Stepdad: Okay, so while we're all here, let's talk about our emergency plan....
I'm in the kitchen, mixing eggs, vegetable oil, water and brownie mix. His tone catches my attention and I lean toward the wall to listen.
Stepdad: Who do we eat first?
We bought crackers, pickles, powdered milk, juice, Capri Sun, ravioli, pudding, cookies, and other dry snacks. Hurricane plan: Eat lots. If we run out, eat the next largest person in the house.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
It's been 6 months and 8 days...
There's definitely a lot going on.
My second article for the Star Banner will print tomorrow.
I'm taking pictures of Kayla Dumon on Saturday, followed by a show in Orlando.
My second year of college begins in three days. I'm taking five classes this semester. I have six more classes to go in the spring.
My play opens to an audience in three weeks. Every time I think about it, I'm nervous. I hope I'm getting it all out slowly right now rather than all at once on stage. I know it's not a big deal, but I have a lot of lines and it's the biggest role I've ever had. There's a lot of people to keep from being let down.
It's been six months since Tara died. Six months and one week.
It just wonder now... in all that I'm doing... keeping busy, exhausting myself... and I wonder what it's like to just be. To be still in the last moment of busy. Tara was getting out of her car, going home after another day at the movie theater, busy getting home. What does she remember? What does she know?
Does she forgive?
My second article for the Star Banner will print tomorrow.
I'm taking pictures of Kayla Dumon on Saturday, followed by a show in Orlando.
My second year of college begins in three days. I'm taking five classes this semester. I have six more classes to go in the spring.
My play opens to an audience in three weeks. Every time I think about it, I'm nervous. I hope I'm getting it all out slowly right now rather than all at once on stage. I know it's not a big deal, but I have a lot of lines and it's the biggest role I've ever had. There's a lot of people to keep from being let down.
It's been six months since Tara died. Six months and one week.
It just wonder now... in all that I'm doing... keeping busy, exhausting myself... and I wonder what it's like to just be. To be still in the last moment of busy. Tara was getting out of her car, going home after another day at the movie theater, busy getting home. What does she remember? What does she know?
Does she forgive?
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Dreadred LDR?
Long distance relationships. More than 1.7 million American couples live in seperate cities. More than forty percent of these couples are married. That means that 1.4 million married people live apart, and happily so. Is this a rising trend? More so, is there even the distant possibility for love in long distance relationships?
"Most important, being far apart gives you a chance to maintain your individuality - something that can get lost in the shuffle when couples spend all their free time together. " (http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Long-Distance-Relationship-Work)
"According to stats compiled by the Center for the Study of Long-Distance Relationships (yes, there really is such a thing), the myth that most long-distance relationships fail is just that: a myth. The reality is that more couples are making it work than you might think. Over one million couples are living in separate U.S. cities today, and another 700,000 LDR couples are actually married." http://www.askmen.com/dating/heidi_200/218_dating_girl.html
Absence makes the heart grow fonder? "Distance dating"
For some people, it works, maintaining a relationship with someone special, and keeping the status quo in their lives. Communication is the tool vital to a healthy relationship over the miles. With the internet, cell phones, webcams, and even snail mail, this should be easy, right?
Not always. The disadvantage is in the lack of touching, of smelling, the memory's most powerful sense. One half may be enjoying the distance. The other can wind up feeling like their relationship is akin to a frozen computer screen. You've clicked the 'X' in the corner of the screen, but nothing is moving. Sure, the mouse moves, but nothing on the screen reacts. Why? Maybe it's the fault of a dead cell phone battery. Maybe they haven't checked their inbox. Maybe... are they ignoring... no... maybe?
It's this indecisiveness, this room for possibility, that can quake the bridge of a relationship. Then again, this is true in any relationship. An unsure pause, a misheard reply... these are The Things We Carry in our connections to one another. These can also be The Things We Drop, or more literally, the reasons why we drop our relationships.
So, if the partnership can end in the short distance as easily as in the long distance, why not find someone really great, someone really special, and choose to connect with them, over the miles, over the hours, over the phone. Be stingy with your heart. You've only got one.
