If these walls could talk, they wouldn't shut the fuck up.

I use the term grandfather pretty fluidly, so a conversation about my family can be a little confusing. Generally, when I say grandfather, I'm talking about my biological grandfather. My dad's dad. I barely knew him. I recall one time where I wasn't a toddler that my grandfather visited me. I was ten, he took me and my cousins to a flea market, bought us a bunch of stuff, and that was it. I don't remember a conversation, just the things. And perhaps that's my ten year old brain only remembering what was important at the time: a bunch of gifts from a dude I barely knew.

If I use the term Bumpa, I'm talking about my grandfather. My grandmother's second husband, no biological relationship to me, but he's who I grew up around, he's my family. My Bumpa was from China, and I always thought it was so funny when I'd tell people about things my Bumpa told me, having to explain he was from China, and then having people go, "Yeah, I can see Chinese in you!" Ha ha, you cannot. But it thrilled me, anyway, because for the longest time, I didn't know that I WASN'T Asian. That my Bumpa was not my blood family. I had literally zero idea that our relationship wasn't as real as the one I had with my mom's dad, my grandpa George. I assumed Bumpa was my blood. But none of that matters, he was my family, he was my Bumpa, and I love him forever. When people tell me they can see the Chinese in my features, I definitely chuckle when I tell them that Bumpa and I weren't blood related, but inside, I feel a surge of pride at even that small, awkwardly incorrect statement making our relationship as biologically tight as I ever thought it was.

My mom's dad, my Grandpa George, is my hero. He's why I wanted to be a cop, he's why I wanted to be seen as tough and strong, because he was tough and strong, and he's why I care about everything so fucking much, but I care about it quietly, and with a lot of snide remarks. My grandpa was the kind of man that, when I had a cold, and I was up with a barking cough all night, would sneak off in his Mustang that he drove until the day he died, buy my cough syrup, and then have his wife (my grandma Dottie, his second wife. My mom's mom died before I was born) administer the meds to me, so I'd never catch on that his gruff exterior secreted away the softest, most wonderful underbelly.

I knew these men. They were Bumpa and Grandpa George. Grandfather seems so standoffish, which is why I never refer to my dad's dad, if I can help it, as anything other than "My dad's dad" or "my biological grandfather". There's a huge distinction in terms for me, though I admittedly slip every once and awhile and call Bumpa or Grandpa George "my grandfather", and I always feel guilty when I do, because they were so much more than that to me.

When my dad was a little boy, his dad, my grandfather, ran off with the babysitter. Everybody's worst nightmare, the joke of all separated families in that era. "Did dad run off with the babysitter, or go out for cigarettes?" That really set my dad's family down a shit course. My dad and his three siblings (Paul, the youngest, Renee, the second youngest, Mary, the second oldest, and my dad, the oldest) spent a portion of their lives in foster care. And not the beautiful family love story, instagram, viral post kind of foster care. The bad kind. The ugly kind that people pretend doesn't exist. My dad was a rough, street-wise kid growing up, and statistically, it's not an asshole thing to do to attribute that to a broken home and a hard as fuck childhood. Meanwhile, my dad's dad had an entirely new family, and I have three more aunts and an uncle because of it.

One of my aunts is a painter, and she's just so talented. She's been taking a master class for painters this last week, posting her work, and getting bathed in praise that she 100% deserves. I've been paying close attention to her work, and yesterday, she posted one that looked like an old painting you'd find tucked away in the corner of a Goodwill. It's an oval shaped painting, brown monochrome, showcasing a waterfall nestled gently in a dense forest, with a babbling stream leading directly into the edge of the painting. I saw she had a lot of comments, and I thought about commenting, so I read them. One of them was from her sister, my half aunt, saying that for some reason, the painting reminded her of dad. My aunt the painter responds with similar excitement and affirmation. It does, indeed, remind her of dad. Their sister, my half aunt, chimes in with her wholehearted agreement. It just reminds them all of dad! A touching sentiment, for sure.

But as I stared and stared and fucking STARED at that painting, I couldn't understand what they saw that reminded them of my grandfather. I didn't get it. And I found myself bawling at my desk, angrily wiping away tears that, fuck, man, I just didn't expect.

