Supermoon One.2 (1981-1982)

    

 It's 1981 and my dad is a Formica salesman.  Formica is a type of composite material that is all the rage among counter top enthusiasts. My  brother, sister, and I find a suitcase full of playing card-sized Formica samples in the garage.  We delight in the assortment of pebbled, marbled, and metallic finishes and decide that we will use them as currency, with the textures being more valuable that the solids.  We also find a half empty pint of Vodka, and a copy of Mein Kampf, by Hitler.

    It's 1981 and I am in special education because of the not-talking.   I am in a class of 6, even though the entire class has only 35 students.  Damien has down syndrome.  He is sweet as pie and has a body like Arnold Schwarzenegger even though he is in second grade. Donald Berry and Elena Bolling are the only two black kids in our class, but they are there too. Missy Wilson laughs a lot and likes to draw, like me. Also, there is Heather Gallagher, who is so docile, that she seems to have no will of her own. No one in special ed calls me Booger Snots. I am in here for a short time; although my speech and listening skills are poor, my writing and reading skills are very advanced.

   It’s 1981 and we are all having dinner at Pop Pop and Mom Mom Marge’s house.  Mom Mom Marge is my dad’s mom and she lives only one mile away, near the Wawa where my mom buys her cigarettes. Pop Pop is sitting on the porch when we get there, and he points to the the top of a big tree where we see his Blue Jay.  Pop pop’s Blue Jay visits him every day, he tells us, and waves us inside, as he is not one for talking.  With loud smoochy noises, Mom Mom Marge says “Come to Mom Mom!” and covers our faces with wet kisses, and crushes our heads against her cubic zirconia necklaces.   Mom Mom Marge is always in motion, and keeps the furniture in her living room covered in plastic, but that is ok because her downstairs has a triple-wide leather lounger and mirrored bar, so we can pretend to be bartenders and drunks.  We sit at the big round card table gamble with our Formica samples.  Mom Mom Marge makes chicken wings and she picks up our discarded bones from our plates and sucks the last of the meat off.  My mom tells us later that this is “disgusting”, but I identify with Mom Mom Marge’s disdain for waste. 

    It’s 1981 and Lonnie across the steet comes out in her nightgown with her two dogs, a Poodle and a German Shepherd.  She has them on leashes as she gets into her car and shuts the door.  The dogs are still outside the car as she holds their leashes out her driver’s window and slowly pulls out of her driveway.  She drives around the block at the same speed, stopping when the Poodle or Shepherd needs to relieve themselves.  In hopes of getting more of Lonnie’s dollars, we offer to walk the dogs.  She declines because its good for her to “get out”.

    It’s 1981.  Donald Berry and I have lost interest in each other, and the running dies down.  I turn my attention to the mortar between the bricks of my school building, where gypsy moth caterpillars rest in the sun.  They are big, black, and furry.  I pet them, and they respond by raising their front part and waving their little legs around, like they have been waiting for that all day. The caterpillars are endlessly fascinating to me, and sometimes, I bring them home in my lunchbox and free them in our backyard.  Sometimes, I put them in my jewelry box.  My mom finds out about this, and is barely able to retrain her ire while she tells me not to bring caterpillars home anymore, and especially not to put them in the jewelry box. 

   It's 1981, and my dad has given me four hermit crabs.  They are meant to pacify my desire for small living things, so that I will stop bringing caterpillars home.   I name them Shelly, Sunny, Blacky, and Star. I put them in an aquarium tank, along with odds and ends that seem suitable for a hermit crab diorama, including sand, horse statues and the heads from my sister's abandoned baby dolls. They become my main priority, and I go to visit them down in the recreation room as soon as I get home from school. I arrive one day to notice that Shelly’s shell is empty, and I search the downstairs looking for a hermit crab, completely nonplussed as to her means of escape and fearing for her vulnerability.  After giving up my search I look inside the tank to see the doll head moving slowly across the sand, and a small set of antennae quivering by its opening.

    It's 1981. I watch “Big” with Tom Hanks who plays a kid that magically turns into an adult because of a wish he made. He establishes a dream life in a dream apartment with his best friend in New York City and they make money doing what they love.   Adult life looks like a hilarious game. This is one of the first events that makes me think it would be a good idea to live in New York City, a thought that would get buried and resurface later. 

    It's 1981 and my dad names a star after my brother, sister, and me. It’s called Marjimsha, and we have a plaque from the National Star Registry to prove it, which we hang in the recreation room.  When the sun is far gone, he stands with us on the front lawn pointing to the constellation where Marjimsha can be found, while we ooh and ah and squint into the darkness.

