Thanksgiving has always been a stressful day for me. Growing up, holidays always seemed to end badly. I would wake up on Thanksgiving with a sick feeling in my stomach waiting for the usual bomb to drop.
Something bad always happened. My parents fought, my sisters and I fought with each other or with my parents, things were thrown, cuss words were used and someone ended up crying in the bathroom. Those fighting type holidays are ingrained in me and the memories of those times is difficult to forget and too easy to perpetuate.
Until recently, I would try and sabotage my holidays by baiting Adrian to fight with me. My modus operandi was to scream and yell over anything, usually something petty. Adrian, who has taken twenty years of this foolishness, ignores it. If fighting was the soundtrack of my childhood holidays, then the soundtrack of my holidays with Adrian have been more of an instrumental (at least on his part).
My family and I have had mixed results with holidays as adults. Last year, Annie threw my twin sister Jackie and I a birthday party which was almost ruined when Jackie and I fought over what time she would arrive to help set up. Jackie and I screamed at each other as my mom paced and swore to herself in the front yard. Annie was crying and upset. Jackie and I resolved it within an hour, but the fight seemed to cast a shadow over the day that was all too familiar.
Last year, our Christmas Eve celebration seemed different. In a Mantz family first, no one fought, screamed or yelled. It was liberating to start a new holiday tradition of peace and goodwill toward one another.
This Thanksgiving, Adrian and I are taking a break from hosting. I met my sister Jackie for breakfast this morning. Jackie was sad that we are not spending Thanksgiving together this year which she expressed to me. Then she told me in a sweet voice how nice it was to have breakfast together. I stopped myself from saying something sarcastic because I knew she meant it. Sincerely.
And she had that same earnest look in her eyes that she always had when we were little. Looking at her face, I felt a stirring in my chest. It was the same kind of feeling that the Christmas Grinch must have felt when his heart started to melt.
Today I am giving thanks for my family and the goodwill we have tried hard to create with one another. The ice is thawing and I am hopeful for the future. I love you.
Panorama of San Bernardino
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Friday, November 16, 2012
Game Time
From a young age, Dad taught us all the card games you can imagine (and some you have probably never heard of). His favorites were rummy, canasta (and double deck canasta), big casino/little casino and others. Dad was a very good teacher and patiently explained the rules. He would always say after his explanation, "Just play, you can learn as you go along."
Our family ritual was the weekly rummy game with my Dad and my two sisters. It was usually on a Friday night because the game would go late. Rummy is played for points and our games would get up to the thousands and last multiple nights. The older I got, the more I noticed how the winning point cutoff depended on how Dad was faring point wise.
For those of you who don't know, a "rummy" is when a player discards a playable card. If one of us girls committed such a grievous error, Dad would be waiting to pounce. He would slap his hand down on the table and bellow, "Rummy!” My sisters and I would jump out of our chairs at the kitchen table.
Sometimes, we would have to stop because one of us would be yawning at the table. Other times, Mom would get home from waiting tables around ten or eleven and we would still be playing.
"Time to stop girls. I am gonna make your mom something to eat," Dad would say. My sisters and I would groan, but Dad would pick up the scoresheet and put it in the drawer saving it for the next game night.
The memories of our card nights are so palatable and real that I can almost imagine myself there. I have no patience and it amazes me to think that Dad enjoyed spending his nights playing card games with his three little girls. I don't remember any annoyance or weariness around us during the card games.
There is no idealization here. If he could have, I know Dad probably would have been at the bar with his friends sitting on a bar stool, his glass waving in the air. But, Mom had to work and Dad always came home to watch us.
Is that what love is? Because when I think of those card games, that's the feeling I get. Dad, my sisters and I, the kitchen table, and a feeling of safety and warmth.
Yes, that is love.
Our family ritual was the weekly rummy game with my Dad and my two sisters. It was usually on a Friday night because the game would go late. Rummy is played for points and our games would get up to the thousands and last multiple nights. The older I got, the more I noticed how the winning point cutoff depended on how Dad was faring point wise.
For those of you who don't know, a "rummy" is when a player discards a playable card. If one of us girls committed such a grievous error, Dad would be waiting to pounce. He would slap his hand down on the table and bellow, "Rummy!” My sisters and I would jump out of our chairs at the kitchen table.
