At the first...

What do you do when your mother is dying?


Ah, Mother. The mother who doesn't actually like you most of the time. The jealous mother. The angry mother. The mother who was 18 when she had you. The mother who's life you unknowingly chose for her, simply by existing? What do you do with boxes of emotions, compartmentalized in random parts of your brain... in brown cardboard boxes....mislabeled, dusty and forgotten.

Until the day you find her dying. You stop in your tracks, stare off into the distance at something you can't see but you dread is there. Something turns you around and unwillingly propels you toward the creaky spiral staircase that leads to the attic of your thoughts. As you climb you look up, but you can't measure how far you have to go. You reach the landing, a dark space with no windows. You stare blue eyes wide at enormous wooden double doors. You step forward hesitantly, push them open, and walk forward into a faintly sunlit space that you forgot even existed....

You sat on a throne when you were 6. Surrounded by servents. A magic wand in your hand, a golden crown on your platinum hair. With all the guile and charm a small child can possess, you ruled the land before you....

And your greatest wish was for the wicked queen to be dead.

(In reality, you were sitting in the rocker on your rusty blue and white swing set, surrounded by your dog Sneakers. With a stick in your hand, a paper burger king "crown" on your head, and your ratty red bathrobe on, you were ready to take on the backyard that encompassed your world.)

But back to the story...

You wished her to be dead. The wicked queen who imbibed too much. Who yelled too much. Who felt it honorable to pull her small tow haired child next to her and tell her that she was sending the king away forever...as she lit a cigarette off the stove and ignored that you were confused.

I don't remember being read any stories as a child. But i remember reading them back. I had a lisp until i was about 7. I'd sit in the chair with my dad, and read "There are rocks in your socks said the fox to the ox" because there were so many "s" in it. I have no memories of my mom liking me. I might be blocking, I might have been too young to remember, but i'm fairly certain from age birth I was on my own.

I lived a small childhood with the idea that I could kill the queen on page 26, and then close the book and start all over again. I've carried that mentality through adulthood. I want to turn the page quickly, get to the end of the book... and then AHHH....close it and start all over again. I live for the climax of the story, not the tale in between.

So what do you do when you leave the book out in a mental rainstorm? The end gets blurry, the pages stick together. You know the queen is going to be conquested, but you don't know what happens in between the bitten poison apple and the demise of the antagonist...

That's my life for today until the death of the Queen. I don't have a map. I don't have a story. I don't have any logistics to apply to the situation to guide me through what's expected of me. I've worked a long time in a job that demands immediate solutions, and I succeed at it. I pride myself at being able to make snap decisions that are not only intelligent, but that I take full responsibility for. It may not matter in the weight of the world, but it matters to me to have that kind of control over my situation.

But in the court of the queen...I'm still a child. I'm a 3 foot tall, blonde haired, wide eyed child. Scared. Curious. And fighting to understand the world around her. And what is expected of her.

I never enjoyed chess, because I all too much understood the ramifications of ignoring the importance of the queen., when all I wanted was to challenge myself, and expose her on the first move.

"Unlike the puppets, we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved."