Juvenile Records Remain Sealed, part 5

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In case you are new to this series, my intent is to inspire and instill confidence. You can overcome your challenges, just as I've overcome mine. Get out there and live the life you dream of. You have the ability to change and make it happen.

xoxo, we're all in this together!

For my mom, the move to Ravencroft represented a step towards freedom and independent living more than anything else had. Even more than our move from Maine when we got in her royal blue Pontiac with white vinyl top and matching white vinyl interior and started driving south with no known destination. “When the people are nice, we’ll know when to stop.” is what I remember hearing. The moving truck followed us down once we’d landed in the mountains of North Carolina and had an address other than a hotel room.

That moving truck still held pieces of her past that were embedded with various memories, none of which she shared with me. Antiques were the only pieces that made it to Ravencroft with us — a small child’s desk, a blanket hutch, a wooden trunk, a Cape Cod baby rocking bench, and my canopy bed and pine dresser — all pieces from her childhood home. Those memories she was okay with. She parted with all other furniture — the driftwood coffee table, the bar-sized stereo, her entire bedroom suite, and all living room furniture.

This move allowed my mom to express her feminine side. We picked out a grapevine wreath for over the fireplace and artificial flowers to decorate it with for each season. She ordered a floral-print couch and deep-peach living room chairs, determined to drown out memories of plaid upholstery that hadn’t much appealed to her or my dad, yet it hadn’t offended them either. Plaid is the pattern of compromise between males and females, yet never truly loved by either.

I went through the motions of helping my mom choose paint colors for our bedrooms. Only the palest colors would be considered, yet somehow she let me choose rather wild, large-scale floral (bordering on Hawaiian) pattern drapery for the sliding glass doors that we each had in our bedrooms. I convinced her that it tied together my pale yellow and her peach tint, which it did.

We painted our bedrooms ourselves and wallpapered our bathrooms (more florals) on weekends, and by the time we got to the living room, she knew the vaulted ceilings were beyond our tool capacity for painting. She moved ahead with buying a new dining room set — a huge, heavy oak rectangular table with high-back chairs — to fit in the alcove. She bought a matching wall unit for the living room, and a bedroom suite for her room. I remember overhearing all the jokes as she talked to her girlfriends on the phone about buying only “one night stand.” I filed it alongside “I like my coffee strong and black, like my men.” and “What’s redneck foreplay? –Get in the truck, bitch.” hoping that someday I’d be able to laugh along with her.

As soon as the living room furniture arrived, Mom finalized the living room paint color selection (a very particular shade of pale ecru). She then found a professional woman painter (we don’t need a man!) who could finish the job. She scheduled the woman to start once school was finished so I would be home during the days to let her in and make sure nothing happened.

Aside from that, I’m not sure what the plan was for me that summer. Since Ravencroft was an adults-only complex, the board had to be petitioned for me to live there. Permission was granted, but there were no other children and not even common areas to meet fellow neighbors. We were no longer in the school bus loop, positioning us in an awkward, childless suburban stratosphere.

I remember finally finishing my huge, circular latch hook rainbow rug. I made a motivational weight-loss collage to help keep me on track with Weight Watchers, which I’d been attending for a couple of years. I planned to do 30 minutes of mini trampoline to the Pointer Sisters each day when our downstairs neighbor went out. I continued to devour books, cross stitch, and sew my own clothes.

All that needle work paid off with nimble fingers, and clearly I learned patience for sitting still for long periods of time. Who knows where all of our skills come from :)

My list of chores had actually decreased since this move represented a huge down-sizing. Our plant collection was minimal, and we’d eliminated our entire bird family, although we still had a dog and a cat. There wasn’t much to dust or vacuum; I could clean the house in about an hour, which I did before preparing dinner for my mom’s arrival home each night.

