Coloring My Roots

For a Dancer

2009-01-08T20:47:00.001-05:00

It never occurred to me when I was young(er) that not everyone dances well, or even at all. Not to brag or anything, but I grew up with a natural sense of rhythm and music--an attribute of my French Creole blood, I suspect--and, in the way of the young, assumed that it was something everyone has. Because when you're young, what's normal for you extends (in youthful logic) into being what's normal for everyone.

It was not a theory I had many opportunities to test, mind you. In middle school and high school, I was never asked to the dances or the prom. And even if I did attend, alone or with a group of girlfriends, I was not asked to dance with anyone. I mostly sat or roamed around at the edge of the action, talked to a few people and itched to slink back home and bury my head beneath my pillow.

As an aside, please don't try to sell me that old line of how the boys "were intimidated by me" and that's why they never approached me. I don't buy that for a second. The truth is, starting in 7th grade (which is when I joined the Lewisville ISD), I was thrown into a society where I knew no one, nor did I fully understand the interactions of my peers. I'd been yanked first from the school system where I'd grown up--the place where I'd had the same people in my classes, particularly my Gifted and Talented cohorts--and then from the small private school where I'd made a niche for myself. But once I hit LISD, I floundered. Everyone seemed to know each other already, have a history, whatever. And they were all so very different from me. I ended up keeping to myself, which undoubtedly made me come off as "cold" when really I was wrapped in my own sort of mortification at my lack of social skills. But anyway, that's why I never got asked out, or asked to join anyone for anything. Everyone thought I was some kind of snob, and the only people who liked me were my teachers, which was probably just another kiss of death.

Okay, anyway, so it wasn't in public school that I determined not everyone can dance. It was at college. I attended exactly three functions (that I can recall, anyway) at which people danced. And I was actually asked to dance! Which flustered me a little because I'd never really danced with other people before. And so my painful education began, including a truly embarrassing moment in which I spun my [male, natch] partner! Yikes.

I did have a moment of triumph, however. One that told me that it's not just my imagination that I can dance well, at least when I'm dancing alone. They were playing "Under the Sea" (yes, the one from The Little Mermaid) and I'd found a spot on the dance floor in the back where I could move unobserved, or so I thought. Or maybe I was just mostly trying to stay out of the way of the couples on the floor; I don't really remember. But whatever the circumstances, I began dancing away, eyes closed, moving to the beats and rhythms. And then . . . I started to hear clapping. Not applause, but the regular kind of clapping people do when they clap along to music. I opened my eyes and saw a ring of people standing around me, watching me dance and clapping as if to cheer me on.

Jimmy Buffett has a song about the perfect partner, which, in terms of dancing, I guess I've never found. To this day, I do prefer to dance alone. My husband doesn't dance, so I get no grief from him about my not particularly wanting to dance with him. I will dance with him, mind you, and I do on the extremely rare occasions when he's willing to do so. Maybe some day, when we're old and the kids are grown, we'll take lessons. In the meantime, though, I'll keep stepping to the beat of my own drum.

"But they make it sound worse than it was."

2008-10-07T22:14:00.000-04:00

For two years as an undergrad at UT Austin, my roommate was a girl named Heather Donavon. We got along really well, which is why we opted to room together for two years. I think we got on because we were both only children and understood the whole don't-touch-my-stuff mentality that comes with that. But whatever the reason, those were two good years--even despite the neighbor who played Madonna (particularly the Evita soundtrack--the club mix) repeatedly, loudly, late at night.

Anyway, one thing I remember (out of many) is that Heather was part Jewish, although she hadn't been raised in the faith. And at one point Schindler's List was aired on television with no commercials, and I came in to find Heather crying as she watched it. She asked me about some of the history, and we discussed it for a while. But then she talked with her boyfriend Jimmy on the phone, and Jimmy had this supposedly consoling outlook: "They make it sound worse than it really was."

Eh?

Now Jimmy was a great guy. Hey, he was the one who called to tell me to tune into The Pretender--his exact words were something like, "There's this show I think you'd like on Channel 5 right now." Turned out to be the pilot, and Jimmy was right, I loved it. So I don't know where his POV on the Holocaust was coming from, exactly. It was just a jarring moment, one that stands clear for me.

I eventually encouraged Heather to call and actually talk to her mom (her Jewish parent). Which I believe she did, and that seemed to make her feel better. I know I also, later that year, gave Heather a signed copy of Anne Rice's Servant of the Bones. I didn't have much knowledge or understanding of Judaism myself back then, seeing as how I'd only ever met two Jewish people (that I knew of): Heather--who was only half Jewish anyway, and knew less than I did--and the girl I'd been placed with during college orientation, a girl (I forget her name) who, coincidentally enough, was from Boston. I let her taste my Big Red, which she found to be awful. To this day, though, I am the only person I know who drinks Big Red. . . I don't know how that soft drink stays in business. . .

Obviously, I know more Jewish people now, namely my husband and his family and their friends. I've enjoyed learning about their history and culture and religion. And I do sometimes wonder what ever happened to Heather, whether she married Jimmy (there had been a certain expectation that they were headed that direction).

School Daze #1

2008-07-23T22:16:00.000-04:00

Since I've been teaching this past month, it has put me in mind of all my teachers:

Kindergarten - Mrs. Glass. . . I remember I was in Room 10, which I didn't like because all the rooms had colors assigned to them, and ours was brown. My only specific memory of Mrs. Glass, though, is that she once asked me to recite the days of the week, and I did it so rapidly that she called me "Speedy Gonzalez." As for Kindergarten, we worked on a different letter of the alphabet each week. We had these little workbooks, and the letter was on the front in glitter. . . I found it vastly boring. The best part was that on Fridays we got to pick colored clothespins and go to other rooms for different activities. The blue room was my favorite because that was art.

