- a fresh start or clean slate
I plunged my hands into the tough dough. At this point in making my pizza dough, utensils were useless. After drenching my hands in olive oil the dough was gooey and easier to manipulate. As I kneaded and rolled the dough, I went over the events of the day.
The day had begun as somewhat normal; I had been awoken by my baby, Jacob, at 5:30 in the morning. The eight-month-old boy had been teething and had created a horrible pattern of waking at this outrageous time every morning. On this normal early morning the sleeping, grouchy bear-like man beside me had let out his furious growl. Thom, my husband, had not been adjusting to parenthood very well. He did not appreciate the sweet smell of diapers, the tender crying noises and coos, or the chubby little grabby hands. Nor did he much like the extra sensitive, emotional woman he now shared his bed with. I admit I was being a bit more needy than usual after having the baby. My estrogen was raging and I was probably being a tad too difficult.
I sprinkled olive oil on the cookie sheet and began to pat out the pizza dough, I thought about how insensitive Thom was being about our poor little Jacobs� pains. I glanced to where my ailing infant now lay crouched on the living room floor surrounded by toys. The young boy had also been learning to crawl; now I had to keep an extra close eye on him so he didn�t get into mischief.
My day had been as frustrating and busy as ever. Thom left by 7 o�clock to commute as usual, to his job as an engineer. He had to drive an hour away, but it was a good job and it was what he wanted to do. But my day was not usually what I wanted to do. Added to my normal routine of going to the grocery store and cleaning the house, working at home, go on various errands, and take the recyclables in. Not to mention that my car would not start and I had to ask a neighbor for help to jump-start it. Getting things done was not made easy by the fact that young Jacob needed constant looking after, and wanted constant consoling. Since the infant was hurting intermittently I would continually find myself simply lying beside him, comforting and consoling as best I could.
As I finished shredding the cheese for the pizza, I glanced once more in the living room at my roaming son. He had managed to cross the room and was getting into the magazines on the side table. I quickly wiped my hands and picked the curious child up, just as he was about to explore the tastes and textures of crumpled newspaper. After giving him tender chidings, I set him in his walker near the kitchen entrance.
�Are you done yet, woman?� Thom asked, somewhat jokingly, from the other room. He had arrived home from work two hours before to find me asleep with the baby curled in my arms. At first he had been somewhat angry then he became jealous and began teasing me. He thought it was just playful teasing. Mocking my laziness, criticizing my housekeeping skills, and demanding dinner, he truly knew how to make me feel terrible. And sometimes he seemed to do it on purpose.
As I slid the pizza topped with artichoke hearts and sun-dried tomatoes, in the oven, I turned around to find Thom holding the baby. He was making a goofy face, causing the little child to giggle with delight, and I couldn�t help but laugh a little myself. Thom turned and looked at me and I saw his eyes sparkle. �I love you,� he said gently, taking me into his arms beside the wiggling baby. At moments like these I knew, no matter what happened in the day, I loved him too. And we were truly happy, and we would stay that way forever.
Life in a small town was relatively simple. People begin to recognize you after about a year; the store clerks, post office workers, even the barber that you�ve only been to twice. You pretty much know the routine of things; when to avoid certain streets due to high volume of tourists or farmer�s market, or where not to avoid during certain parties and events if you want to have a good time.
Getting caught up in the days, time flies by. You do your daily tasks, living day to day. Suddenly you halt for a moment; years forward in time and look around, confused. What the heck happened? I say to myself. Wasn�t I just 19 years old? Ready for fun and excitement?
But, time left me behind. I still feel young inside, like I haven�t experienced the world. And yet I live in it every day. I work every day, go to school, raise my children. What else could I ask for? This is supposed to be the ideal life, right? The American Dream, or something like that I suppose.
Perhaps it�s just the small town, or perhaps it�s just a small world. But, either way, it�s all about routine. The same old, same old. Everyone lives by it. Everyone loves it. Why fight it? Just embrace it.
I had been stopped by the same cop twice in one month. In a small town this is not surprising, since we don�t really have a city police. The county sheriff�s patrol our area, and it must be that there are only a few cops that come way out here.
The first time I was pulled over was late at night. Just past 11 pm, I was on my way home from work. In fact, I had forgotten my name tag on my shirt, so I don�t think he would have questioned the fact that I was coming from work. The car I had been driving was my father-in-laws beat up oldie that hadn�t been fully registered at the time, being in the process of paperwork. So, needless to say, I was nervous.
