The Jobless Goddess

   I was orphaned in my 40s. First my dad died when he was 67, then beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, my mother followed not so long after. No one expected her to go. She was such a presence.    My mother called me every Wednesday and every Sunday for 25 years. Every vacation I had during those years was spent traveling from the east coast to Missouri, Mississippi or Illinois to see her and my dad.    Then after 25 years, there were no more phone calls, no more trips to plan.    It’s been more than 10 years since I lost my dad and my eyes still well up when I hear Hank Williams or Johnny Cash on the radio. Memories come in a flood and take me back to the Midwest. It’s dark out and I’m riding in the car with my dad and we’re going to Krey Packing House in St. Louis where he’ll drop off the meat orders to be picked up the next morning in his refrigerated truck with Cissell and Sons painted on the door. While he drives down highway 55 we tal...

    Can you have an infatuation with an entire country? Not its people really, because I have only a slight acquaintance with someone from this place. I mean the country itself.     Ever since I was in middle school I've had a love affair with Russia. I know. It's not really popular right now. I was keeping this on the down low.     In high school I took Mrs. Berryman's Russian history class and that really cemented the relationship. She even brought borscht to school for us, and the sour cream for on top.     She was a sort of scatterbrained type, Mrs. Berryman. She had my older brother Steve in a different history class and there's a story about how he and his best friend Jack covered the outside of a quarter with heavy pencil and then convinced her to roll it over her face several times as some sort of experiment.     Anyway, I loved that class. It was full of seniors and I was a junior so that made it eve...

    So why is it when you're 12 you can't wait to be 24? And when you're 24 you can't wait to be 28? And then all of a sudden you're 52 and you wonder what the hell just happened? And to top it all off, more times than you care to admit, you still feel like you're 12 even when you're 52.     I think it's best to give up on the whole age categorical pigeon-holing process. It's not reality. It's more a prolonged wives' tale of sorts. One the whole universe has bought into.     Everyone tells us when we're growing up something like, "Just you wait until you're older. Wait until you have kids of your own. Wait until you pay your own rent…"  And we're young and we believe it and we get real nervous about turning 20 and we think about  paying our rent and heat bill, not to mention food and cable.     Then the next thing you know we are 20 and we can't wait to get out of our mother's house. We're drinking out of pic...