Month: April 2019

Don’t Make Me Come Over There!

~ Sandi Staton

Okay, I admit it. I’d rather fight a grizzly bear than run from an argument when my rights are being violated. And the more stressful the situation, the more fiercely I’d fight, from getting my hair washed to having to take a nap when I wasn’t even sleepy.

And speaking of getting my hair washed, It was the worst thing ever! Worse than getting it tangled in the bed springs. Even worse than falling off the high bridge into the rocky creek and getting my new shoes soaking wet.

One night, stripped down to my little white panties, my scrawny half-naked body wet and slippery, I wriggled free from mom’s Hulk-like grip. Out the door I ran, squealing like a terrified pig in the pitch dark, down the wooded, dirt path where bears and tigers and rabid wolves crouched and snarled and growled. Deciding that drowning was better than being eaten alive, I made a frantic U-turn back to the house. To my dismay, mom and daddy were still sitting beside the galvanized washtub, mom holding the shampoo bottle and daddy holding the switch.

And then, there were my brothers, pushing all the wrong buttons, especially when they began taking parts off my bike and putting them on theirs. One day I went to ride it and the handlebars were missing. Another time my light disappeared. Then my bicycle seat. They’d even take off the chain and peddles!

I worked hard to win that bike, in the wind and freezing cold painting a Halloween scene on the grocery store window. I earned it. It was my baby. My pride and joy. They had no right to even look at it without my permission!

One day I caught my brother taking a wheel off my bike. He didn’t know what stop meant so, I picked up a hammer and hit him on the head with it. Not hard. I didn’t kill him for Pete’s sake! But he made such a screaming-bloody-murder commotion that daddy came after me with the switch and I took off running.

Round and round the house we ran, daddy dragging a mile behind me, huffing and puffing like a freight train. Fearing he’d drop dead of a heart attack, I let him catch me. By then he was too weak and out of breath to give me the switching I deserved.

The most frightful event, however, was when I worked at Dunkin Doughnuts. I was having what I thought a playful argument with the baker, a fiery red-haired punk with a zillion freckles splattered all over his face. I knew he was crazy, but I didn’t know he was a blooming idiot.

As I turned to walk away, he grabbed my arm and began dragging me across the floor yelling, “I’m going to put you in the fryer!”

Fearful that I was going to be cooked alive, I punched him in the nose. Dazed, bleeding, and staggering like a drunk on a three-day binge, he loosened his grip and I ran.

Completely deranged now, he ran after me and pushed me on the floor. Before I could figure out what the heck just happened he straddled my back and began choking me. Immediately, several female co-workers attempted to pull him off, but fearing for their own lives, they gave up. Finally, hearing my piercing screams, three burly customers burst through the swinging doors and pulled the psychopath off me.

Then there was that time I got arrested. That was embarrassing, sitting in the back seat of the patrol car with my hair in rollers, wearing short shorts and a little white tank top. I didn’t feel like a tramp till another cop pulled up, rolled down his window and asked with a devilish grin, “Where’d you pick her up?”

I couldn’t believe she had me arrested! I kept telling her to stay away from me. But she insisted on barging into my life, spinning lies, causing trouble, and parking her butt on my doorstep when she pleased. So, she asked for it when I jerked her out of the chair and wrestled her out the door. Not my fault her skimpy dress ripped apart at the seams.

Having to appear in court was no trip to Disneyland, either, standing there listening to her ranting and raving. On the outside, I was a harmless pussy cat. But on the inside, I was a roaring lion ready to leap and rip out her lying tongue.

Maybe the judge possessed a sixth-sense. Maybe that’s why he pointed his finger at her saying, “Stay away from her!” and dismissed the stupid assault and battery charge. I did tell him determinedly, however, that if she ever came to my door again she would suffer the consequences. But I don’t think that had anything to do with his ruling.

For the record, I’ve never killed anyone, never put anyone in the hospital, and never hit my brother again, not with a hammer at least. And when push comes to shove, I always growl before I bite.

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-fight-or-flight-response-2795194

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wobbly Chairs Bite!

