Pilgrim in the Trailer Park

 We put mama in the ground yesterday. We had her buried at Cool Spring Natural Cemetery of the Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Virginia. It’s called a green burial. She was interred in a pink cotton dress in a sea grass wicker casket in the woods. Everything will decompose (ugh, why am I using that word ?) naturally. I laid several colorful flowers on the casket and the rest of the bouquet by the mound of dirt. It really is a beautiful place, and her family was happy with what we chose, which to our credit we discovered by accident. I was worried over whether they were going to put a blanket on her. It can be quite cold in the ground, you know. But, yes, in fact, they do supply a blanket, the funeral director told me this.   I haven’t done many of these “things” — funerals, I mean. I put on a lot of makeup and wore a dark pea coat and large vintage sunglasses. It was a cool day at Cool Spring. It is surrounded by the mountains. I took advantage of the outdoors to smoke a coupl...

 I did not speak to my mom for almost a year. Now, this was not like me. I didn’t go a week without some kind of conversation with her — me complaining about my depressing life and her telling me to grow up (that’s what moms are for). Basically she got the gist that I was safe and sound in my Florida trailer park, whatever comfort that gave her. She was a bonafide worrier. I wish I could have assured her that my mental health was okay…mom just wanted us to take care of ourselves and be happy. I think all parents want that. You could be in a cult, but if it took care of you and made you chipper, that’s fine. Anyways, I wasn’t happy, but I was drinking to disguise that (and had been steadily since February, when I jumped off the wagon) . My sister had passed away in May. I started staying with John in July. I thought I knew what I was doing; I was just an inebriated tumbleweed, taking free beers from the neighbors and walking in the rain. I always prayed in Spanish for it to rain har...

 Oh this business with death… I don’t feel like writing. And I don’t feel like crying. But somehow I more able to summon the strength to write. As if it was that hard. It’s just the regurgitation of my thoughts. I wrote a piece called “This Business With the Birds,” and I put it on Substack, because I wanted to publish it but I didn’t want my mom to read it on the blog. Now, I really like to keep all my work on this blog, because I am very proud of it, and I think I have built something meaningful.  Mom read almost all my posts. She encouraged me to write (“Don’t give up on your writing!”). Hell, she encouraged me to write for the newspaper, even though I thought it was a far fetched idea. She adamantly  told me to stop smoking. I talked to her every day, always with a smoke in my hands, and there was always something to say, some shared feelings about our lives and the people we knew and the things we did or didn’t do and what the cats were doing (sometimes I put the pho...

 Time for dysfunction… Hello, my name is Celeste, and I am addicted to caffeine and nicotine, and there isn’t a word for that yet.  We are really lacking in terminology for all kinds of disorders, yet there’s a word for every phobia that may or may not exist, because mental health is a precious thing, a precarious balance of this and that chemical, inherited or store bought, highly underrated, and explored as much and as little as the depths of our oceans. I’m just realizing how much i rely on my coffee and smokes to get through the day, even here in Virginia. Luckily, my brother bought me some instant (which I can make as strong  as my heart desires) , since there is NO coffee maker (ugh); and without my own car I am still able to get to the store everyday to get these wonderful Montegos (god bless the manufacturer devoted solely to my pleasure. Or demise). I use my brothers Subaru. I think it’s a reasonable cause. I fought and won a battle with alcohol, because addictio...

 Post coming soon…Or never :/ Okay, so I was typing outside in the good old Virginia sunshine and the iPad over heated.  I took it inside to cool down…and it deleted my writing!!! (This calls for three exclamation points like dad would do). I’m not kidding. This has never happened to me before! All I could do was shake my fist at the sky (dammit!). And start over… Anyways. How long can you live in a trailer? Until they condemn it, or the thing burns down. In my experience, trailers are tough old birds. And the people who live in them are, well…it’s not a judgement I’m willing to make.  We moved into our trailer in oh 1998. So it’s withstood a good almost thirty years of our abuse. Wind, rain, and snow, and one unlikely hurricane. So when I come home, this is where I stay. I’m appreciating the beauty of old comforts more. Quilts on the couch. Birds that eat birdseed. A microwave. Instant coffee. Smoking outside, like a good girl.  Yet this time I arrived as a writer w...

 Well, I hope that got your attention.  I took a Frontier airline flight from Orlando International to Dulles airport in Virginia. I’m not the flying type (unless you mean flying by the seat of the my pants): I’m not trendy, I’m not modern, and I’m not a “traveler.” I like to believe these things, but maybe you don’t, since I am a millennial after all. To be honest, flying scares the FUG out of me. But I did it anyway.  Flying was the alternative to a looong car ride up the good old I95, which also scares the fug out of me. Maybe I’m just a scaredy cat. Or maybe I have just become more acutely aware of how dangerous these modes of transportation are. Speeding down asphalt at 70 plus miles per hour…hovering above earth at thousands of feet…does it really make sense to do these things, and can we even prove they’re safe at all? What it is,  is normal. It’s a casual risk. It’s a dumbed down danger. People are copycats and anything through repeated repetition can be norm...