I nap in my comfy chair in the early morning while the Kinglet gets ready for school. He's mostly self-sufficient now; I just have to set an alarm to remind myself to remind him to Do All the Things (brush your teeth/hair, put on deodorant, open the front door, be ready for your ride). Then I call the Empress down, make her breakfast, pack her lunch, etc etc, and get her ready for the bus (which now stops direct at our door, thanks to my disabled self-advocacy!) Once I see her off I can usually slip back into my chair for another coupla hours--a priviledge I gladly indulge in, given my current state of ill health. Those late morning naps can be so freaking sweet.

But the Empress has been home 3 out of 5 days this week (tummy problems sandwiched between MLK Day and school inservice).

In my chair this morning, waiting for the alarm, I found myself wondering what Mom did when I was sick, or had off from school. Did it screw up her week? How did she handle it? One of those things I can't ask her about now, and have to piece together for myself. I hate that.

When I was very little, Mom worked as a waitress. Nights and weekends at a place called The Royal Exchange, up the hill from our house, in Pike Creek. Now it's a Ruby Tuesdays. I have exactly two memories of this part of her life:

1) I remember crying, broken-hearted on the stairs as she was preparing to leave for work one evening. I must have been about 3 or 4. It was a hard time for me I guess, losing that constant access to her.

She was so beautiful, then. Like, truly, glamour magazine pretty.

It must have been hard for my father, too, because I remember he was jealous a lot. I can just imagine--Mom being out late, terminally pretty, serving drunk dudes, while Dad was home alone with three kids. There were a lot of fights at that time. But I digress.

2) I remember one of her co-workers feeding me fruit from the cocktail bar. Maraschino cherries and oranges. First time I ever tried an orange (that i'm aware of).

Then at some point, Mom gave up waitressing to start her cleaning business. Another thing I can't remember, how she got the idea. Someone she knew was doing it, I guess. Anyway. I was still quite young.

3) I remember she took me with her once because I was sick, and she couldn't find a sitter. Her client was home at the time--probably the lady who had Fibromialgia before it was quite as common. I was watching TV or coloring while Mom cleaned. The lady said she liked my nightgown, that it was her favorite color. "Pink?" I asked. "Yes, salmon pink." My first introduction to nuances of color.

[So I guess she used sitters.  Who? Mrs. Markovchik? Mary Ellen Welby up the street? Sweet sweet lady. I used to stop and talk to her on the way home from middle school. She remembered my favorite candy bar was Three Musketeers. Her daughter, Michelle, died young of an aneuyrism. Can you image that, having your one and only child die before you? That's always haunted me. But anyway. The boy I liked in Kindergarten and 1st Grade, Robbie Boyle, also lived in our neighborhood, in the yellow house--his mom watched me now and then too.]

But one of the reasons she stuck with her cleaning business was the flexibility. She could move jobs around, come at different times or on different days, or not work at all if I was home from school or whatever. So that's probably how she managed it.

But Also, I know I was left on my own much earlier than I can imagine leaving my kids. We've only just started allowing the Kinglet to stay in the house by himself at 13. I was a latchkey kid at least as early as 4th grade, if not earlier. A whole day at home--or even half a day, a few hours, while Mom did a house--is not inconceivable. Possibly with one or both of my brothers in charge, since if it was a school closing, chances are they were home as well. [At least once they transferred to the public school. Note to self: find out when Shawn started at Christiana.]

Anyway. I started my day with my head full of these things. Seemed like something I wanted to write down.

So, anyway.

During my convalescence this winter, I decided to reclaim the basement. Ever since the great flood of '11 it's only been used for storage, on account of our fears of mold and dust vis-a-vis my allergies and poor health. At one point The God-King made an effort to make it more habitable by painting the cement in Kills (Killz?), but he didn't make it past the vestibule at the base of the stairs--an area I annexed for The Empress' art supplies--but for the most part we just go down to get food from the deep freezer.

At some point, though, I flipped a switch. When my parents lived here, the basement was an important part of the functional living space. It's a good, big, and--most importantly--a quiet space, ideal for me to sneak off and work (whatever that means) whether or not other (i.e. smaller) people are afoot in the house.

