Do you know what to do

March 18, 1986

We never talked about sex, ever. I discussed it once with my mother when I was in fifth grade. I was in Mrs. Loney's class and we were on the Sex Education unit. My dog, Sandy was having her period. I said to my mother, "Sandy is menstruating." My mom said, "Yes". That was it. When I talked once more about it with her I had my first period. It was Christmas, and I was in seventh grade. I said, "I have my first period". She said, "Do you know what to do? There are some pads under the sink." That was about the extent of it.

My family growing up was very repressed. We are the children of an Aspergian Doctor and (I believe) a Valium mother. My youngest sister called poop "Bomb-o-mint". It wasn't until I was an adult, that I understood that she was trying to say "Bowel Movement". Who teaches their children that? Crazy! I can remember my dad in the corner of my brain asking if I needed to have a bowel movement as a child. It is only a flash, a shadow, as most childhood memories are to me. Bowel Movement! Repression!

Repress all bodily functions! Never speak of them. They were cause for embarrassment.

I cannot remember why I reminisced about this in my journal at this time.

I stare at people

March 30, 1987

ianthe woke me up at 6:45 this morning. I popped up happily - which is unusual. She was hungry. She had fallen asleep before having supper last night. I gave her Cheerios; she didn't eat them until I changed her diaper. She ate all of them and drank lots of apple juice. She was thirsty, so was I. We drank together and smiled. She was very sleepy. I gave her a bottle of milk and put her back to bed at 7:05. I did the dishes - well half of the dishes for Cris - happily - to make his day more enjoyable. He let me wear his purple sweater. He woke up to say goodbye. He asked why I was so chipper this morning. Well, I felt good - good to see ianthe before the afternoon, good that Aja and Harris were too wiped out to wake up with her crying at 6:45 and too tired to wake with me putting her back in bed.

In class later, they went to watch a video. I couldn't take it. No more sitting in dark rooms. I sat up on the third floor thinking about the movie I will make soon. I leaned my head against the glass, looking down into the gallery at a guy with two girls. They looked weird, all foreshortened. When another guy joined them, he looked straight up, not with any purpose and saw me. We stared at each other maybe 30 seconds. I did not want to look away. I was doing nothing wrong. I thought it was pretty weird, only head and shoulders.

Being alone with ianthe, my youngest child, always brought a sense of calm to me. I chose her over Cris's wishes. He had asked me to think about aborting her when I told him I was pregnant. Immediately - within a split-second - I thought about it and the decision was made, "No", but he didn't ask about my thoughts until days later. He was furious. That was the end of my marriage - that choice - the right choice. He soon was coming home from school with drawings on his pants, decorated by Char, a woman who was "just a friend" he assured me. I was so sure he would not stray, when I suspected an affair, it was one of his male friends that I expected him to have strayed with. 

He had no interest in my pregnancy. He painted a violent painting called "The Fetus". He had no interest in naming the child. I chose ianthe, naming her after Richard Braughtigan's daughter. He said he hated it. I chose Tristine, naming her after Peter Davidson, the blond Dr. Who. He played Tristan in All Creatures Great and Small. Tristine is the female version of Tristan = child of sadness. Cris hated that too. I was defiant. He hated everything.

ianthe rarely moved when she was a fetus. I often thought she had died. Once a week, or so, she would move her elbow or knee slowly across the surface of my belly, announcing her presence. She was precious to me. I chose her. She was mine. Cris said he would not take me to the hospital. He told me to take a bus. I did not know what to do. I was plunged into a deep depression. 

When she was born, she just looked around. She was a silent child. She never cried. She just made small sounds. I did not speak to her. I only stared at her. ianthe communicated with small sounds and grunts. I thought she was deaf. I asked my dad (he was a doctor). He reassured me that nothing was wrong. I wanted to believe him.

