Dear Roger;The Mind of A Man is A Dark And Twisty Place

Remember how just before Valentines Day I wrote an email to the man I had "drunk dialed" and told off? and how in this email I had apologized for everything I said and I had begged his forgiveness? It took a lot of soul searching to do that because I tend not to be one to do that for just anyone. I let people go easily and I dont put much effort into keeping connections because I have found that with a few rare exceptions, people will let you down. I valued him because he had been there for me as a constant in my life longer than just about anyone else. I had not heard a word back from him and it had ripped my heart apart. I had even closed an email account that I had kept since 1999 because I was driving myself crazy, checking it constantly to see if he had responded. There had been nothing. The pain of his loss was still there, but I had chalked it up to a lesson learned, that deep down I really was not a very good person and that I deserved to lose the man I had called my best friend for my stupidity. I was looking for something for the ex in my old email archives yesterday, and out of the blue, he replied.

I had not sent him any other emails. I was not on his active list, I was not even showing as active on messenger, but for some reason, he sent me an email. It was like getting punched in the chest. I sat there staring at his name on my screen for a good 5 minutes before I could even gather the nerve to click on it. I read the email half a dozen times, trying to read between the lines so I could figure out why now? What he was thinking and if there is any hope for a reconciliation, but I just dont know. I would like to think I was over him and that I had moved on, but you and I both know that is a damn lie. I miss him. I miss bantering with him back and forth over emails about our lives, and the sexual tension that we kept between us. Yeah, we couldn't do a damn thing about it due to time and distance and circumstances, but having someone to talk to about the loneliness and frustration that comes with being me, was helpful. He got me. He didn't let me get to wrapped up in being me, and when I would get in a funk, he would distract me and motivate me in different ways. He has always been one of my muses, though of a sort that is oddly out of place in my new life, he is still needed.

I dont know what prompted him to write me. I haven't responded yet and I am not really sure what to say back to him. His email had a bit of anger and hurt in it, but it did leave the window open for rebuilding, but I dont know if I should now. If I was the person hearing this, I would be yanking my hair out in frustration thinking,"Make up your damn mind!" but its just not so simple anymore. Yes, I have missed him very badly. Yes, he has been my best friend through most of my adult life, but its like walking into a buzz saw, because honestly I do have feelings for him that are well beyond what I should have allowed myself to develop, and I cant let myself keep looking back when I am supposed to be going forward.

Dear Roger:What My Brain Is Doing When Its Supposed to Be Sleeping

Ive never been a person that sleeps for long stretches at a time. Most nights, if I get 4-5 hours in a row,I wake up feeling like I hibernated half my damn life away. I never have been someone who needed a lot of sleep to function. I guess it goes to that whole thing of me functioning best when I am under pressure or some kind of deadline. When I was in Public Safety, I developed the ability to power nap in all kinds of situations such as while coming back from a fire returning from dealing with all kinds of mayhem. I was able to nap in patrol cars, fire trucks, ambulances, on the ground, wearing all my gear and ready to respond to all kinds of situations. Working in remote, rural areas, I often had to ride a half hour or more to the scene, deal with whatever it was, package the case, transport them or wait for the coroner, and then clear the scene with my partner and return to base back the other direction at normal speed which often was a lot slower, so I got really good at power napping so I could write my report when we returned to base, restock and be ready to go again.

Being a parent didn't help my sleeping habits. I have kids that are escape artists and a wrecking crew, so I had to learn to sleep with one eye and ear open so I could be prepared to wrangle them up. Used to be, my creative process kicked in when I was resting and I would get some of my best ideas for my art or my writing, but as I have gotten older I have had to start taking stuff for my migraines that suppresses my ability to dream and to some extent my creative process. Where, when I was younger, my dreams were more action and adventure and the crazy antics that I would get up to, nowadays, I find that when I do dream, they tend to revolve around conversations, though not always with folks I have any particular personal connection to.

