Chapter 2 ~ Anita

“We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test”

~ Isabel Allende

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Anita’s Point of view, Ohio County WV, (past and sunday 4 a.m)

“Welcome home Tommo did you have a good shift?” He placed his cane up against the kitchen counter and proceeded to boil water. I had already told him I was taking half of the night shift since we were a bit low on staff. 

My grandfather is wonderful kind and loving man. I know I'm so incredibly lucky to have him in my life. My mother had her kindness and empathic nature from him. But he's also brilliant, so well read, ask him a question about most topics and if he doesn't know he'll come back with the answer sooner or later. Meanwhile he's so humble most people have no idea how smart he is. He was never gonna be a big time farmer like size of his land offers. He forgot one of his legs in Vietnam, his own words, and despite that disability he refused to sell the farm which was passed down from his father even though it probably would have been easier for him. He and grandma made many changes and run an organic self pick orchard as well as having a small herd of animals. 

He has called me different variations of the name Thomas for as long as I can remember. It can be confusing to people who don't know about it. I'm told there's a note in the reception at work which says: “If an older gentleman calls and asks for Thomas, Tom etc it's probably for Anita. Except if it's for Dr Thomas. Then it's for Dr Thomas.”

“Hi Gramps, thanks yes it was ok. I'm sorry I woke you.” I gave him a hug and told him I wanted to go to my room and asked him to kiss grandma goodnight for me. 

“Oh well… you didn't wake me honey, I was showing your grandmother how much I love her, and now we're thirsty so I'm making tea. Do you want some?” he gave me a wink. He knows I can take it and I know he's not kidding, he and grandma are like lovestruck teenagers sometimes. I lied to him though, there is something at work which is bothering me more than a little bit. 

I chatted with him while he finished making the tea, then he handed me a large cup. “Do you want to talk about it honey? The presidential suite isn’t going anywhere” 

Told you. He’s smart. He calls my room the presidential suite because it’s bigger than his own has its own bathroom and a walk in closet. It used be two rooms but because my mother and me spend so much time with them when I was younger he knocked down a wall and made a small studio apartment for us. 

My thoughts go straight to Brian, but there’s nothing to say and I’m not ready to discuss it with Gramps, we’re not supposed to talk about the patients outside of work anyway, I did sign a paper about that. It could be some giant misunderstanding. But still, for some reason, I can’t help feeling worried. 

“No, there’s probably nothing I can do anything about right now. I’m gonna take my tea upstairs, go back to grandma loverboy!” He had that one coming didn’t he. I returned the wink he’d given me earlier but slightly more theatrically. 

He just smiled. “ You’ll figure it out, I know you will and don’t forget you can talk to me if something is bothering you. Good night dear, sweet dreams“ 

I might be a tomboy in my heart but I'm also, depending on how you look at it, blessed or burdened with a very feminine look. Let's just say that I've had to fight to be taken seriously sometimes, and that sometimes I find myself running into situations where I feel a slight comradery with a certain Legally Blond character. That movie could not have been about me, unless you change the law school bit to nursing school, fashion sense to dancing…. And well the dog needs to go too. Throw in a bit of  rock and roll and a good variety of homemade remedies. Yeah. It’s a different movie now but let's just say that I can do an impression of Elle Woods very easily. ‘What? Like it’s hard?’ So anyway now maybe you have my first impression. Get to know me better though and you'll find that I don't mind breaking my nails if I have to, and I can kick both high and hard when needed. That part came with serious karate training from age three.

My grandparents farm was always the only physical address I could relate to as home. It’s not that my mother was a bad person, she loved me dearly and showed me that every day but for all her good intentions I think if she’d had psychological evaluation she’d probably be classified as an unfit parent. She was very much a free spirit but she took me to my grandparents home whenever she needed a to ground herself and often she let me stay there without her for extended periods, but many times she brought me along with her on her travels, living out of her truck, in tents, or in her friends' houses. 

