MFA Mama

On up

   International moves, man. Shit is TRIPPY. I am simultaneously having to track down information from four branches down my family tree and get rid of 99% of what I own. Sell this, use the money to buy a certified copy of that. Ooooh, is that a real gold seal? Suddenly I am in regular contact with the State Department and agencies whose names I cannot yet pronounce overseas. 
   A friend innocently asked if the boys would want any of the animals we are leaving behind. I said I had no way of asking; I’m pretty sure I’m blocked from contacting them and they weren’t sentimental about throwing ME away so probably not. My ex and his bad seed have probably either killed me off or made me out to be the monster under the bed.
   In case anyone was worried, Katy now lives in the Silicon Valley and looks down her nose at tapwater, and the barncats and canine contingent are going to the same home in a few weeks. The skins of course will come with us, and that in and of itself is a production that gives me hives, but if I submit all the right paperwork to all the right places, carry the one and fly into the right airport they won’t be quarantined and will go straight to our new home by taxi with us.
   Man, I’m going to miss the Prius.
   Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve found a loving home for my Longhorn skull. It’s a lovely specimen but I can only bring three suitcases where I’m going, so!

13

   Today my youngest and dearest Little Child, my baby, turns thirteen. 

   I just got back from my trip to the Bay Area, which was successful (Katydid has the very absolute BEST of homes! Yay!). It was also peaceful...except a couple of times my hosts’ son was having some hard feelings, but overall it was a privilege to meet that kid. He is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, kind of like my youngest child. He’s even super-picky and mostly only likes filets, wild mushrooms, artisanal cheeses, and fruit (oh and dessert) but his family is able to indulge him. He gets to fully explore his interests and develop talents every which way, and I watched and thought “what if...”

   At thirteen you’re no longer a little child, though, and I can’t use your real name...how about I call you Judah? That’s what I wanted to name you, but your father said you’d be bullied. That’s horse shit. Judah means praise, praised one. From his name were derived the words Jew and Judaism. He was a pretty big deal, and so are you, my bright and talented miracle baby, and it breaks my heart every day not to see you but especially this one.

   Please, kid. Just. Please do not make friends with anyone who thinks Hitler is cool, or uses the n-word without themselves being black. Swastikas are not okay. People who are proud of symbols of hate (including Confederate flags) ought to be educated, and if they cannot be educated, shunned. I think that’s where I went wrong with your brothers, I was too lenient in who I let them be friends with (in part because they struggle to make friends). You I think (hope) possess the discernment they lack, and you certainly don’t struggle getting others to like you.

   I wanted to get you something. I agonized for months but anything I mail your dad’ll intercept and I don’t know your sizes or what you like or even where you go to school. Plus I’m broke from International travel related to my upcoming move, so anything I can afford you’ll probably not find good enough. But I love you, and I believe in you, and I will never not want to know you. Love, Mom

Tomorrow begins a season of travel for me; first to San Francisco (with a cat! I’ve never flown with a cat but we are having to rehome some pets before the big move so here goes nothing?) and then to Turkey and Transylvania* in October. After that I lap back to the US to liquefy our remaining assets and pack up what little we’re taking with us while Transylvania prepares our visas, and with any luck I will be turning forty in our new homeland.

It will all happen as it should, and that will have to be enough. For what I do have (my life, a spouse who truly loves me, two sweet hairless kitties, health that is holding up astonishingly well, a religious community that has welcomed me with open arms, a couple more months of driving my dream car, and the fortitude to carve out a niche for my tiny household and support it wherever we go), I am grateful.

Mary M Zellmer may have stolen the $16,000 our father tried to leave me, but he also left clues that led me down a twisted path to citizenship in his mother’s homeland. And America is a stolen country full of deplorables, ghosts, and monsters, in my opinion, so back to my roots I go! 

   Onward!

 

* No, not really. Transylvania just makes me smile and I don’t want to name our new homeland until we are there.

first

   Today marks the start of the first academic year not to impact my daily life since 1981. 

