Silent All These Years

There are certain songs that remind me of my parents. With my dad is it pretty much all oldies with an emphasis on Elvis. With my Mom it is Bonnie Raitt, Amy Grant, Shawn Mullins, and in particular Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos.

Any time I hear that CD, I vividly remember the time when she lived in these very ghetto apartments on Cambell and 8th Ave. in Phoenix. I was in 7th grade and out of school for the summer. The apartment pool was filled in with dirt and we were pretty much the only white family there. I would get a Payaso (the best popsicles ever) from the guy with his cart, listen to her Tori Amos tape and read Foxfire by Joyce Carol Oates.

Now here is an example of my seriously fast though process:

I was driving to my Mom's house yesterday and I heard a song from Little Earthquakes on the radio. I thought about another thing I learned that summer, that my grandfather had repeatedly physically abused my mom when she was a kid.

Then I thought about his funeral and if she had ever forgiven him.

Then I thought about how both my Mom's parents were dead.

Then I started crying because I don't want my parents to die.

This was all withing the first thirty seconds of the song. So I was driving down Camelback singing along to the song and crying because my parents are going to die. I think that is one reason I can be very happy and yet have no idea where I will be in a year. I still do not know where my life is going but I am very lucky and have a tremendous amount of support from my family. Although I am making it on my own, I know that if I were to not have a job or a place to live, I would have somewhere to go. And that must be the scariest thing in the world, having nowhere to go and no one who loves you unconditionally.