Burnin the Wick at both ends by Kwick

This weekend I visited my safe place…I am not so sure it is safe anymore! It may sound strange to some of you. But the floor in one of the downstairs bedrooms was apparently rotting so he put in a new floor…with carpet. I was furious why didn’t he do that when Grammy was still here to enjoy it!! I heard ripping noises…I walked in on my mother taking things out of books albums that Grammy had put in them. She was ripping up papers she found to be unimportant! I was furious! My Grammy was a packrat, oh I do come by it honest, but my mom had no right to decide what was and was not important to those of us that cared what Grammy thought. Most of the time my mom is not one of the people who cared what Grammy wanted! I think that is why it infuriated me so…I loved Grammy and my mom was taking away the last communication I can have with her physically! She is editing and censoring it!! It may have only been a paid receipt from the year I was born or a piece of mail that seemed like junk mail or a calendar from 1988! Grandma wrote notes on those things. There may have been things that I needed to know. My grandmother was one of the few people who were ever honest with me. Of course the honesty came out of her reality so sometimes I had no idea what she meant until much later but she was honest none the less! At one point in my life I remember crying and whining because I was different than the cousins on my “dad” side of the family! I cannot for the life of me remember what had made me feel soo different I know I just always had. She began to comfort me in her way telling me that I had no reason to try to be like that family. I was 100% my mom side of the family and had nothing of them in me! I was so totally confused as grandma never put anyone down especially not a whole entire family. Later I found out that this man was not my father so she was telling me exactly as much as she could without revealing my mother’s secret!! I am not sure if my grandmother believed that I had a father somewhere out there that my mother knew about …but I did thank God!!
We moved on to the upstairs bedroom that had been mine so often in my life when mom had rushed us out to safety in the middle of the night!! Why did we have to start in MY ROOM!!!!! There is a poster on the wall kind of my contribution to the centuries of clutter in the old room..she didn’t take that down yet!! My crib and the bed I slept in soo many nights. It was in this very room that I wrote my first poetry…screaming for someone anyone to notice me. Notice that life was not OK!! Notice that I needed something even I wasn’t sure what it was!! But this is where we started in my small corner of safety..cluttered as it may be. Now I do not feel fear most days anymore. But for whatever reason having this place invaded by my mother, none the less, was like standing naked in front of thousands of strangers. There are toys and books in boxes. Most of them were never mine…but they shared my moments. When no one was noticing me these were my companions! There is a mirror and an old velvet riding hat that must have belonged to one of my great great grandmothers or someone like that. This is my only connection to my past!! The past that I have lived and the past that came before me! Why must it be done in such a way, like it means nothing to anyone!! My mother does not understand how this affects me…I doubt that she would if I had tried to explain, but ofcourse I didn’t so I will never know. I looked this afternoon for some of those poems! I know I have them somewhere. I have always wanted to put them in a book, but I was afraid that they were just too warped!! Any way I haven’t found them yet so I had to vent!! On a pleasant side note….I wrote my name on the stairwell wall when I was very small in pencil. Some one must have caught me because I did not finish writing the last letter…but it is still there. How cool is that I definitely left my mark on that place !! Grateful Blessings!! Kwick