I had an odd one last night, I was back at my childhood home in East Texas, down at the pond, sitting on the rock that I used to sit on when I was fishing. It was warm and the sunlight was shining through the sycamore leaves on the water and I was barefoot, wearing a pair of jeans and an old t-shirt. My dog that died when I was 12 was there,but nothing else was the same. The house was gone, and I wasn't worried about snakes or spiders or anything. I was just relaxed and happy, stretched out on the rock with my fishing line in the water, when a couple of shadows fall over me. I open my eyes and its my cousin Robert and another young man that I have never really spoken to, but that I find kinda interesting. They sat on the rock and asked me," Soo, any luck?" I told them that I hadn't caught anything, but that I wasn't really working too hard at it. They just both gave me a smile and said,"Well thats the Texas way of doing things." We sat there in the sun for a while, watching the clouds roll by until Robert said, "Its getting late, you know?" I told him that I knew it. He asked if I thought I had done what I was supposed to do and I told him that I thought I had and that if I hadn't, I had at least tried pretty damn hard. "You need to be writing more, you have been soo damn lazy lately." They were sitting on either side of me at this point, Robert smoking a cigarette and offering me a slug off his flask, and the fella on the other side just leaned back looking up at the clouds like the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland, all lanky and tall and vaguely stoned looking. I looked at him and said,"Why are you here? You aren't dead," He smiled at me and said,"No, but I like to hang out in the interesting places sometimes." We got into a debate over what was better being tall or short?, and if he was gay or not and why he was trailing around after Robert. He gave me some vague comments about everything and everyone being all interconnected and how art and music just flows through us all, so thats what he was doing..."going with the flow."Robert looked at him at that point and said, "You are soo full of bullshit your eyes ought be brown instead of blue." They got up and started walking off into the woods the led off towards a meadow where I could hear music coming from. They turned back and looked at me and said, "We are gonna go wander for a bit, you want to go with?" I woke up just as I started to tell them Yes. I guess its no wonder I dont sleep for long stretches at a time. I have no idea why I would be dreaming about my dead cousin, my dead dog, a live young man I dont know,and fishing! Nights when I dream about talking to you seem to make a lot more sense. Most of the time we are in an art gallery walking up a flight of stairs, and you are talking to me in that no nonsense way of talking that you had.

Chance asked me to try and describe how you were the other day.When I first told him who you were most like, as a mentor and by your very physical presence the way you always kept me on the straight and narrow even when I tried to get wrapped up into the whole dysfunction that was my family, he was a bit horrified, but then when I explained that you were never full on cruel or mean, you were just...you. But, of all the literary characters I could think of to most choose from that would help him understand what you were like, I fell upon Severus Snape. Many people wouldn't understand it, but when I explained the whole story behind it to him, he understood and then he said, "Yeah, mom...we are going to be bringing an entire box of kleenex to the theater for that movie aren't we, because sitting here talking about this with you is getting to me, so I can imagine what its going to be like for you to see the end. " My dreams of you often actually leave me feeling happy and well rested, no matter how brief amount of time they are comprised of.

Dear Roger: Rising Mojos,Hipsters, and the Strong Desire to Junk Punch a Giant

Finally! My desire to write has started crawling back. I have gotten some really good ideas lately and I have jotted down a few notes here and there. I think I may actually sit down and put a few chapters to bed by this weekend if I can ever get my daughter to stop inundating me with "Hey Mom!" 500 times an hour. I swear to God she has said that soo many times this past few weeks that I twitch unconsciously in fear.She is always asking me the most bizarre questions or telling em little tidbits of kid trivia that really have no relevance on my life, but she insists that I need to know that Yuri has a purple shirt with a tear in it, or that Jackson simply must have a white bow tie for picture day on Friday. Yeah, thats right, I am going on a hunt for a bow tie for a stuffed monkey for school pictures so he matches her dress.