It was dark and I began rolling down my window, the chilly air hitting my face with a slight breeze. His flashlight lit the ground up in front of my car as he walked up to my window. He leaned forward to talk to me. �Do you know why I pulled you over?� he asked. I noticed he had shaved red hair, and a rather rugged face.
�I have a guess.� I replied, adding �I hate this car.�
He gave a slight smile, �Can you turn your headlights on for me?�
He checked my headlights and came back to the window. The right one is going dim and he went back to confer with his partner that was in the car. As I waited there, I could not help but think �Shit, I�m screwed.�
I saw the little flashlight bouncing back towards me, and I knew he was coming back. He explained we were just waiting for the information to come back on the car, I explained the entire situation of waiting for my father-in-law to finish paperwork and such.
Thus, the small talk began as we waited.
�How long have you lived here?� he asked
�About a year.�
�Ah, where were you from before that?�
�Well, I grew up in San Luis, but I was in Northern California for 5 years.�
�Oh, ok, I was in Chico.�
�Oh, right on.�
Silence emerged its ugly head. I think he finally got tired of waiting and knew I wasn�t out to go steal or hurt anyone. So he left me on my merry way home.
The Second time he pulled me over was in broad daylight. A few weeks later, on my way to work, he pulled me over once again in the same car. On a busy street, he came to my passenger side window, as I leaned forward rolling down the window. I was reaching for the registration and insurance as he reached the window.
�Hi.� He said.
�Hi.� I replied, handing him the registration. I explained that the car has been registered and I was waiting for the sticker in the mail.
�Well, it came up registered immediately when I scanned it, so I�m glad it all got taken care of. Have a nice day.�
So, I drove off to work since now I was late. Later I began to wonder, if it came up registered why did he pull me over?
You can tell a lot about people by their hands. Or that�s what I had been told, though I wasn�t sure if it was something to be believed. I couldn�t even remember where I had heard it, maybe somewhere on the radio or a snippet of conversation I had overheard.
Hands, I thought as I looked at the glossy cover of a magazine, Glamour. It wasn�t a magazine I particularly liked, but it was the only available choice at the claustrophobic waiting room. I never looked forward to dentists appointments. All the poking and prodding was very uncomfortable, and you could keep no diet secrets from your dentist. Not many other secrets for that matter, whether you brush, if you smoke, even what you ate at your last meal. He�ll surely know I had a Snickers bar after lunch.
The magazine was full of paparazzi pictures and Hollywood�s finest at their worst. The married hunks caught cheating with a Playboy centerfold. Or my personal favorite, so-and-so is secretly married. How dare they have their own life! Didn�t they realize becoming famous means having no secrets? As though I cared what they did. Someone obviously did though or the magazines wouldn�t be written and sold so regularly.
Flipping though the pages, I thought of the soon to come unpleasantness of the dentist�s rough metal tools, when I stopped on an interesting page. It was some random starlet after a long strenuous day of shopping. She wore a baseball cap, and a basic T-shirt and jeans. Behind her overly large sunglasses, you could tell she was somewhat irked at being photographed, by the way she was biting her lip.
What was interesting and what made me stop on this page were her hands. I was thinking of what I had heard. I wondered if I could find some dark secret in this actress by her hands. Her hands looked thick but long, the fingers looked rather eloquent. I peered hard at the page, trying to see what was there.
The girl�s nails were nicely trimmed short and buffed, looking almost shiny in the light of the photo. The nails were not painted as I had expected with her being a star and all. They were simple and natural. The shortness of them struck me though. Perhaps she used to bite them a lot. I could picture her neurotically biting and tugging at her bleeding little nails. The thought made me giggle a little, and I wondered if it could be true.
The hands themselves looked tough, the skin strong and muscled. She probably worked out, using her hands with weights or maybe racquetball. They reminded me of working hands, but taken good care of. Not the rough hands of a construction man, but similar to maybe a secretary who spends all day typing. They also looked very soft and smooth too, she probably used lotion everyday. She wore three rings, one on a thumb, the other two on middle fingers and sparkling brightly with diamonds, no wedding ring though.
From this small glimpse of this actress�s hands I had created my own image of who she could be in real life. I saw her as an athletic, pampered, wealthy, independent woman, who was trying to perhaps shed her bad habits and �smile for the camera�. It is Hollywood after all.
I began to think of my own hands. After taking a quick glance around, I placed the magazine on my lap and trying not to look ridiculous I studied my hands. My hands used to look a bit more slender, but now they looked chubbier, yet still long. It had been a while since I�ve taken the time to really look at my hands, probably not since I was a child. I remember studying my hand besides my mothers noting the differences.