   It’s weird as hell. I am not working on a degree, nor am I teaching. I have no children in my home. I haven’t bought a single school supply or lunch ingredient, logged into Blackboard, filled out any Emergency Cards...but I did start the process of converting to the national religion of Transylvania* since it so heavily permeates the local culture, business hours, and daily life over there. It’s also a faith I can get behind, with breathtaking rituals and moving symbolism, and the repititious nature of services will hopefully accelerate my learning of the national language? We’ll see. 

   If you’d told me ten years ago I would be moving to ASIA and attending multiple weekly religious services...well. 

   Life is brutal, but also strangely beautiful, like a beach storm that destroys everything you own but leaves a perfect natural glass sculpture in the sand that you find while picking through the wreckage. It doesn’t make the devastation worthwhile, but you’ll still pick it up to display somewhere once you figure out where home will be now because how many people have even seen one of those, much less found it themselves?

   My Middle Child would be starting at the high school a block from my house this year...he had a lot of health problems and was possibly being held back, and we got a wrong-number call from a SURGEON about him, and I don’t know what district my ex has them in...that boy was so GOOD. I have no idea what happened to him; when his older brother clicked over from “maybe conduct disorder?” to full-blown psychosis I hate to say it, but...no one was surprised. That kid was always just...off. Weird. Creepy. I’d introduce him to a friend and they’d wait until he walked away to hiss “what’s WRONG with him?!?” Middly though, he was, or maybe I should say “he seemed” SO sweet. Polite, kind, the consummate Boy Scout, hardworking, positive...I think my ex and his evil spawn must just have him snowed, I don’t know. I still can’t wrap my head around how quickly and completely that kid turned.

   My littlest one...damn, y’all. I don’t know. I kept him alive for three years by never being more than arms-length from him. He didn’t go to preschool because of his feeding tube, so instead he was my little copilot. Man, I loved that baby! Especially since I felt I’d “stolen” him (the XY had a vasectomy but didn’t follow instructions and I was the only one who wanted that child, particularly after he was born sick). He’s still so young! I feel like he must just get a lot of pressure from his father and brothers to think the worst of me? I don’t know. I have a photo of my father as a toddler and they look so alike; it hurts my heart that I won’t be able to keep watching him grow. 

   I went back and forth on whether to try and see those two before I leave the state, but they didn’t even want dinner visitation and I think I have to protect myself in this, since my good, loving children as I knew them no longer exist. Seeing the hate on the faces of what is left would be more than I could bear. Better to try and make of their memories a blessing.

   Goodbye, my sons. I loved you so, and no matter how awful you were to me I still want you to be happy.

   We all deserve that.

* No, not really. But I’m not naming our new home country until we are settled there and “Transylvania” makes me smile. Sorry, Real Transylvania!

San Francisco

   For a person who does not love to travel, I sure am doing a lot of it! This time I am going to San Francisco in a few days* to celebrate a Transylvanian holiday with friends (and give Katy over into the care of her new loving family). 
   Are you in or near San Francisco? Want to meet up? If a lot of people speak up I might not be able to get to everybody, particularly since there’ll be a lot of religious and cultural events I am very interested in learning more about going on while I’m in town, but I am fairly certain this will be my last trip to California. 

* Hotter and a couple of pitbulls will be home though, lest anyone new to this blog think I have stuff worth stealing besides the Prius, which will be in the car hospital while I am gone**
** An American woman rear-ended me. It’s super-minor. I am fine, my back and neck don’t even hurt any more than usual, and the car has an inch-long scratch in the paint of the bumper. If the other driver had apologized and offered to pay for damages I wouldn’t have even reported it, but instead she came beating on my window telling me *I* was going to go to jail for not driving faster. So her insurance company can repaint my bumper. Americans: SO RUDE.

Mary M Zellmer is a thief

   This is just to say that LtCol (Ret) Mary M Zellmer, a.k.a. Mary M Mudd, nee Mary Michael, is a) my half-sister and b) a goddamn thief.

   My father’s life insurance and pension were through the same entity, which didn’t know he was dead until I recently tried to collect his life insurance. So they’d paid $16,000 of pension benefits into his bank account, which he left to her after she helped him out financially (his reasoning being that she could recover any unused funds she had gifted him after his death). And she took that money so they didn’t give ME (his beneficiary) the life insurance.

