HOME | DD

Description
There is nothing special about me.
I was an over protective mother. I didn't let my daughter out of my sight until she was at least three. After three, there was still a twinge in my heart if she rounded a corner with me not close enough to closely follow her with my eyes. Four to ten was a whirlwind of schools and activities I could not participate in, save the driving. I called that my weaning stage. Ten to twenty was our falling out, my beautiful young princess slamming me with curse words and acne creams, adolescent fury at it's ironic best. Twenty might have been good for her, I don't know.

I haven't spoken to her in eleven years.

I was a bad cook and a lousy wife, the house always cluttered and smelling of something rotten when the refrigerator door was opened. Always enough breeze wafting through the house to carry that smell to me, to remind me in it's own subtle way that I was a failure.
I warped pots, charred pans so they had to be replaced, shattered hundreds of plates and glasses, and snapped forks and spoons at the quick. There was always a melodic clink following me closely if I entered any kitchen. I was not made to compliment the appliances.

My husband said he loved me anyway.

I'm sure he said he loved the girls he pursued as well, handing them his phone number brazenly in the middle of the towns only bar, smoke curling through his hair and reaching towards the ceiling as if it was attracted to him as well. The devil he was, and in a small town, rumor spreads like fire. I did not blink twice when I answered the phone and scripted to the girl on the other line that no, he was not in, but I was his wife and I would gladly take a message if she'd hold long enough for me to get a pen.

He brought me flowers once, nightgowns that did not fit, which I assume did not fit the girl they were originally intended for either. All of these I accepted and stored away in a bottom drawer, a filing cabinet full of sorry.

We had money. In fact, we had a lot of money. Not that it was always that way, but we struggled in what I liked to consider the 'good times' for what we gained rather quickly, which head-longed us into the 'bad times' which gave away like so much dirt over a precipice to the 'neutral times' which danced their way into the 'accept it times'. I was fascinated by the bank account, and when I wasn't burning down the house, I was shopping for...anything. My husband worked and played but never spent, for his enjoyment was more or less free. He knew I knew. We just never said we knew to each others face.

We parted ways at thirty-five. There isn't much to say about it, he couldn't keep himself to himself and he didn't have enough left after sharing it with all the other women to give anything to me. I wasn't sad, or relieved. I wasn't anything.

I made my mistakes, I accepted and moved forward, if not on. I developed a hobby, which was going from many hobbies to not having a hobby at all. I sat from morning until just before bed at the kitchen table and I, with the enthusiasm of a dead skunk, contemplated my life and how it had not really affected me, even at forty. At fifty I was sure to feel something, because at thirty I had said this exact thing. I spent my thirtieth birthday alone, pitifully waiting dressed in my best floral print dress with two candles saluting each other on the tiny round table, a bottle of wine perched precariously in an ice cream pail filled with melting cubes. I had cooked what I believed was my opus, the apex, my Frankenstein.

All that because for once, I didn't burn the ham.

Description
There is nothing special about me.
I was an over protective mother. I didn't let my daughter out of my sight until she was at least three. After three, there was still a twinge in my heart if she rounded a corner with me not close enough to closely follow her with my eyes. Four to ten was a whirlwind of schools and activities I could not participate in, save the driving. I called that my weaning stage. Ten to twenty was our falling out, my beautiful young princess slamming me with curse words and acne creams, adolescent fury at it's ironic best. Twenty might have been good for her, I don't know.

I haven't spoken to her in eleven years.

I was a bad cook and a lousy wife, the house always cluttered and smelling of something rotten when the refrigerator door was opened. Always enough breeze wafting through the house to carry that smell to me, to remind me in it's own subtle way that I was a failure.
I warped pots, charred pans so they had to be replaced, shattered hundreds of plates and glasses, and snapped forks and spoons at the quick. There was always a melodic clink following me closely if I entered any kitchen. I was not made to compliment the appliances.

My husband said he loved me anyway.

I'm sure he said he loved the girls he pursued as well, handing them his phone number brazenly in the middle of the towns only bar, smoke curling through his hair and reaching towards the ceiling as if it was attracted to him as well. The devil he was, and in a small town, rumor spreads like fire. I did not blink twice when I answered the phone and scripted to the girl on the other line that no, he was not in, but I was his wife and I would gladly take a message if she'd hold long enough for me to get a pen.

He brought me flowers once, nightgowns that did not fit, which I assume did not fit the girl they were originally intended for either. All of these I accepted and stored away in a bottom drawer, a filing cabinet full of sorry.

We had money. In fact, we had a lot of money. Not that it was always that way, but we struggled in what I liked to consider the 'good times' for what we gained rather quickly, which head-longed us into the 'bad times' which gave away like so much dirt over a precipice to the 'neutral times' which danced their way into the 'accept it times'. I was fascinated by the bank account, and when I wasn't burning down the house, I was shopping for...anything. My husband worked and played but never spent, for his enjoyment was more or less free. He knew I knew. We just never said we knew to each others face.

We parted ways at thirty-five. There isn't much to say about it, he couldn't keep himself to himself and he didn't have enough left after sharing it with all the other women to give anything to me. I wasn't sad, or relieved. I wasn't anything.

I made my mistakes, I accepted and moved forward, if not on. I developed a hobby, which was going from many hobbies to not having a hobby at all. I sat from morning until just before bed at the kitchen table and I, with the enthusiasm of a dead skunk, contemplated my life and how it had not really affected me, even at forty. At fifty I was sure to feel something, because at thirty I had said this exact thing. I spent my thirtieth birthday alone, pitifully waiting dressed in my best floral print dress with two candles saluting each other on the tiny round table, a bottle of wine perched precariously in an ice cream pail filled with melting cubes. I had cooked what I believed was my opus, the apex, my Frankenstein.

All that because for once, I didn't burn the ham.