Treasured Souls and Crusty Crabby Curmudgeons

As a waitress, I encounter many different aspects of a person's emotional state.  There are the cheerful couples, the happy kids and parents, the stressed out business folk and the moody non-talkers.  At my restaurant, we have our regulars who encompass pretty much all of the above.  There's the Catfish Man, who comes in for lunch, mumbles his order - fried catfish and iced tea, extra lemon - eats and leaves.  He's a salt and pepper weathered dude, furtive glancing as he rapidly consumes his food.  He doesn't want to talk, he just wants to eat and get out.  There's a manic shyness about him which I find endearing and I like to bring his extra lemon arranged like a flower on a plate.  There's the old World War II vet, whom I embarrass with eager embraces and sloppy kisses on his bald head.  I came in once for lunch on my day off and sat with him for two hours, absorbing every fascinating word out of his heroic mouth.  Who would have thought, watching him meticulously cut up shrimp into doll-sized bites, that he had helped save the world; indeed, saved the lives of over a dozen wounded men in the bomber he was flying over Germany?  Their plane was stuffed to the gills with wounded soldiers on the way back to base when they came under fire.  The shit kicker lieutenant aboard opened the bomb bay doors to lighten the weight, and all the hapless men lying there fell to their deaths.  My beloved old dude pulled his sidearm and aimed it directly at the lieutenant's face, stating the fact that he would blow his fucking head off if he didn't stop kicking the man still clinging to the edge.  I bring him his cheesecake with the strawberries arranged in a graceful arc, grateful to know him at all.  There's the stressed out sweetheart of a daughter, gobbling her hasty lunch and ordering a hasty take out meal for her ancient and Alzheimer-ed mother.  I bring her her ice cream sundae with extra chocolate and a kiss to the back of her hand.  There's the dapper old story teller who comes in for late night dinners.  Everybody knows him by name and everybody loves him dearly.  He wears fedoras and antique rings, a crisp hanky tucked just so in his breast pocket.  I smile as I write this, he is such a treasure to us all. When he first found out my love of the bizarre, he brought in a tiny paper clown from the World's Fair and placed it on my open palm.  It curled into a U and he laughed with delight.  "You're in love," he said, and gave me the clown. They were favors given out at soothsayer booths long ago, when he walked with ice cream laden stride as a tiny young boy.  There's his alter ego, an old man with enormous eyes and enormous heart, who nurses his whiskey sour and grilled dinner, sitting at the bar and watching the world unfold before him.  The fedora gentleman finishes his meal and comes to sit beside him, their heads bent toward each other in the easy companionable air of long time comrades. 

All these people are beloved to me.  I don't know Catfish Man's real name; he's been coming in for years and I don't think anybody else does either. I know only the last name of the veteran and only the first names of the elderly comrades, and the twitchy loving daughter I know only by sight.  It doesn't matter.  They are familiar to us all; a family of strangers made precious by the simple fact of us feeding them.  Caring for them. 

There are so many who sneer at the fact that I'm a waitress and I, myself, once shuddered with fear at the thought of ever being forced to wait tables again.  I did it for years before and during my marriage, and it had become the thing to dread.  But this past year has been a revelation.  I even find myself enjoying this very manual job.  Not the work itself, which is dull and repetitive and often filled with crusty crabby curmudgeons, but those shining moments of treasured souls.  I find myself a magician of sorts: I wave my wand and bring their plates and watch the tension disappear.  Regardless of their often low opinion of me, the untouchable who lives only to refill their glass and clear their plates, I am still creating a positive shift in their emotional state.  Eleanor Roosevelt once said she accomplished more good over tea and crumpets than she ever did over a negotiation table.  There's an ethereal wonder in the consumption of good food and smiling faces.  I've helped the heartbroken (there's a hospital nearby), the angry, the weepy and the raging, and all by the simple act of bringing hot food and a grin to their table.  What's that, if not magical?  Merlin with chips and tartar sauce, pie and ice cream.  That's a secret I've discovered, one I wasn't even looking for: the graceful, unexpected joy of a simple full stomach.

I get a kick out of it all.

Love, R

Old Fogey Photos

About a month ago, I was digging around in some old boxes and came across a stack of weathered photos.  I grabbed them up and stuck them in the drawer on my night stand, promptly forgetting them.  This morning, while digging around through said night stand, I found them again. The top picture caught my attention; it was of Chickpea and me.  We were in the kitchen of our married student housing apartment in Madison, Wisconsin.

Chickpea was a gray squirrel.  We became acquainted on a wet Tuesday morning.  I was walking to the school to pick up my son Leland from kindergarten, when I saw a little boy swinging something.  I thought it was a toy of some sort but when I got closer, I saw that it was kicking.  It was a tiny baby squirrel, most likely blown out of its nest in the storm from the night before.  The little boy was swinging it from its tail. I cried, "Oh, it's a baby!  Give it to me!" and the kid handed it over.  Chickpea laid like a dead fish in my palm, his body no bigger than my index finger.  I looked around for a barking mama squirrel but there was nothing: no noise, no mama, nothing. I stuffed him down my bra and continued toward the school. 

Leland was enchanted when I showed him the bedraggled baby.  "That's the squirrel Daddy and I saw this morning on the way to school.  Shafagh was trying to feed it a peanut."  That ended any chance of finding the baby's nest.  Leland and Peter, my ex-husband, had seen the baby a quarter mile from where I found it.

We walked together to the grocery store where I bought an eye dropper, a carton of cream and some hamster vitamins.  We took Chickpea home, dried him off, heated the cream, added the vitamins and a splash of almond extract for taste, then tried to feed him.  At the first hint of food, that little critter went nuts.  He started squirrel snarling in his tiny walnut of a voice, throwing his head around frantically.  The cream went everywhere but in his mouth.  I wiped him off and tried again with the same results.  Finally, I cleaned him up, rolled him up in a wash cloth so he couldn't move and jammed the eye dropper down his throat.  He ate and fell asleep.

My daughter Rhianna, four years Leland's senior, came home from school and immediately knew what to do.  Rhianna has always been something of a Doctor Doolittle.  She has an affinity with animals the likes of which I've never seen.  We went to the library at her suggestion and found a book on baby squirrels.  The little things had to eat every four hours, on the dot.

When my husband came home, he pitched a fit about having a rodent in the house but I was adamant.  I'd taken charge of that hairy little life and I wasn't going to shirk the responsibility of it, no matter how much of a pain in the ass it might be.  Peter droned on and on in a rage and I finally asked, "What the hell is the matter with you?  Why are you so mad?"  He looked at me and blurted out, "Because I'm ashamed.  I walked right by that damn thing this morning and never even thought to try and help it.  You see it for two seconds and take the whole thing on. That's just how you are.  You jump in and rescue things." 

I decided to take that as a compliment.  How cool to be told, no matter how angrily, that you're the type of person to automatically help someone or something that's suffering.  That was very cool to me.

Chickpea ate and slept for four days.  On the fifth, he became a very, very active little squirrel.  Up and down, over and across, his skittery little toes were everywhere; up your pant leg and down your shirt, up the curtains and down the side of the couch.  Run run run, from sunup to sundown, that crazy animal was never quiet.  I'd take him outside for tree climbing practice.  Sitting under a crimson maple, I read a book while Chickpea did acrobatic cartwheels and scampers along branches, always looking down toward me for approval at his courage.  I clicked my tongue and cheered him on, opening my sweater so he could dive in for a snuggle when lonely. 

We weaned him off the cream and introduced him to hardier fare: almonds and pecans, acorns and apples, carrots and strangely enough, green beans, which he loved.  Peter began to rage again as Chickpea started burrowing through the bedroom curtains, so Rhianna and I began to re-introduce our squirrel to the wild.  "If he can find a mate," Rhianna said, "He'll be fine.  Squirrels mate for life."

After a failed attempt to build his own nest - waist high in a hole with no stuffing or bedding - Leland, Rhianna and I banged together a makeshift box on poles and planted it in our tiny garden.  I lined the box with Chickpea's favorite sweater of mine, then crammed him inside.  That's where he slept for about two weeks.  On the morning of the third week, I saw a beautiful sight: Chickpea and a wild female, banging away on top of his box.  They both ran away at the sight of me.  I grinned and heaved a great sigh of relief.  Chickpea would be fine.

He went totally wild but still remembered how to get in through the hole under the air conditioner in the summer.  Rhianna would come home from school to find our startled former pet with a giant cookie in his mouth, and once he and his mate crammed an entire apple pie through that minuscule hole.  We followed the crumb trail from the empty pie pan, across the table and down the kitchen floor, all the way to the air conditioner.  They had laboriously stuffed the whole thing through, and there wasn't a sliver of apple anywhere outside the window.  It was glorious. 

Isn't it fun to stumble across a drift of memory captured forever in a random snapshot forgotten in a drawer?  Ah, I hadn't thought about Chickpea for a long time.  Now I smile as I type away, imagining those nimble toes and tiny hooked claws racing across my pant leg, demanding attention and play.  What a fun little guy he was.  Hope you liked me telling the story of Chickpea the Squirrel as much as I liked remembering it.  Take care.

