Doors

This morning, I saw a political ad that inspired me to write this blog. A political ad you say? Yes, for MJ Hegar. A combat veteran, a Texas Democrat and a woman. See her ad here. http://www.businessinsider.com/texas-woman-running-for-congress-used-doors-in-viral-ad-2018-6?utm_source=facebook

The ad focused on the doors that were closed to her, doors she had to kick through. She was a pilot in the Air Force and served multiple tours in Afghanistan and advocated to end the ban barring women from certain elite jobs. Her representative refused to meet with her so she decided to run for Congress. By the end, I was cheering for MJ. And, it made me think about my own doors, doors I opened that were closed.

USC Law was the door that opened the slowest. After my disaster of a senior year of high school, I took my GED and waitressed, my dreams of attending Claremont McKenna turning to dust. But something kept me going. I always knew I was smart. My mom taught me to read when I was three. I devoured everything I could get my hands on to read and soon (after an obsession with Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume), I was reading literature along with my mom’s Harlequin romance novels.

Whatever it was that kept me going, I am glad it did. My time at Mt. SAC junior college was not easy, but it was rewarding. I had to beg for rides, and schedule my classes around my waitressing job, but it was worth it. I ran the newspaper and got stellar grades. When I transferred to UC Riverside after four or five years, I thought it was as good as it gets. I could not even imagine law school at that point. I was making history in my family by being the first (along with my twin who had transferred to Cal State) in my blue collar family to get a Bachelor’s degree. My dad grew up poor in Montana and drove a sixteen wheeler. My mom was a waitress who got her high school diploma later in life. My parents worked hard. And, my parents always stressed to me that the way out was to get an education.

When I graduated UC Riverside, manga cum laude, my parents were there cheering. I wish I could go back and hug my dad and never let go. He would live to see me graduate from USC Law School. I almost didn’t apply. I aimed for a couple of low ranked local schools, and then on a lark, I decided to go for the gold and apply to USC. When I got the red and gold large acceptance envelope, I screamed.

Law school was hard. My first semester was disappointing and I remember the professor that wrote “are you stupid?” in bright red pen on one of my exams. But instead of letting his comment bring me down, it made me angry and I vowed to prove him wrong. When I managed to get much better grades second semester and As my second year, I was on my way. After making the honors literary journal, I wrote my note on law and the literary “other” (quoting no cases I focused on James Joyce and Joseph Conrad using Edward Said’s Orientalism as a lens), I knew I was close. When I graduated in the top twenty percent of my class, I knew I had won.

Then large firm practice. It sucked. I never fit in at the large Texas law firm, in fact, the largest and most prestigious law firm in Texas. Maybe I didn’t want to. Maybe I wasn’t meant to. Then, San Francisco. Again, not feeling comfortable. Not finding my purpose. It wasn’t until I moved home that I found who I was again.

As an attorney at the public defender’s office, I have to kick doors open all the time. We are the underdogs. We serve the poorest clientele who need us the most. Our job is to help them through a system with grace. My job is to protect the constitutional rights of the mentally ill. I feel privileged to have this job. It is a gift to now kick closed doors open for others.

These are the days to remember

If you haven’t figured it out yet my friends, I will now tell you the purpose of this blog. Drumroll please...

At first glance, one might think that this blog is about the banal. Or about excess. Maybe, JEM is just a glutton for fun. A hedonist. Or perhaps she is a sucker for the past. An obsessor of nostalgia. No. You’d be wrong.

If I had to try and express it, I guess I am here to try and figure it out. What is “it” you ask? This. Why we are here, more specifically, why am I here? What is the fucking point (for want of a more elegant phrase)?

As children and young adults, we are taught to work hard and we will be rewarded. Spend your high school years studying. Go to college. Study some more. Then, more goals. Graduate school. Finally, find a job. Get married. Have kids.

But what they don’t tell you, is that it’s a game that you can’t win. If you buy into this path, what you get is a zonk. It’s as if the game is rigged and behind any door is a boobie prize.

Because, what you will find is that the best of times will be when you change the narrative. Spending your best years studying straight through is boring. You’re wasting your best years. Some might say that I wasted time with the years after taking my GED when the goal was merely survival and fun. I disagree. During my best years, I waitressed and rented an apartment with my younger sister. Our days had a pattern. We worked out at the gym, went to breakfast, and then went to work at a coffee shop. Every night, we got dressed and went out after a dinner of salsa and rice. If we had made good tips that day, we might fit in a trip to the local cheap boutique, the one with the ten dollar dress rack.