It's also a space that has long-held good energy for me--happy home feels from the days when it was our original family room, with the huge old turn-dial TV that had just thirteen channels (one of which was static). This is the space where, in my very oldest memories, I watched Davy Crockett on comfy sofas with my big brothers. And then later, different kinds of happy from when it was my bedroom as a teenager: just coming into myself, shucking off the trauma of childhood to discover I was a young woman with certain merits. This is the space where I wrote my first poetry; where I aced my way through high school; where I had my first encounters with desire.

After everything I've been through this year, medically, I decided, fuck it. At least I know now it's not the allergens giving me these headaches. I can't imagine my condition can be made any worse from spending time down there, especially if I pop a Loratadine in the morning, and make an effort to get some fresh air in equal measures.  And so, from the moment the post-op restrictions were lifted, I've been clearing space down here, reclaiming land from the wild west of insect life and gigantic dust bunnies. I started with my old writing desk--the behemoth we brought with us from the townhouse when the Kinglet was barely two, which Tom said he would never move again except with an axe.  Well, says I, until that day, there's still plenty of life left if the old girl--lots of drawers to fill, and lots of clear space to write upon, should the urge to do so strike me (as it has with this post).

There's still a lot of work to do be done (I can't understate the dirt & dust bunnies), but I'm truly enjoying myself in the interim. I strung Christmas lights over the exposed wood beams and box piles--something I wish I'd thought to do back when I slept here. Just that one thing had a dramatic effect on the ambient energy--now it's a place I want to be, a place that lifts my spirits as soon as enter it.  The idea is, as I get more and more organized, it'll get cleaner, more--you know, finished--and more personalized.

I set up the glider, facing the desk, so I can work on my cardio while the weather is still so cold. I'm up to 10 minutes a day, about 3 times a week--not much, but the momentum is building. And I set up workspaces for my resale projects, with the hope of clearing out the big stuff locally and getting my online stores up and running again. I even managed to make some bank this month. Not being able to contribute to the family finances is such an insult to my sense of self; but being able to repurpose this space as an office/studio, and that leading to actual financial benefit, goes a long way to restoring my sense of usefulness and involvement in life.

The neatest thing, though, is that I can feel myself healing through being here. As if it's helping me through this current transition, just as it helped me recover from my childhood and evolve into something even better in my adolescence. An underground burrow wherein to hibernate. My own personal cacoon.

For anyone needing to emerge from a painful past; I highly recommend getting yourself a basement to rest in. Metaphorically or otherwise.

I wanted to save this FB post from certain loss in obscurity.


With thanks to This Guy: my mood today if it were a song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzoD8DMWDs0&fbclid=IwAR2fVx_OdDi3pyjR-UBi09nTJWjgh68_7PnEXnPioOifsM-B_NBMcZpEqro

I remember sitting outside the BrewHaha cafe on days like this--rainy and cold--on the roof, looking down on Newark in between classes, all the naked trees and scuttling people, smoking my cloves, fuming about one boy or the other.
To think I might have lived so long, to not feel the need to fret over any boy, not even my own, but to pang over a woman--the only woman, really. Who I'll never see again.

Physical bullshit aside, I feel like I'm going through another adolescence.

To wit: I'm enjoying my newfound independence and selfishness (in the hours my children are at school and therefore someone else's responsibility). I'm disenchanted with authority, my eyes opened to the hypocracy, lies, and ineptitude of all the institutions I used to have faith in (government, medicine, education, parents...). I'm pissed off all the time at the unfair hand I have been dealt in life, which is honestly fucked up--but also owning the fact that in some ways I've been spectacularly blessed.

Indeed, I'm embracing the fact that I am, as a whole, awesome. I don't give a fuck what the mean girls think of me, or anyone else. I am rocking my own style, my own agenda. I got this.

So that's fun.
I just wish I had teenage me's energy to go with the attitude.

I am so desperately weak and tired these days. That girl, she had a supernova of hormones to break her out of the chrysalis of her past and motor toward an uncertain future.

All I need is a spark, and a slow burn.

I can handle the rest.