Category: The Junk Drawer

My parents had a kitchen junk drawer, a catch all for gadgets that otherwise had no home. This is my writing junk drawer, a catch all for my writing.

The Dream Quilt

On By Alicia McCauleyIn The Junk DrawerLeave a comment

Asking for money is hard.  Asking for money for a good cause is only slightly less difficult.

My friend, Marie, has been a consistent supporter of my efforts to cycle and raise money for several worthy causes.  So about a month ago, when Marie told me her mother was doing the 3-Day Breast Cancer Walk, I was quick to donate.  My donation gave me a chance to win a quilt handmade by her mother.  I never win anything, so I didn’t really think about the quilt.

Last Thursday night I felt a cold plugging my head and I slept perched upright on the couch so I could do that whole breathing thing.  In the middle of the night I awoke from a dream, chilled by the crisp fall air brushing in through the windows, turning my exposed toes white.  I scrambled around for another blanket and as I lay waiting for sleep to descend, I thought about the dream.  I dreamt that I’d won the quilt and was sleeping snuggled under its story squares.

The next morning Marie beamed as she told me I’d won the quilt in real life.  I grinned from ear to ear as I recounted my dream.

The quilt arrives at my house later this month.  I can’t wait for frosty winter nights when I’ll pull it tight under my chin and dream some more.

The Same

On By Alicia McCauleyIn The Junk Drawer2 Comments

It’s been almost three years since my dad died.  We were estranged, a choice that was mine.  And yet, grief still sneaks up on me.

Today I was baking peanut butter cookies, a holiday favorite, and my mind snapped back to the Christmas morning my parents gave me a Bianchi my dad had picked out for me.  Moments like that were few and far between and cause a twinge of sorrow.

There are other times when I do expect to feel grief and it’s not any easier.  My best friend and his wife moved into a beautiful house just beyond the cemetery where my dad is buried.  On the way to their house Terry and I were cruising in the Mini with the top down, enjoying a perfect evening.  When we passed by the cemetery, I could barely keep from vomiting.  I sucked in gulps of cool air, blinked back hot tears, and tried in vain to listen to what Terry was saying.

I’m not really sure how to handle grief when it sneaks up on me.  I’m entirely unsure how to handle it even when I know it’s coming.  The truth is, sneaky or not so sneaky, it all hurts the same.

Tick, Pause, Tick, Tick Pause, Ticktickticky

On By Alicia McCauleyIn The Junk Drawer2 Comments

I hate the feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop.  When I was a naughty kid, I dreaded my dad uttering those terrible words “Just wait until your mother gets home.”  Waiting is the worst, especially when you know that what is waiting for you is BAD.

I am currently in a nasty waiting game.  My heart has been all jumpy, and stoppy, and generally not good.  My little ticker is doing some sort of rhumba that makes me sweat profusely at the drop of a hat, makes my left arm simultaneously achy and prickly with pins and needles, and causes me to be tired almost all of the time.  Not to mention the whole inconvenience of constantly dropping stuff because I lose feeling in my left hand.

As much as I don’t like it As much as it scares me, I made the dreaded call to my cardiologist.  I hate the fact that I’m 32 and have had a cardiologist for many years now.  I hate that when I called, the receptionist knew exactly who I was.  I hate that I had to tell my principal about what’s going on because I don’t like being weak.  I hate that when I fill out my emergency card every year, I practically write a book under “in case of emergency”.

But most of all I hate waiting.

My appointment is Wednesday afternoon.  Questions swim in my head.  What’s wrong this time?  How many EKG’s will I have to do?  Will I have to wear a monitor to school?  Will I have to carry one in my purse?  What does this mean for bike riding? And the worst one yet: Will I need surgery again?

I know the Bible tells me to be anxious for nothing.  And I’m trying.  I really am.  But if I’m being straight with God and myself, I’m anxious.  If I strip it bare, I’m afraid.  Really afraid.  I’m waiting for Wednesday and right now Wednesday feels very far away.

The Auntie Diaries: A Day at the Park

On By Alicia McCauleyIn The Junk DrawerLeave a comment

It’s no secret that I’m not cut from Mom fabric.  Motherhood isn’t for me and nothing proves that like when my big brother’s kids are in town.  I take each of the five of them on a special date.  My first date went like this:

12:00 Pick up 5-year-old Kyleigh to go to Kids Kingdom.

12:14 Realize that when it is 112 degrees swings, slide, and tire swing sear through shorts when sat upon.  Climb around on jungle gym instead.

12:30 Follow Kyleigh over to the sprinkler area where she plays for a few minutes.

12:37 Sit with Kyleigh in the shade waiting for the water volcano to erupt.  Want to poke my eyes out after telling her over and over that the water volcano won’t erupt until 1:00.  It’s “Are we there yet?” times a thousand.