It was the 90s. The time of some of the best punk and alternative music, but (I will deny this if confronted later) we were into club music. We would go to clubs where they played mostly house, what some call electronic music. Every night was a different club. Red Onion in West Covina, Club Metro in Riverside, Florentine Gardens in Hollywood, and Mister J’s in El Monte.

Every night was a different adventure. There were drunken nights of debauchery. There were also nights where we were tired and grumpy and left after an hour, making all of our feminine prep time a waste. We had a crew of five or six girls that would go out together. My twin sister Jackie, a girl named Gina and some whose names I can’t remember.

Occasionally, my best friend Melinda and I would go to Geckos in Upland that played alternative and where Richard Blade occasionally DJ’d.

This went on for three or so years. Then, I met Adrian. We still had fun. He would take me out to Jolt in Los Angeles. And to Florentine Gardens in El Monte. On my days off from work, Adrian (who was working as a dental assistant back then-a precursor to him becoming a dentist) would bring Chinese food to the apartment and eat with Annie and I at the small table. We would drink some beers and chill out and relax. Adrian and I would go to the room and cuddle and sleep.

I didn’t go back to school until I was 22 or so. After some false starts, I excelled. I became the editor-in-chief of the college newspaper and rediscovered writing. I got straight As aside from Algebra 2 as equation math has always been my Achilles heel, but I loved Statistics (my only A plus). It took me almost five years to transfer to UC Riverside. Those years were some of the best years of my life. There was no carefully mapped out plan. I was just living life and taking classes.

Compared to the grind of general ed classes at junior college, UC Riverside was easy. The majority of my classes in my English literature major just involved reading and writing, two of my favorite things to do. Lucky for me, I wasn’t working after being fired from Applebee’s for not carding a patron when I had 13 tables by myself one afternoon. The firing was hard to take, but it ended up being a blessing because I received 250 dollars a week in unemployment which was enough to live on. I had a junkie car and no bills other than books, food and beer. I made two very good friends who were also English majors and we procrastinated together.

Once I graduated UCR, I went straight to USC Law and you know the rest. I am a reformed big firm lawyer. That corporate litigator girl almost seems like a different person, as if I lost my mind for those 6 years trying to fit my square peg of a self into a round hole. I’ve been a deputy public defender for almost a decade and I love it.

Yet, there is still something missing. I miss the wild chaos of a life on the edge. Some days, I feel like I’m just biding time until retirement and that is surely no way to live. What I have figured out is that I am a creative. Above all, a writer. Perhaps, I need to take another plunge.

And that my friends is the take from all this. Don’t plan, just live. We could all die tomorrow. Tell your kids to enjoy their youth. Use the time to have adventures. Do not make it about the money. You just might have the time of your life and meet the love of your life.

Because in the end, that’s what you will have: Memories.

Reservations

Yesterday was a rough work day, but exhilarating. Then my exhilaration (after I won a motion that needed to be won) turned to exhaustion.

Running to make my specialist doctor’s appointment in Eastvale. Telling the young doctor of my embarrassing digestion issues with pink cheeks. Listening to him telling me he would make me feel better.

Rushing to pick up tacos for dinner. Potato taco for me, beef for Adrian, and chicken for his mother.

Let the dogs out. Frodo is missing his collar. I look in the backyard, on his bed, in our room. It’s nowhere. Adrian says someone took it off him. Maybe tried to steal him through the gate and I scream at him, “stop putting negative scenarios out into the universe!”

I obsess. Where did the collar go? He had it on in the morning when I walked him. I pledge to get one in the early morning hours at Wal-Mart. I can’t let him go without. There’s no walking without his collar and what if he gets out?

When I woke up at 4 am today, the collar was still on my mind. How I collar my dogs, and myself. We think we can protect our pets and ourselves from heartache. But can we? And is the collar just another way of trapping ourselves, like all of the damn possessions we have? At first, a car is freedom, and then it is a payment. A house is a home, then a mortgage. Bills. Work. Bills. Work.

Watching an episode of Parts Unknown at 5 am, I think, I could do that. Let it all go. Travel around the world. Write about my adventures.

