The Rain.

The rain always reminds me of Napa, California. The last year that I lived in Napa as a kid was during the flood of '86. It was a pretty crazy flood and I remember witnessing none of it. But I do remember the sound and the smell of rain. It reminds me of being small and not afraid, not safe but unaware of how unsafe I was. You always think that your life is the standard that most people's lives are modeled after until you begin to witness firsthand that it isn't so. So for a few years, until I went to Headstart and then kindergarten I lived a normal life. It may not be anyone else' version of normal, but until I knew better it was mine. And so I was happy.

The sound of rain makes me nostalgic for that feeling. Of my mother singing to us, of sneaking into the neighbor's backyard to play with their puppies, or camping in our backyard in a tent with a flashlight and a tube of cookie dough with my sisters. Being in the country visiting my grandparents and getting a foxtail stuck in my ear. I think they had to take me to a vet get it out. Climbing a tree in the backyard only to realize that I was afraid of heights. I was so afraid that all I could do was stay still until my grandma climbed up to get me out. She refused to ever babysit me again, poor lady. There are so many tiny memory clips that run through my mind, of grilled cheese  sandwiches we got up early and made so we could give our parents breakfast in bed. Eating peach Quaker Oatmeal and mimicking the commercial saying "Peachy Keen!" as I grinned like I thought the actress did.

There is SO much there that I played over and over again in the years after I was separated from them for good. I hung on to these memories so I would never be alone because I knew at one time someone loved me like that and one day we would be together again. The scene with the song 'Somewhere Out There' from "An American Tale" was a song I loved because it was so similar to how I felt with my memories. The scene from "Dumbo" when the mother cradled Dumbo in her trunk through the bars of her cell as she sang to him always made me ache because I knew what that situation felt like. I felt like I lived in a strange limbo after I was with my adoptive mother. I had a new family but I had a heart full of the family I felt like I had been stolen from. There was a lot of frustration in the relationship with my adopted mother stemming from the loyalties I had for my biological family. She was supportive of my love for them at first but I think she had the expectation that it would fade. And it didn't.

I can see now how it must have been painful for her to compete with the memory of a woman that couldn't take care of me, didn't protect me. But even now as I picture my biological mom with short, curly brown hair and a face that looks so much like mine it makes me long for her. Not her now, but what she was then. My safe place. When I was a teenager and life continued to get more and more complicated I would close my eyes and imagine I was small and in her arms. I would drink Sleepy Time tea because she used to give that to us a bedtime. The smell of that tea makes me feel a fragile kind of peacefulness.

The last time I saw V (biological mom) was right before we moved to Ellensburg when I was 13. We met at Chuck E. Cheese. My 16 year old sister Heather and her were saying goodbye to me. Heather was 3 months pregnant with my nephew Dylan and she was excited. It was surreal, I didn't really know them, they had become almost god-like to me in the 7 years since I had been placed with my adoptive mom. Her hair had turned gray and I felt that same craving for them but barely recognized them. And then it was goodbye for the next 5 years.

I think missing them only became worse, only got stronger. As the life with my mom went downhill I idealized their memories even more. It was a means to survive, a reason to have hope and keep pushing because I knew that as soon as I was 18 I would return to my 'real' life and they would be there with open arms awaiting for their prodigal daughter to return home. So I wrote. For years and years I filled notebooks with poems and then songs. Everything came out of me and on paper it became something tangible and real to keep me company. I sang. I found that when I felt trapped in a situation I could sing or close my eyes and 'play' music in my head. Words and music became an insulation for me against the world. I knew from the first time I remember singing in kindergarten thinking that this was it, this was what I was going to do with my life. I was going to be a singer. And through the rest of my life growing up that was what I worked towards. Writing songs, performing in talent shows and choirs. I think that was the only thing that got me though all of those years.

It was a shock to me the first time I realized that it might not happen. My whole life was based on this dream and it hit me when I was strung out, thinking I was going to be a junky for the rest of my life. It was such a radical concept to me that it actually took the air out my lungs. I don't know when I laid it to rest completely, got over the fact that that dream wasn't one that I was going to live out but at some point I did. Now when I think about it, it's with a kind of disconnect and really no feeling of loss. It really did get me through most of my childhood and in to adulthood. I'd say that it was a very well lived dream based on that alone.