I've been doing my family tree. My dad and I bought the Ancestry DNA kits, and we've sent our DNA samples back to their processing place so we can be fed whatever info they can glean from a tube of our spit. I've branched out my mom's mom's mom's mom's line all the way back to England in the 1560s. I've found the church that my 13x great grandfather was baptized in in England, and sent my mom a picture of the church and the log book. I found my Native American ancestry, and looked up the history of my forgotten, swallowed by the Iroquois Nation, tribe. I found, on my dad's side, the French Canadian roots are MUCH closer than I thought, and I knew my French Canadian great-grandfather that immigrated here. I'm on my way to tracking the Irish roots on my dad's mom's side down. It's been so fucking thrilling, I've been digging and digging and digging and finding so much cool stuff. But I can't find anything on my dad's dad's side.

I have my dad, his dad, and his dad's dad, but after that, the line peters out. I suspect that my family name is not ACTUALLY Tucci, but that we were Americanized when we arrived here in the 1900s. To the best of my researching, that's when my great grandfather came to America. In 1900. But I can't find our name in any port records, not through Ellis Island, nothing has turned up, and I've been searching so hard. And there's fucking NOBODY that knows this answer that's alive now. These are questions that my half relatives never asked, because I asked my aunt if she knew, and she didn't. She has poorly drawn assumptions about our family and they are incorrect. I've done the leg work and the research, and what she thinks is our lineage is not. There's a family rumor that we're related to a pope. We are not, it's horseshit. I can track all kinds of people that we are NOT related to, but I can't find the ones we ARE related to, and I have fucking nobody to ask.

I never considered not knowing my biological grandfather a loss. I had other grandpas that loved me, I never felt a void. And honestly, I don't think I felt a void today. I don't wish I could have known a man that didn't particularly care to get to know me, but I feel guilty about that. I think, anyway.

I'm hungry for all of this information so I can fluff out my family tree. I want to know my grandfather's vital statistics...where he was born, when he died, when his parents were born and died (specifically. I have vague years), where in Italy we hail from, what the big lie on the 1920s census was about (I found this, and I am fascinated by it, and I just wish I knew the story), I want to be able to tell my children things about their heritage that I don't know. These are the things I've been desperately digging to find out about my grandfather. And then, this fucking painting.

This fucking painting points out that his family knows why a painting is so like him. How it could remind all of his children of him, somehow. And I don't see it, I don't get it, and I never once would have asked that question. Not in a million years would I have asked questions that could have imbued the essence of a painting onto his soul in my memory. I don't really give a fuck, I want to know about our lineage. And it's fucking me up.

Perhaps it's so upsetting because I never really needed a reminder that I wasn't his family. I knew it. Biology doesn't mean anything if you're not going to make it mean anything. He has been a branch on a tree for me, nothing more, and that's all he ever had to be.

Today, he became a painting, and I fucking hate him for it.

How to be a ghost

Anxiety is a pretty shitty thing to deal with.

It brings you out of whatever moment you're in and shoves weird ideas into your head like, "HEY NOBODY LIKES YOU AND YOU FAIL AT EVERYTHING" and "Pssssst....if you REALLY want to engage people, why not try shutting the fuck up?"

My favorite is when anxiety gets in my head when I'm in public, or when I'm trying to go to sleep. "DREA, NUCLEAR BOMBS EXIST!" Yeah, so? "SOMEONE IS GOING TO NUCLEAR BOMB JUST YOU WHEN YOU'RE OUT IN THE CITY!"
"DREA. DREA, ARE YOU TRYING TO SLEEP?" Yes. "YOU'RE GOING TO DIE." ....When? "I DON'T KNOW, SOMETIME. MAYBE TONIGHT. DON'T GO TO SLEEP. STAY UP UNTIL YOU DIE." I'm tired. "YOU'RE GOING TO BE DEAD SOON." Fuck. Maybe this sounds like run of the mill paranoia, but it's not. I promise. I've done the legwork, and I've had the therapy and diagnoses. I know what I'm talking about.

Anxiety is almost all the fucking time. It's really bizarre to try and have a logical conversation with an illogical part of you. But once my heart starts racing and my thoughts start rushing in, I'm done. I lose to anxiety. I'm used to it now. It's been decades, and it's just this weird monkey on my back that feels like a desperately unwanted roommate. It's kind of the same with having Borderline Personality Disorder, which I have WAY more under control than my anxiety. Having BPD is like living with a roommate that you never, ever, EVER see, but comes out and does the worst shit EVER without warning, and then is just wildly belligerent about the mess they make. Having ADHD is rough, as well, but only because it fucks with my school. I hate that I put things off until the very last moment, and then have to rush through fifteen page papers, twenty page papers, in a day, sources and all. Don't get me wrong, I still have stellar grades, but I'm not sure I can make it through an entire Master's program like this. I'm going to get overwhelmed, and I'll fidget my entire way there. To my great pride, I've made it this far (hooray, BS!) with GREAT grades, save the "whoops, I got raped and stopped going to school" semester and the "whoops, I left the country and didn't have as much internet as America and couldn't do my work" (straight Cs and four Fs and one C, respectively) semester, and my other semesters are all As and Bs. I suppose the main story in this paragraph is, I manage my mental illnesses really well.

