Remember summer camp? Remember hearing your name at mail call and the excitement when you'd receive a care package from you parents. Maybe it was just a letter and maybe and extra pair of socks, but sometimes you'd score big time because they had included some candy or gum! Those are the care packages childhood stories are made of. Those are the kind of packages I want back.

My mom started bringing me care packages when I was in college. She would show up at my door with a bag full of food. My college town house's cupboards were teeming with instant noodle, pudding mixes, and all kinds of random foodstuffs that either ended up getting donated to a food drive or thrown away. A lot of the food was off brands, usually from the dollar store that looked hokey. It's not that I wasn't grateful for the gesture, mind you, and I've never been a brand snob. I just didn't like what she was bringing, that, and I didn't need the food because I was supporting myself and buying my own groceries.

You would think the gift giving would stop when I moved halfway across the country. Nope. I started getting packages in the mail from her almost immediately. It was all the same stuff; Lipton noodles, cans of red beans, more pudding packages, shipped from the Heartland to the Pacific Northwest for my pleasure. What to do? What...to...do?

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Why the hell didn't you just tell her to stop?" I wish I could have. It would have saved me a lot of headaches and her a lot of money, but it's not that easy. Never has been. I don't have a great relationship with my mother, as you may have suspected. Actually, I know few people who claim to have great relationships with their parents these days. I don't know if it's the times that we grew up in, the changing societal values, or what? All I know is, my mother and I have never really had a good relationship for as long as I can remember. There are zero lines of communication when it comes to my mother, and it's nearly impossible to talk anything serious with her. As I got older, I started to feel bad for her. It started to feel like these care packages were her attempt to make up for lost parenting when I was little, so I let it go and created a monster.

Now, I'm 29 years old, and the packages still come. I've tried to curb the sending by explaining that I can no longer eat certain foods (ie I'm now gluten intolerant) and that we are choosy when it comes to health and beauty type of stuff. The result is that the packages stop for about six months and then low and behold a package shows up at my door chocked full of sewing kits, Bic razors, a sample box of Cheerios, and generic maxi pads. A hodgepodge of inept, catch up parenting, packed in a box and sent halfway across the country.

Love Notes & Lamentations

Did you ever pass notes back in the day? You know, the stuff speedily scrawled in class and handed off to each other in the hallway or the ones you stealthily scribbled and passed while the teacher wasn't looking? How about writing heart broken poems of love lost, life wasting away, and how The Man wasn't going to bring you down? Oh you didn't do that? I SO did. A lot of creative types, like myself, often had a dramatic "woe is me" experience going through school. We'd drone on about how much life sucked and how all love was ill fated. For me, I kept my emotional rants to myself, for the most part. Most of my family and friends had no idea that I was so mentally dark and dreary. I think I was Emo before it was even called Emo, except I didn't have the asymmetrical haircut and skinny jeans. Wait. Does that make me old? Ah crap. Oh well!

I was thinking about all those old school notes and over-emotional poems today, so I went digging around the house trying find them. The notes, I found right away because I had decided, when I was still in high school, that they be amusing some day, so I threw nearly every note since grade school into the same box. I even numbered them by grade, so I'd know when they were written. I'm embarrassed to admit that actually. No, really I'm kinda wishing I was that organized now, but that's besides the point. Looking in the dusty old box, I was afraid to open and read any because almost all of them had been folded in some crazy origami fashion. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to fold them back again. I eventually opted for one that was sans the fancy folding. The "5" on the outside tell me it was from 5th grade.

"How's school? its nice. Only because i'm going out with you. Do you still love me? I still love you. I'm not sure if we will kiss but I want to hold hands. Here comes Mrs Casey, By. Love David."

Ah young love.