My cuticles were white and in bad need of trimming. I couldn�t even remember the last time I had painted my nails. The nails were long and some sharp. All of them differently jagged, for I was admittedly a nail-bitter.
I turned my hand over and a smile escaped my lips. On the right palm there was a smudge of green marker. I began to rub at it, remembering the drawing my kids and I were making before I left the house. It was a big mural of a forest we were going to put up in my eldest son�s room, with a brook and different woodland creatures. I guess even that smudge could say a little something about me. Maybe it shows that I enjoy time with my kids, or that I am artist, or just plain messy.
I began to realize I had created a form of who that starlet was from her hands, just as someone could see who I was from mine. Someone could see how nervous or stressed I was from work, how I spent a lot of time with my children, and how I didn�t take enough time for pampering myself. People could see that I was married from my ring, proudly displaying three simple little specks of diamonds. A deep ache began to burn inside and I knew if I continued it would burst.
I put the magazine roughly back onto the side-table; the receptionist looked at me and went quickly back to her work. I looked at her hands, which were tough and muscled from years of typing, as they danced above the computer keyboard. I quickly looked away, folding my own hands under my sleeves.
The night lay quiet around me, like a wool blanket, suffocating and warm. I rose from my sweat-soaked bed and opened the bedroom window, allowing the sheer drapes to fly and float in the cool breeze.
A gentle grunt came from the dark side of the bed. I shut the window trying to be quiet, so as to not wake my youngest children. My baby, being ten months old, and my 3 year old daughter, Zoe, usually slept in my room with me. They�ve always been closely attached to me, but especially recently. Jacob, being almost nine slept in his own bed, wanting to be the man of the house.
I slowly shut the bedroom door and went into the living room. The whole house was dark, and creepy. Reminding me of some sort of horror movie I walked quickly to the couch and dove under the blankets. I searched for the remote on the coffee table. Of course, it wasn�t there; the children never could put anything in the same place twice. It was a family curse; their father had been the exact same way. I looked under the blanket and found the remote near the other end of the couch.
�Of course, it�s entirely your fault.� I said, turning to a dark corner. I expected Thom�s voice to respond with his usual remark of it being my fault. But I only saw the dark shadows of the curtain. There was a faint glow from the street lights on the border of the window and I stared at it for a few moments. Trying not to think, and yet not being able to stop.
It had only happened six months ago, a terrible car accident involving a logging truck and three other cars. It seemed like it had been years ago and yet at moments like this it felt like just today.
When I had these bouts of insomnia I would often come out and watch television, just anything to distract my mind. Sometimes it would work, recently it hadn�t. After a frustrating hour of infomercials and helpful psychic�s, I turned off the TV and stood up to try something new.
I began to stretch out my sore muscles and twist my unhappy joints. Flexing backwards felt good, taking the strain off my lower vertebrae. I began to stretch downward, inspecting my feet that I had not taken time to look at in a while. I remembered as a teenager painting my toe nails blues and purples, taking such care into how beautiful my feet were. I had been too busy to do anything of that nature for quite a while. I was lucky if I got a shower every day.
As I returned to a standing position I noticed a dark mark on my hand. Looking closer the blue and black colors began to show. Earlier in the day I had burned myself while cooking. As I sat down on the ground for my stretches, I remembered the funny look my infant son, Derek, had made that started the whole mess that ended with my war wound burn.
I had been battling with Derek all evening, at ten months he refused to be held. And yet, the mischievous child could not be let to wander around either, always heading straight for what he was not supposed to play with. He enjoyed un-stacking the books on the shelf or pushing the various buttons on the stereo.
After sliding the dinner in the oven, I hurriedly scooped up my bundle of rough boy and went into the living room. Zoe was in the living room coloring, what I thought was a safe task for her ended not being so great. The three year-old had managed to use every color and was very creative, I gave her that. But, marker all over her legs and belly takes a few days to wash off, no matter how much I scrubbed.
While I was washing my little artist in the kitchen, Derek had managed to pull himself up at the coffee table and was trying to eat Jacob�s orange wedges. Finishing with the colored child quickly, I rushed into the living room before the infant could choke. I managed to get there in time for him to slip a small slimy orange slice into his chubby mouth.