Sometimes, we would have to stop because one of us would be yawning at the table. Other times, Mom would get home from waiting tables around ten or eleven and we would still be playing.
"Time to stop girls. I am gonna make your mom something to eat," Dad would say. My sisters and I would groan, but Dad would pick up the scoresheet and put it in the drawer saving it for the next game night.
The memories of our card nights are so palatable and real that I can almost imagine myself there. I have no patience and it amazes me to think that Dad enjoyed spending his nights playing card games with his three little girls. I don't remember any annoyance or weariness around us during the card games.
There is no idealization here. If he could have, I know Dad probably would have been at the bar with his friends sitting on a bar stool, his glass waving in the air. But, Mom had to work and Dad always came home to watch us.
Is that what love is? Because when I think of those card games, that's the feeling I get. Dad, my sisters and I, the kitchen table, and a feeling of safety and warmth.
Yes, that is love.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Road Trip
Today I have an appointment regarding my fertility. A forty something professional woman trying to get pregnant is a cliche I know, but here I am.
We waited too long to try and maybe the time has passed. "Those are negative thoughts, you have to think positive," my younger sister Annie told me when I expressed such feelings to her. "Read Joyce Myers," she counseled. She has kids and seems to think I can will it into reality.
There are so many things I want to do in the next year. I would love to finish my book. I will finish my book. It will be published and be a huge success. I can picture the book party. I am standing up reading before a large group of people and barely shaking at all. The Smiths are playing in the background. Adrian, my sisters and my mom are in the front row. The initial reviews for my book are splendid.
Why can I picture the book but not picture myself pregnant? Is it because I have less control over getting pregnant other than just trying (and we've been trying)? Or is it because I don't want to be disappointed?
I have written about this issue before but until now it was always theoretical. Now that I have followed through and finally made an appointment, it feels real and scarier.
What if they tell me it is an impossibility? What will I do? Buy another shih-tzu? Adopt? Cry?
It seems as if all I have are questions and no answers. And, as much as I want to sleep away the appointment, like I slept away my senior year of high school, I am getting out of bed, pulling on some clothes and getting in my car to drive to the appointment.
I will just wait and see what happens. If life is all about the journey then I am ready.
Hopefully, I don't run out of gas.
We waited too long to try and maybe the time has passed. "Those are negative thoughts, you have to think positive," my younger sister Annie told me when I expressed such feelings to her. "Read Joyce Myers," she counseled. She has kids and seems to think I can will it into reality.
There are so many things I want to do in the next year. I would love to finish my book. I will finish my book. It will be published and be a huge success. I can picture the book party. I am standing up reading before a large group of people and barely shaking at all. The Smiths are playing in the background. Adrian, my sisters and my mom are in the front row. The initial reviews for my book are splendid.
Why can I picture the book but not picture myself pregnant? Is it because I have less control over getting pregnant other than just trying (and we've been trying)? Or is it because I don't want to be disappointed?
I have written about this issue before but until now it was always theoretical. Now that I have followed through and finally made an appointment, it feels real and scarier.
What if they tell me it is an impossibility? What will I do? Buy another shih-tzu? Adopt? Cry?
It seems as if all I have are questions and no answers. And, as much as I want to sleep away the appointment, like I slept away my senior year of high school, I am getting out of bed, pulling on some clothes and getting in my car to drive to the appointment.
I will just wait and see what happens. If life is all about the journey then I am ready.
Hopefully, I don't run out of gas.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Junior High and Dolly
Junior high was an interesting time. Interesting in the way one says interesting when they have no other adjective to use. I attended Imperial Junior High in Ontario which was about three blocks from our house on Glenn Street. Our house was on a cul de sac across from the Section 8 apartments where most of my friends lived.
My parents bought the house new. Within a couple of years they would lose it to a bank when my dad quit his truck driving job and mortgaged it to buy a bar. As my mom always said, "a drinker owning a bar is a disaster waiting to happen." And eventually, that disaster did happen and my parents lost the house.
But in Junior High, my mom and dad still owned the house. It was the early 1980's and we had just transferred from St. George's, a parochial school in Ontario that we had attended for two years. My mom couldn't afford the tuition or the uniforms any more so we started seventh grade back at public school.
