DRIPPING ON MY KEYBOARD

I first became aware of my grandparent's disappointment of me when I was a teenager. It was deserved, but it still hurt when my grandfather told me his dog was better than me. I had done some horrible things and yes, I had deserved scorn, but I didn't deserve cruelty.  Now, as an adult I look back on that part of my life and I wonder why no one stepped up and saw that I was in crisis. I was struggling. Jesus, I had my first overdose back then. Was it so hard to figure out I had some serious problems? I'm not excusing my behavior because I was incorrigible. I hurt many people and I'm deeply ashamed of that and always will be.

Whenever I would go "home" to Maine I always spent one day visiting my deceased relatives.  My brothers always thought this was rather morbid of me, but it never struck me that way.  I ways grabbed some lunch at a fast food place and ate lunch with my father, grandfather, grandmother and aunt.  They were all buried next to each other in the same cemetery.  On one such visit, I had had an emotional awakening the entire time I was in Maine.  My feelings were raw and I needed to vent so sitting there in front of my father and grandparents who were all non-participating entities in my life growing up I blasted them with everything I had.  I'm glad I was alone because if anyone had been in earshot, they would have thought I was crazy.  My final words to my father were, "Carl Goggins, are you listening to me?" Of course, he wasn't!  He had been dead for over 30 years at that time.  My words fell on deaf ears and my tears fell on stone marker bearing his name.

My next stop was to visit my mother's parents. My heart was so heavy because I knew what a disappointment I had been to them and I had just come from having "words" with my father.  I wish I had been able to say I'm sorry to them while they were still alive.  I wish they had known the turmoil I felt inside me growing up.  I wish they knew the panic I felt.  I wish they knew that I felt I had nowhere to go and no one to talk to and how trapped I felt.  I had to keep everything inside and for a child that's a huge burden.  Eventually it's going to erupt and it did erupt.  When it did, all everyone saw was a kid acting bad and not one person questioned why I was acting that way.  I don't think anyone cared or wanted to know because no one wanted to take any responsibility.

I pulled into the small cemetery where my grandparents are buried and got out of the car.  But instead of going to their grave, I stopped dead in my tracks. On top of their headstone was a huge roll of duct tape.  There wasn't a soul in the small cemetery and why would someone leave a roll of duct tape on my grandparents headstone?  I started laughing because I have a "thing" about duct tape and I took it as my father's answer that he was listening to me. I took the roll and sat down with my grandparents and told them I was sorry for being a disappointment to them and I wept.  It hurt to say that.  It hurts to admit that I hurt so many people that I loved and I wasn't able to tell them I was sorry while they were alive.

Now, let me fast forward to the present day...my mother is 92.  I love her dearly, but we've had a what I'll call a "ruffled" relationship my entire life.  It's never been smooth.  I'm her only daughter, but I've always wondered things like why she never sat me down at a certain age and showed me how to put make up on or how to style my hair, etc. when she herself dressed to the nines and looked like a model whenever she left the house. The other day I sat down in hopes that with the time we have left together that I might try to mend our relationship somewhat and make it smoother by offering an apology.  It was so difficult for me to hand her the olive branch, but I did it. I told her that I was so sorry that I wasn't the daughter that she needed and wanted me to be.  I told her that I really wanted us to enjoy what time we had left together and that I didn't want us to keep butting our heads together all the time (that's a story for another day.) I said I didn't want to be a disappointment to her any longer. My mother sat there without any reaction whatsoever while I wept and said nothing. She said nothing. She said nothing and she has said nothing about it since. End of discussion.

I can't even begin to describe the emotions that have flooded through me lately. I feel as though she continually punishes me for things I did long ago. I know karma is a bitch, but when is enough enough? When have you paid your dues? When are you truly forgiven? I can't help, but feel that my mother's silence is her way of being cruel because at 92 she's limited in what she can actually do now. I mean she can't whack the hell out of me with a hairbrush or a wooden spoon. Oh, I guess she could try, but I'm a little faster than her. I really hate to say that I think it's her way of being cruel  because I do love her. Jesus Christ! Now, I'm crying again! And I have to go find some meme to fit this stupid ass whiny post. Blah! Blah! Blah! Oh Mildred! Dry it up! Go get a Kleenex! You're dripping all over the keyboard!

By the way, I still have that huge roll of duct tape my father gave me and I use it quite often.  Each time I use it, I think of him and I actually thank him. The last time was to tape a hole worn in the fingers of my favorite pair of gardening gloves. Don't say "get a new pair!"  I've looked and they don't make that exact same pair and that's the pair I want so when I wear a hole in the fingers...duct tape it is! Thank you, Carl Goggins!

Can I get an Amen up in here?

Addendum: written 10/23/2022 Sunday morning - My mother passed away almost six months after I wrote this blog post on 6/1/2020. Although I'm much better now grieving has been a difficult process and finding purpose in life after being a caregiver for two elderly parents for the better part of two decades of my life has been challenging. When the options are limitless, how does one choose what to do?

WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?

It always amazes me that as a child I paid such close attention to my surroundings. For example, I vividly remember the leaves as they changed colors in fall and the smell of lilacs as they bloomed in the late spring. What amazes me even more than that is every once in awhile, but not very often as a child I did as I was told by the adults in my life. Because I paid such close attention to my surroundings, I have memories with vivid details of those surroundings. When I think back to my childhood, it's almost like being there again. I can almost feel the leaves scatter beneath me as I jump in a pile of freshly raked leaves or how a McIntosh apple smells when I pick it from an apple tree.

My exposure to horticulture started early on and the neighborhood flora seemed to have played a pretty significant role in my formative years and in some of the memories I still deeply cherish. When I remember the plants growing around my house it always makes me smile even though the plants themselves weren't anything super special or rare. At the corner of my house grew a lilac bush that bloomed every May (60 years later that same bush is still there). If I close my eyes I can still smell its sweet fragrance. Nameless, naughty children would eat the blossoms. Why? Just because they could! In fact, they did many things just because they could. It's a good thing I never associated with any of those hooligans! Along the front and street side of my house grew irises and day lilies. The purples and oranges were stunning when they were in bloom, but they always remained safe from the nameless, naughty children's wrath and veracious appetite.

Early on there were two bridal wreath bushes that framed the front entrance of my house. The lovely delicate white fluffiness never lasted very long and were quite messy as the blossoms were dropped on the concrete walkway. Those bushes were removed at some point in time, but I wasn't consulted on their removal so I don't have a clue as to why they were selected for elimination.  In the back along the alley between my house and the neighbors grew a few burdock bushes. Burdocks are no more than an invasive weed, but for nameless, naughty children they were a plethora of trouble and fun rolled into one. Many a burdock from those bushes found their way into the neighborhood children's hair. They would stick like velcro and tangle long hair in merciless, matted clumps and then cause quite a little hoopla when removed.

Dandelions are also considered weeds, but they were so beautiful blooming against the deep green color of the soft, velvety grass of my lawn. I never understood how something so lovely could be called a weed. As mentioned in a previous blog post, nameless, naughty children found mischievous uses for those lovely weeds like staining white porches with them. My grandmother used to dig up the dandelion greens from her yard in the country and cook them...OMG! They used to make me gag. Now, fiddleheads on the other hand are a great treat to eat.

In the neighborhood, I remember blue hydrangeas (no one ever seemed to add any chemicals to the soil in order to turn them pink). Chinese lanterns had a firm orange ball inside that always fascinated me. The naughty, nameless children thought they were great to pelt at each other because they hurt less than pebbles and didn't leave any marks. Buttercups (why don't you build me buttercup...sorry, I couldn't help myself from singing that song and now damn it, it's stuck in my head) were used by nameless, naughty children to make predictions.

