by Jeni Birr
Acknowledgements:
There are so many people I’d like to thank for turning me into the woman I am today. If we’ve had any sort of interaction, positive or otherwise, you’ve impacted me. I like who I am, so I thank each and every one of you for the part you played in my development.
First and foremost: to my parents for bringing me into this world, loving me, supporting me most of the time, and teaching me that I am smarter, prettier, and stronger than I believe. To my brother, Tom, for always providing the comic relief. You may be misunderstood, but I love you. A huge thank you to my grandparents for always being such a tremendous support system on so many levels. To my Uncle Pat, especially for everything you did for my dad a few years back. To my Aunt Jan, you’re the coolest aunt a girl could have and your boys are lucky to have you as a mom. To Norm and Karen for being a pretty sweet set of in-laws, and helping us through our tough times. And to the Milton’s, for being there for me every step of the way, no matter what I asked.
To my friends growing up: I won’t name all of you because that would take some time, but the extra special few are Rob F., Aaron S., Elena L., Nikki D., Sally L., Leah D., Kristen B. and Donnie M. To my educators: particularly Mrs. Klier, Mr. Guilmet, Mr. Inloes, Mr. MacDougall, Mr. Moll, Mr. Williams, Mrs. LaBatt, Mr. Rutherford and especially Mr. “T” Thomas.
To my camp friends: I love you and I miss you. Dave L., Steve “Doc” G., Tom and Andy E., Willie L. and especially you, Lauren R. And to the counselors I probably freaked out: Dan, Dustin, Superman and especially Sandi. I’m truly sorry.
To my Cosi people, my Quiznos people, and my Panera people; for making almost every day enjoyable. An extra special thank you to Kristin K. and Lisa L. for throwing us such a wonderful and helpful silent auction. And especially to Steve L. and Chris P. for being so understanding.
To my “Florida” friends: Bob and Kathy T., Rachel E., Nicky L., Carissa B., Michelle W., Jamie H., and Julie S., there is so much I have no idea how I would have made it through without you guys.
To my singer/song-writer/spoken-word/artist people: thank you, each and every one of you for teaching me just how much I love art and music and just how little I know about it. For giving me the inspiration to even pick up a guitar, to start writing songs, to record an EP, and even play a few shows.
To Jeff and Aimee D., Kim S., Corrie L., Brad and Julie E., Ross S. and the rest of my friends I’m drawing a blank on but will certainly kick myself for leaving out, thank you all so much for being such awesome people and such supportive friends.
To Andrea: for being such an amazing friend to me since the day I met you. Thank you for your love, support, hospitality and unwavering friendship. Have a warm coke and a smile, wench.
And lastly, most importantly, to my husband, Eric. We had a very rocky journey to marriage, but it was definitely the best thing either one of us ever did. We are so good for each other. You’re an amazing man, a wonderful husband, and I’m pretty sure you saved my life at least a couple times. I love you and thank you, a million times over.
Introduction
Hello there, lovelies! Let me first take this opportunity to thank you for even beginning this little autobiographical novella. This is the story of my life to date, in all of its grit and minimal glory. It may not be fully accurate, but it is exactly the way I remember it. I have not elaborated, exaggerated or sugar-coated anything. I am well aware that everyone perceives things differently; but this is my book, so it’s the way I remember it. Is every factoid of my life included? Of course not! But most of what I deem to be relevant is in here, and I’m sure once this is published, I will remember quite a bit that probably should have been in here, but well, what can you do?
Something I believe in pretty fervently, which I try my damndest to uphold, is not speaking poorly of anyone because I don’t know their story, what they’ve been through, or why they’re being a royal D.B. (if I feel they’re being a royal D.B.); so if I’ve had beef with anyone, it will not be in here. Several of you just sighed. I heard it. The other thing you should know is that I have a bit of a foul mouth, but I’ve tried as much as possible to keep the language clean. There are a few (very few,) sections however, where there is need. I apologize in advance.
