Jun 17, right after showering following nearly 2 hours of working out:
“Ramon’s the only exotic dancer on the island, but we’re lucky to have him!”
I’m tucked under my snoopy blanket rewatching The Proposal for what must be the 100th time. Some 15 years ago, my mom and I would watch it every weekend. That was on top of our bi-weekly (and by bi-weekly I do mean twice a week) visit to the theatres. Back when a large popcorn, an ICEE and those fake cheese nachos didn’t run you $30.
I didn’t realize until recently how much those movie nights mattered to me. When I think about my career and film and what drew me to it in the first place, I’m not sure why that wasn’t the first thing on my mind. How lucky am I to have a great relationship with my mom? One that’s fostered my excitement for the most collaborative art form. She could force me into STEM or tell me to consider a career that’s more “respectable” but she likes who I am and she likes that I like what I like and I am lucky.
June 18, right after knocking the fuck out because of nearly 2 hours of working out:
This morning, I was tempted to jump full-fledge into why film matters to me, and why the idea of having the life of a filmmaker is so appealing despite the historically slim profits. Instead, I find myself more focused on my mother. I don't often hear stories about good relationships between mothers and daughters. I'm the middle child, too. Talk about uncommon.
One of the earliest memories I have is of me peeking behind the bathroom door, watching her applying bright pink lipstick in the mirror. Her eyes glancing towards me to see what mischief I've gotten into now, and I slowly approach her with a cut over my right eyebrow that I earned playing peek-a-boo with my newborn brother. She was pissed, and hoisted me up onto the counter before cleaning it with witch hazel, applying a healing creme, and placing a small bandage on it.
She's always paid close attention to looks, and has strived to preserve mine. Not in a way that has required me to eat less or perform some kind of 'pretty', but by holistic way of, "Please, whatever adventures you find yourself in, just be careful not to get so cut up and bruised." Being a tomboy made that difficult, but not impossible–I was always keenly aware of this advice and did my best to abide by it, if not of actual concern for my face, then for hopes of avoiding her frustration with me.
There's a lot more advice that she's given me, that I've swiftly rejected, nearly daily at the time. Things like, drinking is bad for your little kidneys, smoking weed is bad for the hairs in your little lungs, and other more ridiculous things like don't walk over manholes, which was inspired by a story about a woman in New York who died after falling into one. Some of this advice made me anxious, a lot of it, upset. In retrospect, I think her and I are a lot more alike than I could've ever possibly realized; by way of OCD, or something more simple, like deep concern for one another.
From my perspective, the most dangerous thing for her has always been her lack of follow-through with all that is creative. The photography classes she's talked about for years have yet to be enrolled in. I left my DSLR back home for her, and it's gaining dust. She's talked about the third-spaces that have popped up in now gentrified corners of Kansas City, and the workshops they host. Older women get together to make paintings and arts and crafts and I'm certain she still has the flyer in a drawer in a desk somewhere. Gaining dust.
"When I was in high school," she always starts, "I used to swim a lot. My hair would turn green." She has the scrapbook photos to prove it. "I used to paint," she always adds. I take her word for it, though there is not proof. It makes me conflicted sometimes: does there have to be proof? That's a different topic: the documentation of the process of making art being more alluring than the art itself. No, what bothers me is that there isn't a single painting of hers in our home. The arts and craft flower bouquets she made for her wedding are nowhere to be found either, and I can at least wrap my head around that one; but after years of being a creative force, where was her gallery? I don't want or have to visit a sterile warehouse in the Crossroads to find it, I was hoping it would be in our home.
-E