If a yellow glow could be seen when holding the flower under someone's chin then that meant crazy things were going to happen. If I remember correctly, the predictions were as naughty as the children were. Of course, none of this ever pertained to me! The neighborhood maple trees turned brilliant shades in the fall and when the leaves started to drop, we raked them up into the huge piles to jump in and the cherry trees a few houses up from where I lived had gnarly diseased branches that nameless, naughty children used to chase other children around with claiming it was dog poop on the branches. Those nameless, naughty children seemed to be like the hoards of "walkers" from The Walking Dead...what a menace they were! I can't help, but wonder what naughty things they do now as naughty, nameless adults!

While I was looking at pictures of various plants that are indigenous to Maine, I discovered one of the weeds/plants from my childhood days that grew everywhere. Luckily, none of the nameless, naughty
children ever tried to do anything with the berries other than pick them and throw the ripe juicy berries at one another. I tend to think someone must have told us that they were poisonous, but I have no clear memory of any such warning. The bittersweet nightshade plant is in the tomato family, but is highly poisonous. Wow! I'm almost in a state of shock that I never pushed the envelope and tried eating one or that my brothers didn't hold me down and stuff a few in my mouth to chew to see what would happen. The possibilities really make me cringe! I guess it really is true...ignorance is bliss and what you don't know can't hurt you. Those naughty, nameless children were invincible!

*repost and edited from April 1, 2019

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

As I look back at the past twenty years, one thing that has become the elephant in the room for me is the book that I have been jabbing at finishing. Oh, I have a list of excuses a mile long as to why this pet project never got completed.  Just to defend myself all of my excuses are valid ones, but I have to admit I have lollygagged when I could have plowed through the emotional angst and written THE END many times over.  One could assume I have a problem with completing things or with procrastination...both is probably true.  I've noticed in the last few years how unorganized I've become and how overwhelming everything seems to be at times.  I guess instead of just jumping in and getting things done at times when I feel overwhelmed, I back off.  Perhaps, the fear of success rattles my cage.  Perhaps if I complete my project, what's next?  Does something have to come next? Why can't I just exist in troglodytic nothingness?

So I'm recommitting myself to finishing this "project" and it's purely for my own satisfaction.  This story I'm writing is about my time in drug rehab.  Needless to say, it was a time of great emotional upheaval and self-discovery...among other things.  I'm going to be posting it online in blog form so if any of you are interested in reading it, I'll be posting the link to it soon.

As I've been working on it, names and faces have flooded my head.  One such name and face is that of Sharon Smith, a girl I once knew from what was once referred to as reform school (Stevens School For Girls).  Sharon and I escaped together and headed to Boston together where I ended up leaving her with some friends of mine there (long story).  I never saw Sharon again after that, but I always wondered what became of her until I discovered many year later that fate had been unkind to her and her family.  

Below is Sharon's story according to Noi Noi Ricker published on July 16, 2016 in the Bangor Daily News:

BANGOR, Maine — When Sharon Smith disappeared nearly 36 years ago, her siblings weren’t immediately worried.

“She had run away so many times, she was that type of person,” her brother Randy Smith of Lakeland, Florida, said Monday by phone. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh my God, she’s missing.’ It was more, ‘She’ll be back next week.’”

But she didn’t come back.

The 25-year-old mother of two was last seen on or about Aug. 25, 1980, when she worked an evening shift at the Paramount Lounge, a gritty hotel bar in downtown Bangor known for its adult entertainment where she worked as a waitress and, occasionally, as a stripper.

Her mother, Carolee Smith, reported Sharon Smith missing at the time, resulting in a police investigation that appeared to go nowhere over the years until last month, when investigators dug up a property in Hermon looking for Sharon Smith’s body.

Suddenly, the surviving members of Sharon Smith’s family were given hope for resolution, and memories of the young woman and her disappearance came flooding back.


“My first thought was, ‘Here we go again.’ Then, I was hoping they would find something to give the family closure,” Randy Smith, who was 15 at the time his sister went missing, said Friday.

“My sister was my big sister, very protective and loving,” he recalled. “She really spoiled me. I was the youngest, and I could do no wrong.”

The Smith family, which included Sharon Smith, her parents and five siblings, was in the process of moving to Florida when she disappeared, Randy Smith said.


Their father, Sgt. Harold Leroy Smith, was an Air Force aircraft engineer and was stationed at the Maine Air National Guard in Bangor when he met and married Carolee Smith, who was a Bangor native.

The family’s move may have led some to mistakenly believe the Smiths had abandoned Sharon Smith, Randy Smith said.

“My oldest sister and brother were already down there. Some people said, ‘You took off.’ We didn’t take off, we were moving,” he said. “We had already sold everything. We just figured she would come back. For real.

“Then as years go by, you realize … ,” Randy Smith said, letting his sentence trail off.
A daughter’s search

In addition to her parents and siblings, Sharon Smith left behind two children. Mandi Clark of Bangor was 5 when her mother vanished. Clark said Tuesday that she doesn’t remember Sharon Smith but does remember asking, as a little girl, “How come mom hasn’t come to visit?”

Clark’s brother, Jamie Clark, was a year older. He died at the age of 15. They were both raised by her father, David Clark, who had custody of them before Sharon Smith disappeared and now also is deceased.


Mandi Clark has her own opinions about what happened to her mother, but she does not believe she is alive after all these years.

“In 1995, my friend Wendy and I decided I would try to find my mom,” Clark said, sitting in the living room of her Bangor apartment with a collage of family pictures behind her, one featuring her as a toddler being held by her mother.

Because her mother’s family had moved to Florida and they didn’t really stay in touch, the two friends had little information to start with. They found Sharon Smith’s birth date and Social Security number, which had not been used since 1980, and started talking to anyone with connections to her or the Paramount Lounge.

Stories about what happened the night her mother went missing run the gamut of a jealous boyfriend killing her to gun running, Clark said she discovered.

During her investigation, which is referred to in a recently filed police affidavit, she got a call from an anonymous man who told her Franklin “George” Gilks killed her mother and that “things got carried away, accidents happen.”

Clark said the conversation scared her after the man told her to “leave things alone,” or something similar might happen to her. She reported the call to police.

While she stopped digging around at that point, she never stopped believing her mother would be found.

“I don’t care what happened. I just want her body,” Clark said.

“I just want closure. I just want to bury her here,” she said.
Cold case

The place where Sharon Smith worked, the Paramount Lounge, was located on the ground floor of the hotel built in 1911 on Harlow Street. Sharon Smith, who also went by the names Sharon Clark and Sharon Beaudoin, was renting a room there. The hotel and lounge changed hands and closed about three years after Sharon Smith vanished.

Asked what their parents thought about Sharon Smith’s lifestyle, Randy Smith paused.

“They were just happy she had a job,” he recalled. “She was a fun-loving spirit.”

The Paramount is the last place Sharon Smith was seen alive, Bangor police Detective Jeremy Brock, who took over the case last fall, discovered when he reviewed the case file.

Despite the case remaining unsolved for years, law enforcement investigators didn’t forget about Sharon Smith. Her missing person’s case in the 1990s was handled by now retired Detective Ed Thorne, who interviewed several people who pointed the finger at Gilks. He also interviewed a co-worker of Sharon Smith’s who is believed to be one of the last people to see her alive. The co-worker reported that she stopped by and saw Sharon Smith at the Paramount and that Sharon Smith was supposed to come by her apartment afterward but never showed.

The case file also contains references to two people who told police that Gilks admitted to killing Sharon Smith while at a drinking party, where he was “quite intoxicated.” They reported that Gilks told them he broke Sharon Smith’s neck during an argument.

