What I Could Have Done Differently

Daily writing prompt
What could you do differently?
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What could I have done differently in my life, so that I would be better off now? I could have Learned how to take Cornell Notes. I could have been more interested in how to load a dishwasher. I could have taken a speed-reading course, and a public speaking course. I could have been more organized and focused. I could have asked for more help. But I didn’t. Now, at the ripe old age of 62 almost 63, I have to try and catch up; or, I can just accept who and what I have become, and leave it at that. I’m really tired. Maybe I’ll just do that last thing. I can still try to “Brighten the Corner” where I am. Do you know that old song?

Composting Toilets

The first time my family bought a house, I remember my stepmom and I connected over the idea of sustainable living. That is when she told me about composting toilets. You see, the reason we can’t use our poop directly as manure to fertilize our gardens is because our poop contains bacteria and viruses that would be poisonous to other humans. But a composting-toilet changes all that, It composts our poop in such a way as to make it innocuous manure that can be used to fertilize our gardens.

A Childhood Memory

The toddler woke up. She was in a crib, in the room her mother had grown up in, at her grandmother’s house. She knew it was her grandmother’s house because of the light ruffled curtains on the windows along the outside side wall. On this day, It was summer, but if it was Christmastime, there would be a ceramic green tree with multicolored lights on the vanity beside the bed, and fake frost sprayed on the corners of the windows. Being July in Florida, the air was warm, but it was kept moving by a ceiling fan.

She looked around. She didn’t remember how she’d got there, but she knew her parents were somewhere else doing something important, and she was at her grandmother’s house so her parents could focus on what they were doing.

Christmas

Here I am criticizing myself because I haven’t even written about Christmas,.

 “How can you write a blog at Christmastime and not even mention Christmas?” I ask myself. “What is wrong with me?!”

Is there such a thing as ‘Holiday Trauma?’ Because if there is, I have it. In my mind everyday is just like the one before it and the one after it. I recognize seasons, equinoxes, and solstices, but that’s about it. Everyday is another day to battle against the universal force of disintegration. And I am so occupied with that battle that I do not have any energy left over to romanticize any day or period of days as more joyful or significant than any other.

I know, people will say that that makes me at best a heretic, or at worst an A-theist.

Well, to that I’d say not at all. I MUST believe in a God, or else what would give me the will to keep going? I MUST believe in a loving parent who accepts me as I am, with my disengagement or is it perhaps disassociation about Holidays?

You see, when I was little, the Christmas Holiday was extraordinary. It began just after Thanksgiving (and the build up to Thanksgiving was pretty remarkable too, since I believed the mythology about how my ancestors, who had been saved from famine by the First Americans, sat down peacefully, at a row of three or four 72-in Brown Southern Yellow Pine Rectangle Picnic Tables, with turkey, squash, corn, and beans; to give thanks with those very First Americans for their mutual survival) and it lasted until the second Day of January. My grandmothers, ‘Zelma’, and ‘Little” and my great Aunt Mona (Whom I most resemble today) saw to that. Everything was decorated with lights, tinsel, fake snow designs stenciled onto the windows, Christmas trees, presents galore, endless homemade Christmas cookies on the sideboard in the hall, and all kinds of rituals. Rituals getting out the mechanical ‘roaring lion’ who, when plugged in and the proper button pushed, would walk three or four strides, and then stop and open his ferocious mouth and ‘R_O_A_R!’ There was my mother’s old bedroom with the musical revolving lighted Christmas tree that would play silent night as I was tucked snuggly into my mother’s childhood bed. Things like that.

But After my mother died in that car accident, all that Magic just went away. ‘Little’ Grandma just tried to teach me how to be a lady (have good manners) and a mother (Play with dolls), and grandma ‘Zelma” started telling me the secrets; Like, that when my grandpa Syd was alive, she and Syd would work together to make that ‘endless supply’ of homemade Christmas cookies.

I Dreamed

last night I dreamed I married myself. The bride was a short hourglass shaped woman in a puffy lavendar sequined dress, with a lavendar satin rose on top of a lavendar veil; and the groom was tall thin female in tuxedo and a top hat. As I looked up to myself in the dream, I felt a calming sense of trust and assurance that I would take good care of me.

Why I Didn’t Like Sports

The first sport she didn’t like was “Kick the Can.” The way it worked was a big teacher kicked the can into a crowd of children and then everybody scrambled to kick the can, where? She didn’t know, but there were no fouls. Just a bunch of competitive maniacs butting in on each other trying to kick this can, somewhere. The one rule she knew, she had learned at home, was not to ask questions and reveal her vulnerability. And the teacher who liked this game so much, wasn’t explaining it.

Then there was another game in first grade. It was called “Capture the Flag”. In this case someone had bothered to explain it. There was a designated space, and a line. The line divided one team’s territory from the other team’s. Then there were two goals, one at the far end of each team’s territory. The idea was to steal the flag from the opposite team’s goal and get it safely to one’s own goal. But only very tricky fast runners could do this, she concluded, so this game wasn’t really participatory for her. She, like several other girls would stay near the boundary between ‘their team’ and ‘our team’ and stick her toe over the line and pull it back before she got tagged. If a player got tagged by the other team that player would be put in the other team’s jail, and could only be freed by being tagged by a member of his or her own team. She didn’t want to get put in jail, but at least one time she was.

The teacher who organized this game once told her he’s like to, “sock you in the kisser.” She didn’t know for sure what this meant. Did it mean he wanted to kiss her? Or hit her in the mouth?

Transition to Sports

One of the reasons that I have not accomplished my sustainability goals is because I let myself get distracted. So, while thinking about my goals, I drifted of into the goal of writing a book, and I thought collaborating with a friend who follows popular America sports would be a good idea. So, I started thinking about what the audience for that book would be, and I thought, like me, the audience would be people who do not understand the attraction of sports. And so I got started writing about my early experiences with sports that turned me off to them.