"Most important, being far apart gives you a chance to maintain your individuality - something that can get lost in the shuffle when couples spend all their free time together. " (http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Long-Distance-Relationship-Work)
"According to stats compiled by the Center for the Study of Long-Distance Relationships (yes, there really is such a thing), the myth that most long-distance relationships fail is just that: a myth. The reality is that more couples are making it work than you might think. Over one million couples are living in separate U.S. cities today, and another 700,000 LDR couples are actually married." http://www.askmen.com/dating/heidi_200/218_dating_girl.html
Absence makes the heart grow fonder? "Distance dating"
Saturday, May 31, 2008
V-card
"If sex today is about sharing our desires, making ourselves vulnerable, fulfilling our fantasies and being intimate with another person, then our concept of virginity today should recognize that." - Colin Adamo
Virginity. It's the Halley's Comet of sex, happening once in a lifetime. Special because it's a one time deal, or it used to be thanks to plastic surgeons who promise to "revirginize" with surgery, it's a time-old ideal of waiting. But in America, no one waits. Not for a hamburger, not for a message, not for traffic. Not for love.
If no one seems to hang on to their virginity, why is it an issue? Because Americans only want what they don't have, thus the appearance of "revirginization," and lately, it's even found it's way into the political race of '08. After more than a decade, and $1.5 billion in state and federal dollars" of abstinence-only education, the new presidential contenders are promising a more cost effective way to teach safe sex in the U.S.
So, with new ways to bring back virginity, like it's a fad, what does it mean to be a virgin in America?
Anatomy class teaches that it means penetration, but it isn't always necessary to penetrate to have sex. There's no miracle or immaculate conception involved in the pregnancy of lesbian who is artificially inseminated, is there? She is "with child," without the touch of a man, right?
Maybe this proves that there is a distinct difference between being celebate and being a virgin.
Colin Adamo, the singular and unfortunate fellow to be working on a woman's magazine, says that virginity has more to do with experience than genital bumping. He says that first fumbles, soft touches, skims across the skin, they're all part of a sexual encounter, one that should count as a v-card swipe.
He does, however, raise an excellent point; sex has more to do with satisfaction than reproduction, which is now only a side effect.
President Bush might encourage abstinence, but Americans in general are tossing the idea out the window. Are these pants, sold exclusively in K-Mart, representative of the American perspective on the subject? Do t-shirts like this one, made for guys and girls, show how Americans really feel
about the idea of virginity?
In the end, is it "just a word?"
Really, it's impossible to diffrentiate between someone who has gone all the way, someone who hasn't, and someone who is caught somewhere in between. The label, and the implications, positive or negative, that go along with it, is an individual matter.
Virginity. It's the Halley's Comet of sex, happening once in a lifetime. Special because it's a one time deal, or it used to be thanks to plastic surgeons who promise to "revirginize" with surgery, it's a time-old ideal of waiting. But in America, no one waits. Not for a hamburger, not for a message, not for traffic. Not for love.
If no one seems to hang on to their virginity, why is it an issue? Because Americans only want what they don't have, thus the appearance of "revirginization," and lately, it's even found it's way into the political race of '08. After more than a decade, and $1.5 billion in state and federal dollars" of abstinence-only education, the new presidential contenders are promising a more cost effective way to teach safe sex in the U.S.
So, with new ways to bring back virginity, like it's a fad, what does it mean to be a virgin in America?
Anatomy class teaches that it means penetration, but it isn't always necessary to penetrate to have sex. There's no miracle or immaculate conception involved in the pregnancy of lesbian who is artificially inseminated, is there? She is "with child," without the touch of a man, right?
Maybe this proves that there is a distinct difference between being celebate and being a virgin.
Colin Adamo, the singular and unfortunate fellow to be working on a woman's magazine, says that virginity has more to do with experience than genital bumping. He says that first fumbles, soft touches, skims across the skin, they're all part of a sexual encounter, one that should count as a v-card swipe.
