Jaspur's She Stories

She had become so jaded.  She had reached 40 years old.  She had achieved her dream of marriage and family.  It seemed like she should be at that place, the happily ever after she had dreamed of, had been striving and working for.  She had the house on the cul-de-sac, the lush back yard, the minivan, summer afternoons at the pool, and church every Sunday.  She loved her children fiercely, rearing them was her focus.  Her spouse, well she had no point of reference on that.  But she knew it was a lot better than whatever she had as a kid, which was a sort of revolving door fathering.  She was being told, and so she figured, that their marriage was a normal one.  Normal challenges.  Normal hurdles.  Her day to day had turned into survival mode.   Same schedule, same players, same numb routine,   but still a level of chaos that she could never calm.   The last three years since the 4 th child had been born; had drawn h...

After sneaking around apartment and fearfully watching the mom gather items from her bedroom, the three of them sprinted down the stairs and loaded into the car.   It didn’t feel safe until they had pulled out of the carport and travelled the three blocks to make a right turn onto the street of the little house she shared with her mother.     From that day on, the girls played like sisters.   This was fun because they were already such good friends.   They shared her bedroom, went to school together, and hung out basically all the time.   Suddenly they were roommates, like Three’s Company but with four people and no boys.    It was just so much fun after being the only child in an adult world for so long.   They played Barbie dolls, built Legos, played dress up and watched Solid Gold together on the little TV in the back room.      Her friend had the Speak and Spell; and so now that toy lived at their house!   They dance...

  The roof over her head was precarious. The custody case was over.  From start to finish barely 5 months.  $20,000 in lawyer’s fees and as usual, no one really wins.  For her, there was a cathartic maneuvering in the process that fed her tendency to obsess, to ruminate on the trauma and survival mode of the last 15 years of her life.   She had poured all the details of the marriage from start to finish into a 90-page PDF file.   The timeline of their life together took 3 pages. The supporting evidence of her efforts and his minimizing those efforts on the remaining pages: Appendix A, Appendix B, Appendix C, and so on….   She had spent every waking, non-working non-sleeping minute for four solid days on all the proof she could muster.    She had sought a lawyer to force him to have more possession of their son recognizing some of her scheduling needs, he in turn counter petitioning for full custody. No one would really read that PDF doc...

  They were best friends.   She, awkward and pale with tousled brown hair and mouth full of large, wayward teeth.   Her bestie, caramel and statuesque with a headful of tiny and tightly wound ebony ringlets.   They had met the previous year, sharing the same class at school.   They shared a love for music and fashion.   Late 1970s funky town and funky prints.   In the small, southern California beach town they lived in she could walk the six blocks from the little house she shared with her mom…to the apartment that her bestie shared with her parents.   This was the era of sleep over parties, dress up fashion shows, and disco dreams. Caramel because she came from a white mom, and a black dad.   The mom was striking, a hint of strawberry in her wavy hair.   Her dad was tall.   SO TALL.   If she stood next to her friend’s dad, the top of her head barely reached his belt line.   It wasn’t hard to believe that had been a bask...

  They sat across the room from each other.   Her with a baby nursing calmly, him in an armchair across the room.   These late-night discussions, disagreements if you wanted to call them by what they really were…happened regularly.   She sighed heavily, her anger at the rotation of days for the last few years.   Slowly she just said, “It HAS to be better than this.”   This can’t be what it is.   They’d been married almost 15 years and she was holding 3-month-old baby number four at her breast.   As usual, she was having a hard time understanding why her home and family were so, so difficult to manage. She sunk into the couch and into the baby and glared his way.   “It, it just HAS to be better than THIS.”   The years of torture had built up.   The accusations from him of indifference and him constantly telling her she was looking for reasons to be angry, storming through her memory.   He glared back, he was condescendin...

    They both fell into separate beds, allowing exhaustion to take over.   It had been a marathon day.   She herself hadn’t slept more than 4 hours in a row since she had stepped off the airplane 2 days earlier.   Grandma, in her early 80s, had endured the long road trip to see her son’s decline.   The sunlight had brought the 8:00am meeting.   They all knew what the meeting was for.   As his only child, she had won a spot on this particular committee.   Grandma was invited in as well.   He had married his longtime girlfriend, about two years earlier, was the only other invitee.   She arrived at the hospital at 7:55 with her entourage in tow.   Somehow, the wife’s sister and nephew were also ushered into the small room for support.   It was made clear as the meeting began that she as his daughter, and wifey would be the decision makers in the room.   Everyone else was just there to support.   The conversation...

              They faced each other, outside standing near the park bench.  It was the first time they disagreed, the first real decision as a married couple, that needed to be made.  And they disagreed.      Funny thing was, by the time she was a teenager she had decided she wouldn't even have children.  Her relationship with her mother and father, contentious.  Her family, non traditional, dysfunctional even.  With cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents states away there wasn't much to bond with nearby.  She didn't particularly value or look up to her own parents.  They certainly didn't seem very happy or satisfied with their own lives.  Why would she inflict a similar dreary existence on a another person?  The idea of staying single and childless fit into her idea of the path of her life.   But her teenager self seemed a lifetime away.  Now, she had been married all of o...