First Grade - Mrs. Knorred. . . First grade is a jumble of memories for me. A friend from Poland named Basha, CCD, and each week one student got to bring in a record to share. Most of my classmates brought various Disney soundtracks. I brought Fats Domino. My mother ran into Mrs. Knorred a while back, who, when she heard my mother's name, actually remembered me! (Then again, my maiden name is rather unique.)

Second Grade - Miss Babicki. . . I thought Miss Babicki was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was engaged to be married, I think? She had dark, curly hair and big blue eyes. She was the one who encouraged me to write. Fridays were writing days in her classroom.

Third Grade - Mrs. Rodriguez. . . She was the one to figure out I needed glasses when I failed a math test that had been written on the board and Mrs. Rodriguez figured out that it wasn't that I couldn't do the math, it was that I couldn't see the math! All the girls made it a habit to hug Mrs. Rodriguez at the end of each school day; kids probably couldn't get away with that now. Lots of "no touching" policies and whatnot.

Fourth Grade - Mrs. Cox. . . Our first year at the middle school. All I really remember, though, is Andrew Andresen. He was a classmate of mine, and he sat in my bus line with me and would draw pictures of the houses he was going to build for me when we were grown up and he became an architect. I also remember that his birthday was April 1st. Isn't it weird what we remember? As for Mrs. Cox, I actually don't remember much about her at all except that we did poetry journals in her class.

Fifth Grade - Mr. Brown. . . My first male teacher! And he made quite an impact on me. He was one of those teachers who knows a lot of interesting, trivial things. Also, he wasn't adverse to chucking science or history for an afternoon so that he could teach us to draw or teach us some Japanese. I had once left a drawing of a horse on my desk, and when I came back, Mr. Brown had drawn a cowboy on it! He also once let me teach the history class.

Sixth Grade - Miss Fuller. . . We had moved, and sixth grade was the year I was in a private Christian school. Fifth and sixth grade was in one room; there were only 11 of us total. Miss Fuller was great. Beverly Geraldine Fuller was her full name, and I thought it was just the prettiest name! She gave me end-of-the-year awards for Science and Thoroughness. But my most vivid memories of sixth grade are (1) having a huge crush on a guy named Joel, and (2) reading Watership Down and then convincing the class to play it at recess. (I was Hazel-Rah, natch.)

After sixth grade, I went to the public middle school and we had lots of teachers because we changed classes. I remember Mrs. Grimes as the home ec teacher, and Mrs. Atkins as the English teacher. . . Coach Roberts was my Earth Science teacher. . . I didn't like Mrs. Smithen (the math teacher). I was an office aide. . . That's all I really remember; middle school is kind of a blur. And then high school, too, of course, was just a string of teachers, though a couple stand out:

Mr. Crivello, who taught my honors and AP English classes; I had him junior and senior year. He was the one to introduce me to Jackson Browne's music, and he was easily my favorite teacher. Mrs. Bason was a close second. She was my journalism teacher and the newspaper/yearbook advisor. She and I went to a Star Trek convention together once! She loved Elvis and Gordon Lightfoot. I also really liked Doc Robertson, who taught World History. He never talked down to us, and he could pronounce my last name correctly!

Oh, and then there is one teacher who was extra special. This was in my elementary school years. Beverly Truhardt. She was the Gifted & Talented teacher. She was with us from, I dunno, but it was pretty early on, and she moved from grade to grade with us up through fourth grade. Then she retired. There was something wonderful about knowing that, no matter what else, I would see the same group of students for certain classes, and that "Mrs. T" would be there, too. She was so creative! And she allowed for us to be creative, too.

I have a lot of other school memories; far too many to put down here and now. I will have to string them out over some other posts, I think.

The Truth About Cats and Dogs

2008-06-05T17:54:00.003-04:00

So we've come to the time where I explain Christopher Schutte. All through my middle school and high school years, people would ask me: "What is the deal with you guys?" And I would say, "There is no deal." Which was true. Because the kind of "deal" people were wondering about, well, it just didn't exist between Christopher and me.

We moved to Thompson Drive in Lewisville, Texas when I was in sixth grade. (Leaving behind a sadistic and bad-tempered rental house on Pinewood, but that's another story.) Go ahead. Fly to Dallas and drive out to Lewisville and have a look. I myself have not seen that house in almost 10 years. Haven't been back to Lewisville in all that time.

There were two kids my age living on Thompson Drive when we moved there. Both across the street. We were all in the same grade. Mandy Schindler--she and I actually had the same first and middle name and became known as "Mandy S." and "Mandy L."--lived with her parents and younger brother Jason. I remember in Mandy's family, all the girls were named with that -ee sound at the end. Her mother was Kitty, her cousin in Wichita Falls was Wendy. . . There were others, but I've forgotten them now. Like, Kitty's sister was something like Sandy or what-have-you.

And then there was Christopher and his mother. He went by Christopher or sometimes Chris. Always Christopher in my mind, though. But that may just be because I have a cousin Christopher, too.

I didn't take any special notice of Christopher for the longest time. He was just sort of there, sometimes mowing the lawn for his mother. But then his mother and my mother got to being friendly, and so sometimes there were shared meals, or we'd find ourselves coloring Easter eggs together. That kind of thing. It was all very pedantic. (Sorry folks! Around school, I know, there were such expectations that something havey-cavey was going on, but nothing was!) It was sort of like having an annoying brother who, lucky for you, didn't actually share the house.

I guess Christopher and I got along because we were both only children, with that peculiar tie to our parents that only singular kids can have. In bigger families, it often seems to be the case of "the kids" and "the parents/adults" but Christopher and I had been raised in a way where, in our families, it was just "us." We were comfortable with adults in ways other kids our age sometimes weren't. Adults were what we knew best, knew them even better than our peers. Adults made sense to us in ways our classmates sometimes didn't.

Oh, we weren't socially awkward. Well, Christopher wasn't. He made a niche for himself in drama and exercised great strength there. I was a wallflower. I could interact well, and did if and when I had to, but I didn't seek it out. I stuck to journalism: the newspaper and the yearbook.

