CLS Sandoval

Three

Baby in the Bar

When she was only months old, I took Evelyn with me to a poetry reading in a bar. I was 10 years sober at that point. I’ve never been good at small talk, but since leaving my drunken days for more clarity, small talk with people who were consuming alcohol had proven to be a bigger challenge.  I was amazed at how much peer pressure people who were consuming alcohol would apply to try to make sure everyone around them was also drinking.  Ordinarily, I would be sure to have a drink in my hand; preferably an opaque cup to be sure no one could tell that it was just Diet Pepsi or water.  With my little one on my chest, this proved to be more of a challenge. 

While I may have been frustrated by a dirty diaper that needed to be changed, I was relieved to be able to excuse myself for a reason that no drunk wanted more explanation about.  When I went to the bathroom, I guess I wasn’t surprised, but I was disappointed at how disgusting it was and the fact there was no changing table, of course. Thankfully, there was a tall rectangular trashcan, just wide enough for the baby changing mat to fit on, if you turned the trashcan on its side.  I would’ve changed on my lap if I had to, but the trashcan in the bar bathroom was much more convenient.

Needing Somewhere to Stay for the Night 

The long drives to and from San Diego in the midst of my mother’s mental health crisis were wearing on me. Poor infant Evelyn spent more time in the car than I ever intended her to. I had taken her to the beach, to at least play just a bit before we were to stay the night at our pastor’s house. His wife was the most hostess, and I was relieved to have a place to sleep, while my mother was not allowing me in her front door.  I had already spent years disconnected with my father, and losing my mom was excruciating. 

It was the kind of warm that made a sweater unnecessary, but I still wanted to wear pants. Evelyn was in her carrier on my chest, rooting, so I filled her bottle and let her eat as I gazed across the Pacific. The horizon looked as far away as my mother felt. Flashes of the moments I had spent right here in Oceanside, when I was 10 and my sister Tiffany was five, pulled tears down my cheeks. I could almost see my mother commanding us to shore as our chins quivered, our lips turned blue, and we rolled with the tide in the icy water. We never wanted to get out, no matter how cold we felt. 

The bing of a text message pulls me out of my memory and back to the present moment. It was the pastor’s wife: I am so sorry. Our daughter is coming unexpectedly to town. So, you can’t stay. Maybe you could call your dad? I stare at the message for a moment, look at my happy, feeding baby, then back at my phone. 

I scroll down to my dad’s number, the one I haven’t dialed in years, trying to decide if I am ready to tell him he has a grandchild. 

On the Way to Volunteering at My Daughter’s School 

The storms of Los Angeles were historically cold and historically wet. Anna met me on Zoom for a workout, and I took Lina for a walk in the rain. Rather than listening to Sword and Scale, my favorite true crime podcast, like I did during most of my walks with my dog, I decided to simply take in the rainy morning. 

My umbrella was clear plastic so I could look toward the gray clouds and watch them release their cold, heavy drops. There was always something so magical about rain: the grass looked greener, the streets not quite as dirty, and it brought a quench to our long-lived drought. 

Along the walk, I began to remember the poetry book that my great-grandmother had typed on her typewriter on the back of advertisements. It was full of poems about devotion to God and little flash memoir pieces about me as a little girl and her neighbor having to commit his wife to a nursing home. The drops on my cheeks weren’t rain. My Nana had typed these pieces up: two copies. One for her, one for my mom. We read these after the death of my great-grandma, and after the death of my Nana.  

As I walked back toward my house with my dog, I was walking a little slower. When I walked into the house, I took a shower.  I let more tears fall toward the drain, missing the generations no longer with me, and grateful for the generations I still had in my life. 

I stepped out of the shower, dried my body and tears, put on my PTA T-shirt, and headed off to volunteer in Evelyn’s classroom.

CLS Sandoval, PhD is a pushcart nominated writer and communication professor with accolades in film, academia, and creative writing who speaks, signs, acts, publishes, sings, performs, writes, paints, teaches and rarely relaxes.  She’s a flash fiction and poetry editor for Dark Onus Lit, has presented over 50 times at communication conferences, published 15 academic articles, two academic books, three full-length literary collections, three chapbooks, and flash and poetry pieces in literary journals, recently including Opiate Magazine, The Journal of Magical Wonder, and A Moon of One’s Own.  She is raising her daughter and dog with her husband in Alhambra, CA.