Indiana

Textures.

Salt and warmth of homemade play-dough. Don't eat it, don't eat it. Heavy green mugs. The cold basement floor, the scuffed, damaged plastic on a tricycle wheel.

The narrow wooden stairs. The giant spinning chair. The way everything creaked.

New brother. Me. Sister's Oscar the Grouch piggie bank.

The good.

The collie. Cherry 7up. Easter eggs. Fireflies. Catch them, find them. Fruit Loops for the first time. Mom waits for spring tulips. Pine needles on the Christmas floor. Train sounds. VCR tapes. The zoo. New shoes, Velcro straps.

And the bad.

The plate on my foot, the bee in my ear. Crying, crying. Those wooden figurines on my father's office shelf. Forbidden, forbidden.

Cherry 7up again. The snake. New shoes, soiled. The narrow stairs. Falling, falling. Peter and the Wolf. Tornado sirens. Run and hide, run and hide.

Opa died. Back in a week, Dad said. Back in a week.

The decisions.

Tear the pages of every book. Kiss your brother, show you care. Jump on mom's bed, blow out brother's candles. Shout in the basement, know you're real.

Such joy to decide, to say and to see. The novelty of sensation, the power to do. I didn't know why or how, but I knew I had to because I could.

The words, the finding. Desperate to know, desperate to understand. Spelling out words in church. Whisper, whisper.

Connections. Pass the library to get to sister's school. Shampoo bottle looks like a baby. Chocolate grahams fit in the VCR player.

And me. Always wants, never needs.

Everything was.

But there was so much wrong. Josh was too big. No more brothers and sisters. Mom was sad, but didn't say so. Dad was gone a lot.

I should have seen it. Or maybe I did, but didn't know what to do about it.

In any case, nothing changed. Nothing, nothing.

Normal

I've always flirted between thinking that I was uncommonly special or especially common. 

I'm probably one of them. I don't know what else I could be.

There was a time when I thought I may have been some kind of superhero, beginning to discover that I had mutant powers. Nope. Puberty.

I also assumed that everyone was in constant pain. But then I learned that chronic migraines aren't the norm either. 

My parents helped with the mixed signals. I was told I was great and smart, but only after I had a day in which I felt completely normal, if not substandard.

Some people have insecurities and some people have superiority complexes. I suppose my problem is that I'm insecure about whether I should have a superiority complex.

There always felt like there might be some safety in being normal. I used to pray that God would let me be dumb like other kids. I asked my parents if I could watch more TV so I could be like the other kids.

But along with wanting to be like them, I also hated them for what they were because they didn't have my interests. They didn't seem to have interests at all.

I grew out of it, grew out of worrying whether I was something or not. My childhood was something of a dud, spent watching National Geographic Explorer instead of cartoons, too polite to burp the ABCs.

Today, I try not to care. Because if I care too much, I wonder whether it's normal or extraordinary to spend so much time worrying about it. And around I go again.

Waiting for Snow in Havana

For my first memoir, I read Carlos Eire's excellent Waiting for Snow in Havana. Were I to rename the memoir, I would call it Carlos' Gods. The overall, commanding theme of the book seems to be identifying the "gods" of Eire's Cuban upbringing.

It's a good theme, but it could easily feel like something of a cop-out: to explore one's primary influences is hardly a new or bold concept. Where Eire succeeds, however, is developing and enunciating the love-hate (but primarily hate) relationship with his "gods.". 

First and most obvious is the constant refrain and exploration of young Carlos' present-tense connection to God. He dwells seriously on sin and repentance, but generally in the context of his childhood fears and schooling. Whether it is his experience getting his head stuck in a pew during mass (94-97) or his reflections on hell and repentance (172), this is a vulnerable Carlos, one who is unsure of the god he is asked to worship. It's also a god subject to the changes and whims of his adolescence: his suggestion that Jesus should have X-Ray vision to see through women's clothes (170) is different from the man who finds his seventh proof of god (358). He curses this god and calls on god and thinks about god and ponders god. For all his ponderings and searches for proofs, he still, near the book's conclusion, doubts whether the events towards the end of his time in Cuba were orchestrated by god. For all his insistence of faith, we are left to wonder whether his belief and faith are more than his attempts to cling to his Cuban upbringing. 

