Category Archives: memories

light the corners of my mind

family, in memoriam, memories Leave a comment

Gary P. Smoke, 1956-2013

I agreed to fly south to attend my step-Gary’s funeral mainly to support my Mom. I hadn’t realized it would be so healing for me, too.

I once told Gary (and he delighted in repeating this) that we met under possibly the worst possible circumstances. I was taking a semester off from college, as I was under Academic Suspension, so I had to come back home to live with my Mom after having tasted a bit of freedom on campus. I had no job, no computer (this was 1995), and my Mom had this new boyfriend who (when he was around, anyway) wanted to be my new Dad or something. Mom had gotten used to going out to his place most nights while I was off at school… so I was home alone, depressed and resentful.

After a while, Gary and his dog moved in with us, which was almost worse — especially since our cat was permitted according to the lease, but dogs were not. In my mind, Gary essentially got us evicted from the sweet apartment my Mom had finally managed to score after living in “the projects” during my high school years.

That didn’t happen until I went back to college, though. In the meantime, Gary convinced Mom that I needed to get a job if I was going to live at home, so I applied for and landed a seasonal gig at Target, stocking the Christmas aisles during third shift. That, at least, meant that I was asleep during the day and didn’t have to deal with Gary much. I don’t do third shift well, though, as I discovered, so it also felt like all I was doing was working and sleeping.

After I returned to college, Mom and Gary moved to Parma (partially because they were evicted for violating the lease, but partially because Gary wanted to be closer to his son). Not only did I have to memorize a new “home” address, but I also discovered that they’d left a couple pieces of my furniture behind.

I was pissed. Granted, they were old and ratty pieces of furniture… but they were mine!

When I went “home” for Spring Break, they hadn’t quite gotten settled into their new two-bedroom duplex apartment. The back bedroom was full of boxes; I don’t recall if the bed was set up yet, but it was so full of stuff that it didn’t matter.

I slept on the couch during all of Spring Break, and felt like an interloper in my own home. I’d just met Aaron, and spent all my time listening to the mixtape he’d made me and calling him on the phone and wishing I didn’t have to leave campus for breaks.

Not the best start to a step-parent-child relationship. Continue reading →

year in review Leave a comment

2012 Year In Review

I started out 2012 as the mother of a tiny infant, and ended it as the mother of a rambunctious toddler. That in itself has made 2012 one of the most dynamic years in recent memory. Add to that some unexpected changes in my fitness plan, dealing with the death of a loved one, and getting more focused on my job, and you can probably guess that this has been one hell of a year.

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year in review 3 Comments

2011 Year In Review

One of my photography professors once said that the only truly profound things in life are birth and death. If that’s the case, 2011 was the most profound year I’ve had in quite some time.

Normally, I summarize things like what music I listened to (Daft Punk still steady from last year at #5, Stenobot barely missing my top ten), what restaurants I ate at, how my weight fluctuated, that sort of thing. This year will be just a little different. I still have some fun and frivolous stats to report, but some of them fell by the wayside over the course of the year, due to me focusing on more important things.

I started back on the Pill in the Fall of 2010, due to some female issues I was having. As promised, it regulated my cycle and lessened my cramps and fatigue. It also made my periods lighter, and by January, they seemed to have nearly disappeared altogether. In fact, it was so light for January and February that I started to worry that something was amiss, so I called my OBGYN.

Long story short, I was pregnant.

Connor at 12w4d gestation

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year in review 3 Comments

2010 Year In Review

Last year, I thought I’d join the infographics revolution and show my Year In Review in all graphs and numbers and stats. As it turns out, that doesn’t even work for me very well — it’s difficult for me to really pin down what happened and when, with everything aggregated to such a degree.

This year, I’ll be mixing text and graphics to spice things up. Hopefully it’s a little more engaging than either alone.

It’s also going to be a bit lengthy. You have been warned…

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memories 2 Comments

Thunderstorms

I was still small enough to be held, but no longer a baby. Or maybe that’s just how I’m remembering it. At any rate, I felt cocooned and safe with my mother beside me.

“It’s so pretty,” she’d murmur as we stood together at the screen door. “Look how pretty the clouds are.”

It was always dark — but the dark of an encroaching storm, rarely of night. The mist would barely brush our faces, along with a sweet, cool breeze.

When I got a little older — say, school-age, or close to it — we’d watch for the flashes of lightning, then count: one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand (which I later learned is backward from how most people do it), then either nod knowingly or jump, startled, when the thunder finally rumbled or cracked its reply.

“That must have been close to the high school,” said Mom one time. Usually it was much farther away: nine miles, about.

I grew to love thunderstorms. The smell of them, the sound, the beautiful contrast between the clouds and the land. The beauty, the drama. When we moved to Florida, I discovered that it would thunderstorm every afternoon during part of the year. I would sit in my bedroom, listening to music or reading, smelling the rain and watching it sheet down the open casement window.

Later on, I learned that my mother had purposefully instilled in me that love of storms, because she had been made so afraid of them by one particular incident in her childhood. Even so, I’m glad she did.

Thunderstorms, to me, are moments when I can stand at the open door, or sit on the front porch, or gaze out an open window, and let my senses take over. I breathe in that clean-smelling air, feel the mist on my face, and I’m four years old again, and there’s nothing but me and the rain.

Four-year-old Diana pointing up at...

A rainbow