I was happy because my best friend Melinda and I would be reunited again. Duran Duran and Wham were all the rage and I remember my outfit on the first day of school: black leggings and a florescent pink oversized sweatshirt like the one in Wham's video. My mom bought my twin sister Jackie the same sweater only in yellow and I begged Jackie not to wear it the first day.
The first day of school I realized that Melinda and I didn't have any classes together. All of my classes were GATE classes. I remember Melinda commenting on it and I just shrugged my shoulders and said, "We will still eat lunch together."
My first class was English and I sat in the front of the class as usual. A girl sat down next to me and said, "Hi, my name is Dolly, what's yours?" in a thick Southern twang. Dolly and I became fast friends. She had moved from Arkansas and lived with her parents in the condos next door to Imperial Junior High. She used the word "fixing" as in "I am fixing to turn on the lights."
Dolly had curly blond hair and she wore her bangs over her face on a slant. "It's new ro", she told me. I pretended I knew what she meant, but later she explained that new ro was short for the New Romantic music phase. I remember that she wore the coolest white overalls that had splashes of florescent faux paint splattered all over them.
We used to go to Dolly's house at lunch and watch movies on the cable channel. Her room was covered in pictures of Duran Duran and we would always argue over who would get to marry John Taylor. Simon Le Bon was always our second choice.
Dolly and I were close. I would spend the night at her house and her mom would get us take out. Her mom's bathroom cabinet was filled with medication for her "issues". "She takes Valium to calm her nerves," Dolly told me one day her voice twanging on the word nerves.
My friendship with Dolly eventually faded. I wonder what happened to her. Did she move back to the South? She didn't go on to Chaffey with us. Where is she now?
It is interesting to go back in time and dredge up memories. It can also be frustrating.
Dolly's story is one that that I don't have an ending to. In junior high she was a huge part of my existence and now she is just a somewhat vague recollection.
If I had to imagine an ending, it would go something like this. Dolly moved back to the South and graduated from high school early and went on to study film at NYU. She changed her name when she became a famous filmmaker.
Fiction can be liberating. I wish memoir was that easy.
My parents bought the house new. Within a couple of years they would lose it to a bank when my dad quit his truck driving job and mortgaged it to buy a bar. As my mom always said, "a drinker owning a bar is a disaster waiting to happen." And eventually, that disaster did happen and my parents lost the house.
But in Junior High, my mom and dad still owned the house. It was the early 1980's and we had just transferred from St. George's, a parochial school in Ontario that we had attended for two years. My mom couldn't afford the tuition or the uniforms any more so we started seventh grade back at public school.
I was happy because my best friend Melinda and I would be reunited again. Duran Duran and Wham were all the rage and I remember my outfit on the first day of school: black leggings and a florescent pink oversized sweatshirt like the one in Wham's video. My mom bought my twin sister Jackie the same sweater only in yellow and I begged Jackie not to wear it the first day.
The first day of school I realized that Melinda and I didn't have any classes together. All of my classes were GATE classes. I remember Melinda commenting on it and I just shrugged my shoulders and said, "We will still eat lunch together."
My first class was English and I sat in the front of the class as usual. A girl sat down next to me and said, "Hi, my name is Dolly, what's yours?" in a thick Southern twang. Dolly and I became fast friends. She had moved from Arkansas and lived with her parents in the condos next door to Imperial Junior High. She used the word "fixing" as in "I am fixing to turn on the lights."
Dolly had curly blond hair and she wore her bangs over her face on a slant. "It's new ro", she told me. I pretended I knew what she meant, but later she explained that new ro was short for the New Romantic music phase. I remember that she wore the coolest white overalls that had splashes of florescent faux paint splattered all over them.
We used to go to Dolly's house at lunch and watch movies on the cable channel. Her room was covered in pictures of Duran Duran and we would always argue over who would get to marry John Taylor. Simon Le Bon was always our second choice.
Dolly and I were close. I would spend the night at her house and her mom would get us take out. Her mom's bathroom cabinet was filled with medication for her "issues". "She takes Valium to calm her nerves," Dolly told me one day her voice twanging on the word nerves.