An anonymous letter was sent to Bangor police in May 1999, according to an affidavit filed with a search warrant for the Hermon property. The letter, which was postmarked from Ohio, implicates Gilks, Sharon Smith’s “on and off again” boyfriend, as a suspect and states, “you will find the body of Sharon Clark under the living room part of this old ugly home on the right hand side of the road where George Gilks used to live in Hermon.”

Despite the reference to Hermon in the letter, a majority of the other evidence led investigators to where Gilks, who died in 2008, lived at the time Sharon Smith went missing, which was a trailer in Carmel. The Carmel location was mentioned by several others who implicated Gilks in Sharon Smith’s disappearance, the affidavit states.

In 1999, cadaver dogs searched the Carmel property for evidence related to the case but didn’t find a scent. The affidavit doesn’t indicate if the Hermon property was located and searched at that time.

Thorne and another Bangor officer went to Florida shortly after receiving the letter to provide the entire Smith family with an update.

“The detectives came down here 20 years ago. They said they knew who did it but they didn’t have enough evidence,” Randy Smith said. “They told us her apartment was left open and her purse was inside.”

When he heard those details, Randy Smith realized his sister was never coming back.

“It just seemed crazy to me,” he said.
Search yields new leads

After taking over the case, Brock found more leads to pursue, according to the affidavit. He and Detective Tim Shaw searched property records and discovered Gilks had indeed lived in Hermon in his youth, and his mother and brother still lived at the location of his childhood home, 147 New Boston Road. The old barn that once served as the family’s home was torn down 20 years ago and replaced by a rain pond with a small fountain made out of concrete surrounded by rocks and a garden.

The detectives met with the Gilks who agreed to allow a cadaver dog to search the property. Deborah Palman, a former Maine Game Warden who is a special deputy for the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office, brought her dog, Raven, to the scene on June 14.

“Raven gave a positive indication for the scent of human decomposition at an area near the rain pond where the house used to stand,” the affidavit for the search warrant states. “After probing the ground where the house used to stand, Raven positively indicated several more times in the same area as before.”

The positive indications were enough to convince a judge to allow the June 23 excavation.

Gilks’ family members told police at the time of the search they didn’t believe Gilks had anything to do with Sharon Smith’s disappearance.

The June search for evidence related to Sharon Smith’s case resulted in no evidence being seized, the affidavit filed by Brock at the Penobscot Judicial Center states.

While no items were seized, new leads are now being followed, Sgt. David Bushey, who leads the detective’s division, said Thursday.

“People are starting to call again,” Bushey said. “We don’t have any good solid leads, but we’re creating a list of people to do follow up interviews with. We’ve had a couple people reach out by email as well.”

The family heard about the Hermon excavation after Maine relatives called to let them know it was happening, said Randy Smith and his brother Larry Smith of Tallahassee, Florida, who is more than a decade older than his missing sister.

Larry Smith said his sister loved music and was “kinda crazy.” He also believes she is dead and added that while a part of him wants to know what happened, another part just wants closure.

“I thought it all went away,” Larry Smith said by phone.

For Sharon Smith’s daughter and two grandsons, Micheal and Caleb, there will be no closure until she is found.

“I just want her to know, I’m still here,” Mandi Clark said. “So she’ll know nobody forgot about her.”

SCATTERED THOUGHTS

One of my favorite reading materials while in the "*library/reading room" is the Reader's Digest. This morning I found an editorial that stood out to me.

A Crash Course In Commencement Speeches

As someone who worked at a university for 20 years, I find it appalling that a celebrity should demand $100,000 to give a ten minute speech in front of a group that may never be able to pay off student loans. Also, shame on schools for paying those amounts, especially when they raise tuition every year.

-Robert Austin

Baltimore, Maryland

*bathroom

Of my three adult children, two of them are still paying off student loans. For anyone who chooses to go to college, being saddled with a mountain of debt usually comes with it unless a person comes from a wealthy family or is fortunate enough to have some other avenue of paying for tuition, books and other expenses while attending college. The days of merely working your way through college seem to have disappeared or if it does still exist people are guarding it as a state secret.

This may be getting off subject, but I think back to when my niece was looking into colleges. She applied to some of the top colleges in the country. She was accepted at Princeton and really wanted to go there, yet her school guidance counselor talked her into staying in the state of Maine and going there. WTF? She graduated with the 3rd highest GPA in the state of Maine and she didn't go to Princeton? Who does that?

Her counselor felt too many young people leave Maine and that's true because there's so little there for them after they graduate. Maine isn't a wealthy state by any means. Its nickname is "Vacationland" because for about 5 months it's absolutely perfect minus the black flies (the Maine state bird) and a few other irritants here and there. Do tourists count as an irritant? Ha! Don't ask a *Mainiac that!

*a person born in Maine

I suppose her counselor was doing what she thought was the right thing to do and looking at my niece now who has a family, yes, the counselor did the right thing because Maine is a great place to raise a family.  But at the time...Princeton? Geez! So where was she talked into going? You probably wouldn't have ever heard of the college, yet it’s a very prestigious school. Bates College famous alumni include Robert Frost, Robert Kennedy, Bryant Gumbel, David Hasselhoff, Olympia Snowe, Edmund Muskie, Minoru Yamasaki (designer of the first World Trade Center) and William Henry Vanderbilt III just to name a few.  The last time I checked it costs more to go to Bates than it does to go to Harvard. I guess as with anything it isn't how much it costs, it's what you do with it after you finish. My niece has a wonderful career and a wonderful family, yet she opted to stay in Maine. I applaud her for doing that.

Now, to come full circle to those celebrities who demand outrageous speaking fees at commencement ceremonies. I can't help but feel how out of touch they are with the rest of the world. Some have no idea how the common person lives or if they did start with humble beginnings, they've forgotten those roots along the way. I applaud people like Sean Penn who get in the trenches and work with the people.  As of late, Penn has been giving free COVID-19 tests in the U.S. amid the COVID-19 pandemic. People like him try to help in a crisis. Look at President Carter and his wife, Rosalyn. President Carter is 95. Rosalyn is 92. Since 1984, they have partnered with Habitat for Humanity to build, repair or renovate nearly 4,300 homes for people in need across the globe.

I'm all over the place today, aren't I? I guess the old ADHD is kicking in and I can't focus. So that means I had better get dressed and go outside and get right with the birds and my plants. I've got mulch to spread and landscape timbers to put down and drill. I need to go to the nursery and see if they have their fall plants in yet. Yesterday I ordered a TON of spring bulbs that'll be here later in the fall.  I have my eye on a red crepe myrtle at Lowe's and a pink hibiscus. I have just about every other color, but I don't have pink. I have a list of roses I need to order this winter. I want to order the award-winning rose for the year each one of my children were born and then I have a list of others I like. I love roses. I guess I won't have much yard left once I'm done, but that's okay. There'll be less grass to mow, but more plants to fertilize and weed. Six of one. Half a dozen of another. Work is work and off I go!

A NIGHT TO REMEMBER

Lynne and I stuck our thumbs out to hitch a ride home. We had a small walk-up flat on the fifth floor located on Commonwealth Avenue several buildings up from the Public Gardens in Boston. We'd been at the Sizzleboard in Kenmore Square just to hangout for a while. The first time I ever walked in the Sizzleboard and saw Panama Red and Acapulco Gold listed as two flavors on their ice cream menu I knew Boston was where I belonged. No, they didn't have marijuana in their ice cream. They just borrowed various names of marijuana to put on the menu as flavors. To say it was a popular idea was an understatement. After all Boston and vicinity is a huge college city and so was marijuana in 1971.