Except for my anxiety.

Nothing can ruin a good day like anxiety.

My anxiety is illness and death specific, so I spend a lot of time thinking about dying. I think about it VERY begrudgingly, because I don't really WANT to be thinking about it. It's just there. I wonder about what happens after we die, like the rest of us do (even though I think the thought of death is kind of like the non-baby version of object permanence, and instead of being frightened and confused when something isn't present, we're just like, WHELP, thank god that's not real! And then we go about our lives, forgetting that death is waiting for all of us at the end), but I think I wonder about it with far more frequency than other people. The thing is, while I love being alive, and I am in no hurry to shuffle off this mortal coil, part of me hopes constantly that the afterlife is a peaceful kind of nothing.

I've been a ghost for the last nine years. For three years before that, I was a pretty persistent poltergeist. It sounds so melodramatic to define myself like that, but bear with me.

I left my daughter with her dad right before she turned two. The situation was rough, he was mentally abusive and domineering and controlling and AWFUL to me, though he loved our daughter, which, you know, cool. I was really young. 20. I had to bounce my way out of that life, because I knew I was drowning, and that made my ex happy, because he has his own host of problems, and at the end of the day, we were different people that had zero business being together. I couldn't bring my daughter with me, though. I had no money, and none of the people who would have opened up their homes to me would let me bring my daughter with me. For the record, this includes BOTH of my parents. Not my mother, or my father, would let me bring my daughter with me, despite making room for me. To my mom's credit, she wouldn't even let me stay with her, sans daughter or otherwise. Really, just my dad offered me a place to stay, but his wife wouldn't let me bring my daughter. Family is really cool. I had no idea what else to do, so I left, with the sole purpose of finding a job, finding an apartment, and bringing my daughter out to me, so I could do the whole young, single mom thing and not have to be without my daughter. To bring you up to speed, it didn't work out that way.

I think my daughter knows I exist, but I can't be sure. The last thing my daughter ever said to me was, "I hate you; goodbye means goodbye." She was five, and after she said that, I gave up fighting to share custody and visitation with her dad. She told me I wasn't her mom all the time, and in fairness to her, she wasn't raised to think I was. It dawned on me that as much as I wanted my daughter around and in my life and to be my family, she didn't. I've spoken about this at great length, with lots of moms and dads I know, and I almost always get the same reaction: "if it were MY kid....I would have kept fighting. Five is too young to know what's best." I get it. Parents think I'm a bad parent. It's cool. I think they're all ugly people with zero empathy, and probably weird genitals.

I have another biological kid now. He's turning ten this year. I tell him about his sister whenever he asks, but to him, she's a myth. This beautiful somebody that surely must exist out there, somewhere, but that he's pretty sure he's never going to be positive of her existence because he'll never get to meet her.

To her, her brother and I, her entire family, are a pack of ghosts. We exist. We are everywhere. Whether she wants us to exist or not, whether she knows about us or not, we're here. We check in on her. We do what we can to make sure she's happy and thriving, and it seems like she is. We follow her in the small ways we can, making sure nobody knows, making sure she doesn't know, because nobody likes ghosts. They're afraid of them, because it's scary to face something that you don't know anything about. None of us want her to be afraid of us. I don't want her to be afraid of me, but I lost that battle years ago (have you ever had to read about the horror stories other people tell your children about you, and how your children react? Nothing is quite as fun as finding out your child's step-parent and step-sibling told them that you, their biological parent, was going to steal them from their family. Nothing matches the joy of discovering that your kid is terrified to take her school bus because she thinks she's going to get kidnapped by you, or that she wets the bed when she has to talk to you. Not for anything you've done or said, either, but because the real monsters are sometimes the ones you're already living with, not the ones they warn you about).

