What it is

I will fix this. You can't see the level to the right but you always have to make a choice in this house: level to the ceiling or level from the floor. I have no excuse other than bad math for the spacing. 

Pushing Toward the Light of Day

1. Holland, MI: I was born. My parents were married; April 1964 and August 1963, respectively. We were there for a while.
   1. on a side note, I know what my father was doing at a small, private, christian, liberal arts school of Dutch origin, but for the life of me, I can't figure out how the hell my mother, from the Calvin plains west of Kirkwood, Muhszurra (say it with me, say it right, don't be an asshole), the foothills of the Ozarks, a natural born daughter of the revolution, and one generation off the farm, landed herself in Holland, MI. In retrospect, my parents left out a serious chunk of their lives before each other. Makes you wonder. 
      
      
2. Somewhere in between the undergraduate work at Hope, the post grad study at Michigan State (the public one, not that other business), and the first step up to the lectern, we must have lived somewhere. The words, Cherry Street strike a chord but I can't really place it. I would put Cherry Street in Holland followed by North Kalamazoo. Had to be late '66 or early '67. The only picture of Jack, which is in my mind and not a photograph, is a fat baby dipping his hand into a bucket of interior, institutional, white paint. So maybe we were one and three, and there was a big boxer dog named Bill, an igloo in the back yard come out of a hard winter, the gun on the television and the rat poison in the basement I was certain would come up those stairs after ME. Personally. 
   
   
3. North Kalamazoo, MI: As described above, but throw in the red kitchen table and matching chairs which most likely came from the Salvation Army, and from the stories we're told, my parents weren't quite ready to be parents. Everybody made it out alive, except for Dr. King. He did not and I was a week and a day shy of four years old. We had to move a bit south to the Co-op in Kalamazoo proper and I couldn't tell you exactly when.
   
   
4. Kalamazoo, MI: After we left the the big white house on Whatever Street, the process of 'socializing the kids' began. It wasn't a smooth ride. I was picked up from the community sandbox and dragged home to my mother for the crime of respectfully addressing her daughter as 'nigger'. That may have been the single-most shock in my early childhood development; the beginning of the age of discovery coming to an abrupt and very near end followed very quickly by the somewhat disembodied understanding that I was the most protected species in the country, maybe the world even: 
   
   1. I am a girl. I can choose to work or I can take the easy way out and find a man to take care of me (yup, early thoughts including the concept of 'easy way out')
   2. I am white. White and untouchable (an ocean of guilt and shame followed by a deep breath of relief)
   3. I am of the educated class. I have much opportunity (whatever the hell that looked like)
   4. I was an early beneficiary of the Head Start program, launched one year after my birth and 'designed to help break the cycle of poverty by providing preschool children of low-income families with a comprehensive program to meet their emotional, social, health, nutritional, and psychological needs'. Refer to bullet 3, above. We moved east. Our parents couldn't afford to teach.
      
      
5. Manchester, CT: A long drive from the place of Great Lakes in a 1964 Rambler. My father lived in the men's dorm in Hartford; otherwise known as the YMCA. My mother talked about the color of the leaves in New England. From an apartment in an almost racially mixed co-op to an apartment in a complex where the families were either on their way up, or on the way down but pretty much lily white. It was a stopping point. My parents had friends next door and I did too. Her name was Meg. We kept in touch long enough for one year younger Meg, to obtain the no longer at her parents' home address and send one final letter. In retrospect, I believe she was still looking for approval. Her parents remained academics, Meg graduated at the very tippy top of her most likely very large class and I walked out of high school in April of my senior year. I went to first and most of second grade before we bought the house in Moodus.
   
   
6. Moodus: New England Red Neck Rural. Rural and all the things that come with it. In retrospect, we were probably there too long. I learned some things I probably shouldn't have. On the other hand, I learned some things early which turned out to be instrumental in some of the not so poor choices I made moving forward. I learned the phrase 'accessory to a crime' when the neighbor boy burned down the field behind our three home neighborhood, and we, my brother and I, being fully aware of what Rodney was doing with those matches when we took ourselves out of the game, were held equally responsible by my father. Not particularly relevant that the gloating Rodney was running outside our bedroom windows while we sat inside for a bit (maybe a week, maybe three days) contemplating the final actions, results, and possible disaster (burn down three houses, much?) that came out of us keeping our mouths shut. Later, a tandem life lesson occurred when my brother got caught with my water pipe in the Glastonbury Middle school gym and instantly said: but it's my sister's! My father's judgement: disappointment and shame. We do not commit a crime and lay the blame at someone else's feet. ESPECIALLY since you took it without her knowledge or consent. It was confiscated, I was unscathed. I've jumped ahead.
   
