We said goodbye to Henry this morning. There is absolutely nothing I can write that would do justice to what he meant to us without sending me into tears (oops, there I go again). We loved this dog-- so much so that we gave Patrick a second middle name to honor him-- and he will be missed forever.
HENRY
March 4, 1996 ~ June 30, 2011
The theme this week is fathers, but my new column at Oh Get a Grip! has more to do with my complicated history and maybe helps explain why I’m so adamant about using my “real” name:
I wanted to go on the 6th grade trip to Mexico. That’s how it started. In order to go to Mexico, I needed a passport-- which I didn’t have. In order to get a passport, I needed a birth certificate-- which I did have. Problem was, the birth certificate I had did not bear the same name that I was using. If I got a passport under the name on the birth certificate, school officials would know I was using a different name. My friends would know. Their parents would know. It would have been scandalous, I guess.
This was back in the day when you didn’t have to show documentation to enroll your kid in school. Or maybe that was just life in Florida in the 70s-- a nod to the migrant workers who weren’t in the country legally. You also didn’t have to have a Social Security card until you started working. I guess my mother assumed I wouldn’t have to prove who I was until I was at least a teenager and she’d deal with it then-- but then I asked to go on the Mexico trip.
That was how I ended up in a courtroom at the age of 11, telling a judge about life with my parents so I could get my name changed. I ended up with a new birth certificate that bore the name I’d been using since I was 9 months old. Of course, to get there, I had to listen to my mother answer the judge’s question about who my birth father was: “I don’t know.”
It was a lie.
Teenage girls in short-shorts, the last trimester of my pregnancy and real glasses for iced drinks at Starbucks. Ahhh… Happy Summer Solstice!
My column this week on Oh Get a Grip! is about bullies…
I have been knocked unconscious once in my life. It was a one-punch knockout, too. I guess I have a glass jaw. Of course, I was in the fourth grade at the time, so maybe I could take a punch now. I’m not keen on finding out.
My tale begins with an older, bigger boy. He was in fifth grade, but he had failed at least one grade, maybe two, so he towered over me and outweighed me by a lot. Our altercation actually had nothing to do with me. I was a pretty quiet kid-- kept my head down, nose in a book, did well in school, had a few close friends-- no one really noticed me. Not even the playground bully.
So what provoked my knockout? Ahh… well, you see, I’m very loyal to my friends. Like, mama bear loyal. On that particular day, the mild-mannered fourth grader in me turned into a defender of the helpless, which happened to be my best friend. The bully crossed paths with my friend and knocked her lunch money out of her hand. She began to cry and I came charging. Of course, I failed to acknowledge I wasn’t any better equipped to deal with the situation than she was, but that didn’t stop me. With Denise crying, I went toe-to-toe and nose-to-chest with her bully. The conversation went something like this:
Me: That was mean! Pick up her money.
Bully: No! It’s mine.
Me, picking up Denise’s lunch money: Oh no, it’s not!
Bully: Give it to me or you’ll be sorry!
Me: You’re nothing but a bully. I’m not afraid of you.The next thing I remember, I was opening my eyes and staring at the blue sky. My first (and last) boxing match lasted one round and I never even got in one punch.
I just want to say what a pleasure it is to be a part of the OGG blog. It is truly inspiring me to take new directions in my writing and explore things I might not have otherwise.
Isn’t that a pretty cover? Something borrowed, something blue… although I have my own copy, so it’s something new, something blue. But still. Pretty!
With This Ring I Thee Bed is the lovely Alison Tyler’s wedding anthology from Harlequin Spice. I have been intending to post an excerpt from my story “Taking Vows” for… um… awhile now, but I kept forgetting with all the other stuff that I’m supposed to remember. So here, at long last and just in time for a June wedding, is a snippet of my contribution:
Charlotte ran down the dock toward the boathouse with her arms full of white fluff. She was drenched in seconds, her blouse clinging to her and her skirt flapping wetly around her knees. It dawned on her that the boathouse might be locked, but no, the padlock hung open on the door. She slipped inside and slammed the door behind her, piling the bows on a decrepit iron table by the door. The boathouse smelled of decaying wood and motor oil and the musty scent of neglect.
