It was wonderful and created an ache in me to see kids with two parents play on sports teams. They got to be in dance and have endless toys. Sing in shows I only heard about at the last minute. I saw so much wealth while I had to follow my grandmother, helping her polish silver and scrub floors . She was unhappy at home but turned on a cigarette stained smile for them. She raised their kids. Cleaned up after their dogs. Nursed a dying mother. We got their leftovers for Christmas and Thanksgiving. I got presents like cassettes and nail polish. Some of them remembered my mother and told me how exciting my birth was. It’s so bizarre hearing so much about a woman you only knew for the first 5 years of your life. Would her friends care to know how many times she came into my room sweating, shirtless, mumbling comforting words and scaring the hell out of me? How I hated waking up in places I hadn’t gone to sleep in? What about the times when she wrapped me in a blanket, carried me ...
In those long ago and far away days I was a little girl, a child fed on romance and fairy tales, In those long ago and far away days The scraps of some kind of imaginary adult life That I pieced together From songs and folklore and encyclopedias My own little dreamed up future With Prince Charming and babies And magic and beauty and comfort A Perfect Life. I idolized him because he sang of love and pretty girls Yet he had the roguish airs I recognized From the handsome True Loves I found between the worn covers of my library books I was convinced with all the seriousness of a young girl That he was my destiny, my future, And no one could have told me otherwise. As with any young girl's dreams, Mine did not so much die as were replaced By other, more mature longings For someone else, most likely even more unattainable When I hear those songs now, as an adult, I am reminded of my childhood adoration And remember that little girl fondly Because even though her dreams may have been Lof...