   
7. Glastonbury: We left Moodus in the fall of 1975 and planted ourselves in the contemporary ranch at 1982 Hebron Avenue where we stayed until Thanksgiving weekend, 1980. In as much trouble as we found ourselves periodically given the very long leash of benign and not so benign parental neglect, no one was arrested, no one died, and no one disgraced themselves too terribly. The upshot of living in one place from September, 1975 - November, 1980 was that we adjusted, settled down, and belonged, were an actual part of, an actual community. We each had our places, my brother and me. 
   
   and then our parents hung the pictures on the walls and that was the end of that.
   
   
8. The End of Glastonbury: To be fair, my mother left/lost her job in Hartford and the next job she found was just outside Bryant Park. Do the math:
   1. I91 from Glastonbury to Union Station in New Haven; the terminus of Metro North - :45 without traffic - with traffic doesn't bear thinking. Add parking to butt in train seat and you have a full 1:00
   2. Metro North to GCT - (today's schedule): The 6:24 through train pulls into GCT at 8:15 - 1:51
   3. GCT to Bryant Park - walking is still faster than public transit from A - B. Six minutes, sayeth the map but double that and then some to get out of the station and land your butt in your seat. Call it :15 on a good day.
   4. :45 + 1:00 + 1:51 + :15 --> 3 hours and 6 minutes if everything is on fucking time. Turn it around at the end of the day. I figure she had to get up at 4:45 just to make sure she didn't miss that train. Best guess, she got home sometime between 8 and 8:30. At best, that leaves just about 8 hours of sleep, assuming she can drop face down on the sheets within a few minutes of walking in the door. I don't know how long that lasted but I was painfully aware of my parents shopping for houses in Fairfield County the summer of 1980 when the interest rates were at 18%. 
      
      
9. Fairfield: In 1981 the shit hit the fan; the bits and pieces that were the shell of our family shoved through the meat grinder in the 19 months that I remained under the family roof. Banished for the crime of coming apart at the seams, I walked away in June of 1982 followed shortly thereafter by my father sometime in 1983. Yes. He actually did spend a bit of time under our roof, the collective student body made up of Industrial Design students from the University of Bridgeport and the unidentified contingent from Fairfield University.
   
   
10. Weston/Zephyr Hills: And in December of 1984 I moved with Joe to the forest and my brother headed out for the territories and never looked back. 
    
    
11. Oxford: A six acre farm for the horses we kept in the woods in Weston and a place I tentatively called home; moved in with my pregnant belly and husband over Father's Day weekend in 1986. Moved out for nine months between the end of December 1993 and the start of September, 1994. So we'll count that:
    
    
12. Ansonia: Crowley Street. Left some things to be desired but it was mine and only mine. Back to Oxford.
    
    
13. Stamford: April 1997, marriage long over but cohabitating reasonably well until I found the job at The Castle, saved up for rent times three and found the apartment on Colonial Road. Married Elizabeth's dad in May of '99.
    
    
14. Stamford: 16 weeks pregnant at 35, after a day of being still which follows on the tail of an amnio, we looked at houses to buy and at the fifth house of the day, I sat down in the backyard of the house with the red door and barbie pink kitchen (huh?), looked at my husband in tears and said, jeeze, Pat, please? I wrote a binding check for $3,000 and I was still pregnant when we moved in, in the fall, I think, of the year 2000. Elizabeth was born in December.
    
    
15. Weston Redux: August, 2005. I left with my baby boy just out of high school, Lucia entering grade 8, and the scary little girl called Elizabeth beginning Kindergarten at 4 years, 8.5 months. I had with me a man who stayed until the bitter end of 2008.  We were divorced nearly four years to the day of our anniversary. I stayed. And stayed. And stayed. And stayed until I found myself on a four inch ledge with a thousand foot drop. My doctor abandoned me. I found another who led me to Adam and I'm getting a bit off track.
    
