Tricia

My name is Tricia. It is not Patricia. My mother is Patricia, and as she likes to tell it she named me after her except with me she dropped the Paaaaaaaaaaa. Old men love to call me Patricia. In fact, they nearly insist on it. Some friends, (hi, Paul), like to call me Patty because they know I hate it. I liken being called Patricia to what it must feel like to be named Mathew or Kevin or Lance and called Pamatthew, Pakevin or Palance. Or even, (hi, Paul) Papaul. Calling me Patty is like calling someone named Joe, Dougie. But I am really not bitter about it. Some people say, "So Trish--oh, do you prefer Tricia or Trish?" To this, I can honestly say I don't have a preference. I will answer to either and though I almost always introduce myself as Tricia, Trish has a nice familiar feel that I am tending towards the liking of. (Did you like that passive voice there?)

I was born in Bridgeport, CT in 1976, which puts me at nearly 30. Boy! Lots has happened. Here is a list of highlights for children (as I recall—my memory has been questioned before, so there is that):

Year 1: There is a movie somewhere of my mother in a light blue maternity jumper with a red apple near the hemline. She is big with me. The film is super 8 and silent and in it, my mother is calling her mother (heretofore referred to as Mama) from the old rotary phone in our kitchen. She is playing a game of charades with the camera pointing at her belly, then giving the peace sign (which really meant bebe numero dos), and holding her arms up as though rocking an infant. At 5:43pm on the day that film was shot I popped into the world. At least I think that's the right time, which has always interested me because the hours of 5pm-7pm have always been particularly hard for me. “Family Time” as I have come to refer to them, the hours when the streets are full with the smells of London Broil. Though, now that I am building my own little family and not simply walking my dog along abandoned streets, “Family Time” is not as grueling.

Moving on (now, with less babble).

Year 1 cont’d.: (Don't worry, I won't remember as much from other years) Also the year I sat on my mother's lap at the kitchen table and pulled a scalding hot cup of coffee onto my chest. Which led to my mother's lifelong feeling of guilt and regret that she put the coffee on a paper towel which I, in turn, grabbed and pulled over me, but I hold not a stitch of grudge for this. Pulling that paper towel, however, landed me in the hospital with third degree burns up and down my body. With my weakened immune system (from the burns and from being a baby) I developed croup and the whooping cough and my mother thought I might die. But! I didn't. And though I still have liquid droplet scars along my chest, 1 turned out to be a good year. In it, I learned to say DaDa, No!, and Dop & Dop (which meant Stop & Shop).

Year 2: All I remember of this year (and the memory is solely from photographs) is that I wore a t-shirt whose front read "Here comes trouble" and whose back read, "There goes trouble."

Year 3: I began nursery school at Jack & Jill. Favorite Song: Little Bunny Foo Foo

Year 4: Still at Jack & Jill. Was once told not to get dirty because I had an appointment after school (for what, I don't know). I was wearing a grass green A-line dress with a stitched school bus and children along the hemline in reds and browns and yellows. I was also wearing bright red stockings. (Come to think of it, this (along with Christmas) may have led to my love of the color scheme Red & Green.) I was being so good and patient and when we went out to the playground to play, I told Miss Laurie I could not get dirty and proceeded to sit and barely rock on the rocking horse. When my mother came, I shot up off the horse and tore my stockings on a screw and immediately began crying. Miss Laurie smiled and said "And she was trying so hard!" This, is but the beginning in a long line of screw-ups. Ha!

Year 5: Kindergarten. First friend was a girl named Jennifer H. We sat in a circle on the floor on Alphabet tiles.

Year 6: My little sister, Liz, was born. I thought she was so cool even though she had a fat face and one hundred chins. (I can say that now because she looms over me at 6' and is as skinny as asparagus.) Miss Gates was my teacher and when we were good she would color one strand of our hair with whatever color magic marker we wanted.

Year 7: I chased Patrick White around the schoolyard and learned to subtract.

Year 8: More chasing of Patrick White.

Year 9: Yet more chasing, and I had been playing guitar to little avail for about 3 years.

Year 10: The dreaded Ms. Chikla! Did poorly in school for the first time. Still chasing boys, but less overtly. Began hairspray obsession.

Year 11: Grade 6. Phew! No more Chikla. Did better in school, began writing “for real,” after participating in Young Authors since the age of 6. Had my first “Reading” in which I stood before the 7th & 8th grade classes and read my poem “Tears Have Passed” which was written for Eric Z. (an 8th grader in my older sister, Tammy’s class) who was hit and killed by a drunk driver. (Side note: I think I stole that title from an Eddy Arnold lyric who, along with Willie Nelson, Elvis, Kenny Rogers, and Sophie Tucker were my musical heroes.)

