All Souls Day

 

I wish I had mournful tombstones and statuary to post today instead of this bright crisp statue involving bullfighting from the town square in Santa Cruz. Took the photo last February when my youngest child was visiting. 

Today being All Souls Day is already one of those days when I miss my father, miss him so badly it's nearly a physical ache. He loved Halloween and the day after. From the time I was a small child even November 1st found he and I at the family tombs in New Orleans. We cleaned them thoroughly on All Souls Day. Stopping only for a picnic lunch we brought with ourselves. I feel somewhat guilty now that once I married and moved first to Europe, and later up north in the States that I abandoned that duty.

After reading Kristina Kuzmic's story of her children's Halloween one year when she was an impoverished single mother I could not help but reflect on mine from 1983, mere days before I met my husband. I was a struggling single mother raising my daughter alone, going to college full time and working a pile of jobs trying to keep body and soul together. 

I remember that particular Halloween because I was in hype exhaustion mode that night, sweaty and still panicky that I'd somehow managed to get the rest of the books for my class, complete a big school project and scrape up enough money to pay the light bill. I'd worked at the university library, pulled a shift mixing drinks at a bar and sold an article to a travel magazine. My usual circle of chaos semi panicked state I lived in then.

What I remember the most was that this money and time crunch meant I had no funds for buying my five year old daughter a fancy costume. Every single time I managed to figure out what state my ex had decamped to and started trying to get my child support order enforced he moved again. 

That night I've cut up an old soft pink blanket, fashioning cat ears and a tail out of them, dressing my daughter up in pink pants and sweater, pink socks on hands and feet and I had done an elaborate cat makeup all in pink. I've seen the pictures from that night, and it turned out wonderfully. I just remember that night feeling like I'd ultimately failed horribly as a mother yet again because of poverty and busyness. 

We couldn't even trick or treat at the slummy apartments we lived in, tucked behind a bar and a 7-11. No lights on, no one with kids there but I. We'd walked down to the next neighborhood, which turned out to be one of the nicer ones in town, wide streets named for places in the movie "Gone With the Wind." My daughter did her kid thing, while I stood by at the curb, worrying about the next day because I knew my father expected me to go with him on grave cleanup, yet knowing I had an eight am German class, and a shift at a restaurant I sometimes waited tables at, followed by an evening shift at the library.

I look back and I have no idea how on earth I summoned up enough energy to do all the things I did in those days in an attempt to keep the roof over our heads and to keep paying my tuition at the state university. 

That's the thing I remember most that night, feelings at rock bottom, like I failing in every way, and disappointing all the people I loved in my life. I had no idea I was right on the cusp of a huge breakthrough, taking a regular job I could support us on that would pay a good chunk of my tuition and arrange my work hours around them. That I was soon to meet my soul mate.

I look back then, thinking how much I hated my stressful life of sacrifice and hurry hurry, never dreaming that all it would take was a few of the right changes clicking into place to turn everything around. I think about that time a lot when I'm going through hard times. I'm not personally going through rough times, but I am witnessing friends and family struggling right now, and I have to keep telling myself that their breakthroughs might just be right around the next corner.

One of the things that might happen in my newly retired life is that if some of this continues I might have to go back home to Louisiana to family, to figure out what is next for my family members. The times they are in flux again.

I don't want to. I know tickets are horrendously expensive. It resets my visa which is currently valid until late March. I'd be forced to buy expensive tourist insurance to cover my rear if I get COVID in CR. I'd take greater chances of exposure to COVID just by the dint of being back in the States. I'll be putting out money to live in a hotel because I'm not living with any of the drunken Cajuns that make up my family. I like peace, quiet and sobriety. But... unless those breakthroughs happen quickly I see no way around it.

In all the years Jim and I have been together we've rarely been apart more than a few days. This is going to be one of those times and I'm not looking forward to it. I cannot sleep if the big lug isn't in the bed.