| by mauraid |
�Never let �em see you cry kid .� The first time I heard that phrase I was a very old three. I had already spent a year in a foster home learning the fine art of second class citizenship. Now I was blessed with another move. I was taken away from my parents because I had won the crappy family lottery. I know, I know! Everybody says that, but please bear with me. You�ll probably believe me when you�re done reading. Let�s start with my mother. She�s had a mental illness that seems to have afflicted her all her life. It also was an affliction that no one talked about, let alone bothered to name, so by the time my father met her it was simply described as her �eccentricity �. My Father chose to overlook it because in his words, �She was the most beautiful, intelligent thing he had ever laid his eyes on�. Her eccentricities manifested themselves in the usual and unusual. Groceries would be brought in to the kitchen table and left there to rot while children watched. How many children do you know who wish upon a star they knew how to cook? I knew five. Nothing was ever cleaned including us. I think mother took the term �White Trash� just a little too far, don�t you ? According to a story I heard once, Mother decided something was wrong with me and it could only be fixed by placing my six month old body out in the snow where my father found me a couple of hours later. Thank God ! Long haul truck drivers have to come off the road sometime. Pop, well Pop was another matter. He was a man in his late twenties when he married my mother. He had just got out of the military with the typical attitude problem, and probably an even more typical drinking problem. We kids actually liked the fact that Pop drank. He was a gruff, stiff man when he was sober but when he drank he was something almost magical. That�s when we saw him laugh, talk, tell the most wonderful stories and most important of all for any child, he gave us Money! Yeehaw! Based on these facts, and unfortunately some more horrendous ones, when my mother came into the Welfare office and signed her parental rights away, she was given little to no argument. And my father? Well he was somewhere in California in his semi doing what he thought all good fathers do, making a living. Needless to say no one contacted him or even asked for his take on the situation. Asking Pop�s opinion when he was upset was not a good idea anyway. So I did my year in the foster home waiting patiently for Hell to get back where it belonged only to find out Hell was a big building with an elevator to different floors. Which floor was the Indiana Soldier�s and Sailor�s children�s Home? That is a question that chases me to this day. Most of my ten years of impressions of �The Home �are vague now but a few still like to haunt me. There is one memory that has remained vivid for me though out my life. It is my father�s stoic face peering into my little crying eyes and telling me, �Never let�em see you cry kid�. That whisper still booms within me every time I well up for any reason. The reason those words announced themselves today was a simple, complicated, funny sad and basic fundamentals of Life reason. I had to go to the grocery store. I had just spent the week attending my father�s funeral, doing all those things that good obedient daughters do and not one tear fell. Well they did when the twenty-one gun salute went off but damnit Pop you would have cried too. It was so easy to imagine him firing off those rounds himself in honor of one of his fallen buddies. But hell I didn�t cry any other time. It simply wasn�t allowed. I�m a Lyons for God�s sake! So I endured the most important loss of my life with barely a tear. Pop would have been proud. I came back to Georgia a week later, to my children, to my bills, to my vacuumed life and did what all good responsible mothers do. I went to the grocery store. I was fine, well at least at first. I grabbed my tomatoes and bread in between the �I�m sorry� and �that�s too bad �condolences. The whole time I wanted to scream, �You should have known him. He was worth knowing!� I made it through to the check out line and that moment came. Ya�ll know �that moment�. That time when something life altering hit�s you right up side the head and you can�t control your reaction to it. It is instinctual, guttural. It�s the wild animal that can do nothing else but wail. I looked up from writing my check to see an old man sitting on the bench that Pop sat on. I finished my business, watching him bullshit some other fella, telling him stories about his adventures or misadventures depending how you wanted to look at it. I wondered if this fella knew my Da ? Had they sat on that same bench together and swapped tales while I , too busy getting my life in order to pay attention to Pop, did what I had to do? Did he miss his buddy when he didn�t show up to keep him company, like I missed him already? I walked over to this man and leaned down and kissed him on the cheek, a living, breathing still trying to get it done cheek and whispered in his ear, � Sir always remember when you leave this Earth someone will miss you and everything about you. I then ran from the grocery store, my groceries in tow. I reached my little red pickup and wailed. I wailed so loud I think, I hope Heaven heard me. I fell into a pile at the side of my truck, still clinging to the grocery cart, because come on folks life goes on and I couldn�t lose my groceries, and I howled. I know Pop would have disapproved but this little soldier ain�t Da . She�s just a girl who is wondering now if she�s strong enough to endure it all without that stubborn old face whispering to her, �Never let�em see you cry kid.� Maybe Poppy will forgive me. Shit he might even say, �It�s long over due.� �mauraid 2003 ::: edited by madmick ::: |
| A Trip to the Grocery Store |
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