Anyone who has had to anxiously undress someone else for the first time, be naked in front of another person in an erotic setting, fumble through words of an inexperienced conversation of seduction, or squirm in and out of uncomfortable first try positions deserves to have swiped his or her V-Card just as much as the next person.Well then, credit or debit?
He does, however, raise an excellent point; sex has more to do with satisfaction than reproduction, which is now only a side effect.
President Bush might encourage abstinence, but Americans in general are tossing the idea out the window. Are these pants, sold exclusively in K-Mart, representative of the American perspective on the subject? Do t-shirts like this one, made for guys and girls, show how Americans really feel
about the idea of virginity?In the end, is it "just a word?"
Really, it's impossible to diffrentiate between someone who has gone all the way, someone who hasn't, and someone who is caught somewhere in between. The label, and the implications, positive or negative, that go along with it, is an individual matter.
Monday, March 17, 2008
yellow
The box of shoes rests in my living room. They are, after all, just shoes. Lacey, tall, dark, loud, and beautiful bought them and then needed to get rid of them. I took them as another measure of her generosity. Now they’re an assurance that she had it all planned out. So they reside here by the front door, jumbled in a cardboard box soiled with the invisible residue of loss.
“Lorrie,” my mother calls. “Lorrie, I bought the eggs.”
I tear my eyes from the box, and I meet her in the kitchen. I take some plastic grocery bags from her hands, and we both land our heavy loads on the counter. She massages her wrists and checks her watch before pushing her deep red curls out of her face. Her green eyes are still red from tears on the way home from the store.
In South Carolina, the dogwood trees blossom in the spring and her eyes constantly look just the way they are now. In April, she could get away with blaming her tears on the trees. The November chill outside the kitchen window, however, won’t let her get away with anything.
“You tell Lacey that she is welcome here anytime,” she started telling me in third grade. Even until high school, she made sure Lacey made regular visits to my house. Then in college, we planned to go to school together. I got into a university; she didn’t. She stayed behind to help out her single dad with a job as a waitress.
“I’m saving up,” she promised me with a wave of her hand and a nonchalant flick of dark hair over her shoulder. “I’ll meet you there.”
She won't meet me again.
“You have three hours, honey. Then you need to get ready for the funeral,” Mom says. I nod and pull my brown, thick hair into a frizzy ponytail down my back. She leaves the kitchen carrying the yellow carnations I knew Lacey would love.
This kitchen is at one foreign and familiar. It does not feel like the same one in which Lacey and I made cream cheese cookies on a midnight trip to my kitchen. Then, the dark room flickered with a soft yellow in the candlelight. We shared dozens of the golden treats, laughing and crying over our lives.
Now, the walls are an ugly tan. How is this the same room? Where are the bowls? Which drawer has the spoons? I let instinct tell me what I can’t immediately remember as I gather the items I need.
The recipe isn’t difficult. I know it without looking at the sheet Lacey wrote for me after our first sleepover in fourth grade. I set the oven to 375 degrees. My fingertips twitch as I pull the cream cheese and the butter from the refrigerator.
The cream cheese lands with a soft but solid thud in the plastic bowl. I take spoonfuls of butter fling them into the bowl. It clumps on top of the cream cheese in a greasy half-moon.
Is this why, I wonder, as I cream the two ingredients together with pressured strokes of my spoon. Is it because she felt mashed between life’s bowl and spoon? But, there is no answer to this question, just as there are no answers to any of the other millions of questions I never asked.
I pour vanilla extract into a teaspoon, and my hands tremble, spilling it onto the counter. Only a drop actually makes it near the bowl. It slides in a brown trail down the outside of the container.
Damnit. Why can’t I do this? Lacey did this. Lacey made these cookies any time I needed to be cheered up. I was the recipient of many a Tupperware container full of these golden treats, made with chocolate sprinkles when I argued with my mom, red sprinkles when I was single on Valentine’s Day.
Why, then, didn’t she make these cookies for herself? Green sprinkles for the thousands in debt she incurred over the past few years. We could have laughed about it, maybe even used copper-colored sprinkles to match the pennies we had to our names.