We're here, lurking in the hard to find places, latching on to one person and silently watching her grow up, in leaps that span years. I've considered the fact that her dad and step-mom are my ghost. Perhaps even my daughter herself. I've noticed that in the years where we out ourselves as finding photos, finding tidbits, Facebook pages go private and dark, because we're not allowed to even silently access Rhyann's life. One, or all, of them, don't want us to (truly, we have been told this. During the custody proceedings, my daughter's father's step-dad let us know that when my daughter's dad and his wife...girlfriend...whatever...found out that he was sending my mother and myself photos of my daughter, he was no longer allowed in their home, so he couldn't share photo updates with us anymore) know what she looks like, or how she's doing. Part of me respects that. The other part of me knows that ghosts don't have to play by the rules. Ghosts have nothing but time, and are in no hurry. We can wait in the darkness forever.

I KNOW this is what being a ghost is like, because the last thirteen years have killed me. The weirdest part about being a ghost is, my daughter is the one haunting me. And I'm not quite sure how to reconcile that.

The lesbian sandwich museum

Every teenager has at least one brutally passionate love. The kind that's all consuming, blinding, and unyielding to distance, logic, and pesky obstacles like reality. For me, it was Richard Robinette. Name unchanged, as I'm not entirely sure my memory is giving it reliably. He was everything I wanted him to be...he was a little older, he seemed so cool, he was funny, and he was fucking tall. And he had freckles. A lot of them. I'm a sucker for freckles. And he was racist.

In my defense, I didn't know this until later on in our "relationship". Indefensibly, it didn't stick in my craw like it would now. We were talking on the phone one day while I was over at Amber's house, and of course, it was on speaker, because I was a teenage girl and it seemed appropriate to have zero privacy in such a situation. I cannot be clear what the conversation was about, but he dropped a line that rang to the tune of "I hate niggers". Amber and I, suitably shocked, looked at each other and Amber said, "uh, dude, my dad is fucking black." And Richard apologized profusely, walking back his statement to say he doesn't think that of ALL black people. Amber's dad isn't black, and I told him as much, and said he shouldn't say things like that. And that was that. No more, no less. We changed topics, and it was forgotten.

Recently, I've been changing the way I walk through the world. I've been examining my privilege in a very real way, and taking stock of how it's affected my day to day. My privileges are numerous. I am a white woman, college educated, straight, married to a man in the military (this is a position that, for some reason, affords a respect I will never understand), well read, middle class. I've always thought of myself as a person that believes in equality. And I do. But my actions barely reflected that ideal, and it remained a thing clutched close to my breast: a token symbol of my goodwill to all, and why I'm not a bad person. How can you be a bad person when you're not a racist? That's a rabbit hole. Don't fall in. Aside from that, I always felt proud of myself for being in the All Lives Matter camp, and seeing people equally. Believing that seeing color was a failing on everybody's part, and viewing the world through a gray lens that weighted judgment on action rather than skin tone, made me feel good.

It isn't enough now. It hasn't been enough for awhile.

My husband is Korean. The foxiest mother fucker on the planet. I've never been one for dating white men. They're not my type. Dan was a rare misstep for me, as I'm white enough for dozens of people, so I like to spice up my world with cultural diversity. When my husband moved to Texas and I begrudgingly dragged myself out here to be with him, we moved into a neighborhood far below our socioeconomic rung. Thankfully, he diversity in our neighborhood is great. It's mostly black and Hispanic, and I love that. My son moved out with us in June of last year, and his best friend is a kid named Sidney. Sidney has become our second son. He spends more time in our home than he does in his own, and from the second the boys are out of school on Friday, he's here until sundown Sunday. Sometimes later, if we have a late dinner. He has his own bed, his own stuff here, he calls me mom. And I love him like he's my own.

The day after Trump secured the electoral college votes, Sidney came home and said, "mom, am I going to have to go back to Africa?" Horrified, I looked at him and told him no. I wouldn't let that happen. He told me that a lot of people said that to him. In school that day. SCHOOL. He's an eleven year old little boy. Race was always an issue in the back of my mind until that moment. I was hit by something that never would have occurred to me otherwise: my whiteness shielded me from the truly nefarious parts of the reality of a Trump presidency. My privilege made it so I was upset that an incompetent, arrogant buffoon won instead of the most qualified candidate for the presidency, possibly to date. It kept me from really understanding what Trump's insidious language was inciting in others, and emboldening them to say and do to people who look like my other son. I had to hear it second hand, and even then, I was pulled down by the knowledge that I would still never, ever, EVER understand what that really felt like for him, and even the sadness and terror in his face falls short of what a curse it must feel like to be dealt a card you have no control over, and people hate you for it.

