Perforation Problems

When we were kids, twice a year we'd pile into my mom's mini van and make the trek from Georgia to Indiana: 10 hours to Indianapolis where my dad's parents lived, 11 hours to my mom's parents in Marion, and 12 hours to the lake. At 13 I prided myself on the fact that I could go the entire drive without having to stop to pee. In retrospect that wasn't the healthiest thing, but my mom's need to stop every couple hours grated on me and somehow seemed an indication that she was weak. God, Mom! Develop a stronger bladder!  I'd put up with the visit to my dad's parents, but it was just dues we had to pay before we could get to the lake. There in my grandparents' ranch house with the 70s furniture and seashell themed bathroom, Grandma Drummond would feed us vegetables I wasn't allowed to turn down, while my brothers and I sat, backs straight and on our best behavior, listening to the adults talk. After dinner we'd all adjourn to the living room...

Preschool: There was a giant yellow Big Bird you could ride. I have an impression of the room being red-orange, which must have been the carpet. I cried when my mom dropped me off, but she distracted me with a flower we were going to plant in a little ceramic pot and slipped out while I was busy. Next thing I know the day was over and she was there to get me, and I was taking my little marigold home. Kindergarten: All I remember from kindergarten is the classroom decorations. A cut-out, laminated image of the Morton Salt girl on the wall, and all the students' names on raindrops surrounding her umbrella. A calendar on the inside of the door that changed every month. I remember "March: In like a Lion, out like a Lamb" and "April Showers Bring May Flowers." There was a laminated ruler with my name on it on my desk. We might have made Valentine's Day decorations by creating animals with heart shapes. I don't remember my teacher, or any of the students. Ju...

Giving blood is one of those things good people do. I've never done it. I've always known I should—it saves lives, and everyone says it doesn't hurt much. But even in high school, when everyone used the blood drives as a way to get out of class, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Am I scared of needles? Not particularly, though I don't love them (who does?) But I'm not terrified like my grandma always was, crying and pulling her arms away as the nurse tried to do an IV. I let them do it—I just choose not to look. And years ago I learned the trick of digging your nails into the palm of your other hand as the needle was going in—if you're hurting yourself more than the pin prick, you won't even notice it. This seems like some kind of dark, unhealthy metaphor for life. So I'm capable of giving blood. I could handle it. Why haven't I? I suppose it's a combination of fear of the unknown and a resistance to giving up my time—both silly and selfi...

It was a small farmhouse in Atlanta, Indiana, down a gravel driveway. There was no sign, just a name on the mailbox: Gayle Jordan. “Is his last name Jordan?” I asked my mom, parking my Volt near a discarded wheelbarrow. “What? No, Robert.” “Robert Jordan?” As we get out of the car, a blond woman in her sixties steps out, carrying tote bags to the nearby open van. “Are we in the right place?” My mom asks. “If you’re looking for the studio, yes! Just give me one second.” Just then we see a face in the large window above the garage—a man with long, curly gray hair, beckoning us with a hand. He looks like an artist. The woman puts the bags in the van and leads us into the garage and up the stairs, where the space suddenly transforms from a storage area filled with old sets of Monopoly and trampolines and a creepy antique locomotive with carved animals peering out the windows into an artist’s loft. It’s beautiful. A desk chair in front of a wooden drafting table, fille...

My great grandparents’ house in Wabash, Indiana was full of antiques. Some antiques lived there, like the sleigh bells hanging from the back door that jangled whenever you stepped too heavily on the old floors. Some were waiting to be fixed by my Grandpa T—latches repaired, paint stripped, wood stained—so they could go to their antique shop on Canal Street.   The entire house felt like a treasure trove to a little girl, with something new to be discovered in every crook and cranny. Baskets hanging from the ceiling, glass grapes on the 1800s Hoosier cabinet, huge blue and tan crocks on the porch with various old yardsticks and canes and other wooden riffraff piled in. The steep stairs going up to the bedrooms always had things piled on them—old postcards, books, frames. And in the guest room, where I often slept, there was a giant four-poster bed with a lace coverlet that felt like it had been delivered straight from the past. Somehow I got the impression someone had died in i...

In Columbus we rented a house on Heathmoor Drive from a female firefighter. I remember a blue beaded curtain in a doorway, a phone on the wall with one-button contact to 911 (I got in trouble twice by hitting this), a backyard with an electric pole in it that backed up to my best friend Missy's house. We buried her hermit crab under the fence that separated our yards. This was the house where Matt and I wrote notes to welcome our new baby brother and set them in his crib for him to find when he came home from the hospital. In the basement, my dad built a balance beam for me, and Missy and I made doll houses out of cardboard boxes and constructed tiny rugs with glue and yarn. Matt and I turned the area under the stairs into a dressing room for our elaborate musical productions set to our Disney Channel cassette tape. Our big numbered was centered around the  Talespin theme song . We got our dog Max while we lived here—he was my Uncle Jerry's dog and for some reason Jerry cou...

Splitting time between Indy and Cincy has made being home feel especially luxurious. Our Cincinnati apartment is small, but fine for our purposes—it's in a good location, it has high ceilings and wood floors, appliances are new, we have our own external door so in some ways it doesn't even feel like an apartment building at all, etc etc. But home...every week when I pull in the driveway, open the door, and put my bags down, it's like, well, coming home. I open the back door to let in the breeze, I check all my plants, I plop down on the couch, and I'm just...happy. Everybody should have a place they feel that way about.