Ordinarily, we might walk home, but it had just started to snow. You know, it was that kind of huge, lacy snowflakes that stick to your eyelashes and the end of your nose before melting. A VW bug pulled over and we quickly got in the back. It wasn't until that moment that our real adventure of the evening began. Immediately both of us were handed a thin piece of rope and were told to pull them back and forth. Sure thing! We did as instructed and lo and behold the windshield wipers worked and kept the flourishing accumulation of snow off the windshield.

It seems we weren't in the car more than a minute before a joint was lit. The next thing I know we were pulling up in front of their place to do a little partying, but I had no idea where we were because I hadn't paid attention to where the driver had taken us.  Lynne gave me the nod to let me know that it was cool, so we all piled out of the car and went upstairs to their apartment. Their living room was all the way in the back of the building. Lynne and I settled into spots next to each other on the floor in front of a homemade chunky wooden coffee table adorned with a large bowl of Fritos corn chips and various drug paraphernalia. I had the munchies so I immediately started eating the Fritos and one guy lit a joint and started passing it around while the other guy put some music on the stereo.

Yes, I was only 15, but I was already very well-versed in drugs by that age. I knew my way around as well as someone much older than me so when I started noticing that I was much higher than I should be I got a little concerned. At first, I didn't do anything, but sit back and observe what was going on around me to see if I could make any sense out of the situation. The two guys seemed to be talking in a language I didn't understand. No, it wasn't a foreign language. It was one I'd never heard before. It was a non-sensical one. One that only they understood, but as I looked at Lynne, she didn't seem concerned at all by this so I assumed this was just me. This was just in my mind. Oh goodie! I'm fucked up and don't know why!  Then all my senses seemed to fade away into a psychedelic haze. Was I tripping? Wait a minute! All I had done was smoke a little dope. How could I be tripping? Everyone else seemed fine. This just didn't make any sense to me.

At this point I stood up and asked if I could use their bathroom. Lynne seemed to sense something was wrong so she tagged along with me. As soon as we were out of ear shot, she started quizzing me about what was going on. I'm not one who is prone to paranoia, but in this case, it started to rear its ugly head. All I could think of was getting the hell out of Dodge. I told her what was going on and that I needed to leave. NOW! She went back in and grabbed our jackets and we immediately left.

The cold winter air had a momentary sobering effect on both of us and then holy shit! We realized neither of us knew where the hell we were. Boston is a big place and generally, we knew our way around, but it was the middle of the night by then and we were both high as hell so we had to take a moment to regroup. We usually used the Prudential Building as a beacon or landmark because it was the tallest building and we always seemed to be able to see it wherever we were. But it wasn't anywhere in sight. Where the hell were we? Why hadn't we paid attention to where these guys took us?

As we walked and talked, I told Lynne how I felt and as best I could figure I was the only one of the four who ate any of the Fritos. They had to have been laced with some hallucinogenic drug. What a cheap trick to pick up two females and try to drug them. I wonder what else they planned for us that night. I'm so glad we got out of there when we did.

As we walked I didn't want to walk too close to the buildings and the alleyways because I was afraid of being grabbed so I walked close to the street and Lynne didn't want to walk close to the street because she was afraid of being grabbed by someone in a car even though there wasn't any traffic. And she wasn't high like I was. Weren't we a pair? The longer we walked the worse I got and nothing looked familiar. Lynne kept assuring me she knew where she was, but I knew she was lying to me. I knew she was just trying to make me feel better because I was right on the verge on losing it. We came upon a car repair garage named Hampden Automotive Repairs and we both stopped dead in our tracks. My eyes filled with tears as I looked at Lynne and quizzically asked her if we had walked that far. You see, Hampden is a small town next to Bangor where we are both from in Maine. How could we have walked that far? It was another holy shit moment. Bangor was about a 6 hour drive from Boston.

Lynne finally gave up and walked close to the street with me because she saw I was starting to really unravel. As we slowly trucked along a cop car pulled over and asked us if we needed a ride. Lynne and I just looked at each other for a second. I took a deep breath because I knew this wasn't the good time to get busted and sent home.  Actually, no time was the good time to get busted and sent home but I was high as hell and I really didn't want to get hassled by the man while I was high.  We both knew there was no way around not getting in the cop car, so we eased our way into the back seat expecting the interrogation to begin.  We were surprised when it didn't. When I noticed the two "cops" didn't look like cops at all, but two scruffy-looking hippies instead, I started wondering what was going on.  Undercover, perhaps?  Had two young yahoos stolen a cop car and gone on a joy ride?  Tonight, anything was possible!

When we weren't asked for identification or asked where we live, we knew something was wrong, but we just looked at it like a gift from the Bostonian gods from old. They did, however, ask what we were doing walking at that time of night. We got a lecture about it not being a good thing to do because women can get raped doing stuff like that. Of course, we made up some bullshit story about being at a friend's house and getting lost when we left. I guess that wasn't too far from the truth except they weren't friends. They were assholes!

When asked where we were going, we chimed in and both said we were going to Stanetsky Memorial Chapels. The two hippie-looking cops gave each other a weird look when we said that, but then said to us that they couldn't take us all the way there because it's in a different district, but they could drop us off at the foot of the bridge. We knew that was a weird place to go in the middle of the night or anytime for that matter because it was a funeral parlor.  Lynne explained that we had a close friend that worked there on the weekends and that he'd make sure we'd get home safely and he did exactly that, but only after being subjected to hearing us ramble on about yet another one of our BIG adventures.  Thank you, Kenny Goldstein for being a lifesaver!

Quarantined Day #4

Somehow I get the feeling that I'll be waiting a little bit longer than 4 or 5 days to get my results back and then from what I've been hearing on the news not all tests are reliable. Just another thing that isn't Trump's fault, of course! He does no wrong! All I know is that I feel fine today and I'll take it one day at a time if I have to. I'm cool with that. So how are all of  you coping with this shit show?

Last night I did a grocery order (note to self - don't make a grocery order again while you're stoned.) Naturally, they were still out of a lot of stuff, but I had to opt to have it delivered since still I'm quarantined.  I think I'm beginning to know what a leper felt like.

I went outside today with good intentions of taking down the two small trees that need to come down so my pear tree will grow fully in all directions. Right now it leans one way because it get practically no sun in one direction. Besides being lop-sided it also needs a partridge because it's a pear tree. You don't know how many stores I've been in around Christmas thinking I'd find a partridge...just one partridge....a small partridge, so I can put it in my pear tree, but no! So tell me why there's a dumb Christmas song about a partridge in a pear tree if you can't find a partridge anywhere at Christmastime? You can find doves. You can find swans. You can find ducks. You can find cardinals. You can find owls. You can find any other kind of bird at Christmas, but you can't find one of the birds mentioned in the 12 days of Christmas. And when I ask a sales rep for a partridge they look at me like I'm asking her to perform a sex act with a French hen. Oh la la!

So instead of taking down two small trees, I took a picture of a tree about 50 feet away from where I was standing.  I'm easily distracted, aren't I? Just think about all the homes that this one tree provides. It's like Avatar without big blue creatures running around unless they run around at night. Hey, maybe that's what my dogs bark at and it's not at the squirrels after all. This tree is in Mad Mad Martha and her Digging Dog, Digger's yard next-door to me...shhhhhhhhh don't tell her I took the picture or she might hex me and make my pear tree grow funny or something :) Whoops, I guess that already happened. I need to learn to behave myself...maybe in my next lifetime??