It's February, which means it's black history month. I've asked my boys every day who they learned about for black history, and every day, they tell me "nobody". And this breaks my heart. I've gone 24 days asking this question (minus weekends and holidays). I was going to wait until the end of the month, but I couldn't wait anymore. I emailed the head of my district for the state board of education. I asked him why there isn't a state approved curriculum for black history month, showing all of our children that people of color have contributed to America, and their contributions matter, and their voices count. It was a long email. I have yet to receive a response (I emailed him three days ago, to be fair. But that's three days in a full week). Today, I cornered the school principal in the parking lot and asked her why my boys were learning zilch about prominent black figures. What ensued was ten minutes of her blustering her way through placating me, a sad attempt at correctly recalling what the underground railroad was called, and ending with her frustrated "Go set an appointment in the office to talk to his teacher about why your boys are so confused". Which I will do tomorrow. This can't stand.

Something broke in me when Sidney asked me if he was going to go back to Africa. When the boys' other friend asked me if Trump was really going to bring back slavery, I promised them that absolutely not, the people I know are good people, and they don't want that, and we will never let such an ugly thing happen to anybody again.

I become less and less certain of that promise as each day goes by. Travel bans, border walls, bullshit propaganda tactics designed to divide and dismay. I tell myself we're supposed to be better than this, but the truth is, we're not. People cling to the comfortable issues that have the biggest impact on their life, and their struggle. Causes outside of that go largely unnoticed. I'm in no way trying to make myself a champion of human rights, or sound like some model citizen that knows better than everybody else, but it gets so god damn tiresome to see Facebook posts I make about something dealing with feminism get lots of love and comments and attention, and the comments I make about black lives matter rallies, or organizations designed to help people of color get through x, y, and z are ignored. Even by my husband, who answered my outrage today over black history being swept under the rug with a casual "nah, you're angry enough for both of us" when I asked him if he was upset over the afternoon's events.

It pisses me the fuck off.

I have a newly developed sense of resentment toward the robust group of feminists I made friends with on Facebook after Hillary Clinton lost (despite her note being my initial candidate, I voted for her because any vote not for her was a vote for Trump, and that shit wasn't going to happen if I could help it. Fat lot of good, but here we are), because the torches they carry are so fucking self serving. It seems impossible for them to carry more than one torch at a time, dropping the white feminism torch to pick up the flavor of the month when it comes along, and then ditching it as soon as the spotlight dims. There's room for all of the things, everybody. It's exhausting, but so is inequality.

I have two rallies coming up: one for black lives matter in Austin, and one protesting Corrections Corporation of America. I'll be asking for the women I find myself united with that also live here in Texas to join me. To join us. I feel like they're going to let me down.

Richard was a racist, and apologetically so. I feel like people test the waters of racism to see what they can get away with. I let him get away with it, and it is to my great shame that I couldn't just say, "hey, what the fuck, asshole, go fuck yourself with that bullshit talk", and I had to chastise him by way of a lie. To make him feel shame, and then walk it back myself with a gentle nudge in the right direction, and a fervent belief that was enough.

I've been a complicit racist my entire life. I can't fucking do it anymore. I have repulsed myself, and I am ashamed of people that haven't caught up yet. Ashamed, but hopeful. I am doing my best to break those walls down constantly, but it can be a struggle. Steffie and I will be doing our podcast on this very topic this week, and I don't want to get carried away here. But if you're reading this, and any of this sounds like a struggle you're familiar with, talk to me. Talk to everybody. It's important to talk about. The Jim Crow era is more alive and well than any of us would care to admit, it's just gotten really good at hiding itself under complacency and obliviousness and comfort zones.

Alone with the dream of a life

It's no secret to anybody that knows me that I'm a daddy's girl. I always have been. I'm 32, and I still call my dad "daddy". I haven't called my mom mommy since I was a teenager. In fact, I call her "mother" more often than anything else. I have pictures of me and my daddy when I was a little bitty girl on my desk.

There we are, totes adorbs!

A little known piece of trivia about me: had I been born a boy, my name would have been Phillip Gabriel Tucci. My dad is an intense Genesis fan, so the Phillip was for Phil Collins, and the Gabriel was for Peter Gabriel, and my mom was so glad I had a vagina.

Being the Genesis fan he was, my dad used to play Genesis for me when I was growing up. He played a lot of great music for me when I was younger...Oingo Boingo (Dead Man's Party is still one of my favorite songs), Duran Duran, Kate Bush, Suzanne Vega, Crowded House, all manner of great music that I still listen to and love. But Genesis was the most common.

