things i forgot
2002-07-08 ~ 6:36 p.m.

i'm going to write it down here before i forget again.

i called my mom...had to ask.

why didn't i remember?? i can't fucking believe i didn't remember.

so i am going to write it down....so it is here always and i won't have to ask again.

my mom lived in the house in the patch when she was little. not in the granny's house i know. they called it The Patch. so my mom and my granny and my pa and my uncle and a baby aunt debbie lived in The Patch. the house was a four square from the way my mom just described it. she and uncle danny had their own rooms. that is where they slept. in their own beds.

then granny and pa built a house. the house where my uncle lives now...though he remodeled it. they lived there a while and my mom moved to town to live with my great grandmother gracie. i didn't even know we had "city folks" in our family. much less that my mom stayed there. she was almost 14 or so.

that is the age she was when her best friend was killed. her best friend's father shot his own daughter because she gave candy to her younger brothers and sisters before dinner. i wonder if she moved to town then...she didn't say. i will ask one day.

then my granny and pa built the house i have always known. right beside the first house they built. though they lived in the assembly of god parsonage for a while...but mom wasn't sure when.

my mom worked for a photographer in town. she painted pictures, because they didn't have color. those pictures are extradorinary. black and white images brought to life with texture and color. my mom was beautiful, and looked so much older than 16 then.

it is probably my fault i had nightmares and woke and couldn't remember my family. i ate cheese toast before i went to sleep. i hate cheese toast. no idea why

one morning i was crabby and had spent the night at my granny's...and she woke me up with cheese toast. i ran home crying. guess cheese toast scared me.

and even though i can't understand how i forgot these things...i did. but here they are, and i won't forget them again.

and if i do...i have pictures. mom told me she gave me boxes of pictures, and there pictures of those things.

i feel like a sift today.

but i am not as angry...not so desperate to seek out pain...not so willing to throw myself through a window to escape imagined terror.

thanks mom...for not reacting to the little kid's voice i know you heard. i heard it too...but couldn't stop it. thanks mom, for telling me again all the things i should already know.

and you know....for being handed a live grenade, you have done pretty well. so thanks for that too.

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