The other picture is of my finger because it hurts and I really need someone to say "oh, poor baby"... no really, it's been swollen for days. Both joints are sore and when I put the coffee table together yesterday I said lots of bad language. Autoimmune disorders are hard. Especially ones that doctors leave undiagnosed. Oh well! I guess it could be worse. Gripping the screwdriver was a challenge, but I mastered the challenge because I'm a tough Maine woman! We're made of hardy stock.

I made my mother laugh when I purposely said things her father/ my grandfather used to say while I assembled the coffee table like..."you, son of a whore." That was always one of his favorite sayings and believe it or not when you cuss at a stuck wood screw that won't go in, I don't know what it is about it, but all of a sudden it breaks free and the screw screws right in after it's properly cussed at a few times. Okay, that's my lesson on fixing stuff today. Just remember, Mildred says if you're having a difficult time with something, a little colorful language will go a long way to remedy the situation.

MEN ARE FROM MARS WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS

Recently a big, burly, beer-drinkin' redneck dude was talking to me about having a just a lil fight with his lil lady. When I asked him to define "lil fight" he gave me a blank look like I was an idiot for not knowing what he meant. God, I love it when a man does that! I said, "Okay let me help you help me understand. I want you to select what happened from one of the following:

a. a "disagreement" is a verbal confrontation in which the involved parties usually come to some sort of compromise or settlement.

b. an "argument" is a heated verbal assault in which the involved parties usually have to cool down before a resolution can be made.

c. a "fight" is a physical confrontation usually initiated by harsh words in which no compromise, resolution or settlement is made. "

He said, "damn girl, I didn't realize those 3 things meant 3 different things, but I reckon it was the first one. It was just a lil fight."  

I laughed and went on to ask him if he also says his wife "bitches" all the time.  I tried to educate him about selecting the proper use of words, but I didn't make much head way.  I do think he at least thought about what I had to say even though he really didn't understand a word I said because I'm just some old damn Yankee transplant livin' on the Redneck Riviera! Yehaw! Let's get 'er done! 

 

Being from Maine is like being from another planet. I've actually been asked if we have indoor plumbing in Maine. Ayuh! Ever since about 1980! We have to wait until the ground thaws out before we can dig to lay any pipe. Gotta love Maine sarcasm...God, I miss it! Now, I have Martha livin' next door to me I get a dose of it just about every day.

Spinning The Principal

By the time I got to 6th grade, Mr. Honey (pronounced Hone-ey) was not only the principal of Larkin Street School, but he was the 6th grade teacher as well.  I guess he figured all 6th graders at his school needed a special kick in the butt before entering Junior High School and he was just the man for that dubious distinction.  For the most part, I'd give him an A for being a good teacher, but an F for being a horrible, hardass principal. 

Our class was probably average sized for that time period.  There was roughly twenty of us to his one.   Class sizes had shrunk considerably a few year before when Dow Air Force Base was decommissioned.  Out of those 20 or so in my 6th grade class, today I can only remember a handful of people's names: Mike, Rod, Noreen, Margie, Sherry, Dana, Nancy, Bart, Junior, Carol, Cheryl and Colleen.  I guess that's a pretty big handful, isn't it? 

On many occasions Mr. Honey not only taught us the standard 6th grade curriculum, but he tried to prepare us for life as best he could. I remember him telling us that statistically speaking one of us wouldn't make it to adulthood. What? One of us would die?  His words, I'm sure, were said to make all of us a little more watchful of our own actions and the actions of others, however; I doubt his words were remembered by many after he spoke them.  After all, at that age, aren't we all invincible?  His words have definitely resonated in my head a few times along the way and for awhile I believed I was going to be that statistic.  But lo and behold not only did I fool myself, I fooled many others who had the same thought.

Sixth grade was definitely a year of spreading my wings and learning to think outside the box.  Until this point I was a good kid and a good student.  Sure, I was a little on the chatty side and my mouth seemed to always be described in detail in notes on my report cards.  I even earned the nickname "Gabby" when I was younger and thank God it didn't stick!  I had in many instances learned that clowning around and running my mouth was a good cover for what was really going on underneath.

Mr. Honey fell from my grace the day he suspended several of us from school because he knew all of us would have to face our parents as well.  Kids rarely use their brains when being mischievous especially kids with poor impulse control.  Planning things out is a learned behavior and comes with experience.  A bunch of us had decided to play spin the bottle after school with a glass milk bottle one of us had stolen from inside the school.  We selected a secluded corner of the schoolyard in back of the school for the spot to make our circle.  None of us gave a thought to teachers still being inside the school.  We all thought the spot we had selected was safe from any prying eyes.  In reality, I'm sure whatever teacher witnessed this spectacle was amused by what she saw, but such unruly actions had to be severely dealt with by administering a punishment that would keep us all from doing anything like that again. Suspension was what Mr. Honey selected and all that did for me was make me want to test authority all the more.

Addendum:  I can't count this as my first official kiss because I didn't get kissed because the game was rudely interrupted before that could happen. I hate when that happens! These are just some of the woes of being a clueless, numb as a stump 11 year old who got suspended from school for playing spin the bottle!

The Rock Psychosis

My family has a rock psychosis. Maybe I should call it a fetish to be more polite, but I've always called a spade a spade and in this case, a rock a rock.  I don't know exactly why, when or where it started, but my first recollection that something was amiss in the genepool was when I found out about my grandfather Ingalls' rock collection.  When my daughter was a young girl, my mother and step-father would take her to Maine whenever they went.  When she was about 8, she came back to Florida with tales of her great grandfather's rock collection.

He had asked her if she wanted to see his rock collection when they visited him.  What she was expecting to see was small samples of various types of rocks, so when he opened the dresser drawers in his bedroom that housed his rock collection she was surprised by what she saw.  All the drawers in the room were crammed full of rocks of all shapes and sizes that he had found on the ground wherever he went. None of them were colorful or in any way special except to him. She concluded her story by telling me that he must be crazy.  Although I did tell her it wasn't very nice to say that about anyone, in reality, she had hit the nail directly on the head. I was silently proud of my daughter for being so astute at such a young age.

As the fever grew and spread, my mother and my oldest brother developed the psychosis.  In the beginning, my mother would bring rocks home from Maine to use as doorstops or various other things.  I guess that was acceptable, but when I went to Maine one year and used the car she kept there to use during her extended stays, I found rocks in the trunk and under the front seat. All I could do was shake my head when I made the discovery.  As my mother started her collection my oldest brother started building stone walls on his property at the same time. Everyone was quite impressed by all he had done. His stone walls were beautiful! Everyone knows it takes a certain eye to be able to look at a rock elsewhere and know it's just the right shape and size to go in a certain spot in the wall you've been building.  I think the fever really took hold of him when he skillfully lined the ditches in front of his property with rocks.  It looked wonderful, but unfortunately, he was forced to remove all his ditch work due to some county ordinance. Unfortunately, Big Brother was apparently watching my big brother!  I prefer to think it was probably some jealous neighbor who had rock envy who ratted him out and not some county official riding around looking for ordinance violations.

   

Old Lady With Sagging Breasts

BLOTUS

I was selective in which rocks I hauled back to Florida.  They all had to come from a loved one's yard so each one would have good mojo in them.  It was like bringing a part of that person back with me.  My rocks found a new home in my flower garden. Florida is rather barren where rocks are concerned, so I have to get my "rock fix" while traveling.  After strategically stacking my rocks and closely scrutinizing the structure I had built, I dubbed it "Old Lady With Sagging Breasts".

When my daughter and her husband went to Europe last year, I forbid her to buy any gifts for me while she was traveling. I told her to pick up some rocks from the ground for me from the places they went. When she came back, she presented me with a jar full of rocks that had been bagged and tagged. I laughed and told her that the Pope had probably peed on the one from the Vatican. She assured me that she had washed all the rocks before putting them into baggies. When she had visited Berlin many years ago, I asked her to bring me back a piece of the Berlin Wall. Of course, she did as I asked and I think that may be my favorite rock/piece of concrete or whatever material the Berlin Wall was made from.