No Genesis album got more play than Trick of the Tail. My dad played two songs for me more than anything of the other ones: Ripples, and Trick of the Tail. Even better, my daddy used to sing them to me. I would ask him to sing Trick of the Tail to me, because I loved to hear him sing, and sometimes, we didn't have access to a radio to play his tape. So I'd ask him to sing, and he'd sing, and I'd love him for it.

This went on for years. I remember telling my cousins Russell and Jeremy about the song, and that I loved it so much, and that I'd get my dad to play it for them.

As was common in my family, it wasn't long before Russell and Jeremy were spending a day with me and my dad, and when we all hopped into the car, I was quick to pull the trigger on asking my daddy to play Trick of the Tail for us all. My dad said he didn't have it with him, so I asked him to sing it instead. And he agreed, and started to sing.

Russell started laughing at my dad, and I remember my dad stopping his singing, shaking his head, and putting the car in reverse, leaving wherever it was we were. And my dad didn't sing the song anymore.

My dad doesn't have a classically good voice. I wouldn't even say my dad's voice is note worthy to anybody other than his daughter. I love listening to my dad sing, and it always makes me chuckle, but it's love that keeps me listening. I've poked fun at him from time to time, like hearing my dad sing Bob Dylan's "Isis" (it's a fucking hilarious treat, and it sends me into hysterics every time), but for the most part, I'll be sad when my dad stops singing for good. We all do, eventually.

I regret not telling Russell to shut up. I felt so much shame in that moment. Not for my dad, but for me. Because someone was laughing at something I'd previously found to be the most wonderful thing in the world. I wasn't embarrassed by my dad for his singing, but I was definitely confused. It was an eye opening moment for me...that my tastes were not universal.

I don't think my daddy remembers that car ride, but I do. We drive back to his house in silence, and when we got there, my dad put on a movie for us and went to his bedroom to read. I don't think he thought anything else of it, but maybe he did.

My dad didn't stop singing around me, but he didn't sing that song again. He moved on to Apollo Smile, a change I was thankful for. Genesis always makes me think of that day in the car where I didn't defend my daddy, who has almost always had my back. I'll have to ask him if he remembers.

Insubordinate...and churlish.

I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, when my dog started barking like an asshole. Three loud knocks on the door, and she's acting like someone is trying to cut my throat out, so I figure it must be the UPS guy.

And it was.

AND HE HAD A MRS. PRINDABLES DELIVERY FOR ME. MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

My very bestest friend in the world bought me the thing I had been coveting the longest: She bought me a Mrs. Prindables apple.

Check it:

Look at that sexy mother fucker. The photo is dark, but the apple is gorgeous, and oh my god, eating a piece was like tossing the salad of the lord hisownself. Because holy shit. It was fucking DELICIOUS.

Sidenote: I am fully aware that this is far from vegan. I know. I KNOW. But two things are important to note here:

Number one, it's a Mrs. Prindables apple, and even the most staunch of people can forget their morality and dietary restrictions to indulge in something they've been coveting for over 25 years;

Number two, go fuck yourself.

I must describe to you what was as close to a near death, religious, out of body experience as I will probably ever have.

I unwrapped the apple and marveled at its heft, because it's a very solid thing. There is no banana for scale here, but that apple is easily half the size of my head. According to the box, it weighs three pounds. That's ALL apple. I giggled to myself in disbelief, because I was unwrapping a fuckin' Mrs. Prindables. I never thought I would. As the last bit of cellophane peeled off, I laughed again, and made some kind of squealing noise. There's no approximation for it.

I brought it to the table, picked my most beautiful knife, and, after about ten minutes of debating if I even wanted to ruin the beauty, I did. I sliced into it, and it was magical. The chocolate flaked off into little miracle sized pieces, and the apple smell hit me immediately, and how do things like this happen?

I sliced the half into four gorgeous slices, and I really did just stare at them for a couple of minutes. They were gorgeous. The bright green of the apple, the inviting warmth of the golden caramel, the chocolate layer, and the fat stripes of white and milk chocolate hugging my treat seemed unreal. At least, unreal in my kitchen.

I almost didn't want to eat it. I went through a thousand arguments in my head. What if it's gross? This isn't vegan, Drea, and what if it's gross? What if  it's good, but not that good? What if it's just an apple covered in stuff and it tastes a little bit like you need to go to the dentist tomorrow?

I took a bite.

I ate the rest of the slice. With my eyes closed.

Savoring.

