My hair is cut at the crown to stand up on its own, and while the style requires some product to give it that just got out of bed, but I want it to look this way, I’m a total unabashed hair product whore.

Wax, paste, styling serum, pomade, gel, mousse, molding cream, spray, fixatif, root boosting formulas…endless varieties of product litter my bathroom. If I never bought another jar, can, or tube of hair crack, I would die with a bucket full of stuff that someone would have to throw out. But I buy it anyway. And I will. And I know I will. So I just keep making room.

Some work. Others are over priced VO5. Sticky or paste like, but I can’t  throw them away. Sometimes I toss them into the trash, but almost immediately take them out. Action reminiscent of someone trying to stop smoking. They toss their smokes in the trash, take them out, and instead of smoking in the house, they go outside. That’s me. I’m on the back porch with my Newports.

There are things I wish I could get rid of, but instead the same unnecessary items get put back in their place after I clean house each and every time. I drag useless things with me from house to house, apartment to apartment, from coast to coast, and back again. I spend my valuable time carefully wrapping household items I haven’t used in forever and a day.

My eight white soup bowls have been wrapped in newsprint, placed in cardboard boxes, and unwrapped at least six or seven times in what becomes my newest home. Recipes for curried lentil, split pea and hearty vegetable soup are part of my repertoire, but given a choice these days I would rather write than chop onions, so my sturdy knives stay in their block and i eat salad in my soup bowls.

There is no dining table in my apartment to even put eight soup bowls on, and my kitchen is too small for any sort of table at all. Most of the time I sit on my bed eating something that has little chance of spilling.

The flatware I love has service for eight, but I never invite anyone over for a shared meal. There’s a rolling-pin in my cabinet, next to the casserole, and baking pans I have very little use for. My fifteen quart All Clad stock pot has been stockless for years.

I work eight hours (or more) a day, write and do research many nights, and go out often, leaving very little time, or interest for anything domestic. But I am at heart what in Yiddish we call a “balabusta.”

That means I’m hardwired to clean crevices with a toothbrush. It means I cook well, and that my bed is always made. It literally means a good housewife.

My marriage gave me the opportunity to have success with the house , not so much as the wife.

My ordinary possessions have been my constant. Serving spoons and forks that don’t serve, books that haven’t been read for some time, shoes unworn since 1990, but are classic, I keep all these things. I love them, and am attached to my utilitarian objects.

Unimportant objects and things that clutter corners of an otherwise organized space.

Small plastic bags containing the buttons that come with newly purchased clothing are kept in my sewing kit, while still others are hastily shoved into the drawer with my socks and underwear.

The replacement button the manufacturer supposes will be needed someday when one button goes missing. I have these bags. Some are labeled, at the ready, with every intention of using the lone button. In fact I anticipate the loss just so I can smugly go into my stash and get the one perfect match. But alas, it’s always the button I didn’t keep that falls off unnoticed. Hope springs eternal. There will come a day when the button I need will be the button I actually have.

All this stuff. My three girls will keep what they want when the time comes, the rest will get tossed, given away…it won’t matter.

Something spills in the refrigerator at just the wrong moment, I’m late, have to leave, plan to clean it later, with the intention to remove everything from the shelves. Wipe clean any and all jars caught in the crossfire, and wash the entire refrigerator. Repair the damage and leave it faintly smelling of lemons. Instead I come home late and forget it happened. The liquid dried and became colorless. It may have been a slow syrupy trickle, or an avalanche of goop, but in either case it made it’s way from the back of the top shelf into crevices of the second and third shelves. Pooled into unseen sections rarely cleaned, but undeniably there. It stays this way for so many months it appears as if it’s always been this way, always.

That is how certain people have harnessed my heart. The slow drip of emotion that I haven’t found storage for. No cabinet, no drawer, no under the bed container to house the memories of people I’ve cared for. There’s no place for them. No place for what hasn’t worked. No place for a heart that’s been broken. No place for wishing what might have been. I can sort dusty bins of objects I don’t need, delete names from contact lists, and block email addresses, but feelings don’t  get neatly filed, or strategically categorized. They’re messy, and uncontainable, and not deletalbe.

They’re under the bed, they’re in the drawer, they scatter my stillness when that cabinet is opened. They’re everywhere. The friends I don’t see anymore. The lovers I don’t kiss. The men that haunt me.

They’re still here, and will always be. They’re mine.

Songwriters: Bush, Kristian; Nettles, Jennifer; Pinson, Bobby;

Life don’t go quite like you planned it

We try so hard to understand it

Irrefutable, indisputable

Fact is it happens

Ain’t no rhyme or reason

No complicated meaning

Ain’t no need to over think it

Let go laughing

Zazu is my youngest daughter. When she was eight she and my two other daughters then ages ten and twelve went to live with their father – permanently. After seven years of joint custody he sued for, and won sole custody of our children.

“Your children will not be coming home with you Miss Slaughter” said the judge. I could compose a sentence to tell you what I felt, but no need. Those of you who are parents can imagine, those of you that aren’t can also imagine how the breath left my body. I remember driving home on the Westbound 10 freeway in Los Angeles at about twenty miles per hour, blinded by tears.

I sat at the dining room table in our Venice house for what might have been days, and I never turned the lights on.

My girls are now seventeen, nineteen and twenty-two. We are, and have been reunited for sometime. I started Raw Candor to tell this story. I could not tell you straight away. I needed to introduce my candid, truthful, sometimes funny self. And I did.

I had a conversation with my children to ask them how they each felt about me telling my story of Parental Alienation, because it truly is our story. By virtue of me going public each of my daughters is exposed. I am willing, they are willing, we are willing.

Parental Alienation Syndrome became my badge of shame. I will write more about the experience of always believing that my girls and I would be able to openly love each other again, and what it required from me to keep that focus.

On February 4th I will be speaking at the unconference Heartcamp, an informal conference modeled after the technology driven Barcamp conference. I will be speaking about Parental Alienation.

I look forward to meeting you.

With deep appreciation and gratitude for reading raw, and warmest wishes for keeping an open heart and mind.

Jill

Heartcamp http://heartcamp2011.sched.org/event/01272e250a35da4ed0d8f32583305213