My friendship with Dolly eventually faded. I wonder what happened to her. Did she move back to the South? She didn't go on to Chaffey with us. Where is she now?
It is interesting to go back in time and dredge up memories. It can also be frustrating.
Dolly's story is one that that I don't have an ending to. In junior high she was a huge part of my existence and now she is just a somewhat vague recollection.
If I had to imagine an ending, it would go something like this. Dolly moved back to the South and graduated from high school early and went on to study film at NYU. She changed her name when she became a famous filmmaker.
Fiction can be liberating. I wish memoir was that easy.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
The Importance of Being Good
A couple of years ago, I read a book by Nick Hornby titled "How to be Good". The story centers around the conversion of a man from angry to good. There is a spirtual healer and a lot of other issues involved (that don't matter for this story), but it was the concept that was most interesting.
This morning I was thinking of how hard it is to be good. I equate good with nice and maybe that is the problem. Maybe they are not the same thing.
Truth be told, I am not a very nice person. I am bossy, irritable and I love to get up on a soapbox and voice my opinion even when unwanted. My sister Annie calls me on it sometimes.
"Don't use your lawyer voice on me", Annie will say in her usual diplomatic but forceful way (yes, reader, she is an Aquarian). She knows I can't help it.
My husband, after twenty years, also realizes my nature. And, when I am (insert air quote here) nice, he is perplexed. "Why are you being so nice?", he will ask in his usual droll Piscean manner. "Are you ill?"
My clients seem to understand me as well. I work hard for them and they seem to get it. Lawyers can be nice and not be good. They can promise you the moon and then screw you over (legally speaking). I pride myself on never giving up. "I am not Harry Potter," I sometimes tell people. Yet, I always try to work some magic.
We public defenders get a bad rap. We make next to nothing relatively speaking, have large caseloads and are called "public pretenders". It is an uphill battle to get our clients to trust us.
My friend Tracy also understands me. Tracy has known me since high school and she is so nice that she would probably say I was nice if I asked her. But, I would know she was just being nice as opposed to truthful because bitch can be an understatement when I am in one of my moods.
The question is whether it is worth it for me to try to be nicer. I will never be nice, but perhaps I could be less gruff, more patient and less bossy. Is it possible? The answer: possible but not probable.
The problem is that I like myself, bossy, annoying and opinionated person that I am. I don't want to be a doormat, I think (actually I know) my opinion matters and I hate waiting.
It is JEM's world people and you are all just living in it.
This morning I was thinking of how hard it is to be good. I equate good with nice and maybe that is the problem. Maybe they are not the same thing.
Truth be told, I am not a very nice person. I am bossy, irritable and I love to get up on a soapbox and voice my opinion even when unwanted. My sister Annie calls me on it sometimes.
"Don't use your lawyer voice on me", Annie will say in her usual diplomatic but forceful way (yes, reader, she is an Aquarian). She knows I can't help it.
My husband, after twenty years, also realizes my nature. And, when I am (insert air quote here) nice, he is perplexed. "Why are you being so nice?", he will ask in his usual droll Piscean manner. "Are you ill?"
My clients seem to understand me as well. I work hard for them and they seem to get it. Lawyers can be nice and not be good. They can promise you the moon and then screw you over (legally speaking). I pride myself on never giving up. "I am not Harry Potter," I sometimes tell people. Yet, I always try to work some magic.
We public defenders get a bad rap. We make next to nothing relatively speaking, have large caseloads and are called "public pretenders". It is an uphill battle to get our clients to trust us.
My friend Tracy also understands me. Tracy has known me since high school and she is so nice that she would probably say I was nice if I asked her. But, I would know she was just being nice as opposed to truthful because bitch can be an understatement when I am in one of my moods.
The question is whether it is worth it for me to try to be nicer. I will never be nice, but perhaps I could be less gruff, more patient and less bossy. Is it possible? The answer: possible but not probable.
The problem is that I like myself, bossy, annoying and opinionated person that I am. I don't want to be a doormat, I think (actually I know) my opinion matters and I hate waiting.