After our freshman year of high school, Mandy Schindler moved away--her family felt the need to be taken into the larger fold in Wichita Falls--so Christopher and I were the only ones left on our street. But there were other kids our age in the neighborhood. Topher Roach lived just around the corner. Angela Limpede lived at the far end of the subdivision. One of our teachers, too, lived around the bend from us.

But that's neither here nor there for this post. I call only clearly recall a handful of interactions with Christopher. Going over to house to watch movies--sometimes other people were there, sometimes it was just us. (We went to see Raising Cain at the movie theater, too, that being the only time we went out to a movie.) Him coming over once to have me record something on a cassette tape for him. . . I remember this because, when I advanced the tape with my finger to make sure it started when the recording did, Christopher said to me (as if surprised), "You know what you're doing!" Another time he came over while I was at the height of a ridiculous crush on someone a grade above us, and he found me cleaning my room furiously. At one point I snatched up my Swiss Army knife--a gift from friends acknowledging my love of MacGyver--and I must've looked pretty wild, because Christopher was nicer to me in that moment than he'd ever been. He got the knife away, and we ended up stretched out on my bed, coloring in a Beauty and the Beast coloring book. (What was I doing with that, I wonder?) He colored Gaston in all black and joked that it was Jessica Tedder (a girl at our school who was very pale and prone to wearing black, though I wouldn't call her an all-out Goth).

I remember a night in which Christopher and I stood on his front lawn and looked at the stars. We talked. . . But I don't remember now what about.

I remember him once telling me that he didn't like his friends knowing his mother. . . I didn't really understand it, but when I think back, maybe he meant that, really, I knew more about him and his family than he was comfortable with, at least at that point in his life.

I remember a night in which my mother and I were over at Christopher's house for dinner with him and his mother, and he and I got into a heated argument. His and my mother just watched, heads turning one way then another as if at a tennis match. (The argument was, of course, about our respective choices in friends--neither one of us approved of the others'.)

And I vividly recall a night in which, after we'd been at Denny's with a group of friend, we got home and Christopher slapped me--hard--because he felt I'd been too forward with one of our mutual [male] friends. That stunned me because, really, I was years away yet from a conscious ability to flirt (at least without being ridiculous), and had zero understanding of boys at that point to boot. I honestly had not known that anything I'd done that night could have been perceived as, er, a come-on?

Well, and no one had struck me in years. (My mother had been inclined to slap me when I was younger, but the last time she did it I'd been maybe 12 or 13.)

So that was "the deal." We graduated and went our separate ways, me to the state university, and he to an acting school of some kind. He eventually went to California, did some acting work and then fell into. . . real estate, I think? He's married, has a kid a few months younger than our son, last I heard. But aside from the one or two holiday cards, I've neither seen nor heard from him. But I wish him well. And maybe we'll cross paths again some day, at a reunion or some such. I haven't yet bothered to attend one, but my nostalgia may yet get the better of me and cause me to go one of these years.

H&H

2008-03-27T10:50:00.000-04:00

We lived in a couple different places before moving to the H&H Mobile Home Park. When I was a baby, we lived in "the house on 888," as my parents call it. I have no idea where that is except to think it must be down near Beeville. Then we lived in an apartment for about a year, I think, before getting the trailer.

The trailer is the first home I ever remember living in. We moved in when I was about three, I think. When I was a kid, I never understood why trailers and mobile home parks were such a punchline and so looked down on. Now, having seen more "typical" trailer parks, I do understand. H&H was very special.

Both H's stood for "Henderson." Mr. Henderson passed away. . . I don't know if it was before we moved in or some time while we lived there. Mrs. Henderson and then her son took over. They were very strict about the park. No junky yards here, and there was a lot of space between the trailers--good-sized lots. We had one of the biggest, too. Of all my friends when I was growing up, we had the biggest yard.

H&H was set up like a big U. We lived down at the curve in Lot 18. I guess that means there were probably 36 to 40 trailers total in the park. A lot of big oak trees, both in our yard and in the park in general. We had a weeping willow, too, that stood by our mailbox at the end of our driveway. It wept sap on the car, though, unless you pulled up almost to the deck. But the willow also attracted a ton of Monarch butterflies each year as they migrated. That was pretty awesome.

Down one side of the U that was H&H, there ran what we called "the back road." I think it was technically called Railroad Street because train tracks ran parallel to the road on the opposite side from the park. Didn't get many trains, though, just the occasional hauler bringing limestone through town. There weren't passenger trains in our town.

In second and third grade I could walk to school by going down the back road and taking a left turn. I would walk with Chad and Ryan usually. Didn't take more than 10or 15 minutes. And the back road never had much traffic.

There was a spot we'd always look for, a place where a skunk's skeleton had been driven into the pavement. It had been there so long, you almost couldn't see it any more. You had to know it was there and really be looking for it.

The back road could be dangerous, though, because the few cars that did use it often went too fast. My best friend's cocker spaniel Goldie was run over there. I'm glad none of our cats were ever hit.

The trailer itself: it was aluminum (some in the park were wood, but not ours), white with brown trim. A big deck led up to the door, and we had stairs on both sides of our deck, so you could go down to the driveway or else down to the strip of cement that ran the rest of the length of the trailer before giving way to the big yard. Dad kept his barbecue pit back on that side. There was a huge oak tree overhanging part of the deck and the trailer, which gave much-needed shade come the hot Texas summers.

We had a back door, too, but no deck going up to it, so if I ever went out that way, I opened the door, sat down and dropped into the neighbor's yard. (That was where my best friend lived.)

The front of the trailer pointed just slightly off from west. We had a big bay window there, and that was the room the kitchen table was in because a bar counter separated the kitchen from that room. It was also the room where the record player was kept and all the records because one wall was a bunch of built-in cabinets. The phone--it was tan with gray buttons--hung over the bar counter. Back then you could dial just the last four numbers if you were calling someone in town. Our digits were 8488.