~ Sandi Staton

While scooting my chair closer to the table, my finger received a painful, pinch. Some people are so timid they’d rather drop dead than mention a tiny thing like that. I guess that’s why the waitress was speechless when I shoved my bleeding finger under her nose and complaining, “This chair bit me!”

It’s just the principle of the thing. Eating out should be a safe and pleasant experience, especially when it costs half your monthly retirement check. Besides, what if a child sits in this same wobbly chair? Could take a big chunk out of his finger making him scream bloody murder and his parents dashing to his side yelling law-suit!

After finding her voice, the waitress stuttered, “I’m so sorry! I will have the manager come and talk to you.”

Waiting for our meal to arrive, hubby and I sat talking and laughing with his aunt and uncle sitting across from us. It was Good Friday and the restaurant was packed and noisy. I don’t like noisy. Whatever happened to quiet restaurants playing classical music and everyone talking in whispers? Why do people insist on having TVs and cell phones everywhere they go? Why can’t they just be happy with real live flesh and bones sitting in front of them? Or next to them. Or just in the same room with them. And why don’t restaurants fix their wobbly chairs?

Finally, our meal arrived. Lasagna, my favorite food ever. I can’t help it. I love anything with tomatoes in it. As a kid, I wouldn’t eat till I drenched everything on my plate with ketchup. Drove my dad nuts!

Finishing our delicious meal, a tall, pleasant young man stood beside our table beaming down at us. The manager, just as the waitress promised. Sitting there with a smile as big Texas plastered on my face, I thought, wow! I never had a manager that looked like that.

Okay, I’m old, but I’m not dead.

Offering his deepest apologies and medical help, he told me that everyone’s checks were on him. Even asked me if I wanted his number if my finger got infected.

I wasn’t expecting that! It wasn’t like I’d cut off my hand. Feeling greatly humbled, I thanked and assured him my finger was fine. It didn’t need stitches or a bucket to catch the blood in. Just a tiny band-aid would do.

Tipping the waitress, we left the restaurant feeling happy about the service we received, reminding me that there are still good people in our seemingly selfish world. People who respect others and managers that care that their customers keep coming back.

As we always do when we’re together, we shopped around, laughing and cutting up like four, rambunctious school kids then stopped at Mayberry’s for ice cream. They have wobbly chairs, too. I couldn’t help wondering if they’d give us free ice cream if one of them bites me.  Probably not. It’s like squeezing blood from a turnip for hubby to get a military discount. Besides, I don’t want to find out that bad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walking Clears My Mind

~ Sandi Staton

I woke up confused this morning thinking it was Thursday and scolding myself for not walking yesterday. What a relief to discover that it’s Wednesday and I’m not losing my mind.

At the end of the driveway, I turned left instead of right, this time. It’s a little longer and a lot tougher with the hills and all. We live in a pasture. Well, a once-upon-a-time pasture with houses now instead of critters. Some farmers kept their land, though; the ones with the cows, horses, and goats. Pigs, too. But they don’t smell as bad as somebody’s sewage around here. I hope it’s not ours.

See that house on the hill? Hubby and I toured it after it was built. I loved the sunroom, and basement, and garage, and kitchen, and fireplace in the great room. It even had running water and inside toilets. Not that our house doesn’t have those luxuries, they just appeared more twentieth century in a brand spanking new house.

Trudging up the steep hill, my back whimpering now, a man with a Santa Clause beard swaying in the wind was unloading a bicycle from the truck parked in the driveway. The kid pacing back and forth excitedly must be his grandson, I mused.

I hollered, “Good morning! I love your beard. My son would be jealous!”

Beaming from ear to ear he chuckled, “Thank you! My grand-kids like it, too. Won’t let me cut it off!”

I’m walking slower by the second, now. Somehow the hill seemed bigger than the last time I walked it; like a Mount Everest kind of bigger.