As a ten month old he was just now getting used to his new, evolving taste buds. Thus, the orange brought a wide range of faces on the small chubby face of my beloved little devil. It was hilarious and both my older children and I had a grand old time watching the infants changing expressions. First one of surprise, with his eyes bugged out and his lips pursed. Then a look when the tartness of the orange hit him, his face trying to suck in on itself, beginning with his cheeks. Following a few other funny looks, the orange came sliding out of his mouth to be forgotten. The four of us enjoyed some time rolling around and laughing.
That�s why I enjoyed time with my boys, anything could be funny. The smallest little thing could be so amazing and world altering. Exploring our yard, finding the jungle, could be the greatest adventure.
Our little enjoyment was interrupted when I began to smell the sweet smell of another burnt meal. I ran into the kitchen and threw open the oven door. I quickly reached for the pan, barely taking time to grab the oven mitt. I still managed to burn my wrist on the wire rack as I brought the pizza out. I hadn�t felt the burn right away, but only later after dinner.
As I was washing the dinner dishes, I could hear the children in the living room laughing and playing. The pizza had been edible, but not near to perfect. It had been Thom�s absolute favorite, including the typical toppings of artichoke hearts and sun-dried tomatoes. Suddenly I thought I smelled him. My husband�s Old Spice he always wore was stinging in my nose. My eyes began to sting too. I noticed my burn and heard what my husband would have said if he were there.
�Honey,� his dark brown eyes looking at me sympathetically, �You need to slow down and not hurt yourself. Dinner�s not that important.�
�Right,� I huffed to myself over the darkened pan, scrubbing. �The kids need dinner.�
His voice lingered in my head, as though he were speaking over my shoulder, whispering in my ear. �There�s always something else to eat.� His melodic tone made me scrub the pan harder.
Back in the darkness, back in the living room. I sat on the ground looking at my hands. My poor unkempt hands. The burn was beginning to spread. I could feel the slight throbbing sensation along my wrist.
I looked at the burn deeper, noticing the darker veins in the skin, changing colors. What could this burn say about me? It could say I am clumsy, which I am usually not. It could say I�m a pyromaniac, which I definitely am not. Would it say that I am easily distracted? Or that I am way too busy doing everything for others? Or simply lonely?
My husband had worked a lot so he hadn�t taken on many of the household jobs, so after he was gone, it was not as though I had new responsibilities with the house or children. What was the hardest to deal with was not having him there to talk to at night. I missed having his shoulder to lay my head on when I needed a moment of comfort. Or his gentle reassuring words when there was a difficult problem I faced. I felt like a stone slab being the pillar to keep everyone stable, but I was there all alone, almost ready to tumble.
An anxiety began to swell over me, I felt like I needed to run into the streets screaming. I felt like reenacting a Greek tragedy and begin wailing and pulling out my hair in mourning. I rushed to the back deck and pulled the sliding door open, needing the fresh air desperately as though I could not breathe. My naked feet felt the cold wood of the deck as I stepped out into the open. The breeze seemed to wrap around me and release my tension. I took a deep breath, holding it, and released the stress along with it.
I looked up into the night sky where there were many stars and planets shining down on me. I looked at my hands and arms, noticing how the moonlight fell on my skin. The sparkling of my one ring brought my eyes to it. My ring symbolizing our marriage, our undying love. Undying, I thought bitterly. But it had died or that�s how I wanted to think. But I knew better. I turned my hands different directions, playing with the light bouncing off the diamonds.
My thoughts were interrupted by a soft whimpering from the other room. Entering my bedroom, I switched on the night light. My baby was sitting up in bed, ready for consoling, with his arms out-stretched towards me. I scooped him up and held him close. His little wispy baby hair tickling my face, and his smell lingering in my nose.
I turned to look at Zoe who had twisted herself diagonal, her head where her feet should be. With one arm I shoved her over so she wouldn�t fall off and tucked the blanket over her. She made a little sucking noise as a remembrance from her infant days of nursing. I smiled upon my healthy children, knowing these were the best days of my life. Seeing them grow and blossom into great creatures.
I crawled into the now chilly bed with my baby nestled against me and he was back to sleep before his head hit the bed. Being with my children again, I knew that they were my solace. Just them needing me would make me strong, perhaps I faked it in the beginning, but it will turn to true strength as time passes and hearts heal. I missed my husband badly, but I also knew he was still here, in my children and in my heart.
As I began to drowse off I felt the heaviness of my ring on the pillow above my head, and I heard a deep mumbling voice. It was my husband, and I couldn�t make out the words. As I opened bleary eyes I saw a fuzzy shape before me. �I love you,� he said, �I know you�ll take good care of our children.�
Sleep stole over me, and there was no chance of stopping it. I had pleasant dreams all the rest of the night.