That’s all the structure I had. We had left Dawnwood, a place where I knew neighbors, felt comfortable knocking on the doors of my mom’s friends, had a part-time job making copies for a court reporter, knew all the holes in the fences so I could sneak over to the grocery store and Hallmark, where I would marvel at the 18+ section until caught and kicked out.

Ravencroft was well-positioned to appeal to the conveniences needed for working adults. With cars. It was nestled between two busy roads, bordered by railroad tracks. The only non-condo neighbor I met was Jenny, a woman in her 80s living alone in a tiny shack of a place visible from my bedroom, where I spent chunks of time drinking tea.

There were no secret back woods, no places to wander. When I felt brave enough to cross six lanes of traffic, I could walk to a grocery store or Sam’s hair for a cut or poodle perm. The condo association had rules about lights (tiny white lights only), decorations (no banners or anything in the windows), and laundry (no drying clothes outside or hanging towels on railings).

I felt trapped and confined in about 800 square feet. Our house rules for tidy-ness meant I could never leave anything out, so each day I had to set up the sewing machine or pull out projects from their storage places and then allow time to put it all away at the end of the day. As motivation flagged, this resulted in a lot of days of reading and watching tv.By the time the painter arrived, I was positively eager for any kind of stimulation. Each day she would work and I would sit in the middle of the room and we would talk non-stop. She was a little older than my mom, fit, confident and outgoing. She had traveled, and she was willing to talk freely. She was divorced and had a son. I was hoping she had divorced because she liked women and was falling in love with me as much as I was falling in love with her. She would flatter me by telling me how mature I was and saying that she would love to have me as a friend or daughter, but nothing ever happened. How to make something happen was still one of life’s big mysteries at age almost-14.

On her last day on the job, she gave me her number in the hopes that I would go on a date with her son. He was older than I was — 16 — so he could drive. He picked me up one night and took me to Sizzler, the local chain steak house. It was fine and horrible all at the same time, yet I was willing to persevere if it meant possibly getting to spend time with his mom again.

For our next date he picked me up in a small, white vintage Porsche. It was the ’80s, so this impressed me. He told me all about rebuilding it with his dad while driving through the Smoky Mountains to a hiking spot.

We hiked and talked, and I remember it being a glorious day despite the awkward fact that we clearly weren’t connecting. By the time we reached the peak, we were intensely fighting. Back in those days I had strong opinions and was all too eager to express them. I’m sure I baited him. When I fumbled his attempt at a kiss and flat out rejected him as he played with my thighs, I truly pissed him off. Red-faced hatred greeted me, and the next thing I knew I was alone. On top of a mountain. During my first hike ever, quite unsure of where I was, how I’d gotten into this mess, and how the hell I’d get home.

I hiked down, not a soul in sight. Luckily the trail was clear, so my sub-par directional skills were not challenged. It started to rain, like it does every summer afternoon to preserve the South’s humid reputation, and my panic rose into my throat as I neared the parking lot. Where once there had been a white Porsche, there was nothing. The parking lot was empty, and the rain had settled in enough to ensure no more hikers would arrive today.

I stood still as my mind started in with berating assessments. Does anyone know exactly where you are? Will you have to spend the night here? Should you start walking? Paralysis was seeping in, wrapping my clammy skin in its grip. My heart slowed, lowering my brow with every beat. Hands in pockets, slumped and defeated, I didn’t know what to do. Even crying was beyond me.

Car wheels speeding through gravel broke my haze. The white Porsche stopped in front of me. I opened the door, climbed in, and buckled my seatbelt. That would protect me from the slick windy roads. Nothing but stoicism could protect me from the barrage of abuse that followed. He eventually joined me in silence. I worked hard to suppress my nausea from my inevitable car sickness, and he eventually delivered me home in one piece. I wasn’t trained in the art of ass kissing or graciousness, so it seemed safer to get out of the car without a word. I threw myself into my room, avoiding all questions, understanding why such an amazing woman had gone through a divorce if her son was anything like her ex-husband, but truly saddened that I would never see her again.