We had a separate living room where the TV was. That was also the room with the window air conditioner. I would watch Saturday morning cartoons there. And do my homework at the coffee table when I came home from school. I was one of those kids who wore their house key on a chain around their necks; I'd get home from school, get a snack, and do my homework in front of the TV. Almost always I put in an old tape of Young Sherlock Holmes and let it play while I did my math and history, etc.

The trailer was two bedroom, one bath. Worked fine for our little family. Laundry was in a hall closet.

My room was the first one, door on the left as you exited the living room and stepped into the hall. My mother went on a wild tear and decorated my room at one point, I don't know why. My room was the only one she decorated. She put in navy blue carpet; I guess she figured with a child, darker was safer. Painted the walls lemon yellow. Put in navy blue mini-blinds and a "fiesta red" ruffled valance. ("Fiesta red" was code for "rust-colored.") Then Dad built me a bunk bed. The platform was painted yellow like the room, and the ladder was navy. Instead of a lower bunk, though, they put my long, low chest of drawers under my bed and a little television of my own sat on top of it. I would watch You Can't Do That on Television and Dangermouse every evening in my room. Also on my dresser: an old, apple-green alarm clock that really did the trick in waking me up in the mornings. (I never was, never have been, a morning person.) It was one of those with a little hammer that rapidly bounces itself between two bells, and boy howdy it was loud! Hated that thing. The foot of my bed was all shelves for my numerous board games and stuffed friends. A Belle doll, a Minnie Mouse in green checks, a Smurfette. The E.T. board game, Strawberry Shortcake bingo, Colorforms of various sorts: Holly Hobby, Pound Puppies, and Charlie Brown. An Etch-a-Sketch, a Spirograph.

My parents had the room at the back of the trailer. Their closet doors were all mirrors, that's what I most remember. And that they had a blue-and-white striped coverlet on their bed that had flowers on it. . . I would sometimes go in their room to lay on the bed and read because they got good light in that room. (My room had the oak tree right outside the window, the one that shaded the deck.)

The bathroom was right next to their room, a "California bath" that had two doors: one going into the master bedroom and one to the hall. There was this picture hanging over our toilet--a puppy with its head tilted to one side. When I was a kid, I thought it was a picture of the Pokey Little Puppy, although when I look back now, it was a slightly different color than Pokey.

I remember little things, like how I couldn't fall asleep unless I could hear that the TV was on in the living room, and I usually also had to have the door cracked open so I could see the flicker of light generated by the television, too (Dad watched TV with the lights off). I remember this picture hanging in my room of Jesus on the cross, how the ground was open at the foot of the cross and a skull was there--that's Golgotha for you. And my Statue of Liberty calendar, too, hanging on my wall. I had a fierce devotion to Lady Liberty, was both excited when they decided to fix her up and dismayed to find they were planning to change her torch.

H&H had a lot of nice people living in it, at least at our end of the park; I remember thinking people at the far end were not as nice, mostly because some bratty kids came from that end. There were two speed bumps in H&H, and that's how we calculated distance, like getting permission to ride our bikes either "past the first speed bump" (the one closest to us) or "to the second speed bump," which was down near the mouth of the park. But I almost never went down there. Even Chad and Ryan lived only a few trailers past the first speed bump, so what reason did I have to go further?

Miss Hannah was an elderly woman who lived about four trailers to the right of ours. She had the nicest yard in the whole park, was totally devoted to her grass and flowers. Boy, she'd let you have it if she found you on her lawn without permission! But she could also be really nice, and sometimes she made cookies and we could go in and see her parrot. This was back when you didn't have to worry all the time, when whole neighborhoods were responsible for watching the young'uns. . . You weren't worried whether your parents would see anything, but you sure worried that the neighbors might catch you and tell your parents!

There were also two sources of candy near H&H. The closest and easiest to get to was Gus's Drugstore. Also, the cheapest candy was there; fireballs and gobstoppers for just five cents each. But if you wanted the good stuff, and could afford it, you made the trek up to the Jiffy Mart. That's where Bubble Tape and Jolly Ranchers could be had.

But most of us saved our money for the SnoCone man. His green truck would come jangling through the park, and lucky for me we lived at the bend in the U, so I could hear him in time to go get my money! On really good days I had enough to add "cream" to the flavoring. He also sold packs of Now and Laters for a dime.

The postman, too, was really nice. He'd bring blank butcher paper--I guess the post office kept it for packing--and give it to us to draw on.

I read recently, in Stephen King's Duma Key, that "memory stacks the deck." Or something to that effect. Probably true. My childhood sounds idyllic here, and when I look back, I think it was pretty wonderful. My mother likes to tell me there are lots of times when I was terribly unhappy, and I can remember a handful of embarrassing moments, and ones that I'm really not proud of, but for the most part. . . Life was good.

We lived at H&H until the summer of 1987, when my father was transferred by his job.

let's start with. . .

2008-03-16T14:12:00.000-04:00

I don't remember much of my childhood. I have very distinct impressions about it--that it was mostly happy, in fact--but whenever people start to say, "Don't you remember when. . .?" I usually don't. Maybe my mind has long since been too cluttered with random, useless trivia to remember my childhood. Maybe I made more of an impression on others than I did on myself. That is to say, maybe they were paying more attention than I was at the time. Or maybe I really have squashed a bunch of my memories (good ol' repression), though for what reason. . .

Here's what I can tell you: I had a small collection of friends. Carrie and Chad Minton lived down the street from me; Chad was my age and Carrie was a couple years older. I played with both of them, sometimes together, sometimes separately. It was sort of "whoever is willing to play with me." I remember taking swimming lessons with them. I remember eating watermelon, and how Carrie used to put salt on hers. Carrie had Wham! on cassette tape. Their dad had a Camero that we couldn't all fit in the backseat; their mom had a Bronco. They had a basset hound, too. Barney? I think that was his name.