Love, R

Official Website

I have a domain name!  YeeHaw!  It's http://www.rebeccaodonnell.com/.  My brilliant web designer is working on the website and so far, it looks beautiful.  Can't wait.  I wonder how the FREAK comic will look on it?  I wrote and illustrated a darkly funny piece for promotion.  Pretty black humor, to put a cartoon synopsis of the book to musical form, haha!  I'm nothing if not unusual and I grew up loving MAD magazine musicals.

Love, R

Boneless Beck

I am having a strange day today.  Rather giddy, giggly and jelly-like with relief, with joy, with trepidatious anticipation...after such a long time, my memoir is finished and off to the printers.  I have little else to do but unwind and embroider for the rest of the year (a commissioned piece). I was at work, hauling fish on trays and shrimp on skewers, when it suddenly hit me.  I. Have. Nothing. That. Needs. Immediate. Attention.

YEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWW!!!

I got home, took a shower, laid down to embroider and fell fast asleep.  I woke up with the needle and floss in my hand, embroidery hoop draped across my belly.  It was seven at night when I awoke.  Such a strange thing, after such a long haul, so much work, so much angst, making sure that everything is just so and flows exactly right. There's a beauty in being boneless with relief.  I started laughing and my roommate asked what was so funny.  "I don't know," I replied, cackling.  It was glorious. My hair looked like a Brillo pad, my eyes were ringed with smeared mascara and one foot was peeking out from beneath the comforter covering me, sock hanging half off. 

Being the marvelous creature that she is, my roomie brought out a book and read to me.  One quote in particular struck me with its truth and beauty:  In the depth of winter, I find within myself an indestructible summer. 

When you're born, you get strapped, kicking and screaming, into this roller coaster called Life, with a doctor smacking your bare butt and a sudden burst of cold as your body hits air for the first time.  Floating in warm goo, with the symphony of your mother's heartbeat always in your ear for the first nine months, does little to prepare you for the ups and downs and gut-wrenching thrills of a breathing future.  But we hold on, regardless of the rush of gravity and terror that's just around the corner.  Who would have thought, given my nutty past, that I would be in a position to give aid to others just by telling my story?  This memoir is a snapshot of Rebecca O'Donnell, straight out of my soul and graphically told.  With all these edits and rewrites and re-reads, I've visited those rough-as-hell memories over and over again.  To my surprise, I have seen a value in my experiences.  I'm not grateful that they happened, not the terrible ones, but I'm grateful that I'm not a crack whore or drunk, as so many, many others in my family are.  I'm one of the lucky ones.  So, I raise a metaphorical glass to myself, and to all my brothers and sisters of circumstance.  May you find yourself boneless with relief some day.  May you cackle like a witch and look like a hag with really bad hair, and may you do it all with a grin, just happy to be alive.  At long last, so very happy to be alive.  Hang in there.

Love, R

Almost There

Hello, blog people.  It's late, I'm fried but content and sitting here typing on my blog.  The book edit is DONE.  I can't believe it.  Tomorrow, it's off to the publishers at long last.  The covers have been approved, the manuscript is formatted, it's all done except for a bit of info I need for the front page.  What a long, tough road it's been but I'm so happy about it, I'd jump up and down if I had any energy to leap.  I'm skipping inside.  Sorry I've been so lax in my posts but it's all for the book and the sucker's done.  I think I just enjoy typing that word right now.  Done.

Ah, Beauty.

Wish me well.  After I hand it over, it's on to the next step: doing my part of getting it out into the world.  Snooze time now.  Take care.

Love, R

Everything Old is New Again

It's been four days since I wrote on my blog, which is the longest I've gone since I started.  Abject apologies to anyone keeping an eye on these things but in my defense, I have a reason.  I have finished the final edit work on my memoir FREAK and it is ready to send to print after one...last...read through!!!!  AAAA!!!

This memoir has been a massive undertaking for me. Limitless thanks go out to everybody who's come to my aid as I flounder about in literary waters. While reading through the story of  my own life, editing this, scribbling that, I realize that everything from my past has been brought up again, fresh and new in some cases, rancid and raw in others.  How did I begin the whole process of writing about my own life?  Why on earth would I think it might be interesting to anybody?

It began as simple therapy.  My psychologist suggested I keep a journal, which I found teeth-grindingly dull, so I just started rambling into my laptop. Nothing specific, just a lot of stream-of-consciousness memories tip-tapped out on a keyboard.  What happened to me, what I was feeling at the time: everything.  Before I knew it, I had one hundred and fifty pages. With some coaxing, my therapist talked me into letting her read them.  I wrote them with the intention of their never being read by anyone, so I was very reluctant.  They were raw, sometimes gross, often graphic but absolutely true renditions of events which have helped shape my life. After reading the initial batch of prose, my therapist urged me to publish it.  She thought it was important.  She thought it could help people.  I believe my first reaction was, and I quote, "Fuck, no!"

