kismet-(kiz-met) n, often cap Turk. -FATE
confession time. i got "kismet" from an episode of "beverly hills 90210". haha. no idea why it stuck in my head out of the millions of pieces of pop culture that bombard our brains every day. didn't even realize where it came from until years later, watching a rerun. laughed aloud.
i wrote kismet zine the fall of my freshman year at college. worked at the radio station, which had a whopping broadcast range of just our campus. went to shows like that was my major, instead of environmental science, my actual major. conducted interviews at shows. (which to this day amazes me, since i was pretty much scared of my own shadow back then.) wanted someone to actually read the interviews. so kismet was born!
probably only printed less than a hundred copies of the first issue. interviews with shift, orange 9mm and face to face. assorted ramblings of a barely 18 year old who fancied herself to be "deep". reading it makes me uncomfortable. having other people read it makes me squirm.
i did another issue the summer following my freshman year. chaos ruled my world, as it tends to do every 5 or so years, and interviews were with sick of it all, one king down and another victim. my "playlist" consisted of promise ring, the cure, ink and dagger, bridgewater, torn apart, the get up kids and braid. i guess i tried to cover all the bases. lots of personal shit i wouldn't put out there today. (or maybe i would, since i'm typing this now?) hadn't read any plath or sexton yet, but spilled my guts regardless.
what's in a name? i always struggled with fate vs. free will. always have been a really independent, strong-willed, outspoken girl. from a long line of the same.
for the many lessons i wish i could undo that my mother taught me, the one amazing thing she drilled into me was to speak the fuck up. if something is wrong, say it. if you're not getting your way, correct the problem. no one is going to know what you are thinking unless you open your mouth.
mom was a kid herself at 19 when she had me, so we basically grew up together. in the 80's when she would've rather been out at a club dancing to talking heads, the police, blondie, the cars, instead she had an elementary schooler to deal with on her own. (hell, in 2008 I would rather be at a club dancing to those records!)
young mom equalled grandparents who helped out all the time. i was lucky.
protestant maternal grandparents. catholic paternal grandma, peggy, after jack died when i was 4. instead of being from a "broken home", i was the pride and joy of 5 individuals, who let me know it each and every time i saw them.
it's not until lately that i'm able to see my past for what it was, not from some place of bitterness about what i didn't have. material things only do so much. i had the LA gear sneakers and the white guess jeans and the esprit hoodies and the bass slip on shoes in middle school, the years when fitting in is paramount. (1990-1991 and 1991-1992 for anyone trying to place the fashions.)
the girls who had everything back then are inherently unhappy right now. even though i have deviated from my chosen path many times, i have dodged the unhappy marriages, unwanted children and the kinds of mistakes one can't bounce back from.
18 year old me would never imagine that i would be living in ny, working in my industry, still friends with the ragtag bunch of people i collected over the years. living in an amazing apartment...an apartment i'm currently packing...
i keep every letter that everyone ever wrote me. going and opening them up to read the contents only happens every so often. last night, before going to my friend from work's birthday soiree, i was organizing my "merch box" of souvenirs from my life. nothing from this box ever gets thrown away.
was piling letters on top of each other by date. there are a bunch with my grandma peggy's handwriting. a swirly scrawl that coupled her rural irish background with an accident in her basement that made her beautiful penmanship not so great.
these letters were written in august, september and october of 1996. she would die in early february of 1997. after reading the contents with my now adult brain, i know that she knew her time was limited.
my sister, well half sister, but she has my whole heart, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer when she was 5 years old and i was in my first week of high school. my dad never picked me up from school, so when he did that day i knew something was up. he told me she was sick while driving from corcoran to the hospital.
the previous week, when he was helping her into her gigantic flower girl dress for my uncle sean's traditional irish-catholic wedding, he noticed something protruding from her abdomen. she was then and has always been a teeny, tiny little thing, owing to my dad's 5'8" stature combined with my stepmom's 5'4" frame. (dad calls me his "amazon". my mom's 5'11 1/2". and always in heels.)
to see this little kid, this kindergardener, in a hospital bed getting her first round of chemo and to have been explicitly been instructed NOT to cry in front of her was a lot for me to take as a 13 year old in her first week in high school. understatement of the year.
everyone has their own coping methods. my stepmom turned to religion, then alcohol. my dad was his stubborn irish self, refusing to cry, refusing to give up hope, being strong for the family, as his father jack had taught him by example.
gram always had religion, masses in latin and an gaelic school upbringing. having one son die a week after he was born and at least two miscarriages after that. gerard, my uncle who didn't live, passed away on the same date that jackleen, my sister, was born. (valentine's day.) this fact solidified peggy's belief that my sister would make it, beat cancer, live a full, happy, productive life.
she was right.
peggy lost her battle to cancer on a cold february day at my aunt cathy's house. she refused treatment, saying she had lived a full life, watched her children and grandchildren grow and was secure in her knowledge that she'd be in heaven, finally reunited with jack after almost 15 years.
a drunken conversation at a pub in syracuse, limerick, revealed that my two girl cousins, who are between me and my sister in age, believe my grandma prayed for my sister's illness. that she be taken instead. this is a bit much for my ex-science major, logical mind to comprehend.
i should also mention at this point that peggy was a nurse, lived in london during the war, working in hospitals while air raid sirens blasted. she knew fear, death, disease intimately.
reading peggy's words committed to yellowed paper, twelve years after her death, i am sure of one truth:
she knew.
all the things she said to me were classic things people say when they know they may never have the chance again. i am special. i am loved. she will miss me. i will do great things in life. that she hoped my guardian angel was looking after me...
as jaded as i have become, i have never lost my self-esteem, like so many women i know. even at my low point right now, with family drama looming dark on the horizon and major changes afoot, i love myself. even more than i did 6 months ago or 6 years ago. but those words from beyond the grave were exactly what i needed, exactly when i needed them.
i keep peggy's picture where i see it every day. but words to me mean so much than pictures ever will. pure, true words from the heart. she was the best person i've ever met.
if there is a heaven, i hope she's watching me. and not thinking that i've fucked all this up beyond repair. her values live on in me and i hope that when death comes knocking at my door, i can exit with as much grace and peace of mind as she did.
the kennedy curse ain't got nothing on my family's...
for margaret butler. a true matriarch. (i think i'm keeping this horrible tattoo, since it might be the only part of me you'd recognize at this point. you smiled and didn't yell when i got it.) i love you. more now than ever.
post script..."to me this is a lifestyle, not some silly trend. and years from now when they're all gone, i hope that we're still friends." thanks tommy. slainte.
-mjm
No comments:
Post a Comment