today, operating on zero sleep (see previous entry), i'm having these mild, hallucination-like memory states. random images from my entire life keep coming back to me...very vividly.
remembering the way my arms and hands looked at 7. some of the same freckles are still there. a set of PJ's my grandma gave me for christmas when i was about 3. (i think she made them, actually. until i was about 12 my mom, my aunt helen, or my grandmother made almost all of my clothing; the rest were hand-me-downs from when my sisters, cousins, or the girl next door were my size...side memory of standing next to my mom's sewing machine with pins pricking me everywhere, draped with some godawful knit fabric...) the PJ's were flannel, with pants and a smocked top, a white background printed with red hearts and "my heart belongs to daddy" all over them. i refused to wear any other pajamas until those wore out, and i screamed when my mom threw them away. sitting on my mom's lap before the start of my first day of kindergarten, for a very rare moment of affection from her, and the smell of her coffee, and me feeling ferocious and thinking, "finally, school!" sitting on a balcony railing in a very old vermont town hall (called "the old round church" in richmond, vermont), with my wedding dress draped over the side, feet dangling over a storey's worth of air, leaning back into my new husband's arms for a picture, my arms full of roses, jokingly whispering to him not to push me over the side, and him laughing and holding my waist a little tighter. graveside, at 16, for the burial of my grandfather, who lived with us for about 3 months before he died, and died in our house, in my brother's old bedroom. walking away and stumbling with crying when i saw the mound of dirt and the lid of the concrete vault, discreetly placed to the side and covered with fake green grass, and my sister anne putting her arm around me and helping me walk to the car. 2 years later, at anne's funeral, crying harder because i remembered her helping me before and she wasn't there, feeling ridiculous and fake because my mom and my other 2 sisters had insisted that i get a new dress for the "occasion," and i hated hated hated wearing dresses, and someone had the bright idea that the family members should each place a single red rose on her casket, and i had to rest my forehead on the shiny oak surface before i could walk away, still feeling self-conscious and on display. soooo many people were at anne's funeral...people flew in from all over the world. the funeral directors had to move her body to the church for the viewing and the rosary because their chapel wasn't big enough. and me feeling completely fake, dressed in a not-me dress with big 1985 shoulder pads and tights and shiny black shoes and permed hair, yet naked in grief and still ferocious at 18, an atheist cowed by my parents' grief into miming the rosary, my lips moving and my fingers sliding over the beads, but inside seething about this huge 3-day pageant of a catholic funeral that anne never would have wanted, in front of this crowd, this "audience" of AP luminaries. meeting them all, shaking countless hands, and one of them telling me, at the luncheon afterward, how nice it must be for me, to be skinny enough to pull off a dropped-waist dress. and me speechless, wanting to bash her face in, my sister dead, hating this dress get-up, hating this person who probably just didn't know what else to say, and somehow understanding that and not bashing her face in, longing to get home to my room and my blue jeans and the sanctity of angry music played loud on my brother's old stereo.
i still don't like participating in ritual for the sake of ritual, or for the sake of someone else's feelings. the dishonesty of pretending to believe when i don't, chafes too much. it's only over the last 2-3 years that i've gotten over my distaste for wearing costumes, skirts of any kind, makeup, hair dye, and all things cutely feminine. some of you have witnessed that change, perhaps without realizing it, almost certainly without realizing how much it makes me laugh at myself, to wear barrettes and sparkly bracelets and skirts and red hair now bleached hair soon to be something else hair. it's odd, because i *loved* acting in high school, loved everything about being backstage and onstage, in costume, and was planning to continue acting in college, but after she died i never acted again. or haven't yet; i stopped playing the clarinet that year too (i had been 1st chair in the GRJC concert band), and the piano a couple of years later. i also changed my major from english to chemistry, and quit writing for the GRJC paper because anne was a journalist, and had written for that paper, been managing editor, and i couldn't be in the newsroom without thinking of her and knowing i'd never measure up. by the time i was 20 i had given up writing almost completely, and didn't pick up a pen again, to speak of, until i was 29 and going out of my mind with trying to figure out how to be married, how to be a wife, how to have a husband (never did get the hang of that). an odd bit of symmetry: that's the same age anne was, when she died.
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