Taking my mind off my grumbling hips and legs, I spied a tree I wanted to take home with me. It had huge branches perfect for a swing I’ve been pestering hubby to death for years to put up. But none of our trees have branches big enough to hold even my great-grandkids so I guess that leaves me freezing stark naked in a blinding blizzard.

Passing another house, I heard voices drifting from a nearby driveway, a great relief knowing I’m not alone in case I pass out in the middle of the road. Wait. They weren’t just in my head were they?

I’m on the homestretch, now, feeling ecstatic considering the steep hills I just conquered. I wasn’t crawling anyhow. At least I didn’t think I was until a snail passed me, laughing his fool head off. Smart-aleck!

Suddenly, a bug smacked me on the arm. But I didn’t throw a conniption fit. Didn’t want the neighbors peeking out their windows and thinking they have a crazy person living near them.

Trudging up the long, narrow tree-lined driveway now, I didn’t realize it had so many cracks in it; more cracks than we have money to repair them. Then I got this great idea. I’m going to sit at the end of the driveway holding a cardboard sign that reads:

Pave my driveway and I will feed you. God bless 😊

Just Do It!

~ Sandi Staton

I went for a walk this morning. A big deal since I barely remember the last time I laced up my walking shoes. But, this morning I decided to stop making stupid excuses and just get out there and do it.

I usually walk Pepper, our little black dachshund lab mix. Unlike our greyhound mix, Bella, jerking and pulling me around like a team of wild horses, Pepper’s a joy to walk. But, this morning I just wanted to walk doggie-free.

After feeding the dogs and putting on a pot of coffee I scrambled out the door and down the steps before changing my mind. For a split second, I was tempted to take the car instead. But since my eye surgery eight years ago, I don’t have a license. I don’t have a watch either. Pepper chewed it up. Along with some pens and pencils and probably other stuff I have yet to discover. But I know what twenty minutes looks and feels like, so I don’t need a watch today.

The last time I got serious about walking I was knocked out of commission for weeks. Ruptured disc. Pain that only a sledgehammer to the head would have relieved. Fearing I might end up like that again, I kept it at a turtle’s pace.

It was cooler than I expected; almost too cool for my favorite yellow jersey capris and faded short-sleeved shirt. But, the clean fresh air felt good washing over me, so I continued down the long, tree-lined driveway and across the road.

When we first moved here from the city, I didn’t like living in the country. I thought we had made the biggest mistake of our lives. I cried for weeks. Since we aren’t rich we couldn’t sell and move again. So I was stuck here to tough it out. Eventually, I did stop crying, but it would be years before I surrendered my heart and soul to country living.

Maybe that’s why the grass seemed so much greener today, and the sun beamed down so much brighter from the cloudless Carolina blue sky. I even smiled at the cows grazing on the hillside thinking what lovely, bawling neighbors they’ve become.

Looking down I saw a pulverized frog on the road. Poor thing. I hate when that happens. I wanted to scrape him up and give him a decent burial.

My girlfriend and I held a funeral for a dead bug once. Of course, we were only ten. We even put mercurochrome and a band-aid on a frog’s belly. I had accidentally run over him with the push reel lawnmower. I thought a rock had gotten stuck between the blades. To my horror, it was a frog instead.  After gently doctoring him up we laid him belly up on a clean white napkin in the cool grass praying for his recovery. Sadly, he didn’t make it.

Walking does that to me; takes me to places I haven’t been in a long time. Happy places that only a child can relate to and understand. It clears my head. It helps me to get in touch with my feelings and to see things from a different perspective.

It was a short but invigorating walk. The wind threatened to yank off my orange, smiley face cap a few times, but I didn’t freeze to death. I even came across a critter in the road that wasn’t dead. A black bug the size of an elephant. I hate bugs. But I hate killing them even worse, so I made a wide circle around him and headed home.

The dogs met me at the front door, barking and jumping up and down like a pair of frenzied kangaroos, their tails waving frantically as if I’d been gone a week.

And where was hubby?

Still in bed. Hadn’t even moved. Snoring louder than a locomotive.

Silly man.

 

 

 

 

Does God Really Care?