When I got married, there was a small moment when the world stopped, and it hung in place for a microsecond, and all of it belonged to me. And I don't mean my big showy wedding, I mean my legal marriage. At the DMV, in a plain dress, with all of the hubub of dozens of impatient people buzzing behind me. I remember signing the paper, and in the moment between signing and squeezing my husband's hand, physics weren't real, and it was just us, and that was all that mattered.

I love my husband a lot, but that moment was magnified by at least ten fold when I ate that apple slice. Just me, my apple slice, and my mouth orgasm, alone in a universe without rules or limits.

WHAT THE FUCK.

The secret to time travel is somewhere in the molecular structure of these apples, I fuckin' swear it is. Because nothing in the world is that pure and amazing.

I lovingly put the remainder of my apple in a ziploc bag, put it in the fridge, and had to immediately sit down and catch my breath.

This is not hyperbole, this is how the moments played out in my head. Like an edible melodrama.

Perhaps this seems silly to anybody reading it. It didn't feel silly to me. It was a wonderful gift, from my very best friend in the entire wide world.

 See? That's love, right there.

Wait until she sees what I bought her.

The rhythm really IS going to get me. Just kidding, it won't. I'm white!

The drive from my apartment in Texas to my house in Colorado takes 12.5 hours if you drive the suggested speeds, and about 11 hours if you do it my way, which is illegal, but recommended if expediency is your thing. Even with the three or four stops I have to make (I made six on my last go to....because I REALLY had to fucking pee. A lot), I make excellent time. Eleven hours is still quite the trek of time to be alone with nothing but my repetitive Spotify playlist and my thoughts. After hearing the same five Maroon 5 songs in the span of an hour....seriously, Spotify, what the FUCK is your algorithm like if thirteen hours of music means playing the same twenty five songs for thirteen hours instead of changing it up...it becomes more interesting to talk to yourself.

I thought a lot about my childhood this go around. Not out of some burst of nostalgia, but because I was curious to know where I had exceeded young me's expectations, and where I had failed young me, and where I had diverted off of the expected trajectories into bizarre and unfamiliar territory.

Young me had a lot of ambitions. First and foremost, I wanted to be Madonna. I think I succeeded at that, because I am also old, irrelevant, and pretty fucking desperate to be considered cool. Score one for me.

I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was younger, too. I feel a little bit slighted by Barbie, because Barbie's coolest profession when I was a kid was Ice Princess, and while my frosty bitchiness certainly earns me an Ice Queen title more often than not, Barbie never stood for the kinds of jobs I wanted like she does know. Barbie DID go on to leave her Ice Dancing behind to pursue the sciences, and I commend her for that. Perhaps I would be a veterinarian now if Barbie had been a bit more progressive and not so into the liberal arts when I was a kid. Then again, I was ATROCIOUS to poor Barbie when I was younger. Barbie always got the real bad shakedown from her husband, Ken. Ken was working out some deep anger issues about his Ken parts, and he beat the piss out of Barbie instead of talking to therapist Barbie (who still doesn't exist. If Mattel would read ANY of my letters of suggestion...) and working it out like a normal person. Maybe Barbie and I are even.

The first REAL desire I remember having concerning what I'd be when I was a beautiful grown up (I always assumed I'd be beautiful. Don't let little me know how hard I fucked that shit up, please. She'd be devastated) was wanting to be a Rockette. I watched them every Christmas, and I bitched and whined about dance lessons until I got them, because that's what I wanted to be. I tell people I wanted to be a ballerina, but it's not true. I wanted to do high kicks in a line in Rockefeller Center.

That wasn't just a childhood dream, either. That extended into my young adulthood, and sharing it was embarrassing. But then, in the late nineties, dancing became THE thing to do in the music scene. Fucking music. Who would have thought that music and dancing would be so radical together? Fucking everybody, but shut up. When boy bands and pop princesses made dancing fresh and awesome (sorry, Michael Jackson), I thought to myself, "holy fuck, this is it! YOU CAN BE A BACK UP DANCER!" Because I set the bar high enough to be in the spotlight, but low enough that my cripplingly low self esteem didn't have to answer to the media and the public at large. I danced all the time. It's all I wanted to do. There are HOURS of video of me dancing and singing, and I really fucking hope they've been taped over, or lost in a fire, or thrown down a garbage disposal (somehow) and torn to shreds, because...here's the thing...

I am wildly uncoordinated, and also chubby, and neither of those things is conducive to looking smooth and awesome when dancing.

