Angel of the Morning

 I have been writing human interest essays for 10 years, 7 or 8 of these with Charleston Grit. I base all of my stories on life experience, so my family has trolleyed along with me. I know that if I can't eek out this story, I'll never be able to pen another one. My daughter died 3 weeks ago. 

Breathe in — June 14, 1977. 10:15 pm. I heard her gasp for air as she took that first breath. 6 pounds 12 ounces.  I counted all appendages quickly. She was delivered by forceps, a routine procedure in the late 70's. Did she have brain trauma that caused her progressive myoclonus seizures later in life? My days are a plethora of Why's and If's. 

My brown eyed girl. Van Morrison penned my lifetime theme song for her a decade earlier. She too loved Morrison, her favorite song of his was "Into the Mystic." Michelle loved 70's rock and would jam in front of the huge Marantz stereo in the living room with her dad singing as he played his bad ass air guitar. Bad Company, AC/DC, Styx, Journey, the whole gamut. 

Michelle loved HARD and often. She gave everything of herself to everyone, keeping just enough to get her to the next checkpoint for "fuel."  Over the years the check points became farther and farther apart and she was giving more and more and keeping less. Eventually every little thing became overwhelming. 

Was the disease more debilitating than we thought? Did she hide it better? Was cognitive reasoning affected? I question everything these days.  

But still — still, to the very end she fought the illness, loved deeply and was benevolent beyond anyone I ever knew of. Her beautiful smile could melt ice. Michelle brightened days for many as hers fell apart. The lights dimmed inside those 37 miles of nerve endings. My girl committed suicide. 

I have heard it said all my life. Reach out, there is one person who can turn that tide. We wish we knew who that person was. We do know that a loving husband, mother/father, aunts and cousins, sisters & brothers, beautiful children, brand new granddaughter couldn't do it. 

Now my days, hours and minutes are filled with memories. I see her everywhere and all the time in all things. This is the memory from this morning. Blackies campground on Folly Beach for a full summer in 1981. The campground had a nice large pavilion. The sounds of the party time bands playing shagging music lulled Michelle who was 4 and her sister to sleep on the weekends. During the week a juke box rocked some of the decades best; Peter Frampton, CCR, Styx, Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd.....  but quiet time came early at the campground, 10 PM. 

One morning I was up at the crack of dawn with a pillowcase full of clothes to take to the laundry which was housed behind a wall at the pavilion. We walked quietly down the sandy path to the pavilion which housed a laundry room behind one of it's petitions. As I sorted the clothes Michelle wandered off to the Juke Box to check the coin slot and mash some buttons. All of a sudden Juice Newton started playing "Angel of the morning" at party time decibels. I came running around the petition to find her smiling, her eyes big as saucers. People started yelling out of their tents and campers at us. I couldn't find out how to stop the music. I finally got it pulled out from the wall and snatched the cord out of the wall. It was a memory we spoke of often. Michelle wasn't an angel of the morning. She preferred to wake up naturally and around 10 o'clock would have been her preference. But, school, work, life didn't fit that schedule. I would sing "Angel of the Morning" to her and she would snarl. Eventually she began to like the song again AND the morning. 

My heart feels as if that juke box is plugged back in and memory after memory, side A & B are being played. I will never be able to unplug that juke box, nor will I ever want to.   

The morning after she died, the sun was brilliant, the sky was Tarheel Blue. I wish she could have held out for daylight. I believe it may have changed her mind. 

Breathe out —January 13, 2021, 7:02 pm. 

Bad Ass Cat kind of year.

 

 

I have never uttered "I'm bored," not for a day an hour or a minute of my life. When a thought becomes a stitch, a stroke of the brush, a paragraph on paper, we give it life. We have created something that didn't exist, out of the blue, just like that. To me those creations are little miracles in this world. Whether it be the seed a farmer put into the ground that became a beautiful squash on my counter, origami birds, a child's drawing on a frig, a new guitar riff that rippled out into the universe — A zillion little things that weren't here yesterday came into existence today. 

My mind runs continuously and I know it will until I take my last breath but it wasn't always like that. Unsupportive comments from family de-railed and many times stunted my desire to create. It took years for me to learn that their lack of support was more about their inability to dream than my ability to create. You should never let someone else's voice be louder in your head and heart than your own. 

It doesn't matter if what I do will ever be seen. The joy is in the creating. I don't even try to legitimatize the time I spend doodling on a power bill or scribbling random words in a notebook. I just know that if I wait until everything is perfect in my life to do what I like to do then most of what I have done or ever will do wouldn't materialize. 

I am my biggest critic but I have been working on that for the last several years. I used to crumble up a page I had just written on an essay or manuscript and I've been known to  paint a huge red X across a a painting that I felt I messed up. 

But lately I have found that if I leave it, walk away from it like a jig-saw puzzle, I can get past the ugly and when that doesn't work — I sign it and laugh before throwing it out. 

I have tried my hand at watercolor painting for years and every 4 or 5 years I will twist the caps off of those paints and give it another go but, it never ends well. The last attempt was of a cat, easy peezy I thought. Uh-uh. What happened in those few minutes between the vision in my head and the tip of that brush was nothing short of sabotage. What I ended up with mostly resembled the dead cat from Stephen King's Pet Cematary. It was REALLY bad. 

I couldn't not make myself throw it away even thought the muddled water in the rinse glass was prettier than the painting.  I laughed, signed my name to it  and named it "Cats gone bad" why plural? I thought I might make a triptych series.  

So for 2021. I'll try not to be so hard on myself. There's enough criticism in the world without self-inflicting it. It will be alright if I color outside of the lines, paint bad pictures, make ugly Pinterest projects, do it all wrong — as long as I enjoy the process. Happy New Year to you all, I raise a glass to all of your bad ass cat's this year.