I had a Raggedy Ann doll, and Carrie once took it from me and hid it and told me that it was now in one of the tall silos used by the Georgetown Railroad to store whatever it was they were always hauling (limestone mostly, I think). I remember being desperate to get my doll back and yet fearful of trying to somehow get to the tall, silver structure that seemed so very far from her front porch. Carrie wasn't actually very nice to me. I think I learned how to be mean by hanging around her.

Chad adored me, but he was always kind of moist and snotty, just generally unattractive. I wonder if he grew out of that. He must've, right?

We watched a lot of musical movies at their house: Annie and the version of Cinderella with Lesley Ann Warren. We played a board game called Uncle Willie (or was it Willy?), too. He was some kind of animal--a pig? rabbit? donkey?--in a coat and top hat. What was that about?

Carrie would sometimes invite me to sleepovers, and she and her friends (all older than me) would try to scare me with ghost stories and also try to make me do icky stuff during games of Truth-or-Dare. Meh. I remember going in the closet once--or did they put me in there?--and I either wouldn't come out, or they left me there, something like that. I think when the Mintons moved away (the parents were divorcing), I was mostly relieved, actually.

Also in our neighborhood, right next to the Mintons actually, lived Ryan Humphries and his family. His dad had a motorcycle, and they had two collie dogs, too. Their house--that is to say, mobile home, as we lived in a mobile home park--was crazy. It was wall-to-wall board games and LEGOs. The Humphries were very family-centered, you know, and played games with their kids all the time. It was somewhere between cool and cloying.

Ryan was an odd duck, but he always did what I told him, so that made him easy to hang around with. We played Star Trek and Last Unicorn games in the yard. Or we'd make each other crossword puzzles and then trade papers so we could solve them. That kind of thing. And, of course, whenever I was over at his place (sometimes with Chad) we'd play with LEGOs and do board games and stuff.

At school, my best friend was Emily Schmidt. I think we must've been social outcasts, though I didn't have any real sense of it at the time. (My mother swears I was miserable, but I don't remember that; maybe I really did block this stuff out.) Emily and I loved Moonlighting, and we talked about it all the time, calling each other after the show aired and all that kind of thing. We'd make up our own Moonlighting plots during recess, sometimes act them out. I always had to be David, though. Maybe because I was better at wry humor.

Sleeping over at Emily's was like sleeping in a deranged toy store. She had so much stuff, and her room was always such a wreck. . . She had an older brother that we almost never saw. I don't even remember his name, can't picture him at all.

Emily and I played crazy games with her Barbies. They were always on a cruise, like the Love Boat or something, and the bartender Ken we called "Ted." And he'd hit on Barbie, of course. And he'd make his head spin all the way around and she'd run screaming. I don't know why we did these things. . .

We also made radio shows together. We'd put a tape in the recorder and pretend to be radio DJs. And we'd make stupid jokes and all that kind of thing. I wonder if Emily still has these tapes somewhere? Seems unlikely.

I can credit Emily with introducing me to Huey Lewis and the News. She loved their music.

Finally, my true best friend was Tara Beaver. She moved in next door when I was seven or eight, and of all these people, she's the only one I'm still in touch with, though I don't have a clue why she bothers with me. But that's such a l-o-n-g story, that I'll end this post here and take up more stories on another day.

not dead

2008-03-09T13:57:00.002-04:00

If you're wondering what's happened here, it's this: there is a lot of research involved in writing even a fictionalized account of one's family history, so. . . That's what I'm doing. But in the meantime, I can write things I know from experience--that is, stories from my childhood--and so I may very likely begin to post those things in the near future. Should be entertaining.

The Courtship of Marie-Jeanne

2007-11-10T19:53:00.000-05:00

Louis did not consider Boudreaux to be nearly good enough for his sister. For one thing, Joseph Boudreaux did not have much by way of land, especially compared to their step-father. Boudreaux mostly raised pigs, and only had three slaves. His house was simple; he'd built it himself after leaving his own daddy's house, having used money he was given at his coming-of-age to buy the little bit of land near the bayou. He had a vegetable garden, but those were for him and his slaves to cook and eat; it was the pigs that made him any money, and sometimes a haul of shrimp or crayfish.

How Boudreaux had come into his step-father's circle, Louis was not sure. Joseph Boudreaux was not impolite, but did not dress well either, the way so many of Jacques' friends did. Boudreaux had simply begun to show up at this and that gathering, and of course it hadn't been long before Marie-Jeanne caught his eye.

And why shouldn't she? Marie-Jeanne had, in fact, caught the eyes of many a gentleman in Ascension--indeed, in the parish at large, as word of her loveliness and good nature had spread--so why shouldn't lowly Joseph Boudreaux also notice her? She had the lustrous dark hair of their mother, those blue eyes the shade of slightly turbulent water, skin that had turned an almond color in the Southern sun, and a smattering of freckles over her pert nose and beautifully angled cheeks. Marie-Jeanne found these mortifying, but Louis knew they added to her girlish looks, and those, in turn, added to her charm. Besides, the spots were light enough that one had to be looking Marie-Jeanne almost straight in the eye to see them.

But of all the potential suitors--many of whom were young men with expectations of inheriting a fair amount of property, and some older gentlemen who had a their share of holdings already--Marie-Jeanne singled out Joseph Boudreaux.

He was tall and wiry, more tan than any gentleman should have been, and his hands were slightly calloused, giving away the fact that Boudreaux did some of the work on his land himself, instead of leaving it to the help. His hair was dark and oily, making him seem always unclean, and his ever rumpled clothing did not aid this impression. Confronted with such a picture, Louis simply could not see what it was in Joseph Boudreaux that seemed to draw his sister.

