There’s snow on the mountains. Undoubtedly, this is the last winter I'll spend here, in this valley of the Blue mountains of Oregon.
I’m preparing to leave. Weekends, the house is spotless in anticipation of showing it to someone who will buy it from me. Weekdays, too, the house isn’t not spotless, it’s just more cluttered, gloves and a hat tossed carelessly, but it’s warm and the lights are on, sidewalk shoveled, a candle burning. Each week, twenty-some kids that will stomp up my steps to (always) knock first, banging a guitar against the screen door on their way in. No coats, not yet, even, usually they’re coming from after-school sports, flushed, they glow.
When did I start calling them “my kids?” Recently, months, not more than a year ago. The propriety would have offended my better sense before that. Rules have changed, though, now that I’m leaving. I allow myself this tad bit of sentimentality, proprietorship, after all, they’re the last, at least here, of how many? Two, three hundred? Sometimes as many as fifty a year, plus the children at the schools, starting in 1988 when I first settled here, but minus the four years away, in Eugene, and the six months, later, in California.
Everything’s being tallied these days. Interest rates, values, accounts receivables. Numbers are easier compared to the lists running through my head, nights, now, too, waking me up; I can’t always fall back asleep. I raised two boys here, after all, and although neither took a first step, it is where we first watched Top Gun, where we discovered Tupac, where we built the tree fort. What else? The lists are endless; my fear of leaving something out.
Between us, yes, we’ll remember. Not everything, of course. We’ll reinvent our history same as any other family. Charlotte did not die here, for instance, at least not for the first time, that happened on Northeast 55th Street in Portland in 1981. Ponyboy did, however, become a hero here, since the boys were old enough (5th and 1st grade) to listen through the narrative and claim him as their own. Both boys dated here for the first time, Josh liking Amy and Chris craving Kat. They came of age to drive. Chris had a rave. Josh joined the marines. They’re both DJs. I played a lot of records.
Michael lived here for two years. It was the first time I’d been fingerprinted, qualifying as a foster mother for Michael. Sean had breakfast here every single morning for two school years. Cameron stayed two, three, sometimes six or seven nights a week for numeorous months until his father returned from wherever he'd been working, out of town, somewhere, and we never saw him again. Erika died at St. Charles in Bend, I’d just picked Bono out of a litter, so he was a pup, hanging in the Blazer for hours, each trip over, while I watched her die. Nick stayed here, Erin flew in from New York, Alfredo from Camp Pendleton, Spirit and Ed showed up from Eugene and hated it, got freaked and left early. Michelle drove from Portland and showed up frazzled and scared (all those mountains) grooved over my totally cute yard and my totally cute house and my totally cute dogs (and slept with my husband, here, which maybe wasn't the first time). Lily stayed an evening and discovered that peppermint ice cream really does cure the fear of thunder storms.
My Jello party rocked.
In the fall of 1988, I walked my boys to school for their first day, and came home and sat down at the kitchen table to start to write. To begin my life as a writer. I suppose I accomplished a great deal that day, I have the journals, the notes of “The Catfish Receiver,” and “When Push Comes to Shove.” They don’t SUCK, they got me into Ralph Salisbury’s creative writing class two years later, but they reveal so much about the still-young, still not thirty year old woman sitting at that table, hovering close to the wood stove (already? In September?) not at all yet acclimated to the local climate.
But I am now. There’s snow on the mountains but we’re weeks from the cold snap. The local electric company sends me a bill for a seven hundred dollar deposit on my account. I’ve been here 15 years, but that matters nothing. Never has my power been disconnected, but that matters nothing, either. There are a great deal of things that don’t matter, here.
So, I prepare to leave, hoping the things I am will matter somewhere else. Who I am, perhaps. Many of the firsts, here, are behind me. I filed my first restraining order here, I enforced it here, I refused the collect calls from jail here. I had my number changed here. I emailed the ACLU for the first time from here. I wrote two novels here. I started painting here. I learned to say goodbye, on terms scary and uncertain.
At forty three years old, I’m leaving a world behind. When I was seventeen I would have had nothing but disdain for someone like me, today, with my fears, my calculations. Never trust anyone over thirty.
Things change.Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat, that’s the way it is.
