pretty crabby

Alphabet: A History. F = Frank Black & Forum

I don't even remember the year we first went to see Frank Black but I know Jack was a baby so that would make it 1998 or early 1999. 

In 2001 I saw Frank Black and the Catholics and in my daily commute I played Dog in the Sand CONSTANTLY and when I wasn't playing that I was playing Black Letter Days or Devil's Workshop. All. The. Time.

Back then I was in a totally boring cubicle job (hey, that sounds familiar!) and I spent hours surfing the web. That is when I (like everyone else) started reading Dooce and Que Sera Sera regularly and after I read through all their archives I needed something else to do.  

I stumbled across a Frank Black website one day and then like Alice into the rabbit hole I fell into the forum. Way back then it was small and had only a couple hundred members and there were people who posted often enough that it was easy to pick out the regulars and the weirdos. Though sometimes that goes hand in hand on the Internet, obviously. 

I started posting there on various topics and by the fall of 2002 I was posting all the time. We were having conversations about anything and everything and some of us formed our own group we called The Henhouse (for reasons that are strange and long and that I will spare you here). I found some awesome people in that weird little corner of the Internet, some I was lucky enough to meet in person, some I am friends with still (my good friend Andy in particular who I still email with on a regular basis. Now we talk about our families and our lives and it all started in some silly chat room. Imagine that).

In October of 2003 I went to London and Scotland and I saw Frank Black and the Catholics twice in two days. On a whim the night before the show I had tickets for in London I decided to get on the train and ride to Brighton to try and see them just because I was 23 and what the hell else was I doing? When I got there it was sold out but a kindly bouncer who looked about seventeen took pity on me and called over the bass player who put me on the list. I stood outside the club by myself by the ocean and felt the complete freedom of being somewhere you've never been before and knowing no one in my life even knew where I was. 

The night of the London show I got to meet up with a few people from the forum at a bar and then we all made our way to the show and pushed up so we were toe to toe with the barricade in front of the stage. I have some blurry pictures I took which lived on my wall until I moved last year, hanging there proudly with my ticket stub. It wasn't even so much about the show then as it was about being on my own and making my own friends, completely separate from anything else in my life. Most of the time you make connections through friends or people you know, but this was something I forged out of almost nothing. Made out of my love for music which is as big as anything. 

Taking a trip on my own, meeting people I never met, being brave (and stupid) enough to jump into something before I knew anything about it is something I needed to do in my twenties. Maybe I am too smart to do that today. 

I'm so glad I was dumb enough to do it back then.

(I would like to go back and tell younger me, hey in 2009 you will have a pretty cool Twitter follower!).

Alphabet A History: E, Gramma E

We never lived close to my grandparents. I grew up in Vermont and they all lived in Michigan but I always felt close to all of them.

My gramma was there when I took my first steps, I walked to her. There are blurry photos that she managed to take in the moment. She was there when I turned sixteen years old and my mom threw me a surprise party. She was there when I graduated high school.  

She met my grampa at church and once she wrote me a letter about the days when they were dating. They were allowed to sit out and talk a few hours a night but never after 10PM. Her mother was strict and mean and at least once she pushed my grandmother onto the floor and kicked her. But her father was sweet and she loved him so much... she loved everyone so much. Her husband, her kids, her grandkids. She worried about us all full time, as if it was her job. More than once she called me in tears, worried about me. I wish she hadn't worried so much and when I feel myself starting to worry I remind myself of her. Worrying didn't do much for her but I don't think she knew how to stop. I have to tell myself to stop, and I do. 

She was always DRESSED. She wore coats and matching hats and fancy shoes always. She was stylish and loved to be fancy and "gussied up". I remember standing on a chair in her living room when she was sick so that she could see my dress from her hospital bed.

I think about her life a lot. Her husband died of a heart attack when she was still in her forties and she had four kids at home. She must have been so scared and sad but she kept everyone going and she made ends meet with what she had. She always sent presents and called on birthdays. She always made you eat something when you came in her house. She would offer you every thing until you finally had to take SOMETHING.

She knew the name of every flower.

She was a lady.

I miss her.

Alphabet A History: D. Lake Dunmore

When I was growing up I spent most of my childhood birthdays at Lake Dunmore. I always liked having my birthday in the summer because I LOVE SUMMER and I love swimming, and hey, easy birthday party. Drive to the Lake. Done!

(6th birthday)

I vividly remember my 7th birthday. I remember riding in the car to downtown Middlebury and picking up my cake. I remember Leah in the car. I remember holding my brand new baby doll (who I named Jenny. I was obsessed with the name Jenny. It was so simple and easy to spell!).

I remember my cake that year:

Yeah, sorry Mickey.