But draw her he did. Once Marie-Jeanne was "out" (that is, once she was sixteen and able to circulate in society on a level at which mere children were not allowed), she could be found at many a social gathering, surrounded by admirers and a few girls her age--about whom Louis could never quite determine whether they really did like his sister, or whether they were hoping to catch some crumbs from her overflowing table of suitors. But as weeks and then months went on, the focus began to narrow, and more and more often Marie-Jeanne could be seen standing with only two or three persistent hopefuls, one of whom was invariably Joseph Boudreaux. And then even the last few fell away, and there would be only Marie-Jeanne and Boudreaux, standing slightly too close in the corner of the room, or else (worse, in Louis' mind) out on the verandah, where the candlelight from inside barely managed to penetrate the dusk, and the heady scent of jasmine, magnolia, gardenia could easily sway the better senses.

Finally, Louis approached his step-father. "He's not a bad fellow," was all Jacques said.

"Marie could do much better," Louis insisted. "Boudreaux won't be able to give her the kind of life she's used to."

"For some women that sort of thing doesn't matter much. Marie-Jeanne strikes me as a sensible girl who knows her own mind and heart. More, she strikes me as the kind of girl who would make sacrifices for love."

But Louis was shaking his head. "You don't know her like I do." It was a fact, simple and true, and Jacques didn't deny it. "Marie may believe it now, but she has romantic notions, and she'll regret it sooner rather than later."

"Well, he hasn't asked me for her at any rate," Jacques told him. "Maybe we should wait until he does--if he does--before we worry about it overmuch."

the truth so far

2007-11-07T20:20:00.000-05:00

So of what's been posted here thus far, how much of it is true? Well, the names are. Although Marie Gervaise is also often listed as Marie Herve, and on the ship's manifest is listed as Herve.

That's another true thing: La Ville d'Archangel did, in fact, sail from St.-Malo to New Orleans in 1785, with a grounding in Balize. And yes, they really had run out of food.

Now whether or not Angelique died during the crossing--well, there aren't any church records of her in Louisiana. So we really don't know what happened to her. Although I don't know if the manifest of La Ville d'Archangel would show whether she disembarked or not; I don't have a copy of it. I do know there were a number of deaths on board, though.

The descriptions of my "characters" (and also ancestors) have been entirely created from thin air and imagination. I've seen no diaries or other records to give me any hints as to how they may have acted, nor have I seen any pictures or paintings of any of them. I don't think anything like that exists, really.

still going. . .

2007-11-06T08:50:00.000-05:00

Yes, I've written more than is posted here! I've been working in the Word file for a bit--and then there was some interruption when my son had to be taken to the ER for respiratory problems. But I do plan to continue, and will post some more of the story here in the near future.

Louisiana

2007-11-02T21:46:00.000-04:00

They ran aground on November 4. It hardly seemed to matter at that point, as the food had run out days before. Even Ti-jacques (as they had come to call the youngest of their clan) was no longer as content as he had been, for Marie's milk had indeed dried up, and there was nothing for her or her husband to give him to eat, either, and no way to explain the situation to him. And so he cried, until he'd expended all his energy, and then he whimpered, and finally he mostly slept until the great rumbling caused him to cry out as much as the others.

They were at an outpost known as Balize, at the mouth of the Mississippi river. It was not New Orleans, not yet, but it was at long last Louisiana.

There was waiting, then, while the ship was repaired, but there was also restocking of food and other necessary items, and many passengers ate so much they made themselves sick, but they were merry about it just the same because, in their experience, it was better to be sick from too much food than not enough.

On December 3, then, La Ville d'Archangel did finally reach New Orleans.

The city was no longer property of France, though many French had settled there; now the Spanish held the city, and that made it safe enough from the bloody reach of the Revolutionaries. Jacques Muis d'Entremont had seen the gathering clouds of a coming storm in his homeland, and in response he had removed his family from any potential strikes of lightning.

Louis would have happily stayed in the city, which bustled with an interesting mix of people--varying shades of skin, a cacophony of accents, and yet so many shared the same warm smile of greeting, even when passing a stranger in the streets. The buildings, too, were a marvel, particularly the fine cathedral; who knew such provincials would have the wherewithal to create such a fine house of worship in this savage territory?

But their step-father had other plans. They would go out to Ascension, where there was land enough and less crowding, and build a house and work the land.

The Children - cont'd (3)

2007-11-02T21:15:00.000-04:00

Marie's first thought was to wake her husband who slept deeply beside her, but almost before that idea had formed in her mind she had dismissed it. Her second husband, Jacques Muis d'Entremont, was a good man, for all he was a year her junior. He was a man of ideas, and could be a man of action when his ideas spurred him to it. And so it had come about that they had all boarded a ship and set sail for Louisiana.

But in many of the simplest ways, Jacques Sr. was not much use at all. He often seemed to be stymied by common sense. And right now, in the situation she found herself in, Marie felt that her husband would not be much help to her.

And so she rose, leaving her husband and their son (who had slept between them to stay warm) to continue sleeping while she and Louis lifted the wrapped bundle that was Angelique's body and Marie-Jeanne opened the door for them as quietly as she could manage. They carried Angelique out onto the deck and over to the rail and set her down again. Then Marie stood and flagged down the first officer whose eye she managed to catch. He was a gray-bearded man, skin like salted meat from years of sailing, but kind enough eyes for all the creases that framed them. He took one look at what lay at Marie's feet and understood.

The sailor lost no time finding the ship's captain, who also was the chaplain, and bringing him to where Marie waited with Louis and Marie-Jeanne. The captain said the words he'd long since memorized, and he and the gray-bearded shipman then lifted the shrouded body and prepared to release it overboard. But Marie made a gesture then with her right hand, gentle and dainty yet commanding, and they paused. Pulling back a corner of the blanket, Marie leaned to kiss her daughter's cold cheek. It was a brief, swift move, done all at once the way a bird swoops to catch a field mouse, and then, after receiving a small nod, the sailors surrendered the body of Angelique to the deep.

The Children - cont'd (2)

2007-11-02T20:54:00.000-04:00

One thing was true of Louis: once he was awake, he was completely awake. There was no grogginess, no slowness to him. He sat straight up and--so was his lot in life--took control of the situation confronting him.

