July 15, 2004

I don't even know if there is a beginning. It's just a was. An is. My mom is agoraphobic. The funny thing is...well it was normal. I mean you don't usually talk about what your parents do when you are growing up unless it's to say - oh my mom is so mean. She wouldn't let me stay out all night, etc., etc. I never told my friends that my mom didn't do things cause she was "sick" a lot. That she kept to her room sometimes for entire days. That I don't actually remember a vacation with her for a good chunk of years right in the middle of my childhood.

I guess this diary is more to capture moments of memory when they come up. Things that I saw. Funny moments. Angry ones. It's like I'm always trying to capture the essence of what I grew up with in words but it doesn't often come out the way I want, so I'll try this. And maybe someone out there will understand a bit about this life and how it feels looking in from the outside.

Indoor Picnic

We settle on the plush pile of brown carpet
And scan the horizon out the basement window
We're surrounded by trees in perpetual autumn
Printed in shades of beige on our couch, loveseat and matching chair.

I can smell pledge and lemony spic and span-the smell of every season
It's even nicer when the snow melts and the windows are left open.
In rushes the tastes of green and grasses
That mingle with our egg salad and pink kool-aid
Helps us eat our carrot sticks and broccoli heads.

On the floor, under folded legs, is the green garbage bag - our picnic blanket substitute
It crackles when we shift, feels cold when we lean before it sticks to our legs.
We don't mind so much - mom's been seven years here,
Don't want to mess things up now and start spilling.

We drink to good health though we know it's hopeless
Left in fields of carpet, we eat marshmallows stabbed on forks and burnt on the stove.
In a way it reminds us of camping and evergreens and sky
Instead of being lost in the land of the housebound.

Posted by Rachel at 10:07 AM | Comments (3)