It is JEM's world people and you are all just living in it.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
The Perks of a being a Ghost World Girl
I saw The Perks of Being a Wallflower (a film based on the screenwriter/director's acclaimed young adult novel of the same name) a couple of days ago and it brought back many memories of my high school years. The only other movies that have touched me similarly are movies from the actual 80's era itself, namely, the John Hughes cannon of 16 Candles, Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club.
And I can't forget about Ghost World, a movie about the post high school existence of a goth girl and her best friend.
The angst of high school was so prevalent in The Perks of Being a Wallflower that you could almost taste it. I sometimes forget how beautifully bittersweet those years were for me. Much like Charlie, the male protagonist of the movie, I felt like an outsider during high school. My home life was so chaotic and upsetting that it impacted my ability to see a future and a different kind of life. As a result, I tried to sabotage it. The two things that saved me, just like they saved Charlie, were music (specifically the Smiths for both of us) and my two best friends.
Music for me was a salve to everything at home. The Smiths changed my outlook on life.
The Smiths were not just a band, they were a lifestyle. Morrissey was not just a writer, he was a poet and he touched the loner outsider in all of us. He spoke of unrequited love, of longing and of loneliness.
"That music is so depressing" is what some say of it. But, for someone struggling with depression, the Smiths was a kind of cure.
My two other favorite bands in high school, the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees, were not just music to me. The bands were style and substance and a view of the world that didn't accept that everyone had to look or be the same.
My two best friends, Tracy and Melinda, were my other salvation. We had adventures that I will always treasure and cherish in my mind's eye. The memories of those adventures are their own book, one I hope to publish some day. We were our own little world together.
Ultimately, that was the perk of being an outsider. I found other outsiders and created a life and a world for myself out of dust.
And it was beautiful.
And I can't forget about Ghost World, a movie about the post high school existence of a goth girl and her best friend.
The angst of high school was so prevalent in The Perks of Being a Wallflower that you could almost taste it. I sometimes forget how beautifully bittersweet those years were for me. Much like Charlie, the male protagonist of the movie, I felt like an outsider during high school. My home life was so chaotic and upsetting that it impacted my ability to see a future and a different kind of life. As a result, I tried to sabotage it. The two things that saved me, just like they saved Charlie, were music (specifically the Smiths for both of us) and my two best friends.
Music for me was a salve to everything at home. The Smiths changed my outlook on life.
The Smiths were not just a band, they were a lifestyle. Morrissey was not just a writer, he was a poet and he touched the loner outsider in all of us. He spoke of unrequited love, of longing and of loneliness.
"That music is so depressing" is what some say of it. But, for someone struggling with depression, the Smiths was a kind of cure.
My two other favorite bands in high school, the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees, were not just music to me. The bands were style and substance and a view of the world that didn't accept that everyone had to look or be the same.
My two best friends, Tracy and Melinda, were my other salvation. We had adventures that I will always treasure and cherish in my mind's eye. The memories of those adventures are their own book, one I hope to publish some day. We were our own little world together.
Ultimately, that was the perk of being an outsider. I found other outsiders and created a life and a world for myself out of dust.
And it was beautiful.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
On being Belinda and other fantasies of childhood
When I was in the last stages of elementary school (circa 1981), the Go-Go's were my favorite group.
My dad had a huge laser disc player, a precursor to a DVD player, and each disc must have weighed five pounds. The laser disc came in a huge sleeve about one and a half times the size of a vinyl record. My dad went to a place in Pomona to rent the discs. On one such trip, my dad surprised us when he bought the laser disc of the Go-Go's live in concert singing their first album "Beauty and the Beat". Although I am not a music critic, I think it is undisputed that "Beauty and the Beat" is an album that still holds up today.
The album is pop punk. The album has a host of great songs including "We Got the Beat" (every school kid's anthem), "This Town" (life in the big city), "Fading Fast" (the consummate bad relationship song) and "Our Lips Are Sealed" which was the theme song of me and my sisters who were constantly mortified in front of the neighbors by my parent's fighting.
"Can you hear them talk about us, telling lies, well that's no surprise. Can you see them, see right through them. They have no shields, no secrets to reveal. Doesn't matter what they say, in the jealous games people play."
As if it was a minute ago rather than thirty years, I can picture myself in the living room of our house on Glenn street in Ontario, California. I am singing into a hairbrush and dancing wearing a long skirt with a loose shirt. A silver bangled belt is slung over my hips. My hair is curly just like Belinda Carlisle's (the lead singer).
