I was watching Project Runway the other day, in which aspiring clothing designers compete in a reality show competition. Not one of my favorite shows, but I was sitting there all lazy and watching it. And Tim Gunn, whose job it is to make all of the competing designers feel insecure about their work right before they are judged?
He looked at the work of one designer and said this . . .
“It’s like you have a piece of coal stuck up your butt! Make it into a diamond and pull it out!”
That’s cruel poetry, right there.
Snort.
Cruel poetry always makes me think.
There is a version of my childhood that I sometimes tell shallowy friends in which we come off all brave and heroic and Little House in the Big Woods. Cut off from society, fending for ourselves, going back to nature. No phone, no TV, heating our house with wood. Raising chickens and rabbits and living off the land. There was even a pony!
We were all kinds of awesome and independent!
It was like a Laura Ingalls Wilder adventure!
With food stamps.
YAY!
Yeah, that’s one version.
And then?
There was the coal.
At some point? My parents decided that heating our house with wood, as fucked up as that was? Wasn’t quite shitty enough. And so one day, a large truck drove up into our yard and dumped a half ton of coal in a solid shiny ebony pile.
Coal? It burns hot.
But coal? It burns filthy.
I was, quite seriously, never clean again.
The dust and the smoke from the coal? It settled everywhere. It sank its powdery persistent self into every crevice. It settled and stayed and would not be washed away. The smell of it and the residue of it permeated every porous item. Drifted and lingered on every flat surface.
Our house sank beneath the weight of the filth.
My clothing, my bedding, my books, my pets, my hair.
My skin.
There was just no getting clean.
Plus also?
My parents sucked at keeping the house warm, even with the coal.
So every winter our pipes froze. And then just stayed frozen.
In case you were wondering about the toilet? Because I know I would be . . .
It froze as well. Not the wider pipes that took waste away, but the incoming pipes? Frozen. And so every morning? We would have to crack the layer of ice that had formed over the toilet’s water. All of us would use the toilet one after the other, and then we would pour a bucket of water into the toilet from high above to activate the flush mechanism.
That was way fucking fun.
All of this meant that our water? Had to come from elsewhere. So part of our days over the coldest months? Involved heading out in the drifted snow to the houses of people my mother thought judged least. Dragging a sled.
And in that sled? Big buckets.
Which we would fill with water at the least-judgy people’s houses.
And then drag home.
In that fucking sled.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to transport large quantities of water on a fucking plastic yellow sled?
Sigh.
So the water we had was of the freezing cold bucketed sort. Hot water? Was only available if you managed to boil some of the bucketed water over the coal fire.
So really? There was no getting clean.
Ever.
There was grit between my teeth when I woke in the morning. Fine black etchings set into the childish lines around my eyes. Gray at my scalp. The prints of my fingers and palms set off in constant silhouette against my skin. I coughed up blackness. I sneezed blackness.
I lived in blackness.
Good times, people.
Good times.
This morning?
Kallan was forced to shred some cheese for her scrambled eggs with a cheese grater. We tend to buy the pre-shredded cheese, and so Kallan was all pissed off at how much work cheese was turning out to be.
“Why,” she asked me as she waved the cheese grater in the air angrily, “am I being forced to use this olden tool? This is ridiculous! I’m like a pioneer woman of cheese!”
Snort!
She looked down at her hands in disgust, “My hands are all covered with cheese damp! I’m all dirt-attacked by cheese!”
And she went to pump some hand soap into her palm. She turned on the hot water. Washed her hands.
She turned to stare at me, “Buying me shredded cheese? That seems like the least you could do.”
That right there?
Cruel poetry.
My life is filled with cruel poetry.
Sometimes?
It feels like I spend my life with memories stuck up my ass.
Like a lump of coal.
Still working on that diamond thing.
Sigh.
Not buying shredded cheese? Mom that is so inhumane…hahaha Kidding. I bet you wanted to sit her down and give her the “When I was your age…” schpeel with a side of “You don’t know how lucky you have it” I got that a lot when I was a kid and I thought that we had it rough with a station wagon that was held together with a bandaide and a cheap father who wouldn’t turn on the heat until the glass INSIDE the house frosted.