The poems took some digging in the attic, but I eventually found those too. After reading a few, I can safely say that I may have been a good song writer for a goth metal band. Who knew? I guess I missed my calling. Key phrases include: Blowing out the burning embers of your joyous soul (If the soul was joyous, then why was it burning?), Overwhelmed by the stinging pain (Like bee stings? Because bee stings can be overwhelming.), Emotions swirling inside of me (This phrase or a version of it appears regularly). There seems to be a lot of writing about yearning and aching, crying and emptiness, being taken for granted and feeling out of control. Typical Emo crap I'm sure, and funny now, though definitely not when I was 17.

"Stuck" Dated 07/18/99

"Why is there this longing desire to leave, when there's no place to go? No house to call home. Back and forth. In and out. Unable to stop, and rest in permanent habitation.
Alienated and alone. Wandering aimlessly. Searching for a place to connect, a piece of the puzzle.
Obstacles like mountains, weighing down the aspirations, with the ignored morsels, of reality. Checked into a mental institution, where atleast no one has to care.
Creating a world of illusions, leads to the softening of the brain. Wanna be naked in the snow, and frostbite makes so much sense. Risking health, in spite of it all, to break the chains."

It's so bizarre reading this stuff now. It kind of blows my mind how dark and dreary I really was.

I'm thinking about making these lovely old notes and poems a weekly feature, and I'd love, love, love to include submissions from readers. If you have old note, letter, poem, etc let me know and I'd love to feature it here on the blog.

Making Time to Make Time

Last weekend, I had my littlest sister, Hannah, come stay at my house. There's nothing like your youngest sibling creeping through puberty to make you feel older. If you have younger siblings, I'm sure you understand.

Hannah was born when I was a junior in high school and was an very unexpected addition to our family. I have to admit, it can be difficult having a sibling that is so much younger. All too easily, you get wrapped up in your daily routine. You know, gym, tanning, laundry? Yes, I'm kidding. Seriously, though, I think adults get a case of day to day "tunnel vision". It's when you can only seem to focus on the day to day schedule and rarely step outside that schedule to fit in anything else. Such has been the case with Hannah. The Man has the same problem. Having two brothers 18 and 20 years younger himself, he knows all too well the struggle of remembering to set aside time for your much younger siblings. Unfortunately sometimes, it can be a seemingly unavoidable yet entirely inexcusable problem.

I remember the day that my step mom, Becky, suspected she might be pregnant. Of course, she did what any woman worried about pregnancy would do. She asked me, her 17 year old step daughter to the store to buy the pregnancy test for her. No, I'm not joking, and yes, yes she did. Looking back, I think she was too emotional and maybe even a little embarrassed at the time, but I tell you what, being an adult now I cannot fathom asking a 17 year old to go buy a pregnancy test for me. Oh and did I mention we lived in a small town? A very small town. An 8,000 people, Midwest, conservative, farming, small town. Of course, I went to school with the guy who was working at the store where I ended up buying the test, and I, naturally, had to defend myself. "It's not for me!" and "I'm buying this for someone else!" I swear, to this day, I don't think the guy believed me, that is, until he saw the pregnant proof in Becky's expanding belly.

I've made a sort of resolution with myself to spend more time with my sister. Hannah will be 12 in April. What scares me is that she's starting to look less and less like a little girl every time I see her. In some ways, I feel like I missed out on those little girl years. I wasn't really around much, especially early on. The more that I think about it now, it's probably just as important to take a active role in her life from now on. She needs a good role model at this age. Every kid does, and I'm making a point to try and be one, so I can be there to give her the guidance that I tried so hard to find when I was a kid.

I'll admit, sometimes it seems like a daunting task and that, in turn, makes me feel sort of guilty. I just need to stick to my guns and put in the extra effort. I mean honestly, if I can spend countless hours in front of my computer, I can make time for my sister. Then again, where does that leave us? I just have to remember that kids have got it rough these days. Not that we didn't, but it just seems their innocence gets stripped away earlier and earlier. They are bombarded with images and ideas, both good and bad, from an early age, leaving a million avenues for them to choose from, and I've made it my job to make sure she chooses wisely.