A few years before her death in 1999, my grandmother was slowly ripped away from me. I always loved the time I spent with my grandmother but those days, I sat in idle anxiety until I was allowed to leave the nursing home hand-in-hand with my mom. I didn’t understand what precipitated the change. All I knew was that instead of love and softness, my grandmother began to look at me with a confused unfamiliarity.

I would hope you’re reading this with tears streaming down your face, but I doubt it. Our relationship has not always been an easy one, volatile at times, distant at others. But never let it be said I didn’t love you. Very much. I don’t know how you feel about me. We don’t talk about such things, apparently. But now I’m about to die and there are some things you should know.

In 1970 one drop of rain hitting the ground every ten inches constituted a ten-inch rain in Tempe, Arizona, home of Arizona State University and me, my freshman year in college. Wetback referred to a co-ed who made out on the arid soil after the sprinklers ran in the morning, not migrant workers. People spit on soldiers coming back from Viet Nam. The Women’s Movement quaked on the cusp of exploding. And me? Well, before Titanic, before Leonardo Di Caprio declared himself King of the World, I stood atop the footbridge over University Boulevard and surveyed the student-lemmings who marched along the sidewalk.

With the start of 2019, came Round two of the Me Too movement and the inevitable question: “Why didn’t she speak up sooner?”

 But the truth is, she did speak up.

I am proud to admit that I have a super power. I discovered it at an early age, and have found it even easier to call upon now that I am older and less important in my own mind and probably to the world in general.  

I had it all. I had any pastor's dream job in the perfect city, but I rarely saw my kids or husband and that wasn't what I envisioned as I began the process of ordination to serve the church.

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. 

He was kicked out of our house when I was eleven. To her credit, my mother did this for my sake. He had petitioned her to have me put on the birth control pill—at that age! I had not even started my period yet. There could be no innocent explanation for that request; it was part of the set-up— abusers start their preparation years in advance of the actual crimes against children.

I started meditating to try to get more focus and ease some of the edgy anxiety that’s always been native to my personality. I used HeadSpace, an app created by Andy Puddicome, to try to get a handle on it. I wasn’t a natural. I’d sit still. Breathe. But my brain jumped relentlessly from one set of thoughts to another.

You write the thing in a flurry in November. You write it in response to a journal’s call for submissions. The journal has feminism in the name. You consider yourself feminist in the “women are equal (and also kickass)” way, but you’ve never written a *feminist* essay before.

After working out at the gym for six months and shedding twenty pounds, I walked down the aisle wearing a mermaid style, off the shoulder, lace dress.

The other day, I was walking outside to eat my lunch.  I prefer to eat outside as it gives me an opportunity to see the sun, get some fresh air, and get away from the noise that permeates an open work space. The path I take to the outside takes me through the cafeteria/eating hall area.

I was thirteen years old when problems with my family escalated and I was forced into a shell only music could pull me out of. Every time my mother raised a hand to me, I raced back to let my violin release the notes that I wished I could say to her.

She had skin like honey. Drizzled over each limb, down the nape of her neck. My own, in comparison, is pale; my back is scarred with past acne, my thighs raked with thin white stretch marks and dull, greying bruises. For her, the sunlight clung, in sheets of golden gossamer, to each of her limbs. 

“Come on Beth, while Urkie’s not looking, let’s do a magic carpet ride even though she told us not to.”  My cousin Carolyn’s magic carpet ride meant my sitting on top of one of our grandmother’s assortment of throw rugs and Carolyn pulling me at top speed up and down the hallways and other wooden floor rooms of Grandmother’s boarding house in Birmingham. 

Dressed in a salwar kameez, I twirled and danced inside my room. I loved my long red tunic, the loose flowing pants and the sweeping scarf looped around my neck

I don’t miss him, but what I do miss is sitting on the cold sand of the beach in October, when the wind shivered my young bones, and I would huddle against him, burying my face into his cigarette, scented pullover. He would cross his arms for his own warmth, with a Marlboro Gold hanging from his blue lips. He never wore a jacket and even after all this time, this is the only way I can remember him.

oo often single mothers are accused of being bitter and still stuck on wanting to be with her child’s father. But, in my opinion, being bitter has nothing to do with it. It’s just all that stress of doing everything by yourself that’s piled up on your shoulders and everybody takes it for attitude.

Because maybe the truth isn't a narrative, which is an idea that's new and terrifying. Maybe it's something else. When I was on too many mushrooms, after the part I thought I was in an episode of Doctor Whoand before I almost called you, I went inside my head and tried to find something bigger and behind God, who I don't believe in.

Eight years ago, I sat across from my therapist in a puddle of tears, then heaving sobs. The despair that had been weighing me down for months had only escalated, leaving me frightened and inconsolable. “Do you think this has anything to do with Bobby?” my therapist asked. “Absolutely not,” I said, blowing my nose. “The relationship is perfect.”