Or, why didn’t she let me make them for her? She only had to ask… or shouldn’t I have known? But, I didn’t know. She didn’t tell me. She knew we had different debts. Mine was books, tuition, and boarding. Hers was clothes, jewelry, and… shoes.
I catch the salty droplets sliding from my eyes with a kitchen towel before they can fall into my bowl.
“Sweetheart.” My mom is behind me. “You don’t have to do this so soon.” Her aged hands are sources of soft strength on my shoulders. I shake both her hands away. I am even surprised at my reaction to her, but I know I have to continue.
She shrinks from the kitchen. I take a deep breath, knowing I shouldn’t have pushed her away. I wish I could wipe up our pain just as easily as I wipe up the vanilla on the counter. I can’t though. So, I will do what I can.
I pick up my teaspoon and the vanilla extract. I steadily measure out what I need, then tip it into the bowl. I pick up the white, foam carton containing the eggs. I pick out an egg and crack its shell. As I separate the yolk, I try to push away aching thoughts... thoughts of how the flow of the egg whites between my fingers resembles the red flow from the gunshot she put through her head. Pouring in the yellow cake mix, I push away thoughts of the crumbles she thought her life had become. But, watching the cookies rise in the oven, I did remember her low, genuine laugh, how people around her watched as she passed, and how, once, she met me in a coffee shop to consol me after another heartbreaking boyfriend. She spent her last ten dollars on Mocha Lattes for the two of us, and put the change in the tip jar.
The smell of the cookies floats faintly through the house, from the oven through the living room and into my bedroom. I know the cookies are almost finished. I walk past a mirror reflecting the black dress I’ve changed into for the funeral. I try to keep going, past the box and toward my cookies, toward my first steps of acceptance, but I stop. A pair of pale yellow pumps rests atop the others.
I sit down beside the box, and my hand impulsively reaches for one of the shoes. These were her addiction. She could never resist a pair of yellow heels. I want to pull it into my chest, to pull her more near, but I know these were a cause of her pain. I throw it as hard into the opposite living room wall as I can, and my mom is beside me once again. Finally, I release myself into her arms, and I let myself cry into her shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers into my ear.
“Me too,” I tell her. She pulls away to look into my face. My first words since I’d heard the news. She wipes my eyes with her soft fingertips.
“Lacey loved you,” she says. “She just didn’t love herself.” My mom stands and helps me to my feet. I rise, knowing I will miss Lacey every day for the rest of my life.
The vanilla aroma is now rich and warm, drawing our noses toward the source. We travel together into the kitchen. She takes a mitt from the drawer and pulls out the cookies. They are a perfect golden yellow.
For Tara, who wanted a golden dog and taught me to make golden cookies... and most of all, had a golden heart.
“Lorrie,” my mother calls. “Lorrie, I bought the eggs.”
I tear my eyes from the box, and I meet her in the kitchen. I take some plastic grocery bags from her hands, and we both land our heavy loads on the counter. She massages her wrists and checks her watch before pushing her deep red curls out of her face. Her green eyes are still red from tears on the way home from the store.
In South Carolina, the dogwood trees blossom in the spring and her eyes constantly look just the way they are now. In April, she could get away with blaming her tears on the trees. The November chill outside the kitchen window, however, won’t let her get away with anything.
“You tell Lacey that she is welcome here anytime,” she started telling me in third grade. Even until high school, she made sure Lacey made regular visits to my house. Then in college, we planned to go to school together. I got into a university; she didn’t. She stayed behind to help out her single dad with a job as a waitress.
“I’m saving up,” she promised me with a wave of her hand and a nonchalant flick of dark hair over her shoulder. “I’ll meet you there.”
She won't meet me again.
“You have three hours, honey. Then you need to get ready for the funeral,” Mom says. I nod and pull my brown, thick hair into a frizzy ponytail down my back. She leaves the kitchen carrying the yellow carnations I knew Lacey would love.
This kitchen is at one foreign and familiar. It does not feel like the same one in which Lacey and I made cream cheese cookies on a midnight trip to my kitchen. Then, the dark room flickered with a soft yellow in the candlelight. We shared dozens of the golden treats, laughing and crying over our lives.