The new idea I have for writing involves my daughter and her monkey, so I guess I cant complain. There is a plethora of material there, and its not kiddie book material, I am actually thinking either young adult or adult, and maybe even semi comic style. I would have to work on my sketching, and with my damn hands not cooperating half the time, that would be difficult, but some of the visuals that I get from those two are funny as hell. I love the fact that she has the imagination to maintain such a odd bond. None of my other kids really clung to a stuffie or an imaginary friend like she has, but then again she has been through so much in her young life and she is a more sensitive child, maybe this is her way of dealing with all she has been through. I dont know how much she remembers of the day her father put the straight razor to me. She was in the room, she saw everything. She has been through losing all her friends and most of her things and her brothers and soo much. I feared she would not do well at all, but she has persevered and clung to her Jackson through all of it. I think that if we lost it, that might be a problem, because I have seen the touches of hysteria that rise out of her when he is missing in th house. I hope she will eventually outgrow him, and he will find a place on a shelf as a fond memory, but for now he is as much a part of the family as any of the rest of us and she expects him to be in pictures appropriately outfitted.

My social life is still a desert wasteland. I had been getting flirted with by the cutest guy and I had such high hopes that FINALLY! I was going to meet someone who was not only hot, but who was actually good looking,TALL, and not freaky looking. He finally came over to talk to me yesterday and we were actually having a nice conversation, joking about all the cliche pick up lines and such and the oddness of meeting in a coffee shop. Hes an engineer,(EMPLOYED is a definite plus) and soo cute close up for a giant,(probably around 6'6-6'7) with curly reddish brown hair and green eyes with dimples, so I was totally smitten and just all giddy and wrapped up in talking to him when my friend came walking up after getting coffee from the barista. She had a look on her face that told me something was up so the conversation petered out and cute giant excused himself to go back to work and of course I found out from my friend, who found out from the barista that cute giant is not only married, he is a bit of an obsessive creeper that is best kept at arms length. FML.

I am just going to buy a economy pack of batteries, find my best picks of the hotties I like to look at and call it good. I wish I could import a nice young guy, like a male order bride and grow him up right, but thats not possible, so I will just invest in Duracell and my imagination.

Dear Roger: More Things Change

So I turn 42 this month. I look in the mirror and I wonder what the hell happened? It feels like yesterday I was barely 25, raising hell and running all over the place, trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life. I guess I am pretty lucky that I have survived this long, after all, I beat the odds and the predictions of that self- styled "Seer" that told me I was not going to live to see 30. I think that really fucked me up when I was a kid. I started living my life like I was going to die any minute and it has taken a bit of a physical toll on me, but I had quite a bit of fun and adventure along the way. There are a lot of things I wish I had done. I still cannot believe I have never been overseas. That was my greatest dream when I was a kid. I was going to spend a year just backpacking and slumming around Europe. I wanted to see Ireland and Scotland so bad, yet I have never even been more than 5 miles past the Mexican border. If not for my grandparents taking me away from my parents every summer to give me a reprieve, I would have never seen the majority of the U.S., but thanks to them, I have been to most of the states.

I have so many,"Shoulda, woulda, couldas" that it could make me crazy if I let it, but I just keep hoping that some day before I am too old. I will be able to travel over and see all the things I have dreamed of seeing. Right now my focus is on my kids and making sure that they have the things they need to meet their goals and that they have the chance to reach dreams that I never had a chance to reach. I may not be thrilled that my son dreams of being a musician or a rock star, but dammit, I am going to help him as best I can to get there. I bring him books on guitar playing and musicmanship as well as the business and all that. I am going to find him a class on music theory like he asked and I encourage him. We buy musical instruments with any spare cash we have, not video games and we are slowly building quite a collection. If my ex would ever send them up to us we would have 2 guitars, and electric guitar, a mandolin, a violin, ukulele, drum, 2 harmonicas, penny whistle, digeredoo, and bagpipes. Having a musical child leads to gaining quite a collection of things. He spends most of his time with his guitar, and he guards her like she is the most precious thing known to man, and I guess that is good.A keyboard is next on our list to buy, because daughter wants to play, but it will have to wait until next month. She has quite a fun time with her ukulele and penny whistle and my sanity slips a little further away each time she spends a few hours trying to play both at once, but I guess its all part of the learning process.