As my "large" rock collection grew, I decided to disassemble "Old Lady With Sagging Breasts" and replace it with a larger statue. I had no particular idea in my head when I sat on the ground and built a new statue. My daughter says it looks like a gorilla. Initially, before I attached a penis to it, I said it reminded me of Angelina Jolie (it must have been the lips) [lol]. My youngest son said it reminds him of an alien. What do you think? He ultimately was given the name BLOTUS.

THE ROAD TO NOWHERE - PART VIII

I've always believed in the philosophy "when in Rome, do as the Romans do" or in other words, I was a chameleon who changed colors to fit into any environment. I learned early in life that deceptively assimilating to change is so much easier being a faux chameleon than it is constantly butting heads with the status quo. It was another thing I was great at in short bursts, but one huge problem with

being a chameleon, I didn't have a color for pregnancy and whoever came up with the asinine idea that all pregnant women are beautiful was either a fool, a damn liar, a man or a combination of all three...try fat and ugly with stretch marks and having some award-winning hemorrhoids and insane food cravings instead and you might have hit the nail directly on its head. I always loved the reaction people would have, when they addressed me as "Mrs. Ratched" assuming that because I was pregnant I was married and I would politely correct them by replying "Miss Ratched...I'm not married." To my response always came an immediate apology and I always assured the person not to be sorry because I wasn't.

Upon finding out I was pregnant, I made the decision to return home. My mother insisted I do that because she was worried I wouldn't take care of myself. For the life of me I couldn't understand why she would ever think that [please insert sarcasm and eye roll here], but returning home seemed like the right thing to do so home I went...for awhile at least.

While I had been having my misadventures in Nub City, my stepfather's niece, Teresa had moved in with my mother and him. She had no problem with making herself right at home. This included plundering through my belongings whenever she felt like it and wearing my clothes without asking me. When I confronted her, she simply told me that I wouldn't be wearing any of them any time soon...TRUE, but they still belonged to me and she should have asked me first. It didn't take me long to see the writing on the wall. My relationship with her would always be adversarial at best. So much for having a peaceful pregnancy with no stress...

One day when I had my fill of Teresa, I wrote my mother a short note, walked out of the house and hitch hiked back to Chipley. Surprise, bitches! I'm back! Bring on the bologna sandwiches, but hold the mushroom tea!



In reality I was no closer to figuring out what I was going to do than I was before I left Pensacola. With plenty of time on my hands, I couldn't help but think about all the days that led to my present situation dilemma delicate condition. I think getting a birthday card from Bruce (remember him?) effected me more than I cared to admit. It made me think once again of Stacy and the huge mistake I had made. I never did tell my friends I was hurting. None of them knew of my adventures at Kinsman Hall. They knew nothing about the pain I carried with me. I missed my friends I had left behind and although I know the door had been slammed in my face months before from never returning there even though I had tried, I knew a part of me would always remain in Jackman. I just did what I always do...put on a convincing act as if and everyone saw me as a free spirit with not a care in the world (another thing to add to my list of things I do well.)

Everyone always assumes Florida has no winter. Up here on the Redneck Riviera, winter does exist! It may not get into sub-zero temperatures like those in Maine, but it gets in the 20's several times throughout the winter months (not exactly considered ideal camping weather) On one of those chilly nights in January, Theresa and I went by to visit her family and ended up spending the night at her mother's house. Her brothers had built a nice, toasty fire in the backyard and had pitched a tent. We thought camping out sounded like a splendid idea until about 3am when I hadn't slept a wink and was colder than a witch's tit (an old Maine saying.)  No matter what position I got in, I couldn't get comfortable laying on the ground in a sleeping bag. The crackle of the inviting fire had long died out and was replaced with the sound of Theresa grinding her teeth in her sleep. And yes, Theresa could sleep through anything!

I woke her up and told her I was going inside the house because I was freezing. I was either going to kick one of her brothers out of their bed or I was going to crawl in with one of them. Upon waking, Theresa discovered she was cold also and thought going inside was a great idea so in we went and out came her brothers bitching at how rude we both were. Being pregnant definitely had its advantages.

The next day Theresa and I made our way back to Chipley. Our first stop before going "home" was to make a bologna run at the local Piggly Wiggly. Murphy Laws states that whenever you don't want to run into someone, that person will always show up unexpectedly so one should always be prepared for such inauspicious occasions. When we came out of the store, there was Rickey Brooks and Kent French waiting for us. Naturally, after the customary greetings, Theresa thought it would be a friendly gesture inviting them back to our place. This would have been a great time to have Theresa wear a shock collar set on "kill the bitch," but I smiled and agreed to the visit.

By this time, there was no hiding that I was pregnant. I could see the wheels grinding away as Rickey did some quick math in his head. It seems like I went from being able to wear my normal clothes to nothing fitting overnight. Being pregnant definitely has a way of spreading the news without ever having to say a word. The visit was somewhat awkward. Rickey eyes never left me and I kept trying to avoid looking at him as much as possible. He looked like he was waiting for me to say something acknowledging being pregnant, but I never said a word. Add that to my list of things I'm great at doing! A simple discreet "the baby isn't not yours" would have adequately sufficed, but no such  words ever left my lips.

Rickey looked good...he always looked good. But more important, there were no visible signs of the horrific accident he had been in a few months earlier. After awhile Rickey fell into his normal playful banter with everyone and he even tried convincing me he was crazy because his car rolled on his head. To that, I kindly reminded him that the car rolling on his head had nothing to do with him being crazy. That ship had sailed a long time before his accident! When it came time to say our farewells, I did manage to tell him I was glad he was okay and that I was moving back to Pensacola even though I hadn't actually decided to do so. I just knew I couldn't tolerate anymore visits from him. I had some real regrets where he was concerned, but dealing with them now had been placed on the back burner. Maybe someday I'd address those regrets, but today wasn't that day.

THE ROAD TO NOWHERE - PART II

So how do you mend a broken heart? Chin up? Chest out? One foot in front of the other? At 18, all I wanted to do was dull the enormous ache in my heart until it completely went away. For me, it was all about living in the moment and rarely saying no to anything. The crazier it was, the better I liked it. If it rattled around in my head long enough and became an actual thought and if it brought a twinkle to my eyes and a smile to my face, it definitely got done regardless of the consequences. 

Going back to Maine that summer was a trip in every sense of the word. For the first couple of weeks I was there, I didn't leave my brother's house nor did I try to contact any of my old friends. Although I wanted to see all of them, I was scared to death to see any of them. When I finally worked through my fear, I boldly went to my old neighborhood...unannounced, of course. As I walked through town, everything seemed much closer to the street than what I remembered...and smaller. When I reached my old house, I stop dead in my tracks. The driveway seemed so short compared to what I remembered. Later, I was told it seemed much longer to me then because most of the time I had to crawl up it to go inside my house. Not really! But it was true that my brain was remembering things through the clouded vision of a druggie. I was always high from morning until I finally closed my eyes at night. Drugs threw off my perception of everything and everyone around me.