Marie-Jeanne's face said it all for her; before she could even speak a word to her brother, he knew what had happened. And was sorry, but also surprised to find himself somewhat relieved as well. It was one less thing to worry about, after all, one less person to fret over (and how Angelique had required fretting!), one less mouth to feed when everyone was weak with hunger. Louis might have had a momentary pang of guilt at the sensation, but he was not the kind of person to linger long on sentiment. He brushed aside his feelings--all of them, the whole strange mixture--and got up to do what needed to be done.

Feeling his way a bit clumsily (as he did not possess Marie-Jeanne's particular brand of instinct, that inner compass that allowed her to navigate a dark room), Louis came to rest beside little Angelique's body, still covered in the blanket that was warm from Marie-Jeanne. He didn't need to feel his younger sister's body to know her spirit had fled it; the smell gave it away. Knowing Marie-Jeanne would not want use of that particular blanket again, Louis saw fit to wrap Angelique in it before attempting to lift her.

When she saw what her brother meant to do, Marie-Jeanne gasped. "Louis," she hissed softly, trying not to wake any others, though there was little fear of it; they all were deep sleepers. "Louis, should we not wake Maman at least?"

Louis was 11 and strong, but not quite up to lifting the dead weight of his young sister, and so he eased her back down to the rough planking and agreed that they should wake their mother.

Marie Gervaise (this being her maiden name, the one entered on the ship's manifest prior to sailing) was dazed and slow to understand what her children were telling her. She knew her youngest daughter had been recently ill--not at all surprising, given the circumstances they had all be living under and Angelique's fragile nature besides. She had left it to Marie-Jeanne, and also in part to Louis, to care for their sister, and they were more than capable. After all, Marie herself had a baby and her mother-in-law to worry her, as well as her husband to attend to.

So great was her surety that Marie-Jeanne and Louis would manage Angelique, that at first she simply did not comprehend their words. But then her son gestured toward the wrapped form a few feet away, and Marie found herself struck dumb with understanding. Eve biting into the apple could not have found herself more overwhelmed than Marie Gervaise did in the moment she realized she had lost a child.

The Children - cont'd

2007-11-01T21:00:00.000-04:00

By mid-October, Marie-Jeanne had gone from worried to outright terrified, and she could see that Louis, too, was deeply concerned. Angelique had ceased to be able to eat at all; her fair skin had become translucent and faintly yellow-green, and her shining hair was beginning to fall out.

Other passengers did not worry. In fact, they counted Angelique's condition as so much fortune, for what she wouldn't eat they could have. Food aboard La Ville d'Archangel had become as precious as gold. Everyone was thin, many were sick.

Little Jacques, Louis noted, seemed to thrive well enough. Their mother had continued to suckle him, and both she and their step-father made sure to give as much of their portions of food to Jacques as they could manage to go without themselves. But Louis had overheard his mother worrying aloud to her second husband that she would soon dry up and have nothing more for Jacques, for without sustenence for herself, she could not continue to produce milk. . . And there were complaints all around the ship that they should have arrived in Louisiana by now, should have come to New Orleans already, that they were off course, lost at sea. And it was clear that the food was running out.

Marie-Jeanne saw, too, that their mother was not well, those she strove to hide it. All her fear was for her young son. She considered her older children to be old enough to manage themselves; they had, all of them, always been somewhat self-sufficient. It occured to Marie-Jeanne that their mother might not understand about Angelique, about that girl's frail nature, because Marie-Jeanne and Louis had always been the ones to care for her. Oh, and the nurse. Who had not come with them, and had not been so much use to them even when she had been present.

That thought caused Marie-Jeanne to check herself. It was uncharitable, which Marie-Jeanne seldom was. Louis was the type to make such comments, not his nearest sister. Nurse had been very sweet, Marie-Jeanne amended mentally, for she had been there with pats and hugs and smiles, and she'd had a lovely singing voice. There, now Marie-Jeanne felt better.

And now she didn't again, because she remembered that they were no longer in St.-Malo and that Nurse was gone from them forever.

And Angelique was oh so ill. But not for long because near the end of October her struggles ceased.

Marie-Jeanne awoke in their dark, cramped cabin, her skin itchy from the dirty woolen blanket she'd been sharing with Angelique. It was quiet, aside from the snores of her step-father's mother, who gurgled in her sleep in a most digusting fashion. Early on in their journey, the sound had kept Marie-Jeanne awake, but fatigue had made short work of that. With all the money their family had had in France, though, it seemed to Marie-Jeanne that they could've had more than one cabin for the trip. How much could it cost, then, to cross the ocean in such a rickety vessel?

It was Marie-Jeanne's habit to awaken early; it had been from the time she was a babe. She knew, instinctively, that although it was dark in the cabin, the sky outside would have begun to turn a pearl gray in color. She knew that soon there would be a few footsteps out on the deck as other early risers went out to stretch and breathe fresh air.

But this morning something was different, something was wrong in a way that Marie-Jeanne could not immediately identify. She lay still, listening, trying to hear the difference. And then she realized it was not something that was there, so much as something that was not there. The soft breathing of her sister, the usual warmth of Angelique's body, these things were gone.

Marie-Jeanne rolled over quickly to face her sister, to prove to herself that it wasn't true, that she'd been half asleep still and hazy. But no, she was awake now, and even in the dark she knew Angelique wasn't breathing, wasn't moving, wasn't sleeping.

Oh, Angelique! Who had always been sweet and quiet and had striven to be no trouble to anyone, she'd died in the way she'd lived--quietly and without complaint.

But no, that wasn't exactly true. Even in that moment, Marie-Jeanne's mind insisted upon truth. Angelique had complained often enough. But only to Marie-Jeanne. It was with everyone else that Angelique had been, well, such an angel.