    It's 1981, and I am at lunch in the St. Peter Celestine cafeteria.  There is hot lunch for sale each day, but I never have money for the delicious meat and cheese sandwiches that tantalize me with their smell.  Mr. Vince, who is our school janitor, gives me $3.50 to buy lunch and an extra quarter so that I can get ice cream afterwards.  Mr. Vince is my best friend at school.  I seek him out when I get too lonely and we talk about bugs and animals while he sweeps the cafeteria floor when the kids have left for the yard.

     It's 1981.  My dad drives us to Vorhees where there is a horseback riding stable.  Today is the first day of my lessons.  My instructor’s name is “Happy” and my horse is an Appaloosa named “Cochise”, named after a famous Apache chief.  We spend over half the hour grooming Cochise with special brushes and cleaning her hooves.  The soft underside of the hoof is called the “frog” and I use a hoof pick to remove all the dirt that is lodged inside of it.  The soil smells like manure, which smells like life itself. 

            It’s 1982 and Lonnie has a son living with her.  He is a full-grown man, but loiters around the front of the house with his dog, Magic.  Magic is a skittish mutt who has boundless energy and no bounds in general as she bounds from yard to yard jumping fences and “shitting all over place”, my mom observes.  Magic gets into piles of trash, ripping open bags and leaving their contents strewn around the street.  Nobody likes Lonnie’s son, including us, because we are displaced from our job of carrying in the groceries.

     It's 1982, and we are at Wildwood Beach.  Mom Mom and Pop Pop  come here every year and, have brought us to stay with them in a small compound of shantytown-style apartments they share with a big happy group of seniors who barbeque and hang laundry on clotheslines all day long.  We go to the beach every day and eat fruit in the sun until the umbrellas throw long skinny shadows.  When I sit on the sand, I stare at the heaving belly of the ocean, and pretend I am Mother Nature commanding its movements. I dive into the ocean so far that I feel fear.  I am a good swimmer, but when I get beyond the crowds, I like to hold my breath, squeeze my eyes shut and let my body go as limp as seaweed, to see what the water does with my limbs.  I go deep into a place where I am one with the ocean, and the sharks and jellyfish let me be. It looks an awful lot like I am dead when I do this, and I do not hear the lifeguard whistles until men are flexing their muscles preparing to jump in after me.

    It’s 1982 and Cabbage Patch Kids have become wildly popular. The girls in my class bring their weird-looking dolls to school with them, and it's a big deal for them. My mom tries to get me interested in the Cabbage patch kids, but I am unremitting in my antipathy. Plus, I am still more interested in the black furry gypsy moth caterpillars who sun themselves on the brick wall of my school.

     It's 1982, and the boys in our class have started playing “Wall-Ball”, which is a game played against the brick wall where I routinely hunt for caterpillars.  I get there first one day, to stake my claim on the wall.  I am aware that the boys have more power, but am compelled to make a stand. When the boys show up, they say, “move, Booger Snots, or we are going to peg you with the ball!”  I stand my ground and let them throw the rock-hard racquetball at my stomach, and pretend it doesn’t hurt.  One of the boys says, “She has balls of steel”.  I let them think I am allowing them to have the wall as I walk away and nurse my abdomen in the citadel of the tire playground.  

    It’s 1982, and Heather Gallagher, who is my only friend by default, has brought a Cabbage Patch kid to school.  I look at her weird doll with consternation and am unsupportive of her bringing it with us to the tire playground.  She makes a half-hearted attempt to show it off to the Jennifers, but they are not impressed, so Heather stops bringing her doll to school. 

    It's 1982 I have just learned from television about the “time of the month”. I have a can of v8 in my lunch and I pour it all over the toilets in the lavatory. I am shocked that they know it's me, and I have to have a “chat” and Sr. Valerie. I have grown to fear these chats where she leans in close to my face with her white-colored eyes and freckles and big gaps between her teeth. She finishes our chat, which is not a chat at all because it is only her talking, by recommending Redkin products for my hair, which looks like it can use a washing.

       It's 1982 and I wake up to my mom’s voice saying the wedding is about to start.  It's 3 AM and the wedding between Princess Diana and Prince Charles is being televised.   I rub the sleep out of my eyes and join her down in the rec room. The wedding is a very big deal for my mom, and she granted me permission when I asked to watch it with her.  I am never up this early and it feels like a special treat to be sitting there with my mom as she weeps over the beauty of it all.  I am mostly impressed by her dress which stretches endlessly behind her.  Mom says that is called a “train”, but she is mostly focused on the veil, which hides Diana’s face like a curtain.

