Great, now Kenny Chesney is playing in my ears via I-pod, “Somewhere in the sun”…reminds me of the best summer ever, the last one. I called this song my “Vacation” as I floated in our backyard pool. Never in a million years did I think this soon after summer I would be alone, no backyard pool, no beautiful trees surrounding me, no mother in law…no husband.
Overnight, ten years gone, again. I did this once before only it was Natalie Embruglia singing “Torn” and it was true of my life and my leaving. This one, Kenny…”Somewhere in the sun” seems like a memory of a better time but really, without the floating and the song, there were not better times.
I guess the better that I remember about Kenny is the summer I was able to spend with my girls and the few friends I keep. The pool, my girls, tanning all of their friends and mine, grilling out and just hanging out. I have always worked, too much really and never really had time to just hang, Kenny reminds me of the time I spent just hanging.
I guess that is what I am supposed to be doing now, hanging, getting well, whatever! I don’t feel like this is hanging, it doesn’t feel like Kenny and does not sound like summer.
Keith Urban, “Days go by” Lexi’s favorite song, I love it too, the carnival in Versailles this summer, which is what I think of first. The swings, the song playing, I look back and see Lexi, Alie and Ashley all with hands in the air, they feel and look like birds. I wish they were birds able to fly alone, instead, they are children and I am the mother and I know, but they don’t, that I am getting ready to change everything. Life will not feel like flying in a minute, right around the corner I am leaving my husband and all of our lives, this will be time number two for the first four girls and the first for Lexi, makes me wish the song never played and that I never thought of them as birds at the carnival. Real life is so hard when you are the leader, if you fall, you get dog piled.
I remember when Mark and I bought the house. I had taken Abby a few years ago to my house I grew up in, the address I will never forget 1825 Chamberry Dr. Olathe, KS. I took her there because I could see that she struggles in her life because she can’t forget or let go. I used to have that problem, probably still do, ok, I do, but I used to let people know. I don’t let people know how hard it is anymore.
I told Abby that I didn’t want her to spend her life the way I did, I spent my life trying to go home to 1825 Chamberry Dr. That is where I lived with my family until my Mom gave me to foster care. I never got to say goodbye to that house and dream of it still today. I told her that even when I was there, things were not good. I had a mother that drank too much a step dad that hated me, sisters and a brother that fought all the time or moved out and didn’t come home as much as I had wished. My sister Sue came but my brother married a psycho and maybe he drank too much or something but he wasn’t my brother that left when he did come home. The point is, 1825 Chamberry was not all great memories, just memories and that’s all. I grew up knowing only 1825 Chamberry as somewhere I never got to leave, I was forced out and took with me all I had left, memories. The memories belong to 1825, which is the only place I know to keep them, in that house so I took the house and all that went with it with me in my life and all of my thoughts.
I wanted to go back when I grew up and fix that house, make it the greatest house on the block full with children and better times. There would be no crying mother, no messes, no brother that wasn’t a brother anymore, no sister that hated my mother coming to visit because she worried about us, not really, I think she said she was worried about us to really make the point she was gone because she was hurt and by saying she was worried or acting worried about us, she could remind my mother she failed her and that is why she married and left.
My sister Katie never did come back, she left and married too. I don’t remember Katie coming back at all. She must have but I don’t recall. We had a pool in that house and a fence. My house I just left had a pool, no fence but a pool. My pool growing up could have been great but like everything my step dad and mother did it was a good idea but never really worked out. There was the pool but it was yucky all around it, the deck and cement were never really finished so you had to walk around muddy, yucky stuff all the time, it all got in the pool and there was never a pool cover, it sat black all winter long and when the spring came, frog eggs and a million frogs and snakes sometimes too.
So when I took Abby to my house, we arrived and there was a young boy, Hispanic, standing outside. The boy and his dad were outside working on a car. I stopped and we both got out. I was excited to see someone home, all of my previous trips through the years consisted of me driving by a million times and sitting in my car, crying my eyes out across the street about things that must only speak to the spirit or soul of a person because there were never words that could come out, just a gut wrenching convulsion of emotion pouring out of my entire body. I never cried hard enough to just be 8 again. Every time, I had to go home and just keep all memories in the house. I never wanted to forget 1825 or how far from my grade school it was or how close to my neighbors or what the trees looked like or how it smelled there. I am 8 each time I go. Not sure why 8, it must have been a good year or something, at least better than the rest.
This time, I get out with my daughter. We ask the boy if we can go into the back yard. I explain to him how excited I am that he is home. I ask him if he lives there, he says yes. I tell him my name is Jen and I grew up there; I introduced him to my daughter and then asked if the pool was still in the back yard. He tells us it is not but I ask if I can see the backyard anyway. He says yes, we all walk back.