She was sitting at 4-1/2 months, crawling at 5 months, walking at 7 months. She was a wiry, thin, tall, spider-monkey baby. I was so very depressed raising her, that I forgot to feed her solid food. I breast fed her first, and then thought, "Oh, I should try to give her food", but she wasn't hungry by then. Eventually, she was referred to the University of Minnesota, "Failure to Thrive", they said. They gave me suggestions for diet. Yet, she only ate bananas: banana rice cereal, banana oatmeal cereal, banana barley cereal, and bananas. I lovingly called her the Banana Pan.

ianthe was close to 3 before my sister Cindy agreed with me that she might be suffering from hearing loss. Cindy provided daycare for me while I worked a temp job altering men's suits at Dayton's. She noticed that she had to make eye contact with ianthe to get her attention. She had a very limited vocabulary. She said a few simple words and phrases, notably calling both Aja and Harrison "Aya", "Stop it", and "Bye, see you later".  I took her to the doctor for a hearing test. She had a congenital defect - both of her middle ears were filled with gunk - had been that way since she was in utero. They cleaned out her ears and put in some tubes while they healed. When I took her home, an airplane flew overhead. "Loud mama," ianthe said, startled, covering her ears. Poor baby. She has permanent hearing loss of both high and low ends of the frequency, but human voices are mid-tones, so she does alright.

I always spoiled ianthe. She had only me. She needed extra love. Cris would threaten to fight for custody of the children after our divorce - but he never meant ianthe, he meant only Aja and Harrison. He made it apparent that he wanted nothing to do with her. I am so sad that she knew that. How hard would that be growing up?

A forgotten page and a strange flat basket

I found this page 5 pages back in my journal...

March 26, 1987

Why is
this empty
page
sitting her in
my journal when
I tried so hard not
to leave any
loose ends lying
about?

March 26, 1987

I am the stupid flat basket that you put under your paper plates in. My reeds are woven so that I cannot bend. They are loosely woven, you can see through me. I am hidden, forgotten. I was lost and now desired. I am precious and valuable, not materially but as a ghost, or as a gift. I am not transferred from hand to hand but I am kept and lost and returned only to be lost again.

I cannot see anything while I am lost. I have no awareness. Only when someone possesses me, do I become aware and can contribute myself. I am not used for my original purpose. Why am I flat? I do not know I must not retain much. I can only retain information while someone possesses me. When I am lost, I hold nothing and must be refilled when I am found again.

I am the gift of creativity. I am longed for but I cannot be aware. I must be found, for I am hidden beneath piles of mechanical rubble - the logic of today. I must be found and only found while those who seek me are not looking for me. I am not visible to those who look directly at me but only to those who let themselves be unaware as to give me awareness. Then I can enter them and become one with them.

I am not here to gratify grandiose desires but I am here to give those who are meek the creativity they so desire. I am elusive. I am not on call. I will not come when beckoned or sought. I do not wish to make those who seek me re-known. I want to stay close to the rubble so that I may be lost and found and lost and found as a wish for I am a gift, but I am not permanent.

Gifts must be given away but I am a gift in itself. The giver and the gift. I belong to Sue and only Sue. I am her own unique creativity. Right now a soldier seeks me with violence. He would kill to find me. That is why I am hiding. I will not come out under threat. Only when he is mulified and forgets that he is looking for me will I come out and in doing so, I will transform him into a prince. For awhile at least, before I am lost again. This is my way of life.

I have no idea what the heck this is about. Maybe it is a "free-association" writing for class. Maybe I was analyzing the strange crazy dream I had. I am not sure. It seems at first that I am talking about my tendency to become those who are around me. A basket that holds another person - thoughts - ideals. A basket that is nothing unless it is filled with another. 

But then I go veering off into the "I am creativity" stuff. What? Maybe that was the writing prompt. I was comforted when I went back to my original idea of being the giver of the gift. The basket that holds your burdens. That is who I am. That is who I became to survive. I am mother, provider of my children: Must Keep Them Alive. I am wife: Must Keep Husband Happy. I am never just me. Just Sue. I was never enough for myself. 

