beginings of a poem

There are mornings when I wake—
my mother’s hands firm in my mind
her jagged skin, split nails,
engine grease lodged into their cracks.

Freewrite: How did your family produce gender?

I grew up with a mother who was a jet engine mechanic. When I think of her, I think of greasy fingernails and engine oil. She wore a dress to church because her theology demanded it. She got a nose ring when she retired because she could. I think of intelligibility.

I learned how to hate shopping during adolescence, against the backdrop of a perennial argument over which section to buy my clothes in. She couldn’t bear to buy her only daughter (the only child) clothes in the men’s department. “They didn’t fit well” she reasoned, and when logic would fail her, she knew shame could always do the trick, “why don’t we just forgo the pants and save up for the operation.”

I never knew what the operation was. I knew it only as a cue. I was supposed to roll my eyes and laugh…to protest that, of course that wasn’t what I wanted. It was a mysterious character evoked to loom over my decisions. The operation was a threat placed precariously on the brink of desperation—hers and mine—when we entered into split-in-down-the-middle mall stores.

I remember the day I told her I was jealous. She was admonishing me on how I’d need to grow up someday and wear woman’s clothes like an adult. “But Mom…you don’t,” I pointed out. She wore combat boots and dungarees to work. She got to shop in stores that didn’t even have a woman’s section. I felt more like her failure than my victory when we walked out of the store, cargo pants in hand, towards a silent ride home.

I can't get to sleep...

Our hot water heater ran out of oil two days before I left. We figured out that's what the problem was the next day, but I was too busy getting ready to leave to do anything about it. I offered to schedule it if anyone would tell me a good time. no one did.

A week later someone started rounding up the money. By time I came back, I expected it would all be settled. Disappointed. The tank had been filler, but it had been a few days and no one knew how to light the pilot light. I came home to cold showers.

This morning I woke up and started complaining. I was pissed that I had to pay 80 dollars for oil I'll never use, and I still can't take a damn shower. I started cleaning to sooth my anxiety about it. The fridge smelled, and I didn't know why. I usually clean it out every three or four days, but I had been gone for a while. SO I started to unload things that looked too familiar. I wanted to clean out the veggie drawer before p

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utting my vegetable in because its gross to store food in a dirty space. Then I saw brownish water in the space beneath the drawer and the bottom of the fridge. I took them out to wipe it up and saw mold floating in it. I gagged as I sopped it up, freezing cold with a towel I had found wadded up on the floor. This place was disgusting.

I spent the better part of an hour muddling around with the furnace down stairs to no avail. I grumbled under my breath as I moved bags of clutter out of the way to find the tools to work on it. When I finished, my pants were stained and my hands reeked of oil. I couldn't believe some people had lived here for a year and didn't know how to do this damnit.

I went on the porch to update people on the situation and hint that someone else needed to pick up where I left off. My room mate's cigarette smoke rolled into my space. I coughed a little and then went inside.

As I lay in bed on the edge of sleep, I'm unable to go under. I'm kept awake by the smell of oil mingled with stale cigarette smoke, by annoyance translated into compulsion and neurosis, by the insistence that others have wronged me. I'm going to bed disappointed, critical and alone. I'm going to bed the same way my mother went to bed for the last 20 years, and I can't get to sleep because I'm a little scare of how I'll wake up when I'm through.

Food and class

Foods that indicate low status
Pasta
Anything from jars or cans
Bologna
Spam
Junk food
Rice
Ramen
Fried foods
Frozen juices
Asian food (especially Curry & Stir-fry)
Skim milk
Cooking with oil instead of butter

Foods that indicate high status
Meat (boneless, skinless, and white)
Non-water beverages (coffee, juices, milk, etc)
Wine
Steak
Seafood
Cheeses that aren’t cheddar
Fresh produce
Foreign (read European and Mediterranean) foods
Bakery/hard-crusted bread

Varied condiments (ie. More than one type of mustard, salsa, etc.)
It was important to my mother that we didn't eat "like poor people." When I would petition for vegetables (and eventually when I came out as a vegetarian), my mother would scoff and say things like "we can afford meat so we shall have it. Why settle for things beneath you?" It was similarly important that we were not the kind of people who ate processed meat, who ate meat from a can (to this day I’ve never had tuna salad), who ate meat that had been pressed into patties; we were the kind of people who ate white meat, who ate pulled meat, who bought boneless everything. My mother bought an extra freezer to house the bulks of bargain priced flesh. More than any other aspect, food was the way my mother choose to assert her class ascendancy.
When I would complain about chicken again, she would tell me of days when she was of a lower military rank (with a correspondingly lower pay scale) and she would eat an English muffin for dinner three nights a week. I once told her, “You could buy so much ramen for the price of a pack of English muffins” Disappointed that I had missed the point, she embarked to instill in me that if you have to, then you should eat less, not compromise the quality.

What the thing poor people didn't understand was how to shop wisely (buy in bulk) and how to buy foods that were nourishing. Her tone would be full of judgment as she would list the junk food in my aunt’s cupboard (they were on food stamps). Surely I could see that it was a grievous miscalculation on the part of the government to let poor people decide what to buy with their aid.

Things seem to come full circle as I stall grocery shopping in wait for Wednesday, when I can apply for food stamps…

Unbelievably Angry

Why do I do this to myself?

It had been a year. I told her I wanted to see her. I asked if she would come see me. I pointed out that my Birthday had just passed and that she was retired so she had a lot of time with no commitments. I told her I wanted it to be like a vacation, and I even offered to pay the plane ticket. She said she'd think about it.

I called her two days later to see if she was ready to agree. She informed me that she had been hired for a job at a superstore and was starting the next morning.When I asked her why she had gotten a job just when I asked her to come see me, she explained that she needed the money for the ticket I already offered to buy. I expressed frustration that we would have to schedule around her full-time job now. She said she had told her manager she wanted two or three days off in a row to see me.

I pointed out that if she did this then she would spend one day driving here, one day flying back and we would have so little time in between. I told her I wanted to spend more time. She said she couldn't ask for more. I said I'd try to work around it.

I rearranged my schedule and figured out a way to get to Michigan by driving 15 hours with a stranger from craig's list, spending $150 worth of gas. Cutting out the travel time, that meant two days to spend with her after a year.

When I got there, she informed me that she was working the next two days for eight hours each day.

All in all, I'm pissed that I waisted my time coming here to see someone who obviously went so far out of her way to ignore me. If she wasn't willing to meet me 1/10 of the way, then why am I here?Why is it that I give her so many chances? If I am so totally disappointing to her and she is to me then why do we still have a relationship?