As long as I can bring the shih tzus.

A dark place

This week was a hard one for those with mental health issues. First, Kate Spade. Next, Anthony Bourdain. Depression is an ugly beast I know well. It drags you to a dark place where all you can see is down.

Money doesn’t help (except to the extent it can give you resources). Neither does trying to shake yourself out of it. Instead, it is a slow climb out of a deep well of sadness and melancholy. Not everyone makes it out. I really can’t blame people because life is hard. But it is also beautiful, stunning and surprising at times.

If you had told me fifteen years ago that I would be a criminal defense attorney with the public defender and a writer traveling to San Antonio to attend a prestigious Chicano workshop (Macondo, a workshop started by Sandra Cisneros), I quite simply would not have believed it. I would have laughed and waved my hand and said, “shut the fuck up.” I had lost my passion. My writing voice had disappeared.

It was 2003 and I was a first year associate at the largest law firm in Houston in the worst depression of my life. Worse than my senior year of high school. It was bad.

In Texas all alone. Friends, but no family. My boyfriend in California. All I did was work it seemed. And I would cry in the shower every morning thinking what did I do to my life? Yes, I wanted to die. But with the help of medication, a therapist and my friends, I crawled my way out. Just barely.

If I had given in to the urge, which was strong, I never would have published my stories, written this blog, met my shih tzus and most importantly, married my husband. I never would have went to Hawaii with my hubby and tried to surf or partied in Cancun with my mom. Or went to NYC to see one of my favorite bands, the Replacements, play live. And I never would have represented the developmentally disabled and mentally ill and found my legal calling.

In sum, I would have missed all this beauty. And accomplishments. There would just be ....

I was watching Parts Unknown this morning and it gave me such a rock in my chest to see Bourdain so vibrant on the screen. Talking to punkers in Burma/Myanmar. Encouraging them to live their dream and play in New York City.  Always looking people in the eye. Talking to them. His humanity was omnipresent.

But no one knows what is in someone’s head and heart. The road is a lonely life and while we all essentially live and die alone, perhaps it was just too much solitary time in faraway places.

So friends, please seek help if you ever have those thoughts.  You are not alone.

In the end, what I have figured out from this mad writing journey is that I am not alone. You are out there listening. There are a lot of us out here who feel the sadness more than most because we are empathetic and creative. And that is our greatest strength.

So don’t give up my friends. Ever.

Pretty in black with pink petticoat

I went to bed at 8 p.m. last night after watching Pretty in Pink (for what is probably the twentieth time). Grumpy and irritable, I just wanted to sleep. Forty something and menopausal. Does Molly Ringwald see her youthful self on film and get depressed? Does she long for her teenage self, that skin, that hair? I know I wish I could feel and look young again if only for a day.

A memory comes barging in, one of me in a theater watching Pretty in Pink. Marveling at seeing some of us on the screen. The year is 1986. Don’t know who I’m with. But I know who I am. A preppy sophomore just morphing to punk rock girl. That was the same year I dyed my hair blue black and pierced my nose. Watching Pretty in Pink back then, I was overjoyed at the soundtrack that included my favorite music: The Smiths, Echo and the Bunnymen and New Order. Sitting in my seat munching popcorn and drinking a Diet Coke, I swooned over Duckie’s Morrissey like coif. Add in his John Lennon specs, his vests and his white scuffed Creepers and I was in love. And he loved Andie for all the right reasons. Andie’s working class neighborhood, her high GPA and DIY wardrobe made us all cheer for her. She was smart but different, like me. And together, her and Duckie were a great couple. Let's not talk about Blaine please. I am one of those who never got the attraction.

What I liked even more was how Duckie and Andie showed punk rock attitude without a mohawk. The concept (or maybe better called a theory) that every misfit/punk in the 80s looked like Sid and Nancy is ridiculous. We were all into DIY clothes from thrifting. The cheaper the better. I favored large men’s blazers with thermals and men’s boxers. Paired with a concert tee and my skull or monkey boots,I was set for school. I wore my hair in waves. My friends in my punker portion of the quad dressed just as eclectic. Tracy had her own style and straight spiked up blond hair.  She wore outfits that were edgy. Her mom would take her to the garment district, Hollywood and the Judy’s outlet (I remember buying a Houndstooth coat there) in LA to shop. We both loved Contempo in the Montclair Plaza but it was too expensive. Melinda favored tight jeans and a leather jacket. Our friend Mike T dressed in jeans and an X shirt most days. Ultimately, it was more about the music. The clothing was always secondary.

