The Back Wall wasn’t a restaurant, a store, or a bar-n-grill.

The Back Wall was… well, it was the wall out back of my high school (at the time it was called Roger Ludlowe High school. I think it is called Fairfield High School, now.), right outside of the cafeteria. I suppose that to anyone looking on, it was just the wall of a school, with built-in seating, initials, names and song lyrics written in black magic marker, with windows above, some half-covered with Dead stickers.  Maybe, outside looking in, one would say, “That was where the kids were allowed to smoke.”

It was the only place on school grounds where cigarette smoking was permitted. Yes, kiddies. Smoking was allowed… not encouraged, but allowed.

Between classes, it was where guys would meet up with their girlies, and BFFF’s crossed paths, with just enough time between bells to share a ciggy, pass a note or two, and talk about whatever or whoever.

If you made a left out of the doors, you would pass jocks and preps and then be within a few feet of “everyone land”. At the end of the wall were Dead Heads, or WOWs as we called them. The picture of me in my little flower-child getup was taken on The Back Wall, at the very end, WOW-Territory, I guess. The outfit isn’t actually all that different from how I normally dressed (‘cept the stupid headband), but that was a Halloween picture.

I hung out with tons of people on The Back Wall. Some of those friendships were fleeting, like most high school relationships. Others, like my friendship with Jeanne (my BFFF) continue to grow. All of those friendships, in one way or another, have shaped my life.

I started to write this post a few months ago, when a man… a boy that I often spent time with on The Back Wall, died. My friendship with Brian was one of the fleeting variety, and so I did not expect his death to hit me quite as hard as it did. I suppose, in a way, I wanted to sort of lump him in with all of the other losses I had recently experienced… like that would make it less terrible or more tolerable. I was wrong. It was a completely separate loss. Completely.

Brian was “something” to a lot of people. All of the folks on the Facebook group (“The Back Wall”) had something meaningful to say about him. I couldn’t… not because there was nothing for me to say, but because I felt silly sharing such little things (like, “He was the only person to ever call me Loch Ness and get away with it!”) with people I barely even know anymore. Like my “fleeting” friendship with this person was less than important. I was wrong. Completely.

I have a lidded plastic container that I call my Memory Box. In it, I keep old letters, pictures, postcards and mementos of places I’ve been, people I have loved… silly things, items that most people would probably throw away. I do not go through it as often as I used to. When we began cleaning up and reorganizing the apartment, I found it in the big closet, all the way in the back, on the floor.

I wanted to take a break, so I pulled it out of the closet, brought it into the front room and lifted the lid.

At the very top, there was a small folded piece of old notebook paper. It was addressed to “Loch Ness”. I smiled and opened the mini-note. It read:

Sitting there on my couch, I remembered when Brian handed me the note; we were passing one another in the ever-crowded hall, fairly close to my locker. The note doesn’t mention WHY I should meet him on The Back Wall; it didn’t have to. I remember. He was trying to teach me to play hacky-sack… we ended up getting high, and I made him play his guitar instead. Hotel California.

I kept the note out for a little while and smiled like a jackass. That was one of the most fun afternoons I ever had, out on The Back Wall with Brian.

There was nothing insignificant or less than important about my friendship with the only person who ever got (or will ever get) away with calling me “Loch Ness.”

My mother loved getting gifts, practical or not, but if you asked her what she wanted for her birthday or a holiday, it was practical, practical, practical. Drove me crazy. I hated giving those kinds of presents to my mother. I wanted to give her fun things, pretty things.

I was thirty years old and May was coming. I asked, “Mom. What do you want for Mother’s Day this year?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Something useful. Maybe something for the kitchen? I don’t know why you get me anything anyway…”

Ugh. Why do I ask? Why, God? Why do I ask? Just tell me why, okay? Please?

“Okay, Mom. Something for the kitchen, then.”

“Yeah. Maybe a new pancake turner? I don’t know. Don’t waste your money.”

She wants a spatula for Mother’s Day. The year before she wanted an electric can opener. Ugh. I give up.

At the time, I was still working in Westport. On my lunch hour, I walked down the hill, onto Main Street. I went into Williams-Sonoma to check out pancake turners. Yawn.

I was about to grab a bunch of spatulas (I thought I would buy a pretty kitchen towel, wrap it around the spatulas like they were a bouquet of flowers, tie it with a big pink ribbon…) when I saw it.

I gasped. Oh, my God, it is perfect!

