Written last Friday night in my mole skin notebook:
I’m sitting here in the “crying room,” the place where parents go with their new born babies that haven’t learned yet that you have to be silent in church. I have sat in there many times, growing up with a “young” younger brother, and every time, I feel as though I’m being interrogated like I’m behind a two-way mirror. Only an orange peel thick of glass separates my family from the rest of the congregation.
I am there for one reason and one reason only: TRADITION, or in simpler terms—my mother.
Every year it is the same routine: My mother tries to curl her hair just perfect; it falls before we even get in the car. My father makes sure he has a piece of gum in his mouth to keep him busy and complains how we have to leave so early when there are never any spots open in the pews anyway. And, Jesse puts on his “best” holey pants for the occasion. Me, I just follow the Liedke train.
I don’t have religion in my life. I have faith. And as Elizabeth Gilbert said, “Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be . . . a prudent insurance policy."
Yes, we can believe in something greater than ourselves, but why not see what is in ourselves first? I do not have an insurance policy.
I don’t want to need because then I have to feel. That would be the easier route. . . . I have NEVER taken the easy road. And, you know what? I’m not going to start now. I’d rather take that chance of falling again.
Cold Coffee
Photographed by Paul Schonfeld
December 28, 2010
December 22, 2010
My Mother’s Talking Boots
My mother threw out her high-heel cowboy boots some time ago. “They weren’t practical anymore,” she had said. My mother is a lot of things, but practical is the sugar-coated version and nothing was ever too sweet for her just expensive.
My father and she made money working 12-hour shifts at a mozzarella factory just outside of Oakfield, Wisconsin. In fact, that was where they met while in their twenties, so they were never about to waste cash on “things” that had no use. After she had my sister, me, and later my brother on her hip, the boots were gone soon afterward, hidden in the back of their closet—you couldn’t burp a baby standing in heels, at least not for too long.
But before she Goodwilled them, I had my fittings. In an oversize t-shirt and just her boots, I’d stomp around the house just to hear the conversation they made on the floors: soft and muffled across their bedroom carpet like a secret, clickity-clacking laughter on the kitchen linoleum, and hollowed echoes of arguments bounced off the living room’s thick plywood. (They were still saving for carpet.) My small feet inside their real tan leather let the boots have their own voice. That I could only hear if I’d just let them wear me.
When my feet grew too big, fourteen at the time, nine and a half, the talk from the boots stopped as though they had nothing more to say. I couldn’t squeeze in them if I tried.
My mother didn’t just get rid of the cowboy boots because they were “impractical.” My mother didn’t want to be reminded of where the boots had been, what they had seen. When I came downstairs in them she always said, “Gee, I haven’t seen those since . . .” She couldn’t even put a date on it. I think that made her sad, forgetting that is. She had forgotten the youthful voice inside those boots, a different voice that had spoken when she put them on that reminded her where she had been before—before the factory, my father, her children.
But I too remember her, barefoot, smiling as she flipped chocolate chip pancakes in the frying pan while I danced around the house in those boots. Maybe overtime her taste buds changed. She had new sweets in her life—everything that had come after the boots.
My father and she made money working 12-hour shifts at a mozzarella factory just outside of Oakfield, Wisconsin. In fact, that was where they met while in their twenties, so they were never about to waste cash on “things” that had no use. After she had my sister, me, and later my brother on her hip, the boots were gone soon afterward, hidden in the back of their closet—you couldn’t burp a baby standing in heels, at least not for too long.
But before she Goodwilled them, I had my fittings. In an oversize t-shirt and just her boots, I’d stomp around the house just to hear the conversation they made on the floors: soft and muffled across their bedroom carpet like a secret, clickity-clacking laughter on the kitchen linoleum, and hollowed echoes of arguments bounced off the living room’s thick plywood. (They were still saving for carpet.) My small feet inside their real tan leather let the boots have their own voice. That I could only hear if I’d just let them wear me.
When my feet grew too big, fourteen at the time, nine and a half, the talk from the boots stopped as though they had nothing more to say. I couldn’t squeeze in them if I tried.
My mother didn’t just get rid of the cowboy boots because they were “impractical.” My mother didn’t want to be reminded of where the boots had been, what they had seen. When I came downstairs in them she always said, “Gee, I haven’t seen those since . . .” She couldn’t even put a date on it. I think that made her sad, forgetting that is. She had forgotten the youthful voice inside those boots, a different voice that had spoken when she put them on that reminded her where she had been before—before the factory, my father, her children.
But I too remember her, barefoot, smiling as she flipped chocolate chip pancakes in the frying pan while I danced around the house in those boots. Maybe overtime her taste buds changed. She had new sweets in her life—everything that had come after the boots.
December 6, 2010
Look Under the Bed
My father made me watch Gremlins when I was six.
I was trying to avoid the family popcorn event by acting as though I had important coloring to do at the kitchen table, but Dad knew what I was really doing.
“It’s not scary. Get out here,” he shouted from the living room.
I only remember parts—a slime-green claw to the face, the singing of “Hi, Ho, Hi Ho” in treacherous unison, Spike, saying “Bye Bye, Billy,” and the narrator telling the audience at the end of the film to check under their bed for they might have a Gremlin in their house.
While Jenny slept safely on the top bunk, I checked under my bed every night, for years until I eventually forgot the warning.
Twenty-one years later, I watched Gremlins again. This time not afraid but disappointed for the fear was gone, a part of me like someone had sliced off the tip of my ear and left me like a cat without a tail—unbalanced.
Sometimes you need fear. It lets you know you are alive mentally, for life, like movies are unknown in their outcomes (unless it is a really bad movie). You have to wait for the ending that will happen no matter what.
Gremlins could be as real as many things in this world that cannot be explained. But, we’ll all still continue to check under or beds looking for it.
I was trying to avoid the family popcorn event by acting as though I had important coloring to do at the kitchen table, but Dad knew what I was really doing.
“It’s not scary. Get out here,” he shouted from the living room.
I only remember parts—a slime-green claw to the face, the singing of “Hi, Ho, Hi Ho” in treacherous unison, Spike, saying “Bye Bye, Billy,” and the narrator telling the audience at the end of the film to check under their bed for they might have a Gremlin in their house.
While Jenny slept safely on the top bunk, I checked under my bed every night, for years until I eventually forgot the warning.
Twenty-one years later, I watched Gremlins again. This time not afraid but disappointed for the fear was gone, a part of me like someone had sliced off the tip of my ear and left me like a cat without a tail—unbalanced.
Sometimes you need fear. It lets you know you are alive mentally, for life, like movies are unknown in their outcomes (unless it is a really bad movie). You have to wait for the ending that will happen no matter what.
Gremlins could be as real as many things in this world that cannot be explained. But, we’ll all still continue to check under or beds looking for it.
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