   It may be that because she legally had access to that account, she did not TECHNICALLY commit a crime, as she would know being a retired attorney, but the thing is neither did I up there. The defense against libel is truth (as I as I retired professional writer well know) and bitch, YOU STOLE MY INHERITANCE. You know you did wrong or you wouldn’t have forbidden our mutual sibling to share your contact info. 

   So tell me, are you still at 621 Orlando Ter #5409, Dayton, OH 45409? Or
7809 Hills Dales, Massillon, OH 44646? Is your husband Milton E Zellmer a.k.a. Mickey still living? I haven’t bothered checking for a death cert because see, I’m kind of poor for some reason and vital records cost money (as do attorneys).

   Oh hey are YOU still doing pro bono legal work? Does the Ohio State Bar know you’re a goddamned thief? Do you still attend the Unitarian Church and donate to charity? Do you tell the charities you stole that money from family? I have so many questions, and you changed your phone number. Still, if reading this makes you want to catch up, I’m moving internationally but can be reached through this blog! As with anyone, if something I’ve written on here bothers you and you want me to take it down, all you have to do is reach out and ask.

crime scene

The courthouse where I was divorced is a god damn crime scene as far as I’m concerned. Visits to that edifice over the decade my ex-husband spent using the US family courts system to break me mark the lowest points of my life, and today, as Hotter and I picked up a copy of our marriage certificate for Transylvania’s* immigration department, I said a little prayer aloud that I never see it again.

* Haha, no, not really. Sorry, actual Transylvanians, I just don’t want to say what country I’m REALLY going to until I’m there and the name of yours makes me smile.

Turkey-lurky

   Hello! WTF? OMG! 

   I feel like I used to know someone on here who lived in Turkey. DO I know someone from the blog who lives in Turkey? 

   I’m spending a random layover in Turkey this Fall, because life is super-weird. WHY NOT.

   Are you the literal Turkey lurker? Give a shout out, maybe we can have non-creepy coffee and both hold onto our own beverages at all times or something :)

OH at Kroger

1: Oh hey we need OxyClean.
2: For what?
1: White laundry?
2: What white laundry? What do we have that’s white that we care about? Anything we’re taking to Transylvania?*
1: NOPE!
2: Well then.

* Haha, no, not really. But that will be the new country’s blog-name until we get there.

to my lost boys

   I loved you. I loved you. I loved you.

   I still do, but if I’m going to survive until you are of an age to possibly understand what your father took from us all and want to find me and know me, I have to leave America and go somewhere where I have access to healthcare. 

   It might be a cultural memory, or maybe it’s the Romani blood that runs through all of our veins, but all my life I’ve had dreams and flashbacks of having to gather those I love and flee. After you left I stopped dreaming of taking you with me, or rather you aged in reverse over the months until you were babies again, my beautiful babies, and then one night in a dream when I was fleeing through a forest in the dark, I looked down and what I thought was the two of you in my arms was just the Skins.

   I love those damn cats, but I still woke up crying.

   I will always wonder how it might have been between us without the desperation of being trapped in a sinking democracy by your father and the family court system. Leaving the country costs so much less than leaving your father did. 

   I plan to offer, before I leave, to sign paperwork granting my permission for you to get passports. I hope you’ll ask your father to do that for you, just in case. If we’re ever to find our way back to each other you need to be alive, too.

   The last thing my father ever did for me was leave me a way out. I hope it’s not the last thing I ever do for you, but it will definitely be the last thing I do before I leave America. If your father loves you even a little bit as much as I do, he’ll grab you and flee when the time comes, and if not I’ll know I did everything I was allowed to do.

   I loved you so much. I’ll never not wish I could have taken you with me instead of the cats. Maybe it’s better, if you had to stay, that you do it with someone who can teach you to lie and cheat and steal, I don’t know, nothing makes sense here anymore.

   I hope you remember that before your father taught you anything mean or ugly, I loved you.