Jaspur's She Stories

She turned the radio on in the rental, to make sure she stayed alert for the 45 minute drive to the hospital.  It was well past midnight and therefore ironic that Anna Nalick's 2 am was playing on the radio: . .he turned 21 on the base of Fort Bliss "Just a day," he said down to the flask in his fist Ain't been sober since maybe October of last year Here in town you can tell he's been down for awhile But my God it's so beautiful when the boy smiles  ... Forever after, that song would remind her of her father.  That particular night, she was doing exactly what the song suggested...just trying to breathe.  She was in the last stretch of road from the major city she flew into, to the smaller town where her dying father lay.  The verse of the song pricked her; her father likely adopted his drinking habits from his service in the Air Force, during the Vietnam Conflict.  He'd lied about his age, and enlisted at 16 years old.  By the start of Vietnam, he'd al...

She was her family's emotional janitor.  From the birth of her first child, it had been natural to give freely and entirely of herself for her loves.  For the three years prior to that first baby's entrance into the world, she had honed her wife-ing skills.  Tailoring her schedule and energy to her husband's needs and wants.  His job took precedence of course.  He dictated how church attendance and activity went, because he was more experienced and he knew best.  Not verbalized as such, but just understood as the arrangement.  She was so grateful and happy to be living her actual lifetime fairy tale that she forced all this into the "Happily Ever After."  She felt loved, wanted, and had a purpose in being a wife.  At that beginning stage, she was still developing herself through her education and learning more about religion.  At this stage, she wasn't aware of the manipulation or the deficits in spite of the good intentions of everyone ...

She was stretched thin.  As if caring for her three, active children wasn't excuse enough; they were preparing to put their historic home on the market.  The previous few weeks had been spent painting and staging the large, family home...originally built in the 1840's.  The "COMING SOON!" for sale sign had been in the yard for 2 weeks, to generate interest in her home.  It had worked, and they had two showings first thing the next day.  Problem was, there was just no way to make the old house look....well, new.  Her husband worked long and odd hours, often traveling.  Her 3 kids were all under the age of 8, and not exactly "helpful" in keeping the home in order.  The youngest wasn't even sleeping through the night, still waking half way through to cry her way into momma's bed.   As dinner approached, she thought about how she hadn't planned anything for dinner.  She also thought about what a mess it would make.  She called her ...

It was usually just her and her mom on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  They would walk down to the Boy Scout Christmas Tree Lot, and choose one of what was left of the trees.  What was left of the live trees were usually the misshapen and scraggly.  "It's a tradition to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve!" Her mother would remind her...and they'd decide which of the free trees was the best.  Then, they'd lumber and carry the sharp needled, sap dripping tree the 4 blocks to their southern California rental home.   Once they got the tree through the door, they would then wrestle the stump of the tree into a metal base, the same red and green one they used every year.  Every year this seemed one of the hardest aspects of the decorating process.  She didn't really understand why we needed to provide the tree with water but, she trusted her mother.  Implicitly.  She was still in her single digit years...before pre teen doubts and questionin...

Their friendship began with a plan.  He was a skater boy, but  20 years before Avril Livigne explained that story in detail. They had a couple classes together their sophomore year.  He hadn't grown up in that small town like she did.  But he was on her radar now, and they would run into each other at parties around town. He was cute enough, but too young for her taste and she was definitely out of his league. The mission was, to convince her current best friend of the semester, a blond and bouncy freshman...that he was the boy for her.  So far those blond curls were focusing on older and more popular prey, and hadn't acknowledge his existence at all.  He had divulged to her his longing for the blond and bouncy.  She was ready to play Shakespeare's Emma and make the match happen. Skater boy wore vans and knee length shorts with his T shirts.  His dark, short hair had the kinks that spoke of some black in his bloodline.  But his skin told...

She heard him rustling, then came the expected and familiar cry.  There was no rhyme or reason to it, each night at different times of the night.  The pattern night after night was...that there was no pattern. On this night, she oozed off the bed and staggered across the hall to his room, careful not to smack her face into the door as she had done the night before, breaking the frames of her glasses.  She stumbled in, picked up the unhappy boy and heaped into the gliding rocker.  She nursed him first on the left, then the right. He didn't need over the shoulder burping any more...he let out the air as she pulled him up under her chin, arms and legs tucked around her, for snuggling and rocking.  She loved this part, his soft hair on her neck, his pudgy fingers around her arm, even his little sweaty just come up from the blanket smell.  They rocked, it got quiet.  She focused on the motion and prayed that he'd go back to sleep.  Every night he woke,...

 She couldn't figure it out.  She had read all the stories. She watched all the TV shows that tidied up the conflict, 30 minutes for the Brady Bunch or Bewitched, or within an hour on Love Boat or Fantasy Island.  On the here and there weekends with her dad and his girlfriend, she constantly had her nose in her copies of Grimm's Fairy Tales or Hans Christian Anderson's Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and Peter Pan ALL had happy endings.   During her formative years her preschool, day care, and babysitters added tragic tales to the stories that interrupted  her fairy tale day to day.  You know,  before the prince finds her and whisks her off to the perfect and fanciful rest of her life.  Day to day was mediocre.  There was loneliness and drama and no one to trust.  Evil witches and fiery dragons were in the corners of all the pages.  And as in the fairy tales, mother or father was always far away, dead, or somehow bur...