My ex is now dodging my calls. I didn't really expect any difference. When I do finally reach him, he will probably yell at me and berate me for daring to ask him about the money he owes me. I am used to it and I can read him like a book. He hasn't made a house payment in over 6 months. He is going to lose the house and even though I left him in good shape financially, somehow it will end up being my fault. I think that the age I see in my face when I look in the mirror came from him. The 10 years I spent with him felt like 20 and it stole the joy from me. My kids were my only salvation and I love them dearly, but if my ex dropped dead tomorrow, I would not mourn. It would be a weight lifted off of me. I would be able to go get my sons and what is left of my possessions, and my dog and we would be totally free. He still has a collar on my neck because he has my sons and that holds me back. When he calls, it is never good news. He is always negative and he denigrates me constantly. I should be used to it and able to block him out, but 10 years of conditioning leave me cringing when he yells at me over the phone and I sit there just wishing that he would vanish but feeling the weight of the stress from him sinking onto my shoulders.

I have been working hard on staying in shape and staying young looking. I see some women my age and they look it. The stretch pants, and just so many things that mark the older woman. I refuse to go there. I wear my boots and jeans and I have my tattoos and my funky clothes and I still dont know what the hell to do with my hair, but now its down past my collar and in my face constantly so its either a doo rag to tie it back or a hat. My jeans still fall off my ass and that makes me crazy. I gain a few lbs and then they fall back off. I wear a belt, but I have had to punch holes in it to make it smaller and that is really not cool. I am going to be one of those scrawny, wiry looking older chicks I guess. I quit smoking totally. In fact I gave my last pack of smokes to some transients that were walking along Division the other day. They wanted to bum a smoke so I gave them the whole pack and made their day I guess. I bought a few packs of gum and that will hopefully help distract me for when I think I need one.

I am not sure what being 42 will bring, but hopefully it will be more moving forward and peace. I would like to maybe find a companion to keep me company along the way in this year, but I am resolute in the fact that if I dont, I am okay with ogling pictures of the cute lil hotties in bands and on my tumblr and spending time working out to get rid of all the excess energy.

Dear Roger: Marking Time

I finally got my 7th tattoo yesterday. I actually had a Saturday to myself and I decided to take advantage of it. The design had been in my head for many months and I had sketched it out, tweaked it, worked it over and I even had a little figurine that I carried around with me in my messenger bag for inspiration for my sketches. I had a bit of cash saved up and I just went and did it. I knew that on my bony assed wrists it was going to hurt like hell, but it actually was an enjoyable experience. The artist and I talked over the design, he wanted to know what the story was behind it and why each little thing that was particular to it was so important, so I told him the story and he really put his heart and time into making sure the design was perfect.

The monkey is a small monkey for a reason. The top hat, well if you are a regular reader of this blog, you know who that is a nod to, the pink is for Voodoo, and the match is for a fire relit,the flames aren't clean looking flames, they are sooty and a bit dirty looking. The flames curve up over my hand. Its my first tattoo that cannot be hidden. Its out in the open and anybody who sees my hand, will see the flames curving up over the top of my hand to mark the position of where my pencil or pen would be. My son jokingly referred to it as my own version of the "Dark Mark". It turned out perfect and even the artist thought it was a really cool and interesting design. He had me follow him through the studio so he could show the other artists, I guess it was the first design like that they had done. None of my tattoos are flash,(stock art), all of mine are my own design, so it always takes me a long time when I finally get in to get one done because the drawing and consultation takes forever, but I like not seeing things that are personal to me, on someone else who might not understand them. Even my feather is an original design. My feather would never fly. Its too battered, damaged and worn. The end is split because of the loss of loved ones(as is tradition in native culture),its also red to represent the wounds suffered in battle, its damaged by all the struggles but its still white to represent the fact I have remained pure of heart. The two blue beads represent my oldest children(the tattoo is 15 years old), the bear claw on the leather thong represents you, because even though you were gone from this place, you were still guiding me. Its heavy in the symbolism and I thought about it for a long time before I got it and I researched it as well. My bear on my chest was the same way, with the bear and the fire and the woods all covering significant points in my life. My motto across my shoulders sounds arrogant, unless you know me and understand where it comes from and why it is in Latin. "Ex Animos Venio Propter Amore Audeo" From courage I come for love I dare. Sounds a bit cocky, but the courage is speaking of my ancestors who were the outcasts and hell raisers that were cast out of Scotland and Ireland and run off their land and who fought and survived against the odds. My grandfather who flew more than 50 missions in ww2, all those who came before. For love I dare? That is for my children. I love my kids and that is why I keep trying. That is all that matters.

