Perforation Problems

There’s a room upstairs in my grandparents’ house that’s full of boxes and miscellaneous junk—blankets, pillows, unused furniture. My grandma used it as her storage area, and before her funeral we used it as a place to shove things from downstairs so there’d be more room for people to visit after the service. Nobody’s been up there in a year. This weekend my mom and I spent the night at Grandpa’s. We picked him up on our way to Wabash for First Friday, where we went shopping to spend the gift cards we still hadn’t used from last Christmas. Grandpa stood there quietly looking at things while we shopped, helped Mom get a purse down, said he liked the sweater I was trying on. I kept watching him out of the corner of my eye, waiting for him to get irritated, but instead he reminded me of a docile puppy—agreeable, patient. After we walked over to a restaurant for dinner. They were understaffed and slow—it took an hour longer than it should have, but again, no more than mild complaints...

Monday evening I got back home after dinner with Amanda and checked the mail. Local sales fliers, the power bill, my ever-present Cheryl's Cookies catalog tempting me with buttercream-covered deliciousness—and a Christmas card from my grandpa. A thin green card with penguins on it, one he probably picked up at Dollar General, where he told me he'd been doing all of his shopping. "Merry Christmas to you both," the inside said. "See you on Christmas Day. Love, Grandpa." For some reason—maybe it's because I've already been overemotional this month, maybe it's because I was tired and overwhelmed with everything to do—this made my eyes well up. It seemed like something special, a turning point. Grandpa had not only picked out cards, he had signed them, addressed them, mailed them. Christmas cards! Grandma would be so proud. "Got your Christmas card!" I texted him. "Grandpa sent us a Christmas card!" I texted both Mom and Mi...

I first saw it Monday morning, the "me too." "If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote 'Me too.' as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem." I'd been trying to avoid Facebook and Twitter, with limited success. I'd logged myself out on all my devices so that when I went to Facebook out of habit, I'd have to think twice, have to take an extra step. The result was that instead of going to the Facebook app I just went to facebook.com on my phone, which I somehow convinced myself wasn't as bad. "I'm just checking real fast." "I'm waiting in line, I might as well." "I just have to check my clients' business page. I might as well see if I have any notifications while I'm on there." I might as well, I might as well, I might as well. I've been thinking and reading a lot lately about the addictive nature of Facebook and how it nega...

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...