Every Story Needs a Zombie
First, when your little boy decides to give you a new hairdo while weaving binder clips, white out, jars, pencils, and possibly a small stapler into the back of your head, let him. This may give you another ten minutes or so to work on your book. Recognize as soon as the call comes from the West Coast radio show, your son will forget the “no talking game” and demand something complex from the refrigerator. You will describe your artistic beliefs while mixing parmesan cheese into orzo. Then he will tell you he needs to sit on your lap and whisper things in your ear, even though this sort of thing never happens anymore. Practice sounding authorial while your child mutters, “I love my momma” in your ear repeatedly.
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Gabrielle
We met at an audition for a play at Trinity College Dublin, where I was spending my junior year. By then, I was no longer planning suicide, which was my first idea. Somehow, I thought it would make things easier for my parents if I killed myself in a foreign country. Okay, I was twenty, and my prefrontal cortex was still undeveloped. Also, I was in a depression so deep I could not imagine any future. At the beginning of the summer, I had broken up with who I believed to be the love of my life, and shortly afterward, my best childhood friend was killed in a car crash. After attending her funeral in a state of chaos, I went back to New Jersey and told my mother I was an alcoholic and wanted to die. Since she was in the middle of slicing up a massive rump roast, she waved the knife at me and said, "No! It's his fault. You are perfect. Go to your room." Instead, I left, found a gig house sitting, minding a depressed dog, and spent several months drifting around in a pool, stoned, crying.
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My Parents
Recently several people I know have lost a parent and I find it very hard to say anything helpful. Daily, I miss them both. But I would be lying if I claimed I’d rather they were still alive in the world as it currently implodes, explodes, malfunctions, whatever the hell is happening. Also, life is easier without the constant worry about my mother who lived alone in her house after my father died until something in her brain went rogue and she accused me of kidnapping her and pulled a knife on her caregiver. After that it was a lock-up psychiatric place, memory care, a better memory care and then she died. All the time she just wanted to go home to the house she had designed for her and my father’s retirement.
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