It was the perfect gift. My mother was not a cook, like my grandmother. She knew how to cook; I was not forced as a child to endure burned meals or unidentified deep-fried objects. She just didn’t love to cook the way my grandmother did. My mother preferred baking, and she was really good at it. She loved to bake a cake for no reason (oh, but, man, she would make our birthdays perfect with her cakes), or cookies when she was bored. Her brownies were pretty famous in our family and in our neighbourhood. She made some fancy stuff, and made some basic baked stuff seem fancy. All of it was delicious. Cakes, cookies, breads, tarts, donuts, brownies… and pie.

Apple pie.

Macintosh apples, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, brown sugar, walnuts, and a handful of cornflakes crushed onto the bottom crust (so it wouldn’t be soggy). Other ingredients that I cannot recall at the moment. Perfectly golden, light, flaky crust. Simple. Delicious.

My mother didn’t bake anymore. By that time (late 1990s), my mom had changed; she lost her… well, joy (We did not know then that Dementia had begun; she hid it well at first.). My younger brother, Tadpole (who still lived with her in my grandmother’s old house) now did most of the cooking. Mom would fry herself a burger and onions once in a while; that was about it.

I hated the change in her. I wanted to hear her rattling pans and singing to herself while she baked (my mother had a lovely voice, even if she never thought so). I wanted to visit and have a food fight with her while I helped her peel apples, as we’d done a million times before.

I wanted a slice of apple pie… Mom’s apple pie. I had the recipe and I could make an apple pie well, but never the same. I wanted Ken to taste it and know the Heaven that only my mom could create.

I bought the apple-peeling contraption. I wrapped it in pretty floral paper and a pink ribbon.

She said she loved it.

She never used it.

I have it, now. Still in its box.

The kite – glued, painted, and glittered – must have taken hours to create. It took about two minutes to crash into a tree.

Immediately, the child began to wail.

My heart went out to the little girl. We all know what it is like to spend time and energy building something beautiful, only to see it wrecked a short time afterward. I think the feeling is magnified when experienced by a child. Crash, smash, thrash – Gone.

As sad as it was to watch… and hear (I hate it when little kids cry), it brought a sweet memory into my mind. I thought I’d share it with you:

We were both spending the weekend at my grandmother’s house, just up the road from the beach. After dinner on Friday evening, Cousin Steve and I went for our walk. He suggested, “When we get back, whattaya say we make a kite? We can fly it at the beach tomorrow.”

I bounced alongside him, clutching his hand. “That would be fun!”

“I tell you what,” Steve said. “I’ll make the kite, and you’ll paint it.”

It’s gonna be ugly. “But… you paint better than me,” I said.

He chuckled. “Better than I.”

“Okay. You paint better than I.”

Steve gave my hand a squeeze. “Says who?”

I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Everybody… you’re a painter!”

“Tch,” he said, pulling me closer to him. “What do they know?”

I laughed. “Okay, but don’t be mad if it looks stupid.”

“It won’t look stupid,” he assured me.

That night, Cousin Steve put the cardboard and thin wooden slats together. We covered a section of the parlour floor with newspapers. I began painting while Steve sat in the big chair in the corner, winding string onto a spool. My grandmother sat on her sofa and worked on her sewing; every so often she would remind me to stay on the newspaper-covered area of the floor, and tell me I was doing a good job.

I painted the kite a watered-down shade of sky blue.

I stood up. Steve leaned over and looked at my work.

“Just blue?” he asked.

“Not done. Have to let that dry a little,” I said in my most Professional-Artist voice.

“Oh, I see,” he said, nodding.

“Grandma, can I please have a dishcloth?” I asked. She went into the kitchen and came back with a battered, red- and white-checkered cloth.

“You can keep that one,” she said when I thanked her.

I scrunched the dishcloth into a messy ball and dipped it into a big blob of white paint. I pressed it onto the blue kite over and over, making messy clouds.

Cousin Steve gave me an interested “hm,” and put the spool down on the end table. He began flipping through a book I had brought with me (I never went anywhere without at least one book. I still don’t.).

“There,” I said, lifting the balled-up dishrag for the last time and looking over my work. Well, it isn’t as ugly as I thought it would be…

I stood up. “Done,” I announced.

Steve put the book down and leaned down a little to look at my sky-kite. I saw his forehead wrinkle, and then I frowned, too. What?

“Hm.” He sat up.

My grandmother looked over at it and said nothing.

“Is it that ugly?” I asked, a little hurt.

“It’s very nice,” Grandma said.

Steve leaned over again, an elbow on his lap. He rested his chin on his hand and thought for a moment. “Sweetheart… it’s very good, but… it’s the sky.”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “Cause it’s a kite. It made me think of the sky.”