Interestingly, this god seems more similar to what I would call Carlos' second god: pop culture. Whether it's his buying American trading cards or watching Batman, James Bond and Marilyn Monroe films and TV shows, pop culture becomes a central aspect of Eire's life. Instead of thinking, "What would Jesus do," Eire finds himself considering what James T. Kirk would do in situations. Yet this kind of American envy has its problems and shortcomings. It clashes with his upbringing and eventually is renounced by his wife. 

Yet unsurprisingly, the most important and everpresent of Carlos' gods is Cuba. Whether it is the poignant depiction of Castro's rise to fame or his memories of childhood on Havana streets, Cuba is as memorable, ingrained, wanted and unwanted as god himself to Carlos. The rationale and explanation of Fidel is as real in Eire's eyes as his quest to understand hell and repentance.

This was an impassioned eulogy of a Cuba lost, of a childhood spent in regret and confusion, and an explanation of who he is now. I felt as though it was an honest, unashamed portrayal of childhood and Cuba, but beyond that, I enjoyed that it was also payed due homage to the gods that created him and made him who he is today.

Emetophobia

I don't think it's irrational. Seems like a rational fear to me.

There's even a word for it: "emetophobia:" the fear of vomit and throwing up. I've had it as long as I can remember. My brother throws up and I spend the night on the couch. My sister throws up and I leave home until she stops. One of my parents throws up, and I'm moving out.

Worse, however, is when the tingling starts. When my own stomach starts doing roiling. When my mouth starts watering and the world starts spinning. I feel it coming and I can't escape from my own body.

I try a variety of tactics. I focus on little swallows, shallow breaths, wiggling my toes. I start negotiating deals with God, praying for it to pass. I lie as still as I can, pretending that I'm not nauseous, pretending that I just need to wait a bit and it will pass.

In fairness, sometimes it works. And sometimes it's Christmas 2003. My brother had the flu all week, but was better in time for Christmas Eve. Nobody else had been sick. We had dodged a bullet.

After our seasonal feast of German steak, mashed potatoes, green beans and butter rolls, we settled in for some board games.

But something wasn't right. The old symptoms were back. My face felt flushed. My throat felt full. The contents of my stomach seemed to be swaying, ponderously, planning their next move.

My family asked if I was feeling okay. I'm fine, I lied. Just need to take a nap.

I held as still as I could on our new leather couches. It would pass. It had to pass. I couldn't be sick on Christmas.

I wasn't sick. I wasn't going to be sick. Everything was fine.

God, please don't let me. Bless me. Work a miracle. Whatever you have to do.

My stomach churned threateningly. My body tensed. Sniff, exhale. Sniff, exhale. Focus on your toes.

It passed. I relaxed.

And then promptly puked what seemed to be everything I'd ever eaten all over myself, the new leather couch, and the heirloom blanket on the couch.

Nothing was fine. Christmas was ruined. My family went into damage control, my dad crying "not the couches," my mom crying "not the blanket," and my siblings sitting in mortified, horrified shock on the floor, still dazedly holding their "Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit" tokens.

It was a Christmas never to be forgotten, for all the wrong reasons. I slept in the bathtub that night. The next morning I was too sick and weak to open presents.

That's it. That's why I'm an emetophobe.

Anything capable of ruining Christmas seems like a rational fear to me.

Consequences

I don't remember moments, I remember consequences and words.

The stash of Dad's Winterfresh gum was in his desk drawer. I don't know when I found it, but I remember when he found me with it. That's when I learned the word "theft" and was placed on my parents' watch list. I was banned from his office. And any room with drawers.

I wouldn't have any reason to remember the first snowstorm of my time in Utah. Except for my brother's incessant crying after I pelted him with the first snowballs of my (or his) life. Which also led to my mom using the word "assault" as she spoke to me. And I was assigned to shovel snow alone for hours. Another consequence, another new word.

And then there was the time Dad caught me watching "The Simpsons," which had been previously forbidden. "Lewd" was the word of the day and I returned to my parents' watch list. It took months of deliberately being caught watching Animal Planet before some kind of trust could be re-established.

I also remember getting "The Talk." Dad said I had installed too many games on the computer and that it was my fault it was running so slowly. Dad spent the few hours defragging the hard drive teaching me all kinds of words. Words I didn't want to know. Yikes.

I guess I have my parents to thank for my memories. And my vernacular. And an undesired familiarity with human anatomy and potential jail-able offenses.