disclaimer or something

A mummy-hand holding, (former) biker gang affiliating, hippie influenced semi crunchy granola mom's ramblings and reminisings on an off-kilter life

Saturday, September 10, 2016

Fiction: The House

If I could only speak, the words and tales I could tell...

I saw the Hispanic men construct my skeleton as my wooden beam bones grew taller and taller towards the sky, and I came into true being, my walls and rooms like life-giving cells. I had dreams of housing a large family, children's happy squeals as they tried to ski on their socks down the hallway, candlelit Thanksgiving feasts full of the aroma of turkey and cinnamon spice. I made friends with the young black oaks as the bent their branches towards me in the cold winter winds.

I saw an older couple walk into my doorway, smiling, dreams written all over their faces; paperwork signed and hands shook meant I was whole, complete.

Instead, I became a bed and breakfast, which was not my wish but held my interest. Each one of my rooms was decorated in lovely Laura Ashley wallpaper with matching curtains and bedding, I was catalogue-chic. I witnessed honeymooners, movie stars, people in marital trouble trying to rekindle their love. I knew my walls brought them joy, but I still felt hollow.

The economy had crashed, a mini recession, blared the big box television next to my grand fireplace. The older couple frowned and held hands, as fewer and fewer guests trickled in. With heavy hearts, they agreed to sell me.

Another older couple fell in love with my large grassy yard and winding staircase, and I was theirs and they were mine. I watched the woman as she came home at odd hours from the medical clinic, placing her worn comfortable shoes at the doorway as she collapsed on the couch, her husband having given up and fallen asleep in the master bedroom, alone again. I wished I could wrap my beams around her and tell her she was working miracles and it would all be ok, but it wasn't.

A new tv, a flatscreen, again blared on about another recession, military men deployed overseas, fatalistic news on the screen and in the living room as the man served his wife divorce papers and...papers to sell me, the home.

I sat, vacant yet hopeful,  as people trailed in and out. One of the doctor's secretaries came in and polished my stair rail, wiped down my cloudy windows, dusted my mantle. Her hope and despair matched my own. Summer turned into fall, and winter, spring, and summer again. My paint began to chip, my eaves sagged, people came and went. Someone began to sign paperwork to my elation, only to never return again.

Four years passed, so many people but so little...relationships. All I wanted was to be a home.

There was a family I kept seeing a few times a year, smiles on like the rest of them, who finally came with a pile of papers, signed. A handshake. A boy running across the hallway in socks. The windowsills were dusted, my walls painted, and a worn Bible sat on my mantle. Friends visited, in fellowship, hands were held in silent prayer. The children brought over friends who tossed beach balls around and who colored my walls.

Finally, I was a home. Thank God.

Saturday, September 3, 2016

My vagina and I aren't talking

It's not me, it's you, I told my vagina.

Let's first give a disclaimer, because as you can see, I'm gonna talk about my vagina to the strangers of the interwebby world. Why? Well, I feel as a woman that I can't talk about such private stuff so therefore I will.  I mean, if I am to be lady like and not talk about taboo items, well part of what makes us uniquely "lady" is our vaginas so they should be the hot topic. Why can people talk about, I dunno, toes, but not vaginas?

Wait. Because we are so hush hush about this stuff, and because I was bedridden sick the week of "that part" of health class, I am now thinking, half this stuff I'm about to talk about probably doesn't even revolve around my vagina. It's a blanket term for all that stuff inside that I can't see, ok?

I gave my vagina the cold shoulder after years of begging, when she simply refused to listen or even consider listening, for years I tell you. She put me through a lot of heartache, bullying, and self esteem issues solely because she wanted to do things her own way, on her own time and agenda. She caused me to get the term "late bloomer" past the time of being, well, a late bloomer. I know she had a direct hand in making me shop for training bras while my classmates were shopping for prom dresses. I know she just decided to go all punk rock rebel and decide to give me my period finally after we'd not spoken for, like, ever, and then she did it just to piss me off.  Trust me, I was pissed off, being the last girl to ever get her period...a month before I started high school, meanwhile my friends had grown-up sized boobs and had their periods since elementary school.

