Chanel dreams

Chanel no. 5 & Chanel 2.55

      Here in the one stoplight town of Sandston, Virginia; built on the outskirts of the Chickahominy swamp, how practical is it to dream of Chanel? I was a elementary school age girl in love with a Marilyn Monroe biography that I checked out of a library so many times they should have just given me the copy. That book is still on my bedside table today. When I was old enough to get my first bottle of grown up perfume, my mother bought me Chanel no. 5, because she said that was Marilyn's favorite perfume. I was having a wow moment like all teenage girls. No more drugstore little girl perfume in the candy pink bottle. I had Chanel in the center of my dresser. The black case, the sleek lines. No eighties high school fashion could stand the test of time next to it. When I got older and past my coordinating outfits from Express circa 1990 my taste in fashion magazines evolved. No longer was it that interesting to read a magazine that described the best way to perform oral sex and how to get and keep your man. You can walk down the aisle at a supermarket and get a man. Check out reality tv and you can see a chick juggling a dozen. What sparked my interest was Vogue and pictures of the Chanel 2.55. Coco Chanel's iconic bag named for its debut in February 1955. That was a real goal, not how to get a man with tramp tricks 101. How could such an expensive bag be a goal in this economy in small town USA? Simply for what it represents for me. Yes it is an image of timeless style, an elegant bag that will still be in style in fifty more years. But the root of dream is how much you have to have your act together just to afford it. Yes it is an object of cost that most of Americans will never afford in this economic standstill. In some cases one bag is more than a semester or even a whole year in a community college. To own one bag without being financially stupid all that money would have to be completely separate from your necessities of life. A roof over your head, a working car with a full tank of gas and a great job that you have been at forever and will always be there. Then when you have everything you need, you can cut out that awesome coffee, pack your lunch, and then decide even if you can afford it after being financially responsible is it an ok purchase? That is what my goal is, to someday be so financially secure that beautiful bag could be mine.

White linen and pink rhinestones

White linen and pink rhinestones

Think about 1991. I was 21 and hair metal was oh so something or another. Big hair and bad clothes reigned supreme and I thought I was rocking them both while for four whole months I worked as a stripper. Before you get any judgmental panties in a bunch, please note I don't care about anyone's opinion of me. After all, reputation and opinions are what people whisper behind your back when they don't know you well enough to know your mamas name. I was not some naive little girl that got victimized by a cruel cruel world. I was a grown up and it was a job, and I had a damn good time. It was a hoot. In my current state of chubbiness, if I ever got that skinny again somebody is gonna have to duct tape the clothes on me. When I have extra pennies I would love to take a burlesque class. I would shake my butt and have a blast taking a fun dance class. Throw on the sequins, ruffles on the butt retro panties and call my self Miss Cherry Sunshine. Hence the name of the blog.
           In my time at the gentlemen's club named Greca I regret the awful neon tie dye costume with ugly long fringe. Think Randy Macho Man Savage in the eighties, but a thousand times worse. Not all my fashion choices were cringe worthy. I had a white linen blazer that was perfect. The lines were crisp and simple. I wore it with a pink silky polka dot button down. Think Julia Roberts by the pool in "Pretty Woman". I even had the spiral perm to match. My roommate and best friend, a platinum blonde stripper named Electra wore said jacket with a rhinestone bra. Sadly the jacket did not last the test of time. It was dry clean only and I was young, fashion dumb and washing machine only. The only item that survived from that summer was a bleached and ripped up Levi's jean jacket covered in studs and pink rhinestones. And with that, I hope the rest of your day sparkles as my old jacket.



           

Miss Cherry Sunshine

          Miss Cherry Sunshine, my blog. This is me jumping into the deep end of the pool. I love to write, it's all I think about. I love words, I'm the kind of girl that will search for a antique dictionary. One of my favorite old words is haint, a very old reference to a ghost. My first essay is a small introduction to myself. I took it from a letter to my sister. We didn't speak for twenty five years because of how bad my mother abused her. My mother was mentally ill her whole life, and my sister just couldn't have a relationship with me until after my mother died.
          Not all my essays will be sad, as time goes by I hope to include travel, food, lifestyle and more typical blog post. And if you stick around, a sneak peak of my first manuscript will be happening soon!
"well-behaved women seldom make history." Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Dear Sister,

        I thought about you today. I was at a farmers market on Pole Green Road and I was thinking of this little notebook. I wonder if you ever go to farmers markets and do you like it? I love the simplicity of it. Going on a bright sunny day. Feeling and hearing the gray gravel crunching under my feet. I always look at the tomatoes first hoping for a big green tomato. Watching the honeybees flying slowly around the fat peaches. I wonder are they too drunk off the nectar to be a bother. All the signs are just old lunch bags with black marker. Just a simple day. A sweet memory. I wonder how to pick which ones to share, I can't fit them all in here but I wish I could. 

