram Dass said, "Death is like taking off a tight fitting shoe". And so I know she was free and happy. She did come to me in a dream afterwards, but she was confused about why I was taking her make-up, as if she still needed it.

My granny and grandad.

Last Thanksgiving I dressed up real pretty and I had my grannie's high heels and my daddy's sailor cap tucked away in a memory box. I went and put on her high heels, we wore the same size. I said I am going to wear these high heels every Thanksgiving. But then the heel broke off, so I had to just put them back in the box.
I wish I could find a nice man like my grandad was to my grannie. Like that June Carter - Johnny Cash love. You know?
Oh well, anyways, my coffee's now cold and I smell like cigarettes and the gin from last night. Happy "Sunday morning coming down" to ya.