~ Sandi Staton

My mother was a mess. A neurotic, paranoid, yelling and screaming broken mess, striking out at me as if her abusive childhood was my fault. My fault that her mother dumped her in an orphanage. My fault that she had a foster-mother from Hell. My fault that my dad didn’t work, that they were behind in the bills and my youngest brother was getting into trouble every time he blinked.

And I believed it.

I should have been there and punched that wicked foster-mother in the face. I should have been there when her sadistic son molested her in the barn.  I should have beat him up, hung him from the highest tree stark naked in the blazing sun and let the buzzards finish him off.

That’s what I should have done.

And I felt smugly justified in my feelings seeing how broken my mother was. How the fury inside her erupted time and again. How none of us knew how to help her or cope with the hopelessness and devastation her brokenness caused.

I don’t know why I felt so responsible for my mother’s tragic childhood. I don’t know why I thought I had the power to make her all better. Maybe I thought if she could just one time see and feel my love it would be enough.

It wasn’t.  All the love, wealth and happiness in the world wouldn’t have been enough.

But, I never stopped trying to be her “enough”. Trying and failing again and again till I had nothing left to give but a heart boiling with rage.

Carelessly, she used my tender, sensitive emotions to control me; to feel a sense of power she never felt growing up. Oh, how she loved un-zipping her soul revealing the wounded inner child, whimpering how she was beaten till she bled. How she walked a mile to school in snow up to her elbows. How she’d find rocks in her lunch bag instead of food. How her foster-mother hung her pee-stained sheets out her bedroom window for every passerby to see. If I resisted her mad ploy for control, She’d hammer me to the ground with her lengthy crypt-like silence till I finally caved in.

My mother had a china-doll-Incredible Hulk syndrome. Delicate and fragile one minute and a raging, roaring monster the next. My bedroom became my haven, but not for my poor Barbie dolls that were slammed repeatedly on the bed by a raging lunatic. Sometimes I’d even chop off their long, beautiful hair.

I admit I was a hellcat of uncontrollable fury against my mother at times, especially when I entered my teens and began pulling tighter on the reigns. I was a good kid; a Christian kid. I took to heart the morals she pounded into my head. I didn’t chase after boys, or lie, cheat or steal. I hung around wholesome kids and always checked in to let her know where I was. I earned my freedom and trust, didn’t I?

Nope! Nope! Nope!

Finally, the battle of the wills turned into a full-blown war neither of us would ever win.  And the very one who tried her darndest to save her is now drowning in a cesspool of grief, crying for help. But help never came.

No human hand reached out and touched me. No human arms held me tightly as I cried. No human voice whispered in the darkness everything will be okay.

But God did.

For years I ran from Him, though, blaming Him for everything that went wrong. My life was one big question mark of why’s. Why did you let it happen? Why didn’t you rescue my mother? Why didn’t you rescue me? Why? Why? Why?

He didn’t answer all my why’s, but He understood all my pain. He understood my raging fury. He cared that I was a shattered mess. And to prove it, He opened my eyes and I saw His beaming face. He touched my wild, rebellious heart. He held me in His arms like my father never did. He whispered to me in the darkness, “I’ve got this. I’ve got you. I’ll never let you go.”

It’s been a long bumpy ride. At times, it was like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. But, although we never had a perfect relationship, after six years of no contact, we finally had a few civil years before she passed away.

There’s still that empty longing that only a mother can fill. My heart still cries for her. And I can’t help but wonder what a peaceful, loving home life would have felt like. Then, I look at my son and his happy, growing family and I know.

And I feel deeply blessed. Deeply rewarded when I did nothing to deserve it. And I can’t thank God enough for all that He has done for me even when I thought He didn’t care. I see now that through the darkest dungeon of despair, He was there, giving me strength, nudging me forward, teaching me, encouraging me, sending people to love me, picking up the pieces of my life as if they were priceless jewels. He never once left my side. Not even for a second.

I will never leave you nor forsake you (Joshua 1:5).

