Women Who Eat Chocolate

This. 

I must say that I put most of the awful words I hear into a box with a lock on it. What are these awful words, you ask? They are strings of misguided, misplaced, and misinformed letters that string themselves together ever so incoherently, with religious thread to hold it tighter. I started paying attention to them back when Bush and Gore battled it out with all the ridiculous posturings of the hanging chad drama. I listened to talk radio and was drawn into Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck's show. I tuned in everyday as my kids went to school or were playing in the other room. I became frenzied in watching the news shows, hanging on every word, and letting those words soak into my blood. They became part of me and my rhetoric and anyone who disagreed with me was the worst kind of uninformed. **silently tucks away the fact that I nearly voted for Clinton in 92** I mean, it was Rock the Vote! Bashing.  Ugly words. When the 2008 election came around and Barack Obama became the Demo...

Blood into ink.  Those words evoke a vivid picture in my mind of scratching onto paper the words flowing from a bleeding heart. This is what I am attempting to do as I turn my husband's life into words.  It is hard.  The encouragement I've received after posting the initial six stories has been overwhelming and heart-wrenching. I am mightily heartened and lifted up by your words. So many of us fight to do what we're meant to do. Daily we battle demons in our push to be who we are. The devil is not above using the dirtiest tricks to keep us off base and he's worked very hard on me. His tricks and traps are ones I've fallen into many times over the years.  He's used my own vices and failings on me over and over to keep me from the keyboard. I've felt the presence of his lurking demons when I even attempted to write one word. Their hot breath shivering down my back. I don't say this lightly....but I do say it because it's true. The devil wa...

From the corner of my eye I could see it coming. It was big and hard, and wobbled slightly as it cut through the air. The stale smell of alcohol washed over me as his fist connected with the bones of my face. The blood on the wall trickled slowly, spiraling ever downward. Vision, when you have it, lets you see the world as it is. My vision crept slowly toward the center of my eye, blackening my world as it faded. The last thing I saw before blissful unconsciousness took over me was my mom in a huddle on the floor. Her face was bleeding, and angry purple bruises were creeping over her arms – the kind of purple you only see in a stormy sky. Home is a place in your mind where you go when you want to escape. Home, for me, had been non-existent in the three long years I had been lost to it. For most, a homecoming such as mine should have been like the prodigal son. But where love and warmth had always been, was now replaced by fear and made bleary by alcohol. My mom and brother, wh...

**About ten years ago I published this story in our church newsletter. I had lots of feedback about it, so I thought I would include it here as the next segment in my husband’s story. This is one of many true events that happened while he was lost. The boy sat quietly on the pavement. Christmas lights twinkled in the trees around him. It was that time of year again. He could smell the churros being fried, sugar-dipped and heavenly tasting. Tamales were being steamed, cozy in their nests of moistened corn husks. The sights and sounds were all around him, but this year they meant nothing. He was lost. Two months before, his family had moved to a new town. His brother and him had been walking to school. He was only six and school didn’t sound that appealing to him. He had wandered off; ready to explore the new town they lived in. At the train station, the train cars had looked so fascinating. Before he knew what had happened, the train had taken off – with him in it. Now he ...

Whap. Bam. I opened one eye to peer out from the newspapers that were my blanket for the night. Click click wham! Two purple high heels were swinging in front of my face as I lay under the table in the deserted market. It was late at night, and I had burrowed under this market table to sleep for the night. Discarded newspapers were wrapped tightly around me, forming a mummy-like cocoon. I wanted to sleep, and whoever was sitting on top of my table would soon be sorry for waking me up. With a deft hand I took one purple heel and flung it across the deserted street in front of the market. I heard a scream of fear, and then a questioning voice called out, "Who's under that table?"  Dark streets of Oaxaca City. I poked my head out and her look of fear turned soft in a second. What are you doing under there, she wanted to know. I shrugged, knowing if I told her I was lost that she would turn me in. The policia were the last people I wanted to see. "Are you hungr...

Had I known what my future held, I might have stayed with my Grandma in Valdeflores. But futures are a dim light in a four year olds mind. Warmth, love, and a mom to tuck you in at night are what you need. I wanted no less, and after the trauma, despair, and death I had faced, I wanted nothing more than to sink into my mom's lap. The bus carried us away, driving us into the city of Oaxaca and into uncertain days. We arrived in that city in southern Mexico with nothing but the clothes on our backs. Alone, we straggled off the bus and stopped to look around. We were together, but struggling to know which way to turn. I'm sure the most pressing thing for my mom was to find a place for us to live. I don't remember the ins and outs of how we found a room to lay our head, but I do remember that it was concrete and held absolutely nothing. It was emptier than a wind-swept desert, but also a place we could lie down and sleep. A blissful dreamlessness cleared our minds, if only f...

Suicidio. Suicide. What do these words mean in my four-year-old head? The word is being pushed at us from every angle. I can see my dad, lying on the floor with all the blood, and yet this word keeps being repeated. I don't remember the funeral. I don't remember anything immediately after finding my dad. Not a soft word of comfort, or a tender hand brushed across my forehead to let me know it would be ok. He was simply gone and the army was saying he killed himself. The scene replayed itself in my childish brain, as if on repeat mode. As a grown man, I would ask my ma what happened. Her proud Aztec face would wrinkle into a soft, faraway look. "No recuerdo, hijo – I don't remember, son." The only thing she could pull out of the past was that they said he killed himself. I remembered the gaping hole in his back and the hot blood pumping out from underneath him and I knew it couldn't be suicide. It was burned into my memory.  The Mexican military is a corru...

I can see the waves crashing, foamy and full of seaweed at my feet. I am three years old. My papa comes through the sea grass and dunes to scoop me up in his arms. His face is angular, with kindness in his dark eyes. My older brother runs along beside us and as we reach the waves, he throws me in. I scramble to pop my head above water and swim back to him. This is my dad. This is how I will remember him. They say I look exactly like him. My memories are sharp, but slightly faded at the edges, like an old curling photograph. I see him there, driving up in the olive green army jeep to our house at the edge of the shore. I would be waiting for him and could see  his wide smile and wavy dark hair over the wheel. We lived in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca (Mexico) and he was stationed there at the military base. It was 1970. My memories start very young, most say too young to remember. I comb gingerly over my time spent with him,    sorting through each image. My mama, in these m...

January swept in with a cold clarity that brought out all the yearning for heavy, succulent dishes. Aren't we supposed to be eating 'clean' this time of year? Instead, my longing to eat well butts up against the need to cook things that will be eaten with gusto. Why can't we salivate at the thought of a cool, crisp salad? Maybe in July when sweat is trickling down my back just by stepping outdoors...but in January? I wish. My son, still home until the weekend until he heads back to that cold apple of a city, said he wanted spaghetti....spicy. I like spicy. I clicked open Pinterest and proceeded to do a search and per usual, got five thousand versions of spicy spaghetti. I went with one titled Fra Diavolo which translates as 'Brother Devil' and holy red pepper did the name fit. The only pepper it called for WAS red pepper flakes. As the sauce was reducing and the pasta simmering I was excited to taste. I like nothing better than trying something different espe...