Danielle

I barely remember my parents together, but my earliest memory of my mom is of my parents fighting.  I remember being little and being at the top of stairs and we were supposed to be in bed and I even remember Lauren being beside me and we were listening while they yelled at each other.  I’m thinking I might have been like 3 or 4 if Lauren was actually next to me - but I’m not sure.  And then we moved to New Orleans for a while. 

I have a memory of being in school in Boulder.  And of Uncle Wayne visiting us and him asking us if he should fart inside of the car or outside of the car.  I remember I got really sick in Boulder and I was throwing up and she stayed home with me instead of going to work.  

In Alaska, I remember playing outside a lot and seeing moose and ice skating and running into a swing set pole.  I remember Lauren getting a bead stuck up her nose and it was bad because there was a hole in it and she couldn’t blow it out and she had to go to the doctor for that.

Alaska was a weird time because we had a lot of fun but we were living with Chris and he was kind of an asshole. We had a front yard on the side of a hill on a mountain, and so the driveway and yard were steep and I tried to make a slide of snow on the front yard and he would get mad at me and say it would kill the grass.  Which doesn’t make any sense.  I remember I had this really vivid dream that I went into my mom’s room to tell her that Lauren had wet the bed and she turned into an angel and Chris turned into a devil.  

I remember my mom trying to get us to go to bed and we wouldn’t because the sun was up all the time in the summertime.  And I vaguely remember that we took a trip with Nana when she came up to visit.  And we saw glaciers and in my mind we saw polar bears but that probably wasn’t right.  But I definitely know we saw penguins.  And I think we saw the northern lights.  It was a very adventurous time in my life where I did a lot of really cool stuff and Lauren and I used to play all the time and we used to listen to that song “Everybody Walk the Dinosaurs.”  It was a rock song and Lauren and I would wear adult size t-shirts and put our arms and legs outside the sleeves and walk around like we were dinosaurs.  

We took this other trip, we were near the ocean, and we rode horses and stayed in this cabin near a beach and we had to pee in a pot because there was no bathroom.  

I think my dad said I want to be with the girls and my mom said my relationship is ending and now is a good time to have them.  So we left Alaska and went back with my dad, and I remember going on the airplane and Lauren was really sad because she thought mom didn’t want us anymore.  And I told her that wasn’t true.  But I decided I wasn’t going to cry because I didn’t want her to see me crying.  I missed my mom a lot and kept a picture of her on my desk at our new school in Texas.  

When we were in Texas she would call and we would talk to her on the phone and she would send cards and letters and stuff.  I actually went through and have some of them … divorce is so damn hard on kids.

I was back with my mom for 3rd and 4th grade and we went to St. John’s school in Denver, and that’s when she married Mark.  And we lived in this house on Gaylord in a duplex.  And the neighbor’s name was Beth and she would babysit us and had a baby of her own.  I can’t remember exactly when she moved in with Mark.  But they moved to Golden and we were back with my dad by then and so we went to Golden during the summers.  We’d go to basketball camp and we would go see a LOT of movies.  We’d see movies all the time because it was air-conditioned.  We lived on Zion road on a really cool backyard, up against a hill and it was sort of terraced. We still had Zack, Mark’s dog.  

My mom was compassionate and empathetic and she was also busy.  She worked full-time and cooked for us and helped us with our homework if we needed it and stayed home from work with us if we were sick.  She took really good care of us.  Was always there for us if we needed her.  She made sure we had everything we wanted, but not in a spoiled way, I don’t know… she would just say “yeah - let’s go get your hair done!”  Like she had this friend P.K. who was a personal trainer that would come over and she’d say, “Oh, you want to work out with PK, yeah you can do that!”  She was still a MOM … she still made sure you were operating within the limits and still raised us and was a disciplinarian but she was compassionate and would talk to us.  

For example, in the Logan house it was Lauren’s birthday and she had her friends over and I was like ‘let’s play concert’ and we had this Futon in the basement and I said that will be the stage and we’ll make up songs and dance and we broke the Futon.  And they were like “we’re going to send Lauren’s friends home” and I was like “don’t do that!” And I had to promise not to play with Lauren’s friends anymore that day.  Like I felt like I could always come to some kind of agreement with her and compromise.  

But that was just during the summers.  And then coming back from Belgium I had to decide where I wanted to go to High School – Golden or Denver - and I decided Denver.  