You will also notice snippets of poems and songs I’ve written throughout the story. I’ve been a writer all my life. I wrote my first poem when I was very young and never stopped. Around the age of thirteen, I started writing songs. I’m not saying I’m Maya Angelou or Bob Dylan or anything, but just a heads up if you come across one of these lyrical pearls.
As you’ve probably already figured out, my style of prose writing is exactly the way I speak, as if I was telling my story to anyone I had known for years, or more likely, someone I had just met that had some time to kill. If this is not your preference, well, then, this is where the S.T.B.Y. rule comes into effect, as one of my favorite mentors used to say: Sucks To Be You.
Please make sure your seat is in its upright position, your tray tables are locked, seatbelt fastened, luggage securely stored below the seat in front of you and all electronic devices are turned off at this time (unless of course you’re reading this on an E-reader, those are just fine).
Please enjoy the ride.
This book is dedicated to the best friend I ever had:
my rock, my hero,
my dad.
CHAPTER 1
I was born 6 weeks early and weighed 5 pounds 5 ounces, at 6:55pm. I’m sure that means something spiritual and sacred, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is. I heard my mother tell the story hundreds of times about how she was supposed to be on stage at 7:00, but she didn’t make it! And then she would laugh with that cackle of hers that used to embarrass my dad something awful.
I don’t really remember much of my childhood. My earliest memory is of kindergarten; getting a gold star for giving Courtney the last piece of pink paper when she started to cry over it, so I went with yellow instead. It just seemed like a nice thing to do. I didn’t need pink, yellow was just fine for whatever project we were about to work on, and frankly, I was surprised when I was praised for what I’d done. I’ve always believed in being kind and not sweating the small stuff. And pretty much all of it, is just that, small stuff.
I do remember having a lot of friends as a kid though. Isn’t that usually the way it goes? Lots of friends as a kid and then as you grow they fall by the wayside and by the time you hit thirty you’re lucky if you have five true friends? At least, there’s some saying that goes something like that, about when you die. I did have a bunch though. Rachel was one of my best friends for a time because our dads worked together. She lived at the back of my neighborhood and we would climb the wall and go to the liquor store that used to be called The Cracker Barrel, but I think it’s since changed its name. I got my first sting by a wasp in her front yard when I leaned up against a tree with a wasp just chillin right beneath where I put my hand. This, logically, taught me to always look where I was putting my hands.
Another very good friend of mine was the previously mentioned Courtney. Her family moved to Buffalo, New York in the fifth grade and I never saw her again. I remember one evening when my mother had been on the phone for what felt like ages and I wanted to ask her if Courtney could come over so I made a sign that simply said “can Courtney come over?” but she didn’t respond to my sign. I don’t know how I would have called Courtney to see if she was available because this was well before the internet and cell phones and we had only one landline, which my mother was occupying. In any case, somehow that I don’t remember, I broke a glass on the kitchen floor, and I meant to clean it up, but something distracted me and I didn’t, and my mother cut her foot
on it. I often wonder if somehow, subconsciously, I wanted my mother to cut her foot for ignoring me. I was only about six and I really don’t think I would have wanted that to happen. I wish I could say this is where I learned to clean up my messes and finish what I’m doing before started something else, but I’ve always been easily distracted, and it’s only gotten worse with time.
I was definitely a creative child. I had an easel in the basement and loved to paint and draw. I would finger paint and use brushes to make all kinds of pictures, many of which I still have to this day in my giant yellow Crayola portfolio with the rest of my more recent work. As I got older, I really grew into designing spaces. I moved bedrooms in my house just so I could redesign my room from scratch. I painted each wall a different, vibrant color, and put my bed in the closet, which was just barely big enough for a twin mattress, but not a box spring or frame. This lasted for a few years, but then I moved back to my original room which I redecorated one summer with light blue cloud wall paper, a pink glittery ceiling, (I threw glitter up in small doses onto areas I had coated with spray adhesive and I do NOT recommend this method) and a pink rug with a homemade bed cut to resemble a cloud underneath my rainbow bedspread. I even painted the Lisa Frank unicorns on my closet doors. I thought it was just magical. My dad helped quite a bit with this one.