Year 12: Often beat up by aforementioned sister, Tammy. But we loved each other. I will title my hairstyle in this year “Wind Beneath My Wings,” though luckily my hairspray obsession dwindles after this point.

Year 13: Unbearable crush on Dell. Often wore pink and white tie-dye with heart pin. Why didn’t someone stop me?? Favorite class: Mr. Cummings’s History.

Year 14: High School. Began it as a jock. Swim team, basketball, softball. I was never unpopular, but kept to myself. My mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

Year 15: Same stuff mostly though chastised for hanging around the wrong crowd—“the freaks”. Argued that I got good grades and ‘did sports’. My mother was convinced I was on drugs. I wasn’t. But since I was being accused, I dabbled. ‘Nuff said. Parents divorced.

Year 16: Quit sports. Joined newspaper and lit mag. Continuation of first real relationship with boy. He was much older. Let’s call it a learning experience. Mother, younger sister and self lived across town from father in the dreaded “Condo”. Older sister away at college.

Year 17: Editor of paper, editor of lit mag, president of ecology club. I was looking towards the future, folks! College college college! First heartbreak (finally). Mama gets sick and soon after dies from liver cancer several months before my 18th birthday. I miss her severely to this day.

Year 18: Begin second pivotal relationship with punk rock boy. Let’s call that a learning experience as well. Go to Marlboro College on top of a hill in Vermont with 249 other students. Hate it, but meet many people with whom I am still close and consider life-long friends.

Year 19: Transfer to Emerson College in Boston. Work at condom shop on Newbury Street, which mortifies my father. Live with punk rock boy. Hate Boston, move back to Vermont and go back to Marlboro when I recognize that love and hate are similar emotions.

Year 20: Hmmm, things are foggy here. I know I moved around a bit, Chicago for awhile, broke up with punk rock boy somewhere in there, took year off from school in there. The details are fuzzy. I spent some time on my uncle’s vineyard in North Carolina somewhere in here too.

Year 21: Back to Vermont, studying writing—poetry. Consider self “serious writer” (looking back on poems of this era is done with a certain amount of dread and longing for a time so engulfed in passion). Begin dating Mike, a romantic dunderhead (NOTE: by this, I am teasing--Mike is actually probably a genius, no lie), who is referred to by name because he is still among my best friends after 5-6 years together and a subsequent break-up.

Year 22: I think I graduated this year. Moved back to Boston where Mike goes to art school. I hate it and move, once again, to Vermont, after a brief foray to Alaska where older sister who used to beat me up now lives with her family (soon-to-be husband and son). In Alaska I make natural soap and beauty products, sleep a lot, take long road trips that lead to a knowledge only the icy traveler can know, from the day I leave Alaska onward, I lament that I did not take pictures. Not. A. One. (Talk about dunderheads.) This is also the year Iggy Ruffhouse enters the scene.

Year 23: Hmmm…gobble-dy-gook. I think I am in Vermont. My mother grows sicker as each year goes by.

Year 24: I don’t know. I am either in Vermont or Boston. I move back and forth between these two places regularly. Along with my older sister, I have moved my mother into assisted living.

Year 25: Ah yes, live under the Tobin Bridge in Boston for a while. Good friends Nora & Brian live upstairs. September 11th rocks my world and everyone else’s. My sister marries her baby daddy, my father marries his girlfriend of 10 years, Mike & I move in with his mom when I decided that my Masters in Architecture (I was enrolled in school and everything) was a pipedream.

Year 26: I decide on Photo school instead! Go to New England School of Photography. Spend way too much money, meet myriads of interesting people, and learn that I don’t have what it takes to be a professional photographer, but I sure do like pictures. Woo-hoo.

Year 27: This is the year Mike graduates from Art School, I graduate from Photo School, and we graduate from one another. This is also the year we move my mother into another assisted living home. Tammy is back in CT from Alaska with her family, dad and step-mom are happily married, Liz is at Marlboro.

Year 27-28 (Foggy, I tell you!): Let’s see. I move from Boston (after about 3 years there) to Connecticut (after about 11 years away). Move to New Haven and quickly fall in love with it despite every core of my being telling me I am crazy to move back “home”. Its grit and grime and creativity and little-engine-that-could-ness suit me. The plan is to get some distance from Mike and get closer with my family. Tammy and her family take me under their wings. I will be forever grateful. I lose 60lbs. Date a bunch of duds, and a couple of nice folks who just aren’t for me, nor I them. Make many friends. After many (many) jobs, I end up working at a frame shop where I meet one of my closest friends who also happens to be my boss. I meet many other people and get reacquainted on the Internets with a dude from college. Alex!