High school was challenging because I was pushing the limits.  I just wanted to stay out late and go do stuff and have my own control over my life.  I couldn’t put anything past them though.  Like when I was a freshman I went out with a junior and we went out and met up with another girl and met these other guys in a hotel room in Thornton and I had a pager so my mom and Mark paged me and I called them back and they were like “What are you doing? And where are you?”  And I told them Jenn’s house and they looked her up and called her parents and figured out I was lying and then I was grounded.  She didn’t like to take shit from people.  She had this barometer where she would say “nope, I’m done.”  If 

she felt like she was being wronged, she stood up for herself.  But my mom also wouldn’t get visibly angry about that kind of thing - she would get angry when we weren’t helping her around the house because she was exhausted trying to do everything for everybody.  But when I got caught or got into trouble like that she would be disappointed and say “that’s not right Danielle, that’s not right” and that would hurt more.  Lauren was the home-body during high school and I was trying to be out all the time.  I wasn’t really present during those years. Every once in a while we’d babysit Helen, but I had a boyfriend and stuff.  

My mom told me that the way she thought of my temperament was like the song “Angel in Montgomery” and she thought she’d come home and see a note that was like “Gone and got married - bye.”  By the time I was in High School, she could be like the “cool mom,” even in the Logan house she would mix us drinks like these really weak cocktails … and by the time I was graduating high school or in college, she would be willing to smoke cigarettes with us and stuff.  But even when she was the “cool mom” she never stopped being the mom who took care of us.  The first time I was sick at college, she brought me clementines and chicken noodle soup.  

I was in college when everything started going down with Mark.  I can’t remember if I was home for the summer or when I was visiting back from Crested Butte.  Because I lived at home after college before I moved to Crested Butte. But she would just be like, “just so you know, Mark’s a drug addict and he’s having a problem with cocaine and if you’re going to live here again I just want you to know that.”  But I feel like it was happening while Helen was in middle school.  She had an easy time being open and honest with me … almost to the point of it being overwhelming, like I wouldn’t know how to react.  

She started to lose her memory while I lived in Crested Butte.  Because I remember asking the doctor about it while I was in Crested Butte.  And I remember the first time she forgot Lauren’s birthday I was still in college.  Like, she didn’t call her on her birthday.  

I moved back from Crested Butte and she had already tried to be legally separated from him and the judge had told her to come back if you want to get a real divorce.  She wouldn’t really confide in us, she would confide in Helen because Helen was there but she wouldn’t really confide in us.  And I remember they all came up to visit me once or twice in Crested Butte.

We drove Lauren out to college together and on the way back we stopped at the Fontanel Woods. And it was just me, her and Lauren and she smoked pot in the hotel room and we watched Will and Grace.  One time I gave her some weed food someone had made and she said “you know, I ate that and I just fell asleep on the couch.”  

She was so easy to talk to, especially as an adult.  I would tell her whatever problem or issue I was having and she would always be very gentle and just offer advice.  But she would also give the hard truth.  Like I was having a lot of issues in my adult relationships with women in college and I would tell her about these fights I would get into and she would say, “You know, you’re getting into these fights a lot - maybe you should look at how you’re approaching the relationship.”  And I got mad at her because she was saying I had to take responsibility but it did actually change the way I approached relationships.  Like your whole life you think your parents say all these great things about you but they can’t really be true because they’re just your parents, but she loved me enough to tell me something that wasn’t great about me - but in a really nice way.  To help me become a better person.  

I hope I’m the same kind of compassionate person that deals with things with empathy.  I definitely give people the devil’s advocate truthful advice if they’re looking for advice.  She also taught me … like we talked about religion because in high school I told her that I don’t want to go to church anymore and I have one day to sleep in and I’m not into it anymore.  And she was like, “Ok, you can make that decision and religion is very personal and it’s a personal relationship you have with god and the world and as long as you’re not hurting anyone with it, then that’s your personal relationship.”  

She was just great.  She loved her work, loved walking the dogs, and loved gardening.  She loved the movie Gladiator, and so when she would clean the house she’d have it on every TV in the house so that she could move from room to room and still watch it.  But most of all she was just a great mom.  Just her ability to listen to you and be there for you and give time when she had it.  She loved to take baths, and I would hang out with her when she would take a bath.  And just talk to her and hang out.