Send lawyers, guns and money

My mother has a way of never leaving me. Not that I want her to.

Bits and pieces of her find their way into my life when I least expect it but need it most. Even if I don’t know it yet or at the time, it always comes clear.

We have a new grocery store here in Keene. A Price Chopper. Those of you in NY know them well as they originated there. They have made their way into NH and my backyard. Within a mile and a half of it, literally.

The Boy Wonder applied and is working there knowing he can transfer to one of the 3 locations near where we are moving to in NY.

So of course I had to check it out.

Me and 25,842 other people during the first week it was open. You would think we didn’t have another two major grocery stores to choose from in town. Maybe they were running some great specials that I was blissfully unaware of as I shop only the outside walls of the store.

I start in the organic produce section and what’s not available there I get from the rest of the produce section. I then head into the natural foods section before hitting the natural and organic meats section. Pick up a couple things from diary and I’m done.

Today though I was a first time visitor at their deli counter thanks to The Boy Wonder. His dinner request was for hot sub sandwiches. Crusty baguette, bacon, fried Genoa salami, roast beef, capicola, roast turkey, red onion, hamburger pickles, tomatoes and Irish Swiss baked in the oven. I’m getting hungry again just writing about it.

That sandwich was slamming delicious!

So there I was at the deli counter and as they are slicing up the roast beef I start checking out the salami choices and there it is. The Tobin’s First Prize logo was screaming at me from inside the case on the liverwurst, bologna and salami.

Tobin’s First Prize products originated from the Tobin’s meat packing plant that was located on Exchange Street just off Exit 5 of Interstate 90 in Albany. It’s where my mother worked while we lived in Albany, until I was nine. They are now produced and distributed by John Morrell.

But they have kept the same logo and packaging on the products and when I saw them a smile followed by a slight wince emitted from me.

Funny how a big old slab of liverwurst brings my mother back to life but it does.

I don’t believe I ever stepped foot in the plant but I remember vividly what the parking lot and the big white building looked like and the logo on the tower that you could see from the interstate going north.

I also remember this one girlfriend she had from there that had red hair, smoked, dressed in bright prints and dated a gangster. I think her name was Denise?

A day when the two of them spent the whole afternoon painting the ceilings in the dining room and living room and enough time went by that a little blonde girl playing quietly on her own staying out the way was blessed with them being themselves and given a window into the lives of women without the usual boundaries by which they’re tied.

I’d like to think that day played a small but important part in what makes me the woman I am.

Then there was a story that has become infamous over the years for me.

A Christmas party prank gone horribly wrong which involved an air hose, some poor mans buttock and too much alcohol. You do the math.

The last couple days have been an ongoing dialogue with The Boy Wonder about where he’s going and how he is in control of what does and doesn’t happen for him. We’re coming to the end of the semester and he’s in full excuse mode and defense. (I'm the innocent bystander Somehow I got stuck , Between the rock and the hard place, And I'm down on my luck)

On my way to Price Chopper I had time to think as the guy in front of me forgot he was in his truck and was basically strolling to the plaza with his cigarette, reading his newspaper and darning a pair of socks.

I got to thinking about what I want for him in his life and it’s really quite simple and here is how the thought process went.

**Disclaimer~ those prone to motion sickness should take the necessary precautions or at the very least, remain seated and have a paper bag handy.**

As I was pulling out of the driveway the Santana/Steven Tyler song came on and it made me angry. It’s not the song. The song, Just Feel Better, is hauntingly lovely and what is it about Steven Tyler when he is doing the belting bits in any of his songs I uncontrollably sing along at the top of my voice.

Every time.

Hearing Mr Tyler sing is like smashing into a fresh bruise for me at the moment because it makes me think of J Frey and that makes me want to smash J Frey into a million little pieces if for no reason than there will be truth in the title of that book.

In that book J Frey goes on and on about a guest speaker who he refers to as an aging rock star who is clean and making a comeback and seems to go out of his way NOT to identify but sounded all the world to me that he was describing Mr Tyler.

J Frey goes on about how angry this speaker is making him, that this person is lying and no one could survive the amounts of drugs and alcohol they were saying they would ingest in a 24-hour period. And I am trying not to be upset as I love Mr Tyler but not in that---they have to pull me off his leg kinda way and then isn’t it ironic that we find out thanks to this article that J Frey himself is the liar.

How bloody hypocritical is he.

So yeah, I’m still bitter as J Frey became yet another person who chose to lie to me after I became emotionally invested in him.

Which got me to thinking about The Boy Wonder and how I want him to be his own best friend and know that he can do whatever it is he sets out to do. No one can stop him but himself.

Here I am, 45, finally investing enough in myself to pursue the one thing I always wanted to do---write. Send little bits of myself out into the world through my own distinct voice.

I’m not looking to win any prizes---won’t turn any down---not looking to be famous and not looking to be like anyone else, just me.

Apparently my voice is very different and not everyone wants to listen and I’m okay with that.

My humour class assignments have developed a pattern in what the teacher has to say and none of it is about a lack of humour, he tells me I’m very funny, it’s about the mechanics of my writing; switching tenses and POV----and that thing that’s gotten me pulled aside my whole schooling life.

“It seems like you didn’t follow the directive, but this is really good and I had to give you the A.”

A writing mentor recently told me that, “You’re humour and voice may be too intelligent for most average Americans to follow.”

I’m okay with that because I’m 45 now and not 12, 14, 18 and 21 when no one put it to me in that way so that I could see that I shouldn’t stop and this time I won’t.

I want The Boy Wonder to know he shouldn’t stop.

I wish my mother hadn’t died before she finally did the one thing that was inside her, but she didn’t and I’ll never know what it was. I don’t know that she did either.

And that’s when I pulled into the parking space at Price Chopper and two minutes later there was my Mother visiting me in the form of Tobin’s First Prize, Mother Goose Liverwurst.

She’s given me more advice in the years since her death than she ever did when she was alive.

I guess that’s because those boundaries that use to keep her tied, no longer apply.

Isn’t it ironic.