I am standing naked in front of the full length mirror near the entrance of my hotel room. I am listening to Jazz. Bill Evans on the piano. The lighting is dim in my hotel room.

I like it that way.

I learned my appreciation for dim lighting and low-level light sources such as table lamps from my grandparents, whose home was always dimly lit as far back as I can remember.

Two years ago today was the last time I spoke to my sister.

I called her to tell her that I got accepted to graduate school and that I would be moving out-of-state. I had not spoken to her for 6 months, and all she said was, “That’s great, good luck!”

Three of my relationships have changed this year without my permission. One person told me to have a nice life. Really, he said that. As if we were on the set of “Gossip Girl” or something. I’m trying to. Sometimes it’s hard. Money would make life nicer. Money and not living in a neighborhood where the ghetto bird flies over and warns you to stay inside because there’s a suspect at large that weighs 120 pounds and is armed and dangerous. Really? One hundred and twenty pounds? Is it fucking Spiderman? Jesus, Alameda Sheriff’s Department. Let’s get it together, now.

Thirty years ago today, the anniversary of my graduation from high school, a high school classmate of mine dragged and pulled my 17-year-old  intoxicated body behind a tree near a lake outside of Topeka, Kansas, and proceeded to rape me of my virginity. 

When his penis pushed inside of me, I lost everything that protected me from the rest of the world.  He came back to my body again that night and raped me a second time.  

We had our places where we lived. Thats why I remember the details so clearly. There were many places, many precise, stored boxes to sort through. The first place was called Gail’s. She was the landlady. This Easter happened at the second place, though. In the apartment over Mr. Slatter’s office. He was the landlord that my father got even with when he painted swastikas on the sides of the building. He didn’t have a paint brush so he dipped a roll of paper towels into the can. I don’t remember this. I heard about it.

My daughter recently participated in a living museum. It is a part of her third grade social studies agenda.

Students are allowed to represent anyone they want, either living or deceased, as long as they have a book about them in the library. The list to choose from is essential endless. It is a really interesting program. The students stand like statues, with a “button” placed on them. Then students or parents can “hit” the button and the statue begins to talk about the person they are.

After denying it for the past few years, I finally decided that I need to start dieting. When I was younger (all the way up until college, actually) I had the metabolism of a speeding train. I could eat ANYTHING I wanted and I never gained a pound. I was young, healthy, very skinny, and always active.  And then I discovered one of the crushing realities of adulthood: if you are like most people, you sit at a desk for 8 hours a day, only getting up to go to the vending machine or the bathroom, where you sit on the toilet, quietly crying at the direction your life has taken.

Today is my birthday. When some people get to a “certain age” birthdays just come and go. Not me, I never take them for granted. I won’t be watching it go by. At 7:02 p.m, I will be outside looking at the sky, towards the north. I will be remembering Steven Berrell.

We were friends in high school, not best friends or even good friends, but we were friends. The way high school students are friends. He had a certain gait when he walked. A sort of leaning to the left and then to the right. Steve was tall and lanky. He wasn’t hard to miss, but the thing that struck me was that big goofy smile that seemed to be always plastered on his face. Steve came from a pretty well off family, but you would never know. Steve was sincere, kind and never ostentatious, although he did have a certain affection for button down shirts.

It was about ten years ago that I walked into my little synagogue for the first time.  I was very nervous and had dressed carefully in a nice navy blue skirt, white shirt and navy cardigan.  I wore my good heels and a pair of pantyhose.  My hair was straightened and I had applied a modest pale pink lipstick.  I tried to smile brightly at everyone who glanced my way as if to say, “I’m friendly! I can be approached easily!”  Mr. Penguino and I sat down at one of the long tables set up for dinner.  Unbeknownst to me, it was Tu B’Shevat and I think because of that, I spent the years that followed that dinner working hard towards becoming a Jew.

When I was young, I met three brothers. They were the first three I met on the way to what turned out to be a four year trip to Mexico. That first week’s stay on the border was frightening in that big house full of strange people, morning devotions, provisioned food, picnic tables at meals, women openly breast-feeding babies, scores of children for whom it was difficult to tell to which parents they belonged, afternoons naps in unfamiliar rooms on sheets that didn’t look clean, surrounded by hundreds of flies from which it was only possible to escape by covering yourself with a sheet to sleep, unbearable heat and a back field that stretched as far as the horizon.

About a month ago, I was involved in a rather serious car accident.  I got hit on the driver’s side door in my Toyota Camry by a Ford F-150 that was going 35 mph.  I didn’t see it coming, so I didn’t have time to get scared or even react, really (except I remember saying “ohhh my god” right before it hit me).  The fire department had to cut my car door off to get me out, and I got to have the singular experience of having my clothes cut off me by a trauma team once I arrived at the hospital.

When I was four years old – almost five – I remember hiding behind the sofa in our house with tears streaming down my little face.  My father was leaving, for good this time, and my mother was arguing with him, as usual, and the reason I was crying was because my mother was crying.  When my mother stopped crying, I would stop crying.

I understood from listening to their conversation that my father was not coming back to our house when he left and for this, I felt profound relief.  This would be the end of mom crying, I thought.  This memory is fresh; I remember it as if it was just last week.  Dad walked out and the final slap-slap-slap of the screen door sounded like clapping.

The year before we adopted Little Penguino, my mother took me, my sister, and my then 10-year-old niece, to Honolulu for spring break.  (Mr. Penguino does not like beach vacations.)  We stayed at the absurdly commercial Hilton Hawaiian Village, an enclave of consumerism and soul-sucking eco-decay.  I was uncommonly excited.

I was 17 when I first went clickity-click on the pharmacy’s computer keyboard. They started me on filling refills; it was just punching in numbers (there was no automated system back then). I sometimes I imagine I’m wafting around my 17-year-old self, trying to whisper: Walk. Walk and see a better life. But you know what? I’ll never forget those experiences; I learned so much as a retail pharmacy technician, from compassion to the evolution of lives into deaths to not accepting a date from a guy picking up a prescription for an antibiotic–or acyclovir.

It’s the motherfucking holiday season, y’all. At least that’s what my TV is telling me.

What gets me is that I used to love the holidays, and now I’m a fucking cliché. Now I just furtively get really fucking drunk on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Even when I was a kid, and my dad was a complete ass 99% of the time, I still looked forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas, because all his toxicity could be negated by the presence of the rest of my family. Then he stopped coming to Thanksgiving, and then Christmas. For one shining year in my family, the holidays were pleasant and full of love.