Now, the walls are an ugly tan. How is this the same room? Where are the bowls? Which drawer has the spoons? I let instinct tell me what I can’t immediately remember as I gather the items I need.
The recipe isn’t difficult. I know it without looking at the sheet Lacey wrote for me after our first sleepover in fourth grade. I set the oven to 375 degrees. My fingertips twitch as I pull the cream cheese and the butter from the refrigerator.
The cream cheese lands with a soft but solid thud in the plastic bowl. I take spoonfuls of butter fling them into the bowl. It clumps on top of the cream cheese in a greasy half-moon.
Is this why, I wonder, as I cream the two ingredients together with pressured strokes of my spoon. Is it because she felt mashed between life’s bowl and spoon? But, there is no answer to this question, just as there are no answers to any of the other millions of questions I never asked.
I pour vanilla extract into a teaspoon, and my hands tremble, spilling it onto the counter. Only a drop actually makes it near the bowl. It slides in a brown trail down the outside of the container.
Damnit. Why can’t I do this? Lacey did this. Lacey made these cookies any time I needed to be cheered up. I was the recipient of many a Tupperware container full of these golden treats, made with chocolate sprinkles when I argued with my mom, red sprinkles when I was single on Valentine’s Day.
Why, then, didn’t she make these cookies for herself? Green sprinkles for the thousands in debt she incurred over the past few years. We could have laughed about it, maybe even used copper-colored sprinkles to match the pennies we had to our names.
Or, why didn’t she let me make them for her? She only had to ask… or shouldn’t I have known? But, I didn’t know. She didn’t tell me. She knew we had different debts. Mine was books, tuition, and boarding. Hers was clothes, jewelry, and… shoes.
I catch the salty droplets sliding from my eyes with a kitchen towel before they can fall into my bowl.
“Sweetheart.” My mom is behind me. “You don’t have to do this so soon.” Her aged hands are sources of soft strength on my shoulders. I shake both her hands away. I am even surprised at my reaction to her, but I know I have to continue.
She shrinks from the kitchen. I take a deep breath, knowing I shouldn’t have pushed her away. I wish I could wipe up our pain just as easily as I wipe up the vanilla on the counter. I can’t though. So, I will do what I can.
I pick up my teaspoon and the vanilla extract. I steadily measure out what I need, then tip it into the bowl. I pick up the white, foam carton containing the eggs. I pick out an egg and crack its shell. As I separate the yolk, I try to push away aching thoughts... thoughts of how the flow of the egg whites between my fingers resembles the red flow from the gunshot she put through her head. Pouring in the yellow cake mix, I push away thoughts of the crumbles she thought her life had become. But, watching the cookies rise in the oven, I did remember her low, genuine laugh, how people around her watched as she passed, and how, once, she met me in a coffee shop to consol me after another heartbreaking boyfriend. She spent her last ten dollars on Mocha Lattes for the two of us, and put the change in the tip jar.
The smell of the cookies floats faintly through the house, from the oven through the living room and into my bedroom. I know the cookies are almost finished. I walk past a mirror reflecting the black dress I’ve changed into for the funeral. I try to keep going, past the box and toward my cookies, toward my first steps of acceptance, but I stop. A pair of pale yellow pumps rests atop the others.
I sit down beside the box, and my hand impulsively reaches for one of the shoes. These were her addiction. She could never resist a pair of yellow heels. I want to pull it into my chest, to pull her more near, but I know these were a cause of her pain. I throw it as hard into the opposite living room wall as I can, and my mom is beside me once again. Finally, I release myself into her arms, and I let myself cry into her shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers into my ear.
“Me too,” I tell her. She pulls away to look into my face. My first words since I’d heard the news. She wipes my eyes with her soft fingertips.
“Lacey loved you,” she says. “She just didn’t love herself.” My mom stands and helps me to my feet. I rise, knowing I will miss Lacey every day for the rest of my life.