 

 

 

 

 

Voice of a Strong-willed Child

~ Sandi Staton

I was born this way. I don’t come with instructions. So, listen very carefully.

I will fight you. I will run from you. I will scream and yell at you. I will make the neighbors think you’re killing me. I will drive you utterly insane.

Love me anyway.

Don’t try to change me, break me, tame me; I will not be ridden. I am wild. I am strong. I am a free spirit. I will do things my way, in my time no matter how hard you push and tug and pull me.

Love me anyway.

I know I’m difficult. I know I don’t fit in. I know I will never be that prized child you hoped for. But don’t compare me. Don’t judge and criticize me. Don’t shut me out. That only enrages the beast within.

I will say and do things; mean things, that neither of us understands. I will hate myself, hurt myself, hurt others if you’re not strong enough or love me enough to guide me down this troublesome path. I will ignite your fuse of exasperation and I will blow up in your face. I won’t trust you. I won’t talk to you. I will move completely away from you, and you may never get me back.

Love me. Respect me. Praise me again and again. Talk to me. Protect me. Make me feel safe. Beneath this rock-hard fortress of stubbornness, I am a shattered mess of fears and emotions I don’t understand.

Value my honesty. Listen to my concerns. Laugh at my silly antics. Don’t get so worked up over everything I do and say that you think is so ghastly wrong. I’m just a kid with a different view of the world; searching for truth, honor, and strength. So, when you feel like knocking my brains out, hug me instead. If I resist, hug me tighter. Make me believe that you mean it. Make me feel your tender strength. Make me feel I’m not alone in this crazy, mixed up place.

If you don’t, my life will be a living hell of guilt and shame, forever feeling I should never have been born. Forever kicking and screaming against the world. Forever ravaged by the roaring beast within.

So, don’t make raising me more difficult than it already is. If I’m too much for you to handle, get help. PLEASE! And when you do, I will show you that I was worth it.

Deadly Addictions

~ Sandi Staton

I loved him. He was my brother. But there were times I wanted to kill him. Like when he was fourteen and burned down the vacant house up the street. When he broke into schools to steal pencils and erasers. When the cops came knocking on our door. When he made my mother cry. When he cussed me on the phone at three in the morning. When he stole from my husband. When he’d abandon his wife and kids for days. When his promises went up in smoke. When he shook his fist in my dad’s face and called him an old man; the same old man who bailed him out of trouble a million times over; the same old man that he never saw again after that. Didn’t even go to the funeral.

Drugs were his food. Alcohol was his water. Prison was his home.

Addicted to a life of thrills and chills, he was a living, breathing hurricane of total destruction in the lives he touched. Truth was a foreign language. Denial was a constant companion. Honesty was a devil in disguise.

Why? Why was he so bent on self-destruction? What was so enthralling about running from the cops or living in the woods or spinning tails that even the devil couldn’t believe? Why did he think he was so entitled to do whatever he pleased regardless of the cost to society, to his family, to himself?

Why didn’t he do something constructive with his art, his poetry, and writing? He was brilliant. He could have flown as high as an eagle but chose to wallow in the mud like a pig. Why?

I don’t know. I just know that while he was high on drugs and living a life of crime I was wishing I had a brother I could depend on. A brother I could talk to. A brother I could trust. I was wishing he would straighten up before it was too late. I was wishing he would remove the blindfolds and see how much I loved him.

A few days before Thanksgiving 2014 we had a screaming match over the phone. I hung up on him, wishing he was in front of me so I could smack him upside the head. A few days later he called back. As always, I accepted his apology. The day after Thanksgiving, he was found dead in his apartment.

He was sixty-three.

It still hurts. I still miss him. I still wish he had chosen a sensible life. And regardless of the things he had done, the people he had hurt, the destruction he caused, I loved him. I loved him then. I love him now. I’ll love him till I die. He was my little brother and now he’s gone.

So I sit here, barely able to see the screen through my tears, wishing I could hear his voice once more. Wishing I could tell him I’m praying for him once more. Wishing I could convince him to change his ways before it’s too late . . . once more. Now, I can only hope that he did.