Day 21

 WYG Day 21

I remember…

I used a noun generator to come up with an ordinary word to write a Natalie Goldberg style ‘I Remember’ writing piece. The word the generator gave me is ‘shock’.

I remember the orange plastic pumpkins lit from within with incandescent lights. The pumpkins had black eyes and a missing toothed black smile, and I remember when I would touch them, I would get shocked. Electricity surgered in a spark from the pumpkin to my small hand and I shrieked. My mother chastised me for touching the pumpkin because I could get hurt. And I got a shock. And I spent the next few Halloweens looking at those pumpkins from the ugly floral 70s couch or from the scratchy orange rug, and I would glare at them, wishing I could get closer to them. They were beautiful and I wanted to be close to their beauty, but I couldn’t without pain.

I remember hearing about the Challenger explosion. I was in school, but for some reason, we were the only class not watching the broadcast. It wasn’t until later that I saw what had happened. I recall standing upstairs in my room, the television on, the footage of the explosion on the screen, feeling rooted to the spot I stood in, shocked that this could happen. There was a teacher on board. My teacher could have been on board. How do things like this happen in the world?

I remember when we were in the hospital for the last time with my father. There was a code on the Critical Care floor where my father was, and I knew which room he was in. That was the room they called the Code Blue for. We were in the cafeteria and even though the Critical Care staff bent the rules for me to be on the floor even though I wasn’t old enough, I was directed to go to the waiting area on the floor as staff and equipment and my mother went to the room. My aunt was there and she was in the room for a moment when I entered and I started to cry. She grabbed me by the shoulders, not to hug me, but to shake me back to reality. “You need to be strong for your mom,” she said and then left the room. I stood there, shocked, and I stopped crying right away.

I remember being in high school, having my first real boyfriend, Ron. We met in a math class that I nearly failed (it wasn’t because he was there, but it didn’t help). We started dating not long after we met, and I remembered one time in the hall before one of our classes. We were hanging out talking about some actress I think who was really beautiful and really sexy. I recall declaring that I would rather be known for being smart than being hot and stupid, and my boyfriend snorted and said that it was a good thing because I definitely was not hot. And it shocked me that he said this. It hurt my heart that someone who claimed to love me would say something like that. I was so shocked that I could barely say anything, and I walked off quickly, tears in my eyes. He apologized later, and then I found out at some point that he was cheating on me with his ex-girlfriend, and I was not surprised by this fact. Angry, but not shocked.

I remember just before going to college at the University of Iowa and I was dating a guy who was just perfect for me, or at least I thought he was. He was older, he was an actor, he was a writer who had gone to the writer’s workshop at Iowa. He was funny and encouraged me as a writer and I fell really hard for him. There were so many times I wanted to confess that I loved him, but I just didn’t. I didn’t want to be the first one, because then it wouldn’t mean as much, right? Girls aren’t supposed to say it first. I knew that was stupid, but I felt that deep down inside I was not special enough to be worthy of him. I was living in the dorms and I had spent the day out with my friends seeing the new Harry Potter movie and shopping, and I had to take a shower before he came over. I came out of the shared bathroom on our floor and saw him sitting on the floor outside my room, his head bowed on his knees. I smiled and greeted him and he stood up and we went into my room. In my excitement about seeing him, I started to take my robe off and then he told me that he needed to break up with me because he didn’t love me and he knew that I was in love with him. I put my robe back on, and tied it, and tried to lie my way out of him breaking up with me, but it didn’t work. He then invited me to come and stay with him that night for the last time, and I asked him to leave.

I remember needing help to get pregnant. Bill and I tried for longer than we needed to, and then we went to the doctor and got all kinds of tests and found out that we were going to need help. I was so shocked and broken. We went ahead with clomid and with an IUI. The techs told us that the procedure wouldn’t work but we would try anyway. I had the shock of my life when my period didn’t start, and I took a pregnancy test on Thanksgiving Day and it was positive. A week and a half later, I found out I was having twins.