    It’s 1982, and Mom Mom Irene has been staying with us, and we are driving her home to her mansion in Short Hills. It is a two-hour drive, and my mom plays Easy 101, her favorite station. My brother and I always make my sister sit in the middle and we torture her by singing the love songs into her ears, and holding her hands, like we are truly in love with her. The angrier she gets, the more lovingly we sing, and my grandmother hisses at us to be quiet. “Your mother is trying to drive.” When we ignore her, she reaches back and her hand darts around in search of a knee, but we dodge the disembodied claw, this way and that, until it hovers defeatedly, disappears.

    It’s 1982, and I am done with all the Walter Farley books in the library.  I find a book called the Ghost of Opalina, which is about a cat who has had 9 lives, and the kids who discover her ghost.  She is a friendly ghost who tells her story while the kids listen, and I am transported through her heroic journey and thrilling stories. The author, Peggy Bacon, not only wrote the book, but illustrated it as well with fantastic drawings that show off the glowing mystique of Opalina.

    It’s 1982 and I have bought my first CD.  It is the Footlose soundtrack, and I play the energetic music while we clean the house because my mom has gone on one of her cleaning tirades, and she cleans along with us.  When the title track plays, my mom shakes her hips and dances around the living room.  My brother and sister and me are thrilled and we dance along with her on the green carpet, then on chairs, and then on the tables, but then the song ends and my mom tells us to get off the furniture and finish cleaning.

      It’s 1982, and sticker-collecting has become popular.  Although I have eschewed any sort of trends emerging among my peers, I firmly embrace the collection of stickers, and have amassed a photo album worth which I have lovingly separated into sections.  There are Puffies, which are dimensional and rise up off the surface. There are Scratch-and-Sniff, which I only scratch on special occasions, and my favorite smell is Strawberry Shortcake.  There are plain stickers which have no special qualities, and my favorite of all, the Irridescents, which sparkle prismatically, and give me the special Little Princess feeling when I open up to them.  Of the Irridescents, my favorites are the pegasuses and unicorns that look like they are going to fly off the page.  I cherish this collection and keep it hidden after I find my brother and sister thumbing through it.  

     It’s 1982. I come home from school crying almost everyday.  I spend my days at school lonely and confused because I am not good at anything and fit in with nobody except the deferential Heather Gallagher who would be fine hanging out with a ham sandwich.  My mom never has any luck settling me down and tells me “It’s not the end of the world.” 

    It's 1982 and Sister Regina, the principal, tells my mom that my teachers are concerned. They all feel that I spend too much time looking out the window, “staring at clouds”. My mom asks if they can move me away from the window, but they say it’s bigger than that. At their behest, my mom takes me to a neurologist who thinks I may be having petite mal seizures, and that I should get an EEG. I stay awake and eat nothing for 24 hours before they can do the testing in the morning and my mom keeps me entertained through the dark hours with coloring books and paint-by-numbers, which I relish. When I color, I spend lots of time shading and try as hard as I can to not go outside the lines.  If my hand slips, I consider the page ruined, and start another one.  During the test, electrodes are attached to my scalp with gummy material that sticks in my hair, and I pull it out in little pieces while my mom has a long private meeting with the doctors. I ask her about the results when we are in the car. “They said you just like to stare at clouds,” she says without taking her eyes off the road.

     It’s 1982.  I am at my riding lesson and I have become very good at posting, which is when you stand and sit while the horse trots.  My dad has bought me a new velvet hat, which has a satiny green and gold cover with a pom-pom at the top, like a jockey.  At the end of the lesson I ask Happy when she thinks I will be ready to gallop.  She laughs and tells me I have to learn to canter first, which is the step in between trotting and galloping.  When I get home and tell my mom about my lesson, she says, “your father did not buy you the hat.  Marge did.”  Dad never has money because he cannot hold down a job.

       It's 1982, and my brother, sister, and I join my mom to watch Somewhere in Time, a movie with Chris Reeves who falls in love with a woman in a photograph who lived in a different era.  We know Chris Reeves already from his role in Superman, and he is firmly established as the embodiment of the perfect man.  In this movie, he is enabled to travel back in time to meet the beautiful Jane Seymour and he falls deeper in love with her until they must part.  The movie is full of romantic phantasmagorical Victorian scenes and my mom weeps for the beauty of it all, and we weep along, partially because the movie has a sad ending and its crushing to see Superman so vulnerable and fallible, but also because we are always sad when mom is sad, and we tease her about being in love with Superman, but she tells us she is committed to Tom Selleck. “He can put his slippers under my bed any day,” she says wistfully.