My son was a bit stunned by the tattoo on my hand and wrist. He thinks its 'Interesting", but hes a bit unsure how he feels about his mom having a tattoo that everyone can see all the time. He tells me that hes glad I am typically,"Not embarrassing"(gee, thanks a lot), and though I can be a bit loud at times, I am prone to dancing at inappropriate times and even singing or telling off color jokes or leering and wolf whistling at cute guys, I am in shape, I dont walk around with my boobs or butt hanging out, I dont drink constantly, I finally quit smoking for good, and I am in decent shape, the tattoo has left him a bit disconcerted. I dont have any piercings in my face or other odd places that would leave him subject to teasing from peers, and though we are poor, we dont look or act it so most of his peers are not even aware that most months we scrape through the majority of the month with less than 20 dollars to see us through any emergencies and that we dont have a car, or that we fled circumstances in our last home that would give many nightmares. We maintain decorum, but the tattoo is outside that and he is wondering just how to interpret that. For all our rebellions and our rejection of what had been forced upon us in the past, we had at least maintained our appearances of middle class propriety. I think he is fearful of a mohawk making a reappearance next because he has heard me cussing my hair getting in my face or being tangled or my frustration with just not knowing what to do with it now that its down past my collar and my bangs are past my chin. Its funny that my son is more conservative than I am, but hopefully he will relax and figure out that I am finally unwinding a bit and just marking my place so I dont forget how far I have come.

Dear Roger:Slips and Slides, Sins and Atonement

Stress is getting to me. I have been losing words more often lately, stammering more often, and the twitch in my left eyelid never leaves. If I sleep over 3 hours in a night, uninterrupted, then I awaken feeling shocked that I managed a miracle. Its due to my ex large in part, and the mess he has made of my account and the lasting repercussions it will have on me for this next month, but I am really not as angry as I would have been in the past. I think that the old, wrathful me has pretty much gone by the wayside. I do get angry about some things, but I have become a very forgiving person. I tend to consider the motivations behind actions before I go getting all wound up and angry. If the motivations were deliberate and malignant, then I tend to be less forgiving and more likely for focus my energies on bringing down wrath upon their world, but if its due to ignorance or youth or just simply weakness of character, then I am less likely to expend my own energy on burning them down. My ex is a weak man. He is simply a product of his environment. He is incapable of change at this point in his life and no good will come of trying to compel him to change or by punishing him further than I already have. He is a burden that much be borne for the sake of my children, who unfortunately, love him.

I swear, some months it just feels like one damn thing after another. Bills constantly seem to add up and if the smell of sons shoes are any indication, he needs a new pair and badly! He came home,(on time) after track practice yesterday and took them off. The smell was hideous! It was worse than my gnarliest pair of boots that have to live in the closet away from everyone else with baking soda in them. He seemed to not even notice the odor and that is disturbing in itself.

I dont know what we are going to end up doing this summer. The job market around here is grim. I know so many people who have been looking for so long and there is just nothing.