Marie-Jeanne remembered now all the times her sister had pouted, had fussed, had thrust her pretty lower lip out in petulance, or twisted those lips into a pursed sort of scowl. Hadn't it been so just the other day? When Angelique had first begun to be seasick? And Marie-Jeanne had, as ever, petted her and soothed her and tried to make everything better.

If she was supposed to feel as if a weight had been lifted from her, she was failing in that task. Despite all Angelique's shortcomings, all Marie-Jeanne felt was sorrow that she had not been there--awake and there--to ease her sister's passing.

And now what? Marie-Jeanne forced herself to rise and take the two steps over to where her brother slept in the corner of the room. He was a bear to wake up, but he was also the only person in that room that Marie-Jeanne felt she could count on in such a situation. She shook his shoulder gently, but Louis did not respond, so she tried again more forcefully. Too forcefully, perhaps, given the way he jumped awake and flung his arm, nearly hitting her square in the jaw. But she drew back quickly enough.

The Children

2007-11-01T13:30:00.000-04:00

"There now," Marie-Jeanne said, sitting back on her heels with an amazing amount of grace when one considered the way the boat rocked and pitched. "That's better, isn't it?"

Angelique snuffled a bit longer before coming to terms with the fact that her sister--older by two years physically, but much more emotionally--would no longer be doling out pats and reassurances. "I suppose," she sighed. "When will we be free from this dreadful boat?"

La Ville d'Archangel had departed St.-Malo on August 12, 1785, but the family had not left from there; they had embarked at Nantes, after having gone to gather up their step-father's widowed mother Marguerite. Their step-father was heard to say (when he thought the children were not listening) that he would not abandon his mother to "the coming terror." Whatever that meant. At the moment, Angelique could not think anything would be more terrible than the ship they were on. The rations were getting smaller and smaller, and she could no longer recall a time when she wasn't hungry. But then, whenever she did eat, she felt sick, and only kept herself from expelling her food by meditating on the fact that she wasn't sure when she might eat next.

Marie-Jeanne was worried, and said as much to Jean-Louis, who was 11 and heir to the family name. Indeed, his sisters had come to the conclusion that Louis (as they called him) was truly head of the family now, since their mother had remarried and taken another name, one that was not theirs. No, the siblings had decided that it was the three of them now against the world. They would none of them have left France if they'd had the power to refuse.

"Angelique is always ailing," Louis told Marie-Jeanne now with some impatience. He was hungry, too, and also not completely well, but he felt the burden to be strong for his sisters' sake. "She is too frail by half. She should never have come; none of us should."

Marie-Jeanne agreed with this, but felt there was no use in pointing it out now; complaining never solved any problems. "Maman is wrapped up in caring for Jacques," she mused. Jacques was their step-brother, only a year old.

"And dealing with the old hag," added Louis with no lack of bitterness. "They might as well both be babies, for all the howling they do."

Marie-Jeanne grimaced and left it at that. But she was pleased to notice in the following days that Louis was more attentive to Angelique than he was wont to be, and he even shared some of his rations with her in an effort to cheer her.

It was clear to any observers aboard La Ville d'Archangel that Louis and Marie-Jeanne were cast from the same mould, but those same sightseers would have been surprised to learn that Angelique was their full-blooded sibling. Louis and Marie-Jeanne shared their mother's dark hair, and both were tall and (increasingly, as the ship sailed on) thin. Louis' eyes were dark and Marie-Jeanne's a sort of deep blue, but the siblings shared the same sharp expressions that would make any adult hesitant to speak--these two, one could be sure, would pick up and remember anything that was said within their hearing.

Little Angelique, however, was at age seven a petite beauty. She had fair hair and skin, and eyes of pale blue. Indeed, she looked the picture of her name: angelic. She did not share, however, her siblings' quick wits, nor did she inherit the steely backbone the rest of her family displayed. Everything had always been done for her, never had she been forced to deal with hardship; even when their father had died, Angelique had been sheltered from the worst of the waves of emotion that had crested over their household. Her father had been a distant figure--kind, to be sure, although when she really thought about it (which was almost never), she wasn't sure at all. Affection had come from Marie-Jeanne, and from their nurse, and maybe, if Angelique stretched her imagination just a bit, she could recall a few warm hugs from her mother and father.

The Beginning

2007-11-01T12:50:00.000-04:00

I picture Marie Gervaise (or Herve, as some have recorded it) to be a tall and elegant woman, imperious in her carriage, completely in command of her household. Gervaise was her maiden name, of course, one of which she had great pride, but now her married name makes her that much prouder.

She looks, perhaps, like something Dante Gabriel Rossetti might have painted: a cloud of dark hair that falls in big waves, pale skin, luminous eyes. But Rossetti would not be born yet for more than a century, and as far as I know, there is no painting of Marie, nor of her husband Jean-Louis, or their three children.

Jean-Louis Landromon dit Langlinais exists in my mind in much the same way as his wife: an aristocratic man with sharp, fine features. He also has dark hair, is perhaps slightly more swarthy in skin tone than his wife. Together they appear as the leads in a historical romance novel, maybe.

Or not. The truth is, I know very little about these early ancestors of mine. That they lived in St.-Malo in France; that they had three children: Jean-Louis (called Louis, probably to avoid confusion with his father), Marie-Jeanne, and Angelique; that Marie remarried after the death of Jean-Louis, and her second husband brought her and his step-children to Louisiana--this is all established.

A caveat now for my readers. Some of what you read in this novel will be true, or at least based in truth. A much of it--most of it, I'll hazard--will be utterly fictitious. I do expect, though, that the whole of it will be entertaining.

Introduction

2007-10-31T21:35:00.000-04:00

Here is where my 2007 NaNoWriMo project will be posted. Maybe not all of it, but at least part of it.

This year's effort is titled Coloring My Roots: The [Partially] True History of My Family Tree and How I Became Who I Am. It's basically a fictionalized account of my genalogy. Historical fiction, I suppose, though I anticipate it going through to more modern times. My family is quite entertaining; they deserve to be written about.