The summer before second grade I even starred in and directed a play based on Aladdin, which was a live action movie, before Disney released their animated version. Courtney was a dancer and had all these fancy costumes from frequent recitals that were rather universally sized for kids our age, and I casted her as the genie, a couple boys from our class as the Sultan and Aladdin, and I, of course, was Princess Jasmine. My dad helped build some pretty mediocre scenery. Nothing against his craftsmanship, he was a carpenter’s apprentice for some time, so he knew what he was doing, but looking back, my paintings that hung from the wood frames of fabulous temples and palaces in fluorescent tempura paints weren’t exactly my personal best work. We even had a “magic lamp” which I’m pretty sure was actually a gravy boat. We held several rehearsals, and made flyers, and all of our families came to my house to watch my little play. I didn’t even realize what a task this all was for a seven year old. My dad told me much later in life that all the kids in the neighborhood always looked up to me, and if there was ever an issue that needed solving, they’d all look to me for the answer. These are likely idealized memories from a doting father.
I also remember around first grade going to a store with my mother, and there was this little set of pink and purple heart-shaped erasers that I wanted. She told me I couldn’t get them, so I stole them and hid them under a hat on the dresser in my room. This was apparently not a good hiding place as she found them a day or two later and told me she was taking me back to the store so I could return them to the owner and apologize. This never happened though. I think she was too embarrassed because she just ran into the store and put them back on the shelf. I believe this is what initially taught me that it is okay to steal, as long as you don’t get caught.
We belonged to a swim club for a few years when I was younger. My mother thought it was the cat’s meow and went all the time. My dad’s visits were far less often, but I do remember one particular day when he came along and I could tell they were fighting, as usual. I sat on the bench with my dad facing the playground eating our ice cream cones and I asked him, in my best seven-year-old-too-wise-for-my-years-voice: “Daddy? How long are you and Mommy gonna stay married?” And he responded that he was going to stay married to my mother as long as he could. It was that very night that my younger brother, Tom, and I were awoken in the middle of the night to my mother screaming up the stairs that they were getting a divorce.
Tom and I were given the choice which parent we wanted to live with to avoid messy custody battles and Tom chose to stay with my dad and I chose to go with my mother. In these days, I thought my mother needed my protection. We were going to be best friends and go shopping and have girl time and it was going to be great! This is not what happened. She was determined to find someone and remarry before my father (who wasn’t even looking) and was in every club and choir she could be a part of. I would go to school, stay after in “latchkey” with the other kids whose parents worked, (like my new friends Aaron and Rob,) my dad would come get us around six, we’d go home to his house, and then my mother would come get me around ten, or whenever she was done doing whatever it was that she was doing. It went on like this for months.
The other issue was, how shall I put this delicately…my mother was in no mental state to be caring for a child at this time. Let’s just say my mother had a pretty crappy childhood. I know lots of people think they had it bad, but she really did for reasons I will not get into. She suppressed a lot of it, but the trauma of the divorce brought it all back up, and basically, she lost it, for lack of a more medically accurate term. She spent some time in the mental ward of the hospital where I was born, and when she came home, I remember several instances of her freaking out uncontrollably for no apparent reason. One night she was sitting on the edge of her bed in her nightgown rocking back and forth while clutching her creamsicle-colored stuffed hippo she had named “hugs,” crying and calling me “mommy.” I was eight.