The bright side of things is that its starting to get more Springlike and I have actually taken to venturing outside in a hoodie instead of the full winter regalia. I will be nice to show off the fact that while I may be middle aged, I lack the middle aged spread and my ass is actually in pretty decent shape. I will be able to wear my Volcome slacks that fit and show off the fact I am skinny. I plan to start running again pretty soon and I have been keeping up with my Isometrics and such so hopefully getting toned back up and hitting the gym will eventually happen and I will be able to at least feel like getting out and socializing.

Son has decided to pursue the AP/College prep/NCAA program at his school. I am damn proud of him because it means a lot more work for him academically, but it offers a brighter future.He has gotten more serious about school lately and has even said that he doesn't want to go to Texas this summer. He told me that it seems like everyone he was friends with back there has either quit school or has gotten into trouble for smoking dope or other stupidity. He was running around with a bunch of rich kids that all had vehicles and waay to much free, unsupervised time on their hands, so I was glad that he decided he didn't want to go back for the summer. A few of those boys had already gotten into trouble for truck surfing and running over one of their buddies. He wants to go to OSU and he is even looking into Summer programs where he can either go to music camps and work on that, or even drama camps! He is supposed to audition for concert choir in the next couple of weeks so he has been practicing and focusing on that as well as making a positive impression on the director. It seems like my son is growing up and I hope it sticks for awhile. He has a track meet tonight and he was carb loading as well as nagging at me about buying him some healthier drink choices. He reads labels on stuff,(we always do), and he had commented on the fact that his favorite energy drink had too much sugar in it. I had already told him that weeks ago, but he finally heard it from his coach and decided to listen. So now I am supposed to buy him some kind of high dollar, natural, organic, drink?! I told him to try water, its the drink of champions. He has been curious about alcohol for quite a while and I am very open about it and the effects it has on people. He knows the first boy I ever loved was murdered by a drunk driver and that drunk driving a an unforgivable sin to me that makes me want to beat down whomever I catch doing it, so I have told him that when he is of age, we will sort through it together. I show him videos of how different people are when they are obviously drunk and how it makes things that perhaps they wouldn't say, slip out or behaviors emerge that in the light of day are mortifying.

He knows I drink on occasion and about the "Drunk Dialing" incident that cost me so much. I was very, very honest and open with him about that. Sharing my pain and humiliation with him was eye opening to him and he cringed for me. He has seen me with a hangover, once. He was not merciful. He made fun of me, and he asked a lot of questions about it. I dont think he is all that eager to try whiskey and now perhaps considers that the major leagues of drinking and masochism. He thinks beer smells a bit nasty, so I hope he keeps that opinion, though I dont really expect him to. When it comes to drugs I am not as worried because he grew up around a drug addict and he hates drugs. He wrinkles his nose in disgust at the weed reek that comes from our neighbors house and he knows I can spot when someone is using. He has heard me make comments like,"Hmm, guess crank or coke is just a rock star rite of passage."and when he asked me what I meant, I pointed out all the classic signs of drug usage on the person which while disappointed me, did not shock me. He knows I would spot it in a heartbeat and that I would not hesitate use any means necessary to put a stop to it right there. I have watched too many people eaten up by drugs to allow it to happen to a loved one, so its not a negotiable issue.

We made it through December. We have made it though so much and even though my stress gets heavy at times, it could always be worse. We are alive, and I am making up for the things I have done in the past by trying to fix the future.

Dear Rogers:Bubbling To The Surface

I would have to say that yesterday was a pretty rough day for me. I tend to not get to far off into the the state that I was into by the dinner hour, but there is one thing that can send me into a full on, gut-wrenching, heart-sick panic faster than anything...one of my children being missing or in harms way.