As I went through the process of trying to figure out what I was doing in Maine. I picked up the phone and called the drug rehab (Kinsman Hall) I had been released from only months earlier.  I still had friends there and there was someone there I wanted to see that I felt I should have a conversation with and see if he'd agree to see me. It was important to me that I finally tell Stacy how much he meant to me even if he didn't feel the same way about me. I knew all outside calls would have to go through staff so I was hoping to catch a friendly face. I was glad when it was Mike Morra who took my call. What I wasn't counting on was being told to stay away from Stacy. This seemed to be the same theme from day one for Stacy and I as far as Kinsman Hall saw it. I never figured out why staff was so dead set against he and I being together but that's how it was. I was forced into accepting that when I left Kinsman Hall I'd never see Stacy again.
.  
When I finally came out of my self-imposed prison at my brother's house, I was told repeatedly by people how good I looked and how healthy I looked. Go figure! Two plus years of being clean will definitely do something to a person. I ate right. I got enough sleep and I wasn't high all the time and nor was I engaging in risky activities. I knew what being around my old partying friends would lead to, but I went around all of them anyway. Willpower isn't one of my strong points unless willpower is fueled by desire and determination. After all I did quit smoking cigarettes over 25 years ago while living with a chain smoker. With the right fuel I can do most anything. So needless to say my willpower flew out the door and I eased my pain in a way that seemed so familiar (like an old comfortable shoe or a great fitting pair of jeans). I scratched that itch, but I had a much bigger itch that needed scratching. I needed to get laid! I'm sure I could have rustled someone up to do that thankless task, but I held off until left Maine and returned to Florida. My scorecard remained at one in Maine. My first love was the only person I slept with while I lived in Bangor. For some reason I felt I needed to keep that record unblemished by keeping my pants on my body and avoid being horizontal around anyone tempting including him. By the time I left Maine that summer, my hormones were at a fever pitch and I was ready for some good old promiscuity. I wanted cheap, sleazy sex and I wanted it from someone who could go the distance without a lot of hoopla. 

Instead of returning to Pensacola, I tagged along with my brother, Brian and his family. My brother was going to attend a heavy equipment class at a vocational school in Chipley, Florida.  Being the new kid on any block is a difficult situation regardless of where that block is located. This new fishbowl I landed in was an unfamiliar rural Southern country town that could have been taken right out of the movie, Deliverance.  Everywhere there were faces of strangers waiting and watching, but what they were watching and waiting for made me a little uneasy.

Vernon was dubbed "Nub City" because so many residents there make limb loss insurance claims to supplement their income. In 1981 several years after I lived there Vernon was featured in a documentary highlighting the eccentricities of the people who lived there. The movie angered many residents who felt the documentary portrayed the area in a negative light. Negative light?  How could blowing off your arm or foot with a shotgun for insurance money be considered negative?  Shouldn't it be considered creative and ingenious instead? Oops! There goes my good old Maine sarcasm acting up again! Boys will be boys and rednecks will be rednecks and if you combine the two and get lucky what you get is something the Beatles sang about...Happiness Is A Warm Gun. 

I was ready to get this show on the road and stir up this tiny fishbowl. I desperately wanted someone's finger on my trigger, so the only logical thing to do was to put checking out the local talent at the top of my list. I was confidant I could find a suitable warm gun to scratch my itch. Bang! Bang! Shoot! Shoot!

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

I don't really know where to start this post. My thoughts are pretty jumbled right now. I think it's a combination of not feeling well and being emotionally drained, so please bear with me while I stumble through writing about my latest ordeal which of course involves some rather drama-filled family issues, but aren't all family issues drama-filled? It seems to be the nature of the beast!

About 8 years ago my mother had some sort of break with reality. It was as if aliens had swooped down and abducted the woman I had always known to be my mother and replaced her with a body double void of a mind. She was merely an empty pod for the better part of several years. Naturally, the specialist she had been sent to see quickly diagnosed her with Alzheimer’s and put her on meds to stabilize her condition and to slow down what he claimed would be a steady downward spiral. I never agreed with that diagnosis for many reasons and eventually I weaned her off the meds she had been prescribed for it. Several years later the same doctor admitted that he had been wrong and was amazed by her "recovery." With a lot of hard work and persistence I pulled my mother back from whatever abyss she had fallen into during her breakdown. I have to admit there were times I thought I was ready for a rubber room, but I hung in there and did what I thought was right regardless of what the doctors told me. Today, I'm glad to say my mother is thriving at the young age of 86. The moral to this part of my story is that sometimes you have to follow what your heart and instincts say and cast aside what science and logic dictates.

I try very hard to be a good daughter. Yes, I fall short of perfection on many levels, but there's one thing I can say with absolute certainty...my heart is always in the right place. Because we have friends and family who live in Maine, I try to take my mother there each year so she can spend time with them. As a person ages it becomes more important to be with all the people they love and for that reason I try to be accommodating to my mother's needs. This year our finances didn't allow for our annual trek "home." I felt bad about it, but if you don't have the money, you don't have the money! It's as simple as that!

In July while visiting my Aunt Nancy she asked me why my mother and I weren't going to Maine this year. After explaining to her why I felt we couldn't afford the trip this year, she made an incredibly generous offer by insisting that the three of us make the trip to Maine together and she'd pay all the expenses. Because I knew how important it is to my mother to go to Maine, I agreed to let my aunt do this for us. My aunt is like a second mother to me and after her husband died over 6 years ago, I stepped in and started doing things for her that her daughter and only living child was either unable or unwilling to do. As a result of our increased contact we formed a very close, loving bond and she became even dearer to me than she already was. She recently made the decision to move to Florida so she'd be closer to family so she wouldn't have to be alone any longer. Her decision to move was something my entire family and I was looking forward to and it was a decision she knew would make it easier for all concerned when her health problems started to worsen and she'd need help. Because I love her dearly, I was willing to be that go-to person for her.

Let me now fast forward to our vacation from HELL! The first of two indications that the month we were supposed to spend in Maine would be anything, but paradise was upon arrival I got sick and had to eventually seek medical attention because my own efforts to nurse myself back to health didn't result in me getting better...in fact, I got worse much worse. And the second key indicator of what would lie ahead was when my aunt informed me that my mother and I would have to start paying our own way the first day after we arrived in Maine. Yes, you read that last line correctly! Paying our own way is rather difficult to do when we have very limited resources and was the reason why I had decided against a Maine trip this year. Paying our own way wasn't what she had initially discussed when she insisted that the three of us take this trip together nor was it ever mentioned until we reached our destination. She had offered to pay for everything and it was only because of her generous offer that we had agreed to make the trip to Maine. After being completely blind-sided I took what little cash I had and bought groceries so we could eat while we were there. I never expected nor wanted to eat out every night so cooking our meals and dining in was no big deal to my mother and I because it's what we do every day anyway. My aunt on the other hand likes dining out and although she did eat the meals I prepared, she turned her nose up at the thought of having to eat leftovers and wanted me to cook a different meal each night. Because I was sick the thought of leftovers appealed to me because I simply was worn out and didn't feel like cooking every night. Obviously, she didn’t realize how sick I had gotten or else she just didn’t care.

What became glaringly apparent quickly was that my aunt is an extremely difficult person to please at times and she expects everything to be her way right down to what's watched on television and how loud the volume is. Nothing at all seemed to please her and she had no problem with hatefully telling us that she was not satisfied with anything about the trip and wished she hadn't come. Her obvious unhappiness about the trip made both my mother and I feel bad for agreeing to let her do this for us and we didn't know what to do to help remedy the situation and felt like we were treading on thin ice all the time especially at times when she either wouldn’t speak to us or when she did speak, she’d snap at us harshly.

