Where Am I From?

Last week Ann Voskamp tackled the question "Where are you from?"  and passed the challenging question on to her readers.  Here is my response.

I'm from noplaceinparticular--having moved from the edge of the Hudson River to the edges of Rocky Mountains to city New Jersey streets...from the "Apple Country" in New York to a Connecticut city....to now, the "heights" of the Pocono mountains.

I'm from the smell of hot chocolate-chip cookies, slamming screen doors, sitting in a lightening-split mulberry tree, waiting for the dinner-yell.

I'm from "stop-wiggling-and-bothering-your-brother-or-you're-gonna-be-sorry" church days.
I'm from a too short dress with gangly legs that won't wait for a new dress before growing like saplings from the old one.

I'm from studying hard to be the best and then reading every book in the library just for fun.  I'm from hitting the pavement hard with bloody knees because I walked home with a friend of another color and someone didn't like that.

I'm from pack up your stuff and sell most of it because we're moving...to be "trailer trash" on a mountain of millionaires.

I'm a shikza ...one of the handful of "Christians" in a Jewish-majority school.  A place where "if you aren't a Jew; then you're a Christian."  Somehow "Christians" had come to be synonymous with "goyim."

From my bagel-eating, going-to-Ivy-League-college crowd in High School,  I'm then a Protestant in a Catholic mass...a college of women where I carry my paint box and watch my mind leak from my ears like the paint escaping from a tube.

From loving to sing and hearing glass windows ring with sound waves to a silent morose captive of my own mind, institutionalized until I'm "safe"....

From buzzers and hard mats; meshed windows and rings of keys to visiting hours and passes home.  Years come and go from one hospital to another finding me thin and more and more mad.

To Connecticut shores. Artist.Photographer.Lunatic.

From group home.  Hating the moments that hang heavy from my lap, dragging my legs down and planting them deeper into the floor.  Watching smoke rise to the ceiling. No escape from the deafening sound surrounding me.  Helplessly watching my youth and my life tick-tocking away.  Fear following me like an alarm; like a skulking stranger, cap pulled low--pursuing me everywhere I go.

To wedding dress with lace sleeves and smiles hiding frowns. Words of blessing thinly covering curses.  To the arms of another I belong.

Daughter:  Baby.  Child.  Teen.  Sadness and trouble.  Joy and sunshine.
Paintings hung.  Wheelchairs rolled.  Gasping for air. Hospital stiff sheets. Lonely long nights and days.

Death it was who stalked me.  He came close; I felt his breath hot on my cheek.  Can't run; Can't hide.
Once again sanity took leave.  And those buzzers, mats and rings of keys hadn't changed in 25 years.  Only this body was older and hurting certain.

joints stiffening. Pain, my lover. Days of relinquishment; Nights of keystrokes and conversations warm with strangers-yet-friends.  recliner #5 - to bed I must go.