    
16. Chappaqua, NY: In January of this year, 2019, I took my little girl and we crossed the state line and here is the crux of all this documentation. Most recently I hung every framed photograph I had for hanging, straightened out the art work on the walls, and found frames without glass for a few more. I'll replace the glass. 

I find myself so frightened at the thought of having to leave this place it's hard to breathe some days. Why would I have to leave? I don't know. So many possibilities and just as many that would make it easy enough to stay. There are days I want to shove Elizabeth out a first story window with her bags packed. Just now she's been locked in her room for a bit more than two hours. This is not unusual in general but it is unusual for us. Doesn't bear examining at the moment. 

The thing of it is this: There are 16 locations up there and I am 55 years old. I feel battered by it mostly. As human beings, a good part of our identity is informed by the communities in which we are raised, or not raised. Somebody's wisdom states that the act of frequently moving children teaches them to adapt to different worlds, teaches them to blend, teaches them how to be and remain invisible. OK, that last part is me. 

Yesterday, a man stopped me in the street coming out of Starbucks on the way home from the farmers's market. By name. He stopped me by name. I'm trying to think of a time when that last happened.

On Thursday, I think, at or about dusk, I pulled into my driveway and got out of my car. I turned my back on the cottage and stalked out into my neighborhood - I really do think I blend most times. I wasn't a quarter mile down Prospect when a large SUV pulled out of the very long, very flat, very full of children street to my left. She slowed down in the dusk, lowered her window and asked: Alecto? 

Yes?

Are you OK?

Yes, approaching the vehicle, crossing without bothering to look because for the most part we can, why?

Well...

Oh. My hair?

Yeah, I didn't want to say.

It was a rough day at work and I know I look like I've been rolled but I'll be ok with a mile or two under my feet.

We should get together soon. You know, lunch?

Yes. Yes we should. 

I love her just because of how she is and also how she is not. It isn't her I don't want to leave so much as the environment which has nurtured her, her marriage, her family for the ten years she's lived here, coming out from the city with the rest. 

I was so scared the other day I dialed the just in case the shit hits the fan number of the youngest son of my landlords.

Kyle? It's Alecto...

...conversation which is beating around the bush, actually and finally

Kyle, I don't really know how this is done but if I don't get a lease renewal I'm going to be devastated. Can you help me? I don't know how to do this and your parents seriously can't hear anyone on the phone.

The end result is we're not going anywhere. I guess I knew that but I'm scared all the same.

Because the art and the photographs. They are on the wall.

And also, I have a choice in the matter. 

This is where Elizabeth goes to school. It has its own stop and in all these years, I never noticed. Elizabeth at a highly competitive academic CUNY school, finding as she always has, that she is the central point of a group of disparate people who would never have come together otherwise. She is never alone. She's just afraid she might be. Also a totally other subject - and yet, here she is. 

This: the year she was born, heard on repeat with the rest of Sailing to Philadelphia as I paced the 600 square foot living room alone by choice, counting the minutes between contractions, singing to us both as she pushed toward the light of day.  

Comments

[Cielo]

My list is also long, as you know. The one constant for part of it was our house, because it was on wheels and went from Salem to the mountains of WVa to the mountains of Southwest VA, back to my birthplace. It eventually wound up on a farm somewhere with my great-aunt living in it.

Yes, frequent moving taught me to adapt to new places, to blend in, and to be invisible, a skill I have mastered. It also taught me to be careful with love, because the pain of that loss when you move, again, is like no other. When someone you love passes, there's a finality. Yes, I know in my heart that my Dad is with me, but I also know that I will never again hear his voice or see his face in this world.

But losing someone because of distance or circumstance...there's no closure. What was there is gone, but it didn't have to be. Someone made a choice: my parents or an employer, for instance...and the crack in my heart grew a little wider until it burst open in 1974. I was 13. It took 35 years to get back to the level of trust in friendship I had when we left Appalachia.

I can feel the crack, and time is short.