But then, she was ok with me. Ok, really, she made up for that puberty-will-never-happen stuff... enough that I ended up without menstrual cramps! Awesome! I even had two perfect pregnancies, with no cravings, no morning sickness, no...nothing that pregnant ladies get. I even had two natural births, under 5 hours a piece, with a quick recovery. Yay team vagina!

And then - she decided she'd had enough of this good girl thing. It was just a phase.

Two years ago, I got an abnormal pap smear. You never expect that word, abnormal, and so I quickly brushed it off, while secretly worrying. So they sent me in for another pap and more intensive lab work on the scrapings of my innards and....

I got the call. "You have HPV." You know, WARTS. In. My. Vagina. My husband didn't have them so who, when, where....?

My nonchalant tipsy ditsy college years came back to me, a past I had wanted to forget. I mean, doesn't the Bible kinda say when you're born again you are born anew, you are not your past? Then why the hell was my past coming back full force and then some to haunt me? I wasn't that "bad" in college, only a very few umm, partners, but then one of them... I'm sure he cheated. A lot. Did he give them to me? Was he still out giving out warts for free? He was the worst, and still occasionally haunts my dreams, my soul, heart, and memories, but I had like 99% gotten over how awful that al was and forgiven myself for staying with him as long as I did. And now i'd have a part of his ...his... evil with me, possibly forever. I wasn't, well, one of them, the kind of girl you'd expect to get HPV. I knew women who were like twenty, thirty times more promiscuous and "bad" than I that had got off scott-free.

Then I got the call that it was the most aggressive type of HPV, the type that is responsible for 90% of cervical cancer, and to come in for a biopsy.

Then I got the biopsy and they said they saw something abnormal, that drasted word again.

Then,  with my foot broken (amongst about twenty other really crappy things going on in my life and those around me) I wheeled in for a minor surgery to remove the abnormality.

It was one stage below cancer, but like as "scary" as can be before it is cancer, which is scary enough. Sure, my vagina hadn't killed me or sent me into the world of cancer, but I was not very happy with her.

A year passed, HPV gone, no more abnormalities as of yet, tra la la, a happy life, happy vagina.

Until....

Since I don't get cramps, I do consider myself lucky, but then you have to wear pantyliners around your time of the month so you don't end up, I dunno, in the middle of the desert, wearing white pants, surrounded by a judging crowd, as your new red stain grows. And let's say my period as always been a little unpredictable, but predictably unpredictable if that makes sense.

But just ten days after lovely old aunt flo, I go to the restroom and screech out, "Huh? What the hell" as I huff and puff over to the cabinet for a pad. Maybe it is just a random three second spotting.

Nope.

It lasts four days.

And then, between the fourteen-days ago period began and 38 days afterwards, I've had bleeding for three or more days three times and guess what happened today? Yeah. Oh and I'm mildly anemic so I'm just having a field day, a bloody exhausted field day.

So maybe today has a reason. Yesterday I went to my OBGYN because, well, my vagina hates me and he feels around and has a look see (and  a pregnancy test and another pap as is routine, yay, with extra days to wait on results due to the holiday)  and finds...

A polyp. Like a polyp bigger than a pencil eraser. It could be the problem maker, but he isn't too sure, but isn't worried that he isn't too sure. Meanwhile my low BP (I'm usually 116/65) is at 138/75 because I'm a stress case. I was raised in a home where anxiety was our religion, fear our God, so it kinda stuck. I'm thinking, you aren't sure this is the problem? And you just removed a creepy chunk of flesh from me? And I might just bleed some more?

So today when I discovered I'd be in pantyliners again (might as well buy stock), I looked down and told my vagina, it's over. Its not me. Nope, it's you.