A crack of thunder shook the small wood building and she let out a shriek.
“It’s only thunder.”
A second shriek followed the first as she whirled around toward Oliver, sitting in the rowboat they used to take out on the lake when the kids were off with their friends. He sat propped against some patio cushions that had been relegated to the boathouse, along with a lot of other junk. Sitting there like that, in his golf shirt and khakis with his sandy blond hair falling over his forehead, he looked so much like the frat boy she fell in love with that she shook her head to dispel the image.
“What are you doing in here?”
He shrugged. “I needed to be alone.”
She saw the bottle propped between his legs. “You’re drinking?”
“Sure, why not? Seems like a good occasion to get drunk,” he said, taking a slug from the bottle. “A mighty fine occasion to tie one on.”
“But… you don’t drink.”
He gestured at her. “And you don’t go barefoot, but here you are. We’re two peas in a pod.”
“One has nothing to do with the other,” she said, wringing out her wet hair and pushing it over her shoulder. “I’m not sitting in a dark boathouse getting loaded. I just didn’t have time to put on shoes.”
“You always make time to put on shoes before you go outside.”
“What, exactly, is your point?” she asked, wondering just how drunk he was and whether it was worth having this argument.
He seemed to consider her question for a long time. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me what my point is? You’ve always been good at that.”
“You’re insufferable.”
Charlotte considered going back out into the rain, but another ground-quaking roll of thunder followed by a crack of lightning that lit up the entire boathouse made her change her mind. She wasn’t afraid of much, but she’d always been afraid of thunderstorms.
She expected a retort. The beginnings of yet another fight. Once the divorce was final, there would be no reason to fight anymore. Maybe that’s why they seemed to be fighting even more often lately. Time was running out.
But instead of another poke at her flaws, Oliver asked, “What happened to us?”
She rested her head wearily against the door. He had no idea how many times she’d asked herself the same question. With a resigned shrug, she said, “We just fell out of love.”
Oliver surged up out of the canoe quicker than she could have though possible. He was standing in front of her in a heartbeat, one hand braced on the door behind her head, the other still gripping the liquor bottle. He leaned in close enough so that she could smell the whiskey on his breath and see his green eyes dilated in the gloom.
“Do not speak for me,” he growled at her. “Maybe you fell out of love with me, but I never stopped loving you.”
Her heart felt like it was ricocheting around in her chest. She had never seen Oliver like this before. She knew it was just the alcohol talking, but it made her stomach do a little flip-flop to hear him say he still loved her.
She’d been hurt enough and wouldn’t fall for it again. “Whatever, Oliver. I didn’t have to twist your arm to visit the mediator for the divorce.”
“The divorce was your idea.”
“And you seconded that emotion, remember?”
He took another pull off the whiskey before setting the bottle on the table covered in bows. “I’m not going to keep you tied to me when you don’t love me.”
Despite her intentions to not engage him in a fight, she was getting angry. “You don’t love me, either.”
He leaned into her then, his erection pressing against her lower belly. It was a shock to feel his body against her, at once familiar and strange. It had been so long. She could feel her body responding, softening. She put her hand against his chest, tangling her fingers in the nubby fabric of his golf shirt and feeling the steady, comforting thud of his heart beneath her hand. She wanted to fall into his arms and forget the real world just outside the door; forget the divorce papers upstairs in Oliver’s briefcase, just waiting for their signatures.
“Feel that?” he whispered in her ear, his breath tickling the hairs at the nape of her neck. “Don’t tell me I don’t love you.”
Shiver... I rarely am still in love with a story this long after I’ve written it, but Charlotte and Oliver’s story is one of my favorite. I love a good reconciliation between two people who are meant to be together. With This Ring I Thee Bed is a sexy, romantic collection of stories about all kinds of couples at different stages in their relationship, but all of the stories are linked to a wedding. Perfect beach reading, perfect bridal shower gift!
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Life. Love. Writing. Editing. Sex. Books. Romance. Movies. Friendship. Photography. Teaching. Coffee. (Lots of coffee.) Travel. Feminism. Academia. Insomnia. Memories. Experiences. Rants. Raves. Reviews. Babies. Pregnancy. Motherhood. Insanity. Musings of an insomniac writer. Want to know more?