I feel like a time machine has taken me back, I am 8 and I am walking into my backyard. Through the new cedar privacy fence I go…there, on the left, that is where my step dad built a little covered wooden shed like thing that he never finished so I used it for my fort. I had secret meetings there, with all of my friends. It was our place, my place, out of the way of everything. We had drinks there, it was home base for about every game we ever played, shelter from the rain but you could still stay there and watch a storm and not get in trouble for being wet…around the corner to the pool…no, there isn’t a pool. I look at Abby and realize I am crying and shaking so bad that the boy asks me if I am ok, I told him….I was 8, I tell Abby I was 8 here, this was where I was 8, I really wanted them to know I really was 8 in this place. I can hardly get the words out and I am not sure they understand what I am trying to say.
I am telling Abby, through my 8 year old eyes, how great this place was, there was Rodney, playing king of the hill on the dirt mound when the pool was being dug out there was Maria, Sandy, Tracy, Cindy, Billy, Robbin, Tuffy…we were all there.
I have to collect myself to speak to the boy and I tell him one day, I want to come back and make the house the best one on the block and put a pool back in the yard and a new fence, I realize as I am speaking with him, through the waves of convulsions, the fence is so damaged, there is very little of it left really. I swear I never noticed it all of the other times I had been there.
I tell Abby, see, I am not 8 and I don’t live here. Please, don’t walk through your life and miss it simply trying to get home to a place you no longer live. I can see that Abby really hangs onto feelings and memories the way I do, she associates everything with a feeling and the location of the feeling. Abby’s 1825 is Belton Missouri, where we lived when I divorced her dad.
I thank the boy, he continues to ask me if I am ok and if there is anything he can do, I tell him thank you, not answering any of his questions, I tell him to remember, please, that I, Jen, was 8 years old in this yard and there was a pool. I thank him a million more times, just moving my mouth trying to keep him and Abby listening to something because I don’t want to leave, I really want to feel 8 again. I can’t if they keep talking and I know I have to leave and I feel 8 leaving and I am panicking with all of my insides. I turn to start walking away…8 is gone but not before passing my fort one last time….8 stayed there, 30 something with children walked through the broken down fence, I look back and miss 8…desperately.
So, I have this great house with this great pool, I tell Abby, our first summer in the house, how things must have come full circle. It’s not 1825 but it is a really nice pool and a great house, one of the nicest in the neighborhood. I want for her to know I am at rest; I want her to be at rest seeing that life, no matter how long it takes, always comes full circle.
Now, the circle will be broken, I am leaving, no pool, no great house, no peace…still trying to go home to 1825? I don’t know, all I know is it doesn’t make sense. This was going to be the place I never moved away from. I guess I thought magic was going to happen because there was a pool and kids and a great house. No, in the house I put my stupid marriage, all of my stuff and my kids. I tried really hard to make it home, in my heart, soul and being. It never really was. I guess I am still not home.
I imagine my address in heaven, if I ever get there, will be 1825 Chamberry dr. everyone will be there but it will be the way it should be and I would be 8 there and it would stay that way forever.
In real life, I leave, just because my end has surfaced, against my own wishes, my will takes over. My will is stronger than I ever thought about being. It’s like a separate thing from me; I am scared, my will is never afraid of anything. My will makes change, which I am very afraid of. My will doesn’t cry, I do, so, my will finds a way and I am out.
Out, that is what I am but I can’t seem to locate my will here in this place I am today. I don’t need to be dog piled; I have to find my will and stand back up and lead the troops to safety. I am not doing a very good job, I can’t find my will easily, it takes everything I can muster to make the girls think I know what I am doing and that I am at perfect peace with it. I don’t’ want them to be afraid.
I remember always waiting for my mother to look like she knew what she was doing, she never did. It made me scared of everything, only inside. On the outside, my will spoke to my mother, it told her she would be ok and so would we. It told her not to be afraid and that I loved her and everything would be ok. My will didn’t cry when my mom didn’t come home at night, it just stayed at home waiting for her to see if there was something she needed; I on the other hand, was terrified. I didn’t want her to just disappear one day, I was afraid she wouldn’t make it so my will cleaned the house and made everything orderly so when she did come home, it would be so nice she wanted to stay and never leave again.
I always started with her bedroom, that way when she came home and went right into her room, it would be a nice place to be that was safe. She would wake up and realize she wanted to stay and then I wouldn’t be afraid anymore. Too bad she never noticed, if she did, she would never have given me to foster care. Thank God for my will, it was not sad to leave my mom or 1825 Chamberry, my will was on a new adventure waiting to see what came next. I went to sleep at night and so did my will and I dreamed of home…1825 Chamberry…8…friends…I cried and still do.
Today, I am looking for my will, I know it is here somewhere or I would still have a pool and a yard and the appearance of the full circle life makes. No, I am here and there is a missing will all of the sudden.
I can’t look to my own children like my mother looked to me, lost, hopeless and afraid. I want my children to know I am strong; I want them to know my will, not me, not completely.
I am on a new journey, I am waiting for my will to lead the way, it has never failed me before, it’s the waiting that is so difficult. I wish I could just plan my will to arrive, right in time before I got scared or hopeless or appeared to be lost…too late, I know I have been exposed…I know it will come back, I will just wait. Tomorrow is a whole new day, I might just wake up and there it is, with a plan to get me out of this mess, out before the dog pile begins…out before the girls notice, I am afraid.
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