I was always uncomfortable in my own skin. I was always awkward. Clumsy Spaceship Sue - riding around in my head, behind my eyeballs - seriously - that is how I felt when I was an adolescent. How else could I explain my clumsiness? Why else would I purposely break my little finger on the brick wall outside the gym upon hearing we would be playing basketball for two weeks? Did that hurt? A little, but not as much as the humiliation of being picked last. I couldn't hold the ball, much less bounce it. I didn't understand the rules. A broken finger meant I could sit on the side and stare into space and be alone. Spaceship Sue. 

Tornados and Dreams

Haiku for Cell Animation

Tornado
bring the trike downstairs
venture outside
to listen for trains

My dad and I
Looking forward to
our own destruction
in the storm clouds

March 21, 1987

A Dream

Heaps of garbage and junk my partner picks up a flat basket. A shot is fired from within this war zone. I run safe outside the door. The soldier finds me later in the complex. He is going to kill me. I tell him that I could find the basket, but I can't find it. Lisa makes some really good food for him and his friend. He turns out to be a prince. He talks to one of my important friends (the belly dancer? Halle?) While I chat to the poor soldier about what is happening.

This place is all corridors which have multiple levels, elevators which will take you not only vertically but horizontally. The lower levels are very open - sometimes the ceiling is 3-4 levels up, as you get higher, the ceiling gets lower. The doors open up onto different environments: sometimes outdoors, sometimes shell-shocked neighborhoods or gyms or locker rooms, wherever.

There is this house, all glass front. Someone is telling me about the family in it. The mother comes home from work. The children pour out of the wood work - about 30 kids or so. I'm told she is kind of a saint. I have them over for dinner at my place - a boiler room type of place within the complex.

While we are eating, discussing the prince soldier, the ceiling begins to drip tofu-custard-water. Cris and I are making love on a dirt floor in my room. The ceiling drips on my knee. I grab a towel as the ceiling drips over my legs. The family is trying to help. The saint woman funnels the goop into a machine which was present and I didn't know the purpose of. It moves the stuff all over and if you mix in tahini, it makes a good dish - umm - weird...

At the movies, I take the elevator down to the Hobbit. The guy who dropped out of school is the elevator man. He gives me the Pepsi challenge on the way down. It is a trick. There is no Pepsi, only Coke. Coke products litter the floor of the elevator which is now moving sideways. We laugh. I ask him something. He starts talking about hanging out. I ditch him when the elevator door opens.

I am sure everyone has strange dreams that mean nothing. I have never been one to analyze my dreams, merely being amazed or terrified by them. I do not know why I am recording dreams. They don't make any sense to me. 

The haiku, on the other hand, is significant. I was making a cell animation. Drawing each cell with India ink. The 60 second animation was about tornadoes when I was a child. I remember when there was a tornado siren, my siblings and I would pile downstairs with our things. We had a large basement. We brought our trikes in and roller skates. We drew chalk traffic lines on the red concrete floor, so we would not crash into each other, as long as we obeyed the rules of the road.

If dad was home, he took me outside. I remember standing beside him. He was fearless. We looked to the West. He described what the clouds would look like, "The sky will turn green." He described what we would hear, "Tornadoes sound like trains, listen." 

I am convinced that my father was an Aspergian, like me. He died several years ago, so I can't be sure, only conjecture. He was a doctor. He had special interests: calculus, geology, photography, woodworking. He relied on my mother to tell him when it was time to leave a social function. He didn't have a lot of friends, the men he did associate with were husbands of my mother's friends, or they were people that he had went to school with at the U of MN. He was intensly interested in family. He wanted to keep us close. We were very loved, but I am not sure he ever told us.

Stones

January 27, 1987

I used to look for stones as a child. Dig them from the asphalt if I thought they might warrant a rescue attempt. My parents had a rock path that curved from the backyard along the side to the front yard. The backyard path had small sharp stones that we would pile up on our laps to feel the warmth of them. They hurt to walk on occasionally but the front yard path had larger, smoother stones. Round and smooth mostly. Although the backyard had a few hidden agates and a multitude of quartz, the front path had mostly granite and hard black stones which always eluded a name. Some rocks were sandstones and limestone which we would hunt up to make a hopscotch board on the sidewalk - other specially selected stones served as our markers to throw. We would look for flat stones that would rest and not roll when thrown.