The vanilla aroma is now rich and warm, drawing our noses toward the source. We travel together into the kitchen. She takes a mitt from the drawer and pulls out the cookies. They are a perfect golden yellow.
For Tara, who wanted a golden dog and taught me to make golden cookies... and most of all, had a golden heart.
.stuck.
It's a month and ten days later.
Tara is gone. You still see Rich outside of Wal-Mart. He sits, just hiding his face behind a person, a tree, a shopping cart... anything. Closer, it is not him.
"You won't be seeing him for a while," says Josh. "Actually... ever."
You entertain yourself with magazines, with plans, with trips... but you avoid those things, those people, that might actually move you forward. You shop, you read, you write painful fiction to put it out on paper. So desperate are you that you change what you wrote into what you will write.
Stuck.
Tara is gone. You still see Rich outside of Wal-Mart. He sits, just hiding his face behind a person, a tree, a shopping cart... anything. Closer, it is not him.
"You won't be seeing him for a while," says Josh. "Actually... ever."
You entertain yourself with magazines, with plans, with trips... but you avoid those things, those people, that might actually move you forward. You shop, you read, you write painful fiction to put it out on paper. So desperate are you that you change what you wrote into what you will write.
Stuck.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
This is what you will do
This is what you do.
You make a new plan. The plan won't involve either of the following: your heart-broken fragility or him.
You realize that you are better off. You realize that he wasn't good at being there when you cried. You realize that he was good at making you laugh. Laughing makes you feel better. How is it better not to laugh?
You pray for a phone call, an acknowledgment. You get nothing.
You write him letters you want to take back and forget.
You think of conversations you want to have with him, things where you are strong and assertive and you make him see that this is all him. It's his fault he dumped you.
And then a day passes. And you wake up feeling better, then worse. Then you realize that today, you will make a plan. Today, you will be happily singularly free. Today you will go to Trigonometry class and history class. Today you will visit your boss and put in your two weeks notice, although now you go to your job to stay busy, and even though you dislike the charming smell of popcorn on your skin and in your clothes, you're afraid for that period in which you struggle to have something to do, somewhere to go.
But life always works out in the end, you remember. Never before have you been stuck out in the streets. Never before have you not felt God's blessings of health and family and understanding on a daily basis... Never before have you been heart-broken.
Never before has he blatantly not cared... but then you remember that he has not cared. When he did the same thing to his last girlfriend, you know he didn't care. So you resolve not to care.
You resolve not to be heart-broken. You resolve that tomorrow is a different day. Tomorrow is a different chance you have to change.
Tomorrow, you will follow your instincts and you will do what is right for you. You will quit, and you will start. Quitting is the first step in starting.
This is what you will do.
You make a new plan. The plan won't involve either of the following: your heart-broken fragility or him.
You realize that you are better off. You realize that he wasn't good at being there when you cried. You realize that he was good at making you laugh. Laughing makes you feel better. How is it better not to laugh?
You pray for a phone call, an acknowledgment. You get nothing.
You write him letters you want to take back and forget.
You think of conversations you want to have with him, things where you are strong and assertive and you make him see that this is all him. It's his fault he dumped you.
And then a day passes. And you wake up feeling better, then worse. Then you realize that today, you will make a plan. Today, you will be happily singularly free. Today you will go to Trigonometry class and history class. Today you will visit your boss and put in your two weeks notice, although now you go to your job to stay busy, and even though you dislike the charming smell of popcorn on your skin and in your clothes, you're afraid for that period in which you struggle to have something to do, somewhere to go.
But life always works out in the end, you remember. Never before have you been stuck out in the streets. Never before have you not felt God's blessings of health and family and understanding on a daily basis... Never before have you been heart-broken.
Never before has he blatantly not cared... but then you remember that he has not cared. When he did the same thing to his last girlfriend, you know he didn't care. So you resolve not to care.
You resolve not to be heart-broken. You resolve that tomorrow is a different day. Tomorrow is a different chance you have to change.
Tomorrow, you will follow your instincts and you will do what is right for you. You will quit, and you will start. Quitting is the first step in starting.
This is what you will do.
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