I lack grace, both physically and socially, and my love of music and dancing does not transcend my inability to move like I have rhythm. Really, I look like a blob of gelatin that someone rolled around on the floor and then poked a lot to get it to wiggle. If you put that shit to music, that's what I look like on any dance floor.

There are pictures of me dancing at my wedding, and holy fuck, do I regret them. Thank god they're not moving pictures, because I would ask for my money back from my photographers.

An inability to dance is sadly inherent, and I see this in my son all the time. He and his best friend like to dance, and my son looks like a sloth choking on a hot dog when he boogies. It's this weird, jerking, depressing movement that he transfers into...I don't know...some kind of shimmy. Of course, I would never in a million years tell him this. He loves to dance, just like I did. Just like I do. I bought pointe shoes a couple of months ago, and late at night, when nobody is awake to embarrass me over it, I put them on, and I dance in them. Poorly, painfully, and with all the suave grace of a decayed pineapple, but still, I dance.

Gloria Estefan promised me that the rhythm was going to get me. Tonight. So many tonights have come and gone, and I have not been gotten by the rhythm. Gloria and Barbie have some explaining to do.

The epitome of status

I had very bizarre expectations about what I could expect from the real world when I was a kid. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it was the books I read, or the fact that book reading gave me a thousand weird legs up in the imagination department. Whatever the reason, those expectations made me long for strange, but ultimately simple, things. 

One of the things I remember wanting most clearly was a Mrs. Prindable's Apple. My mom was a single mom, and while I never went without the things I needed, we weren't a monetarily comfortable little unit by any stretch of even the most outlandish imagination. Even so, every year around Christmas time, my mom would take me to the mall, and I got to go to all of the nice stores, where the wealthy people shopped on the regular (I assumed). For a few weeks every year, I got to pretend I was one of them. I have no idea why Dillards and Neiman Marcus were even on my mom's hit list, thinking back on it. Maybe it was her own little treat, mingling among the departments with the ease of someone who belongs. I'd like to contend that everyone in Neiman Marcus is just like my mother, because surely that place is bullshit to everyone else, as well. I'm getting away from myself, though.

There used to be a section at the back of our mall's Neiman Marcus that was nothing but edible treats. The displays were full of Godiva Chocolates, the gorgeous Bavarian Truffles shaped like seashells, and one year, there were hedgehog chocolates from some exotic sounding place, but I can't recall where it was. They each had a red ribbon tied around their hollow chocolate necks, and even as a child that wanted to touch everything in the world, those red ribbons were more sacred to me than anything else. I never dared touch them, though they looked so wonderfully soft. 

On a glass table in the middle of this rich and luxurious smelling paradise sat the display of Mrs. Prindable's Apples. And these, my friends, represented nirvana to my whirring brain. For whatever reason, those apples were a thing of rare beauty to me...a symbol of status that I longed for every day of the year. To be so wealthy as to be able to eat a decadent apple like it was no big deal, or no special occasion? That was how I saw the rich. Scores of Mrs. Prindable's wrappers smooshed in a garbage, while someone in a mink coat and feathered shoes (don't even ask why) laid about with all the grace of an oil painting, feeding themselves slice after beautiful slice of candied and decorated apple. 

How desperately I wanted an apple like that of my own. I asked for one every single year. I just wanted to put my lips to those beautiful confections and pretend for however many divine moments it took me to eat the apple in its entirety that I was among the world's elite. 

I never did get a Mrs. Prindable's Apple for Christmas. When I stood around the spotless glass table at Neiman Marcus, coveting and wishing so hard to receive one that I looked like I was committing a hate crime against that table, my mother would grab my hand and drag me away toward the lame, over priced, and distinctly inedible Christmas tree decorations, telling me all the while that those apples are terribly bad for me, do I really want to eat something that will make my teeth fall out and make me fat?

Uh, fuck yeah I do. 

For whatever reason, I've never bought a Mrs. Prindable's Apple for myself. I'm not sure I can stand the idea of taking it away as a status symbol from the younger, less cynical, version of myself. I am not wealthy (though I am far from being anywhere near as poor as my mother and I were when I was growing up. Settlement not included, my husband and I are doing pretty fucking alright for ourselves. Definitely well enough to buy several Mrs. Prindable's a month, however absurd and ungodly the prices are. And they are), and while buying one of those apples may fulfill a fucking weirdo lifelong dream of mine, I do not yet have the mink coat, nor the feathered heels, that would allow me to rip that picture of frivolous wealth away from myself with the pomp and circumstance such an occasion would deserve.