But I kept writing.  It seemed necessary.  I felt better afterward, even though I was often shaky as hell when I finally metaphorically put down my pen, only to pick it up again the next day.  Even when I lost my apartment and had to move out of state, thus losing my therapist, I kept writing.  It no longer mattered if it was so-called therapy or not.  Somewhere inside me, a door had opened and the flood waters just poured out.  Endlessly. 

I began to weave events together in a way I never had before.  I began to see patterns in my screwed up behaviors that I'd been blind to, decisions based on past trauma instead of present reasoning.  I knew I tried to kill myself in my mid-twenties but I hadn't really thought about the actual horrific events that led up to it.  In the moment, with the razor blade at my wrist, all I could think about was I was so tired of breathing.  Living had simply become an unbearable burden.  There was no specific tragedy in my head at the time.  Just a bone deep weariness.

As the manuscript began to take shape, so did the mystery of all that self-hatred and sorrow.  I found answers as to why I allowed myself to be brutalized as an adult. I thought I was strong and tough because I'd never had an adult relationship with anybody stupid enough to hit me.  I'd had enough of that as a kid and I sure as hell wouldn't accept it as an adult.  What I didn't recognize is the fact that I was verbally and emotionally bludgeoned almost every day.  I was black and blue inside with internal hemorrhaging and all I could think was, "Why are you crying all the time, you big baby? Why aren't you happy?  Get joyful, for shit's sake!"  Viciously self-loathing, I was a bully to me, every bit as cruel as anyone in my life.

Shyly, I started handing out sections of the memoir to friends.  They began telling their friends.  I started getting phone calls; strange requests to "just talk to my niece, she was molested" or "how did you stand fast when your son was doing drugs?  How did you cope?  Why is he alive?"  To my astonishment, my story became a comfort.  This weird, creepy, cannibal inbred redneck horror show of a childhood had become something to help others.  That's why I decided to publish it.  That's why it's about to become a book.  They say everything old is new again.  All this old shit, dragged out of the closet called my brain, has miraculously become something new.  Like a gross squashy caterpillar inside a chrysalis, this goofy past of mine may turn into something beautiful.  So for all my brothers and sisters of circumstance, FREAK: The True Story of an Insecurity Addict is about to become a book.  Maybe reading about all my dumb ass mistakes will convince others to not repeat them.  I hope, with all my heart, that it helps whoever reads it.  I hope they stay their hand if they're in despair.  I hope they find solace, as I did, in putting the puzzle pieces of their own shattered psyches together again.  Thanks to all of you out there for caring about my words.  Take care of yourselves.

Love, R

A Monumental Day

Hello, All.  Hope you had a great Halloween.  Today, November 1st, 2010, is a monumental day for me.  It is the one year anniversary since I moved in with my glorious roommate, a woman I now consider the sister I always wished I had.  She's wonderful.  It is also the 67th anniversary of my beloved Charles the Man's landing on the island of Bougainville in the Pacific in World War II. 

Charlie was a Marine in the Third Marine Division.  He was twenty years old when he landed on Bougainville.  Raised a poor tenant farm boy during the Depression, Charlie "Bud" Dodd enlisted in the summer after Pearl Harbor. He was wounded by a grenade on Bougainville but stayed on the island to fight.  He suffered through dysentery, dengue "bone breaker" fever and intestinal malaria for the fifty-five days he was on the island, every one of which was almost constant fighting.  He went on to fight on Guam and Iwo Jima.

I first met Charlie when he began dating my mother after her divorce from Dad.  He was kind, funny, clever and a voracious reader.  They were together for twenty-six years, he in his house, her in hers, and it worked.  He went to sleep one night in 2006 and simply never woke up.  When I called one of his old war buddies to tell him, a man who'd been ill and frail for years, his reaction was, "That goddamn Dodd!  I wanna go that way!" And he did, less than a week later. 

I have been researching the Pacific theater of World War II for over a decade.  I interviewed Charlie every time I went home, which was only once or twice a year, and I have hundreds of hours of transcribed tapes detailing his experiences in the war.  Two weeks after we finished our last Iwo Jima interview, he died.  We began the whole project as a possible future book but so much information has been amassed, I am splitting it into a trilogy: one book for every island he was on. 

With all the different talents I have, writing is my favorite.  It touches something in me on a different level than any other medium I work with, although I love them all.  FREAK is coming out soon and reminiscing about my crazy life has made me nostalgic for certain dates.  Today is one of them.  So I write this as a tribute to the greatest man I've ever known and will probably ever know.  Charles the Man.  May I do his story justice when I put it down on paper.  He is an important part of my memoir and an enormously important person in my life.  I am very lucky to have known him at all.  Thank you, Charlie, for all that shit you went through back then.  Miss you.

Love, R