I’m sorry you had to go through that as a child!
You seem awfully close to offering a hug.
Stop that.
But thank you.
I can remember my mother telling me about how hard she had it growing up (and she did) when I acted all indignant about the horrible things they made me do as a child, like pulling weeds or sweeping the garage. Once when I was around 10 or 11 my father got so sick of the attitude that he put me and Sister Number 1 (Number 2 wasn’t here yet) in the car and drove us over to the shanty part of the city and made us look at all the people sitting in the heat on their rotting stoops, in poverty. I was so uncomfortable but will never forget it. I think it’s hard for kids to recognize any reality outside of their own. Okay, I almost took that too far and might have made this great post into something different than you intended. Hmm.
I post what I post.
And then the comments?
Often go in new and lovely directions, as different people bring their own stuff to the words I have written.
I love that part.
I think if you can squeeze just a little harder…a 4 carat, tiffany cut diamond might just pop out…Now if Mark can poop out the platinum band, you are all set.
Hee hee!
Damn I would have never survived living at your house.
In fact because of my disease we are thinking of moving someplace warmer. My body just cant handle the cold.
As my adult body cannot handle cold!
I always think my weird allergy to cold is tied to my childhood, somehow.
I’m sure that’s not possible . . . but it feels connected.
I think being cold can trigger a trauma response to memory in your body—seriously.
I do sometimes want to travel back in time and stab your father–WHOA! That one shows some unknown violent streak I must have. Or maybe it is the mother in me wanting to rescue the little girl that you were.
Ok instead of being all stabby, I will just travel back in time and scoop all of you children up and replant you somewhere happy and safe–
Now I must go research time travel machines on Ebay (Napolean Dynamite)
But then?
If you go back in time and scoop me up and make me safe?
I would not be who I am today.
So there is that.
reading kris’s posts make me super violent, too. but i think it’s in a good way. or at least? i’ve decided that’s so.
*I* think it’s connected, especially since it showed up right after you had your daughters.
Dr. Adrienne is in! Please leave your money with the receptionist on your way out.
I have limited funds.
Let me check my pockets . . .
Gum, paper clip, two marbles, and 14 cents.
Will that do?
so what’s the verdict? will kallan be provided shredded cheese for all the days of her life?
Kallan says, “Probably no.”
i agree with kal how can you be so cruel? i never buy grated cheese ever, i just don’t do it or sliced. i’m sure that will change as the kids get older. i remember the scene in superman where superman squeezes a piece of coal so tightly he makes a diamond for lois lane, not with his ass though. once upon a time at 890 i think, when the boys had the big bedroom upstairs someone decided it would be a good idea to scrub off the layer of coal sludge coating the walls. the idea wasn’t mine as you know i was not a cleaning type of kid. of course what happened was we made huge smudge circles and swirls of coal dirt on the wall like an abstract painting…and much laughter and tears…in fact i remember laughing until we cried as part of my childhood as well as much crying.
I remember laughter, but it gets overshadowed.
And like that abstract wall-painting of coal residue and soapy water?
Things are covered and lost.
By reading this post I realized something. I am Kallan and Maj in the way that my parents protected me from my mom’s childhood the way you protect your girls. There was LOADS of bad in my mom’s life. maybe I will explode those moments the best I know them (or can imagine them). They are hugely ugly. And there was crap on my dad’s side. And my parents had pretty much no money when I was a kid.
I was unaware of any of this until I was at LEAST high school age (maybe even college age).
Grating my own cheese? Yes, I would have said I was all olden and ridiculous and I would have informed my mother that it does COME that way now days. And she would have chuckled at me and told me to keep grating.
And I would have rolled my eyes and groaned because I? Have never had knives thrown at me on Christmas.
I forget sometimes that my mom came from a “broken, abusive home”. I forget that our family has “that” in it. I feel so removed from that because I personally never felt any of it, so I forget it is so close to my family.
And that is probably a wonderful thing.