He smiled at me. “But… if we fly it, no one will see it.”

Huh?

Steve then explained what “camouflage” meant. Once I understood, I giggled a little. So did my grandmother.

Cousin Steve didn’t laugh. He said, “Why don’t you paint something you like, Sweetheart? Make it your own…”

We use art to express ourselves. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard him say that. I guess I just wasn’t thinking of a kite as “art”.

What I painted on the cloudy sky-kite was a stick figure: A tall man with golden hair, blue eyes, and a big grin. I painted an oversized red heart over his stick-chest. I put a paintbrush into one of his hands and a palette in the other. I smiled as I worked; something I LIKE, huh?

When I finished, my grandmother looked at it, snickered and said, “He looks like someone we know!”

When Steve saw the kite, he kissed the top of my head.

I said, “It’s you!” even though I was pretty sure he knew.

He looked down at the kite and smiled. “Am I really that skinny?” he teased.

I nodded and grinned like an idiot. “And look; you’re painting!”

“Naturally,” my grandmother said.

The next day, we added a couple of ribbons and the string. We walked the kite down to the end of the road, to the beach. It took a little time and a lot of running back and forth, but finally, the kite bearing a stick-figure portrait of my favourite relative flew up into the sky.

I pointed and squealed, “Look, Steve! You’re flying!”

He winked at me and smiled. “That’s you up there, Sweetheart.”

It was raining. I had been crying all morning. I had been a bitch all morning, too.  I could tell that I was getting close to the end of Ken’s tether; I was about one and one-quarter remarks away from being banished to Don’t Talk To Me Anymore Land, if I’m any judge… and I am.

We were selling my mother’s television set. It was time to start getting our place cleared out and live-in-able again.

My family members took everything they wanted back in September, when we emptied the apartment next to ours. Mom’s place. Where she broke her hip. Where the end really began. They did not take much. Anything they left behind, Ken and I went through: anything that had no monetary or sentimental value went to the dump. Anything that was useful but unneeded by us was donated to whoever could use them. Mom would have liked that. The rest, we kept in boxes up here in the apartment and downstairs in our storage unit along with the leftover furniture that we will use when we move out of here to a bigger place.
 
That was back in September 2008. Now, it was the beginning of June 2009. I had not been looking through anything other than her journals (Those were boxed up, labeled, and stacked up neatly in our bedroom closet.). Ken and I were getting grumpy. I was getting mean.

Time to get moving again.

So, there we were in the parking lot at the Golden Gavel Plaza, one town over from us, on a rainy day, with my mother’s television set (She watched it every day, all day. That stupid TV was on all of the time.), wrapped in garbage bags.

And there was the Ghostbusters-mobile, Ecto-1.

What the fu–?

I giggled for the first time that day. “Look,” I pointed to it. “Who YOU gonna call?”

Ken laughed a little, but he was in a hurry to get (the television) in out of the rain.

I followed him, but walked backwards, checking out the weird car. It was the only car in the front lot besides ours. No one was in it. The Paranormal Society folks were either in the used appliance store that we were going into, or the liquor store. Everything else in that plaza is empty now (there used to be a really nice little supermarket there, back when we first moved to this area in 2001).

I walked in, saw no one but my husband and a clerk, and decided, yep, the ghost-guys are in the liquor store. Gonna be downing Ecto Sours tonight for sure.

Observing the exchange between Ken and the clerk, I nearly began crying again. Putting a dollar amount to something my mother loved… Snap out of it, Chiquita. It’s just a TV. My mother was much more practical than I have ever been.

We were there a total of ten minutes, and then, out into the parking lot we walked, Ken’s hand tight around mine.

Yeah. I think he still loves me.

The weird car was gone… and the liquor store was closed.

Long ago, and for a long time, I saw and experienced quite a bit of what falls under “paranormal”. Some of my interest in that stuff came from traits I shared with my maternal grandmother and my mother, and the tarot that they shared with me.

Snooks, a man I have known since just after my sweet sixteen, and one of my favourite people in the universe, was (and still is) into it, too.

It was an experience I shared with Snooks when we were in our mid-twenties that I thought of when I saw that weird ghost-guys car at the Golden Gavel Plaza. He and I have always kept the events of that evening to ourselves, partly because no one would ever believe us – they would either think we were crazy (or high, which was NOT the case; Snooks doesn’t do drugs, and I never smoke around folks who aren’t into pot. It’s part of my stoner policy), or worse, that we were making it up, which, under the circumstances, would have been highly inappropriate.