12:49 Tell weird babysitter guy with a toddler that perhaps he shouldn’t set his cigarettes and lighter in the woodchips on the playground because, ya know, there are kids here and stuff.

12:51 Move away from weird babysitter guy who apparently took my scolding as an invitation for conversation.

1:00 Finally the volcano erupts.  Kyleigh is afraid to get near it.

1:02 Volcano stops and we sit in the shade waiting for the next eruption at 1:15.

1:15 This time Kyleigh runs for it, understanding that if she doesn’t get to it ASAP, she’ll miss out and will possibly shrivel up into a raisin if she doesn’t get wet.

1:22 Introduce Kyleigh to a little girl from school.  They splash around like old friends.

1:30 Volcano erupts again and Kyleigh has wisely staked out the spot that gets the most water.  She guards her area fiercely and gets completely drenched.

1:40 Weird babysitter guy moves near my shady spot, bringing with him 2 other pock-marked, skinny legged meth users.  One sits behind me, one to the side, and the other in front of me so that when they want to talk to each other they have to yell.  After being caught in the middle of yelling conversations about a festering rash, a stolen truck, and the (insert colorful word) government, I tell Kyleigh that after the next volcano eruption, we’re going to get frozen yogurt.

1:47 Practically injure Kyleigh as I rub her dry with a towel, simultaneously pulling on her shorts and shirt.

1:48 Walk so briskly to the car that Kyleigh runs after me calling “Wait for me!  Wait for me!”

1:48 Think briefly about the Pirates of the Caribbean Code: If anyone falls behind, they’re left behind.

1:49 Grab Kyleigh and hustle her to the car.

1:50 Peel out of the playground parking lot.

2:00 Sit happily in the clean, air-conditioned yogurt shop.  Smile as Kyleigh tops her yogurt with gummy worms, gummy bears, chocolate chips, cherries, sprinkles, more sprinkles, and whatever else she pleases.

2:01 Smile even bigger at the mom who explains to her kid that he can’t do the same thing because they only put healthy things in their bodies.

2:22 Kyleigh puts her sweaty, ice cream covered face up to mine and says “Thank you, Aunt Alicia.”  She tops it off with a kiss, leaving sprinkles on my lip.

Hands

On By Alicia McCauleyIn The Junk DrawerLeave a comment

My hands are a book of stories, a criss-cross of scars, both seen and unseen. The scar across the back of my hand reminds me of my clumsy, carefree childhood, chasing my brothers through the house.  Stomping, yelling, running when running was just for fun.  Then the acute pain of catching my hand on my dad’s wire bristled sanding wheel, the bristles, like porcupine quills catching under my skin.  And then my mother’s tender hands, silky smooth bandaging my own small hand.

My cycling gloves have drawn tan lines across my wrists, a promise that adventure is mere pedal strokes away.  Steering my bike up mountains, beside rivers, through waves of wildflowers bowing over the plains.  My bike is escape.  My legs turn circles while my hands brake, shift, and guide almost without thought.  My mind moves beyond the daily clatter.  It is my space to think about big things and small things all under the careful guidance of my hands.

My left hand wears the promise of love.  Love in all its joy.  Love in all its pain.  Love without condition.  Love like I thought I didn’t have the capacity to give.  Or receive.  How my lovely hands took care of me this year.  Wiping away tears, both his and mine.  Our hands clasped in the spare doctor’s office, trying to hold onto light and hope.  If we just entwined our fingers tight enough, maybe our life together would not slip away.

My hands twisted medicine bottle lids, rubbed his back after lonely nights, and threw my raw prayers up to heaven.

The skin of my hands began to peel, as if my heartache had descended into my fingers and my hands could only respond by peeling away the layers.  It was painful, the forced exposure of new skin before it was time.  And still my hands continued to do all the required jobs just so I could make it from one day to the next.  Soon one day became many days and we’d held on long enough, tight enough, that our life together did not slip away.

My right hand wears another ring, the promise of eternity, of peace beyond my most vivid imaginings.  We cling to this and it clings to us.  It is here in our morning prayers, hands folded that we rediscover our life together, cognizant of the fact that we balanced precariously on the edge of it all and didn’t fall.

Stories balance on the tip of my tongue and the callous on my finger reminds me of my childhood spent holed up in my room, poetry spilling out, filling pages with graphite.  Now, my fingers tap at the keys of my computer.  It’s the rhythmic tapping of letters becoming words becoming paragraphs becoming the story of my life.

So far it is a story of joy, heartache, and healing.  I think of fairy tales and that phrase “They lived happily ever after.”  It always comes at the end of the story.  In my life story, we are living happily ever after.  We are living happily ever after right now because we are aware, so very aware, of just how precious now is.