I guess what I took away from watching Pretty in Pink is that you cannot recapture youth. It exists in that moment. In that time. And try as I might as an adult to recapture that sense of wonder and attitude from that time, I can't. But what I can do my friends is capture now. And I plan on bringing some of my punk attitude and wonder back into my life. Not just through my writing but also through my attire. Next concert, I am gonna say fuck it all and bring out my Betty Page pink petticoat and wear it under a black dress and dance in my head to Psychedelic Furs and imagine 1986 all over again.

Why you may ask?

Why not?

potato salad memories

On Saturday, I did a performance piece at a literary salon and another writer asked me why I write. I was stumped and gave my generic answer: I write because I have to. But the question lingered in my mind.

Even though it is Memorial Day, I woke up at 5 am as usual. I gave Frodo his joint medicine, then fed and walked him and Chewbacca. On the walk around the block, I started thinking about my dad. Wishing he was here. And I had an epiphany (I seem to have had a lot of those lately).

The epiphany started with me remembering growing up in our house on Glenn Street in Ontario. Dad would barbecue every Memorial Day. Big thick steaks. And Dad would always make his famous mayo, mustard, pickle, egg, onion and black olive potato salad (with a small no onion bowl for our little sister Annie because she hated onions).

My sisters and I would lay by the pool all day slathered in baby oil. Me and Jackie would race laps in the pool. Annie would sit on the steps calling the winner. The boom box would blare out The Go-Go’s, Oliva Newton-John and Pat Benetar. Mom would be lingering around eating early because she usually had to waitress that night.

Dad’s friends would come over. The neighbor Gene from next door along with my dad’s red haired work colleague Johnny (who my mom hated because he and Dad always drank too much together). Typically, with or without Johnny there, Dad would drink too many Budweisers. But with Johnny there, Dad’s usual six or seven would turn into a twelve pack or maybe even a case.

Mom would be pissed off when she left for work. But drunk or sober, Dad could cook a mean steak and Jackie, Annie and I would guzzle down grape Shasta and yell at each other to pass the A-1 steak sauce. Sometimes we only had Heinz 57 or Worcestershire sauce (which Dad preferred) and we would moan, “Dad, you know we like A-1.”

Those memories are so vivid I can almost taste the T-bone steaks. And man, Dad’s potato salad was epic. While making it, Dad would wink at me and say, “The secret is the pickle juice Jenny”. My sisters and I would groan as we watched him drink the rest of the jar after splashing some on the mayo.

But you know what? Dad was right. I tried to make his potato salad this morning and it didn’t taste right until I added about a quarter cup of pickle juice. I couldn’t bring myself to drink the leftover pickle juice.

So Dad, if you’re looking down, listening or reading this in the great beyond, just know that I will think of you with every bite I take of my potato salad. And I may not have a kid to pass your recipe on to, but I have my book to be and this blog. The best part is that today I figured out why I write. Dad, you are the reason I write. It’s to hear your voice and to try and capture the memories of when you were here with me, Mom, Jackie and Annie.

Maybe I should rename my memoir “Potato Salad Memories”?

Little Red Prius

I looked at the car. It was perfect. Two weeks and a hideously overpriced Hertz Ford rental later and my car was finally ready.

The red Prius gleamed in the sunlight like a glowing orb. The paint new and rich like a cherry colored apple. The body shop had replaced the side panels and the door, fixing that which could be fixed. They had detailed and aligned it even. Like I said, perfect.

Some things can’t be fixed. Like my brother in law’s death at 54. He left a thirteen year old along with a brother and mother felled by his heart attack. I see it all. The grief is palpable. Like the taste of burnt toast it lingers.

That grief is still there after 103 days, but who’s counting? I am. I want my husband back, the one who smiles, but I have learned the hard way that you don’t always get what you want.

And who am I to put a timeline on grief? I am still grieving my own loss. The loss that broke me in half. Before and after. And, years later, I think if I was my car, I would say fix the inside, not the exterior. Open my hood and patch up my broken womb and let me have a baby Prius that cries.

Alas no. Some things are not so easy.

Yet, why does everything have to be so fucking hard?