Midlife doesn’t announce itself with milestones — it arrives in contrasts. One moment, you’re lighting candles for a graduation. The next, you’re watching your mother shrink into a hospital gown.
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Bat bites are difficult to see and may not be felt.
- CDC, Div. of Public Affairs
The chief concern was “bat bite.” There was no mystery in those words. The mystery began when the concern was personified, as in, “A bat bit my daughter.” That’s medicine.
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Before getting a smartphone in the seventh grade, I relied on memories captured by others. My mother, an amateur photographer, stored thousands of snapshots on her phone. Whenever I felt bored, I would navigate through them, retrieving, reliving, and retaining each preserved story.
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My daughter’s teeth stand in a crooked row. Her two cuspids rise above the rest, turned diagonally like twisted fence posts. The uneven spaces in between her teeth make a crooked grin, but she smiles wide anyway. She laughs with her mouth open, and her blue eyes disappear for that moment as joy swallows up her whole face. Sometimes she talks too loudly, not yet having learned a girl’s acceptable volume, not knowing to hide her enthusiasm.
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I filled a new Lisa Frank notebook with blank templates of MASH. Mansion, apartment, shack, house; ten kids, twenty, zero, one. I asked my mother to get me a case of Mountain Dew to share. I’d finally been invited to a sleepover with the older girls. I braced myself for something far different from the sleepovers I’d had thus far with my best friend, Courtney.
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When I was younger my mom called me Skinny Minnie. I’m not sure what she meant by this or why she called me it, but I know that I was confused. Even at a young age, I thought it was weird to have a nickname revolving around my weight -- especially because I wasn’t even particularly skinny; I was completely average.
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I was a tall, skinny blond, a migrant from a sorority house in Texas, looking younger than my twenty-two years when I moved to Aspen, Colorado. The family of my long-time boyfriend had included me on their ski vacations for several holiday seasons, so when I dropped out of college in my senior year it was the only place I knew to go.
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Like many eccentric children, I had often wished I could be afflicted with some kind of physical ailment, imperfection or secret status—something that would make me unique and special.
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The Sunday after Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel called me to say that, by law, they could not keep her ashes any longer, I marched into parish office of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and demanded of the receptionist, “How does one become Catholic?” I was directed to a Filipino woman, a parishioner-catechist, who smirked at me with detached affection, just like my mother used to. She told me her name was Grace, to which I replied, “well, that’s a good sign.”
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A warm-hearted pack rat through and through, I knew she probably hadn’t donated the boxes in my former bedroom, nicknamed the hobbit hole. (Much like Paul was the Walrus, I am the Hobbit.) Crammed with what I kindly labeled childhood trauma — lighten the truth with a little humor, no? — the boxes held SAT prep books and enough plaid uniform skirts to choke not only the horse, but the whole Kentucky Derby.
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I sat on the floor in Medusa’s interview room, taking the submissive posture my coworker had shown me a few hours earlier: kneeling with my legs spread apart, hands on my thighs, palms turned upward. I was dressed in a tiny plaid skirt no actual schoolgirl would wear, a white crop top, and a pink dog collar. When I’d interviewed for the position of “professional submissive” a week earlier, the manager had emphasized that submissives must wear collars at all times, and I didn’t have the money or courage to step into a fetish store and buy a real one. So here I was in a scratchy, cheap band of fabric with a bulky plastic buckle, its weight around my neck a reminder that I didn’t belong here.
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She was dead before I met her so I’m not sure how much of our meeting I should believe. I was at the deli counter at Kroger when she found me, far away at the crossroads of Main and Court streets in Luray, Virginia, at what used to be the second stoplight in town. She introduced herself as Rosebud (which should have been my first clue), and she winked as she said, but you can call me Rosie, and I knew right then and there that I’d believe anything she had to say.
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I grew up a devout Catholic. My faith and the pursuit of knowledge—of Truth—meant everything to me. I wanted to know, so I threw myself into everything—prayer, reading the Bible—all in the pursuit of Truth. I had a vision of St. Francis of Assisi showing me around heaven and it brought me to tears. This was my Path. Then, the moment after the Bishop confirmed me in my Faith, a voice rolled through me, shaking me to my core: “This is not your way, go find your way!”
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I can’t blame Sister Rose of Lima. She had no idea how ferocious I was at seventeen. Raised to slap, punch, pinch, and sit on top of my siblings when necessary, I had a working class right hook and the grin of a junkyard dog.
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The Kingdom Hall was my second home. Sometimes, when my parents’ screaming wouldn’t quiet, it was my first.
I’d run in. The smell of pine trees would greet me. Smiling faces surrounded me, kind hands reached out to me. I never wanted to leave.
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It’s 1967 and I’m in my childhood home in Central California. There is a knock on the door. My mother, Pearl, looks at me and I know she can see the terror in my eyes. The next seconds will be the hardest thing. Standing on the porch is Dr. Gilbert, the family physician, and he is there to tell my parents that their sixteen year old daughter is pregnant.
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I almost titled this letter “Dear Man-child” or “Dear Boy with the Napoleon Complex…” but, like most people, I realize it’s hard to convince people to listen to my point of view if I start out by insulting them.
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