Our first night in Maine my aunt had a major meltdown (crying, yelling, cussing, etc.) and I expected her to ask to be taken to an airport the next day so she could fly home, but the next morning she perked up and surprised me by continuing on with our journey. Each time she expressed negative feelings it was as if all the things that troubled her from years past had just happened 5 minutes ago. As one day slipped into the next, negative feelings seemed to be all she had and the dark cloud hanging over her seemed to darken even more. Each time we listened to her tales of woe from her troubled childhood, I reminded her that I too had grown up in the same environment so I understood how she felt. I encouraged her to let go of those feelings she had been harboring so she could be at peace. And each time she raved about what a miserable marriage she had for 50 years, she never once felt any relief that she now was free of that misery. It was as if her husband, my uncle was just in the other room and not dead for over 6 years. It was like he still had a strong grip on every aspect of her life. Each time she ranted I told her we'd support any decision she made and that we only wanted her to be happy. Ultimately, she needed to do whatever she thought was the right thing for her. I guess the right thing for her was to spread as much misery as she possibly could and use my mother and I as a whipping board for all the things that had been troubling her.

All the while as we visited with people we had wanted to see while we were in Maine, she refused to allow us to include her in any of our plans. Once when we had close family friends come to where we were staying, she went to her room and refused to come out briefly just to say hello and meet the people. Her actions caused an awkward situation for my mother and me because we were continually put in the position of having to explain why she didn't want to meet and spend time with anyone. Although she adamantly told me that "those people weren't her relatives and she didn't know them," at least half of them were relatives...she just obviously didn't feel the need to get to know them. She also didn't see why I had to explain anything to anyone regarding her or her actions. When I asked her to imagine the roles being reversed, she wasn’t able to see that if my mother and I had done the same thing while visiting her at her house, she'd be embarrassed and probably angry at our actions.

As the days slipped away I felt as if my aunt viewed my mother and I as being bought and paid for thus we were supposed to keep our mouths shut and take whatever she dished out. I guess she decided dowsing herself in Opium perfume even after being asked nicely to spray it sparingly because it has such an overpowering scent was a good way to make us suffer. Try riding in a car or sitting in a room with someone who has bathed in a strong perfume and see how long it is before you feel like you need to vomit. Try having a relaxing vacation with someone who feels the need to clean obsessively or who needs the washing machine and dryer going from morning until evening. Another punishment for us was when she constantly poured chemicals like straight bleach down the drains in the kitchen and bathroom. The caustic fumes just about ran us outside and she continued to do that even after I explained how a septic system works and how it needs bacteria in order to work properly. No matter what was said about anything, she seemed to have no regard for my mother and me and was always right about everything all the time whereas most people automatically know strong perfume or bleach fumes in small confining spaces and people don't mix well and that when travelling in groups “compromise” and “flexibility” is the key factors in having a good trip. For some reason she honestly seemed hell-bent on making our time in Maine as miserable as she possibly could on every level possible and her actions had me utterly bewildered.

At first by her actions had me confused and that confusion quickly developed into disappointment and hurt. My hurt and disappointment only developed into anger at the very end after she apparently felt no need to cut me any slack because I was sick. All the while she refused to do anything with us; she continually talked about her other two nieces, Debbie and Peggy, my cousins and constantly critiqued my brothers as being assholes for not spending any quality time with their mother or helping me with her care. She ranted and raved and called them everything but human, yet when she talked to my cousins on the phone honey would drip from her mouth as she told them she loved them and invited them to come see her. Instead of telling them how she really felt she opted to go the route of being two-faced and then take her anger and resentment of them out on my mother and I. The first week we were there my cousins didn't call her and I thought I was going to go crazy from listening to her constantly bitch about them. I finally went to see Debbie and asked her to please call our aunt because she was sitting there feeling as if no one cared about her and quite frankly she was making us miserable because of it. My cousin promised to call and for a moment I thought all had been righted in the universe and the planets were back in alignment when Debbie called my aunt and they made lunch plans. She actually smiled and I saw a glimmer of sunshine amongst all her darkness and gloom.

But then something happened...all hell broke loose and it was a like a boomerang gone wild. It came swinging back with a vengeance to blindside me with what came next. She felt that my cousins should come visit her and not the other way around even though Peggy has lung cancer and I'm sure she isn't up to making house calls and lengthy visits. All I listened to constantly was how neither Debbie nor Peggy ever comes to see her and how they never call her and that the phone and road runs both ways. She carried on about how none of them even expressed their condolences when her husband died and why should she care anything about them. Listening to her talk about them got me thinking and reality finally smacked me in the face.

Not once in the last 6 years in all the times I've ran back in forth between Florida and North Carolina to check on her, to visit her and to spend time with her so she wouldn't be so lonely and so she'd know she had people who love and care about her has she ever made a trip to see me in Florida. The road runs both ways, does it? It looks to me like the road only runs the way she wants it to run! As for the telephone working both ways, she rarely called me even though I called her at least 2 or 3 times a week unless one of my many health problems was acting up and then I'd suffer in silence because it's difficult putting on a happy face when you don't feel good. I guess the road and phone doesn't run two ways after all and it’s taken me a long time to realize that. I also have rethought how inattentive, selfish, self-absorbed and unfeeling her daughter has actually been. It really makes me wonder if all the harsh, hateful things my aunt has said about her daughter, Sharon is really accurate. It makes me wonder where the truth really lies, but that's something I'll probably never know. After the meltdown about my cousins, Debbie and Peggy she sat in her room for the next 2 days with the door closed and she refused to speak to my mother or me. After two days of sulking, I guess she got tired of being confined. The sun seemed to miraculously come out and she brightened her disposition like nothing had happened. Everything in the world was sunshine and roses. That miracle came as a result of her calling the airline and finding out how expensive it would be for her to fly home. At that point she expected my mother and I to change gears along with her and go do what she wanted to do like look at fall foliage, visit lighthouses and basically do anything that didn't involve our relatives or friends. By then my mother and I had already decided that we wanted to go home. We both had enough abuse and figured there was no salvaging this vacation. Besides, my bladder infection was so bad I could hardly stand it. I had been to an urgent care, but still wasn't feeling any better. Having diabetes, always makes getting anything so much worse!

Most people can expect to be reprimanded for being rude, but what do you do when just the opposite happens? Okay, I never claimed to be perfect and my manners probably could use some polishing, but I have to admit I was utterly astonished for being harshly reprimanded for saying "thank-you" to my aunt at appropriate times when most people would say thank you. She declared “thank you” as a forbidden response to use ever again to her and made us feel awful for being polite. All I know is that I'm just not cut out to be a whipping board especially when I'm sick. I know I should have just left it alone when she kept at me. I shouldn’t have let being sick weaken my resolve. I know I was rude and disrespectful by finally blowing up and telling her "I AM DONE!" I was wrong to tell her that she ruined our vacation and it was unnecessary to tell her that she's a miserable bitch who isn't satisfied with anything. I can admit when I'm wrong when I am wrong, but I feel justified in standing up for my mother and me after being subjected to two weeks of non-stop agony. Maybe I could have approached it in a better way and saved the relationship, but I honestly felt at that point my aunt no longer cared about me.

I believe my aunt owes my mother and me a HUGE apology, but I can safely say that apology isn't something we'll ever get and that's okay. I know how stubborn my aunt is and I truly am okay with how things ended. I gave it my all, but my all wasn't good enough for her. I can accept that. Just like I can accept that in the long run it's entirely her loss and not ours. Sometimes you have to cut your losses and walk away from people you love because they’re toxic and will do nothing but bring you misery. Sure, it hurts, but time will heal the wound. Unfortunately, she decided against taking a plane home and we had n extremely unpleasant road trip back to North Carolina to drop her off. As I drove away from her house headed towards Florida it felt like the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders and it didn't matter that I still had 500 more miles to drive until I was home again and in my own bed so I could be sick in peace. And by the way...it took 3 more months of antibiotics and recuperation until my bladder infection was completely gone. Diabetes is a true bitch!