When I was little, the kitchen was yellow. There was a little wooden table with two little wooden chairs that I ate lunch at everyday: peanut butter and jelly or bologna and cheese, usually. I wouldn't eat the bologna and cheese like a sanwich though; my mom had to roll the bologna up and make tooting noises through it first, and then I'd wad up the cheese and eat that next, and then wad up the bread and eat that last.
There was a crystal in the window; one of those snowflake-pendant things. It used to make little rainbow-sparkles all over the yellow walls. The dishwater in the sink used to catch the sunlght through the south window and make water-reflections on the ceiling. I sometimes watched those for hours.
My mom was singing one day as she made me lunch; some old song about San Francisco. And then she hummed the Rice-a-Roni song: "Rice-a-Roni: the San Francisco treat..." And she said, "Helena, if I was ever going to run away, you should look for me in San Francisco."
"Are you going to run away?" I asked, bewildered.
"No," she replied, realizing she'd freaked out her daughter.
"What's so good about San Francisco?" I asked, having no idea where San Francisco was, but having the vague idea that it was somewhere near Buffalo.
She talked about San Francisco. I didn't pay much attention. I was watching the water rippling on the kitchen ceiling, and the rainbows on the yellow walls.
"Or maybe I wouldn't go there," my mother mused. "Maybe I would go down to Lancaster and live with the Amish people."
I've never understood my mom's fascination with Amish culture. Although she can make shoo-fly pie with the best of them, she's a shitty housekeeper, and I really can't imagine her churning butter, wearing a bonnet, and attending church regularly.
Absently, childishly, I kind of ignored her dreamy little speech, and solemnly ate my bologna-horn and cheese wads.
I had two dreams last night that I can remember. The first was of the afternoon my mom told me her secret runaway-plans. Oh, she never did run away, and I don't think she ever really would have tried, but she had those plans; she knew where she'd go. I dreamed of that last night: of my mom's wide blue eyes and the yellow kitchen, and the bologna horn, and a conversation that meant nothing to me at the time...
When I got back to sleep, safely in Norman's arms, I dreamed another dream. It was of a hotel. It smelled like a hotel, anyway, and you paid a certain amount of money to sleep there for the night, but it looked like pictures of homeless shelters. And on the cement walls, there was red graffiti everywhere: mostly big red 7's and some drippy-looking designs that looked like blood. But it smelled nice, and I was happy. And outside, I knew, was some wondrous place I'd never seen before.
This wasn't my final destination, I knew. I'd been travelling, and this was a stop on my way. I had vague impressions of plans drifting across my dream: how I was going to get there, what time I was going to leave, what I was going to bring, who I was going to meet, what I'd have for lunch.
And in this dream, I suddenly realized I HAVE a place to go... I HAVE a plan for running away, exactly as my mother did. I've had this plan for a long, long time, as a matter of fact, but maybe it's only in times of real crisis that people realize how important their little subconscious daydreams really are.
I have a place now, in my mind. It's a place I've never been, and a place where I don't know anyone, not really. I DID know someone who lived there -- this guy from college who called me "gothprincess" all the time -- and I know OF a few people who live there, but no one really important... If I had to run away, I know where I'd go, and I suppose I'd have to do it all by myself. Which makes it all the more exciting.
I'm hungry... For the past 24 hours, I've been craving blackberries like you wouldn't believe.....
Have to go to work now.
Love,
~Helena*