They exchange secrets. Women dripping in diamonds and designer labels smirk at Jane. Formality meant they had to invite everyone, even her, to these events. She didn’t fit.
Jane gulps her glass of merlot.
Soon, this cavernous house will spill with wine-stained bodies.
Photo by Skitterphoto from Pexels
Tonight, my daughter is having a sleepover with a friend. It’s not her first sleepover. She’s had several this year. But this pang in my heart, loss of breath in my lungs, gets no easier with time.
I worry about her, miss her laugh, and wish to hold her while she’s gone.
It’s not any different from the first time she slept through the night with no need for milk or snuggles at three a.m.. And just like when she didn’t need me to catch her at the bottom of the playground slide anymore.
I’m sure it’ll be the same or harder when she goes on her first date, drives the car alone with her new licence, or moves into her first apartment.
Little by little, she grows up and away.
And bit by bit, I have to let go.
Knowing this, I look forward to tomorrow when she sails through the front door sharing sleepover stories about the brownies they baked and the front walkover she finally had the courage to complete. I’ll bend to smell her coconut shampoo.
At least for now, she still lets me brush her hair.
Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels
*Photo courtesy of Pixabay
A holiday toast to my husband:
Brighter than the shade of rubies in my ears, deeper than the scarlet smeared on my lips, richer than the aged merlot in my glass, is the love my crimson heart carries for you after sixteen Christmases together.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
It’s the summer after seventh grade, and my best friend is Haley, a tall blonde full of moles. There are ten of them shaped like a soda bottle on her back. I wish my freckles could be as cool.
“Don’t be jealous,” she says. “You have so many. I bet we could find something there if we tried.”
Haley lives at the end of my street in a yellow Tudor. It’s massive compared to my parents’ bungalow. I walk to her house every day, and she teaches me to fit in.
“These jeans don’t fit me anymore. Want them?” She tosses a pair of Levis on the bed.
“Wow. Thanks!” I have never in my life owned a pair of brand name jeans.
We swim in her pool during the day and play Ouija board in her parents’ pop-up camper at night. Some nights, we summon so many spirits I make my step-dad pick me up in the rusted minivan instead of walking home. The single-wide trailer park on my street gives me the heebie-jeebies at night. Half the trailers have boarded-up windows, but others have foldable lawn chairs and little pots of annuals out front. It’s a strange addition to our otherwise bland street.
One day while waiting for Haley to get home from her boyfriend’s house, I meet a new girl in the neighborhood. She stops her bike in front of my house, anchors it between her legs and says, “Hey.”
I stop the porch swing. “Hey.”
“Wanna be my friend?” she asks, chucking a pop-it onto the ground. She tosses another, and it snaps as it connects with the pavement.
“Sure. Can I have a pop-it?” I hop off the swing and jog down my steps to her.
“Sure.” She hikes her leg over her bike and parks it on the sidewalk. Then in one graceful swoop, she flips her crimped blonde hair over her shoulder and dumps sawdust and pop-its into my hand. “I’m Kristin.” She flashes a big smile.
“I’m Danielle.” I smile back.
“Cool.”
“You just move here?” I ask, throwing another onto the sidewalk. It doesn’t pop, so I stomp on it.
“My dad did. He lives in a trailer down there.” Kristin nods sideways toward the trailers. “I’m here for the summer.”
“Are those dangerous?”
“The pop-its or the trailers?” She jokes.
I laugh. “The trailers.”
“Nah.” She shrugs. “Mostly old folks.”
“Cool. Where you from?”
“Florida. With my mom.”
“I’ve never been there,” I say in awe. Kristin has a special magic, a glue that draws me toward her.
I find out she’s the same age as me, we both like to ride bikes, and we’re both poor. Or at least her dad is.
When Haley gets home, I invite her to come with us on our bike ride to the park.
“It’s too hot,” she says. “Go play with your new friend. We’ll catch up later.”
Haley invites us to come swimming that afternoon, and Kristin won’t go.
“I only swim in the ocean,” she says.
I have just a month with my new friend, so I don’t go either. I figure Haley has her boyfriend, and now I have Kristin. It’s even.
Two weeks fly while I spend every waking minute with Kristin. I don’t see Haley at all, and I miss her.
So, when she calls and says, “I need to talk to you … Alone,” I go.
My fingers graze the diamonds of the chain-link fence along the front of the last trailer in the trailer park making a soft clinking sound. I’m thinking about how my skin will smell dirty and metallic when Haley startles me by screaming “You’re a terrible friend!” She’s suddenly in front of me and so close to my face. I’m worried she may punch me for no reason.