Though I consider myself to be a failure as a mother, it is a vocation that I take very seriously and to heart and it is my mission to achieve the raising of my sons with these goals achieved: 1. They will be go from point A. to point B. with as little physical or emotional damage as possible. That means that NO ONE HURTS MY BABIES. Even if I have to threaten to throw down against a truck load of idiots in the middle of Burnside and Powell, on my own because some jackass shouted "Faggot" at my son, I will stomp a mudhole in someones ass to achieve it. 2. None of my children will ever be A. Arrested or go to jail for any reason. I have so far managed to achieve that by knowing my kids friends, knowing what they are up to , maintaining rules and discipline, and instilling respect in my kids and fear of just what the hell would happen to them if they ever were arrested, in them. 3. They will all graduate from high school and then college. Even my special needs child, even if that means I am sitting there right beside him in class. I dont care if its art school but they are not going to be without means.

I may be a little strict, but I have seen what becomes of kids who have overly indulgent parents or parents who dont pay attention or who just dont have the knowledge to ask the right questions. I may be nearly 42 years old, but I damn well remember being 15 years old and I remember all the fuckery I got up to running wild in East Texas, and I will be damned if my son is going to end up as much of a screw up as I am, so yesterday when he was over 2 hours late, and he didn't call or text or otherwise check in to let me know WHY? I could only assume that something bad had happened to him.

We live in a big city. A big city where we dont really know anybody. He is a very pretty boy. Yes, he is as big as a moose and fast as hell, but he is a pretty boy and not the most streetwise and hes a bit cocky. The closer to dark it got, the more times I was getting up and looking out the window, checking the door, checking my phone, looking out the window, picking up the phone to call his coach. I sat here with that sense of dread building in my gut, remembering all the times I had gone as a cop to tell parents that their sons had been in accidents or had done something stupid and had been hurt. I listened to each person going up and down the stairs outside my apartment for the familiar sound of his shoes, waiting...and just as I was telling his sister to get her coat and I was pulling my boots back on with my heart already racing and my gut twisting in fear, I heard a knock a the door. He was there, soaked to the bone wondering why I was grabbing him and yelling at him and hugging him and crying for forgetting his key.

He accused me of,"Freaking out" and yeah, I was. He is a teen boy, they live lives of alley cats. More likely to die by violence than by any other means. He is infuriating and stress making and smelly and messy, but like I explained to him,(repeatedly), he is MY BABY. He may do stupid stuff like set his pants on fire, and he may have questionable fashion choices, but it is my mission to achieve my objectives and I am a very objective driven person. He will survive to grow up, stay out of handcuffs,(at least wielded by law enforcement, and the other I dont want to know about and it better be when he is an adult)graduate hopefully with honors from both high school and college, and he will hopefully go out into the world and find someone to love who will drive him crazy.

He was afraid he was going to get grounded or punished in some way, but I told him he had the choice that I used to give quite a few of the people I stopped when I was a cop, "Citation or Lecture?" When I was a cop I missed teaching, so those that chose lecture got the 5 minute educational version of why they were a fuck up and why they shouldn't have been doing what they were doing and sent on their way, or they could simply get a ticket that took me the same amount of time to write and they had to pay a fine on top of it. Weirdly, mostly California folks took the ticket. Southerners often took the lecture, I think because we just liked to talk.He took the lecture, and it was during the lecture, it dawned on the boy that I had been scared. When he realized it he said,"Mom, you were scared?" Duh! That is the one thing that scares me. I dont care what happens to me. Its the thought that what could happen to those that I love and care about that scares me. I jumped in the middle of my psycho ex-brother in law one night in the parking lot of the Orange Blossom Ballroom because I thought he was going to hurt my sis. He was more than twice my size and 10 times the crazy and he was armed, but I didn't care, he was going to hurt my sister. To this day he still wonders if I really woulda chewed his throat out if that bouncer hadn't caught me in a bear hug and held me with my boots off the ground until he could get away, or if my daddy hadn't punched me out when I went to the house and got the pistol so I could go hunt him down and shoot him after they set me loose. I would probably still be in the pen in Texas, but my sis wouldn't have gotten hurt that night. Some folks may say that they would end someone who hurt their loved ones, I follow through. My ex knows this. he knows he was lucky to live to go to prison. He knows that my rage and my standing up in court and facing him to ensure he got the maximum was my way to put an end to him and that the only reason he exists, is because I did not want my children ending up in the system if I went to prison.