More Than Real*2002
Sometimes a child cries out for water
In the middle of the night
But mommy and sister, they didn’t cry for water
They fought back not thirst, but fright
For sister cried out for water once
Had a glass of it poured on her head
Now forced to sleep in wet pajamas
Fighting back tears instead
And sometimes you tell no one
How daddy makes you feel
And sometimes those monsters under the bed
Are a little more than real
Sometimes a child awakens
From nightmarish sleep, in screams
But for mommy, waking was the nightmare
She was safe within her dreams
And sometimes she still awakens
And cries out, out of fright
But she awakens not for thirst of dreams
But the memory of those nights
And sometimes you tell no one
How daddy makes you feel
And sometimes those monsters under the bed
Are a little more than real
~*~
I begged her to let me go back to living with my father, but she refused. I don’t remember her reasons, whatever they were. My father was paying her child support on top of what he had already paid her in the divorce settlement, which was substantial, and he was also paying her an additional several hundred dollars per month to stay in the Birmingham School District, because they were the best in the area. Top three in the country, or so I heard at one point. It wasn’t until he agreed to continue paying her this child support money, in the form of alimony, that she agreed to let me move back home with my dad, but I’m sure she’ll deny that. Frankly, I would.
My brother and I continued to visit her every other weekend. She dated here and there and usually had a new man every year or few. I generally didn’t like them, but let’s be fair, what young girl is going to like her mother’s new boyfriends when she loves her dad so much, which I did. I remember one of them was apparently pretty wealthy and had very bad teeth. He bought her a real fur coat and took us up in his little Cessna airplane. My mother liked that he would call from his car phone when he would arrive because she hated the sound of the buzzer to her apartment. It’s funny the things we remember, isn’t it?
The one I remember the most was Rob. He was twenty-three when my mother met him at some nudist singles weekend thing and they started dating. I was twelve. She was turning forty that year. Funny small-world story here: he was still living with his mother, Tamara, whom, as we discovered later, my dad had a crush on when they went to high school together! Yes, I’ll allow you a minute to proce
ss that one. My mother was now dating the son of a woman my dad had gone to school with. Yes, very weird for me. He was really much more like my older brother. He looked quite a bit like Kurt Cobain, as really any man with long dirty blonde hair did in those days, especially after not shaving for a few days, which Rob didn’t really do very often.
One year, he took us to the Rainbow Gathering, which, if you’re unfamiliar with, is basically a big hippie fest in some remote area that moves around the country and clothing is optional. I think I was thirteen by this point, my brother would have been eleven, and of course, we wore clothing, as did my mother only because we were present, but Rob did not. I didn’t really understand how the food and water worked and didn’t eat or drink anything for almost 3 days, and needless to say was extremely dehydrated upon return, and couldn’t even get out of bed the next morning without passing out.
Rob wanted me to call him “dad,” which I refused to do. I had a father and he wasn’t it. And he was only ten years older than me, it wasn’t even possible. But, one day, when my mother and Rob were moving into a house they had just bought together, I used my powers of female manipulation, called him “dad,” and got him to let me and my friends ride in the back of the empty moving truck on a trip back to the apartment, on rollerblades. Fortunately, for us, this is where that story ends. I realize for the sake of this book it would be a lot more interesting if someone had actually broken a limb or we’d gotten into some horrible accident, but no, everyone did, I’m sorry to say, survive.
Rob was also the enabler to my getting drunk the first time. My friend, Emily, was supposed to be staying over, and she asked him to buy us beer and wine; and then of course, her parents changed their mind once they learned that Rob would be there and she had to go home, so Rob had this beer and wine for just me. We waited for my mother to go to bed, and then he taught me drinking games like bounce the quarter into the shoe, and likely several others, but I don’t remember much about that night aside from getting violently ill, and him waking me up in a closet I had either just sat down in, or passed out in, and putting me into my bed. I was soaking wet all over, I assume from trying to sweat out the alcohol. My mother woke in the night to the sound of my throwing up and just assumed I was sick, and so she called me into school the next day, thank goodness. I honestly don’t think I was this sick for another seventeen years. This, is why I didn’t drink again for a very long time.