Snooks came to pick me up (we were both living in Historic Black Rock then) and we got some Chinese take-out; we brought it back to his place. Once we finished eating, we began calling our other friends to see what was going on that night. Not a single friend was home. We shrugged at one another: Oh, well.

We were on our own, which is not unusual on a weeknight, but it was Friday. Usually, Friday was the night we all met up.

Snooks had gotten some Runes. Could he try them out on me?

Sure.

He did a few readings for me. They were okay, I guess. He was reading the translations from the book that came with the little tiles, not reading me. But this was a new thing to him (and me!), so we’ll cut Snooks some slack (say that three times fast!).

“Wanna Ouija?”

Sure. Let’s talk to some dead people. What the heck? It’s Friday.

I was bored with the Ouija. Elvis is NOT in the house, Snooks.

We stood; he was going to put the stupid thing back in its box and I was going to go outside for a cigarette. The triangle moved.

We’d both seen it. Neither of us was touching the triangle, the board, or the table it was on. We looked at one another and at the same time, we accused each other of blowing on it or something, playing tricks.

It moved again, farther and more quickly this time.

We sat back down simultaneously.

“This isn’t funny, Snooks.” I was getting cold.

He shook his head and lifted his hands. “I swear it isn’t me!” He was sweating.

Well, it isn’t me. And it isn’t Elvis.

It moved quickly between two letters: T and G.

“What the heck?” I said. “I don’t get it.” I wrote the two letters down. Maybe it’ll come to me later. We didn’t know anyone with the initials T.G. who had passed on.

Snooks and I sat in silence, watching with our mouths open as the triangle then moved to the letters G-O-N-E. Then it went back to the two letters a few more times.

Then, the triangle moved to “good-bye”.  It didn’t move again.

I felt sad… but you see, I battle Depression (“The Black Pit,” I call it). I’m sad a lot of the time, so for me to think the sadness and the message from the Ouija board were connected seemed kind of ridiculous. Then I looked up to Snooks’s face: he was near tears. Remember what Grandma said: Listen to the little voice; it’s usually right.

“Do you feel it?” he asked me in a whisper. I nodded.

Snooks felt sick to his stomach. So did I.

Something is definitely not right. Mom? I dunno. Something. What the hell is T.G.?

I asked Snooks to drive me to my mother’s house. We stopped at my apartment so that I could pick up a change of clothes and then I stayed the night at my mother’s house. I didn’t dare tell her about the Ouija when she asked me what was wrong. She had warned me a few times to stay away from that kind of thing: Let the dead rest.

I slept in my old bedroom – actually, I didn’t get much sleep. I felt like I should have understood whatever that triangle was trying to tell me (I still feel stupid about not “getting it”). I kept going outside for smokes and pacing the front yard. I finally fell into a “real” sleep sometime in the wee hours.

The next day, my mother woke me up. Jeanne was on the phone.

My mother whispered with her hand covering the receiver: “She sounds upset.”

Our friend, T.G. had died the night before. He’d gone into a diabetic coma while alone in his apartment.                                                                                                     

While Snooks and I were calling everyone, everyone was trying to get in touch with T.G. He wasn’t answering his phone, but his truck was parked out in his driveway. Finally, the police (at the request of T.G.’s mom) broke in and found him. He died moments later.

I called Snooks right after I hung up with Jeanne. After a lot of crying – T.G. was a really great guy – we agreed not to tell anyone about the Ouija experience. We also vowed to never touch one of those things again.

He burned the board, I think. I won’t even look at one of those things. Let the dead rest.

All of this came to me because I saw the Ecto-1 in the Golden Gavel Plaza. For the first time ever, I shared the story… with Ken. We sat there in the parking lot and I told him everything. I didn’t expect him to believe me (I don’t really expect you to believe me, either), but that was all right. Lots of stuff has happened to me that no one would ever believe. I’m used to being laughed at or getting that “You Are A Weirdo” look.

Ken believed me. What he couldn’t believe was that I had never shared that (or any of my other Outer Limits Adventures With Snooks – and there have been some doozies) with him, my husband.

I drove home, his hand over mine all the way.

“I love it when you tell me stuff,” he said. He squeezed my hand. “I love you.”

Wow. He still loves me.

I recently made a lot of my previous posts private. Please don’t be offended, but I suddenly didn’t feel like sharing myself with anyone, not even you guys.

I felt like I was naked in front of a bunch of people I don’t know… Like I had been the only naked person at a party – hanging out for hours and hours and just suddenly realised, “I have no clothes on!” It was really uncomfortable.

I guess I put a robe on.