Lore Letter 001
No one warns you about turning 20.
Author’s note:
I chose this photo for a few reasons: I recently had a milestone birthday like this woman, my mother was born the same year this was taken, and it’s just a cool photo. I’m still figuring out how I want to structure this project, but I tried to set a couple rules for myself. Most importantly, I limited myself to two hours total for brainstorming, writing, and editing. As a chronic over-writer, it can be hard for me to put the pencil down (literally — I wrote by hand and then transcribed) and just a let a piece stand on its own. Hopefully, this newsletter will help me with that!
I also decided not to censor her face. This first story is pretty lighthearted, but in the future, if I want to write something more sensitive, I’ll consider obscuring the faces. After all, these were and are real people with real stories (even though they dumped their family photos at a thrift store for the taking).
Finally, I listened to a playlist of songs from 1963 while I wrote, and DAMN. That year was just hit after hit after hit! Marvin, Stevie, the Beatles, Sam Cooke, the Ronettes … I could go on. Anyway, enjoy!
The frosting was too sweet and it looked liked Dad’s shaving cream. Before the party, Mom had run herself ragged strategizing how to cut the cake so all of the pieces had an acceptable amount of frosting. Especially Timmy. The candy coating on an ibuprofen could send him into a tizzy.
I turned 20, which should be a big deal for being such a clean number, but it seems like 16 and 18 have stolen all the shine by the time it comes around. Still, I cared. While I was brushing out my bangs, I practiced.
“Hello, I’m Donna Faber, and I’m 20 years old.”
The first time I said it, I slipped out of habit, so it sounded like “ninetwy.” Now there was a thought. No one will care how old I am when I’m 90. At a certain point, you’re just old.
“Donna Sue, if you don’t come down here right now and greet your guests!”
My girlfriends said I should just have them over for a sleepover, but my mother said that as long as I was under her roof, there would be a party. She even bought a bunch of 3-2 beer and said Dad could be bartender, which is even more embarrassing than no beer at all. She invited boys, so that’s a plus. She said Sam Keene is coming, which hopefully means nothing to her. I started bagging at the Kroger just to see him now that we’ve graduated, but he quit two weeks later to do something with cars.
I almost broke my ankle coming down the stairs so the woman would stop screaming at me. With everyone waiting down there, I looked like a princess descending to greet her subjects. That’s what Kelly told me, but maybe she was just saying that. Sometimes, Kelly just says things.
Dad gave me a third beer without a word, so that must count for something. Sam was standing with all the other boys like we were 13 again, but it was cute. He was shy!
“Happy birthday, Donna,” he said.
I wanted so badly for his friends to stop standing there and give us some privacy. But they just stayed like idiots, piling their empty bottles on the cake table. My mother was staring from the couch, but she only poked Dad. He slowly got up to clear the drinks.
“What are you up to these days?” Sam asked.
I hated that he knew I was at the supermarket. Not all the girls at Johnson High went to college, of course, but now that I was 20, it seemed ridiculous that I hadn’t even tried. Kroger was just a tool to spend time with Sam, but now I was stuck without someone to kiss in the produce section.
“Oh, you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.”
I could feel my hair clip falling off the side of my head. I didn’t get a chance to spray because Mom was rushing me.
“That’s very cool,” he said, his friends nodding like they had been listening. “So, where are you living these days?”
I mean, wasn’t it obvious? We were in my living room, which had stayed the same for birthdays one through 19, except for the butt print in the couch that Dad had been working on since 1941.
“I’m over on Maple with a couple of people,” I blurted.
The words slid out of my mouth like they were the truth. Maybe 20 would be about lying.
“Oh, wow, I didn’t know that. It must be nice having your own place. I’m still stuck with my folks.”
I guess I had said it for no reason. Still, it felt good to have something Sam didn’t.
“Yeah, I can pretty much do what I want,” I said, but cringed right after. It was like I was bragging that my bedtime was now 10 instead of 9. But Sam smiled.
“I’ll have to stop by sometime, then.”
Before I could start plotting our love nest at my nonexistent bachelorette pad, the lights switched off. Maybe I was about to be smited by God for lying.
“Haaaaaappppy biiiiiirthhhhdaaaaayyyy, dear Donna.”
My mom emerged from the kitchen with the cake, so stuffed with candles it looked like a campfire. I could hear Sam’s voice even with everyone singing.
I leaned over to blow out the giant flame, but Mom stopped me, squeezing my upper arm harder than she needed to.
“Before Donna blows out the candles and we dig in, I just want to say something about the birthday girl.”
I could hear the tears in her voice without looking at her face. Mom was a crier.
“I can’t believe our little girl is 20. When she was born, how would I have known we would be so lucky to still have her under our roof?”
My face started to burn, and it wasn’t just from the candles.
“She means here in town,” I said, and started to blow before my mother could object. It was harder than I thought it would be. One gust only took out a handful in the corner.
“No, dear, I mean living with us,” she laughed. She looked at the group of ladies from the church knitting circle that she’d invited despite my protests. “We’re not empty nesters yet, but that’s okay if it means we get more time with our sweet girl.”
She was being pretty nice considering the finger indents she’d left on my arm just a minute ago.
My girlfriends were oblivious, but Sam looked confused. Maybe it was the beers (five at that point) or that TWENTY suddenly shouting in my brain, but I’d had enough. I gathered all the air I could and extinguished the rest of the candles in one violent burst. The room went dark. I ran crying to my room, which, unfortunately, was in fact under my parents’ roof and not in a chic duplex on Maple.
It must have been hours when I came out, because the streamers were in the trash and the house was quiet. The beers had finally worn off, and I was starving. Maybe I could fix things with Sam. If I moved out soon, he’d be none the wiser. I imagined us on my cool green loveseat (velvet), drinking a nightcap (whiskey, because he was a man) and holding hands.
When I sat down to eat my cereal, I was shocked to see the cake on the table. Perhaps Dad would have pitied me and left a lice in Saran wrap, but not the whole damn thing. Maybe my mother had baked a backup cake for the guests. That’s the kind of thing she would do.
The candles were still there, although in a more manageable quantity. Just as I started plucking them out, my mother crept in wearing her robe. She was silent as she lit a match. The cake glowed again.
I didn’t make a wish. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted. Maybe that was growing up. In my mother’s kitchen, my home, I ate my birthday cake. There wasn’t too much frosting.