My twin sister Jackie is playing guitar on a tennis racket mimicking the moves of Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey and Annie is playing the drums off beat (unlike Gina Schock who was always on beat) on the end table with silverware. No one ever wanted to be Kathy Valentine.
We had a tamborine and I would always use it on the song "Automatic". I would shake my head like Belinda and shrug my shoulders in time with the music moving the tamborine up and down at my side while I mouthed the words, "Inside fire burning bright... Time stop. Automatic."
Being Belinda was my way of imagining that another life existed.
At age six, I used to read my mom's Harlequin romance novels and dream of being a heiress or a ward. This scarred me for life romantically and caused my first grade teacher to wonder aloud why I knew the word "ravished". Later, I daydreamed myself into being Scarlet O' Hara. Then Belinda.
Everyone wanted to be Belinda. She was the epitome of coolness. Of course, as a child I didn't know her dark side: the drugs, the insecurities and the rabble rousing. Or maybe subconsciously I did. Aren't all cool kids at least a little bit dark?
When I hear a Go-Go's song it transports me quicker than any time machine could. I morph from a forty something lawyer to a tween lip syching with a hairbrush in her hand.
It brings back the good memories of my sisters and I rocking out and it brings back the melancholy memories of sitting in the park with a book wondering when my dad was going to get home and if my mom was still screaming.
I think that is why I love the Go-Go's so much. Their music while up tempo is very bittersweet most of the time.
Just like life.
My dad had a huge laser disc player, a precursor to a DVD player, and each disc must have weighed five pounds. The laser disc came in a huge sleeve about one and a half times the size of a vinyl record. My dad went to a place in Pomona to rent the discs. On one such trip, my dad surprised us when he bought the laser disc of the Go-Go's live in concert singing their first album "Beauty and the Beat". Although I am not a music critic, I think it is undisputed that "Beauty and the Beat" is an album that still holds up today.
The album is pop punk. The album has a host of great songs including "We Got the Beat" (every school kid's anthem), "This Town" (life in the big city), "Fading Fast" (the consummate bad relationship song) and "Our Lips Are Sealed" which was the theme song of me and my sisters who were constantly mortified in front of the neighbors by my parent's fighting.
"Can you hear them talk about us, telling lies, well that's no surprise. Can you see them, see right through them. They have no shields, no secrets to reveal. Doesn't matter what they say, in the jealous games people play."
As if it was a minute ago rather than thirty years, I can picture myself in the living room of our house on Glenn street in Ontario, California. I am singing into a hairbrush and dancing wearing a long skirt with a loose shirt. A silver bangled belt is slung over my hips. My hair is curly just like Belinda Carlisle's (the lead singer).
My twin sister Jackie is playing guitar on a tennis racket mimicking the moves of Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey and Annie is playing the drums off beat (unlike Gina Schock who was always on beat) on the end table with silverware. No one ever wanted to be Kathy Valentine.
We had a tamborine and I would always use it on the song "Automatic". I would shake my head like Belinda and shrug my shoulders in time with the music moving the tamborine up and down at my side while I mouthed the words, "Inside fire burning bright... Time stop. Automatic."
Being Belinda was my way of imagining that another life existed.
At age six, I used to read my mom's Harlequin romance novels and dream of being a heiress or a ward. This scarred me for life romantically and caused my first grade teacher to wonder aloud why I knew the word "ravished". Later, I daydreamed myself into being Scarlet O' Hara. Then Belinda.
Everyone wanted to be Belinda. She was the epitome of coolness. Of course, as a child I didn't know her dark side: the drugs, the insecurities and the rabble rousing. Or maybe subconsciously I did. Aren't all cool kids at least a little bit dark?
When I hear a Go-Go's song it transports me quicker than any time machine could. I morph from a forty something lawyer to a tween lip syching with a hairbrush in her hand.
It brings back the good memories of my sisters and I rocking out and it brings back the melancholy memories of sitting in the park with a book wondering when my dad was going to get home and if my mom was still screaming.
I think that is why I love the Go-Go's so much. Their music while up tempo is very bittersweet most of the time.
Just like life.
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