        My daughter was just beautiful. I could just look at her and just fall in love with her all over again. She was just a happy little baby and she was just fun. Easy going, not a picky eater. My doll baby. The first time I tried to breast feed she was trying to latch on and we both were not quite in line. She took her little fist and smushed it into me scootched my breast into the right spot, she latched on and that was it. Dinner bell was rung.

        Not every memory is sweet and kind. Some are melancholy. A sad song playing on a piano somewhere, always in the background, a broken record of a memory. A memory that can't be changed or fixed. I can remember the moment that I realized I could no longer remember what our Daddy's voice sounded like. I was in my mid twenties and there it was his voice was gone. That was a sad memory. Trying to bring back things he said to me, only to hear my voice saying his words. 

       To compare what memories get lost along the way, and which ones get etched down to the bone. The scarification of my mothers disease on every aspect of my life. How I can still hear the shrill screaming every time she became manic. The words she chose to use against me. Then last week I saw a popover pan and I could hear her promising to make me popovers when I was little. I was so sad from grieving her I wanted to cry right there in the store. I can remember her picking daffodils for me when I was six as strong as I remember all the bitter words.

       Her illness did give her the kindness of forgetting the bad things in her last years. There was a day I came home from work and she was sitting there crying. She had been watching afternoon tv and there was a bipolar mother that had truly abused her children. My mother was crying at the thought had she ever treated me that bad. She could not remember my childhood at all. There was my mother and she just looked so fragile, it was so alien to me. In that moment I could have been cruel and spewed all the venom in the world. And you more than anyone know that it would have been truly honest. But I didn't. I held her soft weak hand and said "no sweetie you weren't like that at all. Yes ma'am my childhood was fine."

       My daughter and I barely talk about the bad times with my mother. It's a past that is shared and equal, with silence to cover up the parts we want to edit out.

       There are many things that I wish I could edit out like someone fudging there resume. I would edit out LA Boy and all the money I wasted dating a commitment phobic rock and roll roadie. He'll let's get rid of prom date Boy too. Well then while we are on this page I wanna get rid of everybody I ever dated before my husband. There was a whole lot of what the hell was I thinking. The cheesy boy that took me to the beach and literally got me bitten by a snake at a pet store and then we went to a haunted house on the ocean front and he got scared and ditched me right there when the teeny bopper in a cheap plastic mask jumped out and said boo. That was winner central right there. The weird guy that reached over my dinner plate and his long arm hair touched my sushi- yuck! 

        It would be nice to get rid of every dating disaster. One date wonders. You go on one date and wonder and you wonder why you didn't stay home reading fashion magazines. Some dates so bad you should join a convent. But in the end every ex had their place in your life as a bookmark to get you where you need to be in life. If I hadn't been so mad at Prom Date Boy for marrying someone else, well I wouldn't have married some cheesy wanker barfly and after three months and been blessed with my daughter. So it balances out. From Prom Boy I learned there is no good reason to wait for someone to marry you. Have respect for yourself because if he ain't marrying you than let it go. Let him waste some other girls time. From LA Boy I learned a ton. Never spend your own money to see a guy. Dating someone three thousand miles away because you think they are oh so cool doesn't really work in the long run. When you are 27 a guy that works for rock bands and goes on tour is exciting when you live in a small town. When you grow up its a guy that doesn't want to wake up before noon, or get a real job. Not so cool when you consider he has never had health insurance, a retirement plan, and no financial security. I'm no psychic but I can't really see a twenty something rock band hiring a 65 year old roadie. So with all those dating disasters, when I met my husband I was a picky high maintenance brat that saw what a great guy he was and I snatched him  up and settled my butt on down. Better late than never.

        I know the exact moment I fell in love with my husband. It was during the most fiery intense kiss I have ever had. It was crazy and sweet and passionate and boom I was in love. You could say it was just lust but after three years he still falls asleep holding my hand. Yes that is love to me.

       Isn't love such an alien concept. You can't make it behave or appear out of thin air. It makes butterflies in your stomach but I never truly understood it until I had gave birth. To compare any dating drama or high school infatuation to true love is just blasphemy. Knowing how much I love my child, live for her, breath for her I can't even remember what feelings I had for her father. I have been in love only three times in my life and her dad was not one of those three.

       My mothers love was such a strange manifestation of behaviors. She did truly love her only granddaughter  but I will never be sure what her true feelings about me were. Perhaps with my childhood it's a miracle I'm not locked in Central State finger painting my rubber room even when they don't give me paint. As much as I know I love Ashley my feelings for my mother have been more in the murky shades of gray. But this I know, every time she tried to kill herself I saved her. She would overdose on a different drug every time and I didn't leave and go the movies. I would haul her dead weight ass into the car or call 911. She wasn't a monster just a human with debilitating disease. She abused me and my sisters as children. She was mentally ill. That doesn't make me a victim or martyr and I was never a saint. I am just me. I am just a girl that wants to finish college. I want to make out with my boyfriend in a LLBean living room. And maybe when I look at the ceramic baby doll that my mother made by hand when I was eight I can know that she cared for me as much as she was able to.