My dad and I had a tradition of taking a photo at Lake Dunmore. I would get on his shoulders and we would smile for the camera. There is a photo of my parents and me all smiling in the Lake. It lives on my nightstand. I am about three. We just continued the tradition from there. Usually my mom took the photo, so I know it is all three of us, even after they split up. Me and my dad smiling, my mom smiling behind the camera. We are all frozen at the lake.

We moved from Middlebury when I was eight years old and I think my 7th birthday was the last one I spent at Lake Dunmore. I went there again the summer I was 15 but other than that I don't know if I have been back.

Sometimes I dream I am on the beach there, running to the bathroom, buying ice cream. My feet slap on the sidewalk, my hair never dries. Everyone is eating cake. Everyone is happy. It's always summer.

Alphabet A History. C: California

In the fall of 1997 I moved to California. I’ve been thinking about that time a lot lately, for many reasons. I had a car there and since I was alone and didn’t really know anyone, or feel brave enough to go out and meet  many people, I drove a lot. I drove all over and I saw every corner of Berkeley that there was to be seen. I used to drive up into the Berkeley Hills and park my car and sit there with music playing, just looking at the lights. 

I saw a lot of movies then. Every weekend I used to drive that little car to the movie theater and see whatever was playing. I saw a lot of crap that year. I spent a lot of time at Borders looking at CD’s. I bought every Billy Bragg CD there was and played them constantly in a heavy rotation with Tom Waits and Joni Mitchell.

At some point I found a local pool and I started going there and swimming after work. I am not good at doing laps and so I would slowly swerve into other people’s lanes. Twice I was swimming along and was smashed into by someone as I listed into their lane. Oops. I was the uncoordinated person in the pool, so usually I would just sit still in my own lane, laying on my back, looking up at the moon rise. Palm trees overhead. Swimming in a pool, in February.

The nine months that I spent in California were the very loneliest of my life. And some of the best. I always thought I wanted to be in California, I always thought that was where I was supposed to be. Maybe some day I am. It is corny to say but I learned so much about who I am when I was there. Like Dorothy I went all the way to Oz only to realize my home was where I had been all along.

In the last month I was there I got a tattoo on my back to remember that time. It says Strength, Trust, Faith. Is it all about what I learned there about myself. Have the strength to know yourself and to do what you need to do. Trust the hard decisions you make. Have faith they are the right ones, have enough faith in yourself to know that you are exactly where you need to be.

Alphabet: A History. B = Boston

My dad moved to Boston when I was eight years old. When I was a kid I spent the summers with him and I would ride the bus down Mass Ave from his apartment near Harvard Square to his work, on Newbury Street. I would cross this bridge and go that same route all the time.

Last year when I worked on that same bus line, I thought about that time a lot. Riding the bus, seeing the city, looking out the window. My mom and I lived in Vermont then and I would ride the bus back and forth to Boston too. So much of my childhood was spent looking out a window.

In 1995 I dropped out of college and I remember the day my dad called to tell me they got a bigger apartment, and I should pack my bags because I was moving to Boston too. It was the end of May that year when I showed up. I remember the day I bumped into Elaine on the street and we talked about the baby she would have the following January.

In May of 1998 when I moved back there again (after a brief ill advised trip across country) I sat on the stoop at my dad's yard sale and that was the first day I met Suzanne who would be my landlord and friend 10 years later. I didn't know that then though, no birds whispered in my ear about my future. I was just a 22 year old girl trying to figure out what to do next.

Today when I walk down the street in my neighborhood in Boston, the same neighborhood I have lived in for the last 14 years, I sometimes think about all the other times I have walked on that street. It is funny how you end up somewhere and you make a life there. It is hard for me to walk down that street now without seeing at least one person I know. I think about how this is my little corner of the planet, where people know me, where I can drive down three streets, point out different houses and say "hey, I lived there for awhile".

I moved to Boston because my dad was here first. And then I made friends with his friends and I met some of my own. In Boston I met another transplaned person and we have made this life together here in our little corner of the world.

Alphabet: A History

I am stealing this idea from Wendy who I think stole it from someone else. And so goes the Internet. I need something new to write about and this is 26 entries if I get all the way to the end. So, let's do this thing.

A is for Annie/plus L is for Lucie.

Annie and Lucie were born in 2000 when my life was kind of a mess. I walked to the hospital on my lunch break and held Lucie in her little blanket and said she looked like a hampster with her spikey hair.

Before Annie and Lucie were born everyone kept having boys, and all we wanted were some girls damn it. Finally Elaine came through and had two of them.

Annie is the sweetest person you may ever meet. She likes to sit next to me at restaurants and walk with me on the beach. She is up for whatever comes next, she is happy and ready to go.

Lucie is a rock star. She is moody and hungry and a goofball. She wants you to play a drum beat so she can pose to it. She knows what she wants and she wants it exactly when she says. No later, please.

Annie and Lucie are smart awesome nine year old girls. I am so glad to know them.