Memoir

My family was normal
by all accounts,
Midwestern Minnesotans
who smiled often
where children never listened
to bickering parents,
where raised voices were considered
a sin – worse than chewing with a mouth open
and full of sea food on Sundays.

My family was normal.
My father was a Navy man from North Dakota
wanting to get off the farm
for adventures in foreign lands.
My mother a quiet Lutheran girl
from a small college town
went to nursing school to avoid becoming a wife,
to use her brain and kindness away from the daydreams
at an ironing board.

When they met
normally they might not have clicked—
sparked with that flame that ignites romance.
It was too nice,
too predictable for two people
who just wanted to get out
to get into this ark of our family
to weather the storm of the 60’s.
My parents weren’t free love kind of people,
or civil rights activists.
They weren’t sure what a feminist was,
and they didn’t inhale or pop pills.
Instead they crawled into each other
and followed the commandment to be fruitful
and multiply two by two
boys and girls
in love.

My family was normal.
After the Navy, my father took up his hammer,
the carpenter built things sturdy as oak.
My mother dug her small hands deep
in the soil and rising dough.
Back on the farm my father wanted out of
my parents built our foundation on normal.

I was 12
and in my still little girl body
and my ancient mind began planning
her escape into silent words
that didn’t fit in,
didn’t accept plain talk
that hid all the truth of change
like a deep scar.
My flat chest
and pure freckled skin
covered all the tracks
of my inner journeys
my family couldn’t know.

The freedom train of possibility
traveled in my blood.
The trail of tears
wore away my bones
like an escaping prisoner
doing time.

My family was normal
and on the farm it was right and good
for a girl to wander into the fields at night
and lay her body down in the deep grasses
and watch the brilliant night unfold herself
from the cloak of twilight—
each star reminding her
that it was possible to hope
for something
more.