Odilon Redon "Ophelia"

I am drawn to the painting called Ophelia. It is beautiful and daintily painted in muted colors. It was painted in 1905-06, oil on paper, mounted on board. It seems to be a dream that Redon painted. He must have worked in a dimly lit studio and danced while he painted. Ophelia looks down. She appears to be in love. She is in the lower half of the painting. She is cut off mid-waist. The dress below her breasts loses focus. She is wearing a blue dress over a white under-dress it is falling from her right shoulder. The white dress appears trimmed by lace. Ophelia has long blond hair falling behind her left shoulder and in front of her right as she is leaning towards and shyly down in profile.

She has a ring of delicate flowers in her hair. In the background it appears to be a vague landscape. Reddish tones to her left and cooler greenish tones to her right. Yellow and red flowers behind her body and an abstract tree limb - very thin rises from the slope of her shoulder and titled head to the top of the painting, the sky to the left of the branch is grey-ish blue, while the right hand sky is a peachy-green color blending orange at the midpoint of the painting near Ophelia's face reminding me of autumn.

The title, Ophelia, gives the work - or rather reinforces the mystical, mythical beauty of the piece. Upon walking towards this painting, I was distinctly satisfied by the title. Ophelia seems to be of another century - possibly the 16th century. A worker, or servant, well dressed but not splendidly.

Ophelia appears to be awaiting (or possibly seducing) her lover. She at times looks a little sad and forlorn - maybe he is never going to show up.

The lines that Redon used in his painting of Ophelia are delicate and pliable. They are softly and irregularly placed about her outline and dress. Small bits of color brighten up the composition - small, thin, areas of excitement within a soft and subtle painting. The blending of the oil colors helps give me a sense of peace. Had they been used without blending, placed side by side, the feeling would have been totally different. Ophelia seems to be outside - the light having a blueish tint to it, it must be during the middle of the day in the shade of the woods.

The composition seems flattened. She does not seem to be out in the open. This adds to the cozy feeling of the painting. Very few cast shadows are present - Redon used shading on the contours of her dress - her armpits, and behind her neck on her left where her hair is falling. This shadowless-ness increases the feeling of her being in a shaded area.

Although I say she looks as if she is in the shade - she appears well lit and the picture is bright, if not a bit muted, not quite pastel. The color of her hair and skin are very much the same - reminding me of warm butterscotch but chalky.

We seem to be on the same eye level - Ophelia and I. She does not appear as much as a goddess or villian. She is someone we can relate to. I want to know her.

Both of these entries are from school. The first a writing prompt. The second an analysis of a piece from the visiting exhibit at the Minneapolis Art Institute. I find it remarkable that one day, I could be in a physical fight with Cris, and the next day, calm and relaxed. 

My feelings have always been short lived. I feel "calm" as my default when I am alone, or in a comfortable place. The week before I was diagnosed with Asperger's, I made a Mood-a-Meter in my classroom to visually represent my state of mind (because students are often afraid of me at first). I have my "normal daily moods" Calm-ish, Manic, Tense, Nauseous, Snappy, and Irate. On the fringes, some less common moods - on the calm side: Numb, Hopeless, and Despair; on the irate side: Crazy-eyed-Serious and the least common of all Dangerous. My students kept asking me, "Where is your Happy?" I was confused, "Calm-ish of course, aren't you happy when you are calm?"  After my diagnosis I realized why I had no "Happy". I have a limited emotional "vocabulary". It had never occurred to me that I felt anything different than those around me. I have since realized that I actually FEEL emotions - I mean I physically feel them - as a sensation. I feel the adrenaline released from my pancreas, I feel hormones secrete from my thyroid. Do you "feel" your emotions? or are they more intellectual? I bet you never thought about it before.