Year 28: Alex and I spend one afternoon together in the early summer of 2004. We laugh and play DOTS! And eat wings and drink beer at the Bidwell Tavern. Months later, he sends me a coconut in the mail. When I discover it, it is in a clear plastic bag in the hallway of my apartment building. I think it is dog shit that my neighbors left for me because the lightbulb is out and I have not cleared the backyard in awhile. Nope! It is a broken coconut with a “We’re sorry! Your package was damaged in transit” label from the post office. Come to find out, I was not the only one to receive a coconut from Mr. Alex that year, but I was the one to be quite touched by it. At Christmas, I receive an Amazon gift certificate from Alex for $19.99 it says “Party like it’s 1999” on it. I invite him to visit. He is supposed to after a trip to New York—where he is going to visit the other coconut recipient. He cancels at the last minute. I think, “Dud!” But he finally comes down a week or so later. It is cold. We walk to Mamoun’s and drink tea and eat falafel. I say “I like your hat” he says, “A girl I have a crush on made it for me.” I think, “Oh.” He goes home. Two weeks later we flirt online. I tell him I am selling my VW van and it is a shame I never made out with anyone in it. He says, “You’ll have to do that before you sell it!” I say, “I have no one to make out with.” He says, “I can think of someone.” I am confused. We make plans for him to visit soon. A few days later he tells me he wants to take me to see Life Aquatic because he just saw it and it is great. I agree. The night before he is supposed to come down I freak out around 3am and send him an email saying “Don’t come!!!!” He doesn’t check his email. At 9am I am in my pjs sleeping. The doorbell rings. I let him in and I take a shower. He plays guitar. I begin to like the idea. My roommate, MK, suggests that we need someone who plays guitar every Sunday morning. I concur. Alex and I wander around town. We end up in my bed. We do not kiss, but he puts his arm around me. We go to the movie. He smells like Nag Champa and man. A good smell. I make him drive home that night. He comes back the following weekend and brings candles, soda from the local soda company where he lives, wine and spaghetti squash. We sing songs while he plays guitar. By morning, I know I am in love. I sell the van and we never make out in it. 4 months later we are engaged, 7 months later, married. My mother cannot come to the wedding because less than a week before she falls down and cracks several ribs and hurts her leg. My father, my stepmother, my sisters, and in-laws, along with many friends are able to make it. We go visit my mother after the ceremony at the full care nursing home in which she continues to now reside. I am sadder about this--her not making it to the wedding, and living at this nursing home--than I have ever let on.

Year 29: I am married. We go on our honeymoon in Truro, MA and 3 days later I turn 29. We move to the middle of nowhere Connecticut into a concrete structure with radiant heat. Our neighbors are cows, literally. Iggy is 8 years old. I take a terrible job and quit it. I now work at a coffee shop making too little money with not enough hours and love it. I talk to Mike at least once a week. I am diving into crafting. I am attempting to surround myself with positive creative types. I read, I write a little. I want to write more. I just learned how to crochet. I crocheted 8 scarves between Thanksgiving and Christmas and gave 7 away as gifts. I am getting used to being married and do not question it in the slightest, but sometimes I feel like I need more room in the bed. But that’s ok, because Alex wakes earlier than me. Except today, since I finally have dental insurance and just had my wisdom teeth pulled though they should have been pulled years ago and am awake early because the painkillers are making me woozy and I decided to take my blogging life more seriously. From 2003-2005 you can read all about it at www.unringingthebell.blogspot.com. From now on, however, you can read about it here. Enjoy! (My husband just woke up and told me he had a dream about a bagel that was made out of sausage. Gotta’ love ‘em! No. Really. You've got to. Especially someone as cute and gracious and smart as he. Ahhh, love.)

Year 30: I am bound and determined--the 30s are my decade! I turned 30 at 5+/- months pregnant and am ecstatic to be out of my 20s! Spent the fall working on a festival at work, reading, and being pregnant. That's seriously about it. It's a quiet life in the Quiet Corner, but not all bad. My daughter, Georgia Maeby Green was born on December 18th at 3:30 in the morning. She spent the first 8 days of her life in the NICU. She has Down Syndrome (Buddy, can you spare a chromosome?) and I suspect it will alter the rest of the days of my life...but she would regardless, no? I am hopelessly in love with her, and so is my husband. She may make it more difficult for me to find the time to write here...or at least to write about anything other than glorious her! (Post Script: Somehow, she's making writing easier! Thanks, Georgia!)