“What?” I ask, freaked by the level of her voice. “What did I do?” I don’t know. I really don’t.
Her face is flushed and eyes are wet. She’s been crying. I wonder why she’s so sad. Haley pulls photos of us from her pocket and rips them.
“You picked that girl over me,” she says. She turns and stomps away, leaving me with shreds of our friendship at my feet. “One day you’ll get it.”
At the end of the summer, when Kristin goes home, I do.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay on Pexels
I stood in the Barbie aisle beside my mother in Kmart with a crumpled green ten-dollar bill secured in my grasp. Choosing a doll from the hundred pieces of plastic perfection posed between cellophane and cardboard with my own hard-earned money at ten wasn’t easy. I imagined buying all of them and how I’d play with each. There was blonde Peaches and Cream Barbie – a doll with a cream-colored gown who smelled like dessert, an Island Fun Ken doll with a Hawaiian swimsuit and a pink and orange lay, and Rollerblade Kira. She had long, dark hair like mine and yellow roller blades that sparked when they moved across the ground. I had seen commercials for each.
“Which one do you want?” Mom asked.
“That one,” I said, deciding. I pointed to Kira. “She’s pretty.” I liked her turquoise top and biker shorts, and her neon yellow knee pads. Her skin resembled Mom’s in the summer after she tanned, golden-brown. When I grabbed her from the shelf, the plastic crinkled beneath my pale fingers. I imagined what it would be like to push her along on the kitchen floor and watch her roller blades ignite.
“That’s a great choice.” She smiled. I interlocked my fingers with hers, and we walked to the cashier with the doll pinned between my side and my arm. She was my new favorite, different from any doll I had at home. Special.
In line, an elderly white lady smirked at me from behind her bifocals. I could smell the mothballs on her stuffy pink polyester pants. “Hmf,” she said as she curled the left side of her lip and crossed her arms over her flowered smock.
I clung to Mom’s legs and hid behind them. I didn’t like strangers, especially smelly old ladies with nasty looks on their faces.
Mom tightened her grip on my hand and encouraged me to ignore her. When it was our turn, I placed my doll in the middle of the conveyor belt with my wad of money on top and looked away from the lady behind us.
“Shouldn’t she buy a white doll?” the lady demanded.
“That’s a silly question, isn’t it?” Mom said, her voice sweet like syrup. She batted her eyelashes and gave the old lady a phony smile with too many teeth showing.
The lady huffed and rolled her eyes.
The cashier handed me my new doll in a grocery bag and put the change in my palm.
Mom nudged me towards the exit. Outside she said, “Remember – don’t let people like that influence you, Danielle. Be smarter.”
Photo courtesy of Pixabay
I couldn’t tell you my age but I know I was young: a toddler in Mom’s arms. She sat with me in our shared bedroom at my grandmother’s house and rocked me in the old wooden chair while singing nearly in a whisper.
“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine …”
It was probably after she left my father. She packed a few of our things in a suitcase and we returned to my grandparents. She tried so hard to shield me from feeling broke and broken.
It must’ve been cloudy outside, because of the soft dewy light that hung in the air like mist before a rainstorm. I now know that there is an empty field outside of that window where neighbors parked their cars, a place where I searched for lucky four-leaf clovers as a six-year-old. But on this particular day my world was so small and focused. I only saw Mom surrounded by the light reflecting from dark clouds.
“You make me happy when skies are grey …”
Her voice was like a blanket warmed on the line. There were tears in her eyes over having to be both mother and father. Maybe she didn’t want to move back home with my grandpa and grandma. Maybe she didn’t want to give up on her marriage or admit to being wrong about the man she loved. She had to do what was best for us.
“You’ll never know dear, how much I love you …”
Mom had the softest touch. She tucked loose hairs behind my ears as she sang the words. Just the first verse, because it was her favorite part. Or maybe that was all she knew by heart. I can’t remember anymore.
There are other memories from Grandmother’s house: the claw-foot tub, the hutch with all the Avon bottles, Grandma cooking stuffed cabbage in the kitchen and the smell of onions and ground beef sifting through the house. None are like the memory of Mom rocking me. The biggest lessons come in the smallest moments.
My life is quite different from Mom’s. Justin, my husband, and I are best friends. And we don’t have financial problems like Mom did. But that isn’t to say we don’t ever deal with stressful situations. Right now we are in a transition stage: house is for sale, and another is under contract. We aren’t sure exactly what the future holds, but I know staying strong for my daughters is most important.
“Please don’t take my sunshines away.”