Notes: Charlotte's Web by EB White "Ponyboy" from The Outsiders by SE Hinton "rat-tat-tat" from "Changes" by Tupac Shakur
2001
I’m preparing to leave. Weekends, the house is spotless in anticipation of showing it to someone who will buy it from me. Weekdays, too, the house isn’t not spotless, it’s just more cluttered, gloves and a hat tossed carelessly, but it’s warm and the lights are on, sidewalk shoveled, a candle burning. Each week, twenty-some kids that will stomp up my steps to (always) knock first, banging a guitar against the screen door on their way in. No coats, not yet, even, usually they’re coming from after-school sports, flushed, they glow.
When did I start calling them “my kids?” Recently, months, not more than a year ago. The propriety would have offended my better sense before that. Rules have changed, though, now that I’m leaving. I allow myself this tad bit of sentimentality, proprietorship, after all, they’re the last, at least here, of how many? Two, three hundred? Sometimes as many as fifty a year, plus the children at the schools, starting in 1988 when I first settled here, but minus the four years away, in Eugene, and the six months, later, in California.
Everything’s being tallied these days. Interest rates, values, accounts receivables. Numbers are easier compared to the lists running through my head, nights, now, too, waking me up; I can’t always fall back asleep. I raised two boys here, after all, and although neither took a first step, it is where we first watched Top Gun, where we discovered Tupac, where we built the tree fort. What else? The lists are endless; my fear of leaving something out.
Between us, yes, we’ll remember. Not everything, of course. We’ll reinvent our history same as any other family. Charlotte did not die here, for instance, at least not for the first time, that happened on Northeast 55th Street in Portland in 1981. Ponyboy did, however, become a hero here, since the boys were old enough (5th and 1st grade) to listen through the narrative and claim him as their own. Both boys dated here for the first time, Josh liking Amy and Chris craving Kat. They came of age to drive. Chris had a rave. Josh joined the marines. They’re both DJs. I played a lot of records.
Michael lived here for two years. It was the first time I’d been fingerprinted, qualifying as a foster mother for Michael. Sean had breakfast here every single morning for two school years. Cameron stayed two, three, sometimes six or seven nights a week for numeorous months until his father returned from wherever he'd been working, out of town, somewhere, and we never saw him again. Erika died at St. Charles in Bend, I’d just picked Bono out of a litter, so he was a pup, hanging in the Blazer for hours, each trip over, while I watched her die. Nick stayed here, Erin flew in from New York, Alfredo from Camp Pendleton, Spirit and Ed showed up from Eugene and hated it, got freaked and left early. Michelle drove from Portland and showed up frazzled and scared (all those mountains) grooved over my totally cute yard and my totally cute house and my totally cute dogs (and slept with my husband, here, which maybe wasn't the first time). Lily stayed an evening and discovered that peppermint ice cream really does cure the fear of thunder storms.
My Jello party rocked.
In the fall of 1988, I walked my boys to school for their first day, and came home and sat down at the kitchen table to start to write. To begin my life as a writer. I suppose I accomplished a great deal that day, I have the journals, the notes of “The Catfish Receiver,” and “When Push Comes to Shove.” They don’t SUCK, they got me into Ralph Salisbury’s creative writing class two years later, but they reveal so much about the still-young, still not thirty year old woman sitting at that table, hovering close to the wood stove (already? In September?) not at all yet acclimated to the local climate.
But I am now. There’s snow on the mountains but we’re weeks from the cold snap. The local electric company sends me a bill for a seven hundred dollar deposit on my account. I’ve been here 15 years, but that matters nothing. Never has my power been disconnected, but that matters nothing, either. There are a great deal of things that don’t matter, here.
So, I prepare to leave, hoping the things I am will matter somewhere else. Who I am, perhaps. Many of the firsts, here, are behind me. I filed my first restraining order here, I enforced it here, I refused the collect calls from jail here. I had my number changed here. I emailed the ACLU for the first time from here. I wrote two novels here. I started painting here. I learned to say goodbye, on terms scary and uncertain.
At forty three years old, I’m leaving a world behind. When I was seventeen I would have had nothing but disdain for someone like me, today, with my fears, my calculations. Never trust anyone over thirty.
Things change.Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat, that’s the way it is.
Notes: Charlotte's Web by EB White "Ponyboy" from The Outsiders by SE Hinton "rat-tat-tat" from "Changes" by Tupac Shakur
2001
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