My elementary education was not formal and I only finished one year of high school. I was home schooled by mother if we can call it that. She tutored me herself or got me private lessons when she felt I falling behind it subjects she didn't feel able to teach me. I guess she was doing an ok job because I did above average on evaluations. Just above it that is. Other than that I learned from our travels and spending time with different people I met through her. I was fluent in French and Spanish by the time I was 10. 

I went to a regular school for a term here and there if my mother stayed long enough in one place, mostly during the times of staying with my grandparents, they called it for social reasons only, that I should check out what's considered cool in school, have some friends my own age and test my ability in sitting still in a classroom without without turning into a monkey. Looking back I'm sure I was lucky, as it's very easy for me to read situations and people and even though I wasn't there continuously I made friends. For that very reason too I really liked going to school for the learning part because since I was there so sporadically I never managed to be bored of it. But I stopped highschool when my mother died.

I never knew who my father was, and I wasn’t very old when it first occured to me that I was probably the product of sexual violence because of the way my mother, who was carefree about most aspects of life, seemed overly protective when it came to mens interest in me. She was adamant about me learning self defense and when I was 12, I already had a black belt in Karate. 

She always used to say “It's not about the grades on your evaluations. I really don’t care how many math problems you solve and how many books you finish reading if you are kind to others and make sure to have fun and be a good fighter” And then she would hug me and ask me what I wanted to do next. Her attention span was sometimes that of Doro the fish but we got along so well. She suffered from anxiety and she self medicated and sometimes she drank a bit too much. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, I know. But despite it all, somehow it just worked.

My mother always had a complicated relationship with food. Her eating disorder was no secret, she never hid it and she readily accepted help for her problems. There were good years and she was very invested in helping me grow a healthy relationship with food and understanding of nutrition. In the end though she lost the battle with her disease. I was 14 when she had her first heart attack. After that it didn’t take long. A few days before she died when I was holding her skinny frame on her sick bed, I quietly asked her if she wanted to tell me who my father was. 

“It was dark. They hurt me. But they gave me you and that’s good” she said and smiled sadly. She asked me to be brave and and I promised her that I was going to live my life to the fullest and enjoy life for both of us. 

After her death I felt such a great loss and even though my grandparents gave me all the love they could I just had to get away. They were not happy about allowing a barely 15 year old girl to travel alone but they both knew if they forbade it I would probably run away anyway. They knew they couldn't lock me up and let me go if I promised to be safe and call if I needed money and never forget that I was welcome back when I got tired of traveling. I asked if it was the same speech they had given my mother. My grandfather nodded sadly. “But you are so much stronger than her Mr Edison, you'll be fine.”

So I packed a small backpack and hitch hiked to the west coast and proceeded to break my promise to my grandparents about being safe. It’s not like I was alone or unprepared. Through my mother I already had a network of friends out there, who where my safety net and I only used my grandparents offer about sending money very rarely because I knew it made them feel better. Many of my mothers friends were musicians and in the beginning I travelled with some of them helping with the shows they were in. I started taking salsa lessons and became a certified teacher, traveled to different cities for workshops, even made it to Cuba once. Life was fun. I became a part of a traveling dance company focusing on Latin dances. I got a used Volkswagen bus which I turned into my home and from then on I was working for myself making my own path through it all.

I don’t regret leaving my grandparents so young. I may have been repeating some of my mothers questionable life choices and it was without a child so I was free to test my boundaries and certainly managed to get myself into some very heavy shit for awhile. Of course there were some heartbreaks and difficulties but I was lucky with the people I met and by some miracle I never found myself in serious trouble with the law. I was free, there were fun times, lust, love, it was wild and deep and I made amazing friends. I met Daniel. He confused me a bit. I was very young and was definitely not looking for a steady relationship but there was something about him. He left my life as fast as he entered it and I was fine with that until the next time we met. By then I had moved back to West Virginia had gotten my GED and done half of nursing school. I took a break in my studies and applied for volunteer work overseas. Perhaps I should call Daniel, he might know what to do. He's is really the smartest person I know… as stupid as he is.