My son knows I live for them, heart and soul. There is nothing else for me, no other reason. I would be lost without them. He tried to tell me that when he was in Texas that my parents didn't care if he wandered in whenever, and I told him," I am not now, nor have I ever been, MY parents. I give a damn. I care. I love you. If you ever do that to me again, Your sister and I will be at your school, waiting on you each and every day. I will walk you to school each and every day. I will call your coach next time when you are an hour late instead of sitting here worrying. It is COURTESY to let your family and loved ones know when you are going to be late."

He is allowed freedom to a great extent, and he is indulged, but I will not have him running the streets like no one gives a damn, and I will not have him getting into all kinds of stupidity that I know boys get into when they are allowed to roam freely. He curses the day I was ever a cop, but its nothing to do with me being a cop, its everything to do with me growing up around a bunch of guys who got into all kinds of crazy shit when they were 15-19, and with me attending 6 funerals from 1984-1987,all of young guys I called my friends, and with watching a half dozen more of them end up in the State pen in Texas for everything from Oilfield theft to drug dealing and possession to attempted murder, not to mention all of the assault and minor consumption charges. How the hell I managed to avoid ever getting cuffed up still baffles the hell out of me, because I pulled a scrawny, buck toothed boy out of the back of a Trans Am one night up on a parking lot by his ears and beat the hell out of him for calling me a bitch. I then stuffed his ass back in the back of the car and proceeded to kick the quarter panels until his buddies hauled ass back to Dallas, convinced that us small town crazies just weren't worth messing with.That was observed by local cops. I think that maybe they were just too stunned to react at the time, but I do remember that later, one of the officers that was the father of a friend of mine pulled me aside and had a heart to heart talk with me about how my anger was eating me and that if I let it keep eating me, pretty soon, all that was going to be left was the anger and that they were going to have to deal with. He suggested that I leave town for a while and go see my grandma and find some peace and quiet, to see if I could lose some of the anger and maybe find what was left of me. He was right, there wasn't too much left of me, but the threads of that conversation helped me to hang on until I was able to get gone for good. Tommy was a good guy and his son was a good friend as well.

My son may not have father that gave him anything beyond genetic code, but he has me and I am to blame for everything that is wrong or right with him. I try really hard to lead him properly and if nothing else to be a good cautionary tale. I dont expect him to act totally sane, after all he is young and male and hes musically inclined and dramatic and artistic and scary freaking intelligent, but I expect him to be a good man,and so far, from what I have been hearing, I may have succeeded there. I hear stories about him from people who I bump into around town or when I call the school and they tell me things," He is such a well-mannered and kind young man", "He is so polite and sweet and good-hearted".Hearing these things makes me feel that I may have succeeded. My neighbors and my apartment manager have stopped me to compliment me on my son, because he has done things like stopped and offered to help them when they needed it, or he is unfailingly polite and says,"Ma'am and Sir". I cant help but to feel smug when people compliment me on that, that snooty prep school principal told my kids in front of me,"You dont have to say,"Ma'am and Sir here, this isn't the South." I said, "I told them they have to say it because its the mark of good home training and good manners and I say they have to say it." We may not be rich, but honor, integrity, dignity and pride, cost nothing to instill and I think I may be succeeding.

As for his lack of courtesy yesterday, the crushing guilt that he felt and the amount of apologizing he did, left me no doubt that he got the point I was making. It was a learning moment for both of us. We sat up pretty late last night talking about things, and Rog, we even talked about you for quite a while. He saw the raw pain I feel from missing you, and no boy likes to see their momma cry like that. I told him, that is how I feel over losing my uncle, who was like my father, imagine what losing my child would do to me? He got it.